“Believe me, I know my France.” 1
—LOUIS NAPOLÉON TO HIS MEN
“Certainly the prospect of this marriage pleased me, but…” 2
—MATHILDE BONAPARTE REGARDING HER ENGAGEMENT TO LOUIS NAPOLÉON
On the face of it, it hardly seemed of immediate concern to the inhabitants of Schloss Arenenberg when in the spring of 1835 newspapers announced a deadly outbreak of cholera sweeping the ancient Tuscan capital of Florence. It had happened before, many times, and the socially prominent and wealthy simply left for the countryside. Louis Bonaparte left for the seaside, while his younger, fifty-one-year-old brother, Jérôme, his ailing wife, Catharine, son “Prince Jérôme,” Plon-Plon (Napoléon Joseph), and daughter Princess Mathilde, preferred the safety of Switzerland. Back in January 1831 the Jérôme Bonapartes had been obliged by the Vatican police to abruptly quit their comfortable Roman palazzo and move to Florence, thanks largely to Prince Louis Napoléon’s plotting with the Carbonari to bring Napoléon’s son, the Duke of Reichstadt, from Vienna to assume the crown of Italy.3
And now, four years later, Uncle Jérôme still resented the heavy price they had paid as a result of his wayward nephew Louis Napoléon’s hell-raising, as he settled into the villa of “Mon Repos,” near Lausanne, on the shore of Lake Geneva. Swiss doctors confirmed that Catherine was in an advanced stage of cancer. The once frantically gay princess rapidly succumbed, dying in the rented villa on the night of November 29–30, 1835.
The funeral of the princess was not the only thing on Jérôme Bonaparte’s mind now, however, for the death of his wife also meant the immediate loss of the two main sources of the family’s income, derived from two “pensions” granted her by the former tsar Alexander and her father, Friedrich I, king of Württemberg. With the family treasury suddenly depleted—thanks to Jérôme’s squandering of his entire estate and his here-today-gone-tomorrow champagne mentality—and the inevitable marriage of his blossoming fifteen-year-old, dowryless daughter Mathilde to think of in the near future, for almost the first time in his erratic, sometimes violent life, libertine, gambler, and womanizer Jérôme Bonaparte had to sit down and do some serious thinking. And then once again, as it always seemed to transpire in his feckless existence, an unexpected, if still rather dim, light shone on the horizon.
Following the funeral and during his immediate sojourn to Stuttgart, nominally to visit Catherine’s relatives following her burial in the family crypt, but in reality to salvage his finances, Jérôme Bonaparte received an invitation from his sister-in-law, Hortense, to come with his grieving children for a visit to Schloss Arenenberg. While Jérôme’s feelings regarding his now twenty-seven-year-old nephew Louis Napoléon were not exactly warm at this stage, stripped of two-thirds of his income, this former king of Westphalia had to be realistic. The family’s small convoy of calèches was soon en route to the modest château overlooking Lake Constance. Of all the Bonapartes, Jérôme was the only one who personally liked and accepted Hortense. The other clan doors had been rudely shut these past two decades, leaving few possible suitors for his daughter.
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Although visitors generally found Arenenberg rather somber, heavy, and oppressive, including the ostentatious clutter of Napoleona—large family portraits and delicate miniatures, busts, swords, snuff boxes, and books—young Mathilde found the ambiance, especially the lightened, tented chiffon ceilings in the private apartments, most inviting, and she liked her gentle, beautiful aunt Hortense, which in turn won her over in the eyes of cousin Louis Napoléon.
Allowed to visit Hortense in the morning while she was still in bed, Mathilde found her “pleasant and smiling, taking me into her confidence about her daily affairs here while showing an interest in my future, even as she attempted to better understand me personally.” And Louis Napoléon, for once relaxing in this rare intimate family gathering, was clearly smitten with his pretty first cousin, even flirting with her. Putting her dark mourning dress aside, one afternoon she appeared in an embarrassingly low-cut gown, looking much older than her sixteen years. “It was a pleasure to look at her, she was so pretty,” an amused Valérie Masuyer remarked, noting that “the young prince could not take his eyes off her.”4 Uncle Jérôme soon had to return to Stuttgart with Mathilde, pleased that this first meeting between the young couple had gone off so well.
Mathilde was not the only prospect in sight, however, as Hortense and Valérie Masuyer considered the possibilities. The daughter of General Arrighi de Casanova, the Duke of Padua, was an attractive option, with a dowry of 600,000 francs in cash, but the title was new and the young lady a bit of a pudding so far as Louis Napoléon was concerned, and in any event his father also rejected that candidate, just as he did the young widowed Maria da Braganza, queen of Portugal. And although there were rumors of German and Russian princesses, Louis Napoléon for his part neither wished to bear the crown of, nor live in, a foreign country. It would be France or nothing, and he was fast losing patience with this matrimonial quest. “I do not want to run all over Europe selling myself to the highest bidder,” he complained to Hortense.5 On the other hand there were not that many crowned heads of state wishing to have one of those upstart “Bonapartes” as a son-in-law. Europe had enough problems as it was, without having to add to them.
