Bernadotte

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Engels helped Marx considerably in his work on this article. In his letters to Marx of September 11 or 12, and particularly of September 21 and 23, 1857, he adduced many facts on Bernadotte’s military record, especially during Napoleon’s campaigns against the third, fourth and fifth European coalitions (1805, 1806-07 and 1809). Engels’ account of Bernadotte’s role in these campaigns was founded mainly on A. H. Jomini’s Vie politique et militaire de Napoléon (vols. 1-4, Paris, 1827). It was reproduced by Marx almost word for word.

Marx sought to give a complete picture of Bernadotte, above all as a politician and diplomat. He collected a vast amount of biographical data, as can be seen from his letter to Engels of September 17, 1857 (in which he wrote about the different appraisals of Bernadotte by various historians) and from the extant excerpts from the Biographie universelle (Michaud) ancienne et moderne, The English Cyclopaedia, Meyer’s Conversations-Lexicon and Fr. Chr. Schlosser’s Zur Beurtheilung Napoleon’s und seiner neusten Tadler und Lobredner.

On October 15, 1857, Marx made the following entry in his notebook: “Cyclopaedia. Military Bridges. Brown. Bernadotte”, which shows that he sent off these articles to New York on that day. On Dana’s request for articles beginning with B see Note 49

Bernadotte, Jean Baptiste Jules, marshal of the French empire, prince of Ponte Corvo, and, under the name of Charles XIV John, king of Sweden and Norway, was born Jan. 26, 1764, at Pau, in the department of Basses Pyrénées, died March 8, 1844, in the royal palace at Stockholm. He was the son of a lawyer, and was educated for that profession, but his military impulses induced him to enlist secretly, in 1780, in the royal marines, where he had advanced to the grade of sergeant, when the French revolution broke out. Thence his advancement became rapid. In 1792 he served as colonel in Custine’s army; commanded a demi-brigade in 1793; was in the same year, through Kléber’s patronage, promoted to the rank of brigadier-general, and contributed, as general of division in the army of the Sambre and Meuse, under Kleber and Jourdan, to the victory of Fleurus, June 26, 1.794, the success of Jülich, and the capitulation of Maestricht. He also did good service in the campaign of l795-’96 against the Austrian generals Clerfayt, Kray, and the archduke Charles. Ordered by the directory, at the beginning of 1797, to march 20,000 men as reenforcements to the Italian army, his first interview in Italy with Bonaparte decided their future relations. In spite of his natural greatness, Bonaparte entertained a petty and suspicious jealousy of the army of the Rhine and its generals. He understood at once that Bernadotte aspired to an independent career. The latter, on his part, was too much of a Gascon to justly appreciate the distance between a genius like Bonaparte and a man of abilities like himself. Hence their mutual dislike. During the invasion of Istria Bernadotte distinguished himself at the passage of the Tagliamento, where he led the vanguard, and at the capture of the fortress of Gradisca, March 19, 1797.

After the so-called revolution of the 18th Fructidor,(‘ Bonaparte ordered his generals to collect from their respective divisions addresses in favor of that coup d’état; but Bernadotte first protested, then affected great reluctance in obeying, and at last sent an address to the directory, but quite the reverse of that asked for, and without conveying it through Bonaparte’s hands. The latter on his journey to Paris, whither he repaired to lay before the directory the treaty of Campo Formio, visited and cajoled Bernadotte at his head-quarters at Udine, but the following day, through an order from Milan, deprived him of half his division of the army of the Rhine, and commanded him to march the other half back to France. After manv remonstrances, compromises, and new quarrels, Bernadotte was at last prevailed upon to accept the embassy to Vienna. There, acting up to the instructions of Talleyrand, he assumed a conciliatory attitude which the Paris journals, inspired by Bonaparte and his brothers, declared to be full of royalist tendencies; expatiating, in proof of these charges, on the suppression of the tricolored flag at the entrance of his hotel, and of the republican cockade on the hats of his suite. Being reprimanded for this by the directory, Bernadotte, on April 13, 1798, the anniversary of a Viennese anti-Jacobin demonstration, hoisted the tricolored flag with the inscription, “Liberty, equality, fraternity,” and had his hotel stormed by a Viennese mob, his flag burnt, and his own life endangered. The Austrian government declining to give the satisfaction demanded, Bernadotte withdrew to Rastadt with all his legation; but the directory, on the advice of Bonaparte, who had himself been instrumental in provoking the scandal, hushed up the affair and dropped their representative.

