Authors: Mary McGrigor
The Tsar's Doctor (13 page)
The road to Paris was open. The next day, as the allied armies advanced, Alexander rode alongside his columns. ‘My children,’ he said to his guards, ‘it is but a step further to Paris.’ They responded: ‘We will take it, father. We remember Moscow.’
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When in Moscow, Napoleon had so admired the city’s golden cupolas that on his return to Paris he had gilded the dome of the Hôtel des Invalides (the hospital built by Louis XIV for old soldiers) and now as they neared the city they saw the gold glitter in the sun. On the morning of 31 March 1814, Alexander triumphantly entered the capital city of the man who had captured his own.
The people of Paris went wild with excitement at the sight of the fabled Tsar of Russia. Crowds lined the streets to see Alexander, who had such a good seat for a horse, riding astride the dark bay mare which, in times of their friendship, had been a gift from Napoleon. In his dark green uniform, with golden epaulettes flashing in the sunshine, he epitomized the conquering hero, raising his arm in salute to the rim of the plumed hat crowning his fair, curling hair. Women screamed with delight as Alexander rode through the main streets of the city and into the Champs Élysées. Gasping with delight, they saw the Imperial Guards, cuirasses gleaming, riding horses as magnificent as themselves. Then some drew back in terror, clutching their children to their skirts at the sight of the moustached, swarthy-skinned men, as the murmured word ‘Cossacks’ drifted through the crowds. These were the legendary barbarians, famed for their ferocity and rapine. If the stories told of them were true, doors must be locked and windows barred. No one in Paris would be safe.
Beside the Marley Horses, sitting astride his own perfectly trained mare, Alexander took the salute of his columns of splendidly mounted cavalry and regiments of infantry until late in the afternoon.
He had meant to stay at the Elysée Palace but Nesselrode, the former commercial envoy to Paris who had now become his secretary, received a mysterious message that the palace had been mined by Napoleon’s agents and therefore was highly dangerous to inhabit. This proved to be false information but Alexander nonetheless decided to accept Talleyrand’s offer of part of his house, which stood most conveniently at the corner of the Rue St Florentin and the Rue de Rivoli.
Here the tsar, along with most of his entourage, occupied the whole of the first floor. Despite the number of rooms there was still not space for everyone. Wylie’s great-niece wrote that he stayed in what she described as ‘one of the best hotels’. Nonetheless the tsar kept his doctor close to him during those weeks of April 1814 when Alexander, briefly the most powerful man in Europe, held dominance over the discussions regarding the ruling of France.
In Talleyrand’s house the tsar was protected night and day by guards of his own Semeonovski regiment. In the streets there was some disturbance as the citizens celebrated their freedom from a dictator’s rule and the officers of the Tsar’s Guard stopped the mob hauling down Napoleon’s statue in the Place Vendôme. Vigilance was vital, for Napoleon was only a few miles away at Fontainebleau. Even more threatening was the news that Marshal Marmont, with a division of the French army stationed near Paris, was still defiant of surrender. The city remained in a state of tension as Caulaincourt, Napoleon’s former ambassador to St Petersburg and one of his closest aides, hurried back and forth to the palace of Fontainebleau, carrying dispatches between the French emperor and the leaders of the allies, in whose hands now lay the fate of France.
Convinced at last by his advisers that there was no point in continuing the war, Napoleon sent envoys to Alexander with his offer to abdicate in favour of a regency for his three-year-old son. Accordingly, at three o’clock in the morning on 5 April, the tsar received Caulaincourt and the marshalls Ney, Marmont, and MacDonald in the first floor of the former foreign minister’s house. Caulaincourt used all of his persuasive powers to convince Alexander to accept a Bonaparte regency, but Talleyrand, whom the tsar then consulted, told him on no account to allow this as a regency would undoubtedly be influenced by Napoleon if held in name by his son.
Alexander then confronted the envoys with his decision. Regency was unacceptable, he told them. Stability was a necessity for France. Napoleon must abdicate unconditionally. He would receive an adequate pension in whatever place of exile it was decided he should live. By now it was known that even as Marshal Marmont had joined the conference his corps, the last loyal contingent of Napoleon’s once omnipotent army, had deserted him to join the allies.
