The Bonaparte (and the Beauharnais) boys, one by one, kept dying young. Sometimes a person’s good intentions are manipulated in order to get them killed or subverted. Hortense was trying to get her sons to comprehend this.
This is a serial of a book by Queen Hortense. The previous entries are furnished at the bottom.
- playing into the chaos of revolution, without reflection, without a fixed plan, and without having carefully calculated its means. But the victory of Paris had revealed a weapon unknown hitherto, the pavement. With the people standing up for themselves, everyone thought they were sure of annihilating the most imposing army.
The delusion was complete. I arrived at Florence, agitated with a thousand fears. I needed to dispel my two children of the common illusion of which I saw them surrounded. How their youth and their ardor cause me anxiety! I wanted to gain their confidence, and my arguments, contrary to those of so many others, despaired them.
My husband had gone to Rome to see his mother. I spent two fortunate days in the middle of the only two interests of my life. My son Napoleon informed me that he had received pleas from Paris to persuade him to come and help reconquer the rights of his cousin.
The ministers' proceedings were regarded as a decisive moment against a government which was said to be compromised. My son admitted to me that he had at first hesitated, but he showed me his answer.
"The people alone are masters," he said. He recognized a new sovereign. Should I carry the civil war to my country, when I wish to serve it at the price of all my blood? From Corsica, similar proposals had been made to him which he had answered in the same way. I approved of his conduct.
Besides, what could he have done then in France? If the people had remained attached to his name, I had too much proof that all the leaders, all the old friends, had taken up other interests and that’s what they would defend.
But Italy, where he lived, counted perhaps on his assistance. That was where all my fears were. Tuscany was the happiest country in Italy. The sovereign was loved there. Nothing was desired but a constitution, which the ministers were already going to grant, it was said. It was even assured that M. de Metternich, in
Hortense’s explanation why she broke the law is here.