Bernadotte’s relationship to the Bonaparte family consequent upon his marriage, in Aug. 1798, with Mlle. Désirée Clary, the daughter of a Marseilles merchant, and Joseph Bonaparte’s sister-in-law, seemed but to confirm his opposition to Napoleon. As commander of the army of observation on the upper Rhine, in 1799, he proved incompetent for the charge, and thus verified beforehand Napoleon’s judgment at St. Helena, that he was a better lieutenant than general-in-chief.At the head of the war ministry, after the directorial émeute of the 30th Prairial, his plans of operation were less remarkable than his intrigues with the Jacobins, through whose reviving influence he tried to create for himself a personal following in the ranks of the army. Yet one morning, Sept. 15, 1799, he found his resignation announced in the Moniteur before he was aware that he had tendered it. This trick was played upon him by Sieyès and Roger Ducos, the directors allied to Bonaparte.

While commanding the army of the west, he extinguished the last sparks of the Vendean war. After the proclamation of the empire’ which made him a marshal, he was intrusted with the command of the army of Hanover. In this capacity as well as during his later command of the army of northern Germany, he took care to create for himself, among the northern people, a reputation for independence, moderation, and administrative ability. At the head of the corps stationed in Hanover, which formed the first corps of the grand army, he participated in the campaign of 1805 against the Austrians and Russians. He was sent by Napoleon to Iglau, to observe the movements of Archduke Ferdinand in Bohemia; then, called back to Brunn, he, with his corps, was posted at the battle of Austerlitz in the centre between Soult and Lannes, and contributed to baffle the attempt of the allied right wing at outflanking the French army. On June 5, 1806, he was created prince of Ponte Corvo. During the campaign of 1806-’7 against Prussia, he commanded the first corps d’armée. He received from Napoleon the order to march from Naumburg upon Dornburg, while Davout, also stationed at Naumburg, was to march upon Apolda; the order held by Davout adding that, if Bernadotte had already effected his junction with him, they might conjointly march upon Apolda. Having reconnoitred the movements of the Prussians, and made sure that no enemy was to be encountered in the direction of Dornburg, Davout proposed to Bernadotte a combined march upon Apolda, and even offered to place himself under his command. The latter, however, sticking to the literal interpretation of Napoleon’s order, marched off in the direction of Dornburg without meeting an enemy during the whole day; while Davout had alone to bear the brunt of the battle of Auerstädt, which, through Bernadotte’s absence, ended in an indecisive victory. It was only the meeting of the fugitives of Auerstädt with the fugitives from Jena, and the strategetical combinations of Napoleon, that counteracted the consequences of the deliberate blunder committed by Bernadotte. Napoleon signed an order to bring Bernadotte before a courtmartial, but on further consideration rescinded it. After the battle of Jena, Bernadotte defeated the Prussians at Halle, Oct. 17, conjointly with Soult and Murat, pursued the Prussian general Blücher to Lübeck, and contributed to his capitulation at Ratekau, Nov. 7, 1806. He also defeated the Russians in the plains of Mohrungen, not far from Thorn, Jan. 25, 1807.

After the peace of Tilsit, according to the alliance concluded between Denmark and Napoleon, French troops were to occupy the Danish islands, thence to act against Sweden. Accordingly, March 23, 1808, the very day when Russia invaded Finland, Bernadotte was commanded to move upon Seeland in order to penetrate with the Danes into Sweden, to dethrone its king, and to partition the country between Denmark and Russia; a strange mission for a man destined soon after to reign at Stockholm. He passed the Belt and arrived in Seeland at the head of 32,000 Frenchmen, Dutch, and Spaniards; 10,000 of the latter, however, contriving, by the assistance of an English fleet, to decamp under Gen. de la Romana. Bernadotte undertook nothing and effected nothing during his stay in Seeland. Being recalled to Germany, there to assist in the new war between France and Austria, he received the command of the 9th corps, mainly composed of Saxons.

