Metternich on Napoleon’s family
This is taken from “Mémoires, documents et écrits divers”, Vol. 1:
Napoleon had a great weakness for his family. There is no doubt that many of the sovereign' s moves were due to the desires of his brothers and sisters.
Not all members of this too large family were equally ambitious, however. Napoleon's mother loved only money. Neither her mind nor her tastes led her towards social advancement. She had an immense income, and, without her son's precise orders, she would have thought only of investing her funds. When her children took the liberty of ridiculing her extreme thriftiness, she said to them: "You don't know what you are doing; the world does not always go in the same direction, and if you all fall on my hands again, you will be grateful for what I am doing today.
In 1814 Madame Lætitia had amassed a large sum of cash, which she had buried in a hiding place covered by the portrait of her late husband. The fact, and the place where the treasure was deposited, were denounced to Napoleon, who went to his mother and had the money removed. She may have taken with her from France a fortune of about six million francs.
I never knew either Joseph or Lucien Bonaparte personally, so I cannot express an opinion on their behalf. Napoleon had a favourable opinion of Lucien's mind, but he never ceased to accuse him of excessive and misguided ambition.
In an interview which Lucien had with his brother in Milan, he offered as a token of reconciliation a declaration by his wife giving, of her own free will, the assurance that she did not wish to impede her husband's fortune. The Emperor, on leaving one of their conferences, said to the people gathered in his anteroom: "Lucien does not want to give up his little rascality; he wants to prove to me that he has a hard head, I will prove to him that I have a harder head than he has. - And there was no further question of mending fences from then on. It is indeed known that in consenting to leave his wife he insisted on the recognition of his children. His conduct in 1815 provided the true measure of the severity of his republican principles.
Napoleon has often depicted Joseph to me as a gentle man of character and spirit, but incapable of undertaking a career which would require vigour.
Louis was placed in the family like an outsider. Injustice alone could have found fault with his moral character.
Jerome was gifted with a lot of spirit. The depravity of his morals, an exalted vanity and his mania for imitating his brother in every way, covered him with ridicule.
Two of Napoleon's sisters were remarkable for their wit, the third for her great beauty. Elisa, the eldest of the sisters and at the same time older than Napoleon, had a male spirit, and in character as well as in figure a great resemblance to her brother. Ambition was her dominant passion, and had not the low extraction of her husband, Baciocchi, and the latter's complete lack of intellectual faculties been an obstacle to it, there can be no doubt that this branch of the family would have risen to a high fortune. Of the three sisters, this was nevertheless the one who had the least power over Napoleon, who feared her and knew how to resist her.
Caroline combined a lovely appearance with an uncommon spirit. She had studied her brother's character thoroughly and was under no illusion as to any of his faults, nor as to the risks which his fortune ran as a result of his excessive ambition and domineering spirit; she also knew perfectly well the weak sides of her husband, and she would have led him, if he could have been led.
Aww, Clemens. Still fuming over 1814/5, are we?
Murat was only a soldier, but a soldier of the Revolution and endowed with a certain instinct for domination which I have always seen as the prerogative of the Jacobins. Caroline had great power over her brother's mind, and it was she who held the family together. Her ambition was to create for herself and her family an existence placed as far as possible beyond the reach of Napoleon, and even beyond the chances of his fortune, a fortune which she judged to be compromised by every excess arising from his insatiable lust.
Pauline was as beautiful as it is possible to be; she was in love with herself, and her sole occupation was pleasure. Of an affable character, gifted with an extreme benevolence, Napoleon devoted to her a feeling different from that which he bore to his other parents. He cited her as a unique example in the family. Pauline," he often told me, "never asks me for anything. The Princess Borghese, for her part, used to say, "I do not like crowns; if I had wanted them, I would have had them; but I have given up the taste for them to my relatives." She had a veneration for Napoleon which approached worship.
Josephine had exercised a long reign over Napoleon; she was gifted with a benevolent character and a peculiar social touch. Her mind was not great, but it followed a good direction. Her excessive taste for spending often led to painful explanations between her and her husband. It would be unfair to put any of the failings caused by Napoleon's ambition on her shoulders. If she had been able to do so, she would undoubtedly have stopped the wagon onto which, however, she had contributed directly, in the beginning of his fortune, to place the future Emperor.
Gifted with more wit and a far greater measure of ambition, his daughter Hortense never ceased to play a part in Napoleon's career. He loved her, and his condescensions for her were the cause of perpetual and active jealousies between her and her sisters-in-law. More than one friction in Napoleon's personal situation and even in the course of business was due to this cause.
Cardinal Fesch was a singular compound of bigotry and ambition. A devotee in good faith, he was not far from seeing in Napoleon an instrument of heaven and an almost supernatural being. He believed his reign to be written in the book of fate and regarded his deviations as decrees of God.
Napoleon knew all the individualities of his family, and he did not conceal from himself the fault he had committed in abandoning himself to the spirit of domination and the insatiable greed of some of them.
He said to me one day, in 1810, on the occasion of a long interview in which he had just told me the story of his life: "I have obscured and hindered my career by having placed my relatives on thrones. One learns by walking, and I see today how wise and necessary is the fundamental principle of the ancient monarchies, to keep the princes of the ruling house in great and perpetual dependence on the throne. My relatives have done me much more harm than I have done them good, and if I had to do it all over again, my brothers and sisters would have palaces in Paris and a few millions to spend in idleness. The fine arts and charity would have been their domain, and not kingdoms, which some do not know how to run, and in which others compromise me by parodying me.
Napoleon was careful to place a man of confidence with each of his brothers and relatives. The fortune of M. Decazes dated from the position he held as secretary of the commands of Madame Laetitia.
There’s so much I would love to answer to that, dear Metternich ... But mostly I find it rather funny to hear Napoleon go all judgemental over other people’s ambitions. Particularly as he had to coerce both Joseph and Louis to even accept their crowns, and as he did not even succeed with Lucien.
Also of note: Both of Napoleon’s adopted children, Eugène among them, are not even listed as “family” here.
@joachimnapoleon: I think the first two volumes of Metternich’s published papers might be of real interest to you!
Clemens Wenzel Lothar Prince de Metternich: “Mémoires, documents et écrits divers”
Volume 1
Volume 2