Napoleon, on word of this, accepting at last that all was lost, put his name to the act of abdication on 6 April. Just a week later, on 13 April, the Treaty of Fontainebleau, signed first by the leaders of the four major powers, Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain, was agreed. The document was then taken to Versailles by Caulaincourt, so that Napoleon could add his signature.
On receiving it, the French emperor, unable to accept the humiliation to which it was demanded he should put his name, attempted to end his own life with poison, but failed, perhaps deliberately. Once the treaty was ratified, Napoleon was granted both the sovereignty of Elba, and a pension of approximately 2,000,000 francs. He then left France for the island off the north-west coast of Italy, chosen as his place of exile by his one-time friend and ally, the Tsar of Russia himself.
Paris was soon
en fête
. Nature itself seemed to welcome the conquerors. The warm sun shone from a clear sky, bringing chestnut trees bursting into flower. Gardens, scented with lilac, were bright with spring flowers and birds sang joyfully from dawn until the fall of night, heard even above the cacophony of hawkers shouting their wares and of horse-drawn vehicles in the streets.
While much involved in diplomacy, Alexander also enjoyed the city’s social life. Balls were given in his honour. Fashionable ladies, whose husbands, sons and lovers, had so recently fought against him, competed to entertain him. He waltzed with the wives of generals and – susceptible as ever – fell in love again.
Extraordinary as it seemed, both then and ever after, the lady who inflamed his passion was none other than Josephine, she whom Napoleon had loved so passionately but had abandoned to marry the daughter of Emperor Francis of Austria in order to produce his longed-for heir. Exiled as he was in Elba, Napoleon himself must have marvelled at, and perhaps even rejoiced in, the irony of the man with whom he himself had enjoyed such a contrast in relationships, now being involved with the woman who would remain his enduring love.
Marie Josèphe Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie, as was Josephine’s original name, had lived through much triumph and tragedy in her life. Born on a slave-worked plantation on the West Indian island of Martinique, she still spoke with a Creole accent, husky but attractive to the ear. She had first married Vicomte Alexandre Beauharnais, father of her son and daughter, Eugène and Hortense. Fêted by Paris society, both for her beauty and her charm, her world had dissolved in the revolution of 1793 when she and her husband had been imprisoned and he killed by the guillotine. Surviving and ever more ambitious, she had taken a series of influential lovers, until the young General Napoleon had been entranced by her at first sight.
Saddened as she was by her divorce from him after a marriage of thirteen years, she nonetheless retained some of the magic which had so enslaved him. Even at fifty, and now grown rather stout, she still possessed much of the beauty which had dazzled so many men’s eyes. Nonetheless both time and hardship had taken their toll. Josephine, as Napoleon had called her and as she was now known to the world, was becoming physically frail and Alexander’s relationship with her was to end as sadly as had that with Napoleon himself.
Time and again he called to see her at the beautiful house of Malmaison where she had lived since her divorce. On one occasion, when the King of Prussia had announced that he was bringing his two young sons to dine with her, she asked Alexander to come with his brothers Nicholas and Michael to help entertain them. Her daughter Hortense and her two little sons, Louis Napoleon and Napoleon Louis, were in the drawing room when the guests arrived. Alexander, who was fond of children, talked to the two boys, who told him that when they grew up they meant to become soldiers to fight the Prussians and the Cossacks! The King of Prussia, hearing this, was plainly not amused and their governess hastily took them away but on another occasion, the younger boy, later to be Napoleon III, slipped into Alexander’s hand a gold ring which the tsar promised faithfully to keep for as long as he should live.
Excited by Alexander’s attention, which made her forget her health, Josephine bought new dresses. One was a beautiful but flimsy creation, which she wore for a picnic near the Forest of Montmorency. The day was suddenly cold, as happens often in spring, and she caught a chest infection which turned into bronchitis. James Wylie, sent by Alexander to tend to her, strongly advised Josephine to rest. Nonetheless, embroiled as she was in refurnishing and re-decorating her house, she simply ignored her illness, refusing to stay in bed.
