but she had been married by proxy to her uncle before leaving Vienna. Declaring that to be good enough for him, Napoleon whisked her up to bed.
She was quite an attractive girl, with light brown hair, blue eyes and a very fresh complexion, and had a good, somewhat buxom figure; but she was very shy and, not unnaturally, she had been greatly distressed at having to leave her family. When waiting on her one morning in her apartments, Berthier had found her weeping bitterly. She had pointed out to him that everything there was dear to her. There were a tapestry that had been worked by her mother, pictures painted by her uncle Charles, drawings by her sister; and, above all, she was heartbroken at having to leave behind her little pet dog.
In spite of her sadness and timidity, Napoleon was enchanted with her. He could not do enough to reconcile her to exile and, a few days after they reached Paris thanks to Berthier's having hatched a little plot with her father before leaving Vienna he was able to give her a delightful surprise. Unlocking a door, he pushed her into a room and there were her tapestry, her paintings, all the other things she treasured, and her little dog.
To begin with, her shyness caused her to be haughty with the French ladies who formed her Court; but soon she made some good friends, and entertained those with whom she became intimate with the strange trick of being able to wiggle her ears.
The marriage was celebrated in Notre Dame on April 2nd, with almost unbelievable splendour. Not only were there a galaxy of subject Kings and Princes with their consorts, row upon row of High Dignitaries, Ambassadors, Marshals and Generals, but nearly every family of the old French nobility: de Rohan, de Richelieu, de Chevreuse, de Nemours, de Brissac, de Coigny, de Poligniac, de la Tour d'Auvergne, de Chalais and the rest were represented. For the past six years these émigrés had been welcomed back by Napoleon to add lustre to his
Court. They were not permitted to use their old titles, but to many of them he had given new ones when he had created thirty-one Dukes, three hundred and eighty-eight Counts and one thousand and ninety Barons.
Now, on this festive occasion he made a new distribution of honour’s, and Roger found himself elevated to the rank of Count, with which went a pension of thirty thousand francs per annum, as it was Napoleon's practice to ensure that his nobility had ample funds with which to support their dignity. All the Marshals had been endowed with great estates and a few, like Berthier, had revenues of over a million francs a year.
In April, a matter that had been giving Napoleon considerable concern for some time boiled up into a major issue. His fat, neurotic brother Louis, whom he had made King of Holland, far from acknowledging to whom he owed his crown, declared that he had been sent to rule over the Dutch by God's will. On the one hand he taxed his subjects unmercifully to pay for every sort of extravagance; on the other he pleaded their interests as an excuse to thwart Napoleon at every opportunity.
But, in the present instance, he undoubtedly had a case. After Nelson's victory at Trafalgar, it had become clear that for a number of years to come the French Fleet would not again have the strength to challenge the Royal Navy. The invasion of England no longer being a possibility, Napoleon had conceived another means by which he hoped to force Britain into suing for peace.
This was his Continental System, initiated by him in a decree published at Berlin in the summer of 1806. By it every country in which the Emperor's writ ran was ordered to cease importing goods from England, Commerce was Britain's strength, as by it she acquired the great sums with which she had financed France's neighbours to make war on him. Through his System, he expected not only to prevent, from lack of funds, further coalitions being formed against France, but also to reduce Britain to bankruptcy.
But the System proved easier to envisage than to carry out. Britain, having been first in the field with an Industrial Revolution, had become the emporium of Europe for manufactured goods. Moreover, it was her vast merchant fleets that brought to the Continent the products of the tropics, such as sugar, coffee, spices and innumerable other desirable items that had for long added enjoyment to the meals of Europe's millions.
As a result, smuggling had increased to enormous proportions and, while it could to some extent be suppressed in France, many other countries had proved openly recalcitrant. The Pope, for one, had refused to deprive his people of their little luxuries, so Napoleon had had him arrested and imprisoned and annexed the States of the Church. Another, and the worst leak in the blockade, had been Portugal. It was for that reason that Napoleon had sent General Junot with an army to Lisbon and was endeavoring to subdue the whole Peninsula.
Now it was Louis who refused to co-operate, and came to Paris to tell Napoleon that, the Dutch being a nation of merchants, the System was ruining his people and he would not tolerate it. Napoleon replied furiously that if Louis would not, he would remove him from his throne and annex Holland.
However, Louis was given one last chance. It was known that British commerce was suffering cruelly from the embargo, which was bankrupting many of her merchants. So, with the possibility of bringing France's inveterate enemy to heel, Louis was authorized to make overtures to the British Government on the lines that, either negotiations for a peace should be entered upon, or he would give way to the Emperor and close the mouth of the Scheldt.
Soon after the negotiations started, Louis returned to Paris and, in a flaming temper, accused Napoleon of having gone behind his back and sent his own emissary to London with proposals for a cessation of hostilities. With equal rage the Emperor denied it. But Louis produced evidence that an agent named Fagan was actually there.
It was then discovered that Fouche, Talleyrand's powerful partner in the secret endeavours to prevent Napoleon from entering upon further wars had, on his own authority begun peace talks with the British; and that the proposed agreement could have led to a coup d'etat in which the Emperor would have been forced to abdicate.
The proofs were such that Fouche could not deny them. After years of power second only to that wielded by his Imperial Master, he was disgraced, exiled to his estate in Provence, and his Ministry of Police, with its countless thousands of spies operating all over Europe, was given to General Savary, Due de Rovigo.
But that did not save Louis. Soon afterwards he was deprived of his Kingdom, Holland was made a part of France, and he went into exile at Toplitz in Bohemia.
By mid May Roger had been for over two months the Comptroller of Josephine's household and, devoted to her as he was, he felt that the time had come when he could decently ask to be relieved of his appointment; then, with the happy prospect at last of marrying Georgina, return to England. But it would have been highly dangerous simply to resign overnight and leave Paris. The safe course was to return for a few weeks to Napoleon's service until a suitable opportunity arose, such as the Emperor's temporarily leaving Paris, or sending him on a mission, when he could disappear without his absence becoming at once remarked upon.
Accordingly he told Josephine that he was now anxious to seek some form of more active service, and she reluctantly agreed to let him go, assured him that she would always value his friendship, and gave him a diamond encrusted sword-belt as a mark of her appreciation of his companionship at this distressing time in her life.