Copyright © 2014 by Kate Williams

Originally published in hardcover in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson, a member of The Random House Group Limited, London, in 2013.

Published simultaneously in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Williams, Kate, 1974-, author

Ambition and desire : the dangerous life of Josephine

Bonaparte / Kate Williams.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-7710-8859-9 (bound).–ISBN 978-0-7710-8861-2 (html)

1. Josephine, Empress, consort of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1763-1814–Marriage. 2. Josephine, Empress, consort of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1763-1814–Influence. 3. Empresses–France–Biography. 4. Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821–Relations with women. 5. France–History–Consulate and First Empire, 1799-1815. I. Title.

DC216.1.W44 2014        944.05092        C2013-900686-9

C2014-904613-8

Cover design by Marietta Anastassatos

Cover image: François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard, portrait of Empress Josephine, 1808

(Château de Fontainebleau / Giraudon / Bridgement Art Library)

Title-page image: © anamad / iStock.com

McClelland & Stewart,

a division of Random House of Canada Limited,

a Penguin Random House Company

www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

v3.1

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

1. La Pagerie

2. Sophistication

3. “Beneath All the Sluts in the World”

4. Revolution

5. “The Height of Good Manners to Be Ruined”

6. “What Strange Power You Have over My Heart”

7. “The Single Object in My Heart”

8. A Million Kisses

9. “I Am So Distressed at Being Separated from Him”

10. “All I Have Suffered”

11. “He Owes Me Everything”

12. “The Most Beautiful Thing in the World”

13. Scenes with Bonaparte

14. “My Stepfather Is a Comet”

15. “Your Imperial Majesty”

16. “The King of Diamonds”

17. “I Have Fulfilled My Destiny”

18. “I Wish You Would Be More Reasonable”

19. “Cold and Often Embarrassed”

20. “Like a Wounded Soldier”

21. “More Full of Charm”

Epilogue

Illustration Insert

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Illustration Credits

Other Books by This Author

About the Author

Prologue

December 1, 1804.

It was the most important night of Josephine’s life.

Parisians and men and women from all over France were taking their positions along the route in the darkness, dignitaries from across the world had arrived, the gold coaches were prepared, and the imperial robes were hanging ready for the supreme hero. The next day, Napoleon was to be crowned emperor of France and all its territories. The little Corsican soldier would be “His Imperial Majesty.”

All of France believed Josephine was marvelously happy, but inside the grand palace of the Tuileries, she was afraid. She was about to pull off the most audacious plan of her life.

Everything was riding on how she conducted herself in what would be the most important test of her life so far. If she succeeded, she would be crowned empress, first woman of the empire and the consort of the greatest man the century would see. But if she failed, she would be condemned to disgrace, humiliation, and poverty. She was forty, she had been Napoleon’s wife for eight years, and he was talking of annulling their marriage.

Napoleon had once been obsessed with his “little Creole.” But he mourned the lack of an heir, and now that he was the ruler, every woman in the empire was offering herself to him. When Josephine fell into one of her jealous rages, he simply left the room, bored by her tears. And because he had married her in a civil ceremony, she would not be too difficult to put aside.

The Imperial Majesty, so decisive on everything, was unsure about his empress. His family whispered to him that marrying a foreign princess would boost his grandeur—and produce an heir. And yet Josephine was very popular with the French people, and Napoleon saw her as his good-luck charm. He was also a deeply loyal man. “How can I put away this excellent woman just because I am becoming great?” he fretted. Perhaps, he thought, he would wait until after he was crowned.

Then he made one crucial mistake: He confided his concerns to Josephine. She responded calmly. Then she plotted. Pope Pius VII and his entourage were visiting, and Napoleon had asked Josephine to act as hostess. She was a celebrated diplomat, and he was proud of her graceful, charming ways. She seized the opportunity to win Pius over to her side.

BY DECEMBER 1, the night before the coronation, Josephine was ready to strike. She begged the pope for a private audience and assumed her prettiest, gentlest manner. She confided to him that she felt quite distraught, violently worried about her soul, and only he could help her. She simply had to tell him her secret: The marriage had been a civil union, so they were living in sin in the eyes of God. She was afraid, she told him, so desperately afraid, that the emperor was destined for hell.

Pius was prompted to action by her tears and softly whispered worries. He marched straight to the emperor and blustered that he refused to crown a sinful man. Declaring himself shocked that His Imperial Majesty had not confessed the truth, he announced that Napoleon must be immediately married in a religious ceremony. Napoleon pleaded and bullied, but Pius would not relent. The imperial pair must be united by a priest or he would refuse to conduct the coronation.

Josephine sat demurely and waited for her plan to succeed. She had lingered until the very last minute to tell Pius, so that Napoleon would not have the time to argue the pope into a compromise. The supreme emperor was forced into a corner. Either he agreed to marry or the coronation would be delayed. Finally, grudgingly, he gave in. A makeshift altar was created in his study, and the couple was secretly married that evening by one of Pius’s cardinals. Napoleon fumed, while Josephine smiled.

She had won. She was Napoleon’s wife before God. It would be almost impossible for him to set her aside. She, the “little Creole,” would be empress of France.

That night Josephine savored her triumph. She had beaten everybody—Napoleon’s spiteful family, the politicians who whispered against her, and all the actresses and duchesses who had tried to usurp her. They would all have to watch her be crowned.

AT TEN A.M. on December 2, the imperial coach set out from the Tuileries Palace for Notre-Dame. It was a giant concoction of gleaming gilt, drawn by eight splendid white horses and topped with a magnificent crown borne by four sculpted eagles. Napoleon and Josephine sat resplendent in their sumptuous coronation robes, just visible through the long glass windows. Crowds lined their route, along pavements that seemed to have been sprinkled in gold.

Josephine had never looked more beautiful. She wore a long white satin gown heavily embroidered in gold, and the shining ringlets of her hair were arranged around a fabulous diadem of leaves made from a thousand diamonds and adorned with pearls. Her necklace and earrings were sapphires and emeralds surrounded by cut diamonds, and on her finger she wore a ruby—the symbol of joy and “so perfect a personification of elegance and majesty.”

At Notre-Dame, Napoleon received his crown from the pope. He placed it on his head and then waited as Josephine advanced toward him. She knelt before him and clasped her hands, as if praying to him. Then Napoleon moved toward her and placed the crown on her head, gently, so as not to disturb her priceless diadem.

Josephine—impoverished Creole, widow, semi-courtesan, and mistress—was now empress of all France. She had won.

Or so she thought.

MARIE-JOSÈPHE-ROSE DE TASCHER de La Pagerie grew up a carefree girl on Martinique, became a kept mistress in Paris, and ended as the most powerful woman in France. She was no great beauty, and she was six years older than her husband, but one twitch of her skirt could enthrall the man who terrorized Europe. She became the perfect consort, skilled at pleasing the crowds and reading Napoleon’s mood all the while. She was soft power to his hard power: She excelled where he could not, as a master of patronage, diplomacy, and etiquette. As a heroine of the Terror and a former aristocrat, she legitimized him in the eyes of the people as a defender of the Republic, and her kindness and gentle manner made people forget his brutality and rudeness.

She pretended that she had no desire for power. Feigning meekness, she would say she was “not born for such grandeur.” But really, she wished for ascendancy over all those who once snubbed her.

Josephine’s proofs of her victories were her incredible possessions: her extravagant wardrobe, her artworks, and her jewelry box spilling more diamonds than Marie Antoinette’s once had. Her home, Malmaison, was a work of art. Complete with Swiss alpine chalet and greenhouse, her gardens had hundreds of varieties of flowers never grown in France. The house was furnished with priceless paintings and statues Napoleon had stolen for her from all over the world. Josephine was one of the most powerful and energetic art collectors in history. She was a second Catherine the Great, using art to shore up her rule and confer upon herself the trappings of power. A mistress, a courtesan, a revolutionary heroine, a collector, a patron, and an empress, she was, in the words of one of her friends, “an actor who could play all roles.”[1]

To win, Josephine would do anything—abandon her friends, undermine her enemies, and inform on her rivals. She would even sacrifice her daughter.

CHAPTER 1

La Pagerie

One day in the spring of 1763, a young woman climbed to the top of a hill on a plantation in the south of the island of Martinique. Six months pregnant with her first child, Rose-Claire de Tascher de La Pagerie was twenty-six, a scion of one of the greatest families on the island, and not easily intimidated. For the last seven years of her life, she had watched the British and French war for control of the island. French forces had filled the nearby port, Fort-de-France, and both sides had fought bitterly. The French settlers on Martinique huddled in their homes, terrified of losing their land to soldiers or slave rebellions. Rose-Claire’s handsome husband, with whom she was deeply in love, was among those who had defended the island. Finally, in early 1763, the British and French signed a treaty—Martinique would remain French. Clambering up the hill, accompanied by her slaves, Rose-Claire watched the British ships on the horizon sail away. She patted the swell of her stomach, convinced that she was carrying a boy.

Three months later, on June 23, 1763, Rose-Claire’s first child was born. The child who would later be empress of France had only narrowly avoided being born British. “Contrary to our hopes, it has pleased God to give us a daughter,” wrote Rose-Claire on the occasion of the little girl’s birth. “My own joy has been no less great. Why should we not take a more favourable view of our own sex?”[1] But Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie was a terrible disappointment to the rest of the family. Rose-Claire’s husband, Joseph de Tascher de La Pagerie, desired a boy who one day might gain greatness for his line. Her family wished for a boy to take over the land. As a girl, Marie-Josèphe was not valuable, intended at best for an early marriage to one of the local landowners and life as a busy matron to half a dozen children.

Martinique was tiny, barely forty miles across and fifteen miles wide. It was four thousand miles and several weeks’ sailing from France—and both culturally and geographically remote from the motherland. The French fought for its lush lands but saw the place as a cash cow and the people who lived there as provincial and ill educated. Some families came out from France to make their fortune there, but rather ashamedly, for the capital, Fort Royal, now Fort-de-France, was no bastion of culture. “Everyone hurries to get rich in order to escape a place where men live without distinction, without honor.”[2] The women were indolent, while the men struggled to resist the temptations of drinking island rum, gambling, and dueling. Children were raised to take over plantations, as masters or wives, and few left the Caribbean.

Josephine was the name that Napoleon would give her. Marie-Josèphe was known to her family as Yeyette, or Rose when they were being very formal. She was born into a dynasty in decline. Her mother, born Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois, was a member of a wealthy plantation family and a descendant of both Pierre Bélain d’Esnambuc, who had established the first French colony on the island in 1635, and Guillaume d’Orange, who had defended the colonials from the Dutch navy’s attempt on the island in 1674. Rose-Claire was a proud member of an elite family—the Sannoises owned swathes of land on Martinique, and her father was a true grand blanc, one of the prosperous landowners who retained near-absolute control over the island.

Rose-Claire should have married a son of another wealthy family. But she was still unmarried at the shockingly advanced age of twenty-five, when most other girls had been wed for eight or so years and were already mothers. So when the rather poor Joseph-Gaspard de Tascher de La Pagerie asked for her hand, she was delighted at the prospect, and her parents had no choice but to agree. Joseph was a charmer with an eye for the ladies. His father, Gaspard-Joseph, had been a steward on the plantations, with a reputation for irresponsibility and hedonism. Thanks to his skill at making connections, Gaspard managed to secure his son a position at the French court, as a page at the Palace of Versailles. The young man returned after three years, elegant, polished, and in search of a rich wife.

Newly married, the ill-matched pair settled in their home, the place where Rose-Claire had lived for most of her life, a large and beautiful plantation near the little village of Trois-Îlets in the southwest of Martinique. Habitation de La Pagerie, as it became known, was 1,230 acres of highly fertile land, bordered by lush hills. Cocoa, coffee, cassava, and cotton flourished on the slopes, while sheep and cows grazed on rich green pastures and field after field of sugarcane surrounded the house. A small river—also named after the family—snaked through the grounds. Like most plantations, La Pagerie was self-sufficient and had its own carpenters and ironmongers, as well as a flour mill, sawmill, and hut for treating injuries and illness. Over three hundred exhausted, often sick slaves tended the sugar, the cows, and the cocoa, all of them crammed into poky hovels near the main house. Yet almost as soon as Joseph turned his hand to management, the plantation’s fortunes began to decline. “He means well,” his brother said of him, “but he must be pushed.”[3]

Yeyette, the future empress of France, had, as she herself claimed, a “spoilt childhood.”[4] Her parents, grandparents, and unmarried aunt let her do as she pleased. Her home was a large plantation house, a single-story white wooden dwelling with large open windows, without glass. Like all plantation houses, it was in the center of the grounds, to allow the owner to oversee the labor of his slaves. There were more than four hundred plantations on the island, and La Pagerie was comparatively small and humble, though pretty to look at—for the white inhabitants, at least. Nestled against three sides of the house was a sheltered veranda decked with blossoms. Around it were the outbuildings and a pretty garden, overhung with tamarind, mango, and frangipani trees and surrounded by a floral hedge. Today all that remains of the domestic buildings is the kitchen, for, as was customary, it was built of stone rather than wood. It is now part of the La Pagerie Museum in Martinique, and without all the paraphernalia of saucepans and pots, its sheer size indicates how much food even a small family and their attendants would require.

Yeyette grew into an engaging, happy child with limpid amber eyes and a fine complexion. Like all plantation children, she had a black wet nurse (a custom that shocked the French). The little girl spent her days with her nurse, Marion, and her maids, Geneviève and Mauricette, who devoted themselves to her care. Anxious to preserve their position as house servants, they obeyed Yeyette’s every whim and treated her like a princess.

“I ran, I jumped, I danced, from morning to night; no one restrained the wild movements of my childhood,” Yeyette rhapsodized.[5] Her sister, Catherine, arrived on December 11, 1764, and the two were companions, playing hide-and-seek among the bushes and making toys out of sticks. Few other inhabitants on the plantation were so free. Sugar was an exacting master—as soon as one crop was harvested, it was ready to be planted again. The underfed slaves worked from six in the morning until seven at night throughout the year, digging, planting, reaping, and then beginning once more. They toiled under the broiling sun and were treated harshly, punished with the lash of the whip. As soon as the sugar was harvested, they had to extract the juice, a process that had them working up to eighteen hours a day. In the sugar mill, at the center of the property, female slaves pushed the cane through rollers to crush it. Cutlasses were kept on hand, for the slaves frequently caught their arms in the machinery and the quickest way to free them was to cut off the arm. Elsewhere, in the sucrerie or purgerie (the sugarhouse), the slaves struggled in the terrible heat of the boiler room to press the juice into thick sugar syrup.

Martinique was the third stop on the well-traveled French slave trade route. African men and women were captured and sold on the Ivory Coast in exchange for gold, tobacco, guns, gunpowder, or cloth, and were then crammed into ships bound for France. In France, the ships took on supplies required in the Caribbean and set off, full of slaves and books, gowns and furniture. When little Yeyette went to the port, she saw the slaves being taken off the ships and hauled to market, branded, shackled, and then sold. Emptied of their human cargo, the ships were loaded up with bundles and crates and sent back to France, where eager ladies awaited sugar for their tea and cocoa for their stores.

The children of slaves were the possession of their mother’s owner. Slaves were not permitted belongings or even to pass down a family name. The punishments allowed in colonial French society were severe—ranging from brutal beatings to brandings to being burned alive. Slaves could be covered in honey and placed on anthills to be stung to death, shot (although owners thought this a waste of bullets), drowned, or thrown into ovens. The average life expectancy of a slave was twenty-five.

As she skipped in the garden, Yeyette often heard the slaves cry out. When she and her family sat indoors, dining on fish, roast meats, pastries, and sweet fruit, the red flames of the slaves’ night fires shimmered at the windows, and their songs rang through the darkness. The air of the plantation was always slightly sweet, and during syrup-making time, it was thick with the smell of burned sugar. Typically, Yeyette played with the slave children who were her own age: She was especially fond of one-legged Boyoco and weak, often sick Timideas. Yeyette’s daily life was bound up with the slaves, and she did not question it. Slaves, she thought, were the way of the world.

About forty slaves had the better luck to work directly for the family as maids, cooks, laundresses, and manservants. For the families, they were both friend and foe, the serpents in the bosom they feared might turn to poison or the knife in a moment of rage—or, for the women, seduce their husbands. Female slaves were accepted as a sexual resource for the colonial men. Some of the slaves closest to Yeyette were probably also her relations. Her devoted mulatto nurse, Marion, could have been the daughter of her grandfather or perhaps the overseer, and her delicate maid, Euphémie Lefèvre, who traveled with her to Paris and whom she supported for the rest of her life, was very likely the daughter of Joseph, her father. Euphémie was her day-to-day companion, her maid, and her friend.

The slave owners lived in fear that their slaves would rise against them. They worried about the runaways, who hid out in the hills and plotted revenge, and they fretted about murder—indeed, Yeyette’s mother would later prosecute one of her house slaves for attempting to poison her. The news of the abolitionist movement, gaining credibility in France, infuriated the grands blancs, who became increasingly defensive of their way of life. Across the rest of the world, there was a growing sense that slavery was unfair and cruel. The British and French economies were reliant on the produce of the Caribbean islands, but Quakers and other religious groups had long been suggesting that the price was too high to pay. One later cartoon showed drops of sugar as slaves’ tears in ladies’ cups of tea. In 1771, John Somersett, a slave who had been brought to Britain by an American customs officer, escaped and was recaptured. After a highly publicized trial, it was declared illegal to hold and remove him against his will. In Britain (if not the wider British Empire), a man could not be a possession. The question of whether slavery should be abolished was swirling in settler society, even though many tried to ignore it.

Creoles, the name given to whites born in the Caribbean, had a reputation in France for being pleasure-loving, lazy, sensual, capricious—and possessed of arcane sexual skills. As an adult, Josephine traded on her reputation as seductive—but the other characteristics were true of her as well. She had scant discipline as a child. While she was running wild on the grounds of La Pagerie, her future friends in France were strictly educated in chilly houses, dressed in stiff frills for show, always told to sit up straight, and kept to a rigid timetable of lessons and a diet of plain food.

Rose-Claire had little time for educating Yeyette and Catherine. They lived in a paradise of pleasure, and their lives were unintellectual and free. Yeyette dashed about with Euphémie and Marion, wearing the loose cotton dresses that were customary for colonial children, and discovering lizards and butterflies, picking flowers and the fruit that hung heavy on the trees. As she grew older, she rode around on her Spanish pony, took long walks to the hills and splashed in the sea like a dolphin. She sucked on sugarcane plucked from the fields, and drank the syrup so enthusiastically that she gave herself a cavity in her front incisor. In adulthood, her teeth gave her pain; to hide them, she smiled with her lips pressed closed, looking enigmatic and mysterious to those who did not know the truth.

She adored her home, but her father was less content. After living off his father for years, he had expected to be cosseted by his wife’s family. To his horror, he found that Rose-Claire and her parents wished him to be the head of the family, stewarding La Pagerie through crises and devoting himself to their care. He was incompetent and unlucky at business, with no aptitude for the dreary tasks of supervising the overseer, checking the books, and keeping careful accounts of what was bought and sold, and he was uninterested in befriending fellow traders. His health was poor, he hated the heat, he suffered frequent bouts of malaria, and he resented his wife for not having a son. Marooned owing to bad roads, La Pagerie received few visitors outside of feast days, and Joseph became consumed by nostalgia for the balls and soirées of Versailles. Soon he was hardly ever at home, throwing himself into gambling at cards and nights with mistresses in the capital. “He spends his time in his charming Fort Royal where he finds more pleasure than he does with me and his children,” Rose-Claire wrote to Edmée, her husband’s sister, in 1765.[6] She was pregnant again and yearning for a boy. “I hope with all my heart that it will be the little nephew you desire; perhaps that will give his father a little more love for me,” she said.

On the evening of August 13, 1766, lowering dark clouds obscured the horizon. It was hurricane season, and soon rain was battering the trees and winds of up to a hundred miles an hour were slashing the island. In the middle of the night, three-year-old Yeyette was woken and seized from her bed by Marion. Joseph, Rose-Claire, baby Catherine, and a few domestic slaves hurried to shelter in the first floor of the sugarhouse. There Yeyette and her family crouched, hands over their ears, trying to block out the screams of the slaves as their dwellings were torn in two by the rapacious winds.

For two days, Martinique was battered by the storm. When the winds abated and the family emerged, they saw nothing but devastation. They had lost everything. The bodies of slaves lay strewn across the ground; their homes had been entirely destroyed. The trees were flattened, the crops wrecked, and most of the animals killed. Their grand plantation house was reduced to scraps of wood. The only remnants of grandeur were the stone outbuilding used as the kitchen and the sugarhouse, where they had so wisely sheltered.

The destruction was terrible—440 people dead, hundreds more injured, and close to fifty ships wrecked off the coast. The island’s crops of sugar, coffee, and cocoa had been wiped out and whole villages wrecked. People had lost their lives, their homes, and their ambitions for the future. In nearby Trinité, the wind tore a church from its foundations, threw it into the air, and smashed it to the ground. During the storm, houses, trees, and cattle soared up toward the clouds, only to crash down into the wet soil or the raging sea. One family found themselves using the door of their house as a raft, clinging to it until they were rescued.

Joseph gazed at his home in despair. To rebuild it would be a daunting task, insurmountable to a man who was as impractical and lazy as he was. The family adopted the upper floor of the sugarhouse as their living quarters and built a veranda over the south side. It was meant to be their residence for six months or so. A few weeks later, Rose-Claire went into labor and they all prayed for a son. But the child was a girl, Marie-Françoise, or “Manette.” Joseph felt he had been saddled with another useless mouth and he railed at the poor hand life had dealt him.

The defeat of the island broke the heart of Rose-Claire’s father, and he died six months later. The family had expected to inherit great wealth from his will, but they were shocked to find there were only debts to be paid, and Joseph did not have the gumption to investigate any possible mistakes in the accounts. The young husband now had a family of dependent women—a mother-in-law, a sister-in-law, a wife, and three daughters—and no money. Fortunately, he had an efficient overseer in Monsieur Blanque, who ensured that the slave quarters were rebuilt and the sugar-processing buildings restored. Even though all the crops were replanted, the estate dwindled, and Joseph spent more time than ever gambling and squiring mistresses in Fort Royal. Soon there were only 150 slaves, and sugar production was under half what it had been. Angry, frustrated, and left alone for long periods, Rose-Claire watched her childhood home collapse into ruins.

Joseph never had the money or the energy to rebuild their wooden house, so the upper floor of the purgerie became their permanent home. No genteel family would ever live over the workrooms—and island society was shocked at the La Pagerie living conditions. With the hurricane, the death of grandfather Sannois, and the birth of a third daughter, the family’s situation was dire. Oblivious, Yeyette continued skipping through the sugarcane, playing with her nurse under the breadfruit trees, and riding her pony.

Usually, the daughters of the great plantation families were sent to France at the age of six to be educated. Not only did their parents wish them to acquire polish, but it was a way to keep them from merciless tropical diseases that killed so many before the age of twelve. And indeed in 1770, at the age of seven, Yeyette caught a severe bout of smallpox—but luckily, she recovered and was left unmarked. In Paris, Joseph’s sister, Edmée, was eager to take Yeyette, but Joseph declared he could not afford to send her.

In the same year on the other side of the world, the dauphin, Louis-Auguste, was married to the fourteen-year-old Maria Antonia of Austria. She was met by officials on an island in the Rhine, stripped of her fine Austrian wedding clothes, re-dressed in French gowns, and sent to Versailles. “Meeting with Madame la Dauphine,” Louis wrote in his hunting journal of their first encounter at the Château de Compiègne. Two thousand people died in the fashionable avenue of the Champs-Élysées after a crush at a fete to celebrate their marriage.

The young princess was flung into a world of pomp, etiquette, formality, and treacherous courtiers. “Everything depends on the wife,” her mother, Maria Teresa, had told her, “if she is willing, sweet and amusante”—in other words, it was her fault if the marriage failed. Four years later, Louis XV died of smallpox, tears rolling down his cheeks after he sent away his favorite mistress, Madame du Barry. Then the palace resounded with a thunderous rushing noise as hundreds of courtiers left the king to hurry to Louis-Auguste and Marie Antoinette, now King Louis XVI and the queen of France.

Marie Antoinette, barely seven years older than Yeyette, became the primped young queen of Versailles, surrounded by dozens of servants and her favorites, the dizzy, softhearted Princesse de Lamballe and the sensual Comtesse de Polignac. Her tiny figure was swamped by heavy brocades, hooped skirts, and trains, and she piled her hair three feet high and topped it with feathers, ribbons, and diamonds. Her mother chastised her for “following fashion to excess.”[7] But the queen could not stop powdering her hair, decking herself with precious stones, and covering her face with lead paint and rouge. She ordered four new pairs of shoes a week and three yards of ribbon every day so that her peignoir, or dressing gown, was always tied with fresh ribbon. A palace of exquisite, exotic desserts that no one ever ate, hairstyles that took days to perfect, and courtiers bent obsessively on guessing the queen’s every whim, Versailles was a labyrinth, the jewel in the French crown—and much of the money to pay for it came from the sugar islands of the Caribbean.

France at the time was riven by inequality. Peasants and laborers worked with little respite and for a few coins. Life expectancy across the board was very low thanks to the appalling rate of child mortality, and the average age of death was around twenty-five—the same as that of the slaves in the Caribbean. At the top were the nobles living in grand style through the rents from land tilled by peasants and tenant farmers; above the nobility was Versailles, a great iced palace built from the toil of thousands of hands. Martinique was nothing but a name to Marie Antoinette, choosing shoes and demanding that her maid adjust the position of her ribbons. But Martinique thought obsessively about her. Society gossip on the island was all about Versailles, the fashions of Paris, and the favorites of the queen.

Yeyette turned ten in 1773, and Rose-Claire decided to send her to boarding school in Fort Royal. After a long journey by canoe, she arrived at her new home, accompanied by Marion, her nurse. They took a carriage past brothels, slums, and shebeens, soon reaching the grandeur of colonial buildings and the Governor’s House. In the midst of it all was the Maison de la Providence, a convent school for young ladies, founded in 1763 in an attempt to instill proper morals in the lax girls of the island and prepare them to be “wives, mothers and mistresses of plantations” who would embed proper Christian tenets in their husbands and children.

Yeyette awoke at five, dressed herself in the red-and-blue-striped cotton uniform, and began two hours of supervised prayers. Then teachers from France, under the beady eye of the Mother Superior, instructed the girls in arithmetic, drawing, embroidery, penmanship, and geography. Rose-Claire had ambitions for her daughter, and the girl was given extra lessons in dancing and painting. She had Wednesday and Saturday afternoons off for gossiping and giggling with the other filles de la Providence, and one day in town per month, when she usually visited her grandmother. The main idea was that a young lady would befriend a circle of other girls and thus be introduced to their brothers or male relations—and find herself a plantation husband. Fortunately for Yeyette, who had little interest in applying herself, the education was light. “Her voice is sweet, she plucks prettily at the guitar, and, showing a general aptitude for music, she could with proper instruction perfect her singing, playing and dancing,” her father wrote—but her music remained a mere “aptitude.”[8]

Yeyette left school at the age of fourteen, knowing little more than when she had arrived. She began to attend gatherings at other plantations and the balls at the Governor’s House in Fort Royal. Attended by their house slaves, young ladies gowned in white and finely dressed gentlemen paraded on the lawn before entering the humid ballroom to dance to the music of the slave orchestra under bouquets of flaming tropical flowers. Yeyette was a popular girl to flirt with but not to marry, for, in the words of one man, she was “fused with grace, more seductive than beautiful,” entrancing and magnetic, but “the family in real life lives in mediocrity.”[9] Without a large dowry, she was not sought after. But Yeyette wished for more than marriage to a plantation son. Seduced by her father’s nostalgic stories about Paris and Versailles, she wanted to go to France.

Yeyette was fifteen when she and two friends decided to visit the local witch. Euphémie David lived in the hills near La Pagerie, mixing potions, telling stories, and promising to cure all ills. She kept a healthy trade—in a world of disease and sudden violence, few could resist the pull of the occult. The old woman clutched the hand of each girl in turn. The first, she said, would marry a planter and live a contented life. The second, a distant cousin of Yeyette’s, would live a scandalous life and be captured by pirates. Yeyette was destined to marry one man in France, but unhappily, and then wed a “dark man of little fortune” who would “cover the world with glory” and make her greater than a queen. Even so, she would die unhappy and often yearn for the ease of life on Martinique.[10] It seems too convenient to be plausible, but Josephine would later refer to it intently, and even brought it up in newspaper interviews long before she became empress.[11] Most likely, the sorceress saw her yearning for adventure and guessed that she was destined for a new life in France—one that would not necessarily bring happiness.

France seemed like an impossible dream. But then Yeyette’s aunt Edmée wrote to suggest that one of the La Pagerie girls be sent over to marry her lover’s son, Alexandre. He was seventeen, born just over three years before Yeyette, handsome and eager for a Creole bride. As the eldest, Yeyette was the obvious choice.

The Tascher de La Pagerie family already had a poor reputation, and Joseph’s sister, Edmée—whose real name was Désirée—was a scandalous figure. In 1757, in the midst of battles between the French and British for control of the island, François de Beauharnais arrived on Martinique as the governor. His wife, a wealthy Saint-Domingue heiress, took an immediate fancy to the nineteen-year-old Edmée and moved her in as a companion. The forty-two-year-old governor fell passionately in love with Edmée and made her his mistress. Ambitious and amoral where her brother was quiescent and parasitic, she did as she liked. In order to hide their liaison, Beauharnais (who had declared himself a marquis), found her a husband, Alexis Renaudin, a handsome young king’s musketeer. He had been recently released from prison for the attempted poisoning of his wealthy plantation father, but Beauharnais was impatient, and the marriage was arranged in 1758.

The governor was so obsessed with ensuring the wedding of his lover that he ignored the plight of the nearby island of Guadeloupe. The British attacked, and Beauharnais delayed for three months before responding to the requests of the lieutenant in command for assistance. He was lazy, too cautious, and preoccupied with enjoying Edmée (for now he could take her freely, since if she fell pregnant, the child would be seen as her husband’s). By the time his fleet reached Guadeloupe, the British had won. For such appalling dereliction of duty, he was called back to France. He refused to leave immediately and instead whiled away his last months on the island fondling Edmée. Finally realizing that he was a cuckold, Renaudin angrily abandoned his wife and hurried to France to arrange a legal separation. She followed after him in an attempt to seize a financial settlement, though she did ensure that her brother’s marriage to Rose-Claire was arranged before she left. Beauharnais and his wife returned to France, leaving their three-month-old son, Alexandre, with Edmée’s mother (the journey was seen as too risky for an infant).

In France, the discarded Madame de Beauharnais retired to a country estate. The marquis wangled a generous pension from the king and set up home in Paris with Edmée, who was now separated from her husband. When Alexandre was five, he was sent to Paris to live with his father and Edmée, and he became as fond of her, he said, as if she was his own mother. Parisian society despaired—adultery was all very well, but it was immoral to live together in sin. Still, the marquis adored his much younger lover, and his wealth protected them from cruel comments, in public, at least.

When Edmée was thirty-eight, after nearly twenty years with her lover, she began to think about securing her future. The marquis was sixty-two and sickly, and she would be left virtually penniless on his death, as his estate and that of his wife would go to Alexandre. She wanted to keep this money for herself and suggested Alexandre marry her niece, in the hope that the couple would care for her after her husband’s death. Alexandre agreed, for he needed to wed in order to come into his inheritance. It was entirely acceptable to marry a Martinique girl; the French thought them wildly rich, and they had a reputation for beauty and sensuality. Although Alexandre knew the La Pagerie sisters were not incredibly wealthy, he thought they were comfortably off, and that was satisfactory enough. He had only one proviso: He wished his wife to be very young.

The marquis wrote to Joseph de La Pagerie telling him that Alexandre did not want Yeyette, since “my son, who is only seventeen and a half, finds that a young lady of fifteen is too close in age to his own.”[12] He asked for Catherine, not knowing that she had recently died from a strain of yellow fever. Instead, Joseph offered eleven-year-old Manette, a girl equipped, he cheerfully wrote, with health, gaiety, and “a figure that will soon be interesting.”[13]

The family fell into uproar. Manette was hysterical at the thought of leaving her home, and her mother felt she could not permit her to marry so young. Yeyette was tearful and furious. She had dreamed of Paris for as long as she could remember—and now Manette was taking her place. She begged her father to send her instead. Otherwise, she had nothing to anticipate but a dreary future as a planter’s wife. Yeyette, normally pliable and indolent, was so passionately set on traveling to France that her father relented.

“The oldest girl, who has often asked me to take her to France, will I fear be somewhat affected by the preference which I appear to give to her younger sister,” he wrote. He continued that Yeyette had “very fine skin, lovely eyes, good arms, and a surprising gift for music. She longs to see Paris and has a very sweet disposition. If it were left to me, I would bring the two daughters instead of one, but how can one part a mother from both her remaining daughters when death has just deprived her of a third?”[14]

Back in Paris, Edmée was growing desperate. She wanted the marriage agreed to quickly, before Alexandre’s guardians could dissuade him. “We must have one of your children,” she wrote. “Come with one of your daughters or with both of them, but hurry.”[15] The marquis sent a letter authorizing the publication of the marriage banns on Martinique. Alexandre’s name had been added, but the space for the bride’s name was blank. By the time the letter arrived, Joseph’s decision had been made for him. Poor Manette had so exhausted herself from crying that she fell ill with a fever, and her mother refused to let her go. When Alexandre heard the news, he was not ecstatic. “Surely it is not your intention to have me marry this young lady if she and I should feel mutual dislike for each other?” he wrote to his father. Still, he was obedient. “I feel sure after the description that has been given that she will charm me.”[16]

Yeyette was to be married. But having won his battle, her torpid father dragged his feet. It was not until six months later that the priest stood in the church of Notre-Dame de la Martinique and announced the forthcoming marriage between Alexandre-François, chevalier de Beauharnais, and Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie. Then Joseph again delayed over the journey. For years, he had said he longed to return to France—and now he did not wish to go.

He ignored his sister’s pleas for urgency. He was ill, the journey was expensive, and travel was growing more dangerous by the day. After the uneasy truce shortly before Yeyette’s birth, hostilities between Britain and France had begun again, and Martinique was under siege. Moreover, the hurricane season was approaching, making it unsafe to travel by sea.

Edmée pushed and demanded until finally, accompanied by her father, her aunt Rosette, and her maid Euphémie, Yeyette embarked for France in September 1779. Sixteen, barely educated, pretty, and thoughtless, Marie-Josèphe was bound for a new life in Paris.

CHAPTER 2

Sophistication

Alexandre de Beauharnais was slender, strong-jawed, and handsome. As languidly aggressive as a character in the forthcoming novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, he was already an arch-seducer by the age of seventeen. He felt the world was his for the taking. In August 1779, just before Yeyette departed from Martinique, he wrote to his stepmother that he was “going into the country” with a “wife of a sub-lieutenant in the navy, a charming woman.” He was not planning on conversation. “I count on spending two days there, and in that short space of time I shall do everything possible to succeed.”

He won his prize. His new mistress, Marie Françoise-Laure de Girardin de Montgérald, Madame de Longpré, was from a Martinique family, twenty-nine, and the mother of a child. Stylish and temperamental, she had captivated her youthful lover. “Yes indeed, the chevalier has tasted happiness. He is loved by a charming woman who is the object of all the aspirations of the garrison of Brest and the district.”[1] He expected Edmée to congratulate him. Entranced by Laure’s conversation, enthralled by her sexual experience, he barely gave a thought to the girl who was traveling thousands of miles to marry him. To Alexandre, love meant sex and conquest, and life was about enjoying himself.

A spoiled, much beloved child, Alexandre had been raised to believe he was destined for greatness. Until the age of five, he had lived on Martinique, then was sent to his indulgent father and his mistress in France. In 1775, his tutor, Patricol, was offered a position in the household of the two nephews of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld. A leading figure of the Enlightenment, the duc was friends with Voltaire and Lafayette and a fervent abolitionist. Patricol took Alexandre (and his elder brother, François) with him—it was not uncommon for aristocratic children to be sent off to live in grander households—and the boys grew up in the duc’s Parisian palace and his country château, listening to debates about freedom. He also grew up excessively reserved, cloaking his feelings in elegant diffidence. “What astonishes me most in him, and greatly displeases me, is the extreme care that he takes to hide, and the ease with which he disguises, the feelings of his heart,” rued Patricol.[2] A modern teacher might say Alexandre was deceptive and shallow.

At sixteen, Alexandre achieved a commission in the Sarre Infantry Regiment, which was commanded by the duc. There, his passion for women hit new heights. They were to him “trophies of war.”[3] He wrote lists of all the women he had ensnared, comparing their various features and titles. Stationed with the unit, he seduced ladies of the town and regimental wives, always eagerly acquainting his stepmother, Edmée, with his every success. By the age of seventeen, having long lost his innocence, he preferred older, married women, since they were more nonchalant and skilled at verbal sparring. Laure—bored, sensual, teasing, and glamorous—was perfect.

MEANWHILE, YEYETTE WAS en route to France. She had expected her journey to be terrifying; only a year before, her cousin Aimée had disappeared while traveling on a ship, and her family in Martinique believed she had been kidnapped by pirates. Yeyette and Joseph had taken places on a naval store ship, Île de France, headed to the mainland in a convoy led by the Pomone. The weather was rough, and the storms were so bad that the passengers believed they would die. Joseph and his daughter were hopelessly seasick and terrified of battle at sea, for they were repeatedly followed by British ships.

In spite of their troubles, the family made it to the large naval port of Brest, on the west coast of France, on October 12, 1779. Overwhelmed by the bustle, the cold and the dreary autumnal skies, the family retrieved what remained of their baggage and took lodgings in town. But the French sophistication Yeyette had dreamed of was nowhere to be found. Brest was one of the two major naval bases, a practical town of bars, brothels, and supply shops. Worse still, her father was ill and exhausted, and he had forgotten to write to his sister before departing to say they were coming. He didn’t even manage to send the letter to tell her that they had arrived until October 20.

Edmée had expected much more warning and had to rush to depart, seizing Alexandre and hurrying him to Brest. The young soldier was furious about the lack of notice. From the start, he was ill disposed and ready to find fault with the Creole girl he thought too old to be properly biddable. Moreover, he was deeply in love with Laure. She had recently told him she was pregnant with his child, and he wished to be constantly by her side.

Though she was sick and suffering from the journey, Yeyette readied herself to meet her fiancé. Euphémie dressed her mistress’s hair and pinched her cheeks for color. Yeyette thought she looked enchanting, and remembered how men had admired her at the governor’s balls. As soon as she saw Alexandre, she was delighted. Nineteen and very handsome, he was superb in his uniform of white with silver buttons and facings. Unlike her shabby father, he was precise in his appearance, with hair perfectly powdered and drawn back at the nape of his neck. She admired his piercing blue eyes and prominent nose. Everything about him corresponded with the strictures of male beauty at the time—except for the fact that he was of rather less than average height.