The battle of Wagram, July 5 and 6, 1809, added new fuel to his misunderstandings with Napoleon. On the first day, Eugène Beauharnais, having debouched in the vicinity of Wagram, and dashed into the centre of the hostile reserves, was not sufficiently supported by Bernadotte, who engaged his troops too late, and too weakly. Attacked in front and flank, Eugène was roughly thrown back upon Napoleon’s guard, and the first shock of the French attack was thus broken by Bernadotte’s lukewarmness, who, meanwhile, had occupied the village of Adlerklaa, in the centre of the French army, but somewhat in advance of the French line. On the following day, at 6 o’clock in the morning, when the Austrians advanced for a concentric attack, Bernadotte deployed before Adlerklaa, instead of placing that village, strongly occupied, in his front. Judging, on the arrival of the Austrians, that this position was too hazardous, he fell back upon a plateau in the rear of Adlerklaa, leaving the village unoccupied, so that it was immediately taken by Bellegarde’s Austrians. The French centre being thus endangered, Masséna, its commander, sent forward a division to retake Adlerklaa, which division, however, was again dislodged by D’Aspre’s grenadiers. At that moment, Napoleon himself arrived, took the supreme command, formed a new plan of battle, and baffled the manoeuvres of the Austrians. Thus Bernadotte had again, as at Auerstädt, endangered the success of the day. On his part, he complained of Napoleon’s having, in violation of all military rules, ordered Gen. Dupas, whose French division formed part of Bernadotte’s corps, to act independently of his command. His resignation, which he tendered, was accepted, after Napoleon had become aware of an order of the day addressed by Bernadotte to his Saxons, in discord with the imperial bulletin.

Shortly after his arrival at Paris, where he entered into intrigues with Fouché, the Walcheren expedition (July 30, 1809) caused the French ministry, in the absence of the emperor, to intrust Bernadotte with the defence of Antwerp. The blunders of the English rendered action on his part unnecessary; but he took the occasion to slip into a proclamation, issued to his troops, the charge against Napoleon of having neglected to prepare the proper means of defence for the Belgian coast. He was deprived of his command; ordered, on his return to Paris, to leave it for his princedom of Ponte Corvo, and, refusing to comply with that order, he was summoned to Vienna. After some lively altercations with Napoleon, at Schönbrunn, he accepted the general government of the Roman states, a sort of honorable exile.

The circumstances which brought about his election as crown prince of Sweden, were not fully elucidated until long after his death. Charles XIII, after the adoption of Charles August, duke of Augustenburg, as his son, and as heir to the Swedish throne, sent Count Wrede to Paris, to ask for the duke the hand of the princess Charlotte, daughter of Lucien Bonaparte. On the sudden death of the duke of Augustenburg, May 18, 1810, Russia pressed upon Charles XIII the adoption of the duke of Oldenburg, while Napoleon supported the claims of Frederick VI, king of Denmark. The old king himself offered the succession to the brother of the late duke of Augustenburg, and despatched Baron Moerner to Gen. Wrede, with instructions enjoining the latter to bring Napoleon over to the king’s choice. Moerner, however, a young man belonging to the very large party in Sweden which then expected the recovery of their country only from an intimate alliance with France, on his arrival at Paris, took upon himself, in connection with Lapie, a young French officer in the engineers, with Seigneul, the Swedish consul-general, and with Count Wrede himself, to present Bernadotte as candidate for the Swedish throne, all of them taking care to conceal their proceedings from Count Lagerbjelke, the Swedish minister at the Tuileries, and all firmly convinced by a series of misunderstandings, artfully kept up by Bernadotte, that the latter was really the candidate of Napoleon. On June 29, accordingly, Wrede and Seigneul sent despatches to the Swedish minister of foreign affairs, both announcing that Napoleon would, with great pleasure, see the royal succession offered to his lieutenant and relative. In spite of the opposition of Charles XIII, the diet of the States, at Orebro, elected Bernadotte crown prince of Sweden, Aug. 21, 1810. The king was also compelled to adopt him as his son, under the name of Charles John. Napoleon reluctantly, and with bad grace, ordered Bernadotte to accept the offered dignity. Leaving Paris, Sept. 28, 1810, he landed at Helsingborg, Oct. 21, there abjured the Catholic profession, entered Stockholm Nov. 1, attended the assembly of the States, Nov. 5, and from that moment grasped the reins of the state. Since the disastrous peace of Frederikshamm, the idea prevailing in Sweden was the reconquest of Finland, without which, it was thought, as Napoleon wrote to Alexander, Feb. 28, 1811, “Sweden had ceased to exist,” at least as a power independent of Russia. It was but by an intimate alliance with Napoleon that the Swedes could hope to recover that province. To this conviction Bernadotte owed his election. During the king’s sickness, from March 17, 1811, to January 7, 1812, Charles John was appointed regent; but this was a question of etiquette only, since from the day of his arrival, he conducted all affairs.

