The flippant attitude (which indicates the scope and summit of an ill-informed mind) that he was the victim of abnormal ambition to be connected with one or other of the royal families is ludicrous.  If he had been eager to have such distinction, it was within his reach at any time after he became First Consul.  He had only to impart a hint and there would have been a competition of available princesses, the choice of which would have bewildered him.  Assuredly he showed no youthful impetuosity in this respect, and it may not be an overdrawn hypothesis to conclude that his marriage with Marie Louise was neither popular with the French people as a whole nor with other nationalities.  It excited jealousy and mistrust amongst the larger Powers, and in France itself the memory of the last ill-fated union of France with Austria—­that of Marie Antoinette and Louis—­had left rankling effects in the minds of the people of the Revolution.[32]

Murat had urged on his brother-in-law and the grand dignitaries the fact that a marriage with a relative of Marie Antoinette, who was an abhorrence to the adherents of the Revolution, would alienate a large public, but Murat’s objections were suspected of having personal colour and overruled.  It is, however, beyond conjecture that the King of Naples had diagnosed aright; whether from self-interest or not, the warning proved accurate.  The most loyal and devoted of his subjects felt that their invincible hero was drifting into a vortex of trouble.  They had learned by bitter experience the duplicity of Austrian diplomacy.  The remembrance of the cruel wars they had been cunningly trapped into, the bleached bones of Frenchmen that lay on Austrian soil, and the denuded homes that resulted from Austria’s odious policy of greed, worked on them like a subtle poison.  And the glory of their conquests over her was nullified by the eternal suspicion that she was ever hatching new grounds of quarrel.  They thought, indeed, their premonition of Austria’s perpetual treachery was clear and definite, and that the new Empress would be a useful medium of their enemies’ machinations.

We can never fully estimate to what extent these impressions influenced their minds and actions and the part they played in hastening the great national humiliation.  It is a pretty certain conclusion that it was only the colossal successes and magical personality of the Emperor that kept subdued the spirit of resentment which the marriage had caused.

And we have historic evidence before us which clearly shows that the well-balanced mind of Napoleon was torn and tattered between doubt and conviction, and he fell into the fatal error of allowing his judgment to be overruled either by circumstances or pride.  Had he relied on his superstition even, the chances are that St. Helena would never have had the stigma of his captivity stamped upon it.

French and Austrian alliances have never, so far as they affected political history, been very successful.  The stability of earthly things is governed, not by sentiment or theoretic doctrines, but by facts as hard as granite, and no one knew this more thoroughly than the man who fell a victim to the devices of the Austrians and their French allies.