Yeyette held out her hand, her face bright with excitement. Alexandre looked at her in shock. He was obsessed by appearances and already a little jaded by too much experience with women, and Mademoiselle de La Pagerie was not what he had expected at all. He had anticipated a dusky beauty, all languorous grace, with a sensual smile and an air of French sophistication. He got a plump girl with a thick Creole accent and a clumsy manner. Yeyette barely understood fashion, and she was ill at ease with the heavy brocade gowns and elaborate coiffeurs she was expected to wear. She looked like a child in her mother’s clothes.

Alexandre could hardly smile. It was even worse when Yeyette spoke. Lightly educated, lacking in elegance, and without style, it was clear the girl who had run wild in the baking sun belonged in the schoolroom, not at a soirée. She was a poor comparison to his glamorous mistress, Laure—Yeyette had neither beauty nor accomplishments, and her deportment was terrible.

The young soldier was used to women practically swooning at his smile, so Yeyette’s fascination with him had no novelty. It was obvious that the girl was eager to please and that she was a virgin. But he had little desire to take her to his bed. Still, he respected his stepmother, Edmée, so there was no turning back. Over their following days together, he tried hard to love Yeyette. Certainly, she was so in love with him that it seemed she would be docile. Perhaps, he thought, some schooling in manners from Edmée, and time spent with a dressmaker, might shroud her rougher edges. “Mademoiselle de La Pagerie may perhaps appear to you less pretty than you had expected,” he wrote to his father, “but I think I may assure you that her amiability and the sweetness of her nature will surpass even what you have been told.”[4] Alexandre also thought Yeyette was a ridiculous name. He declared she must henceforth be known only as Marie-Josèphe-Rose.

Marie-Josèphe was too blinded by infatuation to understand that her fiancé was immune to her charms. Seeing this, Edmée took whirlwind charge. She told her niece that all was proceeding marvelously, then whisked her brother to visit a notary in Brest. She encouraged him to sign a document agreeing to the marriage and ceding all control to her. Ill and lazy, he agreed, even though his sister now had the right to decide the dowry and could mortgage all the La Pagerie property in order to fulfill it.

On November 2, the party set off for the three-hundred-mile journey to Paris. Marie-Josèphe was in love. She had, Edmée wrote to the marquis, “all the feelings that you could wish her to have toward your son, and I have observed with the greatest satisfaction that she suits him.”[5] The young bride-to-be gazed from the carriage window at countryside that was so unlike Martinique, and imagined her life with her new husband.

As they traveled, the route began to fill up. Carriages of fine ladies, soldiers on horseback, farmers driving their livestock, and laborers looking for work all crammed onto the bumpy road toward the great gated city. An unthinkably huge, bustling place of six hundred thousand souls, a place of incredible luxury and awful poverty in one, Paris was an eye-opener for anyone, let alone a plantation girl from far-off Martinique.

Finally, Marie-Josèphe arrived at the city she had dreamed of with such fervor. Elegant houses bordered the streets, servants trotted along with messages, ladies descended from carriages to enter the shops or the homes of their friends. The smell of the streets was so intense that visitors often fainted on their first visit. Marie-Josèphe, hardened against fetid conditions by her awful sea journey, stared through the window, gathering in every sight until they arrived at their destination, the family house in the rue Thévenot.

Her new home was a thin two-story building near modern-day Les Halles. Once fashionable, the area was now rather down at the heels. Formerly the home of the marquis’s grandmother, the house had fallen into disrepair, and it had not been renovated for the young couple because no one realized they were coming. Still, it was grand and imposing, with reception rooms hung with heavy chandeliers and tapestries. It all seemed a long way from the rooms in the sugarhouse at La Pagerie.

The marquis and Edmée had quit their stylish apartment in the rue Garancière to live with the newlyweds, all of them crowding into the narrow, gloomy house. Despite the grandeur of Paris, Marie-Josèphe missed the beautiful scenery of Martinique—when she opened the window, she could smell the pungent stench of the tanneries. On nearby streets, butchers set up open stalls and threw their waste meat into the middle of the road.

Edmée was determined not to lose any time. She put out orders for the wedding trousseau and arranged for the banns to be read in three different churches, and on December 10 the marriage contract was signed. In the house on the rue Thévenot, Joseph agreed to give his daughter the incredible dowry of 120,000 livres (money he didn’t have), a sum chosen by his sister. The bride offered presents and furniture given to her by friends and relations on Martinique—generously valued at 15,000 livres. Edmée donated a summerhouse at Noisy-le-Grand and all its furnishings, as well as a sum of money due to her from the will of a relative. Alexandre brought an annual sum of 40,000 livres from the family estates in France and Saint-Domingue.

With such money, the young couple would be so rich that no one could snub Marie-Josèphe for her countrified ways. But their wealth existed only on paper. There was no arrangement to bring the furniture from Martinique, and Edmée had a life interest in her gifts to Marie-Josèphe, so she would not be able to use them until her aunt died. Edmée had assessed Joseph’s contribution on the basis of the value of the properties in the Caribbean, but the sum was impossible. He could hardly afford his expenses in Paris, and he was supposed to give the couple six thousand a year as interest on their dowry. In reality, the newlyweds would be living off Alexandre’s money and whatever cash they could borrow.

On December 13, 1779, Marie-Josèphe was married. The chill, dark church at Noisy-le-Grand was filled with Alexandre’s friends and relations, and the ceremony was overseen by her new father-in-law, the marquis. She was virtually alone. Her father was too ill to attend, so she was given away by a distant cousin. Euphémie, her maid (and probably her half sister), was the only person she knew well. Her position of dependence and inferiority hardly could have been clearer. On the register, her wobbly and childlike “M.J.R. Tascher de La Pagerie” now appears poignant, the sole feminine signature among fourteen names.[6] Alexandre had conferred on himself the title of vicomte, even though he was not yet entitled to it, so Marie-Josèphe was now the vicomtesse de Beauharnais. That night Alexandre took her to his bed; after their first night together, Marie-Josèphe only adored her husband more intensely.

“The union is your doing, their happiness must be your work also,” the bride’s mother wrote to Edmée.[7] It was an optimistic view of Madame Renaudin’s powers. La Pagerie had been poor preparation for the cruelty of Marie-Josèphe’s new world. Parisian ladies discussed the philosophy of Montesquieu or the labyrinthine politics at court. Marie-Josèphe—who had never seen an opera, knew nothing of poetry, and could not comment on art—was out of her depth. At dances, she was shy and awkward, and people laughed at her behind their hands.

She refused to give in to sadness. Full of the joie de vivre of youth, she reminded herself that she was married to a handsome man her school friends would envy. She was eager to see fashionable society and be a good wife to her husband. Every day she waited excitedly for her invitation to court, since it was customary for aristocratic brides to be introduced to the queen. She longed to see the Versailles her father had extolled. But when word came from the court, it was not in their favor. As the Marquis de Beauharnais had created a newfangled title, and the family had been fined before for claiming false titles, the couple would have no place at Versailles. Alexandre was furious at the insult and harbored great resentment toward the king and queen.

He also despaired of his wife’s coarse manners, but on the other hand, her intense need for him and her fervent adoration suited his egotistic soul. It also made him complacent and convinced he could treat her as he chose. Mortified by her provincial behavior, he left her at home when he visited his friends and relations for dinners and soirées. He found her childish and too dependent, and her incessant questions annoyed him. He disliked her maid, Euphémie, deciding she was too rustic (perhaps he also thought the family resemblance too obvious). Marie-Josèphe’s lustrous chestnut hair, pretty eyes, and gentle heart had no effect on him. He called her an “object who has nothing to say to me,” and returned to his regiment soon after the wedding.[8] “Instead of spending my time at home with a creature with whom I can find nothing in common,” Alexandre wrote to Patricol, his former tutor, “I have to a great extent resumed my bachelor life.” Laure de Longpré was by then heavily pregnant with his child, and he had fallen in love with her. “I have until now attached myself only to persons incapable of inspiring a violent passion,” he wrote of his conquests before Laure. “I have never experienced true love.”[9]

With her husband away, the young vicomtesse de Beauharnais was lonely, unoccupied, and perpetually cold. The chilly, airless rooms at rue Thévenot were impossible to heat. Her father remained unwell, and she was still a little afraid of her aunt. She sent letters to her husband rebuking him for not writing to her. He replied, accusing her of trying to “poison the pleasure which I take in reading what you write by reproaches which my heart does not deserve.”[10] She begged him for attention, complained about being lonely, and upbraided him for leaving her alone. He responded with anger. “She has become jealous,” he fumed, “and wants to know what I am doing.”[11]

Fatigued by her begging and unhappiness, Alexandre decided to embark on a project of reforming his wife. In public, Marie-Josèphe was socially embarrassing, and her slight education had not given her the resources to amuse herself while alone. She needed to acquire the semblance of an accomplished and educated mind, as well as interests that might distract her from complaining. He had a plan to “recommence your education and repair by my zeal, the first fifteen years of your life which has been so tragically neglected.”[12] Under the supervision of Aunt Edmée, the vicomtesse would be put to work studying history and geography, learning by rote the works of the great poets, and reading the theory of drama. Alexandre also wished to correct her poor posture and hired a dancing master in an attempt to instill in his wife the poise and grace required of a Parisienne.

Marie-Josèphe promised to work hard, and Alexandre rewarded her with rapturous praise. “I am delighted at the desire to improve yourself which you have demonstrated to me,” he puffed. “You will acquire knowledge that will raise you above others, and combining wisdom with modesty, will make you an accomplished woman.”[13] He was too hopeful. Marie-Josèphe had taste and sensitivity, but her mind was too ill disciplined to absorb her studies without a great effort of will, and this she was too lazy to attempt. She had a kind heart and a generous manner, but these counted for little in a time when accomplishments and elegance were the definition of female excellence. In her husband’s eyes, she corresponded to the most unfortunate Parisian prejudices about ignorant Creoles.[14] His wife was hopeless at everything and, worse still, without money.

Marie-Josèphe learned little poetry, and her dancing did not improve. Exasperated, Alexandre became even more intensely attached to Laure de Longpré. Any thought of separation from her induced in him “the deepest despair.”[15] In the spring, she gave birth to their son, and her triumph over his heart was complete.

BUT MARIE-JOSÈPHE HAD a card up her sleeve. By early 1781, after a successful winter visit from her husband, she was quite sure she was pregnant. Alexandre was pleased by the news and made plans to leave his regiment for the birth. But, once home, he was soon disenchanted with her once more, frustrated by her disgraceful reluctance to improve herself. “If my wife really loved me, she would make the effort … to acquire the qualities which I admire and which would bind me to her,” he fumed to Patricol.[16]

Despite the pregnancy, after little more than a year of marriage, Alexandre and Marie-Josèphe were on the brink of separation. Patricol applied himself to reuniting them and wrote to Edmée, encouraging her to tell her niece to restrain her jealous demands: “[B]rusqueness and bossiness are two of the worst ways to attract to her a husband.” It was wise advice, but Marie-Josèphe could not control her emotions. Pregnant, lonely, and afraid, she became even more despondent and needy.

ON SEPTEMBER 3, 1781, eighteen-year-old Marie-Josèphe gave birth to a boy, baptized Eugène Rose. Alexandre was thrilled by his legitimate son. But within a month, he lost patience with his wife, affronted by the appointment of Euphémie as his child’s nurse. Edmée decided to send him away on an Italian tour in the hope that his travels might mature him, and that time away from Laure de Longpré might encourage him to appreciate his legitimate family. But this meant that Marie-Josèphe was alone once again. She was struggling to manage on the money her aunt and father-in-law chose to give her. She began to run up debts, using the goods and money in her marriage contract as security.

Alexandre returned in the summer of 1782 to find that his father-in-law, Joseph, stepmother, and aunt had traveled to Martinique. He and Marie-Josèphe were finally able to take a lease on their own house, on the rue Neuve Saint-Charles. Alexandre was delighted with their new home and pleased by Eugène, now a bonny toddler. He felt more kindly toward Marie-Josèphe, and she quickly fell pregnant again.

Alexandre decided his wife was at least a little improved from her first days as his fiancée. He began taking her to the salons of Paris, the idea factories of the pre-Revolution era, having developed a passion for liberal ideas and the notion of a different future France, one with a constitution and a political government. Choderlos de Laclos’s novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses had captivated the city, and everyone discussed its political implications. Even Marie Antoinette read it in secret. In the exciting furnace of new ideas, women played a prominent role, celebrated and powerful. Marie-Josèphe listened to and participated in the conversations around her, though she could not help feeling jealous as she watched her husband flirt with everyone but her.

After just a few weeks with his wife, Alexandre yearned to be with Laure again. He crept away from Paris in the middle of the night, writing to Marie-Josèphe on the journey to ask for her pardon for “having left you without farewell, for having gone away without warning, for having fled without having told you again, a last time, that I am all yours.”[17] At Brest, he found no letter waiting for him. “Love for my wife and the love of glory both hold absolute sway in my heart,” he lied crossly. “If I yield to the latter it is for your future good and for that of your children.”[18] He decided to return to Martinique to assist its fight against the British. He had an incentive—Laure de Longpré’s father had died on Martinique, and Laure wished to return to the island. He and Laure would take the same ship out.

“Kiss little Eugène with all your heart and guard his little brother,” Alexandre wrote as he waited to depart, certain that the child in her womb was a son.[19] He was less pleased with Marie-Josèphe’s failure to write to him. “This neglect is inconceivable,” he seethed. “If, as I begin to fear, our marriage turns out decidedly badly, you will only have yourself to blame.”[20] Used to nurturing older women, who cooed over his cares, he felt aggrieved and deserted. Friendless, worrying about money, pregnant, and the mother of a young child, Marie-Josèphe could not provide the support he needed. He scribbled melodramas onto the paper. “Amidst the risks of war and of the seas, where I go to seek death, I shall without sorrow and without regret see a life taken from me whose moments will have been reckoned only in misfortunes.”[21] His was the classic strategy of attacking the spouse as a way of blotting out his own guilt.

At the end of December, Alexandre finally set sail and divided his time between upbraiding Marie-Josèphe and playing lotto with Laure. “I was often bored by the game but amply recompensed by the pleasure which I derived from the journey,” he wrote to his wife, enjoying rubbing salt in the wound.[22]

Alexandre arrived on Martinique in January 1783 and was appalled. He had not seen the island since he was five and had cherished dreams of orderly tropical beauty. Instead he found chaos and impropriety. “The morals, the multitude of people of color, in their indecent costumes, their manner of living, their dwellings, the appearance of libertinage, all this has amazed me.”[23] He was deeply disappointed by La Pagerie. Rather than living in a fine house surrounded by a bustling plantation, his in-laws were huddled in the sugarhouse, struggling to control malcontent slaves. Manette, the girl he’d first desired, was now sixteen and very ill.

Peace negotiations had begun in London the week before his arrival, and Alexandre had missed all the military action. With Laure occupied by her family, he tried to be a good son-in-law, talking of a marriage between Manette and one of his fellow officers. “Your mother loves and always misses you,” he reported to his wife.[24] But he soon lost interest, and after only two days at La Pagerie, he returned to Fort Royal and threw himself into the social life of the island, accompanied by Laure de Longpré. In the daytime, tired and a little sick from wine, he dwelled on his annoyances with his wife. Hurt and angry at his slights and his continuing affair with Laure, Marie-Josèphe had stopped writing entirely. Alexandre was predictably aggressive.

“Finally I have proof of your inconstancy! With my own eyes, I have seen the proof! Yes, with my own eyes, I have seen that you have written to your parents, and me, I alone have been forgotten,” he scrawled. “Should you want information about me, my father will always know my news and through him, if you are curious you can find out what country I am living in … I am abandoned!”[25]

On April 10, 1783, Marie-Josèphe gave birth to a little girl, Hortense-Eugénie. Struggling for money and already receiving demands for payment of her debts, she sold jewelry to pay for the baptism. She sent word of the birth to her parents but not to her husband.

Laure de Longpré heard the news and immediately began working her snakelike charms. She suggested that because the baby had arrived two weeks early, she was not Alexandre’s child. Alexandre drove himself into a frenzy of hatred. Cooling his heels on Martinique, dissatisfied and ill at ease, he decided his wife was as licentious as her father. It was suddenly clear to him: He was married to a whore.

Alexandre went on the hunt for evidence. He questioned Marie-Josèphe’s friends and family and tried to bribe and blackmail the slaves on the plantation to tell stories against her. “Such totally base conduct and vile methods, how can this be the behavior of a man of culture and good birth?” Rose-Claire wrote in despair to the marquis. “I would never have thought that he would have let himself be led around so, by Mme. de Longpré. She has turned his head completely.”[26] He even threatened to kill Brigitte, one of the family’s most trusted house slaves, if she did not give him the information he wanted. “M. le Vicomte used all his means to extract something unfavorable about the conduct of my mistress,” Brigitte recorded.[27] In Alexandre’s mind, his wife was shockingly wicked. Scratching his wound over and over, he demanded corroboration of his wild fantasies.

Marie-Josèphe, far away in France, heard nothing of Alexandre’s activities. She continued unaware, wrapped up in her new baby, hoping that her husband would eventually grow tired of Laure. And that after a few months in the lush lands of her beloved Martinique, he might return contented.

CHAPTER 3

“Beneath All the Sluts in the World”

On a fine August day in 1783, twenty-year-old Marie-Josèphe was sitting with her son and daughter in the drawing room of the summerhouse at Noisy-le-Grand. She was told that a visitor had arrived to see her. Into the room swept Laure de Longpré, returned from Martinique; thirteen years Marie-Josèphe’s senior, she was sophisticated and glamorous—and sleek with pleasure over her triumph. She handed Marie-Josèphe a letter from Alexandre. Nothing could have prepared the young wife for its contents.

Marie-Josèphe read and learned that her husband had been gathering evidence against her, and he was quite sure of her depravity. “In spite of the despair in my soul and the fury which overwhelms me, I will contain myself,” Alexandre wrote. “I will tell you coldly, that you are in my eyes the vilest of creatures and my period in this country has revealed to me your abominable behavior.” The Creole heritage that had been such an attraction was now evidence of a propensity to vice that she had enthusiastically indulged. He told her he knew all about her affairs with other men. “As to repentance, I do not even ask it of you, you are incapable of it,” he wrote. “A woman, on the eve of her departure, who can take a lover into her arms when she knew that she is affianced to another, has no conscience; she is beneath all the sluts in the world.” And he believed that she had continued her dreadful licentiousness in France. What, he wondered, “shall I think of this last child, arriving eight months and a few days after my return from Italy?” He was, he puffed, “forced to accept her, but I swear to all the heavens that she belongs to another; it is a stranger’s blood that courses through her veins!” Alexandre was merciless. “Never, never shall I put myself in danger of being so abused again. Remove yourself to a convent as soon as you receive this letter.” His letter left her no choice. “I will see you once and once only on my return to Paris, to discuss practicalities … but, I repeat, no scenes and no protestations.”[1]

Madame de Longpré glided away, smiling in victory. Marie-Josèphe was sick with shock. Her husband hated her. She was about to lose everything: her marriage, her home, and since men typically took the custody of children, Hortense and Eugène as well. Edmée and the marquis were horrified by the letter. Entirely dependent on Alexandre, since his inheritance paid for the house where they lived, they promised her they would try to intervene. But the letters from his father and stepmother only angered him. When he arrived in France in September, he was incensed to hear that Marie-Josèphe had not yet left their house. Writing from a property owned by Laure, he said that it would be quite impossible for them to live together because he would be forever “tortured by the perpetual images of the wrongs of which you know I am aware.” She had two alternatives: go to a convent or return to the Caribbean. And he was not going to listen to his family: “[T]ell my father and your aunt that their efforts will be useless.”[2] He could not divorce her, but he would exile her and then proceed to live as he pleased. At twenty, Marie-Josèphe’s future looked bleak.

“Come back to your little country,” begged her mother, “our arms are always open to welcome you … and console you for the injustice you have suffered.”[3] But Marie-Josèphe knew that if she left for La Pagerie, she would have to leave her children with Edmée. And she would be nothing on Martinique but a burdensome daughter on a struggling plantation, unable to marry again even if any man were to take an interest in her. At the end of November 1783, she took up residence in the Panthémont Convent in the rue de Grenelle in Saint-Germain. Eugène and Euphémie went with her. Hortense was left behind, as she was too young to be separated from her wet nurse. In nearly four years of marriage, Alexandre had spent a mere ten months with his wife.

Marie-Josèphe, with the assistance of her aunt Edmée, chose a particularly fashionable convent, dedicated to housing women of aristocratic background. Thomas Jefferson sent his two daughters to attend the attached convent school, after assurances that the girls would be exempt from religious instruction. Ladies of great hauteur lived side by side with the nuns, some staying temporarily within the walls because their fathers or husbands were away; others, like Marie-Josèphe, had been abandoned. These lady boarders paid to rent anything from a small chamber to a grand six-room apartment with its own kitchen. And they were able to leave the convent, receive visitors, and generally behave as they pleased.

In December, Marie-Josèphe met the court adjudicator to discuss her marriage. She showed him Alexandre’s enraged letters from Martinique and talked of his unfaithfulness. As she explained, even her father-in-law believed her the wronged party. “It is not possible for the complainant to submit to such indignities,” the adjudicator ruled.[4] The provost of Paris ordered that she remain in the convent while the legal process of separation began and that Alexandre should pay maintenance for his children and various costs. Alexandre did not. Instead, he demanded that the lease on the house in Neuve Saint-Charles be sold, refused to pay her bills, and asked for money from her—including the sum she’d received after selling her jewelry to pay for Hortense’s baptism.

The Panthémont ladies were fashionable aristocrats, more used to the dressmaker and the salon than Bible reading. They amused themselves as they had done in the outside world, with dancing, couture, and debate. Marie-Josèphe, hitherto such a poor student, was finally willing to learn. Understanding that she had nothing but her charms to rely on, she watched the women around her and soon grasped the art of graceful movement and conversational allure. She lost her accent, practiced the art of whispered suggestion, and softened her voice to a husky, slow tone that would become one of her chief attractions. She learned to cover her mouth with her handkerchief when she laughed, to hide teeth ruined by too much sugar as a child. She lost weight and discovered how to enhance her rather clumsy figure with clinging dresses, shawls, and perfect carriage.

Changes in fashion helped. Bored with stiff, heavily embroidered gowns that stuck out so widely from the hips that the wearer had to turn sideways to pass through the door, Marie Antoinette’s dressmaker, Madame Bertin, had encouraged her royal mistress to eschew the hoops and brocade on more formal occasions and assume a simpler look. And as the queen had begun losing her hair after the birth of her eldest son in 1781, a plainer coiffure—popularized by the painter Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun—also became à la mode. The new draped gowns and softly curling natural hairstyles perfectly suited Marie-Josèphe’s face and figure.

The Panthémont women were eager to pass on their secrets. Marie-Josèphe learned to make the best of herself with creams, lotions, whitening potions for the face and hands, and oils for the hair. She probably added dye to brighten the color of her hair and smoothed the fashionable lead-based white paint on her cheeks—which had the lucky effect of disguising how the sun had darkened her skin. Other women traced their veins with blue pencil to suggest the opacity of the skin, but Marie-Josèphe’s skin was a little too dusky for such pretenses. She added shading to her eyes with kohl and elderberries and even applied soot to her eyebrows and long lashes. And she learned the art of rouge.

In Britain and other parts of Europe, red face paint was frowned upon as the tool of courtesans, but no French lady of style saw herself as dressed without her rouge. By 1781, French women were using two million pots of rouge a year. Court ladies wore heavy swathes of it, leading down from the sides of their eyes to their lips, while gentry wives placed small spots of rouge in the middle of the cheek. Unknowingly, Marie-Josèphe was covering herself with toxins, for the best rouge was made from vermilion, ground from cinnabar (mercury sulfide) or from ceruse, which was produced by dousing lead plates in vinegar. Some women actually died from smearing their faces with lead-based potions—the famous London beauty and socialite Maria Gunning passed away at the age of twenty-seven from excessive use of such makeup.

To a twenty-first-century observer, French eighteenth-century women would look strange, for there was comparatively little color on the eyes (apart from maybe a spot of rouge, which cannot have been flattering), while the cheeks flamed with false-looking red. But at the time, rouge was battle paint—it recalled sexual flush and made women look more doll-like. Marie-Josèphe’s annual expenditure on rouge alone would soon amount to well over three thousand francs.[5]

At twenty-one, she was not a great beauty or even “precisely pretty.”[6] She was about five feet—a respectable height for a woman—and slender, with slim hips but a slightly broad back. She had small, attractive feet, thanks to a childhood without shoes (eighteenth-century shoes were stiff and pointed and bad for little feet). The foot was an intensely erotic part of a woman’s body, since it was so infrequently seen after a girl turned fifteen or so and her skirt lengths dropped, thus indicating she was a woman. A dainty ankle was often more likely to drive men wild than a generous bosom. The new style of flowing gown more easily revealed the feet, and Marie-Josèphe made sure to expose hers at every opportunity.

The vicomtesse had become a charming woman, with her beautiful, low voice and the easy, sensual grace she had learned so carefully at the convent. Her chestnut hair fell in beautiful curls, while white paste concealed her tanned complexion and highlighted her delicate features. But her most appealing attributes were her luminous eyes, surrounded by luxuriant lashes. They glowed green or amber in different lights and stopped men in their tracks. Women pondered the nature of Marie-Josèphe’s attraction, but men saw it immediately. She made them think of the boudoir.

IN EARLY 1785, Alexandre seized Eugène from the convent. Marie-Josèphe wrote to the provost of Paris to complain, and the vicomte and vicomtesse were called to appear at the Châtelet. In March, the affair was settled. Marie-Josèphe won. Under the terms of the separation, she would be allowed to live anywhere she chose and use any monies of her dowry. Alexandre was to give her 5,000 livres a year and 1,000 a year for Hortense until the age of seven and 1,500 thereafter. Hortense was to live with her mother until marriage. Eugène would be taken by his father after the age of five, but he would spend summers with Marie-Josèphe. Hotheaded Alexandre also had to eat humble pie. The authorities found no evidence for his accusations of immorality and forced him to sign a document withdrawing his accusations, and to admit that “he was wrong to write the said lady the letters of 12 July and 20 October of which she complains and which he admits were inspired by the passions and anger of youth.”[7] Marie-Josèphe had been declared innocent. Yet it was a straw victory. She was in an impossible position, a woman without real male support, unable to marry again.

She soon joined the marquis and Aunt Edmée at their new home in Fontainebleau. At the time, Fontainebleau was a rather countrified village, around thirty-five miles southeast of Paris. Surrounded by lush forest, it was entirely dominated by the king’s hunting seat of the same name, a huge and ornate palace built by Francis I in the sixteenth century on a site that had hosted the royal hunt since before the twelfth century. The village was transformed during the hunting season as the court arrived and the aristocracy took houses. Marie-Josèphe, her face whitened, her cheeks rouged, resplendent in a flowing gown and soft coiffure, could finally play the part of the Creole who was as sensual as Martinique itself. In just over a year, she had metamorphosed from a gauche schoolgirl into a sophisticated seductress—all she needed now was a man to seduce.

In Fontainebleau, Marie-Josèphe had a small but pleasing social circle of minor aristocrats, and she spent her time at card parties, promenades, and the occasional ball. Eugène turned five and was sent to live with Alexandre; Marie-Josèphe had expected to lose her son and was stoic about it, but Euphémie mourned him. His tutor sent a letter to Euphémie, purported to be from Eugène (although it was hardly childlike language), saying “there was no need for six pages to express to you my eternal gratitude for the care and kindness you have shown toward me.”[8]

Marie-Josèphe’s debt collectors had left her alone for a time after the news of her marriage settlement, but in Fontainebleau they began to return. Alexandre did not pay her allowance. She begged her father for money, but he was barely able to pay any of the six thousand livres a year he had promised her on marriage. “You know me well enough, my dear Papa,” she wrote to him, “to be quite sure that if it were not for an urgent need for money, I would speak of nothing but my fondest sentiments for you.”[9] The marquis de Beauharnais had installed Joseph as overseer of his properties in Martinique, and Joseph was failing miserably at turning them to profit or even keeping them running as they were. The marquis sent letters instructing him and offering suggestions, but the revenue kept falling. And the marquis himself was no longer as rich as he once was, since his pension from the government had been reduced. There was little left for Marie-Josèphe and her daughter.

The king liked to hunt three or four times a week, and nobles from all over the country arrived in Fontainebleau to follow his procession. There were weeks of spectacles, games, and dancing. Marie-Josèphe badly wanted to find her way into the court. She immediately made sure to befriend François Hüe, chief clerk of the royal hunt, and was soon given the rare privilege of following the hunt, one that had not been permitted to her husband. She was not allowed to approach the king, but she could attend his sumptuous feasts and enjoy the games. The vicomtesse was on her way to social success.

The court Marie-Josèphe encountered during her first hunting season of 1786 was troubled. Marie Antoinette was thirty and had recently given birth to her fourth child, Princess Sophie Hélène Béatrice. The baby was fragile and Louis Joseph, the dauphin, was often ill. The queen was openly criticized for spending millions of livres on fripperies, as well as on a palace for her children at Saint-Cloud and on constructing a fantasy version of farm life at Petit Trianon at Versailles, complete with a model village of twelve houses, windmills and dovecotes, and a dairy made of marble with silver pails for the milk. There, she and her ladies could play at being country girls, flouncing in the fresh air, admiring perfectly groomed sheep.

Scabrous cartoons suggested that the Swedish nobleman Count Axel von Fersen—a frequent guest at Versailles—was Sophie’s father.[10] Parisians snapped up cartoons depicting Louis XVI as a fat, stupid cuckold, while his immoral queen manipulated France for Austrian gain. Marie Antoinette was shown surrounded by her sexual favorites, dallying with her lesbian lover, the Princesse de Lamballe, in a vitiated, spendthrift court.

The previous summer, Marie Antoinette had received a letter from a jeweler, Charles Auguste Boehmer, in which he proffered his gratitude and explained that the finest set of diamonds would soon be in her possession. Marie Antoinette asked Madame Campan, her lady of the bedchamber, to interpret the meaning of this letter, but she could not. The queen decided it was irrelevant and discarded it.

Boehmer was referring to an impossibly ornate necklace of nearly 650 diamonds, which he had long been trying to sell for the astronomical sum of a million and a half livres. Cardinal de Rohan, who hoped to win the favor of Marie Antoinette, had advanced some of the money to Boehmer after Marie Antoinette had met him secretly outside the palace one night and told him he would indeed gain her favor if he secured the diamonds for her. And so the necklace was sent. But when Boehmer requested the rest of the money from Marie Antoinette, she said she did not have the necklace and had never asked for it.

The king requested an explanation from Cardinal de Rohan, and he produced a note signed by Marie Antoinette accepting the jewels. It was found that the note had been forged by a con woman who had paid a woman of dubious virtue to imitate the queen at the nighttime rendezvous, and had then intercepted the necklace and kept it for herself. The cardinal was arrested and tried by the Parlements of Paris, which acquitted him on the grounds that he had been duped by the con woman. Marie Antoinette declared her innocence, yet even those who believed her were deeply troubled by the fact that a man could think the queen would stoop so low as to buy a necklace in secret—and meet to discuss it after dark, like a prostitute loitering in the shadows. The presses worked overtime, producing caricatures attacking the woman who was ruining the country with her demand for luxury above all else. She and her vast, bloated palace of Versailles became the scapegoat for France’s economic hardship and the excessive power of Austria and the German states. When Marie-Josèphe encountered the hunt, the Affair of the Diamond Necklace was still a divisive issue among the courtiers.

The French court was hated in Paris, but at Fontainebleau, the courtiers and their hangers-on forgot everything and abandoned themselves to celebration. There was much splendor, carefully observed ritual, and a tradition of courtship and gallantry to ladies. The huge caravan of the court was always eager for young, beautiful women, and the vicomtesse de Beauharnais fit the bill perfectly.

Marie-Josèphe was invited to soirées, balls, concerts, and parties thrown by members of the court. She delighted in the glamorous company, the lavish breakfasts laid out under the trees, and the thundering rush of the horses. Exhilarated from following the hunt and excited by the proximity to royalty, she often came home drenched with rain, glowing with the exercise, and eager to return. It was her first chance for true pleasure since she had arrived in France, but such liberty came at a cost. She needed funds for dresses, jewels, and entertaining, as well as visits to Paris with her new friends. Without a husband or family, there was really only one way for a pretty woman to find money. As one friend wrote, since she was desperate to have the “luxurious enjoyments of her era,” she found that her “attractiveness gave her certain advantages.” She did not care about polite society and indeed “defied public opinion rather overtly.”[11] The vicomtesse was playing a dangerous game.

She began to depend on the kindness of her older gentlemen friends, such as the banker Denis de Rougement, who invited her to stay with him in Paris. She befriended the Chevalier de Coigny, who was twenty years her senior, and the married Comte de Crenay. Men of her own age, she had found, were difficult and demanding. Older gentlemen petted her, appreciated her charms, gave her handsome presents of jewels, and paid her for her time.

IN 1786, MARIE-JOSÈPHE was spending rich men’s money freely, but her newly adopted country was verging on bankruptcy. The government could not borrow any more. The controller general asked the king to call an assembly of notables—144 members of the aristocracy, Church, and government—and inform them that taxes must be raised. The assembly demanded that there be a supervisory commission of finance, and that it must be distinct from the royal government. The king responded by dismissing the assembly. The provincial governments and that of Paris declared that only the Estates-General, not called since 1614, could pass such demands.

In the midst of it all, the aristocracy continued gaily on their thoughtless, spendthrift, even debauched road. Marie-Josèphe was squarely on this path—until, in 1788, she made a snap decision to travel to Martinique. Denis de Rougemont lent her 6,000 livres, she borrowed more money from her aunt and sold some of her possessions, and with the funds she bought passage on the Sultan for herself, Hortense, and Euphémie.

It was not a good time to leave France. Eugène was due to arrive for his summer visit, Edmée was unwell, and they would be traveling to Martinique during hurricane season, through seas thick with hostile British ships. Hortense later declared that her mother was thinking of her own “aging mother, who she hoped to see one last time.”[12] Marie-Josèphe also wanted to secure funds from her estates. But there was more driving her voyage than money and familial feelings. She had been the mistress of various men and was most likely fleeing because the scandal had become heated and she thought it best to absent herself for a while. If Alexandre heard any unfortunate intimations, he might spread gossip against her or even try to take Hortense away. After a year of living on the periphery of the ruinously expensive French court, Marie-Josèphe was in debt and in trouble, and she needed to escape.

The Sultan arrived in Martinique on August 11, 1788. Marie-Josèphe was delighted to see her family and the slaves waiting for her at La Pagerie, and initially she remained quietly at the plantation. Little Hortense took easily to the role of grande dame. One day she found some copper coins to distribute among the slaves, and was chastised by her grandmother for playing at being superior when she was only a child. After a few months, Marie-Josèphe began to spend more time at the balls and receptions of Fort Royal, riding high on the cachet gained from Fontainebleau. She wrote to Aunt Edmée, asking her to send a dozen fans and a muslin ball gown.

But on Martinique, as in Paris, social unrest was growing. The slaves saw newspapers, listened to the talk of the freed slaves, and overheard the huddled conversations of their masters; they learned that America was in the process of abolishing slavery, and that across Europe there were fierce debates about emancipation. Soon anti-slavery literature was circulating throughout the Caribbean. The freed Martinique blacks were forming committees and demanding parity with the whites.

On August 31, 1790, a slave rebellion began in Saint-Pierre and turned into a full-fledged revolt when underprivileged whites and dispossessed soldiers joined the ranks of the protest. The turbulence spread and soon Fort Royal was in an uproar. Marie-Josèphe’s family was very afraid. Her uncle was seized, and the slaves took over the fort. She decided that she and Hortense should leave at once. Along with Euphémie, they hurried to the port and embarked on La Sensible. As they ran, a cannonball landed a few feet from them.

Marie-Josèphe set off on her long journey back across the Atlantic, forced to wear makeshift clothes sewn from material in the ship’s store. The slaves were defeated not long after she left. The ringleaders were beaten to death in public, and their heads were propped on posts around the island. Nevertheless, the seeds of change had been sown. Martinique would never be the same.

CHAPTER 4

Revolution

While Marie-Josèphe danced at Fort Royal balls, Versailles had been struck with gloom. “Death of my son at one in the morning,” Louis XVI wrote in his diary on June 4, 1789. The seven-year-old dauphin died of a form of tuberculosis, emaciated and covered in sores. His younger sister, the king’s fourth and youngest child, had died at eleven months in 1787. By the end of the year, the king was a man besieged. The winter of 1789 had been the most severe in living memory. Marie-Josèphe’s friends skated on frozen ponds and enjoyed hot drinks in front of their fires while the poor suffered, scrabbling for firewood and eating scraps of stale bread in desperation. Over twenty thousand beggars wandered in search of food in the area around Versailles. The government gave twelve thousand of them work laboring on the hill at Montmartre, for the tiny sum of twenty sous a day.

On May 4, 1789, the first meeting of the Estates-General had been held: It was composed of the Church, the nobility, and the third estate—lawyers, merchants, and professional men. Alexandre de Beauharnais became the representative for Blois, his ancestral town. When the Estates-General was reconstituted into the National Assembly on June 17, he became a key player, allying himself with the group of liberal nobles petitioning for reform. Aggrieved at his previous exclusion from court, he threw himself into his role. Finally, he felt, somebody was listening to him.

On July 11, the king dismissed Jacques Necker, court financial adviser and father of the great saloniste and intellectual Germaine de Staël. When the news reached the streets, the theaters closed and armed men marched through the city, chanting Necker’s name in protest against his discharge. The anger did not calm, and crowds began to fill the streets. Fights broke out, buildings were attacked, and the king’s name was insulted and mocked across Paris. On July 14, the king wrote “rien” in his hunting journal, meaning he had failed to catch any prey that day. In Paris, an armed crowd of more than a hundred thousand attacked the Bastille, freeing the prisoners and killing the governor. The Duc de Liancourt came to Versailles to report the news to the king while he was in bed. “Is it a revolt?” asked the king. “No, Sire,” replied the duc. “It is a revolution.” Alexandre and his fellow deputies were delighted by the fall of the Bastille, for it meant that revolution was truly coming. The next day, some of the most hated courtiers—such as the queen’s confidante, the Duchesse de Polignac—agreed to flee for the country, but the king and queen refused to leave. Against a summer of bread riots and bloody demonstrations, the king and his courtiers continued to hunt and feast on champagne breakfasts.

On Monday, October 5, the king was hunting in the woods near Versailles. He had shot more than eighty animals when he was told that a large group of workingwomen had left Paris that morning to demand grain and flour from their sovereign—as well as concessions to democracy. The king ordered his granaries to be opened, but the crowd would not be pacified. As night fell, they were demanding the bodies of the sovereigns. At four o’clock in the morning, the palace apartments were invaded. By midday the king and queen were being taken to the capital, surrounded by the chanting mob, the heads of their guards planted on sticks and waved around them. At the palace, the only sound to be heard was the closing of doors and shutters. Locked up and deserted, the ghost court at Versailles stood in its ornamental gardens and wooded parks, a hated relic of a monarchy that was breathing its last.

