and Prince
of Eichstadt. With the protection of Bavaria he actually succeeded in
wringing from the Bourbons some 700,000 francs of the property of his
mother. A first attack of apoplexy struck him in 1823, and he died from
a second in February 1824 at Munich. His descendants have intermarried
into the Royal Families of Portugal, Sweden, Brazil, Russia, 'and
Wartemberg; his grandson now (1884) holds the title of Leuchtenberg.
Except Louis, an invalid, all the brothers of the Emperor were around him
in the Cent Jours, the supreme effort of their family. Joseph had left
Spain after Vittoria, and had remained in an uncomfortable and
unrecognised state near Paris until in 1814 he was again employed, and
when, rightly or not, he urged the retreat of the Regency from Paris to
Blois. He then took refuge at his chateau of Prangins in the canton Vaud
in Switzerland, closely watched by the Bourbonists, who dreaded danger
from every side except the real point, and who preferred trying to hunt
the Bonapartists from place to place, instead of making their life
bearable by carrying out the engagements with them.
In 1816, escaping from the arrest with which he was threatened, after
having written to urge Murat to action with fatal effect, Joseph joined
Napoleon in Paris, and appeared at the Champ de Mai, sitting also in the
Chamber of Peers, but, as before, putting forward ridiculous pretensions
as to his inherent right to the peerage, and claiming a special seat. In
fact, he never could realise how entirely he owed any position to the
brother he wished to treat as an equal.
He remained in Paris during the brief campaign, and after Waterloo was
concealed in the house of the Swedish Ambassador, where his
sister-in-law, the Crown Princess of Sweden, the wife of Bernadotte, was
living. Muffling, the Prussian Governor of Paris, wished to arrest him,
but as the Governor could not violate the domicile of an Ambassador, he
had to apply to the Czar, who arranged for the escape of the ex-King
before the Governor could seize him Joseph went to the coast, pretty
much following the route of Napoleon. He was arrested once at Saintes,
but was allowed to proceed, and he met his brother on the 4th of July,
at Rochefort.
It is significant as to the possibility of the escape of Napoleon that
Joseph succeeded in getting on the brig Commerce as "M. Bouchard," and,
though the ship was thrice searched by the English, he got to New York on
the 28th
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