Napoleon, too much of a parvenu himself to spare the susceptibilities of his ex-lieutenant, compelled him, Nov. 17, 1810, in spite of a prior engagement, to accede to the continental system, and declare war against England. He suppressed his revenues as a French prince; declined to receive his despatches directly addressed to him, because he was not “a sovereign his equal”; and sent back the order of the Seraphim, bestowed upon the new-born king of Rome by Charles John. This petty chicanery afforded to the latter the pretext only for a course of action long decided upon. Hardly was he installed at Stockholm, when he admitted to a public audience the Russian general, Suchtelen, who was detested by the Swedes for having suborned the commander of Sweaborg, and even allowed that personage to be accredited as ambassador to the Swedish court. On Dec. 18, 1810, he held a conference with Czernicheff, in which he declared himself “to be anxious to win the good opinion of the czar,” and to resign Finland forever, on the condition of Norway being detached from Denmark, and annexed to Sweden. By the same Czernicheff, he sent a most flattering letter to the czar Alexander. As he thus drew nearer to Russia, the Swedish generals who had overthrown Gustavus IV, and favored his own election, retired from him. Their opposition, reechoed by the army and the people, threatened to become dangerous, when the invasion of Swedish Pomerania by a French division, Jan. 17, 1812 — a measure executed by Napoleon on secret advice from Stockholm— afforded at last to Charles John a plausible pretext for officially declaring the neutrality of Sweden. Secretly, however, and behind the back of the diet, he concluded with Alexander an offensive alliance against France, signed March 24, 1812, at St. Petersburg, in which the annexation of Norway to Sweden was also stipulated.

Napoleon’s declaration of war against Russia made Bernadotte for a time the arbiter of the destinies of Europe. Napoleon offered him, on the condition of his attacking Russia with 40,000 Swedes, Finland, Mecklenburg, Stettin, and all the territory between Stettin and Volgast. Bernadotte might have decided the campaign and occupied St. Petersburg before Napoleon arrived at Moscow. He preferred acting as the Lepidus of a triumvirate formed with England and Russia. Inducing the sultanc to ratify the peace of Bucharest, he enabled the Russian admiral Tchitchakoff to withdraw his forces from the banks of the Danube and to operate on the flank of the French army. He also mediated the peace of Örebro, concluded July 18, 1812, between England on the one side, and Russia and Sweden on the other. Frightened at Napoleon’s first successes, Alexander invited Charles John to an interview, at the same time offering him the command-in-chief of the Russian armies. Prudent enough to decline the latter offer, he accepted the invitation. On Aug. 27 he arrived at Abo, where he found Alexander very low-spirited and rather inclined to sue for peace. Having himself gone too far to recede, he steeled the wavering czar by showing that Napoleon’s apparent successes must lead to his ruin. The conference resulted in the so-called treaty of Abo, to which a secret article was appended, giving the alliance the character of a family compact. In fact, Charles John received nothing but promises, while Russia, without the slightest sacrifice, secured the then invaluable alliance of Sweden. By authentic documents it has been recently proved that it depended at that time on Bernadotte alone to have Finland restored to Sweden; but the Gascon ruler, deluded by Alexander’s flattery, that “one day the imperial crown of France, when fallen from Napoleon’s brow, might rest upon his,” already considered Sweden as a mere pis-aller.