No amount of pleading from well-intentioned friends would stop Josephine, now once again the first lady of Paris, from holding a dinner and ball for Alexander, which would outdo any of the entertainments held in his honour by people who were, at least in her opinion, of lesser standing than herself.
Malmaison, for so long quiet and largely shuttered, was brought alive with running footsteps as servants scurried through the kitchens and the corridors of the floors above. Lights shone from every window, welcoming the guests. Reaching the entrance, footmen holding
flambeaux
handed them from their carriages to the open doors. French and Russian nobility who rubbed shoulders on the stairs included the Grand Duke Constantine, and Alexander’s younger brothers, Nicholas and Michael, handsome in uniform, who had just arrived in France.
It is known that many of the tsar’s entourage were present, therefore Wylie must have been among the press of people who saw Alexander take Josephine in his arms to lead off the dancing with a waltz. Later in the evening they slipped away together to walk through the garden to the hothouse where, much obsessed with gardening, she kept many rare and tender plants.
Emerging from the heated greenhouse, Josephine began to cough and shiver in the cold night air. She returned to the house exhausted. The adrenaline pumped into her system by the nervous energy that had sustained her throughout the hours of entertaining, suddenly drained from her body leaving her gasping for breath.
Her illness, now turned into full-blown pneumonia, grew worse over the next few days. Helpless doctors could do nothing but apply poultices and lower her temperature by bleeding, thus further weakening her already frail constitution. When told of what was happening to Josephine, Alexander turned in desperation to Wylie, begging him that as he had once saved Count Kutaisof, he could now do the same for Josephine by inserting a tube in her throat. But Wylie, knowing now that she was suffering from a malignant illness, was forced to tell him that in this case a tracheotomy would not only be useless, but would increase her suffering and destroy any chance of recovery she might still possess.
In Malmaison the servants moved quietly as Josephine struggled to stay alive. Five days after the ball that had taken such a toll of her strength, Alexander called again to see her. Hortense and her son Eugène were there, but Alexander, realizing when he saw her that she had only hours to live, left after a few minutes. Later that day the news that he now both dreaded and expected was brought to him. Josephine was dead.
Alexander was once more plunged into depression by the death of the woman he had all too briefly loved. Wylie did his best to reason with him but to small avail. Superstitious like most Russians, the tsar was now was becoming paranoid, convinced that he could only bring misfortune to anyone close to him.
Forced to face up to reality, he found himself dealing with the difficulty imposed by her funeral as it was discovered that the French army, still in the throes of changed allegiance, could not provide a fitting guard of honour to escort the coffin to the grave. Accordingly Alexander ordered that his own regiments, in full dress uniform, should stand to attention along the little country road from Malmaison to the church.
Thus by another stroke of irony was the great love of Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who had so nearly conquered Europe, escorted to her burial by the soldiers of the Tsar of Russia who, once his sworn ally, had led the forces of his enemies against him to defeat what he himself had believed to be the greatest army in the world.
There remained one more twist to the story of the strange and unnatural relationship between these two autocratic men who had held the fate of Europe in their hands. Alexander, having heard that the Elector of Hesse was trying to claim back the pictures in the Malmaison purchased from him by Napoleon for Josephine to enhance the beauty of her house, bought them himself from her heirs for a fair price that allowed them to pay off her debts. He took the pictures back to St Petersburg, where they were hung in the Hermitage as souvenirs of his victorious campaign.
Tourists were now once more pouring into Paris. Among them were some young Scotsmen, Archibald Alison and two young friends who came from the Forth valley. They brought letters of introduction to two men from their homeland, Lord Cathcart, the British ambassador to Russia, and Doctor James Wylie, physician to the tsar. Alison kept a diary in which he described the dignity, courteous manners and simple character of the tsar, to whom they were introduced.
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Wylie, having shown them around Paris, was entertained in return at a dinner party which they gave for sixteen Russians and Britons in the Restaurant Malpinot in Rue Saint Honoré, where, in an evening of great jollity, many toasts were drunk to both countries and to the heroes of the recent campaign.