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Updated: June 10, 2025
Better for him and for France had he defied the advocates of royal alliance and stuck to Josephine, or even married Marie Walewska. If it was merely the policy of succession that was aimed at, he could have adopted his natural son, the brilliant Alexander Walewska, whose subsequent career in the service of France would have justified this course.
This young person, whom the Emperor had since seen three or four times at most, also came to Fontainebleau, accompanied by her mother; but, being unable to see his Majesty, this lady, like the Countess Walewska, determined to make the voyage to the Island of Elba, where it is said the Emperor married Mademoiselle L to a colonel of artillery.
This young person, whom the Emperor had since seen three or four times at most, also came to Fontainebleau, accompanied by her mother; but, being unable to see his Majesty, this lady, like the Countess Walewska, determined to make the voyage to the Island of Elba, where it is said the Emperor married Mademoiselle L to a colonel of artillery.
The girl who had so attracted Napoleon's attention was Marie Walewska, descended from an ancient though impoverished family in Poland. When she was only fifteen she was courted by one of the wealthiest men in Poland, the Count Walewska.
This young person, whom the Emperor had since seen three or four times at most, also came to Fontainebleau, accompanied by her mother; but, being unable to see his Majesty, this lady, like the Countess Walewska, determined to make the voyage to the Island of Elba, where it is said the Emperor married Mademoiselle L to a colonel of artillery.
The succession problem had been artfully revived, and the amiable Marie Walewska, who was living close to Schönbrunn, was about to give birth to a child which he knew to be his, and it is not improbable that this double assurance that he might reasonably expect to have an heir if he married again brought him to the definite decision to go on with the divorce; and the Emperor Francis of Austria made haste to form an alliance by offering his daughter Marie Louise in marriage.
During our sojourn at Fontainebleau the Countess Walewska, of whom I have heretofore spoken, came, and having summoned me, told me how anxious she was to see the Emperor. Thinking that this would be sure to distract his Majesty, I mentioned it to him that very evening, and received orders to have her come at ten o'clock.
To her gratification Napoleon treated her with distant courtesy, and, in fact, with a certain coldness. "I heard that Mme. Walewska was indisposed. I trust that she has recovered," was all the greeting that he gave her when they met. Every one else with whom she spoke overwhelmed her with flattery and with continued urging; but the emperor himself for a time acted as if she had displeased him.
But his promise to restore Poland he never kept, and gradually she found that he had never meant to keep it. "I love your country," he would say, "and I am willing to aid in the attempt to uphold its rights, but my first duty is to France. I cannot shed French blood in a foreign cause." By this time, however, Marie Walewska had learned to love Napoleon for his own sake.
Of the many women who succeeded one another with such bewildering rapidity in the favour of the first Napoleon, from Desirée Clary, daughter of the Marseilles silk-merchant, the "little wife" of his days of obscurity, to Madame Walewska, the beautiful Pole, who so fruitlessly bartered her charms for her country's salvation, only one really captured his fickle heart Josephine de Beauharnais, the woman whom he raised to the splendour of an Imperial crown, only to fling her aside when she no longer served the purposes of his ambition.
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