After the French retreat from Moscow, he formally broke off diplomatic relations with France, and when England guaranteed him Norway by treaty of March 3, 1813, he entered the coalition. Furnished with English subsidies, he landed in May, 1813, at Stralsund with about 25,000 Swedes and advanced toward the Elbe. During the armistice of June 5, 1813, he played an important part at the meeting in Trachenberg, where the emperor Alexander presented him to the king of Prussia, and where the general plan of the campaign was decided upon. As commanderin-chief of the army of the north, composed of Swedes, Russians, Prussians, English, Hanseatic, and north German troops, he kept up very equivocal connections with the French army, managed by an individual who frequented his head-quarters as a friend, and grounded on his presumption that the French would gladly exchange Napoleon’s rule for Bernadotte’s, if he only gave them proofs of forbearance and clemency. Consequently, he prevented the generals placed under his command from taking the offensive, and when Bülow twice, at Grossbeeren and Dennewitz, had vanquished the French despite his orders, stopped the pursuit of the beaten army. When Blücher, in order to force him to action, had marched upon the Elbe, and effected his junction with him, it was only the threat held out by Sir Charles Stewart, the English commissary in his camp, of stopping the supplies, that induced him to move on. Still the Swedes appeared on the battle field of Leipsic for appearance’ sake only, and during the whole campaign lost not 200 men before the enemy. When the allies entered France, he retained the army of Sweden on her frontiers. After Napoleon’s abdication, he repaired personally to Paris to remind Alexander of the promises held out to him at Abo. Talleyrand cut short his puerile hopes by telling the council of the allied kings, that “there was no alternative but Bonaparte or the Bourbons,—every thing else being a mere intrigue.”

Charles John having, after the battle of Leipsic, invaded the duchies of Holstein and Schleswig, at the head of an army composed of Swedes, Germans, and Russians, Frederick VI, king of Denmark, in the presence of vastly superior forces, was forced to sign, Jan. 14, 1814, the peace of Kiel, by which Norway was ceded to Sweden. The Norwegians, however, demurring to being so unceremoniously disposed of, proclaimed the independence of Norway under the auspices of Christian Frederick, crown prince of Denmark. The representatives of the nation assembling at Edisvold, adopted, May 17, 1814, a constitution still in force, and the most democratic of modern Europe. Having put in motion a Swedish army and fleet, and seized upon the fortress of Frederickstadt, which commands the access to Christiania, Charles John entered into negotiation, agreed to consider Norway as an independent state and to accept the constitution of Edisvold, carried the assent of the assembled storthing Oct. 7, and Nov. 10, 1814, repaired to Christiania, there, in his own and the king’s name, to take the oath upon the constitution.

Charles XIII expiring Feb. 5, 1818, Bernadotte, under the name of Charles XIV John, was acknowledged by Europe as king both of Sweden and Norway. He now attempted to change the Norwegian constitution, to restore the abolished nobility, to secure to himself an absolute veto and the right of dismissing all officers, civil and military. This attempt gave rise to serious conflicts, and led, May 18, 1828, even to a cavalry charge upon the inhabitants of Christiania, who were celebrating the anniversary of their constitution. A violent outbreak seemed imminent, when the French revolution of 1830 caused the king to resort for the moment to conciliatory steps. Still Norway, for the acquisition of which he had sacrificed every thing, remained the constant source of embarrassments throughout his whole reign. After the first days of the French revolution of 1830, there existed a single man in Europe who thought the king of Sweden a fit pretender for the French throne, and that man was Bernadotte himself. More than once he repeated to the French diplomatic agents at Stockholm, “How does it happen that Laffitte has not thought of me?” The changed aspect of Europe, and, above all, the Polish insurrection, inspired him for a moment with the idea of making front against Russia. His offers in this sense to Lord Palmerston meeting with a flat refusal, he had to expiate his transitory idea of independence by concluding, June 23, 1834, a convention of alliance with the emperor Nicholas, which rendered him a vassal of Russia. From that moment his policy in Sweden was distinguished by encroachments on the liberty of the press, persecution of the crime of lèse-majesté, and resistance to improvements, even such as the emancipation of industry from the old laws of guilds and corporations. By playing upon the jealousies of the different orders constituting the Swedish diet, he long succeeded in paralyzing all movement, but the liberal resolutions of the diet of 1844, which were to be converted, according to the constitution, into laws by the diet of 1845, threatened his policy with final discomfiture, when his death occurred.

If Sweden, during the reign of Charles XIV, partly recovered from a century and a half of miseries and misfortunes, this was due not to Bernadotte, but exclusively to the native energies of the nation, and the agencies of a long peace.