Back in Stuttgart once again, Jérôme Bonaparte and King Friedrich had to settle Catherine’s estate, Jérôme not neglecting the opportunity of showing off the king’s lovely granddaughter, Mathilde, as a potential bride-to-be—and no doubt her worth as a dowry investment by him. Indeed Jérôme assured the stouthearted king that he personally was a reformed man. He would put an end to his spendthrift ways of the past couple of decades. He would not only cut down on household expenses, he would sell his luxurious Florentine palazzo in exchange for the more modest villa of Quarto.
The subject of marriage between Louis Napoléon and Mathilde was now on the table. The hurdle of Bonaparte family animosity was diminished somewhat as Letizia gradually came to know and accept Hortense after her many visits to Rome, and with that matriarch’s death on February 2, 1836, any possible lingering animosity was literally buried.
Money was the real problem. Jérôme was hoping for cooperation from his father-in-law, King Friedrich, who openly welcomed the idea of the marriage of that couple. Another visit to Arenenberg followed, allowing Louis Napoléon and Mathilde to spend more time together, including chaperoned moonlight boat rides on Lake Constance. The creative Jérôme Bonaparte finally proposed terms: a 150,000-franc cash dowry (which he did not possess) and the Schloss Gottlieben (near Arenenberg) that he had just acquired (entirely on credit) for the young couple. The prince’s father in Florence finally condescended to the alliance (at the urging of Hortense) with the promise of another 250,000 francs. Hortense added an annual pension of 12,000 francs out of her own meager personal funds. The two poorest branches of the Bonaparte family would unite, but with a cautionary Louis adding his usual paternal advice. He was perfectly aware, he noted, that Mathilde was “charming, but that is not everything in a marriage,” for the “illusions of beauty and even those of worthy feelings” frequently did not stand the test of time.6 And that is how matters stood on the twenty-second of May, 1836, as a blooming Mathilde and a much relieved Jérôme left Switzerland on their return journey to Florence.
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Little known to Hortense, however, Louis Napoléon had more pressing matters on his mind, thanks in great part to the stimulating drive of Gilbert (Fialin) Persigny. Hereafter politics superseded romance in the life of the prince.
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Louis Philippe, “the king of the French,” and his misrule and mass suppression of the electorate were among the principal obstacles oppressing the French people, Louis Napoléon preached to Persigny, who in turn encouraged the prince. The July Monarchy, having arrived by revolution, must in turn now be removed by it, but not by violence, not by the sword, the prince insisted. “If the government [of Louis Philippe] have committed enough mistakes to makes the people desire another revolution,” he argued before Gilbert Persigny, “if the Napoleonic cause has left fond memories in the hearts of the French people, then all I should have to do is to present myself, standing quite alone, without even troops at my side, before the people and remind them of their recent grievances and past glory, and they will rally to my flag.… Believe me, I know my France.”7 He was completely beguiled by his own rhetoric and fervor, and convinced of the purity of his intentions. After all, “a revolution is only acceptable, only legitimate when it is made in the best interests of the majority of the people,”8 he argued. And strongly encouraged by Persigny throughout the late summer of 1836, they sat down to work out a plan to remove King Louis Philippe and replace him with this nephew of Emperor Napoléon. Louis Napoléon decided on the seizure of the ten-thousand-man garrison of Strasbourg, followed by a march on Paris. But initial attempts to contact and win over senior army officers and officials in that city were most disappointing. The commanding general, Théophile Voirol, had not only turned him down but had notified the war office in Paris.9 Louis Napoléon’s attempt to bring in General Rémi Exelmans, a veteran of the 1812 Moscow campaign, also failed.10 In the end, the most senior officer at Strasbourg agreeing to go along with this plot was the fifty-two-year-old Colonel Claude Nicolas Vaudrey, who had fought with Napoléon at Waterloo. Vaudrey in turn recruited Major Denis Parquin (married to Hortense’s former companion, Louise Cochelet), Major de Bruce, Lieutenant (Viscount) de Querelle, and Lieutenant Armand Laity, among others. And that was how matters stood by the end of September 1836.
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Fanny Le Hon had been working with Hortense as she prepared to recognize Auguste de Morny officially, by adopting him, and in the last week of October Fanny duly arrived at Arenenberg to draft the legal paperwork. It was probably about this time that Louis Napoléon received the shocking news that he had an illegitimate half brother. On the twenty-fourth of October, a somber, constrained farewell dinner was held at Arenenberg including Hortense, Louis Napoléon, Henri Conneau, Valérie Masuyer, and Fanny Le Hon. Fanny announced that she would be returning to Paris to see the lawyers regarding the adoption, and Louis Napoléon had been invited to visit cousins on a hunting party in Germany.11 The following morning, the prince boarded his carriage and set out on his journey. Instead of heading northeast, however, hours later he crossed the Rhine into France. He would not see his mother again until the summer of the following year.