“Kings who become prisoners are not far from death,” the queen told Madame Campan.[1] At the dilapidated Tuileries Palace in Paris, the king paced the rooms, and the queen tried to give her children the impression of normality. They decorated their apartments with furniture and ornaments from Versailles, and drapes were strewn over the damp patches on the walls and the rotting wood of the door frames. In Versailles, the royals had been as distant from the populace as ornaments in a museum. At the Tuileries, dirty, toothless faces pressed up against the windows, and their carriage was pelted with mud whenever they drove out.

Alexandre and his fellow deputies proposed that the king cede military command to the National Assembly, and drafted other changes that attempted to install equality into French life, including the abolition of a hereditary monarchy. The National Assembly confiscated the Church lands, which constituted nearly ten percent of France. Plum positions in the Church, government, and military were opened up to the population rather than being reserved for the aristocracy. Alexandre was made one of the secretaries of the assembly. The venal, womanizing soldier and minor aristocrat considered too insignificant to follow the hunt was now a man of leadership, one of the rulers of revolutionary France.

On October 29, 1790, Marie-Josèphe, Euphémie, and Hortense disembarked from La Sensible at Toulon after a difficult crossing and found that France had changed entirely. Every village and town was festooned with banners and garlands, and the trees in the squares wore red caps of liberty. Even the language was different: People were increasingly calling each other tu instead of vous, though by 1792 the accepted form of address was citoyen and citoyenne.

The walls and houses of Paris were covered in the same red caps, ribbons, and slogans. At Fontainebleau, the hunting shelters and fine horses stood untouched. The workshops of the perfumiers were quiet, the Sèvres factory made porcelain that nobody bought, and embroiderers, saddle makers, and hairdressers sat glumly unemployed, while lemonade makers and pâtissiers scrabbled for the few aristocratic customers who still dared spend.

Marie-Josèphe took up lodgings at 953 rue Saint-Dominique, just off the fashionable Boulevard Saint-Germain. She lived with Désirée Hosten, a fellow Creole with a thirteen-year-old daughter who loved to play with Hortense. Euphémie was also with them, as well as Hortense’s faithful governess Marie de Lannoy, and Marie-Josèphe’s new dog, Fortuné, an ill-tempered, cross-faced, but loyal pug.

Madame Hosten was truly a woman of revolutionary sympathies. Marie-Josèphe learned from her the new way to survive: how to dress, behave, and speak like a person from the working classes (or an aristocratic notion of such a person). Marie-Josèphe—who hated strict regimes of dress and etiquette and had never been able to speak in a properly affected manner—was in her element. In a reaction against Versailles, the women of the 1790s were no longer beribboned ornaments wearing corsets so pointed that they could not sit down in a carriage. They stuffed their jewelry under their beds and gave the hoops from their dresses to their children as toys. The decorative woman hiding behind a lacy fan was a hated symbol of the parasitic aristocratic hierarchy. Finally, Marie-Josèphe could cut up the flouncy, boned gowns she loathed.

The young citoyenne Beauharnais now wore simple gowns striped in red and blue, plain bonnets, and jewelry made of iron and steel. Her hair curled unpowdered around her face—the new orthodoxy was that flour should be feeding the poor, not adorning the coiffures of the upper classes.[2] She still kept a little rouge on her cheeks, but the simple style was much more suited to her careless elegance. She was in fashion and—in certain lights—beautiful. She was the ideal revolutionary woman: plainly dressed, practical, and very informal. Except she lacked the zeal for the dismantling of royal and aristocratic privilege. She thought the treatment of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette was more horrifying than gratifying. But she kept her views quiet, and everyone believed her a friend of the Revolution. All she had to do was appear hopeful for the future.

Not long after she arrived home, Marie-Josèphe received the news that her father had died at fifty-five. She had been to visit her home just in time. He died with terrible debts, so there would be no money for her, although her family was able to stay on the plantation.

A new Parisian salon society sprang up to replace the court. The city was alive with cabals, discussions, and meetings, and as the wife of Alexandre, she had a new cachet and could enter any salon she desired. It was a time when anything seemed possible and the people imagined a new country, free of aristocratic privilege and royal oppression, emerging phoenix-like from the ashes of the Revolution. “The nation was seized with hopes for boundless happiness,” wrote Madame de Staël, and “one has never seen both so much life and so much intellect.”[3] Her salon was vital in directing government policy; there Marie-Josèphe encountered men who were shaping her country and who would also transform her life, including the ruthless former priest Abbé Sieyès and the limping bishop-turned-republican Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, who had tried to seduce Madame de Staël to further his ambitions. The thirty-six-year-old aristocrat was the most skilled and devious politician Marie-Josèphe would ever meet.

Newly dressed in her plain striped gowns, Marie-Josèphe was all the more popular for never having been presented at court. She was congratulated, admired, invited to balls, operas, country picnics, and receptions; in short, she was in demand, and to keep up her new status, she spent money as if there were no tomorrow.

But underneath all the sparkling conversation, the cheering, and the caps of liberty, the truth was that France was bankrupt. Unrest continued to surge; the crowds were prowling and angry, unwilling to wait much longer for the bread they had been promised.

AT TEN-THIRTY P.M. on Monday, June 20, the two surviving children of the king and queen were carried out of the Tuileries, half asleep and disguised in heavy woolen dresses, and bundled into a coach with their governess. The young princess asked her brother what he thought they were doing. “I suppose to act a play,” he replied, “since we have got these odd costumes.”[4] The king and queen, the king’s sister Elisabeth, and their escorts joined them, all disguised as servants in shawls and pulled-down hats. Louis’s crown and robes were stuffed into the baggage under the seats. The king had finally agreed to flee Paris and head to the border, where royalist troops and foreign armies would protect him and allow him to demand concessions.

The plan was that the royals would pretend to be the servants of a noblewoman, the Baroness de Korff, played by the children’s governess. The king would act the part of a valet. At the city walls, the party transferred to a large custom-made coach guarded by three men in bright yellow livery.

At eleven on the following night, the ill-disguised set of servants arrived at the small town of Varennes-en-Argonne, where they searched desperately for fresh horses. The huge coach and the yellow-clad guards made them conspicuous. They were recognized and captured only twenty-five miles from the fortified royalist town of Montmédy, where they had hoped to be safe.

When the news came through of the royal flight, Alexandre was on his second day as president of the assembly. He dispatched riders to retrieve the royal party and announced that the assembly should sit continuously until the runaways were caught.

ON JUNE 25, the royal family were dragged back through Paris in front of crowds of spectators. Madame Campan attended the queen on her return to the Tuileries and found that her hair had turned entirely white.

Alexandre de Beauharnais was the hero of the hour. The flight of the king was a turning point. The moderates who had espoused the idea of a constitutional monarchy—or a king with limited powers rather than an elected form of governance—felt terribly betrayed. Those on the left were confirmed in their notion that the king and queen were dangerous traitors who had intended to reach Austria and then wage war on France. The members of the powerful pro-Revolution Jacobin club—who hoped for equality, along with their working-class supporters, the sans-culottes—were infuriated. Marie Antoinette was cast as a corrupt plotter, a woman who would betray the country without compunction.

In September 1791 the constitution, so long in formation, was signed by the king. Louis had only the right of veto, and the country would be governed by a legislative assembly, elected by those deemed proper citizens—which meant about three quarters of the adult male population of France. “There is nothing to be done with this assembly, it is a gathering of scoundrels, madmen, and fools,” wrote Marie Antoinette.[5] But she had to give the impression of contentment with the new order. “The Revolution is ended!” the people cried. Fireworks and bonfires lit up the sky. A hot-air balloon floated over the Champ de Mars, billowing ribbons of red, white, and blue. The Champs-Élysées was strewn with illuminations from the Tuileries, and everybody was encouraged to celebrate.

The crowds might have cheered the fireworks, but they were still angry. The salon aristocrats of Marie-Josèphe’s circle lived in a gilded bubble. The twenty theaters of Paris were full every night and the balls and receptions continued. They all genuinely believed that once the king’s power and spending were reduced, the people’s fury would be assuaged and life would return to normal. They expected to retain their privileges and see a large chunk of the money and luxury that once were the preserve of Versailles.

On June 20, 1792, the anniversary of the flight to Varennes, the guards let a mob into the Tuileries gardens. They stormed into the king’s apartments with pikes and hatchets and threw a red cap on his head. For two hours, they danced and sang and forced him to drink the health of the country, while the queen clutched her children in terror. By the evening, order was restored, though all the doors had been broken, the furniture smashed, and the drapes torn down. The king and queen were like animals in a zoo, on display with no means of escape.

Later in the summer of 1792, the jubilation had dispelled, and the borrowed money had run out. With the king and queen imprisoned, the people needed someone to blame for their poverty. They turned their attention to the aristocrats. The parading crowds shouted, “We will hang all the aristocrats.” Members of the Versailles court were arrested and imprisoned. Alexandre left Paris to serve in the army at Blois. Marie-Josèphe and her friends became very afraid and redoubled their efforts to appear ordinary and citizen-like.

The government hoped that the imprisonment of the royal family might pacify the people. On August 9, the National Guard was sent to the Tuileries to take the king and his family to prison. They butchered the courtiers and five hundred Swiss Guards, along with hundreds from their own side who were mistaken for their enemies in the confusion. The gravel was left stained with blood and strewn with limbs. “What a lot of leaves!” was the king’s only comment as he left. The royal family was taken to the Tower of the Temple near the Bastille. “We shall never return,” said the Princesse de Lamballe, the fluffy blonde so hated by the populace.

Still the people were not mollified. Within a month, angry Jacobin and sans-culottes mobs had set upon the prisons and killed many of the remaining courtiers, as well as hundreds of ordinary farmers, maids, shopkeepers, and children in what became known as the “September Massacres.” Marie-Josèphe hid with her children in their house, thankful that she had never attended court. She was near enough to the prisons to hear the screams as sixteen hundred men, women, and children were tried by ad hoc tribunals and either released or hacked to death. Crowds came to stare at the shiny new piece of killing equipment set up in front of the city hall. An afternoon with “Madame la Guillotine” became a popular entertainment as people gathered to watch, clutching “programmes” of those to be killed.

They were hungry for blood. The queen’s darling, the Princesse de Lamballe, was put in front of a hastily assembled trial. When she refused to proclaim her hatred of the royal family, she was thrown to the crowds, raped, and killed. Her breasts were sliced off and the jubilant mob propped her head on a pike, her innards on another, and paraded her through Paris. They even took her head to a hairdresser to have her trademark golden locks arranged. They then ushered it to the Tower so the queen could give her lips one last kiss. However, the horrific sight of the princesse’s head on a pike popping up at the windows was too much for even the hardened guards, and they hurried to close the shutters so the queen would not see. The mob paraded the head around throughout the afternoon and later abandoned it, after which it was retrieved by a kindly citizen who asked to give the last remains of the princesse a proper burial.

No one was safe. The prince of Salm, a friend of both Marie-Josèphe and Alexandre, offered to take Eugène and Hortense to his country estate and then away from France. The children were told they were taking a brief summer holiday. Eugène, who was used to separation, was excited by travel, but nine-year-old Hortense missed her mother intensely. “I am touched by your regrets at being away from your mother; but my dear it is not for long,” Marie-Josèphe wrote. “I hope that the Princess [of Salm] will return in spring, or I will come and collect you.”[6]

The rest of Europe gazed on France in horror. Catherine II of Russia was encouraging active intervention, and Austria, Spain, Prussia, Saxony, and Sweden were in favor. On April 20, France had declared war on Austria. Alexandre, serving with the army in Strasbourg, was furious when he heard that his children had been sent away, for he felt it was their duty to remain in Paris. He demanded the prince of Salm return them. Alexandre then sent Eugène to school in Strasbourg and told Marie-Josèphe she could keep Hortense at home.

On December 26, 1792, the trial of Louis XVI began. On January 15, 1793, he was found guilty of collaboration with counterrevolutionary forces. At two P.M. on Sunday, January 20, thirty-eight-year-old Louis was told that he would die the next day. He begged for three days in order to prepare his soul, but was refused. Marie Antoinette asked that she and the children spend the night with him, but Louis told them he needed peace to ready himself. The children were so hysterical that he could persuade them to leave him only by saying he would see them in the morning. On the morning itself, he crept away silently because he could not bear to say goodbye.

At around the same time Louis was informed of his fate, a guillotine was set up in the Place de la Révolution (formerly Place Louis XV and now the Place de la Concorde). During the night, flakes of snow fell on the blade. By the morning, there was a great crowd around it, rubbing their ice-cold fingers and buying hot rolls from the sellers who wove through the throng. At ten-fifteen, the king arrived wearing gray breeches, a pink waistcoat, and a brown silk coat, elaborately neat, his hair as perfectly coiffed as if he were in Versailles. Refusing to allow the executioner to tie his hands, he climbed onto the platform, took off his coat and waistcoat, and began to speak: “My people, I die an innocent man,” he said, but his voice was swamped by the noise of the drums. He was compelled to kneel, the blade was brought down, and his head tumbled into the basket. Spectators dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood to keep as souvenirs.

Marie Antoinette waited in her cell, hoping she might see him one last time, until she heard the crowds below shout out that he was dead. One of the guards brought her a gift from him—his wedding ring engraved with “M.A.A.A., 19 Aprilis 1770,” from the days when she had been Marie Antoinette, Archduchess of Austria.

“A GREAT NATION had that day soiled its history with a crime for which the future would hold it guilty,” said Madame de Staël.[7]

Starving dogs stalked the city. Left to their own devices after the death or flight of their masters, they drank the blood in the gutters and threatened anyone who dared venture out. Soldiers were sent to kill them, and the people of Paris covered their ears at the sound of scattered shots. Three thousand canine carcasses lay around the streets until the authorities came to collect them—using the confiscated carriages of the aristocracy and piling them high with dead dogs.

At the beginning of March, the first pro-monarchy uprising took place in the Vendée area. The Committee of Public Safety was instituted as the government, and in July, Maximilien de Robespierre was elected to its ranks. With his installation, France careered toward disaster.

The National Convention had proposed that slaves be freed in the French dominions. A settler representative at the assembly declared that he and his fellow white islanders would “rather die than assent to this infamy!” He was uncompromising in his threats. “If France sends troops for the execution of this decree, it is likely that we will decide to abandon France.”[8] In 1793, the plantation owners of Martinique made a preemptive strike. Rather than submit to a France abolishing slavery, they gave up their island to Britain. Marie-Josèphe’s birthplace was now British. The change hit her finances hard. With the British fleet blocking the island traffic, there was no chance of receiving money from her family or the estates belonging to Alexandre. The kindness of men sufficed again; she borrowed from friends and admirers and engaged in black-market trading with a network selling Parisian goods to Belgium.

Matters went little better for Alexandre. In 1793, he was appointed commander in chief of the army, but his election coincided with terrible failures. On July 23, the Austrians recaptured Mainz, and the French general was forced to retreat, leaving behind twenty thousand troops to be killed. Alexandre offered his resignation, and it was promptly accepted on the basis that he had “neither the strength nor the moral energy necessary in a General of the Republican army.”[9] The previous day, the convention had decreed that no one of aristocratic birth could hold office.

The failures of the Austrian campaign reminded everyone of their former queen, still locked up in the Temple. On August 1, wearing a plain black gown, her belongings reduced to little more than a handkerchief and some smelling salts, Marie Antoinette was taken to a cell in the public prison of the Conciergerie. There the jailers showed off Prisoner 280 to the eager public for money. She held her head high, accepted favors from still-loyal shopkeepers, and hoped that her relations would come to rescue her. But the Committee of Public Safety believed the only way to bind the working classes to the Republic was to execute the queen.

On Monday, October 14, 1793, she was brought in front of the revolutionary tribunal. Gaunt, white-haired, and dressed in her threadbare black gown, thirty-eight-year-old Marie Antoinette was put on trial for treason—accused of giving money to her brother, the emperor of Austria, of engaging in orgies and other terrible acts. She denied everything. “If I have not replied, it is because Nature itself refuses to respond to such a charge laid against a mother,” she said when accused of incest with her son. Composed and dignified, she felt sure she would be exiled as a punishment. At nearly four in the morning, she was handed her verdict and forced to read it aloud. She was found guilty on every charge.

At seven A.M. on the sixteenth, her faithful maid came to her cell and tried to give the doomed queen some food. Marie Antoinette donned a plain white gown while the warders watched. Her hair was hacked off and her hands were bound, despite her protests that her husband had not suffered a similar humiliation. As she passed the Tuileries, her eyes filled with tears. At twelve-fifteen, the crowd jeered as her head fell into the basket. When her body arrived at the mass graveyard where her husband was buried, it received no special treatment. The gravediggers were having their lunch break, so the head and body of the queen were left lying on the damp grass.

The city had become a terrible, ghoulish place, as ravaged and sick as if it had been hit by the Black Death. People denounced employees, neighbors, friends, and lovers and were constantly afraid of being accused of treason, plotting, or antirepublican feeling. Almost the entire company of the Comédie Française was imprisoned for suspicious behavior. Mothers were dragged to the guillotine from childbed, while men and women were so eager to save their skins that they cheered the deaths of their loved ones.

The days of gay salons were over. Women dressed drably, all the better not to be noticed. Notre-Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason, the churches were destroyed, their statues of saints smashed into pieces, bronzes stolen and melted down. A new republican calendar was instituted at the end of 1792, which had a rest day every ten rather than every seven days. Robespierre declared there would be a new religion: the cult of the Supreme Being. Streets called after saints would be renamed—after vegetables, agricultural implements, or patriots of the past. The convention voted in the “Law of Suspects,” ordering the arrest of all those who had by remarks—or even connections—shown themselves “the partisans of tyranny.” Anyone who had traveled in aristocratic circles was at risk of arrest. Marie-Josèphe quickly left the rue Saint-Dominique for Croissy, a quiet town near Paris, where she hoped to keep a low profile. She and Madame Hosten took the Maison Rossignol, an elegant house decorated in Louis XIV style, formerly the home of Madame Campan, who still lived nearby. Marie-Josèphe declared herself a citoyenne of the Republic and arranged for Eugène to train as an apprentice with a local carpenter and for Hortense to practice dressmaking.

Life at Croissy was calm and as safe as anywhere could be in the circumstances. When Marie-Josèphe gazed out her window, she could see a pretty château concealed by tall trees and parks. It was owned by local aristocrats, the Molays, and called Malmaison. She became close friends with Madame Campan, the former first lady of the bedchamber. She also met Jean-Lambert Tallien, the twenty-five-year-old radical deputy in the Committee of Public Safety, vulpine, clever, and always ready to change sides. Otherwise, Marie-Josèphe lived quietly.

But Marie-Josèphe was too confident. The committee’s attentions had turned to the Beauharnais family, and it ordered the arrest of Alexandre’s intensely royalist elder brother, François. Marie-Josèphe wrote begging for clemency for François’s estranged wife, Marie—and, by extension, for herself and Alexandre. As she knew, once one family member was taken, the rest would usually follow. She proposed her revolutionary credentials. “If he [Alexandre] was not a republican, he would have neither my esteem nor my affection. I am an American and I know only him of his family … my household is a republican household; before the Revolution, my children could not be distinguished from sans-culottes and I hope they will be worthy of the Republic.”[10]

Marie-Josèphe’s description of herself as an American rather than a slave-owning Creole was almost ludicrous. “I write to you frankly as a genuine sans culotte,” she wrote from her fine villa, her jewels stowed in boxes upstairs. Eugène and Hortense might have been plainly dressed, but they, like their mother, were a long way from sans-culottes—the often ragged people of the revolutionary mob. She received no reply to her letter. By March 1794, Alexandre had been arrested on suspicions of intending to undermine the state. He was taken to prison at the Luxembourg, then Les Carmes. Jacques-Louis David, painter and archrevolutionary, signed the warrant for his arrest. “Every day I was brought hundreds of them to sign and in the heat of the moment, I did not even read everything I signed,” he later said.

Marie-Josèphe busied herself writing to various people trying to free her husband. By doing so, she secured her own fate. The Committee of Public Safety received a letter denouncing Marie-Josèphe and Madame Hosten for running a “gathering place for suspected persons.” The writer told the committee: “Beware of the former Vicomtesse de Beauharnais, who has secret dealings and connections with government offices.”[11] On Easter Sunday 1794, late at night, citoyens Lacombe and George arrived to search the home of Marie-Josèphe and Madame Hosten. The men conducted their mission with care. “After the most scrupulous search,” they reported, “we have found nothing contrary to the interests of the Republic; on the contrary, a multitude of patriotic letters which can only commend the citoyenne.”[12] But their fair treatment was immaterial. The next day the women were arrested. Marie-Josèphe could not bring herself to wake her children. “I could not bear to see them cry,” she told their governess, Mademoiselle de Lannoy.[13] She and Madame Hosten were taken to Les Carmes, the most infamous prison in Paris. Alexandre was already there, desperate and ill. At thirty, Marie-Josèphe was doomed. No one expected to get out of Les Carmes alive.

Once an orderly convent, Les Carmes had quickly become dirty and infested with rats and lice. The walls were still spattered with blood from the September Massacres. Three hundred inmates waited there to die. Marie-Josèphe shared a cell on the first floor with several other women, including the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, and hundreds of mice. The windows overlooked the garden, but they were barred, and the prisoners saw little daylight. The fetid mess from the latrine buckets overflowed in the corridors, and the place reeked of human misery. Many prisoners had given up hope and sat barely dressed, hardly able to wash themselves or care about their surroundings. Outside, as they knew, the streets around the guillotine ran red with blood. Marie-Josèphe longed for her children. She wrote to Hortense, “I embrace you both from the bottom of my heart.”[14]

The prisoners were suffering, but at least there was food. At mealtimes in the refectory—first the men and then the women—each prisoner was given a half bottle of wine and as much stale bread as they could manage. In the afternoon husbands and wives, mothers and sons could snatch a few hours together as the prisoners were sent out into the courtyard for fresh air. Marie-Josèphe had many friends there, including the prince of Salm, who had been captured after he came to the city to return Hortense and Eugène.

In the afternoons, the prisoners would chat, walk, and play cards in the recreation area. The Revolutionary Tribunal usually came to collect those chosen to be guillotined in the morning, although the carts sometimes came back for others in the afternoon. The prisoners were brave: It was convention that they should simply wave goodbye to their companions with a sanguine air. After all, every man and woman who watched a victim being taken away knew that he or she might be taken tomorrow. The end of the recreation period was a momentary relief, since the tribunal tended not to come at night.

The day after she arrived, Marie-Josèphe saw her husband in the recreation area. He had become rapturously devoted to one of Marie-Josèphe’s cellmates, Delphine de Custine, the blond widow of a general, whom he called the “queen of roses.” But still he was devastated—if not surprised—to see his wife in prison, and concerned that his children had been left unprotected.

Like many of the women, Marie-Josèphe cut her hair short while in prison to avoid having the executioner cut her hair right before death. Short hair was also more practical in the lice-ridden cells where there was little chance to wash. Within a week of arriving at the prison, Marie-Josèphe’s health and spirits were low. She was deeply distressed every time she saw an acquaintance hauled off by the tribunal. Her only succor was the comfort of her friends. As the weeks wore on, some prisoners sat huddled alone, afraid of conversing in case they were accused and guillotined for conspiracy. Marie-Josèphe always tried to keep talking. It stopped at least some of the pain. The beautiful and daring Grace Elliott, former mistress of the Duc d’Orléans, decided Marie-Josèphe was “one of the most accomplished and one of the most amiable women I have ever met.”[15] She thought Marie-Josèphe had been on the side of the revolutionaries and had now changed her mind—which was probably what most people believed of the estranged wife of Alexandre.

Marie-Josèphe also befriended the glamorous twenty-year-old Thérésa Cabarrus, the mistress of Jean-Lambert Tallien. Thérésa and Jean-Lambert had met when he was sent to extend the Terror into Bordeaux. She returned to Paris with him and was promptly imprisoned. Thérésa, in contrast to the other unhappy prisoners, was determined to free herself and see the honor of France restored.

In Les Carmes, the moral strictures of the outside world were forgotten. With no idea how much longer they would live, people seized love where they could. It was easy enough to bribe one’s way out of a cell, steal through the darkness, and creep onto the pallet of another. Everybody wanted to forget their suffering, but the women had another motive: If a female prisoner fell pregnant, her name was removed from the list of those to be guillotined, and she would be allowed out of prison briefly to give birth.

Marie-Josèphe fell in love with the handsome young General Lazare Hoche, somewhat her junior at twenty-seven, charismatic and commanding, with a curly mop of black hair. Imprisoned after his enemies in the army denounced him, he was a good catch. As a valued prisoner, he had his own cell, where he ate excellent food and drank fine wines. He had married a pretty sixteen-year-old, Adelaide Dechaux, just over a week before he was imprisoned. Though he was in love with her, he could not resist the febrile atmosphere of the prison. Marie-Josèphe soon seduced him into an intense affair. She was able to spend all her free time with Hoche and deploy her many weapons: her alluring way of speaking, her soft hands, her flirtatious conversation. Night after night, she crept to his cell. But after twenty-six days, he was transferred to the Conciergerie for interview and trial.

With Hoche seemingly on the way to the guillotine, Marie-Josèphe felt hopeless. Certain she would never escape, she constantly craved her children. They had hit upon the clever idea of sending messages via their mother’s cross but intelligent pug, Fortuné. He dashed under the prison gate, negotiated the rats, and found his mistress, who took the messages from under his collar. The letters, as Marie-Josèphe said, “did me much good.”[16] The siblings had even sent a heartrending letter to the tribunal, begging for the release of their parents, but it was merely placed in a file and forgotten.

One day a woman bearing a note from Marie-Josèphe came to Mademoiselle de Lannoy, asking that the children be given to her for a few hours. She then hurried them to the prison and they stood in a courtyard. A window opened, and they saw their mother and father. Hortense cried out in happiness, which alerted a sentry, and the woman rushed the children away.

On June 22, a new law was passed, denying any of the accused either a defense or the right to cross-examination. There would be no need for solid evidence. With this, the worst stage of the Terror was unleashed. Men and women, rich and poor, were tried in groups of fifty and speedily dispatched.

On July 21, Alexandre was called to the Conciergerie for his trial. As he told his wife, a group of prisoners had been interrogated and had named him as a traitor. “I am the victim of several villainous calumnies brought against me by several aristocrats, so-called patriots.” He felt keenly the injustice of being judged a “bad citizen.” Before leaving the prison, he sent Marie-Josèphe a lock of his hair to keep for the children and wrote her a touching letter, aware as he scratched out every word that his own death made hers inevitable.

I have no hope of seeing you again, my friend, nor of embracing my dear children. I shall not tell you of my regrets: my tender affection for them and the brotherly attachment that binds me to you can leave you in no doubt as to the feelings with which I take leave of life … Farewell, my friend, comfort yourself with my children, console them by enlightening them, and above all teaching them that it is on account of virtue and civic duty that they must efface the memory of my execution and recall my services to the nation and my claims to its gratitude. Farewell, you know those whom I love, be their comforter and by your care make me live longer in their breasts. Farewell, for the last time in my life, I press you and my dear children to my breast.[17]

Alexandre appeared in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal on July 23, with forty-eight others. All but two were declared guilty. The next day, he was taken to the guillotine, along with the prince of Salm. Alexandre’s head rolled into the basket as the crowds around the Place de la Nation cheered. Marie-Josèphe was a widow.

She collapsed when she heard the news and retired to her cell. Marie-Josèphe knew she would be next. “My children, your father died on the scaffold and your mother will die there too,” she wrote. She recalled life on Martinique and then launched into praise of Alexandre, who, “having made me the happiest wife, was to make me the most glorious and unfortunate mother. Oh my dear Alexandre! How brief and beautiful those moments we were together and how the days which drag on since death destroyed them seem heavy and long.”[18]

Her time was running out.

SIX DAYS AFTER Alexandre’s execution, the guard came in for Marie-Josèphe’s trestle bed. One of her cell mates, the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, demanded to know if she would receive a better bed. “No, no, she will not need one,” he replied with a terrible smile, “because they are going to come to take her to the Conciergerie, and from there to the guillotine.”[19]

The women burst into tears. Marie-Josèphe calmly, as the duchesse recalled, “told them that their pain was entirely irrational, that not only would I not die, but that I would be Queen of France.” The duchesse thought she had gone mad but humored her by asking if she had appointed her household. “ ‘Ah! It is true, I was not thinking about that. Well my dear, I shall appoint you lady of honor, I promise you.’ ” The women wept even harder.

That afternoon, when Marie-Josèphe took the duchesse to the window to console her, they saw a peasant woman making gestures at them, clearly desperate for them to understand. Marie-Josèphe gazed at her without comprehension as the woman repeatedly picked up her skirts. “I called out to her: Robe! She made a sign to show that I was right; then she picked up a stone and put it in her skirts, which she showed us again, lifting up the stone with the other hand: Pierre! I called out to her again.” At this the woman made a movement as if cutting her throat and then began to dance.[20] Marie-Josèphe stared: Robe? Pierre. Then she understood. Robespierre was dead. “You see,” she said to her cellmates, “I will be the Queen of France.” She was given back her bed and spent “the best night in the world.”[21]

ON JULY 26, Thérésa Cabarrus had sent Jean-Lambert Tallien a dagger and a letter condemning him for failing to rescue her. “I die in despair at having belonged to a coward like you,” she wrote. Whether due to the letter or to the fear that he would soon follow his mistress to prison, Tallien decided on action. The next day, Robespierre was in midflow, addressing the convention, when Tallien leaped up, waving the dagger and crying, “Down with the dictator!” It was a signal to his fellow plotters Paul de Barras and Louis Fréron to rise up behind him.

The deputies turned on Robespierre, and he fled to the Hôtel de Ville. Barras stormed the building and Robespierre was dragged away. He tried to shoot himself but succeeded only in shattering his jaw. He was left bleeding on a table in the Committee of Public Safety, then moved to the same cell that Marie Antoinette had occupied. Hundreds of Parisians followed his cart to the guillotine. Robespierre, always immaculately dressed, stood in front of a furious crowd, his jaw held together with bandages, his blue coat spattered in blood. The people cheered as he was executed.

The Jacobins were now the new enemies. Barras, Tallien, and Fréron were the heroes. Tallien became the president of the convention. The Terror was over. Through the incredible revolving door of eighteenth-century France, a new political system was in charge: Thermidor. Founded on the hope of equality, it has left little to history, conserved only as the name of a lobster recipe.

In Les Carmes a few days later, Marie-Josèphe was told that she would walk free. She was among the first to be chosen, thanks to the personal intercession of Tallien. When she received the news, she fainted. She had lost her husband and many of her friends. She had been in prison for three and a half months, and her health was ruined.

Fortunately, she was not entirely alone. General Hoche had also managed to escape the guillotine, and he wished to resume their affair.

CHAPTER 5

“The Height of Good Manners to Be Ruined”

On August 6, 1794, with little more than the dress she stood up in, Marie-Josèphe emerged into a France that once again had changed forever. With Robespierre dead, people streamed into the streets, no longer afraid to speak to one another. They saw a city in ruins. Paris was derelict and neglected, rubbish piled high and weeds growing through the cracks in the roads. Animals ran wild and beggars huddled in corners. The grand houses had been entirely despoiled: The furniture and mirrors from the interiors, and even the lead from the roofs and glass from the windows, had been snatched and sold. Bands of robbers and pickpockets scoured the streets, and murder was par for the course.

Marie-Josèphe took an apartment on the rue de l’Université for herself and her children, sharing with another female friend, Madame de Krény (Madame Hosten was still in prison). She began borrowing to survive. All her possessions at the rue Saint-Dominique were sealed away and unavailable to her, seized as the property of the state. She needed gowns, jewelry, crockery, and supplies. The marquis and Edmée had survived the Terror but they had little to give her. She threw herself into the arms of General Hoche, who whiled away his time with her, giving her presents and money when he left.

Marie-Josèphe had tried hard to conserve her beauty in prison, but it had been a hopeless quest. She was slender and her skin was fine, but her hair had thinned, her teeth were ruined, and she was often racked with nervous illness. At thirty-one, she had to use every beauty aid she could find to ensure Hoche’s affections. Luckily, he was entranced by her sensual arts and her bedroom tricks. He wrote to his child-wife, Adelaide, telling her that he was unavoidably detained in Paris.

“We are free,” cried one newspaper, “our thoughts, our intentions, will no longer be poisoned.”[1] Yet though Robespierre was dead, the people could not forget the atmosphere of denunciation and suspicion, and it was impossible to feel at ease in conversation with friends, even at home. Parisians were grateful to Tallien and his allies, but they did not trust them.

The British were still blockading Martinique, but Marie-Josèphe managed to find someone traveling to New England who would take a letter for her. “You have without doubt heard about all the awful things that have befallen me,” she wrote to her mother. “I’ve been widowed for four months! My only consolations are my children and you, dear mother, for my support. My most cherished wish is that we will be reunited one day.”[2] In the wastes of Paris, poverty-stricken and desperate, she found it hard to feel grateful for her survival. “My children now only have my support and I cling to life only to make them happy,” she wrote. As a postscript, she added, “Greetings to all the slaves on the plantation,” and sent a kiss to her wet nurse.[3]

Marie-Josèphe pleaded with her mother to send letters of credit or supplies of sugar via Hamburg. French currency had been devalued by a third, and anyone who had sugar or coffee could sell it on the street for a high price. She wrote again and again to her family, begging for money while living on loans and the money Hoche had given her. In the ruins of post-Terror Paris, only the moneylenders were getting rich. One friend gave her food; another sent her petticoats and skirts.

Paris had turned into, as one Swiss traveler put it, a “giant flea market.”[4] Street gangs sold their ransacked booty, families tried to earn money from their belongings, and neighbors combed through the homes of anyone who had not returned from prison for items to wear or trade. Everywhere on the streets were carts selling furniture, curtains, tapestries, floor coverings, saucepans, and plates. There were piles of children’s toys for sale on street corners and stacks of clothes balanced on makeshift tables near the river. Agents acting for the Russian elite were hunting for priceless antiques to be had cheaply, and men sent by the prince of Wales had snapped up paintings, bronzes, and furniture from Versailles. Marie-Josèphe, unable to retrieve her belongings, spent her borrowed money excessively on new tables, chairs, and drapes for her home.

Around her, all the Parisians who had survived were throwing themselves into amusement, unsure how long the peace would last. “It is impossible to die of hunger with more gaiety,” sighed Baron de Frénilly.[5] Thirteen theaters reopened, gambling dens welcomed revelers throughout the night, and over a thousand new dance halls were set up, as well as dining and drinking halls. The rich feasted on the new dish of lobster thermidor, while the poor still fought over bread. The courtesans who had disappeared during the Terror came out in full force. The city was peppered with women in bright dresses, sauntering arm in arm and taking clients back to the deserted parks stalked by hungry cats.

Those who had suffered imprisonment were immediately at the top of the social tree. “It was the height of good manners to be ruined,” declared Baron de Frénilly, “to have been suspected, persecuted, and, above all, imprisoned.” Those who had not been imprisoned were suspected of having bribed their way out of it—or of maneuvering to put others in jail in their place. As Frénilly put it, “People greatly regretted that they had not been guillotined”; it was an eighteenth-century version of survivors’ guilt.[6] Marie-Josèphe attended “victims’ salons” and “victims’ luncheons,” gatherings of those who had been in prison like her. She was now à la mode. Everyone in Paris wanted to meet a victim, especially a pretty one without a husband.

The most exclusive invitation of all was to the Bals des victimes. Only those who had been imprisoned or had relations who’d died in the Terror were permitted to attend. Women wore chemise-style gowns and cropped their hair, as the prisoners had done at Les Carmes. The fashionable short hairstyle was called the “coiffure à la victime.” They also wore thin red ribbons around their necks to recall the cut of the blade; when guests entered the ballroom, they had to bow their heads in imitation of the head dropping from the guillotine.

A young Corsican soldier, newly arrived from the provinces, was struck by the bacchanalian frenzy. “Everyone is determined to make up for their sufferings,” twenty-two-year-old Napoleon Buonaparte wrote to his brother Joseph. Napoleone had thought himself destined for a stellar career but had fallen out with his paymasters. On half pay without a commission and virtually friendless, he felt lost. He spent his time trying to write a romantic novel and goggling at Parisians trying, because they were afraid of the future, “not to miss a single pleasure of the present.” He was most struck by the glamorous females. “Women are everywhere, in the theatres, the promenades, the bookshops,” he told Joseph. “Here alone they deserve to rule; all men are mad for them, think of nothing but them, live only for them. A woman needs to live in Paris for six months to know her due, to know what her empire is.”[7] He gazed at women like Marie-Josèphe from afar, knowing they would never take notice of a nobody like him.

Marie-Josèphe took full advantage of her popularity, desperate to start again. She looked much younger than her thirty-one years (after she lied to the issuing officers, her passport also helpfully said she was twenty-eight). But to start over, she needed money and protection. She begged Hoche to divorce Adelaide, but he dithered between his teenage wife and his mistress. On August 21, he was appointed commander in chief of the army on the coast of Cherbourg, and he offered to take thirteen-year-old Eugène with him on campaign. From this act of kindness, Marie-Josèphe drew confidence that he would return and choose her.

Hoche traveled to Cherbourg and began his command on September 1. Marie-Josèphe sent him passionate letters, pouring out her heart and trying to persuade him to marry her. He replied diligently, but he was growing tired of her demands for money and her inability to save a penny.

Always a strong believer in spending more to gain more, she was throwing her purse around more carelessly than ever. Carriages were now incredibly rare, but Marie-Josèphe hired one and paraded around the city in style. She was hugely in debt to moneylenders and the banker Jean Emmery. She wrote to her family, “I hope that you have received the tender expressions of your poor Yeyette and that of her children; she really needs support from you, her heart is battered and she has been deprived for a long time. We have no hope of existence but your generosity.”[8] It was an impossible demand, however, and Marie-Josèphe soon realized that she would have to find the money herself.

In December, the Seine iced over. Wolves howled on the outskirts of the city. With roads submerged in snow, Paris was stranded and its citizens suffered greatly. What little food there was to buy was expensive, since maximum-price laws had been abolished and inflation was soaring. Every tree in the Bois de Boulogne and the parks of the Tuileries was chopped down for firewood. Women threw themselves in the Seine over the shame of being unable to provide for their children. The ranks of streetwalkers swelled to thirty thousand as desperate girls did anything they could to buy food. The government instituted rationing—one quarter of a pound of black bread made from a bitter mix of peas and chestnut flour. At one in the morning, starving men, women, and children began queuing outside the bakeries. At seven o’clock, they started tearing at each other as they tried to snatch the tiny loaves. In the wealthier classes, guests took their own bread and candles with them to dinner parties. Marie-Josèphe was one of the few exempt from this custom on account of her extreme poverty.[*]

The streets were stalked by the Muscadins, young aggressive men who attacked anyone they thought of as republican and threw their caps of liberty to the ground. Savage purges of the Jacobins and anyone accused of being a sans-culotte began. Barras, Tallien, and the rest could barely see past ensuring their own political and physical survival. In the lawless, poverty-stricken city, missing thousands of its men to conscription, the corrupt and the venal flourished as they made money from profiteering and speculating on state assets that had been quickly sold off. Thousands of émigrés had left behind estates, houses, and businesses. Those who remained skimmed off the best for themselves. Dishonest men willing to enforce their desires with violence could make a fortune in a month.

