One of Napoleon's Loves
One of Napoleon's Loves by Edna Worthley Underwood unfolds as the diary of Countess Tatjana Tschaska, a young Polish noblewoman on her family's estate near Warsaw, beginning in the spring of 1806. Through her entries she records both the rhythms of Polish country life and the anxious political mood of a nation partitioned among Russia, Prussia, and Austria, hoping that Napoleon's advancing armies might restore Polish independence. Tatjana is intelligent, outspoken, and steeped in national feeling, tempered by skepticism about French motives despite Poland's long history of fighting for France. Her mother pressures her toward marriage, and Tatjana, hoping to delay the inevitable, nominally consents to a match with Prince Adam Czartoryisky, a Polish aristocrat serving as Russia's Minister of Foreign Affairs. The engagement is formalized with ceremony and gifts, though the couple remains separated, since Adam stays at the Russian court pursuing his life's mission: persuading Tsar Alexander to ally with England against France, believing this would make an independent Poland strategically valuable to both powers. His letters to Tatjana reveal his growing disillusionment with Napoleon, whom he distrusts as an opportunist rather than Poland's true liberator. Napoleon's campaign brings him to Warsaw, where he is greeted with ecstatic patriotic celebration. Tatjana is presented to him at a court reception, and their exchange of witty, charged banter marks the beginning of a personal fascination between them. Their connection deepens at a card table, where Tatjana boldly wagers "the freedom of Poland" against him in a game of whist—and loses, prompting Napoleon to declare he has "won" her despite her betrothal to his political adversary Adam. Napoleon subsequently visits her, sends her gifts and books, and on a moonlit sleigh ride through the winter countryside kisses her passionately, establishing an intimate bond even as Tatjana keeps insisting she can only "worship," not love, someone godlike rather than human. As the war with Russia intensifies through 1807, French victories mount, culminating in the Peace of Tilsit, which crushes Adam's hopes: Napoleon allies with Alexander instead of freeing Poland, and Adam bitterly concludes that Napoleon is merely a modern opportunist devoid of the "knightly honor" of an earlier age, predicting a future ruled by commerce and self-interest rather than chivalry. The narrative resumes in 1812, with Tatjana at a Lithuanian estate as Napoleon prepares to invade Russia. Adam, still hoping to use his influence with Alexander, enlists Tatjana in a covert strategy: since Napoleon still loves her, she can be used to lure him deep into Russian territory under a feigned retreat, allowing winter and distance to destroy the Grande Armée where weapons could not. Summoned by Napoleon and given military dress to ride disguised among his officers, Tatjana accompanies the invasion, torn between patriotic duty and her fascination with the Emperor. She tries repeatedly to persuade him to guarantee Poland's freedom before advancing further, warning him that the Russian retreats are a ruse and that he is riding toward catastrophe. Napoleon dismisses her warnings, delivering a sweeping meditation on why he believes the Poles—brilliant, charming, but undisciplined and unsuited to modern statecraft—cannot sustain independence, and predicting that a coming commercial age will dissolve the last vestiges of chivalric nationhood. The army reaches an eerily deserted Moscow, which the soldiers pillage amid an atmosphere of pagan festivity. As fires begin consuming the city, Napoleon summons Tatjana to the Kremlin's coronation cathedral and, intoxicated by conquest, proposes to make her Empress of the East, ruling Russia and the Orient as his consort. Seizing the opportunity even as the building burns and officers pound at the door warning of the gunpowder stores beneath the Kremlin, Tatjana extracts from him a written guarantee of Poland's free, independent political status. Just as he signs, the Prince of Naples breaks in with Adam's intercepted letter exposing the plan to lure Napoleon to destruction, revealing Tatjana as complicit in the trap. Napoleon's face registers devastating realization and grief rather than mere anger; he coldly orders her sent back to her Russian-dispatched escort without another word or glance. Driving away as Moscow burns behind her, Tatjana glimpses Napoleon standing alone atop the Kremlin wall, and closes her account reflecting that she remained faithful to her country and duty, yet feels only contempt for herself—concluding that she was beneath even his anger. The novel closes this narrative movement on that ambiguous, melancholic note: a love story entangled irreparably with imperial ambition, national tragedy, and the impossibility of reconciling personal feeling with the demands of a doomed patriotism.
By Edna Worthley Underwood · First published 1911 · Genre: Historical Fiction, Romance, Diary Fiction