#savary

Translated:

[This anecdote] relates to one of the many masked balls held at the Prince of Neuchâtel's (Berthier). As the Emperor was expected to attend, two of his aides—this time Rovigo (Savary) and Lebrun—stood at the door of the first room to control the entrance. Each arrival presented their invitation card and then lifted their mask to reveal their identity. Madame de Dalberg and I, both disguised as bats, arrived together. At that very moment, the Emperor appeared, completely enveloped in a dark gray domino, but easily recognizable by his hesitant gait and his voice. He circled us for a long time. We naturally pretended not to recognize him and began chatting about things that might pleasantly intrigue him. After a few minutes, he managed to recognize Madame de Dalberg; but he tried in vain to guess who I was. Finally, unable to bear it any longer, he left, though not abandoning the hope of recognizing me, for he immediately went to find Rovigo and instructed him to continue his investigations. Rovigo devoted himself to this task with commendable zeal throughout the ball; he even went so far as to snatch from me a large ring, set with a ruby ​​​​and crafted in the antique style, which I was wearing that evening. But it revealed nothing to him, and all his efforts were in vain. This little adventure would probably have remained unresolved had the Prince of Dalberg not revealed the solution to the riddle after my departure. The next day, at sunrise, the Emperor wanted to know immediately from the Duke of Rovigo how the affair of the Black Mask had ended, and a few days later, when I was again in his presence, he took pleasure in telling me about that entertaining evening.

—Mémoires de la comtesse de Kielmannsegge sur Napoléon Ier, d'aprés la manuscrit original des archives du comte Guerrino zu Lynar / traduits de l'allemand par Joseph Delage, v.1-2.

“The Minister of Police [Savary], in his Police notes, with which I am generally very satisfied...seems to be trying to make me peaceful. This can’t have any results; it hurts me because it would imply that I’m not peaceful. I want peace, but not a peace that 3 months later would put us back in arms, or that would be dishonorable. Make him understand how inappropriate this way of dealing with this subject is. I don’t make war a profession and no one is more peaceful. But the will for peace, the desire for it to be lasting, and the totality of the circumstances in which my Empire finds itself, will alone decide in my deliberations on this matter.”

Original French:

'...le ministre de la Police, dans ses notes de Police, dont je suis en general très satisfait...parait chercher à me rendre pacifique. Cela ne peut avoir aucun resultat; mais cela me blesse parceque cela supposerait que je ne suis pas pacifique, je veux la paix, mais non pas une paix, qui 3 mois après nous remettrait le armes à la main, ou qui serait deshonorante...faites lui comprendre tout ce que cette maniere de traiter ce sujet, a d'inconvenant, je ne fais pas de la guerre un métier et personne n'est plus pacifique; mais la volonté de la paix, le desir qu'elle soit durable et l'ensemble des circonstances où se trouve mon Empire, decideront seuls dans mes déliberations sur cette matiere...'

Context: 1813 is 21 years after the wars began, and there had been several peace deals made and broken since the beginning of the war. Peace offers were used to as means to assess the weakness of the French army, and peace periods were used to regroup and reorganize the war effort against France.

The police system directed by the Duc de Rovigo also did a great deal of harm to the court ladies. His predecessor Fouché only harmed the Emperor when he obliged the latter to exile certain persons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain from Paris. Whenever a complaint was made to Fouché he would pretend to know nothing about it, blaming it on the Emperor’s impetuous temperament, on the fact that there were a hundred other branches of the police department which he could not superintend. In the end he would promise to wait for a favorable moment and have the sentence of banishment lifted. Later, it is true, he would request the Emperor to rescind the order which he had himself asked for, thus giving himself all the credit and letting his master take all the blame. He thus made followers for himself, but he never bothered about drawing-room gossip or petty social intrigues.

The Duc de Rovigo, on the other hand, seemed to do nothing else than collect the slightest bits of information about everyone’s private life. He acted as his own detective, wished to be the confidant of the ladies, stirred up quarrels between them, told stories which might or might not be true, spent all his morning making visits from one to another. If, in the Bois de Boulogne, a woman surrounded by her children and her friends happened to be speaking to a man and caught sight of the Duc de Rovigo she felt her reputation was lost. All our ladies did their best to avoid him.

First of all, I’m SO sorry for the long response time on this ; I’m currently at my Paris appartment and I left the Dubief book and all of my other Junot texts (i.e. three books) back at my country house. So I meant to wait to respond until I could get back and check exactly what he has to say about Napoleon’s reaction to Junot’s death as the most recent/thorough biographer, but I just … havent gone back yet.

And it’s been weeks. 😬 

When I do, I’ll be sure to let you know how he - and the other Junot biographers - describe the aftermath, but in the meantime, here are a couple of other sources on Napoleon’s response to the news :

For one, there’s this letter from Napoleon to Savary. And for all the possible partiality of correspondance like this, at least this one probably exists :

« Dresde, 7 août 1813

Je reçois votre lettre du 2 août. J’ai éprouvé une véritable peine de ce que vous m’avez écrit de ce pauvre Junot. Il avait perdu mon estime dans la dernière campagne [celle de Russie], mais je n’ai pas pour cela cessé de lui être attaché. Aujourd’hui il a recouvré cette estime, puisque je vois que sa pusillanimité était déjà l’effet de sa maladie … » (1)

----

« Dresden, 7 August, 1813 

I’ve received your letter from 2 August. I was truly pained by what you wrote me about poor Junot. He had lost my esteem in the last campaign [Russia], but I hadn’t ceased to be attached to him because of it. Today he has regained that esteem, since I see that his cowardice was already the effect of his illness … » 

My own personal guess is that this is probably pretty close to how he reacted across the board as regards Junot’s death. They might not have been that close anymore by the end, but Napoleon probably regretted the loss of a very old friend, and may have felt bad about how he’d treated Junot, especially in the last years. 