Marie-Josèphe needed to join the circles of those with money in the post-Terror world—the moneylenders, the arms profiteers, the bankers, and the men of the political elite. She was still alluring, despite her travails in prison. A travel document of the time listed her as “height five feet, nose and mouth well made, eyes orange, hair and eyebrows dark brown, face long, chin somewhat prominent.”[9] She began to cement her friendship with Thérésa Cabarrus, heroine of all Paris. Tall and very beautiful with deep brown eyes and dark hair, Thérésa had a charming personality, more charisma than the entire Comédie-Française, and a love of fame that made her the new idol of the age.

For many, lovely Thérésa was entirely responsible for the downfall of Robespierre. She was invited everywhere, applauded at the theater, followed in the street, and called “Our Lady of Thermidor” for her bravery. She was followed around by a group of Thermidor loyalists, dressed up in brightly colored jackets with long hair curling around their shoulders and speaking in an affected drawl. Marie-Josèphe and Thérésa were soon fast friends. Marie-Josèphe called her “little one” and acted as a witness at her wedding to Tallien on December 26, 1794.

Marie-Josèphe spent much of her time at Thérésa’s cottage-like home, La Chaumière, near the rural area of the Champs-Élysées. At Thérésa’s parties champagne flowed, and politicians, bankers, generals, actresses, and courtesans danced together. As the founder of Thermidor, Tallien was the hero, and presiding over it all was his lover, in outfits that were barely decent. By the winter, Marie-Josèphe was standing next to her, often in a similarly diaphanous gown to add to the effect. When she became a confidante of Thérésa, her credit increased and she was able to borrow more money. But most of all, she was in a position to meet Thérésa’s friends and dance with them, drink with them—and then invite them to visit her at the rue de l’Université.

The newspapers were preoccupied with Thérésa. Also adorning their pages was Juliette Récamier, a delicate seventeen-year-old beauty who was limpid and shy where Thérésa was brash. She was the wife of a wealthy, elderly banker, although some gossiped that she was really his illegitimate daughter, whom he had married when she was fifteen to ensure she took his estates if he were killed. It was unlikely, even though the marriage was not physical and he treated her like a daughter. “I am not in love with her,” he wrote, “but I feel for her a genuine and tender attachment … she possesses germs of virtue and principle such as are seldom seen so highly developed at so early an age.” Whatever the truth, he encouraged her to host salons and delighted in her reputation as one of the most beautiful women in Paris. He poured money into her glittering entertainments as she held court among men of power—speaking so softly that they had to lean in close to hear her. Another newspaper favorite was Fortunée Hamelin, eighteen and newly married. Her Creole heritage, long hair, and tiny waist made her entrancingly attractive, even though she had, according to one contemporary, the face of a bulldog.

Seductive, a survivor of prison, stylish, and somewhat lacking in morals, Marie-Josèphe fit in to this circle perfectly. She, Thérésa, Fortunée, and Juliette became known as the Merveilleuses, the fashion plates, the stars. Some called them the “Graces.” Taking the fashion for prison chemises and short hair to the extreme, they flaunted their lovely figures in transparent gowns. If couture at Versailles had been stiff corsets and the post-Revolution period simplicity and restraint, the style that marked the Thermidor was decadent nakedness. The overthrown queen had been palely pretty and blond, and Thermidor wanted a different look. Marie-Josèphe, like Thérésa, Fortunée, and Juliette, was dark-haired and dusky-eyed.

The Merveilleuses curled their hair tight around their heads, put flowers behind their ears, donned sandals on bare legs, and wore filmy puff-sleeved dresses scooped low over the bosom. Unsuited to the muddy streets of Paris—or indeed, for venturing outside, other than in high summer—the gowns were best worn at evening parties. Every curve of the body was exposed, and any dancer could feel the warm flesh of his partner while proceeding around the floor. Unlike the torturous gowns of Versailles, the Thermidor frocks were easy to whip off. Despite the Paris chill, dresses had become so diaphanous that people said the “sans-culottes had given way to the sans chemises.” Fortunée Hamelin once walked down the Champs-Élysées with her breasts entirely on show.

Usually, though, Thérésa wore the most eye-popping outfits. She preferred short see-through Grecian gowns, split at the thighs, the cloth dipped in scented oil to mold itself to her body. “It is not possible to expose oneself more sumptuously,” Talleyrand exclaimed of her.[10] Thérésa’s arms jangled with gold bracelets, and she wore gold rings on her toes. During one party at La Chaumière, she wagered a man that her entire dress would not weigh more than two six-franc pieces. In front of her forty guests, she removed every scrap of clothing, including her bracelets and shoes. She won the bet.

Marie-Josèphe was sought after by men and women alike. As one newspaper reported, “An event talked of in the Paris Salons! Alteration in the style of hair-dressing affected by Mesdames Tallien and Beauharnais!”[11] She cared very much about the matter, writing on one occasion to Thérésa:

I think it of importance that our head-dresses should in all respects be alike. I now state for your information that I propose wearing a red handkerchief in my hair, tied in the Creole fashion with three locks on each side of the head. That which is a presumption on my part is quite natural on yours, as you are younger, and, if not handsomer, still of a much fresher complexion … We are, however, attempting a bold thrust and must drive the trois Bichons and the Bretelles Anglaises [rival women in society] to despair. You fully understand the effects of this conspiracy, the necessity for secrecy, and the wonderful effects which must attend it.[12]

All of them were noticed at the theater, followed by crowds, and discussed in minute detail at society gatherings. For Marie-Josèphe, however, it was a risky game: The other Merveilleuses were married and over ten years younger, nearer Hortense’s age than her own. Baron de Frénilly declared Marie-Josèphe the sort of woman who could remain for fifteen years at the age of thirty, but even so, thirty was excessively old in the new world of the 1790s.[13] She knew that if she spent her time with youthful girls of twenty-one, potential suitors would think her a similar age—and as long as she didn’t mention her children, no man would think her as old as she was. Prison had ruined her health, but it gave her a claim to fame and notoriety. Thanks to the horror of Les Carmes and her ability to flatter her way into the affections of celebrated young women, she had become one of the most expensive mistresses in the land.

At one of Thérésa’s parties, Marie-Josèphe was introduced to the man who would change her life. At forty, Paul François, Vicomte de Barras—former soldier and civil servant, and Tallien’s successor as president of the National Assembly—was Thermidor’s most powerful man and one of the wealthiest individuals in the country. Handsome, with dark hair and green eyes, he was clever and dishonest. After overthrowing Robespierre, he had the reputation of a hero, but his fellow politicians denounced him as untrustworthy, cruel, and a hypocrite for surrounding himself with “the most corrupt of aristocrats, lost women, ruined men, cheaters at cards, courtesans and speculators. He was like an exotic potentate: magnificent and dissolute.”[14] In attaching herself to Barras, Marie-Josèphe was aiming high.

After meeting him in the winter, she wrote asking for his help to assist a young sans-culotte man. It was a typical act of kindness to someone who once would have been her enemy. The request was also an excuse: She said she hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing him in a long time, reproached him for forgetting an acquaintance, and asked him to visit her in her apartment. The widow Beauharnais was issuing a clear invitation.

By the following spring, she was Barras’s established mistress, and her money worries were over. “Along with all that is seductive and captivating,” declared an anonymous pamphlet about her, probably written by the Marquis de Sade, Marie-Josèphe had “a usurer’s avidity for money, which she squanders with the alacrity of a gambler and a love of luxury grand enough to swallow up the revenue of ten provinces.”[15] Barras paid the rent on her home, discharged her debts, and gave her everything she desired, including a country residence in Croissy. In return, she lavished him with attention. Since Eugène was with General Hoche and Hortense was staying with her aunt Edmée, Marie-Josèphe was free to direct her every waking hour to him. Barras wanted her to be complaisant, sexually adventurous, and an exhibitionist. She was expected to arrange parties for him where nothing was forbidden.

Less than a year after she had been released from prison, the widow of nearly thirty-two was presiding over the most powerful table in Paris. Once a week, she traveled to her country estate in Croissy, and the stage would be set for an incredible celebration. Her neighbors watched, astounded, as carts of meat, game, exotic fruits, and flowers arrived at her door, despite the food shortages. Soldiers arrived later, escorting Barras himself.[16] He and his fellow heroes were behaving like kings, and they desired a harem to entertain them.

With the drink flowing and the Merveilleuses wearing barely any clothes, Croissy evenings sometimes degenerated into orgies. On one occasion, Marie-Josèphe, Thérésa, and Fortunée undressed during the soup course, and Thérésa dipped her breast into Barras’s champagne glass. While the guests were eating salad, Fortunée used a small napkin to perform an erotic dance. The dessert was handed around, and then Thérésa dropped to her hands and knees and imitated “the undulations of an African panther.” By the cheese course, Marie-Josèphe was on Barras’s knee and fondling him in front of everybody. The other guests tripped off with each other to the bedrooms.[17]

In later life, consumed with bitterness against Marie-Josèphe and her husband, Barras declared her a “lewd Creole” and blustered that she “derived none of her attractions from nature, but everything from art, the most refined, the most provident” used by the courtesans of Greece and France. She was motivated only by money, he thought. She never loved “except from motives of interest,” even though she gave the impression to those who possessed her that “she was conquered by them and had freely given herself.” He wrote with a flourish that she would have “drunk gold from the skull of her lover.”[18] The truth was that Marie-Josèphe was hungry for both love and money.

After years of privation, she had finally found security. She reaped the rewards of her new life. She enrolled twelve-year-old Hortense in an exclusive girls’ school, the Institut National de Saint-Germain, run by Madame Campan. An enclave of aristocratic civilities, the school was a haven for refugees from Versailles, such as Jean-Baptiste Isabey, Marie Antoinette’s miniaturist, who was now the tutor in drawing. Madame Campan trained girls to be accomplished young ladies with perfect etiquette. There was no notion of learning a trade useful to the state, as there had been during the Revolution. Life, once more, was all about exquisite manners and show.

Unlike her mother, a lax pupil with the nuns in Fort Royal, Hortense was diligent and quick-witted (rather to the envy of some of the other girls) and excelled in the curricula of languages, history, geography, drawing, music, and dancing. Latin was not included, and math, as in all girls’ schools, was an extra subject that parents had to request. Hortense had private harp lessons and was quite talented at drawing and painting, which she took with Isabey.

When Eugène returned from accompanying Hoche on tour, he was sent to an elite academy for young men (Hoche had largely returned to his wife, although Marie-Josèphe still held a flame for him). Marie-Josèphe then took a large house on 6 rue Chantereine, which she rented (with Barras’s money) from an actress friend, Julie Carreau. Developers had been buying up areas of the city and building brash new homes for the bankers, moneylenders, and speculators. Now the rue de la Victoire in the ninth arrondissement, the rue Chantereine had been converted recently from marshland into one of the most fashionable new districts. The house came with stables and a coach house, and Marie-Josèphe needed a staff of coachman, manservant, cook, chambermaid, and maid. Of course, Euphémie was with her, and she also retained Mademoiselle de Lannoy, governess to her children for their occasional visits. Only a few months after becoming Barras’s mistress, Marie-Josèphe was rich.

She dipped liberally into Barras’s pot of money for decorations. Sheer muslin curtains, typical of Martinique, adorned her dining room. She covered the chairs in pale blue nankeen and displayed classical ornaments, including an Etruscan silver urn, on her shelves. Excited by her decorating, she forgot to buy enough practical goods: There was a shortage of spoons, cups, and plates.

In the summer of 1795, the convention put Barras in charge of the troops engaged to defend it. He decided that he needed to win over the army and that he should pick out a pet to foster, in order to have someone to use to his advantage in the future. He especially liked to find people down on their luck and vault them into privilege, for he thought doing so gave him more control over them. This time he chose an obscure and poor young Corsican general by the name of Napoleon Buonaparte.

[*] In 1795, the livre was replaced by the franc, worth seven livres, three deniers. The new currency added to the financial chaos. Indeed, many people continued to refer to money as “livres,” especially when referring to large sums or property transactions.

CHAPTER 6

“What Strange Power You Have over My Heart”

It was the early autumn of 1795. The chandeliers glowed above a table heavy with food, perfumed flowers adorned the vases, and wine flowed into crystal goblets. Barras seated Napoleon next to Marie-Josèphe, who appeared at her best in the soft candlelight, her gown clinging to her bosom. The two fell deep into conversation. Unlike every woman the young soldier had met, she neither mocked nor ignored him. Instead, she listened to him talk of his military victories and praised his successes. Napoleon was dazzled by her sophistication. “I was not immune to the charms of women,” he said, “but I had not had good fortune with them; and my character rendered me shy before them. Madame de Beauharnais is the first to have reassured me. She said flattering things about my military talents one day when I found myself seated next to her. Her praise intoxicated me; I addressed myself only to her.” Impulsive and decisive, he had fallen in love, and after that evening, “I followed her everywhere; I was passionately in love with her.”[1] Ill at ease in society and without an object of devotion, Napoleon had found an ambition and a goal: to seize his patron’s mistress.

That night was his first meeting with Marie-Josèphe, but he had seen her from afar and, like everybody in society, knew of her reputation. Marie-Josèphe, the exotic Creole, the survivor of Les Carmes, was discussed in the salons and feted in the newspapers. From a distance, she was a glittering prize; close up, she was gentle, seductive, and elegant. Her days as a gauche bride long behind her, she was the epitome of delicacy and mystery, her smile suggesting sensual delights. Napoleon was immediately her slave. “It was chez Barras that I saw my wife for the first time,” Bonaparte later recalled.[2]

In his attempt to keep the little Corsican on his side and thus have someone under his thumb in the army, Barras had enlisted his secret weapon: Madame de Beauharnais.

Anyone could understand Napoleon’s attraction to her. Marie-Josèphe was a real Parisienne (if not by birth), an aristocrat who had everything he wanted: position, social cachet, sophistication, and a true revolutionary past. As his friend from the military academy at Brienne, Louis-Antoine de Bourrienne, put it, she would “aid him in achieving his ambition,” since through her, he would have access to the most influential people in society.[3] And, simply, he was captivated. “She was a real woman,” Napoleon said, enthusiastically praising her rear end.[4]

BORN ON AUGUST 15, 1769, six years Marie-Josèphe’s junior, Napoleon was a fighter from the cradle. Named for an uncle who had died in the battle for Corsica against the French, he was the second child of his parents’ marriage to survive. In 1764, handsome eighteen-year-old Carlo Buonaparte had married Maria Letizia Ramolino, aged thirteen and intelligent, though entirely uneducated and very strong-willed. Initially Corsican nationalists, the Buonapartes changed sides when the French took over the island a year before Napoleon’s birth. Carlo changed his name to Charles de Bonaparte and, as overdressed as a peacock, befriended the Comte de Marbeuf, the commander in chief of the French forces on Corsica. He later traveled to France to wait around at Versailles for favors and money. Letizia, virtually alone on Corsica, raised her eight children with a strict hand. “To the manner in which she formed me at an early age,” Napoleon said, “I principally owe my subsequent elevation.”[5] Severe on laziness and venality, she had no compunction about whipping her offspring. Napoleon prided himself on never crying out.

In later years, he talked up his poverty. “We never bought anything except what was absolutely necessary, such as clothes and furniture,” he said.[6] He was not entirely truthful: His mother’s dowry was thirty-one acres of land, a mill, and a bake house, and his father was successful at gaining favors from the elite for the family. By the rough and ready standards of Corsica, they were wealthy, with a shuttered stone house on the route to the port, shared with other Bonaparte family members, and a small country home, as well as the mill and the bake house. They spent a lot on appearances: As Napoleon’s mother said, “Better to have fine clothes and a grand salon and to eat dry bread in secret.”[7]

Napoleon did not learn French until he was nine, as Corsica was linguistically, culturally, and historically Italian. Letizia resented speaking French, and her son would always pronounce certain words in the Italian fashion. “I have a presentiment that one day this small island will astonish Europe,” declared Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[8] He meant that its compact size and isolation made it the ideal laboratory to try out his social theories of the primitive man. Corsica was mocked, looked down on as a humble farming island with meager culture.

Napoleon was a tough, assertive, aggressive child, intelligent and with a temper that always threatened to boil over at any provocation. At the age of seven, he was sent to a Jesuit school where he learned to read, write, and add, as well as a little Latin and ancient history. He spent his time there destroying his surroundings, pulling out the stuffing from chairs, scratching tables, and tearing leaves off plants. Marbeuf encouraged Charles to put his children forward for a scheme in which the offspring of impecunious members of the elite could apply for scholarships at French schools. In 1778 Napoleon won a place at the Military School of Brienne, the lowest-ranked of the ten military academies where noble sons were trained for the army. Charles took his son to Brienne while on his way to pay his respects—alongside other Corsican nobles—to the new king, Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette. Napoleon’s elder brother, Joseph, bound for the priesthood, wept copiously at their parting, but Napoleon let slip only a single tear.

At Brienne, the little king of the Bonaparte family was brought down to earth with a bump. Graceless, foreign, with a heavy Italian accent, small and ugly, an island boy on a scholarship, Napoleon was a prime target for the bullies. His fellow schoolboys shouted that the Corsicans were cowards, called him “paille au nez,” or straw nose, and laughed at his height and his waddling little body. “I’ll make you French pay for this,” he cried. He became preoccupied with joining the army, so much so that when an inspector suggested he was not yet ready, he considered applying to the British navy.

Life at Brienne was harsh. There were no visits home unless a parent was gravely ill, and no holidays other than a fortnight’s break at the end of the summer, when the boys were taken on walks in the barren countryside around the school. Among the other boys was Bourrienne—who later would become his secretary—but Napoleon claimed that he had few friends while there, because friendship took up time. The teachers were poorly trained, and the inspection reports noted laziness in the 20 staff and 150 students, as well as widespread insubordination. The vice principal prided himself on dashing through Mass in nine minutes. Napoleon was bad at singing, deportment, and music and awful at dancing, but he tried hard in ancient history and geography and had a real aptitude for mathematics. “That child will never be good for anything but geometry,” he later recalled people saying.[9] In 1782 he told an inspector that he wished to devote his life to science and produce a theory of electricity or a new model of the cosmos.

In 1784 he had his chance to escape. Just as he was due to graduate, the Ministry of War sent out a call for students with a talent for mathematics. Fourteen-year-old Napoleon was selected to attend the École Royale Militaire in Paris. Unlike ramshackle Brienne, the École Militaire was luxurious, with meals served by waiters and thirty professors and staff, from grooms to wig makers and shoemakers. Unfortunately for Napoleon, he still had to take the dreaded dancing lessons. He did, however, learn plenty of math and took useful classes in fortification. The boys at the École Militaire were the crème de la crème, too occupied with their studies to mock Napoleon for his accent, but they were not friendly to him, and he felt excluded and looked down on. He emerged with a lifelong chip on his shoulder regarding the aristocracy, to whom he felt everything came easily. His graduation report noted he was hardworking and “capricious, proud, and extremely egotistical.”[10]

In 1785 Charles died of stomach cancer. Napoleon barely mourned his father. He promptly informed his mother that he was now the head of the family, as his elder brother was wedded to the Church. Thirty-five-year-old Letizia and the four younger children—all born after his departure—were now essentially dependent on his wages; fortunately, the middle two, Lucien and Maria Anna, known as Elisa, were on scholarships. Letizia was excused from attending church, as she had so much domestic work. As the breadwinner, Napoleon worked harder to qualify as an artillery officer, cramming into a few months’ preparation what would normally take two years. At sixteen, he graduated forty-second out of fifty-eight in his class. He was then sent as a second lieutenant to the La Frère Regiment in southern France. Already shy of women, he was the only new recruit who did not visit a brothel in Lyon on the way.

Life in the garrison town was undemanding. Napoleon spent his copious free time reading rapaciously. As he put it, “I conquered rather than studied history.”[11] He ate one meal a day to save money and sent every spare penny to Letizia. In September 1786, he took an extended leave and finally returned home for the first time in eight years, meeting the four younger siblings he had been supporting: Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jérôme, still only a baby. He asked for further leave on the grounds of illness but returned in late 1787 to Paris.

There, he encountered a pretty girl working the red-light district of the Palais Royal. The expensive women took rooms overlooking the arcades, while the cheaper girls like her were forced out in all weather to find clients. Napoleon asked her how she had become a streetwalker and stood with her, feeling so vigorous, he declared, that he did not feel the cold. He took her to a nearby hotel and lost his virginity. After wasting a further six months on Corsica at the beginning of 1788, he returned to his regiment.

In 1789 the Revolution broke out and Napoleon, bored of quelling bread riots, went back to Corsica hoping to win political influence on the island. He had little success and returned to France in 1791. He hedged his bets: He joined the Jacobin Society on July 3 and publicly celebrated Louis XVI’s birthday in August. As the Terror spread, Napoleon left Paris and took his sister, Elisa, out of her school at Versailles. On the journey south to Corsica, their coach was frequently halted by revolutionaries demanding their passports and instructing them to shout “Vive la Nation!” The people clapped Napoleon on the back, shabby in his army uniform. In Marseille, Napoleon felt safe: He and his sister spent a month there and then traveled in leisurely fashion to Corsica. For Napoleon, his early twenties were a time of dodging responsibility. He had little interest in romance, as he wrote in his Dialogue on Love: “I do more than dispute the existence of Love. I consider it to be actually as injurious to society as to the personal happiness of mankind.”[12]

In 1793 the political situation on Corsica exploded. The Corsican Assembly deemed the Bonapartes traitors and exiled them for good. Napoleon and his banished family fled to Toulon, where he wrote a republican pamphlet and found his spirit at last. Toulon had been attacked by the British, and Napoleon, the budding politician, used his contacts with the president of the revolutionary committee and was given the post of commander of artillery, after the previous holder had been wounded. It was the first of his impressive promotions. He took a key role in the rescue of Toulon, impressing Paul de Barras, who at the time was in Nice with the army. Barras spotted Napoleon’s talent and, after the French won Toulon, encouraged his promotion to brigadier general.

By 1794 Napoleon’s brother Joseph had long since given up the priesthood and was on the verge of marriage to a Marseilles girl, Julie Clary. He introduced Napoleon to her plump, cheerful sixteen-year-old sister, Désirée. Napoleon called Désirée by her middle name, “Eugénie,” and was more practical than romantic with her, telling her what books she should read and how she could improve her manners. He considered marrying her, since she brought a large dowry, but was not affected by particular feelings for her. He held fast to his belief that love weakened man.

He received orders to join the Army of the West, suppressing the protests of royalists in the Vendée. He would have been under the command of Marie-Josèphe’s lover, Lazare Hoche, a man strict with those who took unpaid leave. There was no glory in the Vendée, and Napoleon traveled to Paris to argue his position. Following a furious unresolved argument, after his leave period expired, he was living in a cheap hotel, existing on a tiny allowance sent by Joseph. He tried to meet anyone of influence, knocking on doors and demanding introductions, but was often turned away.

Depressed and miserable, Napoleon looked sickly. He rarely bothered to comb his hair and his uniform was shabby. At the age of twenty-six, his career seemed over. He wrote despondent letters to Joseph and Désirée and seriously contemplated suicide. “I will end up not stepping aside when a carriage passes,” he wrote dolefully to Joseph.[13] “Life is a mere dream that fades.”[14]

Paris in the summer of 1795 was food for cynicism. The only winners after the Terror were the get-rich-quick speculators and black marketers, profiteers, military contractors, and bankers. Thermidor was a regime that protected property, enshrined the supremacy of those with money, and allowed them to get richer by buying public monopolies for a song, snapping up handsome estates previously owned by aristocrats and the extensive lands once owned by the Church. “There is one thing alone to do in this world and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power,” Napoleon said.[15]

He wandered the streets and started work on a romantic novel, Clisson et Eugénie—a doomed love story that reflected a young man’s eager desire to experience passion—having repeatedly read Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther. Clisson, “born for war,” meets two sisters and falls in love with the younger, Eugénie. He gives up the army for her but is then called back. When wounded, he sends his aide to tell Eugénie, but she falls in love with the aide. Clisson decides to die in battle, writing to her, “At twenty-six I have exhausted the fleeting pleasures of fame.”[16]

Napoleon had taken up his pen as a romantic novelist, but the fates were aligned differently. Paul de Barras saw in him a man who would do anything to be on the winning side. Barras’s friends were baffled by the great man’s fascination with the swarthy Corsican: “Who is this Bonaparte? Where has he served? Nobody has ever heard of him.” The vitiated society men laughed at “Barras’s little protégé.” “At that stage in his life,” wrote Laure Permond, “Bonaparte was ugly.”[17]

At just over five feet three, he was not excessively small (the average Frenchman was about five feet six), but he gave the impression of short stature because of his slumped posture and skinny chest.[18] Underfed, with a yellowing complexion, gray eyes, and a protruding nose and chin, he was almost unpleasant to look at. In an age when the ideal of male beauty was dark curls and lustrous eyes, Napoleon’s lank, greasy hair and small eyes made him a joke and revealed him—to snobbish Parisians—as lowly stock. He refused to waste money on gloves, so his fingernails were as dirty as his boots. Even worse, his French was heavily accented and hesitant. Dress and behavior meant everything, even after the Revolution, and Napoleon was scruffy, sloppy, and rude. He had little idea of social niceties and tended to smile at the wrong moment or burst into laughter for no reason. Most of the time he was too awkward to say anything, but when he did speak, it was usually to offer a crude joke. Profoundly frustrated that he could not impress people as he wished, he retreated into bouts of temper and sulking. And yet under all the grime and poor manners, he was profoundly intelligent—and had a force of will that was irresistible, if one made the effort to speak to him.

Barras took Napoleon to the salons of Madame Tallien and Madame de Staël and to various parties. “He was just a little general who was unhesitatingly dubbed a fool by all those who knew him,” said Madame de Chastenay. Bonaparte mused to his brother that “a mad desire to get married will take possession of me.”[19] He was so frantic to be accepted that he proposed marriage to Laure Permond’s mother, fourteen years his senior. He even considered the gold-digging courtesan Grace Elliott, whom Marie-Josèphe had met in prison.[20]

Napoleon was young, lustful for power, and fascinated by the women who spurned him. Parisian ladies, he wrote to Désirée Clary, were as “beautiful as old romances and as learned as scholars … all these frivolous women have one thing in common, an astonishing love of bravery and glory.” He observed them like a scientist, evaluating their characteristics. “Their toilette, the fine arts and their pleasures take up all their time. They are philosophers, lovers, courtesans, and artists.”[21] Admiring but excluded, he was more than ready to fall in love with the first of these fabulous creatures who deigned to show him any attention. At the fateful dinner in 1795, he was captured wholesale by Madame de Beauharnais.

At first it seemed impossible that he could act on his passion for his patron’s mistress, but Barras quickly allowed him leave to court her. Barras had been growing disillusioned with Marie-Josephe, for she was both expensive and increasingly dependent on him. He also reasoned that if Napoleon “took” his lover, the young general would feel even more loyalty to Barras.

Marie-Josèphe’s interest in Napoleon, on the other hand, was utterly baffling to her friends. The ladies in the salons, the Merveilleuses, and the women who wished to be like Marie-Josèphe could not comprehend her willingness to humor the skinny little Corsican. But while she was drawn to his ambition and intelligence, she refused to be his lover. As she told Barras, “she believed she could do better than him.”[22]

In October 1795, pro-royalist sentiment flared in the streets of Paris. In what became known as the 13 Vendémiaire, royalist supporters rose up and declared allegiance to the émigré army of the Comte d’Artois, then marching toward the capital. Barras put Napoleon in charge, and he suppressed the riots with swift brutality. Hundreds of royalists were killed.

Barras and his allies used the violence to declare the need for a new political system, the Directory: five men in overall charge, presiding over the Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred. Barras quickly emerged as the leader. “The memory of the terror today serves the friends of despotism,” said Madame de Staël.[23]

Barras resigned as commander in chief of the Army of the Interior and put Bonaparte, the inexperienced soldier who had been practically expelled from the army, in his place. At only twenty-six, Napoleon, dubbed General Vendémiaire, was wealthy and celebrated. He moved to an expensive new house, took headquarters at the Place Vendôme, and used a private box at the Opéra. He immediately started enriching his family—and redoubling his appeals to Marie-Josèphe.

“WHEN GENERAL BONAPARTE fell in love with Mme. de Beauharnais, it was love in all the power and strength of the term,” said his friend Auguste de Marmont. “It was apparently his first passion and he felt it with all the vigor of his nature.”[24] Although he continued writing to his putative fiancée, Désirée, he was a man devoted. As with his fiancée, Napoleon decided not to address his lover by her given name, instead feminizing her middle name. He called her the name by which she would always be known—Josephine.

Now that Napoleon was the military hero of Thermidor, the newly named Josephine became more enthusiastic about his advances. She wrote to him using the full force of her charm to seduce him.

You no longer come to see a friend who is fond of you. You have quite deserted her. This is a mistake, as she is tenderly attracted to you. Come to lunch with me tomorrow, septidi. I want to see you and talk to you about matters that will interest you. Good night, mon ami, je vous embrasse.[25]

Napoleon replied immediately. “I cannot imagine the reason for the tone of your letter. I beg you to believe that no one desires your friendship as much as I do, no one could be more eager to prove it.”[26]

Josephine held out against Napoleon’s pleadings for intimacy, but not for long. By December 1795, they were lovers. He scribbled his passion at seven o’clock in the morning, enraptured after their first night together.

I wake up filled with thoughts of you. Your image, and the intoxicating pleasures of last night allow my senses no rest. Sweet and thrilling Josephine, what strange power you have over my heart! Are you annoyed with me? Are you unhappy? Are you upset? My soul is broken with grief and my love for you denies me repose. But how can I rest any more, when I submit to the feeling that overwhelms my very self, when I drink from your lips and from your heart a soothing flame? Yes! One night has taught me how short your portrait falls short of the reality! You start at noon: in three hours I shall see you again. Till then, a thousand kisses, mio dolce amore, but give me none back for they set my soul on fire.[27]

Napoleon’s letter is a masterstroke of ardor—and somewhat different from the letters of his rival Horatio Nelson to his mistress Emma, Lady Hamilton, telling her he thought of her so much “I could not touch even pudding,” and that he had felt jealous and dreamed he had hit her with a “big stick.”[28] In France, it was the age of the sentimental letter writer, of the outpouring of emotion, ruled by the fervent (although rather less explicit) letters in books such as Rousseau’s La Nouvelle Héloïse. Napoleon threw all his emotions into his letters, high on his sexual obsession. He scrawled hard, breaking holes through the paper with his pen, covering the words with blots because he was so impatient to write to her. Near-illegible and misspelled, his words burn with the fire in his soul for Josephine, her husky voice, clinging dresses, and boudoir promises.

Gone were all his notions that love was merely a “social passion.” With Josephine, he was overturned, consumed, and fascinated and could think of nothing but her. Poor Désirée wrote letters, but they languished unanswered on his desk.

Napoleon was immediately in thrall to Josephine’s small waist and high bosom, her fine skin and delicate movements. In bed, he was delighted by her, baffled and excited by her repertoire of techniques. Josephine recognized that Napoleon was a man who was excited by theater. She dressed up for him, doused herself in the scents he liked, and embodied the role of the temptress. She decorated her chamber with absolute care, covering the walls with gilt and mirrors. In the old days, she had learned the hard way how to be a perpetual mistress to a man: willing, inventive, compliant. Her early roués had been only too familiar with such tricks—mirrors and shadowy postures in candlelight, bedroom acrobatics (Napoleon praised her “zig-zags”), perfume in the hidden hollows of the body, and feigned pleasure. But Napoleon had never encountered these tricks and could not believe his luck. As he later wrote to her, he never “forgot those visits” to the “little black forest.”

Napoleon also had a fascination with makeup, partly because it was something his mother never would have used. Josephine, who bathed daily and whose dressing table groaned with pots of powder and skin whitener, was his ideal. She even made her own cosmetics—one she used in a “very secret” ritual in her daily toilette, perhaps a form of the “facial varnish” popular at the time to stretch out the skin and minimize wrinkles. Her small hands and feet were the most exquisite imaginable (he was obsessed with hands and feet and had become very vain about his own). To him, she was the ultimate in beauty.

Almost as soon as they became lovers, he was demanding that she marry him, throwing himself at her feet, and falling into rages when she refused. Shy and nervous around women, conscious of his failings as a lover, he was convinced that only she could understand him. Josephine’s softness, her lack of education, her pliability, indolence, and excessive femininity all made her his dream lover. Even her failure to live within her means was erotic, yet another indication of how she needed the firm hand of a man. Her readiness to forgive slights and wrongs made her a good match for him. No woman who bore grudges could have lived with Napoleon.

He was also wildly jealous. One evening he announced he would use the cards to read the futures of the guests attending a party. He told Madame Tallien that she would experience “a thousand follies.” When he came to General Hoche, he delivered what was, for a soldier, the ultimate insult: “General, you will die in your bed.” He hated any man who admired Josephine—except Barras.

Napoleon wished to be the all-powerful man in every aspect of his life. Josephine looked up to him and asked for his advice. When he whipped himself into a rage with her, she acted out the supplicant, weeping and pleading for mercy. She was a naturally lachrymose woman in a sentimental age, sometimes weeping three times a day, and Napoleon was swept away by the erotic tableau of her in tears. “I keep remembering your kisses, your tears, your lovely jealousy,” he said.[29] Tears were proof of her emotion and her femininity, and Josephine’s ability to turn on the waterworks was vital to her power over him. “I was not born with a heart that could bear the sight and sound of weeping,” he said.[30] He found the image of her sobbing on her knees unbearably arousing. “Ah! Tears!” he said cynically. “Woman’s only weapon.”[31] Josephine’s tears were a weapon he craved. He had a deep-seated need to watch her acting out the role of humiliated maiden; nothing bolstered his sense of masculinity more. With his instinct for drama, he loved to stir up terrible rows and push her to hysterical tears, then forgive her, the lovers clinging to each other in passionate reconciliation.

“Bonaparte is all day in adoration before me as though I was a goddess,” Josephine wrote.[32] His sexual obsession with her was entrancingly novel, after a series of jaded men like Barras. But she had been broken in to the ways of love by her failed marriage. As a teenager on the ship over from Martinique, she, too, had been alight with ideas about romantic destiny derived from books and the enthusiasm of youth. After the cruelties of Alexandre and her treatment at the hands of her often blasé lovers and keepers in the years after her separation, Josephine had become a woman who did not have the luxury of believing in love. To her, romance and sex were a path to status and security, the bargains that a woman had to make to survive. Over the years she had learned charm and sophistication, while forgoing her excitement, her joy in the new, and her desire to lose herself to another. She had not been looking to fall in love but for a man to support her and her children. Napoleon interested her and she loved him, in her way, but she no longer believed that passion could change her life.

Though Napoleon was sensual in his letters, in person he could be rough and abrupt. He knew virtually nothing of polite conversation and expected Josephine to listen to him describing military plans. Although he adored her and was entirely in thrall to her sexuality, he had little interest in her thoughts or opinions and did not wish for much repartee. He was the type of man with whom a woman could feel terribly lonely even as he caressed her.

Paul Barras encouraged Napoleon to ask her to marry him. “You have the rank, the talent to become a hero,” Barras said, “but you are poorly connected; without fortune, without relations.” Barras explained that, as Napoleon put it, Josephine was valuable because she was part of “both the old regime and the new” and would “make people forget my Corsican name, would make me wholly French.”[33] To be “wholly French” was Napoleon’s ambition, and if he thought that Josephine could give him such a prize, he would have offered marriage even if she had been plain and twice his age. He promptly proposed.

She consulted her friends on whether to marry Bonaparte. Some of the ladies thought him a joke; others worried that a military life was insecure and that a financier or a statesman would be a better bet. Josephine’s lawyer was dismayed when he heard that her groom would offer her only the tiny sum of fifteen hundred francs a year. She was aware that Napoleon’s family did not approve of her. On top of it all, Hortense was unenthusiastic. She’d met Napoleon at a dinner at the Luxembourg Palace—she was sitting between him and her mother and he was so desperate to talk to Josephine that Hortense had to give up, lean back, and listen to his trumpeted chatter flying over her head. Afraid of losing her mother, she begged her not to marry him.

Josephine wrote to a friend, probably Madame de Krény, in a state of indecision.

Do you like him? You will ask me.—But … No.—You feel cool about him then?—No; but I find myself in a lukewarm state which I do not like … Taking a side has always seemed tiring to my Creole nonchalance, I find it far easier to follow the will of others.

… I admire the general’s courage, the breadth of his knowledge of everything, of which he speaks equally well; the quickness of his mind, so he understands the thoughts of others almost before they have been expressed; but I am afraid, I admit, of the empire he seems to want over all those who surround him. His scrutinizing gaze has something strange about it which I cannot explain.

Finally, the thing that should please me, the force of passion, of which he speaks so much and which means one cannot doubt his sincerity, is exactly what stops me offering the consent that I am just as often on the point of giving.[34]

THE STRENGTH OF “this affection which almost seems to render him delirious” discouraged her. She worried that if he fell out of love with her, he would resent her. She had, after all, seen so many men chase her desperately, then grow cold.

But the “Widow Beauharnais,” as she signed herself, could not remain single forever. Barras would not marry her. General Hoche had been visiting her over the winter but showed no signs of divorcing his wife.

Josephine made up her mind. She said yes to Napoleon, to his passion, to his obsession with her, to the small financial settlement and the role of a military wife. Napoleon, overjoyed, saw himself as beginning a new life with his prize by his side. In a signed contract, both parties agreed that there would be no joint property or goods, and neither would be responsible for the debts of the other.

In his letters, Napoleon was the impassioned lover, but he had inquired into the status of Josephine’s accounts and decided the wedding was to be swift and practical. There could be no church service for the friend of the Directoire, but there would also be no dinner or reception, as Josephine would have had if she’d married a financier. A week previously, Napoleon had been made commander in chief of the French Army of Italy, and still he had no desire for a celebration. Josephine did not invite her children or the Marquis de Beauharnais and Aunt Edmée or her female friends. Napoleon’s family was also absent, disapproving from afar. Désirée heard the news and told him she was heartbroken. “You have made me unhappy for the rest of my life,” she wrote. “I shall never promise myself to another.”[35]

CHAPTER 7

“The Single Object in My Heart”

Josephine’s second marriage was a quiet affair in a dingy town hall.

Once stylish, the Hôtel du Mondragon was situated in a small road off the Avenue de l’Opéra and was serving as the town hall of the second municipal district of Paris. The grand paneling on the walls was faded, and the great chandelier had fallen into disrepair.

