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 Kléber and 
Jourdan, to the victory of Fleurus, June 26, 1794, the success of 
Julich, and the capitulation of Maestricht.'* He also did good 
service in the campaign of 1795-96 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 many 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 Sieyeés 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 Brünn, 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 recon- 
noitred 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 Auerstadt, which, through Bernadotte’s 
absence, ended in an indecisive victory. It was only the meeting of 
the fugitives of Auerstadt 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 court- 
martial, 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 
Blticher to Ltibeck, 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, Eugéne 
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, Eugéne was roughly 
thrown back upon Napoleon’s guard, and the first shock of the 
French attack was thus broken by Bernadotte’s Iukewarmness, 
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 Auerstadt, 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 Schénbrunn,'” 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 Stock- 
holm—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 94,” 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 sultan‘ 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 
Orebro, 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 commander- 
in-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 Bilow 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. Stull 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 insurrec- 
tion,’ 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 distin- 
guished by encroachments on the liberty of the press, persecution 
of the crime of lése-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 
1844,7°° 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.