As for Jerome, he returned to Cassel quite disheartened at the unsuccessful issue of his loan.  Some days after his return to his capital I received from him a snuffbox with his portrait set in diamonds, accompanied by a letter of thanks for the service I had rendered him.  I never imagined that a token of remembrance from a crowned head could possibly be declined.  Napoleon, however, thought otherwise.  I had not, it is true, written to acquaint our Government with the King of Westphalia’s loan, but in a letter, which I addressed to the Minister for Foreign Affairs on the 22d of September, I mentioned the present Jerome had sent me.  Why Napoleon should have been offended at this I know not, but I received orders to return Jerome’s present immediately, and these orders were accompanied with bitter reproaches for my having accepted it without the Emperor’s authority.  I sent back the diamonds, but kept the portrait.  Knowing Bonaparte’s distrustful disposition, I thought he must have suspected that Jerome had employed threats, or at any rate, that he had used some illegal influence to facilitate the success of his loan.  At last, after much correspondence, Napoleon saw clearly that everything was perfectly regular; in a word, that the business had been transacted as between two private persons.  As to the 300,000 francs which the Senate had lent to Jerome, the fact is, that but little scruple was made about it, for this simple reason, that it was the means of removing from Hamburg the Westphalian division, whose presence occasioned a much greater expense than the loan.

CHAPTER XX.

1809.

Visit to the field of Wagram.—­Marshal Macdonald—­Union of the Papal States with the Empire—­The battle of Talavera—­Sir Arthur Wellesley—­English expedition to Holland—­Attempt to assassinate the Emperor at Schoenbrunn—­Staps Interrogated by Napoleon—­Pardon offered and rejected—­Fanaticism and patriotism—­Corvisart’s examination of Staps—­Second interrogatory—­Tirade against the illuminati—­Accusation of the Courts of Berlin and Weimar—­Firmness and resignation of Staps—­Particulars respecting his death—­ Influence of the attempt of Staps on the conclusion of peace—­ M. de Champagny.

Napoleon went to inspect all the corps of his army and the field of Wagram, which a short time before had been the scene of one of those great battles in which victory was the more glorious in proportion as it had been valiantly contested.

—­[The great battle of Wagram was fought on the 6th of July 1809.  The Austrians, who committed a mistake in over-extending their line, lost 20,000 men as prisoners, besides a large number in killed and wounded.  There was no day, perhaps, on which Napoleon showed more military genius or more personal courage.  He was in the hottest of the fight, and for a long time exposed to showers of grapeshot.—­ Editor of 1836 edition.]—­