Josephine arrived at the arranged time of eight P.M. on March 9, 1796. She wore one of her cherished muslin dresses with a tricolor sash. Napoleon had not yet arrived. Josephine waited in a room on the second floor reserved for civil marriages, watching the faces of the witnesses, Tallien and Barras, fall into shadow as the candles sputtered and died.

Napoleon still did not appear. There was nowhere to sit, no refreshments, and the registrar, Charles Leclercq, grew increasingly annoyed. Finally, he declared the wait insupportable and retired to bed, instructing his subordinate to take the ceremony. Josephine continued to wait, growing somewhat impatient. At ten o’clock, they heard the front door creak and then the unmistakable noise of Napoleon clambering up the stairs. He burst into the room, accompanied by an aide. He had been drawing up military plans for the Army of Italy, so inspired by his own genius and so caught up in his imagination that he had entirely forgotten the time, he said. Josephine was hardly pleased, but she forgave him, outwardly, and the ceremony was conducted by Leclercq’s minion, Antoine Lacombe, his eyes nearly closing in the light of the one remaining candle.

This was Napoleon’s attempt at making Josephine’s position in the relationship clear to her: She must wait for him. However, he found a way to make it up to her—the marriage certificate added eighteen months to his age and knocked four years off hers, making him twenty-eight and her a few months short of twenty-nine. He gave her a gold and enamel medallion engraved “To destiny.”

Legally, the wedding was unsound. Because of the difficulty of obtaining documents from abroad, the officials waived the need for certificates of baptism and instead took sworn statements. Josephine’s birth date was given as 1767 and Napoleon’s as February 5, 1768 (not August 15, 1769); this would have made her a child at the time of her first marriage and Napoleon only a month younger than his brother Joseph. Still worse, Napoleon’s aide had not reached the age of majority and should not have been a witness. To add to it all, Lacombe probably was not qualified to conduct the marriage.

Napoleon declared it all excellent and whisked Josephine back to 6 rue Chantereine. He hoped for a night of passion, but Fortuné had other plans. In the bedroom, Josephine’s mulish pug perched on the bed and would not be moved. As Napoleon recalled, “I was told frankly that I must sleep elsewhere or share the bed with him.” Josephine was not in the mood to be merciful. “Take it or leave it,” she said.[1] Napoleon tried to thrust the dog aside, and the pug promptly bit him on the shin.

The day after the wedding, the Bonapartes drove to Saint-Germain to break the news to Eugène and then Hortense. Eugène was cool and Hortense wept. Napoleon treated them gently, wandering with them over the grounds and asking them about their studies. “Assure them that I love them as if they were my own children,” he wrote to Josephine.[2] It was not hard to love the two Beauharnais teenagers. Eugène was a good-looking young man, dutiful, gentle, and obedient, with a strong sense of responsibility. No intellectual, he was hardworking and naturally contented, and his rather small stature was pleasing to Napoleon—the last thing he wanted was a strapping stepson towering over him. Hortense was the pet of Madame Campan’s school, already tall, pretty, with beautiful, thick fair hair and fine skin. She was lively and gay and excellent at her studies, with a particular skill for drawing and singing. Napoleon put her weeping down to youthful mood swings and was confident he would win them both over.

Josephine had been single for eight years, and on her second day as a married woman, she found herself bidding Napoleon farewell. On March 11, he engaged with military plans and visitors all day; that evening, he briefly seized his bride in his arms, then gathered his belongings and climbed into a carriage bound for Italy. His baggage contained eight thousand livres in gold coins—and a miniature of his beloved. He longed for her to come to Italy. Unfortunately, the Directory had withheld Josephine’s passport, and she could not travel. They wished Napoleon to concentrate on the task at hand: conquering Italy.

Napoleon set off, obsessively planning military strategy and passionately scribbling to Josephine in his spare moments. “You are the constant object of my thoughts,” he wrote to her a few days after his departure. “My mind is exhausted imagining what you are doing. If I see you sad, my heart is torn and my grief mounts. If you are gay and lively with your friends, I am full of reproaches.” As he put it, “I am not easy to make content.” He forswore his ego for her. “The illnesses, the passions of men influence me only when I imagine them touching you, my love.” He signed off with “a thousand kisses.”[3]

After a week’s travel, Napoleon halted to visit his mother in Marseilles. Josephine had written her a sweet letter of introduction, but Madame Letizia was not impressed. The family all preferred Désirée Clary, who was docile and easily influenced. The notorious and famously extravagant Madame de Beauharnais, a fashion plate who already had two children, was far too audacious and too old. Indeed, she was only thirteen years Letizia’s junior. Napoleon was the family’s main breadwinner, and they saw Josephine as a threat to their own chances of becoming rich through him. Still, Letizia accepted that she had no choice in the matter and wrote a reply to Josephine, with Napoleon standing at her shoulder to dictate the words. Josephine, with her soft voice, her tears, and her “zig-zags,” had won. Napoleon had chosen the woman most likely to annoy his family and staked a claim for independence.

On March 27, he arrived in Nice and greeted his senior officers. He stood in front of the raggle-taggle group of soldiers and promised them land, riches, and victory. But thoughts of his wife were never far from his mind.

Not a day has passed without my loving you, without holding you in my arms. Every time I drink a cup of tea, I curse the glory and ambition that keeps me from the soul of my existence. In the middle of business, at the head of my troops, reviewing the camps, my wonderful Josephine is the single object in my heart, occupation of my soul, absorbs my thoughts.[4]

The letters flooded into the rue Chantereine. Josephine’s responses were rather slower, but when they arrived, they filled Napoleon with glee:

How can you think, my darling, of writing me like this? Don’t you think I’m in a bad enough state as it is without further increasing my sadness and confounding my reason? What eloquence, what feeling you portray; they are fiery, they inflame my poor heart! My incomparable Josephine, away from you there is no joy—away from you the world is a wilderness in which I am alone and without experiencing the bliss of unburdening my soul. You have robbed me of more than my soul, you are the only thought of my life.[5]

All of Napoleon’s untapped literary ability came pouring out in the letters. “By what art have you learned to entrance all my faculties, to concentrate in yourself my spiritual existence—it is witchcraft, dear love, which will only end with me. To live for Josephine, that is the story of my life.”[6]

Josephine had never read anything so romantic, so heavy with longing. Napoleon was experiencing the exhilarating pleasure of pure physical passion. It was first love in every sense of the word. He sent her letters spilling love, and mused on the meaning of life.[7]

Napoleon had a policy of bundling his letters into a basket to read a few weeks later, on the principle that merely a fifth would need answering by then.[8] But he seized Josephine’s letters the minute they arrived, devoured them for details about her. He could hardly believe she was his wife; he was initially too shy to call her by her new name. Even though the old addresses of Monsieur and Madame had returned, his early letters in the campaign were directed to “Citoyenne Beauharnais,” then “Citoyenne Bonaparte care of Citoyenne Beauharnais.”

He threw a tantrum when he thought her cool. “I am not happy with your last letter, it is as chilly as one from a friend. I have not found that fire which kindles your looks, and which I have sometimes believed I found there.”[9] He was always begging for more. “If you loved me, you would write twice a day. But you have to chat with your gentlemen callers at ten in the morning and then listen to the empty gossip and silly nonsense of a hundred dandies until an hour past midnight.” He complained that in “countries with any morals,” women were home at ten and “write to their husbands, think of them, live for them.”[10] He could have easily found such a biddable woman. He chose Josephine—independent, difficult, and cool—because he adored a challenge. And he was her sexual slave. “A kiss to the heart, then lower, much, much lower.”[11]

NAPOLEON’S INITIAL MILITARY campaigns in Italy were not successful, but he played down his failures in his letters to Barras and the Directory. He soon had better luck, and the Italians began to flee their cities as he approached. On April 21, Barras wrote to Josephine with the news that nearly four thousand enemy soldiers had been imprisoned or killed. Two days later, Napoleon wrote to Josephine describing his victories and asking her to join him. “Come quickly. I warn you: if you are late, you will find me ill.”[12] He informed her that Jean-Andoche Junot, his aide and a very able commander, was returning to Paris to deliver the flags of victory to the Directory, and she should return with him. If she did not, “I will suffer misery without remedy.”[13]

Josephine was content in Paris with her friends and had no desire for the hardships of travel. Her father-in-law, the Marquis de Beauharnais, and Aunt Edmée were due to be married in June (thanks to the recent death of the marquis’s wife), and she wished to enjoy the summer holidays with her children, not as a camp follower. She was spending thousands of francs on renovating the house at rue Chantereine, employing the fashionable architect Vautier to overhaul the interiors and create new furniture. She embraced a sickly-sweet decor worthy of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. Her bedroom walls were painted with swans and pink roses, and the room was adorned with bronze chairs and a new harp. Next door was a dressing room entirely covered with mirrors. She bought a fine mahogany table for the dining room and matching chairs, along with two marble-topped side tables. She had a free hand: Napoleon had approved her plan to redecorate and suggested only that she “put portraits of yourself everywhere.”[14]

Moreover, Josephine had a newfound celebrity status to exploit. As the wife of a military hero, she was cheered and feted; poets wrote long verses to her, and she was besieged with presents and invitations. Merchants extended her credit. She, not Madame Tallien, was now the most sought-after woman in Paris, the guest everyone desired at dinners and parties. In May, the Directory threw a ball to celebrate Napoleon’s victories. “Vive la citoyenne Bonaparte!” cried the people as they saw her. One woman told her that she was “Notre Dame des Victoires.” The name “Our Lady of Victories” stuck and was Josephine’s until her death.

With such accolades and stardom, she had no desire to trek out to Italy, though Napoleon’s letters begging her to come were wildly passionate. “My life is a perpetual nightmare,” he wrote. “I have lost more than life, more than happiness.”[15] He blamed “perfidious friends” for keeping her away from him.[16] He would not hold back. “To die without being loved by you, to die without that certainty, is the torment of hell.”[17] When he saw that the glass covering his miniature of Josephine was broken, he cried, “my wife is either very ill or unfaithful.”[18]

Napoleon’s appeals failed, and General Murat was sent to persuade Josephine to leave for Italy. She told Murat she had been unwell—with symptoms similar to pregnancy. A man fixated by his virility, Napoleon was thrilled. “I wish I could see your little stomach,” he blustered, “it will make you look fascinating.”[19] Unfortunately, Josephine’s fevers, headaches, and irregular menstruation were not caused by pregnancy. She was only thirty-three, but her health had been wrecked by her period of imprisonment and weakened further by her years as a kept mistress, during which time she was using contraceptive measures such as noxious douches. She was in all likelihood infertile by the time of her marriage. In the years to come, Napoleon would hanker after the return of her “little red sea,” and she would lie to him about its frequency.

Josephine’s letters soon dwindled to a trickle. In June, she sent only two, of three lines each. Poor Napoleon begged for more. “As if a pretty woman would give up her habits, her friends, Madame Tallien, a dinner with Barras and Fortuné,” he complained bitterly to her.[20] He gained further victories but dolefully sought after his Josephine. “It’s impossible that you inspired a limitless love and don’t share it.”[21] As his friend Marmont said of him, “He spoke frequently of her and his love, with the effusion, ardor, and the delusions of extreme youth.”[22] “Without you, I am useless here. I will leave the chase after glory and serving the country to others.” It was all a picture of romantic despair. “A thousand daggers are ripping my heart to bits.”[23] He even dreamed of being her shoes and her gown. When she still did not reply, his letters grew wilder, and Josephine threw them aside, weary with his “delirium.” Once she read out to her friends a letter in which he fretted about a rival and threatened to take an Othello-style revenge. She simply laughed and said, “He is funny, Bonaparte.”[24] Napoleon cried out about lovers, desperate for her to reassure him she was faithful. “Stay in Paris, have lovers—let everybody know it.”[25]

Napoleon was no fool, although people often took him for one. Usually correct in his judgments, he was hardly ever wrong about Josephine. “Our Lady of Victories” was indeed having an affair. In April, she had met a handsome soldier, Hippolyte Charles, when he had accompanied General Leclerc to call on her. Twenty-three and eager to please, a lieutenant in the Hussars, a gambler, a man-about-town, and a dandy, Hippolyte was rather small but extraordinarily good-looking, with a chiseled face, fine blue eyes, and dark hair. He was persnickety about his dress—men sneered that he was a coxcomb, a hairdresser dancing attendance on the ladies—but he was immediately part of the circle of victory heroines. “We are all smitten, Mmes Récamier, Tallien, Hamelin have all lost their heads, the man is so handsome,” Josephine wrote to Talleyrand. “I think that there is no one in the world who ties his cravat with more aplomb.”[26] Few men could have provided a greater contrast to scruffy, ugly Napoleon. Hippolyte asked questions about fashion and hairstyles and always knew the latest gossip. He reveled in jokes, never a forte of Napoleon’s, and played schoolboy pranks, pouring glue into the scabbard of Junot, Napoleon’s aide, and pretending to be a Creole in Josephine’s salon. As a young soldier at the Battle of Valmy, he had been nicknamed l’Eveille because of his talent to amuse: He woke everybody up.

Hippolyte pursued Josephine avidly, but with languid charm rather than the wild passion of Napoleon. Unlike her husband, who cheerfully rode roughshod over her opinions, Hippolyte was more deferential and liked to listen to Josephine converse. By the summer, they were lovers. The man all her friends wanted was too enticing a conquest to resist. Instead of writing to her husband, she was spending her mornings and afternoons with the best-dressed man in Paris.

Through Hippolyte, Josephine had also found a terribly risky way of making money. There was very little cash in the government coffers to fight the wars against Austria, so companies sprang up that would supply horses, uniforms, and weapons and accept payment much later, usually with interest added. One of these was owned by Louis Bodin of Lyon. All of the companies fleeced the government, but Bodin was one of the worst offenders; invoices were changed after submission, and men in the field would open boxes and find blunt, rusty weapons. Instead of horses, he sent donkeys seized from French peasants. Despite such shocking practices, Bodin continued in business because he paid bribes to the ministers and generals in charge. He used Hippolyte to pursue relationships with army paymasters—and his employee’s relationship with the wife of the man who made all the decisions was a gift to him (it is not impossible that Hippolyte chased her to further his career). Josephine began taking kickbacks from Bodin in return for smoothing relations with her husband’s colleagues. She earned money to pay off her debts and buy herself elegant outfits that she could wear at balls as the Lady of the Victories.

All the while, Napoleon called for her presence. Josephine was hesitant, and the government was still withholding permission for her to travel. Finally, in May, the Directory wrote to Napoleon: “It is with great reluctance that we yield to the desire of citoyenne Bonaparte to join you. We were afraid that the attention she would give you would distract from the glory and safety of your country.”[27] But the permission came too late; Josephine was in love with Hippolyte.

On May 15, Napoleon entered Milan in triumph. At a dinner on the previous night, the hostess had commented on his youth. He shrugged that he was indeed “not very old at present—twenty-seven,” but he would be much older in twenty-four hours, as he would gain Milan (or mille ans).[28]

He declared that he wished for Italian unification, but he presided over an orgy of looting. Carts of paintings, bronzes, statues, and jewels were packed up by his soldiers and sent back to France. On May 6, he had asked the Directory “for a few reputable artists to take charge of choosing and transporting all the beautiful things we shall see fit to send to Paris.”[29] Artists and scholars, including Antoine Gros, arrived and drew up lists of prizes. Every conquered city and state surrendered its treasures. The pope handed over twenty-one million francs’ worth of gold, a hundred paintings and objets d’art, and eighty-three statues, including the breathtaking Apollo Belvedere. Napoleon also took five hundred manuscripts, including one by Virgil that had belonged to Petrarch and contained his notes (Bonaparte initially wanted two thousand, but the artists suggested he moderate his demands). The Duke of Parma gave up Correggio’s Dawn and fifteen other pieces, including the same artist’s Madonna di San Geralamo, much to the distress of the people of Parma. Napoleon personally demanded Raphael’s Madonna di Foligno from Perugia. Venice lost its bronze horses from the Piazza San Marco. Works by Giorgione, Raphael, Leonardo, Lippi, and Titian, among others, all created to glorify the Italian city-state, were seized by Napoleon and packed off to France. Even private citizens found their walls empty of paintings when they returned to the homes they had fled.

Nearly every week saw congratulatory articles in the French press, some written by Bonaparte himself, about the brilliant seizures of art in Italy. He and his soldiers claimed lofty ideals: True art belonged in France, the land of liberty and the home of man’s cultural patrimony, rather than in the corrupt Italian state. He had received a command from the Directory that he should send back art “in order to strengthen and embellish the reign of liberty.”[30] He knew that it humiliated Italy to lose cultural treasures to him—and he wanted some of the pieces for himself. Just as millions of the francs he stole went into his own pocket (possibly only a fifth of the money made its way back to the government), he was seizing works of art for the Louvre, the Directory, and most of all for Josephine. It was Italy that made her a true collector.

But still she did not write. Napoleon’s letters hurtled into the silence. “I received a courier who left Paris on 27 May, and I have had no response, no news of my bonne amie. Could she have forgotten me or forgotten that there is no greater torment than not to have a letter from mio dolce amore? They gave me a great party here; five or six hundred elegant and beautiful ladies tried to charm me; none had that sweet and harmonious face which I have engraved on my heart. I saw only you, I thought only of you!”[31] He asked after the progress of her pregnancy. “I imagine constantly that I see you, with your little round tummy.”[32] Josephine read the letter and set it aside. He also wrote of his feelings to his brother Joseph. “You know that I have never been in love before, that Josephine is the first woman I have adored.” It was all dreadful. “If she doesn’t love me anymore, there is nothing left for me.”[33]

By June, Napoleon had endured enough. He said he would leave at once for Paris. Josephine ignored the letter, as she did most of his letters, and continued dallying with Hippolyte. Enraged, Napoleon threatened the Directory that he would return home. “I hate all women. I am in despair!” he roared to Barras. Barras needed Napoleon to win victories in Italy, so he swung into action. On June 24, Barras informed Josephine that she would have to travel immediately. She would have to leave her household—and her children—behind. He threw her a grand dinner at the Luxembourg Palace two days later, then pushed her into a carriage. Josephine wept and protested and wore the expression of someone about to be sent to the scaffold.

Still, she had one consolation. In the first carriage, along with her cross little dog, Fortuné, was Hippolyte Charles, resplendent in his powder-blue uniform and scarlet sash.

CHAPTER 8

A Million Kisses

“I have had the most difficult journey possible,” Josephine complained. “I had a fever on mounting the carriage and was sad besides.”[1] As her six coaches of attendants, luggage, jewels, and dresses rumbled through France, Hippolyte was apparently her only consolation—he was returning as aide-de-camp to General Leclerc. By day, he and Josephine had to content themselves with smoldering looks and surreptitious touches of the hand, for they were escorted by Napoleon’s brother Joseph. By night, they took adjoining rooms at inns and slipped into each other’s chambers.

Joseph did not notice the nighttime creakings. He was preoccupied with scribbling away on the draft of a novel and nursing a painful venereal infection. Josephine’s maid, Louise Compoint—one of the four servants accompanying her—did observe her mistress’s behavior, but she was distracted by a romance with the womanizing Junot, who was leading the escort. Certainly, it was clear to many that Hippolyte was in love with Josephine and that he sulked every time she talked to anyone but him. Antoine Hamelin, a friend of Napoleon, felt unhappy seeing Bonaparte, already “covered in a glory that he reflected on his wife,” becoming the “rival of a two-bit little man” who “had nothing to offer but a good figure and the elegance of a wig maker’s boy.”[2]

Finally, two weeks after their departure, Josephine arrived at the gates of Milan. She was met by huge crowds, and she responded as well as she could to the wild applause, trying to hide her misery that Hippolyte was set to leave for the army headquarters of Brescia. Napoleon was still away fighting, but he had decorated the Serbelloni Palace with flowers and filled the garden with new plants for her. The walls were decked with stolen Italian art.

A few days later, he arrived, and the pair spent the third night of their married life together. Josephine was elegant in her clinging dress, quite obviously not pregnant. The hero was so delighted to be in her arms again that he did not complain about her deception. She marshaled her charms to full advantage, flattering him, listening to his descriptions of military plans, and pretending to be jealous of the beautiful Italian women who came to Napoleon’s court. Napoleon was more obsessed than ever. He would often leap away from his papers and, as poor Hamelin blushed to report, play with her as if she were a child and “overwhelm her with such rough caresses that I would go to the window.”[3] But only four days after she arrived, Napoleon was off to battle again, and Josephine was left alone once more. “I am dying of boredom here in the middle of the superb parties given to me,” Josephine bemoaned, missing the Talliens, Barras, and her children.[4] Uncomfortable with the large household the Italians had given her, she discharged the staff and set up a much smaller establishment. Napoleon continued to send billowing letters of romance from the front line, ranting about men who might admire her and waxing lyrical over her bodily delights. “I thought that I loved you but now that I have seen you again, I love you a thousand times more,” he vaunted. “Your charms burn my heart and my senses.” He suggested she become more flawed, “less beautiful, less gracious,” and “never be jealous, never cry, your tears carry away all reason and burn up my blood.”[5]

Napoleon’s hysterical passion was no comfort for Josephine. She wrote to her aunt: “My husband doesn’t love me, he worships me. I think he will go mad. I have seen him only briefly, he is terribly busy.”[6] On July 24, he finally gave Josephine her freedom from her gilded prison and instructed her to come to Cassano. On the way, of course, she would have to stop at Brescia, her chance to see Hippolyte Charles. Napoleon declared his jealousy: “I have been told that you have known for a long time and very well that gentleman you recommended to me for a business venture. If that was the case then you would be a monster.” But he did not really believe she had been unfaithful; he just enjoyed creating a drama. He finished the letter, “a thousand kisses everywhere, everywhere.”[7]

Josephine was on the way to Cassano when she and Hamelin spotted Austrian soldiers nearby. The commander overseeing her journey, General Guillaume, told her that he could not keep her safe and ordered her to leave immediately. She refused to do so until she had word from Napoleon. When he heard that the Austrians were moving toward the town, he sent Junot to tell her to travel to Castelnuovo, accompanied by dragoons. As they traveled, Junot saw an Austrian gunboat on a lake, turning to face its fire at them. He leaped from the carriage and pushed Josephine and her maid into a ditch. The two women had to crawl along under cover until the boat had passed. Hamelin was shocked that “this woman so futile, so occupied with pleasures,” could actually be courageous. “Madame Bonaparte did not display one moment of weakness. Her only thoughts and worries were for the life, the glory, of her husband.”[8] At Castelnuovo, she threw herself, weeping, into Napoleon’s arms. He then packed her and Hamelin off to Tuscany, again escorted by dragoons. On a stop in Florence, her house was invaded by eager locals, who had heard outlandish rumors that she was traveling with the dead body of her husband and wanted to see the corpse with their own eyes.

On August 5, Josephine traveled through Tuscany and at last reached Brescia. After a decisive battle at Castiglione, Napoleon sent word for her to meet him at his base in Cremona. Josephine pleaded that she was exhausted, unable to travel the twenty-five miles to her husband. She asked for one night in Brescia. That evening she had an intimate dinner with Hamelin and Hippolyte Charles. When the men were about to depart, she called Hippolyte back to attend to her. Hamelin later returned to retrieve his hat, and a grenadier refused him entry. Josephine was back in Hippolyte’s embrace.

One night was barely enough, but Josephine had to continue her journey. The next day, she and her husband met at Cremona and she was once more subjected to his passionate caresses. When he set off again, he was not reassured. She returned to the palace in Milan, and he accused her of writing to him as coldly “as if we had been married for fifteen years.”[9] When no reply came, he spiraled into a predictable rage. “You are mean and ugly, very ugly, above all you are shallow. It is evil to deceive a poor husband, a tender lover!”[10]

Josephine may have been a poor correspondent and dawdling with another man, but in Milan she played the wife of the great conquering Frenchman to perfection. She presided over balls and receptions and received delegations. They showered her with gifts, hoping she would win over her husband. The king and queen of Naples sent a set of flawless pearls, and the Duke of Modena offered gold worth thirty million francs if he were permitted to keep one Correggio painting. The pope addressed her as his “daughter in God” and gave her cameos.

Josephine still longed for Paris. “All the Princes of Italy give me parties,” she wrote to her aunt. “Well I would rather be a private citizen in France. I care not for honours bestowed in this country.” And yet she knew she was ungrateful in her hankering to be elsewhere. “My husband is all day in adoration before me as if I were a goddess and there could not possibly be a better husband.”[11] She wrote often to Barras, ending most of her letters, “Bonaparte sends you many messages; he still adores me.”

Two days after his majestic victory at Arcola, Napoleon wrote to his wife. “I am going to bed with my heart full of your adorable image,” he scribbled. “I would be so happy if I could help undress you, small shoulder, small white breast, supple, very firm, the pretty little face and the hair tied up in a scarf à la créole. You know that I always remember the little visits, you know, the little black forest … I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the moment I will be in it. To live within Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields.” He finished with “Kisses on your mouth, your eyelids, your shoulder, your breast, everywhere, everywhere!”[12]

On November 23, he wrote again. “I hope that in a few days you will be in my arms, and I will cover you with a million kisses, flaming like the equator.” Josephine did not receive the letter. Napoleon didn’t know it, but she had gone to Genoa to see Hippolyte Charles. On November 27, Napoleon arrived at the Serbelloni Palace and dashed up the stairs to see his beloved. The bedchamber was empty. He was so shocked he almost fainted. When he came around, the servants told him she was in Genoa.

“I get to Milan, I fling myself into your room; I have left everything to see you, to hold you in my arms … You were not there, you were off somewhere or other in town,” he wrote. He declared his heart was broken. “The unhappiness I feel is incalculable.”[13] The next day, he wrote once more.

While I give to you all my desires, all my thoughts, every second of my life, I submit to the power that your charms, your character, and your whole person have over my poor heart. I am wrong if nature, unkind to me, has not given me the attraction needed to captivate you, but what I deserve from Josephine is respect, esteem and compassion.[14]

NAPOLEON GAVE FULL rein to his dramatic spirit, but there is no mistaking the sincerity of his feeling. Although he was too proud to believe that she would betray him, his painful cry that nature “has not given me the attraction needed to captivate you” was a difficult admission for a man of his vanity. His despair was writ large on his body. A young general arrived in Milan and was shocked to find him “haggard, thin, the skin sticking to his bones, the eyes shining with a constant fever.”[15]

On December 7, Josephine finally returned. Once she was in front of him weeping on her knees, insisting she was true, he forgave her in an instant. He could not seriously believe she would be unfaithful. She threw a grand ball for him, and mollified, he turned his mind back to military planning. “The army is without shoes,” Napoleon wrote heatedly, “without pay, without clothes, the hospitals lack everything, our wounded are lying on the floors.”[16] It was the consequence of using companies like Bodin’s: There was no flour, and men were scouting in the hedges for food.

Despite the poor supplies, Napoleon’s winter campaign was successful, and the Corsican turned his attention to Austria. The Directory wished him to invade the country from the south, in order to meet the French Army of the Rhine. While Josephine remained in Milan, he advanced quickly toward Vienna and was within a hundred miles of his target by the end of March. On March 26, he offered an armistice to the Austrians. He signed a treaty the following month without writing to the Directory.

In May, keen to celebrate his victories, Bonaparte moved his war court from Milan to the castle of Mombello, ten miles away. In Mombello, a castle handsomely decorated with frescoes and luxuriously furnished, he instituted his own court, a carnival of Napoleon. His military success had cast a spell over his supporters, who had become convinced he was all-powerful. As one put it, they thought he gave them “a future without limits.” His reception rooms were always crowded with generals, nobility, and merchants from Italy, begging for the favor of a glance or a brief interview. He dined in public like a king, allowing people to gaze on him from afar. Josephine was always at his side, and he delighted in her knack for performing the role of queen. She took the tributes with grace, led the ladies in the dancing, and won over the enemy and the Frenchmen alike. Every week saw balls, receptions, dinners, and hunting outings, as well as theatrical performances, operas with stars such as Madame Grassini, prima donna of La Scala, and boat outings on Lake Maggiore.

Napoleon spent some of the millions he had stolen on indulging Josephine at Mombello, and he encouraged her to employ gardeners to lay out the grounds. To outsiders, they seemed the perfect couple. Napoleon took “conjugal liberties” with his wife on journeys and jokingly threw “pellets of bread at her during dinner.”[17] Josephine, noted a visiting poet, “frequently caresses her husband and he seems devoted to her.”[18]

All the while, Madame Bonaparte was yearning for Hippolyte. The pint-sized dandy was often at Napoleon’s side, as he had been promoted to captain, and even Josephine did not dare conduct an affair while her husband was present. There were occasional surreptitious kisses and gifts, but these only made the pain of separation worse.

She was more than happy to spend money keeping up the appearances Napoleon desired. Her debts ran into the hundreds of thousands as she patronized the best dressmakers and bought nearly everything offered to her, too lazy and softhearted to haggle.

Josephine was loved, but her pug, Fortuné, had been barking at and threatening the other dogs at Mombello. “I never knew a more horrible animal,” said Josephine’s friend Laure Permond.[19] The little dog eventually picked a fight with the cook’s mongrel, and the bigger animal savaged Fortuné to death. Josephine was distraught. It was a sad fate for the heroic pet who had run into Les Carmes prison to find his mistress. Napoleon was exultant at the death of his enemy, but sympathetic Hippolyte secretly bought her a replacement dog, a soft bundle she could embrace while she thought of her lover.

Napoleon hated the new animal. One day while out walking, he saw the cook trying to hide in the bushes. When he asked the reason for the man’s bizarre behavior, he was told that the cook was ashamed of his dog’s crime and afraid that Napoleon might castigate him. Napoleon asked after the dog and was told it had been banned from the grounds of the palace. “Bring him back, perhaps he will rid me of the new one too,” said Napoleon.[20]

Worse for Josephine, the Bonaparte family had arrived, and proximity was not breeding love. “I have for him the most lively affection,” Napoleon wrote to her of his brother just after their marriage. “I trust he will obtain yours, he merits it.”[21] Poor Napoleon was ever hopeful; but though they were divided over so much, the Bonaparte family was united in reviling Josephine. Joseph led their resentment, furious that her spendthrift ways drained Napoleon’s purse. Hundreds of thousands of francs’ worth of confiscated gold and funds ended up in the pockets of the Bonapartes, but still they complained. When Napoleon was made commander in chief in 1795, he had sent sixty thousand francs to his mother and made Joseph consul in Italy and Lucien commissary with the Army of the North. His uncle Cardinal Fesch (only six years Napoleon’s senior, the child of the remarriage of his grandmother) left the priesthood to become a commissary, and in Mombello he was seizing artworks galore.

Joseph acted as the family banker and was obsessed by money. His wife, Julie Clary, was a simple, modest woman, but unfortunately, as Désirée’s sister, she could hardly be Josephine’s ally—although she was pleased by Josephine’s concession of always allowing her to enter a room first. The Bonaparte matriarch, Letizia, spoke Italian all the time and rarely managed a few words of French. Brought low by years of hardship, she was also preoccupied by money. When Napoleon complained, she would shrug: “If ever all of you fall on my hands again, you will thank me for saving now.”[22]

Elisa was the least troublesome of the sisters, a plain woman whose desperation for power was not as naked as that of her siblings. She had been forced to marry a Corsican officer, thanks to an absence of other suitors, but was little ruffled by her unhappy marriage. She tended to side with Lucien, but she was reasonably harmless, running an intellectual salon in Paris and supporting the author Chateaubriand against Napoleon’s attempt to banish him. She hated Josephine but contented herself with sniping and complaining rather than attempting to overthrow her.

For Letizia and the younger Bonapartes—Louis, Pauline, Caroline, and Jérôme—life had been a struggle, especially after the death of Carlo. Those early years of poverty had scarred them all and made them greedy for money. Louis was sickly, lazy, and in the throes of gonorrhea: Paranoia, sores, and delusions made him a man of “harsh melancholy,” as Josephine’s lady-in-waiting put it.[23] Jérôme was the worst of all, a spoiled spendthrift who expected his brother to pay the bills. And then there was Napoleon’s beautiful and aggressive sixteen-year-old sister, Pauline, Josephine’s sworn enemy. Sensual and flirtatious, with a thick Italian accent and a frustratingly vague air, Pauline left a trail of chaos behind her. She loathed Josephine, stuck her tongue out at her in public if she felt like it, and tried to outdo her in diamonds and dresses. Pauline called her sister-in-law “la vieille” (the old lady) behind her back, and every word about Josephine’s beauty grated on her sensibilities. She tried to steal her patterns for gowns from the dressmakers and also attempted to find out her boudoir secrets. “I am as good as she is,” she claimed. “She is only more experienced than I am.” She was obsessed with the politician Louis Fréron, who was heavily associated with Thermidor, twenty-four years her senior, and famous for his mistresses. On June 14, Pauline was married off to the somber General Leclerc, twenty-seven and very responsible. Napoleon hoped he might keep her out of trouble and away from Fréron. It made Pauline dislike Josephine even more, as she believed her sister-in-law to be behind the plan.

By September, Josephine was suffering and even spending was no respite. She was told that Lazare Hoche had died of consumption at only twenty-nine. Hippolyte Charles had gone on campaign with General Leclerc, and she heard that he had begun an affair with an Italian woman. She was very worried, for he still had her love letters. He had the power to expose her to Napoleon, the gloating Bonapartes, and a French public keen to hear scandal.

Back in France, the people were avidly following Bonaparte’s victories. He was still their hero, but the Directory was deeply unpopular. The royalists had won a majority in the assembly of 1797, and the aristocrats were flocking back to the city and talking of restoring the king. Conspirators hung around corners and in clubs, wearing black velvet collars or wielding knotted handkerchiefs to show their allegiances.

Barras knew he was in a vulnerable position. Along with Talleyrand, he suggested that Napoleon might consider a coup d’état to show the Parisians who was in charge. The general shied from suppressing the popular will again, and gave the task to one of his generals, Pierre Augereau. The Directory spread rumors that a monarchist coup was imminent, and on September 3, Parisians awoke to find they were under military rule. Augereau’s troops had laid siege to the assembly, which was being held at the Tuileries. The next day, the deputies were arrested, the newspapers were shut down, and the elections were annulled. It was the end of the idealism of representation that had founded the Revolution of 1789. Over 160 captives described as “enemies” were shot or deported. Ordinary Parisians cowered in their houses, shopkeepers refused to unfasten their shutters. The bloodletting was back.

In October, Napoleon confirmed the peace with Austria. Terrified of the combined might of the French and the Austrians, the Republic of Venice invited Bonaparte to visit in the hope of winning his protection. Unbeknown to them, France had secretly offered to cede Venice to Austria in return for Belgium and Lombardy. Aware that his visit would seem to Venice like tacit protection and that a refusal to go would pitch them into panic, Napoleon sent Josephine as his diplomatic representative.

The woman who once was an uncouth Martinique girl set off in style, after demanding a splendid collection of gowns paid for by army funds. The cost of her wardrobe could have financed two or three months of the campaign. Her huge entourage rumbled off to Venice and was met with an ecstatic welcome. A hundred and fifty thousand people hung out of windows, throwing flowers to her and waving banners. To them, she was as grand as Cleopatra. The following day, in a procession of hundreds of boats decorated with flowers, she went to dine in the open air at the Lido. The city authorities had spent weeks on the preparations. The highlight was a majestic evening of fireworks and another procession along the canal, followed by a grand ball at the Doge’s Palace, where she was the guest of honor. On her return to Passirano, a delegation came to offer her a hundred thousand ducats if she could persuade Napoleon to favor Venice. Josephine even received a handsome diamond ring for a speech she gave in their support. She smiled and nodded, accepted their offerings, entirely aware that Napoleon had already sold the city to Vienna.

In November, Napoleon departed Italy to debate the fate of Germany at Radstadt, and Josephine returned to Paris. Throughout France, she received tributes to Napoleon as towns cheered her arrival and threw magnificent receptions in her honor. She smiled graciously, but her mind was ever elsewhere. Hippolyte Charles galloped after her and joined her at Nevers, his pockets stuffed with smuggled diamonds. He vowed to her that there had been no Italian woman—and now that he was no longer expected to fight in Italy, he could attend Josephine’s whims as they idled across the countryside.

Napoleon arrived in Paris on December 5, exhausted by his victories. He was shocked by his newly renovated home, and not in a pleasant way. Josephine had sent further orders from Italy asking the painter Jacques-Louis David to create a frieze in the salon, and she had been buying more mahogany furniture. The bill reached a huge 300,000 francs, scandalous when the house itself was worth only 40,000. It was fortunate that Napoleon had stolen millions of francs’ worth of gold from Italy. His general’s income was a mere 15,000 francs a year, barely enough to fund Josephine’s makeup.[24]

All Paris wished to celebrate him. Their street was renamed rue de la Victoire in his honor, and when Hortense arrived to see him, she found “people thronged in such vast numbers to cheer ‘The Conqueror of Italy’ that the sentries stationed in the gateway of the house on the rue de la Victoire could hardly hold them back.”[25] Like many women, Madame de Staël had convinced herself that she was the hero’s ideal companion. She wrote him gushing letters comparing him to Scipio and Tancred, described him as “the most extraordinary genius ever seen,” and complained he was married to an “insignificant little Creole, quite incapable of understanding or appreciating his heroic qualities.”[26] The last thing Napoleon wanted was a strident, conspicuously clever woman such as Madame de Staël appreciating his heroic qualities, for he found the idea of women meddling in politics simply unbearable. Unfortunately, the more he ignored her, the more she swamped him with letters and, later, waylaid him at balls. When she first heard that Napoleon had returned, she dashed to his house. On being told that she could not enter because he was in the bath, she tried to push her way past, crying, “No matter, genius has no sex!”

Four days after the hero arrived, he was welcomed in a huge ceremony at the Luxembourg Palace. In front of crowds of spectators, Talleyrand presented “the son and hero of the Revolution” to the Directory, declaring him a simple soldier who was uninterested in power. Barras thanked Napoleon for his presence and urged him to go on to conquer Britain.

Talleyrand intended one day to install himself as ruler, and he hoped to use Napoleon as the military ballast to shore up his regime. He decided to cement his association with Napoleon by throwing a scandalously expensive ball to celebrate him, designed and overseen by Bélanger, a fashionable architect, who directed teams of carpenters and painters to remodel and decorate the Hôtel de Galliffet on the rue de Grenelle. Five hundred people were invited, all instructed not to wear any items of clothing from Britain. The ball was due to be held on December 25 and was to be dedicated to Josephine—but by the twenty-fourth, she still had not arrived.

She was spending her time with Hippolyte Charles, traveling slowly so that she could dine intimately with him and sleep longer in the mornings after their nights of passion. More in love with her handsome dandy than ever, she dreaded drawing close to the capital, where she would be separated from him and he would fall prey to other women.

