• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2637 0

because Napoleon was on the brink of sending troops to seize the Danish fleet himself. Moving away from the issue of grand strategy, there is also the argument that what mattered above all was Napoleon’s loyalty to his own family - that what he really wanted was to seize the throne of Portugal for some sibling. Yet somehow these arguments remain unconvincing. The Portuguese fleet may have been substantial, but it was by no means big enough to make much of a difference, while most of its ships-of-the-line were mere ‘Fourth Rates’ and therefore incapable of standing up to the much bigger and well-armed vessels favoured by the Royal Navy. With Portugal taking only 4 per cent of British exports, forcing her to join the Continental Blockade was hardly a matter of the greatest importance. And, finally, by 1807 Napoleon’s family was well provided for, not that there is any evidence that they were a consideration in respect of Portugal. Joseph was King of Naples; Louis, King of Holland; Jerome, King of Westphalia; Murat and Caroline, Duke and Duchess of Berg; Elise, Duchess of Lucca and Princess of Piombino; and Eugène de Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy.

There remains the issue of the control of Lisbon itself, but, important though this port was, the game hardly seems worth the candle. In consequence, the honest observer is forced back on the atmosphere that reigned in the Tuileries at this point. The return of Napoleon to Paris on 27 July 1807 was marked by the celebration of a ‘Te Deum’ in Notre Dame, immense demonstrations of loyalty and much pomp and ceremony, and the same sort of scenes were repeated a little over a month later when Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, was married to the daughter of the newfound King of Württemberg. As one of the guests remembered:

The ceremony took place in the Diana gallery at the Tuileries . . . All the magnificence of the most sumptuous court were deployed on this occasion. The quantity of pearls, diamonds and precious stones of all sorts which added their brilliance to the costumes of the women was truly prodigious, and the effect was all the more striking when one recalled the miseries of the end of the previous century: a few brief years had sufficed to bring back the most excessive behaviour.15

Still more impressive, and at the same time more militaristic, were the celebrations that accompanied the return of those few troops - primarily the Imperial Guard - who were brought back to France from Poland. Among them was the Chasseur officer, Jean-Baptiste Barrès:

The city of Paris had erected . . . a triumphal arch of the largest size. This arch had only a single arcade, but twenty men could pass through it marching abreast. At the spring of the vault . . . one saw great figures of Renown offering wreaths of laurel . . . From the morning onwards the arch was surrounded by an immense crowd . . . At noon, all the corps having arrived, the eagles were united at the head of the column and . . . 10,000 men in parade uniform moved forward to march past under the triumphal arch to the sound of the drums and the bands of the corps, numerous salvos of artillery, and the acclamations of the immense mass of people who had assembled on the spot. From the barrier to the palace of the Tuileries the same acclamations accompanied us . . . All the roofs and windows . . . were packed with sightseers. Poems in which we were compared to the 10,000 Immortals and warlike songs were sung and distributed as we went by . . . In short, the enthusiasm was absolute, and the festival worthy of the great days of Greece and Rome.16

Given Napoleon’s character, such scenes could not but spur him onward, and all the more so as the Napoleon of this period was very far from being the romantic hero of Brumaire and the Consulate. Amongst those who have left us a personal description was the young nobleman, the Duc de Broglie:

I had a glimpse of the emperor as he went by on his road to Bayonne. He stopped for breakfast, like any ordinary traveller, at the inn . . . He was no longer that young First Consul, slim,