And then of course there’s Laure’s side of the story. She says :

« Quand on lui remit la dépêche d’Albert, il la décacheta aussitôt, et, la retenant de la main gauche après avoir en lu les premières lignes, il se frappa violemment le front de la droite ; dans ce mouvement la dépêche lui échappa … il la releva avec la rapidité de l’éclair .. et puis il s’écria, mais avec un accent déchirant d’expression : 

- Junot ! … Junot ! … O mon Dieu …

Et il joignit les mains si fortement, que la dépêche en fût toute froissée … Junot ! répétait-il avec cette expression qui venait du cœur, et qui dénotait une douleur réelle ! … Mais, ayant regardé autour de lui, et voyant qu’il était observé, il ne voulut pas être homme devant un œil observateur ! … il sourit avec une expression triste, mais indéfinissable, et dit d’une voix haute, quoique altérée : 

- Voilà encore un de mes braves de moins ! … Junot ! … O mon Dieu ! ... »

-----

« When Albert's despatch reached him, he immediately opened it, and, holding it with his left hand after having read the first lines, he struck his brow violently with the right ; in that movement the despatch slipped from his grasp ... he picked it up with lightning speed .. and then he cried out, with a heart-rendingly expressive tone :

- Junot ! … Junot ! … My God … 

And he clasped his hands so tightly that the despatch was quite crumpled … Junot ! he repeated with that expression which came from the heart, and which spoke of real pain ! ... But, having looked around, and seeing that he was being watched, he did not want to be a man in front of an observant eye ! ... he smiles with a sad, indefinable expression, and says in a loud, albeit distorted voice :

- There we have it, one fewer of my brave men ! … Junot ! … My God ! … »

I for one am not entirely sure what to make of this - my guess is that it’s pretty much totally fabricated, or at least very, very embellished. For one thing, Laure wasn’t anywhere near Napoleon (or Junot, for that matter) when all of this was taking place - she claims to have had it from a « témoin oculaire [eye-witness] », so even if everyone along the chain is trying to relay the truth in good faith, we’re still one more degree removed than usual with memoires.

And then there’s the fact that just following this scene, she writes that after 15+ minutes of trying to pull himself together, Napoleon manages to push back « ces affections pures et saintes, qui retrempaient son âme et lui donnaient ce charme puissant qu’il perdit au reste en perdant ceux qu’il aimait et dont il était aimé … » at which time he remarks that he now has nobody in Illyria, and that someone will have to be sent to fill the vacancy. Charles Hugh MacKay (the same guy from the Univ. of Florida that @maggiec70​ knows) makes the good point that Nap. knew Junot was ill, had him removed from his post in early July, and then placed on the retirement list a week before his death - so he definitely was aware by this point there was no one in Illyria. (... But then, just to play the other side, he could foreseeably have been looking for something official and to-the-point to say at a particularly difficult moment.)

One more thing that’s sort of interesting, which I’ve seen referenced a couple of times, is this apparent order by Napoleon - as soon as he heard about Junot’s death - to send someone to his house and to destroy all of the correspondance that had passed between them. I’ll have to see if Dubief talks about that at all, because the other sources I’ve seen that mention it don’t bother to say where they got that info from. (If anybody’s read all of Savary, you may have heard about this - I think it might have been him that was sent with the order.)

Since correspondence seems to be a recurrent topic lately, I’m posting the text of a letter I have found, from Bernadotte to his brother-in-law Joseph Bonaparte, about his friend Savary:

L'adjudant général Savary, votre ancien collègue, désire mon cher Joseph quitter le service pour entrer dans la partie forestière en qualité de conservateur. Ses goûts, ses anciennes habitudes et surtout le délabrement de sa santé le déterminent. Savary est mon ami il s'est toujours très bien conduit envers vous, c'est sous ce titre et la garantie d'une probité sévère que je lui donne cette recommandation auprès de vous. Je vous prie de l'appuyer auprès de votre frère. Je vous salue fraternellement. Paris le 12 floréal an [??]     J Bernadotte

Adjutant General Savary, your former colleague, wishes to leave the service, my dear Joseph, to enter the forestry sector as a conservator. His tastes, his former practices and above all the poor state of his health have decided him. Savary is my friend and has always behaved very properly towards you; it is on this basis and with my guarantee of his strict probity that I can give him this recommendation to you. I would ask you to recommend him to your brother. I send you my brotherly regards. Paris, 12 Floréal year [??] J Bernadotte

https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/-4C34E7B83E

This letter was sold at auction, and the catalogue description gives the equivalent date as May 2, 1800. I don’t know the exact date of the battle during which Desaix was killed (Marengo?), but it would have been not too long before or after this.

Savary has served under Desaix until the latter’s death, as an aide-de-camp I believe. Desaix’s death was not as represented in paintings: he was shot and  killed instantly; as I recall, his body was entirely stripped of all clothing as was usual at the time, and it was Savary, looking for him, who found him among the dead. Savary recognized Desaix from a ribbon used to tie back his hair. 

As far as I know, Savary did not become a forestry conservator (who knew he had an interest in forestry?). Instead he became Napoleon’s hatchet man, and his chief of police after Fouché’s ouster.

I’m endlessly fascinated by who was whose friend - or enemy -, and how early in life such relationships were forged. Joseph and Bernadotte had married the Clary sisters and were brothers-in-law; Savary was Bernadotte’s friend, and worked alongside Joseph in some capacity..