Talleyrand postponed the ball until the twenty-eighth. The food and flowers had to be disposed of and reordered and hundreds of blossoming trees sent away, as they would not last. Servants gleefully pocketed fine breads and desserts from the untouched buffet. By the twenty-seventh, Josephine still had not appeared, and Talleyrand postponed the ball once more.

On January 3, she finally returned. Napoleon was furious, but she wept fetchingly, and as always he forgave her. The ball proceeded. In the first courtyard, the guests saw a great re-creation of a military camp, with soldiers from every regiment in the Army of Italy gathered around a fire. The reception rooms were decorated with stolen Italian art, and Talleyrand himself stood at the center of a staircase draped in myrtle. Napoleon and Josephine entered with Hortense, all plainly dressed, in stark contrast to the magnificent costumes of the other guests. The crowd fell silent at the sight of them. And just before the ball, fireworks shot into the sky and painted “Vive la République” in flaming colors.

When dinner was called at eleven P.M., Talleyrand announced that he would revive, for a single night, the old custom in which the women were seated at the table while the men remained behind them, serving them food and wine. Napoleon gallantly took up his position and impressed the company with his solicitousness. The meal’s toast was to the “Citoyenne who bears the name most dear to glory!” After dinner, Josephine was celebrated in a song as the “dear companion” of the “conquering hero.” Standing, cold and tired, next to her already impatient husband, she had to smile beatifically as she listened to the voices proclaim “By tending to his happiness / You acquit the obligation of France.”

Try as he might, Napoleon could not escape Madame de Staël. She captured him after dinner and demanded, “Which woman in history do you most admire?” He retorted, “The one who has borne the most children,” and marched abruptly away. “Extraordinary man,” she exclaimed, undeterred.

The ball was unforgettable, even for blasé Parisians used to inventive entertainments. The tableaux were beautiful and the food divine, and it was the first night when the company danced the new and risqué waltz. Napoleon, Josephine, and Hortense departed at one A.M., though the party was intended to continue until dawn. Poor Talleyrand was then presented with hundreds of bills, inflated by Josephine’s nonarrival. Bélanger “begged the Minister to observe that the various delays occasioned by the late arrival of Madame Bonaparte caused a very large extra expense for items twice replaced like the 930 trees.” He also had to pay twice for painters, carpenters, masons, candlestick makers, engravers, and gardeners, as well as massive sums for the buffet and musicians.[27]

Underneath her veneer of graciousness, Josephine was deeply unhappy. She was uncomfortable with her new celebrity, missing Hippolyte Charles and suffering from Napoleon’s fury over the bills for the renovations, as well as her lateness. She was worried about losing his favor—despite her infidelity, she was fond of Napoleon and wished to remain his cherished wife. When she learned that her maid Louise Compoint had been continuing her affair with Napoleon’s aide Junot, she took out her temper on the girl. Josephine was very fond of Louise, and the two had dined together more like companions than mistress and servant. But the news that she was Junot’s lover was too much to bear, and Josephine dismissed her.[28] Distraught, Louise began to plot her revenge.

CHAPTER 9

“I Am So Distressed at Being Separated from Him”

As his fame grew, Napoleon became increasingly convinced that he would be poisoned. He employed someone to taste his food at all public events, took his own plate and glass to dinners, and kept a horse saddled and ready at the back of 6 rue de la Victoire in case he needed to flee. His friend Bourrienne declared that Napoleon had received a letter from a woman informing him that he would be killed. The woman was later found with her throat cut and her body mutilated.[1] Napoleon seemed to believe the threats to his life came from members of the Directory. In spite of all the pomp and glory of the ball they had thrown for him, he was afraid of them.

“My health is ruined,” he complained to Joseph. “I can barely get into the saddle and need two years’ rest.” He was exaggerating—his health was fine. He was in fact living quietly in an attempt to win over the five directors. They were teetering on a political knife-edge and might turn against him at any moment. When he had boasted to Barras that the Italians wished to make him their king, he received a sharp response. “You are right not to dream of any such thing in France, for if the Directory was to send you to the Temple [the jail where King Louis and Marie Antoinette had been imprisoned before execution] tomorrow, you would not find four people who opposed it.”[2] Barras had no qualms about threatening his protégé when he thought him too big for his boots.

The Directory was distrusted by much of the population. Inflation was rising, and the directors were seen as wealthy and corrupt, taking from the people for their own gain. Napoleon despised them as weak, “disturbed by the passions of the women, the children, and the servants,” but he had to pretend to be subservient to them.[3] He could not glory in his success, as he had done in Italy. He refused invitations, sat in the shadows at the theater, and declined tributes. He also presented himself as a scholar, attending the Institut National des Sciences et des Arts. “I shall bury myself in a retreat,” he declared. Talleyrand had pressed the Institut to accept him as a member, and Napoleon was delighted to be recognized as an intellectual rather than a military bruiser. He put it about that he and Josephine had become retiring scholars. But ultimately, Napoleon was biding his time. As he said to Bourrienne, “I should overthrow them and be crowned king, but it is not yet time for that.”[4]

Josephine tended Napoleon’s salon and invited poets, writers, and scientists to the rue de la Victoire in order to bolster his pretense of being retired. In public, she played the consort so effectively that everyone was taken in by her husband’s act. He “shuns anything which might draw attention to himself,” one newspaper noted. Meanwhile, his mind was working obsessively on his next conquest. “This little Europe is a pinprick,” he wrote. “I must go to the Orient, all great reputations have been won there.”[5]

At the tender age of eleven at Brienne, he had read of the campaigns of Alexander the Great, who had embarked to the Orient at twenty. In 1789 Napoleon had been gripped by Voyage en Egypte by Constantin de Volney, a young Frenchman who had spent three years wandering the country in native dress; when he met Volney on Corsica in 1792, he had questioned him intensely. In Italy at Mombello, inspired after dining with the French ambassador to Constantinople, Napoleon had dashed off a letter to the Directory declaring that it was time to take Egypt. He received no reply, but he was not discouraged.

In July 1797, Talleyrand gave a speech before the Institut proposing an invasion of Egypt. A fortnight later, he was appointed to the role of foreign minister. Unaware that Talleyrand had raised Egypt in his lecture, Napoleon wrote to him. “We must take Egypt,” he proposed. “This country has never belonged to a European nation.” He asked for twenty-five thousand men and eight or ten ships of the line.

France needed a conqueror of international might. The empire she had gained throughout the seventeenth century had been gradually taken by the British. Pondicherry and trading posts on the east coast of India were lost in 1761, Louisiana had been claimed by the Spanish, and Britain took the Canadian colonies in 1763. And of course, Britain and France had fought a long and continuing battle over the islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Saint-Domingue. France wished for an empire—and Egypt was a great prize. Napoleon planned to continue from Egypt to India, following in the footsteps of Alexander. He would take scientists and philosophers and lead a voyage of discovery and cultural enrichment, as well as adding to France’s imperial might.

Napoleon drew up careful plans, demanding 30,000 men and 3,000 horses. The Directory deemed the campaign impossible—the soldiers were needed to defend French interests in Italy. Aside from Talleyrand, the gray bankers of the Directory thought Egypt a romantic pipe dream. Undaunted, Napoleon deputized Josephine to win them around. She sent letters, entertained them, hung on their every word, and turned the full force of her seductive personality on Barras. “I wait in the hope that our friendship prompts you to sacrifice a quarter of an hour to come and see me, where you will find me absolutely alone. I hope, my dear Barras, that you will not refuse this mark of interest from a woman whom you care for.”[6] Josephine smiled, caressed, fluttered submissive eyelashes, and lit candles for intimate suppers, but the men of the Directory remained unconvinced. Set on invading Britain, they sent Napoleon to survey the Channel ports in northern France and Belgium in February, leaving Josephine on her own again. She dined with Barras, saw Hippolyte, and met with Bodin, who was still earning money from his shady practices.

Napoleon returned on February 21, earlier than she had expected. She wrote to Barras’s secretary: “Bonaparte has come back tonight. Will you, my dear Bottot, express to Barras my regrets that I cannot dine with him tonight. Tell him not to forget me. You know better than anyone how I am placed. Farewell, I send you my sincere friendship.”[7]

Josephine greeted her husband warmly, and Bonaparte was delighted to see his wife so attentive. Unfortunately, the haze of passion did not last long. In March, the newspapers erupted in fury over Bodin, his cheap horses and poor weapons, the exploited army, and the French people who had been let down by the greedy businessman. The Bodin Company became the bête noire of the French people. Napoleon, like most soldiers, hated army profiteers, “the scourge and leprosy of the service.”[8] He was stunned by suggestions that his wife was linked to an organization that had been revealed to be so corrupt. Unfortunately, the dismissed maid, Louise Compoint, chose that moment to avenge herself by spilling the beans about Josephine’s relationship with Hippolyte. Normally, Napoleon would have paid no attention to a disgruntled servant, but now her words were yet another piece of evidence to Josephine’s disadvantage.

Joseph heard the news and struck fast. He went to Napoleon and told him that his wife had been working with Bodin through Hippolyte Charles. The two brothers confronted her, with Joseph relishing every moment. They demanded to know whether she was acquainted with Citoyen Bodin and if she had gained him contracts with the Army of Italy. Josephine denied it, and they moved on to more serious questions. Napoleon pushed his wife into a corner and asked whether Captain Charles lived with Bodin at 100 Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and did Josephine go there every day?

She resorted to her typically dramatic responses. She wept, railed, and cried that if he wanted a divorce, he had only to say so. She bewailed her fate and said that he was distressing her; then she pretended to faint and said she was cowering from his blows. Later, she wrote to Hippolyte in panic, describing the ruthless interrogation.

I said that what he was talking of meant nothing to me; if he wanted a divorce he had only to give the word; he had no need to use such means; and I was the most unfortunate of women and the most miserable.

Napoleon was won over, as delighted as ever by her theatrics and the tableau of her in tears, her rouge streaked over her face.[9] But he had not forgiven her entirely. He made it very clear that she would not be allowed out and she must never see Hippolyte again.

Josephine wept again and thanked her husband. But behind her tears, she was desperately in love with Hippolyte.

Yes, my Hippolyte, they have my unalloyed hatred; you alone have my tenderness and my love; they must see now, as a result of the terrible state I have been in for days, how much I abhor them; they can see my sadness—my despair at not being able to see you as often as I wish. Hippolyte, I shall kill myself—yes, I wish to end a life that henceforth would be hopeless if it could not be devoted to you. Alas! What have I done to these monsters? But they are acting in vain, I will never give in to their disgraceful behavior![10]

She was also thinking carefully.

Tell Bodin, I implore you, to say that he doesn’t know me; that it has not been through me that he got the contracts for the Army of Italy; let him tell the door-keeper at No. 100 that when people ask him if Bodin lives there he is to say that he doesn’t know him. Tell Bodin not to use the letters which I have given him for Italy until some time after his arrival when he needs them … Ah, they torment me in vain! They will never separate me from my Hippolyte![11]

These few incredible letters, found among Hippolyte Charles’s papers, put her in a terrible light. Reckless and desperate to be with her lover, she said she would go clandestinely to Bodin’s.

I will do everything to see you today. If I cannot, I will spend the evening at Bodin’s and tomorrow I will send Blondin [a servant] to let you know the time when I can meet you in the garden of Mousseaux. Adieu, my Hippolyte, a thousand kisses, as burning as is my heart, and as devoted.[12]

I am going, my dear Hippolyte, to the country. I shall be back between half past five and six, to see you at Bodin’s. Yes, my Hippolyte, life is a continual torture. You alone can make me happy. Tell me that you love me, and only me. I shall be the happiest of women.

Send me, by means of Blondin, 50,000 livres from the notes in your possession. Callot is demanding them. Farewell, I send you a thousand tender kisses. Tout à toi.[13]

Josephine’s addiction to Hippolyte was pure danger. Underneath all her gentle smiles and flirtatious banter with Napoleon’s generals and political friends, she was craving adventure and rebellion. The deception, the undercover assignations, and the secrets that constituted her affair were intoxicating.

But Napoleon was touched by his wife’s kohl-streaked tears and believed her promises of fidelity. He cemented their reunion by promptly buying their house in rue de la Victoire on March 26 for just over 50,000 francs. Indeed, it would have been foolish not to, since Josephine had spent 300,000 on the decorations. She was also fortunate. The Directory abandoned the plans to invade Britain. Napoleon was told he could advance to Egypt, and all his energies were soon devoted to his new campaign.

The Directory set firm conditions for their brave young general. He could have 25,000 men, he must raise much of the money for the expedition, and he was forbidden to march on to India. Talleyrand would assure the authorities at Constantinople that Napoleon had no aims to attack the Ottoman Empire and merely wished to overthrow the Mamelukes of Egypt, allowing the French to trade in peace.

The Directory’s decision threw Napoleon into a frenzy of activity; he worked day and night, planning his strategy. His way of raising the money was simple: He would steal from the countries he had “liberated” from tyranny. Berthier, his chief of staff, traveled to Rome to rifle the Vatican; General Joubert did the same in Holland; and General Brune stole three million gold francs from the Swiss—the entire exchequer.

The greatest minds of Paris, including architects, artists, composers, astronomers, botanists, surgeons, literary scholars, cartographers, zoologists, and printers were invited. The ships would be packed with everything from telescopes to chemistry sets. Napoleon even ordered one of the newest Montgolfier balloons—not to view enemy troop positions but in the hope of stunning the Egyptians into awe.

Bonaparte’s official line was that he was aiming to invade Britain. Only his inner circle of generals and Josephine knew the truth. Even the minister of war was kept in the dark. Indeed, some of the scholars refused Napoleon’s invitation because they thought Britain too chilly and lacking in scientific potential. Josephine had to keep her mouth closed and did not even tell Hippolyte of the plans. Hippolyte may have been her lover, but she was not prepared to betray her husband militarily—even if she could have profited from sharing such important information.

Finding money, discussing balloons, and drawing up strategies preoccupied Napoleon completely, though he did attend to pleasing Josephine’s children, finally winning over Hortense with gentle expressions of interest in her hobbies, and offering to take Eugène as his aide-decamp. And Bourrienne, who had been attempting to make himself useful to Napoleon since their school days at Brienne, received his reward: Napoleon appointed him his private secretary and agreed to take him to Egypt.

Josephine begged him to allow her to come too, telling him that her childhood on Martinique meant she would be accustomed to the heat. The Directory had commanded him to return in six months, but she knew that he had been suggesting he might stay six years, depending on the course of events. “I shall colonize that country,” he said. “We are only twenty-nine years old, we’ll be thirty-five then.”[14] She would be in a vulnerable position if Napoleon was away for longer than six months. The credit she was given by shopkeepers and bankers was contingent on her promise that he would be present to pay her debts. While he was traveling around the Orient, her lenders might very well call in their loans. Napoleon refused her permission to come to Egypt and told her she could accompany him to see him off—but no farther.

As insurance, she begged Napoleon to buy the country estate of Malmaison before he left. This was the beautiful house she had admired from her window when she lived at Croissy with Madame Hosten. Napoleon could certainly understand the appeal of a country estate. He agreed to view the house. The owners, the Couteulx du Molays, had bought the property in 1771 and once had thrown lavish receptions where they entertained members of the highest society and artists such as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun, the great painter of one of Marie Antoinette’s most celebrated portraits. But aristocratic fortunes had declined after the Revolution, and they needed to sell. Unfortunately for Josephine, the hero of France was scandalized by the asking price and told his wife to abandon her plans.

The house at 6 rue de la Victoire became overwhelmed by preparations for departure. Generals, messengers, scholars, and artists were constantly at Napoleon’s door as his brilliant mind oversaw the loading of thousands of men, horses, and civilians, and all their equipment, onto vessels at six different ports. Time was of the essence: He needed to be in Egypt before the annual flooding of the Nile made campaigning impossible. On the evening of May 4, the Bonapartes dined with Barras and saw Macbeth at the theater. Then they departed Paris at four in the morning, hoping that the early start would mean no British spies had spotted them leaving. Napoleon and Josephine hurried to Toulon, arriving on May 9. There she saw for the first time the French fleet bound for adventure. One hundred and eighty ships stretched for miles, their masts swaying in the breeze.

The crown jewel, L’Orient, was Napoleon’s flagship, the most powerful warship in the world. Made from 6,000 oak trees, it was 214 feet long, had 120 cannons, and carried 2,000 men.[15] Napoleon’s fine chamber contained a library of nearly 300 books, carefully chosen by the poet Arnault. He had the Koran, the Hindu Vedas, and Volney’s Voyage. He also had a printing press on board, to make pamphlets declaring his excellence to the people of Egypt.

Bonaparte assumed his position on the admiral’s barge and boarded each warship to inspect it. After months of pretending retirement, Napoleon had his reward of setting off with a display of pomp and grandeur in front of thousands. His soldiers cheered him, along with the scholars and their instruments (who were finally beginning to wonder if they were really going to Britain). Stowed away on the ships were more than three hundred women. Along with the washerwomen and seamstresses who officially accompanied the army were the wives of officers, bundled up in men’s uniforms while boarding and ensconced in cabins for the long journey. Napoleon proudly showed Josephine his quarters on L’Orient, which included a special bed on rolling casters to assist with seasickness and storage for eight hundred bottles of wine. This only intensified her desire to go, but he remained staunch in his refusal. Egypt was a voyage into the unknown and he wanted to play the great man—with no distractions.

Bonaparte was not yet thirty, and his mission to Egypt would be the first great seaborne invasion of the modern world. The following day, he inspected the troops and told them that the ideal of liberty of the Revolution meant France should conquer distant countries. If they succeeded, he promised, they would each be given six acres of land.

Bonaparte did not depart immediately, for there was a storm reported at sea. While they waited to leave, Josephine continued to beg to accompany him. At last he agreed that she could join him later at Naples, once he had passed the British fleet sailing under Nelson’s command, which he knew was heading into the Mediterranean. On May 19, the sea was calm, and the French fleet departed. Josephine watched from a balcony and wept as her husband left amid the firing of cannons, the shouts of people, and the music of brass bands.

NAPOLEON SET OFF toward Egypt, the conquering hero at the front of the fleet funded by money he had stolen from half of Europe. For him, it was a time of hope and almost unbounded opportunity. On the journey over, he initiated conversations with fellow officers on topics ranging from the age of the world to whether other planets were inhabited. Even the realm of space travel seemed open to him!

While Napoleon pondered alien life-forms, Josephine followed his orders and waited at Toulon for two weeks for news that the fleet had passed Sicily safely. Once she had it, she set off for the spa town at Plombières to take the waters before traveling to Naples. On the way to Lyon, she wrote to tell Barras that General Brune—the French commander in Switzerland—was trying to break the government contracts held by the Bodin Company. “Write on their behalf, I beg you, to General Brune,” she urged. “Both you and I owe everything to them.”[16] Even though she knew how much Napoleon hated army profiteers, she was still trying to help Bodin’s company—and thus Hippolyte.

Plombières was a quiet town in the lush pine forests of the Vosges Mountains in Lorraine, made up of small houses with balconies. Dating back to Roman times, the original baths had been destroyed and then restored in the early seventeenth century. Since then, hundreds of well-heeled invalids had flocked to Plombières: rheumatic old women and gout-ridden men, along with dozens of frantic infertile women.[17] The local doctor, Johannes Martinet, ran a roaring trade and in 1791 published a book promoting the waters and their wonderful effects—Observations sur quelques maladies chroniques et sur les effets des eaux de Plombières dans ces maladies. He was an advertising genius holding out the ever-inviting promise of eternal youth. Josephine lodged in the Pension Martinet with her maids and her huge wardrobe; she took the waters and promenaded in the town. Plombières was a good place to prove her virtue to her husband, for it was full of ladies trying to cure their health and become pregnant. One visitor who attended a ball reported that there were sixty women to twelve men, and only four of the men were fit to dance.

Having learned from her previous mistakes, Josephine wrote eagerly to Bonaparte, sending the letters by courier to Barras to forward. “I am so distressed at being separated from him that I cannot overcome my sadness,” she told Barras. “His brother, with whom he corresponds so closely, is so horrible about me that I am always worried when I am far from Bonaparte.”[18] She dreaded Joseph. “He is a vile, abominable person,” she wrote heatedly, “some day you will know what he is like.”[19] And yet she was still flirting with her former lover. “I wish that the waters of Plombières could be prescribed for you,” she told Barras coyly, “so that you could decide to come here and take them. It would be very kind of you to have an ailment in order to be able to cause me pleasure. I am very devoted to you.”[20]

The woman who once infuriated Bonaparte with her failure to write was now scribbling every day. “You know him and you understand how he would hate not getting news from me regularly,” she wrote to Barras. “He says that I am to rejoin him as soon as possible and so I am hurrying to finish the cure.”[21]

The debacle with the Bodin Company had made Josephine feel nervous about her husband traveling without her, and she genuinely desired to go to Egypt, at least for a short time. And yet after her cure, she planned to return to Paris for a few days before setting out to Italy to meet the boat. While in the capital, she would have found it hard to resist seeing Hippolyte.

Either way, she did not have a chance to prove her newfound devotion. On June 20, two days after she wrote the letters to Barras, a maid called Josephine and her visitors to the balcony to see a little dog on the street. They all rushed outside and the terrace collapsed under their weight. The party fell twenty feet to the ground. One of her companions broke her leg, and Josephine herself was very badly hurt, for she was at the front and her visitors had landed on her. She had a suspected broken pelvis, and her spine was so bruised that she could not move.

The physician Martinet, a man more used to treating country burghers than the wife of the conqueror of Italy, promptly wrapped her in the bloody skin of a newly killed sheep, bled her, administered an enema, and plunged her into a hot bath. Martinet sent daily reports to Barras, intent on ensuring the health of such an estimable patient. Poor Josephine was tormented by douches, hot baths, more enemas, poultices, plasters, leeches, camphor, and compresses of brandy and boiled potatoes. Determined to make his fame out of the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, Martinet took notes of his treatments and would eventually publish everything in his Journal physico-médical des eaux de Plombières. He informed the horrified Josephine that she had to stay there for two months, imbibing the waters and submitting to his treatments.

Hortense was rushed to Plombières from school in Paris, arriving to find her mother an invalid, unable even to feed herself. The whole plight was made worse by Napoleon’s missives; unaware of her accident, he assured her that he could not live without his Josephine and reiterated the instructions to embark at Naples. She told everyone who would listen that she was too ill to move. “I wish my health would permit me to depart now; but I don’t see the end of my cure,” she wrote to Barras in July. “I cannot stand upright for more than ten minutes without terrible pains in the lower back. I do nothing but cry. The doctors say that in a month I shall be cured.” She told Barras, however, that his letter had “put balm on my bruises.”[22]

Whether it was Barras’s letters or Martinet’s enthusiastic baths and potions, something did the trick, or at least did not hinder a natural improvement. By August, Josephine had recovered and agreed to act as godparent to Martinet’s newborn daughter—and she asked Barras to be a godparent, too. On August 15, she and Hortense arrived back in Paris to find pictures of Napoleon suspended around the city. She was still hopeful of joining him in Egypt, if a ship could be found. But then a shocking piece of news came through. Upon hearing it, Josephine wrote immediately to Barras. “I am so worried about the news that has just come in via Malta that I must ask to see you alone tonight at nine. Give orders for no one else to enter.”[23]

On August 1, at Aboukir, off the coast of Alexandria, Nelson had attacked the French fleet. All but four of Napoleon’s ships had been sunk.

When British spies had seen the ships assembling at the French ports, they began to debate Napoleon’s destination. The minister for war and the British consul in Livorno suggested he might be heading to Egypt. Earl Spencer, first lord of the Admiralty, ordered the dispatch of Horatio Nelson, then rear admiral of the Blue, to the Mediterranean to ascertain Napoleon’s destination. Though he was missing an arm and was wounded in one eye, thirty-nine-year-old Nelson was a genius for strategy and propaganda, and he was equipped with a pathological hatred of the French. Nelson had much in common with Napoleon: He was also a social outsider and impatient with etiquette. He had been living in miserable retirement with his wife, making model ships and reading The Times, and he was hungry to be back at sea chasing his prey.

Napoleon was aware the British had been dispatched, but he was too convinced of his own brilliance to worry. He avoided Nelson with ease and, on June 11, took Malta and raided the island’s coffers. The Knights of Malta, the possessors of the island, were aging, and the ten thousand men who made up the garrison were not loyal and were unlikely to risk their lives to defend their masters. Napoleon banished the Knights and set about making the island into a modern state. He issued dispatches, abolished feudal privileges, and freed two thousand slaves. Meanwhile, his men scoured the monasteries, churches, and knightly properties for treasure. On June 19, they set off once more, their trunks filled with gold.

On board, Napoleon pondered Islamic history and chattered about his wife. “Josephine almost always formed the subject of our intimate chats,” Bourrienne noted. “His love for her verged on idolatory.”[24] The thought of Josephine was a distraction from the awful conditions on board, for the meticulously planned food stores had spoiled and the men were living on dry, wormy biscuits. When the fleet landed at Aboukir, Napoleon was concerned that Nelson might catch them—they were very vulnerable to attack just in port. He demanded his men disembark immediately, but the sea was rough and many boats capsized. Already exhausted, the soldiers began marching to Alexandria, spurred on by the thought of finding drinking water. Alexandria surrendered quickly, and Napoleon’s men won a victory over Mameluke troops at Shubra Khit, a village on the Nile. Buoyed by these triumphs, he commanded his battle-scarred men to continue on to Cairo.

If he had been missing Josephine on the boat, he was craving her in Egypt. In the calm after the victory over the Mamelukes, he had been boasting of his wife’s excellence. Junot, seeing the men laughing behind their hands as their leader extolled Josephine’s virtue, decided Napoleon must be told the truth. A cynical philanderer, Junot had little belief in love. Most of all, he hated Josephine for dismissing Louise because of their affair, and he wanted revenge.

As Junot accompanied Napoleon past an oasis, he seized his moment. He told him that Josephine had continued her affair with Hippolyte and that all Paris knew it. He reiterated that Louise had traveled with Josephine en route to Italy and she had seen everything. Napoleon fell into a state of shock: His face paled and his limbs began jerking. He beat his head with his fists. “I have no wish to be the laughingstock … I will divorce her.” He cried out, “Divorce—I want a public and sensational divorce.”

He dashed to Bourrienne and asked him the truth.

Josephine!—and I six hundred leagues from her—you ought to have told me. That she should have deceived me like this!—Woe to them!—I will exterminate the whole race of fops and puppies! As to her—divorce! Yes, divorce! A public and open divorce![25]

Napoleon said he would write to his brother Joseph to pursue the divorce, but Bourrienne attempted to quiet him, urging that it would be unreasonable to rely on hearsay evidence while so far away. He told him that it was unfair to accuse a woman of such infidelity when she was not present to defend herself. As for divorce, “it would be time to think of that hereafter.”[26] Napoleon eventually agreed to restrain himself from immediate action. His anger was subsiding. “I would give anything if what Junot had told me was untrue, I love her so much.”[27] But the seeds had been sown, and it was clearly only a matter of time before he abandoned his wife. Night after night, Napoleon called his stepson to his tent to bemoan Josephine’s behavior. Eugène was powerless to defend her in the face of his emotion. Josephine was effectively ruined.

Napoleon was distraught, but he was able to put his feelings aside to focus on the campaign. At Embabeh, they took on the Mamelukes again, and he sent home news of his great victory at “The Battle of the Pyramids.” On July 24, he entered Cairo. Instead of the opulence they expected, his men found “shadowy houses often in ruins, even the public buildings seem like dungeons, shops are nothing better than stables.” Mercilessly, they complained that all the children were too skinny and covered in flies.[28]

Napoleon requisitioned the palace of Alfi Elfi Bey on the edge of the city. Only recently renovated, the residence was a riot of marble, mirrors, damask curtains, and silk-woven Persian carpets, with sunken baths on both floors. He settled in and sent the Directory his requirements for creating a properly French community in Cairo.

1st, a company of actors; 2d, a company of dancers; 3d, some dealers in marionettes, at least three or four; 4th, a hundred French women; 5th, the wives of all the men employed in the corps; 6th, twenty surgeons, thirty apothecaries, and ten Physicians; 7th, some founders; 8th, some distillers and dealers in liquor; 9th, fifty gardeners with their families, and the seeds of every kind of vegetable; 10th, each party to bring with them: 200,000 pints of brandy; 11th, 30,000 ells of blue and scarlet cloth; 12th, a supply of soap and oil.[29]

The conqueror also ordered the building of hospitals and bakeries, made mandatory the use of lit torches outside houses, and forbade the burial of bodies inside the city walls. Declaring himself the liberator of the Egyptian people, he set up newspapers, threw balls and receptions, and founded the Egyptian Institute for the scholars he had brought with him. The wives who had hidden themselves in uniforms now appeared openly, while the soldiers and scholars began to befriend the Egyptian women, though they were rather shocked at their size (to compliment an Egyptian lady, they learned, one should say “she was so beautiful, she could not get through the door”). The Egyptians complained that the Frenchmen were giving the women ideas about dominance, since they gave gifts and presents and “pride themselves on their submission to women.”

With Cairo secure, Napoleon went back to contemplating Junot’s revelations. On July 25, he sent Joseph an anguished letter. “I have a lot of domestic problems for the veil is completely torn away. You are the only person left to me in this world,” he mourned. “It is a sad state of affairs when all one’s affection is concentrated in a single person. You know what I mean.” In words not dissimilar to those in his novel Clisson et Eugénie, he said he wished never to see Josephine again. “I have had enough of people. I need solitude and isolation. Greatness no longer interests me. All feeling in me is dried up. At twenty-nine, everything is over.”[30]

Eugène wrote quickly to his mother.

My dear mama, I have so much to say to you that I don’t know how to start. Bonaparte has been miserable for five days, as a result of a conversation with Julien, Junot, and Berthier. Their words have affected him more than I would have believed. All I have heard amounts to this: that Charles traveled in your carriage until you were within three posting stations of Paris; that you met him in Paris; that you were with him at the Theatre of the Italians in the private boxes; that he gave you your little dog; that even now you are with him. Such, in scattered phrases, is everything that I have heard. You know, mama, that I don’t believe a word; but what is certain is that the general is very upset. However, he redoubles his kindnesses to me. He seems to say, by his actions, that children are not responsible for the faults of their mother. Your son, however, chooses to believe that all this gossip has been manufactured by your enemies. Your son loves you as much as ever and is as eager as ever to greet you. I hope that when you do come all will be forgotten.[31]

Without Josephine there to fling herself weeping at his feet, Napoleon dwelled on her faults. The thought that everyone knew he had been shamed was deeply painful to him.

On August 1, many of Napoleon’s crew members were offshore when Nelson arrived at Alexandria, and most of the ships were undermanned. At three o’clock, Nelson took dinner and ordered fast action. At ten, L’Orient exploded into fire, killing hundreds of men. With it sank six hundred thousand livres in gold and diamonds stolen from Malta. Eleven warships were captured or lost, and at least twelve hundred men were dead, with thousands more taken prisoner.

When the news of the attack on his fleet reached Napoleon, he received it “without a flicker of emotion passing over his features.”[32] Holed up in his handsome marble palace in Cairo, he told his men that Britain might control the sea, but France had an empire on land, in the place where three continents joined. “We are obliged to found a great Empire, and found it we will,” he announced. “The sea, of which we are not masters, separates us from our homeland; but no sea separates us from either Africa or Asia.”[33] “Everything is perfectly fine here,” he wrote airily to the Directory. He addressed questions of tax and property laws and made plans for further conquest.

The Battle of the Nile, as it became known, was an incredible victory for Britain. By the end of 1798, everyone in Britain and most people in Europe owned some sort of picture of Nelson in tribute, from cheap prints or a tankard with his likeness to expensive portraits. Women across the land draped themselves in Nelsonia, proudly wearing anchor necklaces, “N” brooches and headbands, and Nile-themed shawls. A popular print by the scabrous James Gillray showed a onearmed Nelson by the pyramids beating red, white, and blue crocodiles with his truncheon made of “British Oak.” The king and queen of Naples, via the British envoy’s glamorous wife, Emma, Lady Hamilton, begged the hero of the Nile to come to Naples to protect them. Lady Hamilton told him, “I walk and tread in the air with pride to think I was born in the same land as Nelson and his gallant band.”[34] Nelson dashed to her—and out of Napoleon’s way.

SOON BESIEGED WITH news about Napoleon’s victories, Josephine decided that his defeat at the Battle of the Nile could be dismissed. She continued her life blithely unaware that Napoleon knew of her infidelity. She frequented the friends her husband disliked. Barras, Thérésa Tallien, and Juliette Récamier were often at her salons, along with the cream of society. Musicians and composers, including Méhul and Cherubini, artists such as Gérard and Girodet, and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, author of Napoleon’s beloved Paul et Virginie, all came to her receptions. The poet Arnault had fled Napoleon’s company at Malta and traveled back to Paris; he found the delicate company of Josephine much preferable to rotten biscuits with her husband. She also saw Hippolyte Charles, flirted with handsome men, and failed to write to Napoleon (though she did dutifully invite her sisters-in-law to her salons).

In October 1798, a Parisian newspaper reported that a French mail ship had been captured and letters written by Napoleon seized by the British. His letter to Joseph still lies in the British Museum, written across in Nelson’s distinctive spiky hand, “found on the person of the courier.”[35] Among dreary lists of instructions and letters about domestic affairs from other officers was Napoleon’s missive of July 25, wailing to Joseph that the “veil is torn,” and Eugène’s to his mother, telling her that Junot had spilled her secrets. After the success of the Battle of the Nile, the letters were a gift to the British, another indication of a weakness in Napoleon’s armor. James Perry, the editor of the Morning Chronicle, grasped the scoop and printed sections of the letters on November 24, 1798. The readers goggled at Napoleon crying over his wife. The letters were read not only over the breakfast tables of London and Manchester; unfortunately for Josephine, the Morning Chronicle was available in Paris. Before long, everybody knew of Napoleon’s misery—and Josephine’s terrible disgrace.[36]

CHAPTER 10

“All I Have Suffered”

Though Paul de Barras put pressure on the French newspapers not to reprint the news about Madame Bonaparte, copies of the Chronicle passed hands, and the rumors spread about the marriage of the Bonapartes and about Josephine’s behavior. She knew she had been exposed. She grew desperate and terrified of the power of Napoleon’s family to destroy her.

Joseph was deeply gratified that his brother’s letter to him had been published. He did not visit Josephine and refused to give her money from the family funds, as Napoleon had directed him to do before he departed. When Louis Bonaparte returned from Egypt, he, too, declined to visit her. In Paris, Josephine found herself shunned, mocked, and ignored. The French never received the letter.

Now that everyone knew about her infidelity, her creditors began to call in their debts. She could not pay even the smallest bills.[1] She tried to charm and influence the Directory and other men of power, but this only gave her enemies more ammunition.

In his letter to Joseph, Napoleon had suggested that, after their divorce, he’d keep 6 rue de la Victoire. Josephine knew she must do something for herself. Malmaison, the country home Napoleon had turned down, became her last hope; in her mind, it represented the security she needed and the possibility of a rural retreat where Napoleon might fall in love with her all over again. He would return, the great conquering hero; she would throw herself at his feet, and then he would pay her bills. She had ammunition of her own: Joseph had purchased the Château de Mortefontaine for 285,000 francs, and she knew Napoleon would not want to be outdone by his brother.

Josephine visited Malmaison again with Hortense. She was particularly delighted by its beautiful situation amid lush green lawns, woodland, and vineyards. She had always missed the foliage and flowers of Martinique, and Malmaison, she hoped, would be her chance to cultivate gardens full of exotic plants. In October 1798, she asked her old friend Jean Chanorier, the mayor of Croissy, to approach the Molays about selling the property. All through that miserable winter of 1798–99, Josephine fretted about money, had Barras fight off the debt collectors, borrowed funds to get by, and haggled through Chanorier for Malmaison.

The first written mention of Malmaison in the land records appears in 1244 as a listing for a simple barn. By the fourteenth century, the site had become a substantial manor house, and it would remain with the same family until 1763. Josephine was a typical example of someone who had grown rich under the Directory and had started to buy up the property of old French families, much to their despair. Monsieur du Molay loved the house and could not bring himself to be involved in its sale (especially not to a nouveau riche wife like Josephine).[2] But the Molays were in need of money, so his wife took over negotiations. The women’s drawn-out correspondence, with Chanorier acting as arbiter, is a testimony to female prowess, determination, and business acumen. Neither party was prepared to give in easily.

In a letter dated March 1, 1799, Chanorier declared Malmaison to be not only “the prettiest property I know” but also, as a working farm, exceedingly “useful” in a financial sense.[3] He informed Josephine that Madame du Molay was asking three hundred thousand francs and claiming that Bonaparte had agreed to the price with a Molay relative who was “prepared to testify to it.” He answered firmly: “I told her that the General had only ever spoken of 250,000 francs; but that even if he had, the land would have decreased in value since then.”[4]

Josephine responded unequivocally. “The price asked by Mme. du Molay is too much,” she informed Chanorier. “Whatever desire I might have had to come to an agreement over Malmaison, I am obliged to withdraw my interest. My last offer is 100,000 ecus [250,000 francs], for immediate occupation.”[5]

On March 17, she conceded.

My final offer, taking into account your opinion and the information you have given me [her way of saving face over paying more], is 310,000 francs, to include everything and for immediate occupation. I firmly believe that I should not have to pay any more than this, and I’m keen to resolve the matter one way or another.[6]

Madame du Molay eventually found Josephine’s offer suitable. But she was not to be moved out easily. “Poor Mme. du Molay shuddered,” Chanorier wrote, “when I told her that, being tired of Paris, if you purchased the property, it was quite possible that you would take up residence within a fortnight.” The Molays asked to stay in one of the apartments on the farm until mid-July. “That way, you could move in the day after you bought it.”[7]

For all her firm words, Josephine had been ruled by her heart. She later admitted that the final asking price amounted to well over 325,000 francs. Joseph had bought his grand château with seven hundred acres of land for much less. An undated letter from her to Barras, published in 1820 and recorded as being “for Malmaison,” suggests he helped her find the money to buy the house.

I was sure that this would interest you; I was no less sure that you would succeed. Here I am now certain of possessing a refuge, and thanks to this kindness, which is made all the sweeter by the grace with which it is offered, this refuge meets all my requirements, and I can allow my passions to flourish there. These are peaceful and pure tastes which in more prosperous times, I cultivated whimsically and which today I embrace wholeheartedly.[8]

With the furniture included in the price, Josephine could move in right away. She did not waste a moment. She took occupation in April and promptly began planning a housewarming party.

Despite the Molays’ modifications, the château needed sprucing up and was crying out for expansion. But the grounds were magnificent, and the farm boasted a fine production of wine, a healthy wheat crop, and a variety of livestock. Josephine was delighted by how she could “freely breathe the country air.”[9] In years to come, the Île de Chatou on the edge of the property would be portrayed repeatedly by the Impressionists. The house was a sanctuary from Paris yet was only ten miles away. If the solitude became too monotonous, Josephine would be able to access the capital in under an hour by coach.

