Life of Napoleon Bonaparte. Volume IV. Вальтер Скотт

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СКАЧАТЬ patriots, by counselling them to await his death, before making a daring attempt to vindicate their freedom. Such counsels were favourably listened to, because men are, in spite of themselves, always willing to listen to prudent arguments, when they tend to postpone desperate risks. But this species of argument was ended, when the inheritance of despotism seemed ready to be transmitted from father to son in direct descent. There was no termination seen to the melancholy prospect, nor was it easy for the most lukewarm of patriots to assign any longer a reason for putting off till Napoleon's death the resistance which to-day demanded. Under these various lights was the birth of the King of Rome considered; and it may after all remain a matter of doubt, whether the blessing of a son and heir, acceptable as it must necessarily have been to his domestic feelings, was politically of that advantage to him which the Emperor of France unquestionably expected.

      And now, before we begin to trace the growing differences betwixt France and Russia, which speedily led to such important consequences, we may briefly notice some circumstances connected with Spain and with Spanish affairs, though the two incidents which we are to mention first, are rather of a detached and insulated nature.

THE EX-QUEEN OF ETRURIA

      The first of these refers to the Ex-Queen of Etruria, a daughter, it will be remembered, of Charles, King of Spain, and a sister of Ferdinand. Upon this princess and her son, Buonaparte had settled the kingdom of Etruria, or Tuscany. Preparatory to the Bayonne intrigue, he had forcibly deprived her of this dignity, in order to offer it as an indemnification to Ferdinand for the cession, which he proposed to that unhappy prince, of the inheritance of Spain. Having contrived to obtain that cession without any compensation, Buonaparte reserved Etruria to himself, and retained the late Queen as a hostage. For some time she was permitted to reside with her parents at Compeigne; but afterwards, under pretext of conducting her to Parma, she was escorted to Nice, and there subjected to the severe vigilance of the police. The princess appears to have been quicker in her feelings than the greater part of her family, which does not, indeed, argue any violent degree of sensibility. Terrified, however, and alarmed at the situation in which she found herself, she endeavoured to effect an escape into England. Two gentlemen of her retinue were sent to Holland, for the purpose of arranging her flight, but her project was discovered. On the 16th April, 1811, officers of police and gendarmes broke into the residence of the Queen at Nice, seized her person and papers, and, after detaining her in custody for two months, and threatening to try her by a military tribunal, they at length intimated to her a sentence, condemning her, with her daughter (her son had been left very much indisposed at Compeigne,) to be detained close prisoners in a monastery at Rome, to which she was compelled to repair within twenty-four hours after the notice of her doom. Her two agents, who had been previously made prisoners, were sent to Paris. They were condemned to death by a military commission, and were brought out for that purpose to the plain of Gresnelle. One was shot on the spot, and pardon was extended to his companion when he was about to suffer the same punishment. The mental agony of the poor man had, however, affected the sources of life, and he died within a few days after the reprieve. The severity of this conduct towards a princess – a Queen indeed – who had placed her person in Napoleon's hands, under the expectation that her liberty at least should not be abridged, was equally a breach of justice, humanity, and gentlemanlike courtesy.80

LUCIEN BUONAPARTE

      It is curious, that about the same time when Napoleon treated with so much cruelty a foreign and independent princess, merely because she expressed a desire to exchange her residence from France to England, his own brother, Lucien, was received with hospitality in that island, so heartily detested, so frequently devoted to the fate of a second Carthage. Napoleon, who was always resolute in considering the princes of his own blood as the first slaves in the state, had become of late very urgent with Lucien to dismiss his wife, and unite himself with some of the royal families on the continent, or at least to agree to bestow the hand of his daughter upon young Ferdinand of Spain, who had risen in favour by his behaviour on an occasion immediately to be mentioned. But Lucien, determined at this time not to connect himself or his family with the career of his relative's ambition, resolved to settle in America, and place the Atlantic betwixt himself and the importunities of his Imperial brother. He applied to the British minister at Sardinia for a pass, who was under the necessity of referring him to his Government. On this second application he was invited to England, where he was permitted to live in freedom upon his parole, one officer only having a superintendence of his movements and correspondence.81 These were in every respect blameless; and the ex-statesman, who had played so distinguished a part in the great revolutionary game, was found able to amuse himself with the composition of an epic poem on the subject of Charlemagne;82– somewhat more harmlessly than did his brother Napoleon, in endeavouring again to rebuild and consolidate the vast empire of the son of Pepin.

      Another intrigue of a singular character, and which terminated in an unexpected manner, originated in an attempt of the English Ministry to achieve the liberty of Ferdinand, the lawful King of Spain. A royal and a popular party had begun to show themselves in that distracted country, and to divert the attention of the patriots from uniting their efforts to accomplish the object of most engrossing importance, the recovery, namely, of their country, from the intruding monarch and the French armies. The English Government were naturally persuaded that Ferdinand, to whose name his subjects were so strongly attached, would be desirous and capable of placing himself, were he at liberty, at their head, putting an end to their disputes by his authority, and giving their efforts an impulse, which could be communicated by no one but the King of Spain to the Spanish nation. It is no doubt true, that, had the Government of England known the real character of this prince, a wish for his deliverance from France, or his presence in Spain, would have been the last which they would have formed. This misapprehension, however, was natural, and was acted upon.

      A Piedmontese, of Irish extraction, called the Baron Kolli (or Kelly,) the selected agent of the British government, was furnished with some diamonds and valuable articles, under pretext of disposing of which he was to obtain admission to the Prince, then a prisoner at Valençay, where his chief amusement, it is believed, was embroidering a gown and petticoat, to be presented to the Virgin Mary. Kolli was then to have informed the Prince of his errand, effected Ferdinand's escape by means of confederates among the royalist party, and conveyed him to the coast, where a small squadron awaited the event of the enterprise, designed to carry the King of Spain to Gibraltar, or whither else he chose. In March 1810, Kolli was put ashore in Quiberon bay, whence he went to Paris, to prepare for his enterprise. He was discovered, however, by the police,83 and arrested at the moment when he was setting out for Valençay. Some attempts were made to induce him to proceed with the scheme, of which his papers enabled the police to comprehend the general plan, keeping communication at the same time with the French minister. As he disdained to undertake this treacherous character, Kolli was committed close prisoner to the castle of Vincennes, while a person – the same who betrayed his principal, and whose exterior in some degree answered the description of the British emissary – was sent to represent him at the castle of Valençay.

      But Ferdinand, either suspicious of the snare which was laid for him, or poor-spirited enough to prefer a safe bondage to a brave risk incurred for liberty, would not listen to the supposed agent of Britain, and indeed denounced the pretended Kolli to Barthemy, the governor of the castle. The false Kolli, therefore, returned to Paris, while the real one remained in the castle of Vincennes till the capture of Paris by the allies. Ferdinand took credit, in a letter to Buonaparte, for having resisted the temptation held out to him by the British Government, who had, as he pathetically observed, abused his name, and occasioned, by doing so, the shedding of much blood in Spain. He again manifested his ardent wish to become the adopted son of the Emperor; his hope that the author and abettors of the scheme to deliver him might be brought to condign punishment; and concluded with a hint, that he was extremely desirous to leave Valençay, a residence which had nothing about it but what was unpleasant, and was not in any respect fitted for him. The hint of Ferdinand about a union with Buonaparte's family, probably led to the fresh importunity on the Emperor's part, which induced Lucien СКАЧАТЬ