The Ravishing of Lady Mary Ware (9 page)

Three days elapsed before a ship came close enough in for her to be reached without undue risk and, fortunately, at midday the wind dropped to hardly a breeze; so for the afternoon she lay about three miles offshore, almost becalmed.

As Roger was anxious that no-one in the town should
see him put Georgina aboard, they waited until an hour or so before twilight was due to fall before leaving the house. Early in the afternoon he had made certain through his telescope that the frigate was British; Georgina had then packed most of the clothes he had bought for her while she was living at Passy and, having told the Dufours that they were going for a trip in the yacht, they had carried the bags down to her.

With the approach of evening, the usual breeze from the land caused the sails of the ship to fill a little, and she began to put on way. But Roger was not displeased as, without the breeze, he could not have sailed his yacht, and he felt confident that he could overhaul the frigate. Before they hoisted the anchor they took a long, tender farewell of one another, but Georgina put a brave face on their parting, and the yacht was soon churning up a ripple at her bow.

It took them over two hours to come up within hailing distance of the frigate, but that suited Roger well, as he did not want to run even the slight risk of one of the officers on board recognising him as Mr. Brook. To reduce the possibility to a minimum, he had put on his oldest sailing clothes, and it was now nearly dark.

The watch answered Roger's hail; then a lengthy exchange took place, during which the Captain came on deck. At first he was most reluctant to take a female aboard; but, on being assured that she was the Countess of St. Ermins, a well-known beauty who had many influential friends, he decided that it was better not to risk a reprimand from his superiors for having refused to assist her to escape from enemy territory.

At length a breeches buoy was let down, Roger lashed Georgina firmly into it, then she was hauled up. He had lowered the sails of his yacht and now sat down in the stern while she gently rocked. After waving Georgina away, he sadly watched the ship until she had disappeared
into the darkness. He then hoisted sail and turned the yacht in the direction of St. Tropez, where he intended to sleep that night.

The following afternoon he told the Dufours that their mistress had received news that a member of her family was dangerously ill; so she had had to leave for Marseilles at a moment's notice. Next morning, with a heavy heart, he took the road to Paris.

When, on the 12th March, Roger reached the capital, he found it agog with excitement over the Emperor's approaching marriage, and was glad to learn that the bride was to be the Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, the nineteen-year-old daughter of the Emperor Francis.

The Russian alliance, entered into with such enthusiasm by the Czar in the summer of 1808, when the two Emperors had met on a raft in the middle of the river Niemen at Tilsit to agree an armistice, had never been popular with a great part of the Russian nobility; and later, when the two Emperors had met again at Erfurt, Alexander—a mental as well as a born autocrat—had baulked at the suggestion of giving his sister to a Corsican upstart. Finally, to avoid offending Napoleon, his formal proposal had been rejected by the Dowager Czarina on the excuse that her daughter was still too young to marry.

The result must be a further weakening of the Franco-Russian alliance, which gave Napoleon security in the north and could lead to his becoming still more powerful through the conquest and partition of Turkey; so Talleyrand, Fouché, Roger and everyone else who was secretly hoping for Napoleon's downfall were very pleased that the new Empress was to be the Austrian.

Having made his service to the Emperor, Roger rode
out to Malmaison. Josephine received him with delight, had the best guest suite in the house prepared for him and said that he must order anything he desired, at her expense. During the next few days he took over from her Comptroller and found that there was nothing basically wrong with the running of the household. It was simply that the official had endeavoured to check Josephine's extravagance, and had shown no tact in doing so. Feeling confident that he could always persuade the Emperor to give her more money, Roger made few changes and soon settled down to his new life.

As spring was now well on the way, much of his time was spent with Josephine in her beautiful garden. Flowers were her chief delight. Tens of thousands of bulbs were blooming in the glades, and in the hot-houses there were many rare tropical plants that she had had sent from her native Martinique. But, although she no longer drove into Paris, she was far from leading the life of a recluse. Apart from the enmity of members of the Bonaparte family, she had been universally popular and her old friends flocked out to Malmaison to visit her; so Roger was kept up-to-date with all that was going on at Court.

Berthier had been sent to escort Marie Louise from Vienna, and the Emperor was to receive her at St. Cloud. But, with his usual impatience, instead of adhering to the arrangement, as soon as he learned that she had crossed the frontier, he drove at full speed to meet her. To the surprise and dismay of her attendants, he dashed into a house where she had broken her journey to rest and, although soaked to the skin from having been exposed to the pouring rain, fervidly embraced her. He then hustled her out to his carriage and carried the frightened girl off to his palace at Compiègne. Then he declared his intention of sleeping with her that night. Vigorous protests were made, because the marriage had not yet taken place; 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 honours, 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 endeavouring 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 authorised 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 Fouché, 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'état
in which the Emperor would have been forced to abdicate.

The proofs were such that Fouché 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, Duc 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 Park, 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.

Two days later he waited on Napoleon, who was in a good mood and glad to have him back. For a week, he again assisted Berthier in organising the stream of troops and supplies that continued to pour south into Spain. The Emperor then sent for him.

The now paunchy, bullet-headed master of Europe was pacing angrily up and down in front of his desk. Turning toward Roger, he thrust out his great, broad jaw and snapped in his atrocious Italian-accented French:

‘Breuc, I have a mission for you. Those accursed Germans are plaguing me beyond all endurance. Neither by requests nor threats can I induce them to carry out my decrees. Hamburg has now become the worst hole in my System. Daily, American ships loaded with British goods arrive in the mouth of the Elbe, and nothing is done about it. My mind is made up. I will tolerate this no longer. I intend to take over Hanover, and make it a part of France.'

Roger raised an eyebrow and, having British mercantile interests in mind, said, ‘With all due deference, Sire, might that not lead to more trouble than blocking the hole is worth? I gather that recently there have been quite a number of demonstrations against our troops in the north German lands. The measure Your Imperial Majesty proposes might well lead to open rebellion.'