She thought Malmaison the perfect place to hide from prying eyes. She invited Hippolyte Charles to visit her, at first in secret so that no one would see him arrive. Little by little, as his visits became more frequent and a routine established itself, the couple became complacent. He even had his own bedroom next door to Josephine’s. He spent whole weeks there, though he left when guests were expected.

The gossips repeated that a country neighbor had spotted Josephine and said, “Poor Mme. Bonaparte can be seen at dusk walking in her garden, leaning on the arm of a young man, probably her son.” Josephine, incredibly, was amused that the locals thought Hippolyte was her son. He was leading a precarious existence, engaging in the odd bit of shady business and still working with Bodin. Josephine, too, was receiving kickbacks from the profiteers. At a time when her enemies were collecting evidence against her, and the Bonaparte family looked forward to their ultimate triumph, her obsession with Hippolyte was very unwise.

He had a wandering eye, and she already suspected he had another lover. In February, she had written that she wished to see him. “You can be assured, after this meeting, which will be the last, that you will no longer be tormented by my letters or by my presence. The respectable woman who has been deceived retires and says nothing.”[10] Still, they seemed to reconcile, and Josephine continued behaving with shocking disregard to the risk. A general’s wife should have acted more wisely, especially considering the affair had already been revealed in the papers. But she loved Hippolyte’s lighthearted air and his energy, and she could not give him up.

THE DIRECTORY WAS falling apart. In June 1799, the ruthless intellectual former priest Emmanuel Sieyès had allied with Barras to expel the directors he did not trust and brought in fifty-three-year-old Louis-Jérôme Gohier and two others in their place. Another rising star was Joseph Fouché, a former cleric, pale-eyed and pale-faced and utterly without morals; he, too, had dealt in army supplies. In July 1799, he became minister of police, tasked with quashing all criticism of the government.

Josephine marshaled her beauty and her redecorated salon at rue de la Victoire to win over the men who would control Napoleon’s career, and thus lure her husband back to her. Sieyès was dismissive of her, but Gohier was both eager to dine with her and sexually fascinated by her, although she was close friends with his wife.

Gohier advised Josephine that her relationship with Hippolyte compromised her in the eyes of the world, and she should either give him up or divorce Napoleon and marry him. She assured Gohier that they were just friends. She had no wish to divorce Napoleon or to be Hippolyte’s wife. As she knew, the little gallant would never marry her—there was no way he could afford to keep her.

The War Ministry had launched an inquiry into the Bodin Company and discovered the poor horses, various bribes, and numerous unpaid suppliers. Josephine was keen to save Hippolyte, now codirector, from disgrace. “A report on the Bodin Company is to be made today to the Directory, and I beg you to intervene for them,” she wrote to Barras. “The firm is in such a bad way that it needs powerful sponsorship.”[11] Every time she gained her former lover’s sympathy with her vulnerability, she also drove him to exasperation with her pleas to favor Bodin’s dodgy dealings. He grew tired of her supplications. One evening at dinner in the Luxembourg, Barras turned his back on her and spoke only to Thérésa Tallien. Josephine departed in tears, convinced that he believed she would be divorced by Napoleon on his return from Egypt and thus was shunning her.

BONAPARTE SOON HEARD of his humiliation in the British press and was bent on revenge. After attempting to amuse himself with dancers, he spotted pretty Pauline Fourès at a hot-air-balloon launch in the Ezbekiya Gardens. The wife of a lieutenant, twenty-year-old Pauline was a cheery, accommodating soul who had the slender figure Napoleon liked and looked well in her disguise of the uniform of her husband’s regiment. She had long golden hair, a rose-petal complexion, a perky temperament, and an eagerness for adventure. Lieutenant Fourès had come across her working at a milliner’s shop in Carcassonne and married her just before setting off on campaign.

Napoleon ignored the balloon and stared at Pauline openly and without flinching, a tactic that many of his amours found disturbing. Junot was sent off to make a proposition to her; unfortunately, he did so in coarsely practical language, and Pauline was shaken. General Duroc was sent to make another attempt, bearing a handsome jeweled bracelet as a gift. This time the lady proved much more receptive.

On December 17, Lieutenant Fourès was assigned to take a letter to Admiral Villeneuve, who had been commanding one of the few ships to escape the Battle of the Nile but had been captured in Malta. He was also tasked with carrying letters to the Directory in Paris. Napoleon hoped the journey would take three months or so. Fourès was refused permission to take Pauline with him. As soon as the husband’s back was turned, Napoleon invited her and several other officers and their wives to a dinner at the palace. After dessert, an officer spilled coffee “by accident” over her gown. Napoleon leaped to her rescue, ushered her upstairs to change, and neither returned to the dinner. She was soon living in a villa on the palace grounds, and others dubbed her Napoleon’s “Cleopatra.”

Bonaparte treated the milliner’s apprentice as a true companion. He admired her staunch determination to travel through Egypt with her husband, and he was pleased by her vivacious personality. He flaunted her, hoping the news would get back to Paris. For the short period they were together, she presided at his dinner parties and accompanied him everywhere in his carriage. Napoleon even forced seventeen-year-old Eugène to escort him and his new mistress around the city, until the poor boy begged to be excused.

On December 24, 1798, barely a week after capturing Pauline, Napoleon set off for Suez. He wished her a touching goodbye and told her to make a son while he was away, always hopeful for the proof of his virility. He came back briefly after Suez, only to set off again in February on a grandiloquent expedition to Syria. He meant eventually to take on the Turks, who had declared war on France.

Pauline’s husband was captured just outside Alexandria and was promptly returned to Cairo. Fourès was outraged when he learned of his wife’s betrayal, but he could do nothing. Napoleon pronounced the Fourès divorced (he saw himself as the de facto ruler of Cairo and so judged himself able to dissolve a marriage), which left him free to enjoy Pauline. Her only fault was that she would not get pregnant. “What’s to be done,” said the great hero, “the silly girl … can’t do it.” Pauline vehemently defended herself. “Good God!” she cried. “It’s not my fault.”[12] She presumably meant that his cursory technique made conception unlikely.

Napoleon soon set off again. He could not bring himself to stay in one place for too long (even if he had a pretty girl like Pauline waiting for him). “I saw myself on the way to Asia, riding an elephant, wearing a turban, attacking the English in India,” he later wrote.[13] The reality of the campaign was less romantic. The men hated the conditions of the desert and suffered in the heat. At Jaffa in Palestine (now part of Tel Aviv), they were plied with alcohol to give them courage and then sent to massacre all those who were in the enemy garrison, including women and children. In the morning, Napoleon dispatched Eugène and another young aide, Crosier, to call for peace. Turkish soldiers holed up in a citadel told Crosier they would come down if their lives were spared. He brought all four thousand of them as prisoners.

Napoleon was furious with Crosier and Eugène. “Have I any provisions to feed them?” he railed. “What the devil can I do with them all?”[14] It was impossible to expect them to become loyal members of the French army, and there were not enough troops to march them back. Napoleon ordered the men to be shot. For three days, his demoralized soldiers were forced to chase fleeing men into the sea and shoot them. Weeping children clung to the necks of their fathers as they, too, were killed, and the sea turned red with blood.

The following day, the army was hit by bubonic plague. Napoleon declared that any man who was afraid of the plague would catch it. To prove his point, he visited a hospital and touched some of the patients and helped to reposition others. He believed that if one had control over the mind, the body would follow suit. The army progressed to Acre on the coast of Syria, but failed to take the garrison, which was protected by the British. Napoleon told his men to return to Cairo, after writing to the Directory that Acre was not worth seizing. He left behind two thousand wounded and plague-ridden soldiers. The British offered to take them on their ships, but Napoleon refused, and the men were beheaded by the Turks almost as soon as the French left.

He wrote missives to the French blowing his own trumpet, puffing his incredible victories, barely mentioning the plague. “We want for nothing here,” he exclaimed to the Directory, “we are bursting with strength, good health, and high spirits.” He had instructed that his men be welcomed in Cairo like conquering heroes, with grand ceremony and bands playing. Napoleon was good at assuming the mantle of a victor, even if he did not deserve it. He hoped that the news of his celebration would reach France. “We are masters of the entire eastern desert,” he wrote. “If you could send us excess of 15,000 men, we would be able to go anywhere.”

He hurried back to the arms of Pauline Fourès but was disappointed to find she was not yet pregnant. He dallied with her and planned more victories until the British cunningly sent him a set of recent newspapers.[15] Napoleon was shocked at the news they contained. France was under fire. Austria, Britain, and Russia had banded together; the Austrians had pushed the French back over the Rhine; and the French had been forced to withdraw from much of Switzerland. Malta was blockaded, and the French forces were being driven back through Italy. Most of the territory gained during the Italian campaign had been lost.

Napoleon scoured the newspapers, madly reading of the failures of his country. “Italy is lost!!!” he cried. “All the fruits of our victories have disappeared! I must depart.” France needed a savior, and he was the man to do it. By August 11, Napoleon was preparing to leave, abandoning his ill and exhausted Army of the Orient under the command of Kléber, telling everybody but Bourrienne and his chief of staff that it was just another expedition. He took Eugène with him but left Junot, still unable to forgive him for telling the truth about Josephine. He refused to let Pauline Fourès come, in case the British took the ship. “You should think of my reputation; what would they say if they found a woman on board?”[16] He suggested to Kléber that he take her as a mistress.

Once Napoleon had left Egypt, he was eager to get to France. At Corsica, the ships were stalled owing to a lack of wind. He stayed in his childhood home, saw relatives and his old wet nurse, and raged against the weather. “I will be there too late,” he moaned. On October 10, 1799, he finally landed in France and was greeted by delighted crowds. The cannons fired in Paris to announce the news. People wept with joy, and the theaters had to interrupt performances so people could sing patriotic songs.

In Cairo, governing from a palace, issuing edicts that had to be obeyed by a subject people, Napoleon had discovered a taste for tyranny and ruling over an empire. But he no longer wished to be emperor of Africa. In place of Alexander, his new hero was Julius Caesar, conqueror of Europe.

THROUGHOUT 1799, JOSEPHINE became increasingly nervous and unhappy. Exposed and guilty, she was afraid of Napoleon’s return and began to doubt that the purchase of Malmaison would win him over. She told her old friends that she was retiring, shunning social life. “I came to Paris, my dear Barras, meaning to see you, but I was told when I got there that you had a large party today,” she wrote. The woman who once thrived on admiration and reveled in society now wished to be private. “Since moving to the country, I have become such a recluse that social occasions frighten me,” she told her former lover. “Besides, I am so miserable that I do not wish to be an object of pity for others.”[17]

“Mama has bought Malmaison,” Hortense wrote to her brother in October 1799. “She lives a very reclusive life there.”[18] She meant the letter to be read to Napoleon and for him to understand how quietly Josephine was behaving.

She has only given two big dinner parties since you both departed. The Directors and all the Buonoparte family were invited, but the latter always decline to come … Maman is, I assure you, very distressed that the family won’t live on friendly terms with her, which must vex her husband whom she loves very much. I am certain that if Maman could have been sure of reaching him, she would have gone, but you know how impossible that would be.

Josephine herself, after presumably overseeing the letter, wrote that she wished for Eugène’s return and that of Napoleon, “especially if I find Bonaparte as he was when he left me; then I will be able to forget all I have suffered as a result of your absence and his.”[19] She was making a counterstrike: accusing her husband of neglect and absence. Luckily for her, Napoleon did not see the letter. He and Eugène were already on their way home.

CHAPTER 11

“He Owes Me Everything”

On the night of October 10, Josephine was dining with Gohier and his wife, discussing politics and Paris gossip. The cutlery and glasses clinked, the candles cast soft light, she smiled at Gohier’s jokes and talked about dresses with his wife. Then an urgent message came through from Eugène that he had landed at Fréjus with Napoleon. Josephine leaped from her chair. “I must reach him before his brothers can talk to him,” she cried. She made her hasty goodbyes, collected Hortense, and hurried into her carriage. She told her driver to speed south in the hope of catching Napoleon at Lyon.

She did not know which route he would take and so took her chances on the route via Châlons, begging the coachman to push the horses as fast as he could. As she sped south, she saw that every village and coaching inn had been speedily decorated for the returning hero, with triumphal archways erected over the roads and illuminations strung across the houses. Each time they stopped to change horses, people crowded around their carriage, imploring Josephine to tell them “if it was really true that the savior (for that was the name that all France had given him) had returned,” as Hortense recalled.[1] Finally, they reached Lyon, only to be told that the general had already left and was traveling to Paris on a different road. Napoleon had remained briefly in Lyon to bask in the people’s praise, and the city had produced a quickly written new play, Bonaparte at Lyon, for him. Josephine had just missed him.

In shock, mother and daughter turned the horses around and raced through the night. The road back was nothing but a “series of ovations” for him, and each was a bitter pill for poor Josephine.

Her worst fears had come true. Lucien and Joseph had traveled to meet Napoleon at Lyon. All the way to Paris, his brothers talked to him of Josephine’s infidelity and her relationships with army profiteers.

Napoleon entered Paris to wild acclaim. The city sparkled with lights, bands played, and women—and even some men—fainted. But he wanted only to see Josephine. Even though he was angry with her, he longed for her soft embrace and her perfumed body, to hear her gentle voice, and to lie in her bed. He was ready to hear her defense. He expected a torrent of tears and then, when he deemed it fit, a passionate reconciliation.

But he arrived at their house at six A.M. and found her absent. Furious and miserable, Napoleon abandoned himself to melancholy in his lonely home. He believed that she must be with Hippolyte Charles, as everybody had said.

AS SOON AS he was able, Napoleon called on Paul de Barras and declared he would divorce Josephine. Barras counseled patience. He had his motives, of course; the Directory would only be further undermined if their favorite general embarked on the embarrassing course of divorce.

Then Gohier, who was desperately fond of Josephine, told Napoleon that divorce was a “black mark against the record of a man in public life.” He stressed how Josephine had rushed from their home to meet him, and said that the public was more likely to trust a married man.[2] Napoleon, confused, turned to his family. Like vultures, they flocked to say that it was obvious she was away seducing her lover and he should be rid of her immediately.

The next day, Jean-Pierre Collot, a banker, visited rue de la Victoire and begged Napoleon to forgive Josephine, for the moment, at least. “Think of France!” he cried. Napoleon railed, “I will never forgive her! How little you know me!” Collot, like Barras, suggested that a public separation would expose him to ridicule—“You will be laughed at like one of Molière’s husbands”—and warned that he should not make any hasty decisions.[3] “All this violence proves you still love her,” he argued. “Do but see her, she will explain everything.”[4] Napoleon would not listen, avowing that people would grow bored with gossiping about him and his wife. “My determination is fixed,” he said, “she shall never again enter my house.”[5] Eugène, who had just arrived in Paris (he had traveled separately from his stepfather in a slower coach), attempted to speak to him, but Napoleon was adamant.

Bonaparte visited Fortunée Hamelin, who also recommended caution. If he wanted the public to focus on his military victories, he shouldn’t get hauled into a domestic drama—and many of his middleclass supporters would be shocked by a divorce. But Napoleon was a wounded bear; despite all the advice to have patience, he stormed home and told the maids to pack up Josephine’s huge wardrobes of clothes.

JOSEPHINE ARRIVED AT eleven that night, exhausted and covered in dust and dirt from the journey. The porter told her that Napoleon would not see her and gestured toward her boxes of belongings, packed and ready for her to take away. Josephine and Hortense dashed past him into the house. The servants did not dare stop them. A maid told them that Napoleon was in his dressing room and would not come out. Josephine wept and begged at the door. Napoleon finally said that he would not see her and he would never open the door to her again. She crouched on the last spiral of a narrow staircase, crying noisily and begging him to forgive her. She wept and pleaded for hours, her sobs echoing through the house. For the first time, Napoleon resisted her tears.

At nearly five in the morning, still weeping, Josephine stood, unable to believe that her tears had not succeeded. In a last-ditch attempt, she went to find Hortense and Eugène and implored them to assist her. They climbed the stairs in their nightgowns and wept outside Napoleon’s room with her, pleading for mercy. He flung open the door, and the tableau of his wife in tears with her two children, all three of them supplicating him for help, was too much to resist. Eugène and Hortense begged him not to break their mother’s heart: “Ought injustice to take from us, poor orphans, whose natural protector the scaffold has already deprived us of, the support of one whom Providence has sent to replace him!”[6] Napoleon relented. “I could not bear the sobs of those two children,” he later declared. “I asked myself, should they be made victims of their mother’s failings?”[7]

Napoleon took Josephine to their bed, and the reconciliation was complete.

The next morning Lucien arrived, expecting to push forward the matter of the divorce. To his horror, he found the pair in bed together, his sister-in-law fully reinstated as the ruler of Napoleon’s heart.

Josephine had been forgiven, but the balance in the marriage had shifted, and she was no longer the all-powerful, dishing out her favors from a pedestal. Napoleon was now sure that she had been unfaithful to him. His success in Egypt, and his affair with Pauline, had made him more vainglorious and less dependent on her.*1 He would never again worship at her shrine; she would never again treat him so cavalierly. Without a child, she knew she was weak, and her exposure as an adulterer had made her realize that men of power and her friends alike would turn their backs on her if they felt her hold over him was slipping. When they had married, she had been the sought-after woman, and few could understand why she had accepted Napoleon’s proposal. Now he was seen as the savior of France and she a mere wife. Her position could be taken from her at any time.

Unsurprisingly, his family was livid about the reconciliation. Her sister-in-law Pauline and the brothers were from then on “at open war with Josephine.”[8]

NAPOLEON CLAIMED HE had forgiven Josephine for the sake of her children. He was very fond of them. In Italy, not long after their marriage, he had written to her, “Be sure to tell them that I love them as if they were my own. What is yours or mine is so mixed up in my heart, that there is no difference there.”[9] He told her that he thought Hortense “entirely adorable” and had come to see Eugène as his adopted son.[10] It was hard not to admire the pair: Eugène was dutiful and steadfast and had served him well in Egypt; and golden-haired, graceful Hortense was the jewel of Madame Campan’s school, about to graduate and make her debut with a set of accomplishments worthy of Versailles. She was also rather terrified of Napoleon and would tremble when she spoke to him, asking others to request favors on her behalf.[11] Such a display of fear could hardly fail to endear her to him.

But Napoleon was driven by more than mercy. He was bent on political power, and for that he needed his wife. Having a wife and stepchildren made him look reliable; he also required Josephine’s quiet powers of influence, her ability to please and flatter, her talents as a hostess, and her continued hold over Barras, Gohier, Talleyrand, and the others. Most of all, as a survivor of imprisonment, she gave legitimacy to his claim of protecting the Republic, while at the same time her aristocratic title persuaded the royalists into believing that her husband would espouse their cause. As Barras had said, she made him seem French.

Distracted as he was in the stormy days after his arrival, Napoleon saw that the words of the informers who had written to him while he was in Egypt were correct: The Directory was struggling. The populace of France, facing economic decline and distressed by the failures of the army in Europe, had lost faith in their government. The Directory was riven with personal rivalries and grudges. No one trusted anyone else, and each member was trying hard to hold on to his position by ousting his rivals. The door was wide open for Napoleon to step in, adored by the people and, as a general, seemingly unsullied by politics. As Hortense put it, “With Italy lost, the finances spent, the Directory devoid of energy and authority, the return of the General was seen as a favor from heaven.”[12]

The irascible Emmanuel Sieyès had been preparing a secret coup d’état to seize power by ousting his fellow directors—Barras, Gohier, and Jean-François Moulin. The fourth, Roger Ducos, Sieyès thought spineless enough to follow him. He gained the confidence of Talleyrand, Joseph Fouché, and Lucien Bonaparte. He needed only a general on his side to provide military might. General Bernadotte, minister for war, refused. General Joubert was killed in Italy, and both General Macdonald and General Moreau were reluctant to involve themselves in a political plot.

On October 14, Sieyès was awaiting Moreau in his office at the Luxembourg Palace. Moreau arrived at the same time as a messenger delivering the thrilling news that Bonaparte had returned and was nearly at Paris. “There’s your man,” Moreau said, and promptly departed.

Napoleon wanted more than to be the strongman for another man’s political desires. He listened to Sieyès, nodded politely, and then made his own plans to launch a coup, hoping that Gohier and Barras would back him up. He employed Josephine to charm certain influential men and persuade them to espouse his cause—and to persuade Barras that he was still loyal. She obeyed gladly, keen to please, and planned dinners, receptions, and intimate meetings as required. Six rue de la Victoire was a revolving door of politicians, ministers, and generals all eager to sample Josephine’s delicate desserts and hear her flirtatious words, close in their ears. She flattered Barras and Gohier and lulled them all into a false sense of security about Bonaparte and his goals. As she did so, the Directory breathed its last.

Napoleon sounded out Barras, asking him what he would do if there were a coup to unseat the Directory. Barras refused to listen to the idea. He tried Gohier, who made it clear to Napoleon that he thought him too young to be involved in government. His plans for a coup in tatters, Napoleon was left with no choice but to throw in his lot with Sieyès, although he despised him.

On November 9, Napoleon got up at five A.M. and sent letters to favorable members of the Council of Elders, requesting their presence at the Tuileries at seven A.M. (the rest would receive their letters too late, long after the voting had ended). Four hundred dragoons were already assembling there. He set about trapping the other directors. “Will you, my dear Gohier, and your wife have breakfast with me tomorrow at eight o’clock in the morning,” Josephine had written to her friend the night before. “Do not fail: I must speak to you of interesting matters.”[13] Gohier thought the hour suspiciously early for Josephine and sent his wife alone. She found Josephine’s house full of soldiers, ready to arrest her husband and force his resignation.

Napoleon arrived at the Tuileries at eight-thirty, surrounded by his generals. He addressed his troops, telling them the Directory had betrayed them. The Elders were essentially tricked into declaring that the two legislative bodies—themselves and the lower house, the Council of Five Hundred—should move to Saint-Cloud. Napoleon thought it would be easier to pass a new constitution away from the center of Paris. He had Gohier and Jean Moulin arrested. Talleyrand went to Barras’s house and told him that the others had resigned and he had no choice but to do the same. Napoleon had given him two million francs to bribe Barras. When Barras gave in without a fight, Talleyrand kept the money for himself. At Saint-Cloud, Napoleon was criticized by the Elders, but the real violence came when he attempted to address the Council of Five Hundred, who were angrily questioning his actions. They grew so heated that he was forced to flee for his life, but then he sent in his troops, led by General Murat, to expel the council from the Orangerie. The council members were forced to submit to the soldiers and effectively gave over their powers to Bonaparte. “It didn’t go too badly,” he shrugged.[14] That night, he and Josephine slept with loaded revolvers under their pillows.

On November 10, Napoleon asserted again that the Republic was in danger and he was the man to save it. He ensured that he was installed as a consul, along with Emmanuel Sieyès and Roger Ducos, both of whom Napoleon secretly planned to oust very quickly. Almost unbelievably, thanks to his might, his clever plotting, and the help of his wife, Napoleon had moved from feted general to the most powerful man in France. Barras kicked his heels in his country seat of Grosbois. “I see Bonaparte has tricked me,” he mourned. “And yet he owes me everything.” The same was true for Josephine. Barras had cared for her, protected her, and lent her money, and miserable exile was his reward.

“I found division reigning amongst all the authorities,” Napoleon declared, describing his return to France. “They agreed only on this single point, that the Constitution was half destroyed, and was unable to protect liberty!” He announced that the Council of Elders had begged him to help them, since the “men whom the nation has been accustomed to regard as the defenders of liberty, equality, and property,” or the directors, had been planning to restore the king. “I was bound, in duty to my fellow-citizens, to the soldiers perishing in our armies, and to the national glory, acquired at the cost of so much blood, to accept the command.”

All lies, but believed. The men and women fighting for the fall of Louis XVI had hoped for a representative government. In 1799 they were given a tyranny. There would be no elections but three consuls and four assemblies, and every member of the senate and the Council of State would be nominated by the first consul. Furthermore, Bonaparte declared that the first consul would be appointed for ten years, and he would choose the other consuls. The entire country, effectively, would be ruled by one man.

At three in the morning, Napoleon returned home, fretting to Bourrienne that he had said the wrong thing. “I like better to speak to soldiers than to lawyers. Those fellows disconcerted me. I have not been used to public assemblies; but that will come in time.”[15] Josephine was in bed when he arrived, but awake, and she begged his help for Gohier. Napoleon was not to be won over. As he saw it, he had given Gohier a chance to be part of the coup, and he had refused it. “What would you suggest, my dear?” he replied. “He is respectable, but a simpleton. He does not understand me!—I ought, perhaps, to have him transported.”[16]

Bonaparte, clever as ever, lulled Sieyès into believing he would be first consul. Of course, he never would be. “The Revolution is finished,” Napoleon announced on the last day of the year. He wasted no time maneuvering himself into position as first consul, with two patsies, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès and Charles-François Lebrun, as his colleagues. Sieyès was unceremoniously packed off with a pension to the country.

The general was now a little king. Josephine, the Martinique widow, was the consuless. It had happened in the blink of an eye. Napoleon had achieved a shocking reversal of everything the French had fought for, and he had been allowed to do it because he had acted under the guise of liberty and peace. With bands of royalists and Jacobins stalking the streets and black marketeers making fortunes, the people were desperate for order. But they had traded one evil for another: With Talleyrand as the foreign minister and Fouché, brutal organizer of killings in Lyon under the Terror, as minister of police, the new regime was just as restricted and self-serving as the Directory. Lucien Bonaparte was appointed minister of the interior. Napoleon, the ruler of all France, cheerfully voted himself a salary of five hundred thousand francs.

The republicans were still afraid of a monarchist restoration and believed Napoleon was the man to save them. The royalists fooled themselves that he was simply taking temporary charge of the country before handing it over to the exiled Louis XVIII—they had been swayed by Josephine to believe this was the case (and by their own wishful thinking of restoration). Bonaparte’s strongman image pleased the middle classes, and he offered men of influence more power to ensure their support. He decided that the way to please the people was with grandeur and pomp; he demanded carriages and palatial settings and officially announced that the terms of address would no longer be citoyen and citoyenne but monsieur and madame. He believed the people would be pacified by pageantry and promises and would give up their hope of representation to a man who seemed to offer a secure government.

Napoleon decided the house in rue de la Victoire was too humble for the city home of the consul and set Josephine and the maids to packing up their belongings. They would move to the Luxembourg Palace. Josephine had often visited Gohier and Barras for dinners there. Her first meeting with Napoleon had been at an evening reception in one of its rooms. And yet she dreaded moving to its cold opulence. Built on the orders of Catherine de Medici, it held the ghosts of many who had come to power only to lose it all, and Josephine was already growing nervous about her husband’s wild ambition. To console herself, she spent excessively on dresses, jewelry, and furniture, and threw thousands of francs at Malmaison—still indulging her “love of luxury grand enough to swallow up the revenue of ten provinces.”[17] She had also become newly careful of her own reputation: She informed her agents that she would have no further dealings with companies selling army supplies.

Napoleon was delighted with himself. Despite the privations of his campaigns, he had filled out a little and lost some of the skinniness of youth. In the early days, his hands had been dirty and unkempt, but now they were rather beautiful (Josephine presumably used some of her potions on them). In conversation “he would often look at them with an air of self-complacency.”[18] Josephine had improved his dress, and his accent had softened. He was not handsome, but he was imposing, and the possession of power gave him a great charisma.

By February, he decided he and his wife should occupy the Tuileries Palace in the center of Paris. With three pavilions, nearly four hundred rooms, and a long gallery, built by Henry IV, that linked it to the Louvre, the Tuileries was grand but decayed. Cheap streetwalkers sheltered with their clients under the shabby hedges outside. After Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were taken away in 1792, the Tuileries had fallen into terrible disrepair, looted for its furniture and even the wood of the window surrounds. The stairs still bore spots of dried blood from when the Swiss Guards and courtiers had fought back against the coup. The dreaded Committee of Public Safety had met in the queen’s apartments. The main gate was inscribed with a warning, “On 10 August 1792 royalty was abolished in France and will never return.” The gardens were overrun with sellers of lemonade and hot pies, catering to all the gawping sightseers and petitioners waiting to plead with the officials. The residence of every monarch since the mid-seventeenth century, it was to the people the symbol of Bourbon privilege and oppression. But Napoleon did not care. He wished to be king.

Today the Tuileries is no more, destroyed in a huge fire in 1870, but ghosts remain in the buildings of the Louvre and the gardens on the Place de la Concorde. Napoleon and his wife occupied apartments once lived in by the Gohiers, surrounded by servants in uniforms embroidered with gold. Josephine sat on chairs owned by her old friends and dined off their tables. She walked through rooms once occupied by Barras. She was living in a goldfish bowl: The newly and fashionably landscaped gardens were opened to the public and had fast become a popular place for Parisians to take leisurely afternoon walks. They peered into the windows and knocked at the doors. Every time she went out, she was dressed in rich gowns befitting her new status, transported in a carriage driven by six horses and accompanied by an escort of cavalry. The formality made her uncomfortable; she missed the rue de la Victoire. But still, she had won—over all those who had tried to unseat her, over the Bonapartes, and also over her husband.

Four years previously, Napoleon had clambered up the steps to toil at the Topographical Bureau of the Committee of Public Safety, a position he had gained thanks to Paul de Barras. The Revolution was barely ten years old, but for Napoleon, it belonged to a different era. One of his first acts was to have the revolutionary symbols daubed on the front of the palace painted over. “I don’t like to see such rubbish,” he said.[19]

He ignored the derelict rooms and the patches of damp. On their first night in the Tuileries, he swept Josephine into his arms, crying, “Come, little Creole, get into the bed of your masters.”

NAPOLEON WAS OFFICIALLY installed at the Tuileries on February 19. The carriages left the Luxembourg at one P.M. to the stirring sound of military music and the beating of drums. As Napoleon and his retinue passed by, more than three thousand soldiers lined the streets, and the crowds cheered. Josephine, in her customary flowing dress, had left the Luxembourg a little ahead of him, accompanied by Hortense. The populace gazed at their Merveilleuse, the wife of the man they hoped would bring peace. After them came the Council of State, forced to use cabs because so few carriages were available—they had been commandeered to load up the slaughtered dogs seven years earlier and then destroyed. The registration numbers on the cabs were crudely concealed with pieces of paper.

It seemed as if all of Paris had arrived to see Napoleon’s grandiose parade, along with swathes of tourists. Josephine was cheered enthusiastically, but her inferior position was drummed home, for she was not allowed to participate in the rituals. Instead, she was obliged to remain on a balcony to watch Napoleon conduct his military review. Accompanied by Hortense, Napoleon’s sister Caroline, and a few other ladies, she gazed from above as he took the salute of his regiments and then the cavalry in a great show of martial might. Among the plumes and the pomp, he was a tiny figure.

Napoleon beamed and waved joyfully at his wife. Josephine responded in kind, her handkerchief clasped in her hand. After the review, he clambered up the stairs to take possession of Louis XVI’s apartments on the first floor. “I watched the siege of the Tuileries from there and the capture of that good Louis XVI,” he said, pointing out a window to the house of Bourrienne’s brother, “but I will remain here.” That “good Louis XVI” was his new model for grandeur, if not governance. He was utterly convinced of his right to live in the palace.

Napoleon decreed that Josephine should have Marie Antoinette’s rooms on the ground floor. The new first consul wished the rooms to be returned to their earlier resplendence. Decorators and designers draped the chamber in blue and white silk with gold trimmings. Josephine decked the salon with violet taffeta, arranged Sèvres vases and bronzes on the tables, hung the walls with paintings, and brought in woodwork repairers to beautify the queen’s enormous mahogany bed.

The whole palace radiated splendor, but it was also rather dark, cold, and oppressively formal. Napoleon adorned it with statues of Hannibal, Demosthenes, Alexander, and other great men and was happy. But Josephine was miserable and ill at ease; she longed for the informality of Malmaison. “I was never made for so much grandeur,” she confided to Hortense. “I will never be happy here. I can feel the Queen’s ghost asking what I am doing in her bed.”[20] Napoleon had no patience with her unhappiness. He wanted her to fall at his feet, proclaim his excellence, offer sensual delights. And after the debacle of his return from Egypt, Josephine, walking on eggshells, did exactly that, forced to keep her reservations to herself.

She was now the unofficial queen of France. Napoleon had strict rules on how he wished her to behave. Thérésa Tallien, Fortunée Hamelin, and all the others were banned. The first consul hated Thérésa’s flirtatious glamour and did not trust her or her husband—they were kept under permanent surveillance. He did relent for Madame Récamier, whose banker husband was too wealthy to alienate. He instructed his wife to spend her time with those of aristocratic origin such as the Ségurs, the Caulaincourts, and Madame de Rémusat.[21] On no account should she receive visits from men in her apartments; she was to dress far more modestly; and most of all, she should refrain from engaging in politics (rather rich, after he had used her diplomatic skills to gain his position). For Josephine, who was “the sworn enemy of all forms of etiquette,” life henceforth was to be fraught with strain.[22]

Napoleon was decided: Women had been possessed of too much power. “There is no feminine in the function of the Consul,” he said. “We need the notion of obedience, in Paris, especially, where women think they have the right to do as they like.” As a young man in Paris just after the Terror, he had been baffled by the conspicuousness of women, their influence and conversation. One might say he was paying them all back for snubbing him.

But Bonaparte’s ambition to rule in a world without women did not last long. He relied on his wife too much. He could not manage without her at his side on social occasions, and he needed her diplomatic skills and her ability to manipulate others into doing what he wished. And when he was not in his office or at committees securing his position and drawing up laws, he wanted to be with Josephine.

She was constantly watched and always on show. As one courtier said, “We turned their eyes toward the rising sun, Mme. Bonaparte, who was installed at the Tuileries, where the apartments had been entirely refurnished as if by fairies.” She had “already put on the airs of a queen,” but a kind and gentle one.[23] Her every minute was planned. They were always together, and when he was not with her, Napoleon expected Josephine to ready herself in case he arrived. In the old days, she had been free. Now life was rather as it had been in Mombello—always the same.

Napoleon slept in her bedroom, leaving at eight for his own chamber, where he would bathe as Bourrienne read him letters and telegrams. He liked his bath boiling hot and often demanded more hot water from his servants. Bourrienne sometimes had to open the door to let in fresh air because he could not see through the steam. While Napoleon was being shaved, Bourrienne would read him the newspapers, paying special attention to the news in the German and British papers but ignoring the French. “Pass over all that,” Napoleon would say. “I know it already.”[24] He would eat a simple breakfast of chicken and onions before returning to drafting papers.

The consul would usually join Josephine for a speedy lunch of no more than twenty minutes, gobbling his food so fast that she had barely begun her first course by the time he had finished. He allowed more time for dinner but generally did not eat until most of his work was finished, which meant Josephine often waited until past midnight for his presence.

Napoleon never ate much. “I cannot help thinking that at forty I shall become a great eater, and get very fat,” he worried.[25] He thought excessively about his weight and tried to eat little (although he sometimes secretly stuffed himself with food). And he never stopped exercising. While dictating, he would sometimes walk back and forth for five hours, hardly noticing the time passing. As he walked, he stooped and clasped his hands behind his back. When he was deep in thought, he often gave a quick shrug of his shoulders, and his mouth would twitch from left to right as he came up with a new idea.

While Napoleon was working, Josephine attended to her correspondence and saw her dressmakers, milliners, portraitist, and tradesmen. In the afternoon, she sat with her ladies and played cards or listened to a little music. Few guessed how dreary she found her new life. Her mien was gay and pleased with what she saw. She always seemed eager to greet people at the Tuileries and host endless dinners, many with up to 150 guests. She met thousands of people at home and abroad, all of whom expected a special word of recognition.

Many days, Josephine simply had to wait, beauteously dressed and perfumed, for the moment when Napoleon might burst through her doors without warning and demand tea.[26] He always came at five to watch her dress, and if he had a free moment, he would dash downstairs to see his “little Creole.” Sometimes he sat quietly, contemplating a military problem, and she sat with him (also in silence, until he chose to speak). Other times he would play his customary tricks on her, teasing and laughing, overturning her makeup pots, pulling her hair out of its style, and pinching her. “Do stop, Bonaparte,” she would say, for he wished to be treated as a naughty child. She worked hard to be his perfect companion, always ready to listen, to read, to go out driving with him, and to assume the soothing, unruffled air that so pleased him. “Josephine possessed an exact knowledge of the intricacies of my character,” he explained.[27] She was the only one allowed to call him “tu” or Bonaparte.*2

She was not allowed to feel tired at the midnight dinners or to eat her lunch before he appeared. He expected her to be fully made up and coiffed, with no hint of fatigue or ill health, and perfectly gowned in exquisite French clothes that were not too revealing. He spent every night with her in an overheated chamber with the window firmly closed—neither liked the cold. “We were a very bourgeois couple,” he wrote, “sharing a bedroom and a bed,” ensuring “the wife’s influence and the husband’s dependency.” Cleverly, Josephine had persuaded him that occupying the same room would ensure his safety. “I told him,” she said, “that I was a very light sleeper, if any nocturnal attempt against him was made, I should be there to call for help in a moment.”[28] Thanks to this, “no action of mine escaped Josephine,” he said. “She guessed, she knew everything, which was sometimes inconvenient for me.”[29]

She participated enthusiastically in the effort to fete Napoleon and shore up his image of himself as the ruler of a new world. She had befriended the painter Jean-Baptiste Isabey, former artist at Versailles, while he was a teacher at Madame Campan’s school. Josephine was fond of Isabey’s studied style; in 1797 he had created one of her first portraits, a sketch of her in a white dress and head kerchief, the ideal republican heroine. She introduced him to Napoleon, who saw no irony in the former artist of Marie Antoinette becoming his painter for hire. Isabey became Josephine’s makeup artist and the key director of the appearance of Napoleon’s ceremonials.

In public life, Napoleon was utilizing Josephine’s diplomatic skills to win over aristocrats, crusty bankers, and military men alike. She was by his side at dinners, balls, and receptions and hosted grand occasions of her own. She supplied the dignity, grace, and elegance that he lacked. Napoleon was “deficient in education and in manners,” Madame de Rémusat would explain, and had no idea how to enter or leave a room, how to make a bow, or even how to stand up properly.[30] Josephine was acutely sensitive to social etiquette. More important, she was equable and engaging where he was boorish. His way of showing friendliness was to pinch the ear or bash someone on the arm or call them a fool. Josephine was kind, and her charm attracted “many persons to his court whom his natural rudeness would otherwise have kept away.”[31] Her honeyed tones won people over when his shouting failed. When Bonaparte arrived in the drawing room, all eyes were fretfully directed toward him to try to guess his mood. If Josephine presided alone, everything was “gaiety and ease.”[32]

Nothing in Josephine’s upbringing had prepared her for such a life. Though she was unhappy in her new role, she had to learn to manage. She had a knack for remembering people; her time as a mistress had schooled her in the importance of showing interest in and attention to everyone, even those who bored her; and she was truly skilled at putting guests at ease. Josephine was also a human display of Napoleon’s power: her gowns, her jewels, her possessions, and her art all showcased his brilliance and wealth.

Even if Napoleon had stuck with his original plan of keeping his wife from power, she received so many letters from people begging for help that it was impossible to exclude her. Her correspondence in the months following the coup d’état is full of letters from influential figures requesting favors and promotions. Most of all, she was trying to help the émigrés—stripped of their wealth during the Revolution—restore their assets and clear their names from the list of enemies of the Republic.

Napoleon spotted Josephine’s postbag and saw another way she could be useful (his instruction to her to stay out of politics hadn’t lasted long). He needed the support of the royalists and the émigrés, for they had power, money, and, his spies told him, support from Britain. In fact, one of his first acts as consul was to abolish the law by which any returning émigré could be put to death. However, allowing them to return would be seen as undermining the principles of the Revolution. Josephine would be his device for covering his tracks. She would receive requests from the exiled aristocrats and apply to the ministers to have their names removed from the list of enemies of France. If republicans demanded an explanation, Napoleon would simply say that his wife had too kind a heart.

Josephine was delighted to receive requests from the greatest families in France and to entertain them in her salon. Previously so indolent, she read applications from morning until night. Eventually, Napoleon told Fouché, minister of police, to ensure that she did not go too far. She wrote letter after letter. “Would you oblige me, citizen Minister, by speeding up the processing of citizen Michon de Vougy’s forthcoming case with the commission of those inscribed on the list of emigrants,” she wrote to the minister of justice.[33] She also asked for favors, begging Fouché to “receive favourably Mme. Pasquier, one of my oldest friends.”[34]

Josephine assisted thousands of émigrés in returning to France. They called her the embodiment of “grace and goodness,” and she was respected and loved in equal measure for “inexhaustible charity.”[35] In the first year alone, more than forty thousand families were reunited. The returnees felt loyal to her husband and less likely to ally together to reinstall a king. She was particularly generous to the relations of her first husband, including her brother-in-law François, who had been a member of the Army of the Princes at Koblenz, a group of young aristocrats who had plotted to invade France in 1792. Bonaparte was so led by his Josephine that he gave François a diplomatic post. By 1802, nearly all exiles had been permitted to return, apart from men who fought against the French in foreign armies (unless, of course, they were François). They were not allowed to retrieve any property seized by the government or army, but otherwise they had free movement in the country. Still, few of them truly liked the new, highly moralistic and repressive social regime Napoleon was leading. There was to be, as one returning émigré put it, “no more flirting, no sentimentality, no godlessness, no more sparkling wit, no more easy relationships, no more joy.”

With the arrival of the émigrés, Josephine hoped that her husband might feel more sympathetic to the exiled Louis XVIII, son of the dauphin and Maria Josepha of Saxony. The forty-five-year-old younger brother of Louis XVI was living in exile at Courland (modern-day Latvia) in a palace owned by Paul I of Russia. There he had written a biography of Marie Antoinette and attempted to create an opulent court like that of Versailles.

Not long after Napoleon’s installation, Louis wrote to Josephine that he hoped she would use her influence to bring him back as monarch. To her husband, he was even more gaily optimistic, suggesting Napoleon use his military might to restore him to the throne. “I wish you would act more quickly. You and I could secure the magnificence of France,” Louis plaintively wrote to the first consul. “You would have to climb over 100,000 corpses first,” Napoleon replied. He offered small consolation: “I will gladly do what I can to make your retirement pleasant and undisturbed.”[36] Napoleon sent his answer to the press to be printed, much to the pleasure of the republicans.

Privately, Josephine begged her husband to reconsider. After years of insecurity, she believed that a monarch was the only way to stop any further bloodshed; she even took Hortense to plead with her. “I implore you, Bonaparte, don’t go making yourself a King.” The consul brushed off their tears. “You see ghosts where there are none, my dear Josephine. You have been taken in by the Faubourg Saint-Germain,” he said, commanding her not to refer to the subject again.[37] “They should return to their knitting and leave me in peace. But I don’t hold it against them,” he said to Bourrienne.[38] An old snob to the core, Napoleon loved Josephine’s links with the aristocracy and her passion for royalty. But he knew that the people still saw him as the protector of the Republic, a caretaker until the installation of a proper government, and he was determined to prove them wrong. “To be at the Tuilieries is not enough,” he acknowledged to Bourrienne. “I need to ensure that I stay.”[39] He could not do so without Josephine.

Thanks to her guile and finesse, she had emerged triumphant. Napoleon knew that he needed her. The rise of the Martinique girl, mocked by high society for her gruff accent and plump figure, seemed complete. Despite her spendthrift ways and failure to produce an heir, she had become Napoleon’s ideal wife, albeit largely for propaganda reasons: Her time in prison and her links to the aristocracy sparkled like the diamonds around her neck.

The British, who had laughed at the lovelorn Bonaparte’s letters, shook their heads at her continuing influence. In a caricature by an anonymous British artist, entitled “Johnny Bull on the Look-out or—Bonaparte Detected Drilling His Rib, at the Play of King and Queen of England—Scene St. Cloud” (1803), the couple’s power roles are playfully subverted.[40] Johnny Bull is meant to represent England, while Napoleon and Josephine are seated on thronelike chairs. Josephine is larger and taller than Napoleon, and it is she who holds an orb and scepter and wears a crown. Her pose is dominant, masculine, in charge.

JOSEPHINE MIGHT HAVE been winning the battle against those who wanted to see her fail, but she was spending huge amounts of money to do so. Napoleon wished to see her in lavishly decorated apartments and set apart from other women, always grandly dressed and covered in jewels. He wanted her followed in the haute couture magazines. Periodicals such as Journal des Dames and Costume Parisien would circulate pictures of the finery worn by Parisian ladies, and they often reported on the styles of Madame Bonaparte. Once upon a time, European courts had looked to France as the leader of fashion. Napoleon was eager for those days to return.

After the simplicity of the post-revolutionary dress, Napoleon dreamed of his wife as an ancien régime fashion plate. Still, he forbade gowns that were brightly colored, declaring that they made his head hurt. He hated dark gowns as well. He threatened to burn Josephine’s cashmere shawls, which were an incredible luxury, and forced her to wear woolly wraps made from properly French sheep. And she had to keep her weight down as he had an “invincible hatred of a fat woman.”[41] His fantasy woman was slender and graceful, clad in white, and he tried to make every woman dress the same way.

On the excuse of boosting the French silk industry in Lyon, the consul banned the import of Indian muslin, a fabric Josephine cherished.[42] Whenever Hortense and Josephine appeared before him, he would immediately ask, “Is that muslin you’re wearing?” They lied that it was St. Quentin linen, but smiled despite themselves, and he would promptly rip the gowns into pieces with his hands.[43] Napoleon demanded their clothing be made of more ostentatious fabrics, such as satin, velvet, and taffeta. What Josephine wore set the trend: Women began wearing heavier clothes with straighter skirts and stiff bodices, lengthened their sleeves, and raised their necklines.[44] When Napoleon spotted Madame de Staël at a ball in a low-cut gown, he bellowed, “You must have nursed all your children yourself, Madame?”[45]

Josephine’s favorite high-waisted gown was the perfect way for her to show off her still-impressive form without revealing too much skin. The shorter bodice of the “Empire-line” gown was much closer to the neck and suited her figure entirely. Men, too, eschewed the more romantic look. They wore darker, thicker fabrics with a frock coat, tailcoat, and straight waistcoat, very like military dress. Secretly, though, Josephine yearned for the fashions of her youth, the freedom of flowing dresses and natural hairstyles. She had been at her most beautiful in her mid- to late twenties and spent the rest of her life trying to dress in similar fashion, even when it had become very outdated.

THANKS TO HER lavish lifestyle, the specter of money reared its ugly head once more. When he returned from Egypt, Napoleon instructed Bourrienne to investigate his wife’s debts. Bourrienne approached Josephine but found her reluctant to divulge the truth. Finally, after she became consuless, she admitted to him that she was in debt for 1.2 million francs (around $20 million in modern-day terms). Bourrienne was scandalized and terrified to give his master such awful news.

Josephine begged for Bourrienne’s help. He told Napoleon that the debts amounted to only 600,000 francs. Even that, for the first consul, was a shocking sum. He seized her bills and roared with fury. Why, Napoleon fumed, had she needed thirty-eight new summer hats, all purchased in the space of a month, when she was in retirement at Malmaison? There was a bill of 180 francs for feathers and 800 for perfume. It was an outrageous amount when the average Parisian worker supported a family on 600 francs a year. In one year alone, she bought 900 gowns, almost five times as many as Marie Antoinette. Josephine was spending hundreds of thousands of francs a year. Napoleon had already paid off the outstanding debt of about 300,000 francs for Malmaison, as well as funding the renovations for their old house in the rue de la Victoire, and his wife had spent twice that amount on fripperies.

As usual, Josephine wept and pleaded and threw herself at Napoleon’s feet. At last he declared he would pay the debts. He did have some sympathy for her, for it was clear to anyone that many invoices were wrong—she had been hugely overcharged for certain items. However, she had shown no interest in checking the bills for accuracy.

Bourrienne had some difficult maneuvering to do: He told the dressmakers, milliners, feather makers, perfumiers, and all the others that they should quietly take half of what they were owed; if they sued, he said, Napoleon might be forced from office, and then they would receive nothing. Grumbling, the owners of the finest shops in Paris agreed. But they could not resist the siren call of Josephine’s purse and soon returned to present her with more tempting delights, such as jewels, shawls, fabrics, and trinkets. She had learned nothing from the debacle; she bought without asking the price and promptly forgot what she had purchased.[46]

Napoleon could compel “the toughest of characters, the most untameable of men” to do his bidding.[47] Yet he was powerless to curb Josephine’s astronomical spending. Her debts were not limited to tradespeople; she also borrowed money from friends. “I have not forgotten your 50 louis,” she wrote to her friend and fellow Creole Madame de Krény in 1800, “you will have them the day after tomorrow.”[48] As Bourrienne put it, her desperate need to spend money “was almost the sole occasion for her misery.”[49]

Napoleon loved people to be in debt, since it was a way of keeping them in a state of dependence, but Josephine went too far: She was addicted to shopping. Having lost so much in the Terror, she was always afraid of being deprived again. She was also looking for control and security and a way to forge an identity separate from Napoleon’s demands. She simply could not stop buying things she did not need.

After Napoleon had cleared her arrears, Josephine almost immediately lurched back into debt. She resorted to very unfortunate methods to make money, notably sharing political information with men such as Talleyrand and Fouché for a price, as well as delving back into black-market army supplies.[50] She even revived her foolish contact with Hippolyte Charles, after trying to recommend his company for an army contract. “I regret very much that I have failed,” she ventured, “since I would have been so happy to prove to you that nothing will change my feelings of the tenderest and most lasting friendship for you.”

In writing to Hippolyte, Josephine took a terrible risk. Her motives were purely nostalgic; she yearned for the days when she was younger, more hopeful, and not confined to the restricted role of wife of the first consul. It is almost impossible that this contact went unseen, but Napoleon’s spymaster Fouché protected her, as he was wont to do. It turned out she was wasting her time trying to prove her “most lasting friendship.” As she confessed to Madame de Krény, Hippolyte was being cruel to her in an attempt to break it off for good.[51] The relationship was over. On Hippolyte’s deathbed in 1837, he asked that Josephine’s letters to him be burned. Five letters survived, and in them is the tale of the only woman who dared betray Napoleon.

Aside from spending her husband’s money, she devoted every hour to being the perfect wife. She ornamented her apartments with tributes to Napoleon’s glory, praised him excessively, and proclaimed herself distraught when he departed her rooms. He deputized to her the task of entertaining visiting statesmen and keeping his allies, particularly those of noble origin. Many years later, Napoleon would admit that his marriage “brought me closer to a group which I required for my plan of integration, which was one of the most vital principles of my government.” As he said, “Had it not been for my wife, I should not have had an easy means of approaching it.”[52]

The truth was, despite their tumultuous relationship, Napoleon loved her and could not be without her. As he had to admit, his life had changed beyond measure since he had met her. “To me, luck is a woman,” he said, and that woman was Josephine. “He became accustomed to associate the idea of her influence with every piece of good fortune which befell him,” her friend Madame de Rémusat marveled.[53] As he saw it, he had gained majesty with her, and in order for his success to continue, he would have to keep her by his side. “I win battles,” he declared, “but Josephine wins hearts.”

*1 Napoleon had forgotten Pauline, still in Egypt with the rest of his army. She later returned to Paris, and although he never saw her again, he did (with General Duroc) arrange her marriage to a retired officer in 1801.

*2 Women of Josephine’s class ordinarily called their husbands by their surnames. Other family members would do the same, but Napoleon allowed only his wife to call him Bonaparte.

CHAPTER 12

“The Most Beautiful Thing in the World”

As consuless, Josephine was writing letters, charming politicians, and conforming herself to fit Napoleon’s moods. But her heart was often miles away in Malmaison. While the first consul was reconfiguring the very foundations on which the country rested, his wife began major restructuring and renovation of her country estate. In January 1800, the two young architects Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine were called upon “to rebuild a badly constructed house which is falling into ruin and which was only built for a very ordinary person.”[1]

Percier and Fontaine kept a detailed notebook in which they recorded the modifications. This invaluable document gives a sense of the scale. Entire sections of the house were demolished and rebuilt. As always, Napoleon grumbled that his wife was spending too much money but did little to stop her. She attempted to create an interior decor imitating military tents, but Napoleon judged it unappealing. He dubbed a tent-shaped vestibule designed to house the domestic staff “a fairground tent fit only for showing animals.”[2]

Malmaison was to be primarily a home for entertaining, so in her renovations, everything was sacrificed to these spaces. Josephine spent thousands on the salon, the dining room, the gallery, and the billiard room on the ground floor. The architects remodeled them along classical lines with stucco columns and decorative panels, the best means of display for statues stolen from Italy. They created a music room, which Josephine decorated with her incredible collection of art. The renovated dining room was equipped with an ingenious underfloor heating system, and Louis Lafitte decorated it in Pompeian style. By July, Percier and Fontaine proudly noted, “the dining room, billiard room and vestibule are nearly finished. The First Consul, who is back again, is pleased with the changes.”[3]

Next to the dining room was another tentlike meeting room. Beyond this stood Napoleon’s office. Framed by imposing pillars (and a protruding kitchen pipe that severely annoyed the architects), the ceiling was decorated with a fresco of the figures of Minerva and Apollo and portraits of the hero. “Mme. Bonaparte desired to have paintings representing scenes from the general’s life,” Fontaine noted.[4] Napoleon liked the paintings by Girodet and Gérard, especially since they were inspired by Ossian, the great ancient Gaelic bard. Ossian’s poems had taken Europe by storm after the Scots poet James Macpherson had published verses supposedly written by the bard, which he said he had found (in reality, the lines were written by Macpherson himself). Napoleon was less enamored by the pictures of him on the panels by Bidaut, Taunay, Dunouy, and Thibault, and he demanded their prompt removal. The whole home was a tribute to Napoleon, covered in Greek and Roman decorations and Egyptian trinkets. Josephine packed it full of heavy mahogany and gilt furniture made by Napoleon’s favorite, Maison Jacob. Everything was meant to give an aura of grandeur and opulence, and to underscore Napoleon’s message that he was a new force for good with connections to old traditions.

As with Percier and Fontaine, Napoleon’s patronage changed the lives of the Jacob brothers, the owners of the Maison Jacob atelier. The exquisite creations of their father, Georges Jacob, had adorned the royal palaces of the monarchs prior to the Revolution, and the aristocracy had all fought to buy his work. But after 1789 his workshop lay quiet. Under Thermidor, demand began to soar once more, and Georges’s younger son François took over, soon catching the attention of Barras and the directors. Josephine filled her home with his furniture, and by the time Napoleon was first consul, François Jacob had to tempt his father out of retirement to help with Napoleon’s demands for mahogany, gilt and bronze chairs, tables carved with his insignia, and chests and armoires so heavily laden with gold that they were wearing on the eye.

Despite Napoleon’s obsession with Versailles, in which bedrooms were public spaces as splendid as reception rooms, his home at Malmaison followed a bourgeois setup: Public rooms were resplendent and private rooms simple. Laure Junot, a regular guest at the château, was unimpressed, complaining, “Our apartments consisted of a bedroom, a cabinet and a room for our maid.” She also called the furniture “very plain.”[5] Napoleon and Josephine didn’t mind; until the end of the consulate, they shared a bed under a fresco of clouds blowing across a blue sky in a simply furnished room.[6]

By 1802, the now-jaded Percier and Fontaine had done their work, and Malmaison had been transformed. Josephine turned her attentions to developing the grounds of her new home and buying more land. She had originally purchased a rather measly 150 acres, but by the end of her life, the land had increased more than ten times, with grounds stretching to the banks of the Seine. Percier and Fontaine created an area for sports and rebuilt the stables and outhouses. They erected extra buildings for staff and cottages for guests. Josephine had grand designs: She requested a pavilion and a roundabout to make it easier for dozens of coaches to attend at the same time. In 1801, after an attempt on Napoleon’s life, she added sentry posts.

Josephine longed to reproduce the lush landscape of Martinique in her home and bought books on horticulture as well as thousands of plants. “She wants us to work on the gardens, the waters, the conservatories,” Fontaine noted in 1800.[7] He protested that her requirements were “without measure and without limits.”[8] Josephine, transported by romantic desires for rolling hills and free-flowing beds of flowers, clashed with Fontaine, who preferred a classical layout. He was infuriated when she eventually hired the British gardener Howatson and then Jean-Marie Morel, both specialists in the jardin à l’anglaise, as she wished a wilder look for her grounds than Versailles.

On October 2, an alarmed Napoleon appointed a new superintendent for the gardens in an attempt to curb the expense. It was hopeless. Josephine had become a woman obsessed by plants. In a letter to her mother, she asked for “the trees and seeds of as many species as possible” (though Josephine had asked, her mother refused to come to France because she was a staunch royalist and was shocked by Napoleon’s desire to rule alone, but she agreed to send over plants). Josephine filled the gardens with orchids and exotic magnolia trees from St. Lucia and also exploited her husband’s empire by collecting seeds from his representatives all over the world, including Africa, South America, and the Middle East.

Josephine established connections with influential figures across the globe, sending off letters bursting with botanical knowledge and showcasing a meticulous attention to detail. The year she moved into Malmaison, she wrote to General Lefebvre, “I would therefore be delighted to receive some of the magnolias and the bushes which you possess in significant quantity. But I attach a condition: that is that you make use of me with the same freedom and that you demand from me just as unreservedly any of the plants which I possess which you desire.”[9] She wrote to Monsieur Cazeaux in November 1803, playing on his “patriotic zeal” and asking for some of his plants and “seeds from America.”

I wish to multiply the production of plants from this continent in France, since its temperature is similar to our own. In order to achieve this goal, of which I have no doubt you will recognize the value, I am dedicating a section of the grounds adjoining Malmaison to a nursery. Exotic trees and bushes which thrive in our climate are cultivated here. The First Consul is observing the development of this establishment enthusiastically. It is a new source of prosperity for France.[10]

Josephine was presenting her garden as the glory of France. In a letter to the prefect Thibaudeau, she thanked him for the “wonderful collection” of seeds he had sent.

It brings me such inexpressible joy to see these foreign plants multiplying in my gardens. I hope that Malmaison will soon offer a model of good culture and that it will become a source of riches for the departments. It is to this end that I am growing a large quantity of trees and bushes from Australian and American territories. In 10 years time, I want every department to possess a collection of precious plants from my nurseries.[11]

Josephine delighted in exchanging seeds, ideas, and cuttings, pressing all the owners of fine gardens to give her the plants she desired.[12]

The grounds of Malmaison were her empire. As the botanist Étienne Pierre Ventenat wrote to her in the foreword to Le Jardin de la Malmaison in 1803, she had created “an impressive reminder of the conquests of your illustrious husband.”[13] She had gathered “the rarest plants growing on French soil,” which had never before left “the deserts of Arabia or the burning deserts of Egypt.”[14] She even bought from the enemy, spending her husband’s gold at the Hammersmith nursery Lee & Kennedy. “Some plants have arrived for you from London,” Napoleon wrote in 1801—only a few years after the Battle of the Nile.[15] She begged the ambassador in Britain to see if the king would sell her some of his plants. Even in times of war with Britain, when the rest of Europe was blocked from trade, much to the detriment of their economies, Josephine still imported plants from Britain. Napoleon even allowed one nurseryman safe passage to bring over a particularly delicate tree.[16]

In 1800 he authorized the explorer Nicolas Baudin to undertake an expedition to Australia, instructing him to bring back plants and animals. He returned with thousands of treasures for the consuless, including hibiscus, mimosas, and other flowers from New South Wales and Tasmania, as well as eucalyptus trees. Josephine then wished for an expert in Australian horticulture and appointed Felix Delahaye, who had restored Marie Antoinette’s garden at Versailles and traveled with an expedition to southwest Australia in 1791 during which he collected two hundred plants.[17] Malmaison became a little Australia, and all the sea captains were told to bring back flora for Josephine. In 1809 Napoleon sent over eight hundred plants and seeds from Schönbrunn in Austria.

“My garden is the most beautiful thing in the world,” Josephine said in 1813.[18] Malmaison was a fiefdom of rare and exotic plants, many grown for the first time in Europe, some of which are now common in our gardens, including cactuses, rhododendrons, tulips, dahlias, and double jacinths. “There are so many rare plants from all parts of the world, that one might believe oneself to be in the tropics,” pronounced Comtesse Potocka.[19] Josephine also cultivated roses and would eventually produce fifty varieties. She spent thousands on specimens and nurtured her own, using names that evoked beauty and sensuality, including cuisse de nymphe emue (or “thigh of an affected nymph”). She had an exceptional collection of heather and grew jasmine from her native Martinique. She spared no expense, once spending three thousand francs on a single bulb. By 1813, she could inform Eugène proudly that her grounds were “more visited by Parisians than my salon, since at this very moment that I am writing, I am told that there are at least 30 people walking in the garden.”[20]

Malmaison had something of the fairground or theme park atmosphere about it. In 1802 Josephine built an exotic orangery full of pineapples and other fruits, which she served at her table. The following year she bought a fleet of pretty cows and opened a dairy, staffed by a cowherd imported from Switzerland and a team of dairymaids in Swiss costume. Marie Antoinette’s Petit Trianon had been mocked and derided; now Josephine made one that was even grander and kitschier, even taking the bas-reliefs by Pierre Julien, along with the marbled furniture and porcelain from the Petit Trianon, to furnish it. Morel built a Swiss chalet on the edge of the Saint Cucufa pond as a house for the herders, with cattle sheds next door. Josephine delightedly served the butter, milk, and cheese at her table. In 1808 the king of Spain sent a present of two thousand prime merino sheep, and she set them wandering over her grounds. Parisian high society loved playing farm with Josephine, as they had with Marie Antoinette.

In 1805 Josephine opened her hothouse, designed by Jean-Thomas Thibault and Barthélemy Vignon. “Vast and magnificent,” as one visitor said, it was a 165-foot-long tropical paradise full of plants from around the world.[21] Huge trees over fifteen feet tall touched the glass ceiling, and dahlia, amaryllis, and fruit trees perfumed the air. In the midst of it all was a bust of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His notions of freedom, emotion, and feeling were in absolute opposition to the stiffness of the consul and the mannered formality Napoleon desired—but in her hothouse and gardens, Josephine could be as romantic and liberated as she wished. In a letter to one of her gardeners, she wrote to say that she would like her bust of Rousseau to be displayed so that the tendrils of the surrounding plants would trail around his head.[22] Rousseau, ornamented with greenery, was the king of her domain.

The biggest attraction of all was her zoo. Her animals roamed freely on the grounds at Malmaison, and it was the most exotic menagerie in Europe. Few ships arrived in France from foreign climes without an animal for Josephine. Kangaroos hopped around the verdant gardens, and emus nuzzled at the soil as the country neighbors gaped at Peruvian llamas. She had the first zebra in Europe, as well as a gnu, a chamois, and golden pheasants from China. Gazelles trotted around and nibbled from the hands of guests, and flying squirrels swooped through the trees. Talleyrand gave her a monkey who liked sealing letters with wax.

After surviving lengthy sea journeys, her animals flourished at Malmaison, unless Napoleon felt like using them for target practice (fortunately, he was a poor shot). Peacocks stalked the flower beds while her prized Australian black swans swam on Malmaison’s canal and lake. They were the first to be seen in Europe, and she was incredibly proud of them. Such were the spoils that came back from the 1800 Australian expedition that the Natural History Museum demanded a share, but the minister of the interior told them that Josephine came first.

Her most cherished animal was a female orangutan possessed of a remarkably sweet nature. The little lady strolled about the house fully dressed, and when anyone approached her, she pulled her coat over her legs and would “assume a modest, decent air to welcome the visitor.” She always ate at the table, using a knife and fork, and was particularly fond of nibbling on turnips. After dinner, she loved to cover her head with a napkin and then pull funny faces. When she fell ill and was put to bed, she lay with the cover drawn up to her chin and her arms outside it, completely hidden by the sleeves of the dressing gown. If anyone she knew came into the room, she greeted him with an appealing look, shaking her head gently and pressing his hand affectionately.[23]

Nowhere else in France, or indeed Europe, could one see a llama grazing or an orangutan eating turnips. Josephine’s visitors were delighted by the great forests, lawns, beautiful waterways, and long canal full of boats and black swans. The whole place was a museum of curiosities. Josephine also collected stuffed animals and birds and placed them in cabinets all over Malmaison.

Troupes of gardeners, landscapers, designers, botanists, and horticultural specialists followed Percier and Fontaine, throwing their hands up in dismay over the demands of the consuless. Louis-Martin Berthault, who began work there in 1807, best understood Josephine’s tastes. He created a temple of love, a monument to melancholy, a grotto made of rocks from Fontainebleau, and an ornamental lake with a statue of Napoleon at its center. Berthault positioned classical and Renaissance sculptures all around the park (perfect for the guests to play hide-and-seek). He also widened the river to create another lake and added a salon to the side of the huge greenhouse that housed Josephine’s tropical plants.

Decorated in the antique style, adorned with vases, and heated by wood-burning stoves, her “greenhouse” salon was an intimate place to talk with her guests. The centerpiece featured two “beautiful brèche violette marble columns, 12 feet in height, with gilt capitals and bases,” procured by the founder of the Musée des Monuments Français.[24]

Before long, Josephine became inseparable from her garden. Botanists even named plants after her: The Lapageria rosea, Josephinia Imperatricis, and Amaryllis Josephinae were all tributes to her. Trading on the idea of her garden as a reflection of her husband’s battles, she said that three of the plants she grew—lily of the Nile, Parma violets, and Damietta roses—were in honor of Napoleon’s military conquests.[25] She planted a cedar tree on the property to commemorate the Battle of Marengo.

Creating a beautiful garden was often seen as the role of the consort. Maria Carolina, queen of Naples, had caused her British envoy, Sir William Hamilton, endless headaches in her quest for a truly British garden at her palace. But Josephine prided herself on knowing more about horticulture than Marie Antoinette or Catherine the Great, and she used portraiture to advertise her knowledge. In Baron François-Pascal-Simon Gérard’s watercolor An Allegory of Empress Josephine as Patroness of the Gardens at Malmaison (c. 1805–1807), she stands in front of Malmaison’s famous hothouse. Similarly, Pierre-Paul Prud’hon’s Empress Josephine at Malmaison (1805–1809) shows her looking relaxed and ethereal in the gardens, and it even depicts a Josephinia Imperatricis in the bottom right-hand corner. Eager to show off her excellence as a botanist, she took as her symbol the cornucopia, the icon of abundance, prosperity, good fortune, peace, and good government, and had it carved into many of her possessions.[26] The British caricatured her as an amateur botanist, with George Cruikshank producing The Imperial Botany, showing a bosomy Josephine displaying her sunflowers to the beau monde—all have faces of powerful men, and the Napoleon flower is much less healthy than the Wellington. The French snapped up pictures of her next to her plants and bought trinket cornucopias.

Josephine sought to publicize and record her gardens.[27] She asked Pierre-Joseph Redouté, formerly Marie Antoinette’s drawing master, to produce 120 color plates in a two-volume work entitled The Garden of Malmaison (1803–1805), as well as eight volumes of Liliaceous Plants (1802–1816) by the botanist Étienne-Pierre Ventenat. She gave away copies of the books in an attempt to promote her gardens, and encouraged Redouté to publish a survey of the roses in Malmaison. His Roses (1817–1824) would make her gardens famous after her death. She covered her bedroom walls with flower pictures by Redouté and used them to decorate a giant bed she bought in 1812.

The gardens were her pleasure and her consolation, but they were also an elaborate form of imperial propaganda, as well as her stake at immortality and a reflection of the quest for power that her husband conducted with her at his side. Her plants were also for her guests to admire, setting them at ease while they wandered the grounds, talked politics, planned love affairs. Josephine might have claimed for herself the position of supportive consort, and the role of the woman without intellect or political awareness, but it was an act: Few could have created such an imaginative and truly unique home. Informal, beautiful, welcoming, and all ease and grace on the surface, Malmaison was Josephine. As Napoleon observed: “Without you, Malmaison is too sad a place.”[28]

In the early days of the consulate, Malmaison was practically the seat of government. Josephine and Napoleon traveled to their country retreat whenever they could, and were always there for Saturday evening, all of Sunday, and part of Monday. After meetings held to decide the civil code and foreign policy, Josephine would host grand receptions and fabulous dinners. As a hostess, she meant, above all, for her guests to enjoy themselves. “We chose our hour of rising,” recalled Madame Junot.[29] Breakfast was informal, around eleven at the earliest, and guests could spend the afternoons as they pleased, with music, reading, or games in the garden, or simply wandering the grounds, gossiping about politics. The company would gaze at the paintings and admire the incredible mosaic pictures from Florence, bronzes, and Sèvres vases in the reception rooms. At dinner, Josephine always provided a sumptuous spread, with her own butter, milk, fruits, and meat, the table decorated with flowers and candles softly illuminating the young faces of Napoleon’s court.

In the afternoons, Napoleon and Josephine would ride around in her barouche. “When I am outside in the fresh air my ideas take a higher direction,” Napoleon said. “I cannot understand how some men can work successfully if they are always inside, beside the fireplace, without communication with the sky.”[30] Visitors to Malmaison often saw him working outside, papers on his lap. Talleyrand once arrived to find Napoleon had “established his office on one of the bowling greens.”

Everyone was seated on the grass which Napoleon did not mind in the least as he was wearing leather boots and kid breeches—and he is used to camping. But as for me in silk breeches and silk stockings—can you imagine me sitting on the lawn! I am full of rheumatism! What a man! It was as if he was in a camp![31]

On warm summer evenings, Josephine would order dinner to be served outside, sometimes in tents to celebrate Napoleon’s victories.[32] There would be hunts, and as Laure Permond, by then married to Junot, recalled, when Bonaparte “felt in the mood,” he would play games such as barre, “which he vastly enjoyed, taking off his coat and running like a hare.” The consul teased the animals, feeding the tame gazelle tobacco from his pouch and “encouraging it to run at us and the horrid animal tore our dresses and often our legs.”[33] But his greatest pleasure was to see the younger ladies “running beneath the leafy arches of the trees, all dressed in white.” Nothing touched him like the sight of a graceful woman in a white gown.[34]

During the summer months, there were balls in the salons on Sundays, and guests in their finery spilled out onto the huge lawn of the property. There were concerts and games of blindman’s bluff, chess, backgammon, cards, billiards, and charades, which Napoleon hated losing. The company was young, fun-loving, wealthy, and life seemed full of possibility. Romantic liaisons were made under the trees, pursued beside the Greek statues, and broken by the lake of black swans.

“It was not difficult to be entertained,” Hortense remembered.[35] On Wednesdays, forty or fifty guests would be invited to dinner, and a hundred and fifty came for a theatrical performance overseen by the consul. He would have his courtiers, friends, and relatives rehearsing for weeks, supervised the casting, and spent thousands of francs on costumes and props. The theater manager came over from the Théâtre-Français, and drama coaches were hired in the form of the established actors Talma, Michot, Fleury, and Mademoiselle Mars. As in royal courts throughout history, the family members took the important parts and the courtiers had to applaud them, no matter how bad they were. Fortunately, Hortense, who usually took the lead female roles, had a sweet voice and a facility for acting, unlike the rest. Bourrienne was given the longer parts on account of his good memory, Junot often played drunkards, and stolid Eugène was landed with the footmen roles. Lucien declared the whole lot of them poor, but Bonaparte was delighted by their performances, writing to Josephine while she was in Plombières to inform her that Hortense was playing Rosina in The Barber of Seville.[36]

Napoleon initially told Fontaine to create “a sort of portable theatre, which can be set up in the gallery at Malmaison, near the drawing-room.”[37] Then he ordered “as economically as possible, a small hall, entirely isolated, in the direction of the farm.” It was not an economic design. Fontaine drew up a plan and an estimate, handed it to Bourrienne for a performer’s view, and settled on a circular form, the seats divided into sections, with a pit, a row of boxes, a gallery, an orchestra, two small foyers, and “a smaller theatre with no machinery for intimate plays.”[38] On May 12, 1802, the architect recorded in his journal, “the theatre of Malmaison has been used for the first time.”[39]

The actors played in front of consuls, minsters, senators, and generals—and Napoleon. “He would be there in his box, close beside us, and followed us with his eyes and at the same time with a more or less mocking smile, which terrified us all,” recalled Laure Junot.[40] “After the spectacle, there was a crowd in the ground floor apartments for brilliant refreshments.”[41] The evenings ended at about midnight, when guests would clatter in their carriages back to Paris.

MALMAISON WAS JOSEPHINE’S crown, and Hortense, fresh from Madame Campan’s, was its jewel. As Napoleon wrote to his wife in Plombières, “your charming daughter does the honours of the house with perfection.”[42] She had inherited her mother’s grace and elegance, along with her father’s magnificent looks. Unlike her mother, she read widely, wrote poetry, and played the piano well, particularly her favorite sonatas by Haydn and Mozart and pieces by Gluck and Dalayrac. So accomplished were her musical compositions—which included “Le Bon Chevalier”—that they were performed and appreciated in other salons.[43] One of her compositions, “Va T’en Guerrier,” was even turned into a military march at Napoleon’s request.[44]

Josephine had been lazy at music, and Napoleon could no sooner play than stand on his head, but they encouraged Hortense and Eugène to perform. Hortense sang beautifully, putting great expression into the words, and her voice blossomed under the guidance of her Italian singing tutor, Signor Bonesi.[45] Napoleon was always alert to improving his stepdaughter. On one occasion as she read aloud, he stopped her in midsentence and corrected her loudly.[46] But most of the time she needed little coaching. She was also a talented artist and had benefited greatly from Isabey’s tutoring. On one occasion at Malmaison, Hortense failed to make an appearance at dinner. When Josephine went to her daughter’s room and found her drawing, she asked whether she was hoping to earn a living from her hobby. Astute for her age, Hortense replied: “Mama, in the century in which we are living, who is to say that that might not happen?”[47]

Everyone thought Hortense was destined for an auspicious marriage. Like Josephine, she was very affectionate and quite attached to her mother and brother. “She is really angelic in disposition,” thought Madame de Rémusat.[48] She had inherited her mother’s talent for flirting. Madame Campan worried for her as she embarked on her new social life as Napoleon’s stepdaughter. She warned that it would be a “dangerous whirlwind,” since many people wished to be friends only “for their own advantage” because she was “the person of the moment, with an awe-inspiring title.”[49] Madame Campan was right: Hortense was quickly surrounded by soldiers, ministers, and diplomats eager for her attentions. She fell in love with Napoleon’s former aide-de-camp, General Duroc. A romance blossomed—but Josephine had greater plans for her daughter, and Napoleon disliked the idea of such a powerful son-in-law. Napoleon declared that they could marry, with a dowry of five hundred thousand francs, but Duroc and she would have to leave for Toulon immediately after the wedding: “I do not want any sons-in-law in my house,” Napoleon said.[50] Duroc refused to agree to the terms, and Josephine sent her despairing daughter back to the round of dancing and balls.

WHEN THEY WERE not entertaining, Josephine’s routine at Malmaison seldom varied: She would spend the day corresponding about plants, surveying the house and the grounds, receiving visitors, and dining alone with Napoleon in the evening. He neglected his work to walk around the property and supervise the improvements, and amused himself by calculating the income from the grounds, including even the vegetables in the kitchen garden. “That’s not bad,” he said, looking at the profit of 8,000 francs, “but one needs a yearly income of 30,000 francs to live here.”[51]

“Napoleon loved Malmaison with a passion!” said one visitor.[52] “Nowhere, except on the battlefield, have I seen Bonaparte happier than in the gardens at Malmaison,” wrote Bourrienne.[53] The consul looked forward to his weekends there as eagerly as “a schoolboy to his holidays.”[54] In a world where he was always afraid of uprisings or rebels hungering for his blood, the consul felt safe in Josephine’s palace. Even when he was seriously entertaining plans to leave her, he still thought fondly of Malmaison. In August 1809, while in Austria, he wrote, “the pleasures of Malmaison, the beautiful greenhouses, the beautiful gardens cause the absent to be forgotten.”[55]

If the gardens were Josephine’s display case for exotic and rare plants, the house was her frame for the art she purchased at a cost of millions. She had the pictures, statues, and mosaics that Napoleon had taken for her during his campaigns, some so exquisite that it was little wonder many had been locked up in the secret closet of the pope. And even during the period of the Directory, she was an influential patron. From 1799, she had amassed over 450 paintings, drawings, and miniatures. By the time she died, there were more than three thousand objets d’art at Malmaison (including works by old masters and contemporary artists, sculpture, furniture, and other decorative objects). Josephine became one of the most important collectors of her age.

On a personal level, she loved the chase of collecting. Her gallery featured the finest paintings in Europe, taken by the brute force of her husband. “I would have respected Mme. Bonaparte more if she had simply said all these works of art were taken by force at the end of a sword,” said Madame de la Tour du Pin. [56]

Catherine the Great had amassed art as an aggressive strategy, creating a collection that saluted Russia’s power and wealth. With every painting she took from a vassal state, an enemy, or a rival, she proved her country’s magnitude. Famous French consorts previously patronized French artists, from Watteau and Boucher, beloved of Madame du Pompadour, to the Sèvres porcelain admired by Marie Antoinette. Josephine saw herself as the patroness of an empire. As the wife of Napoleon, she knew it was her role to create a fabulous art collection to showcase his power. The collection was also testimony to her independence, dedication, and negotiating skills.

She kept up with trends in the art world and subscribed to a variety of journals. She used the most knowledgeable advisers in France, such as Dominique Vivant de Denon, director of the Musée Napoléon; the archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir; the curator and merchant restorer Guillaume Constantin; and the artists Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Jean-Baptiste Isabey, and Lancelot Turpin de Crissé. Crissé even became her chamberlain. She made the careers of many artists. “How many she helped! How many received her support!” said her maid, Mademoiselle Avrillion.[57] Once she had bought their works, commissions from Napoleon often followed, and everybody at court wished to use the same painters as Josephine.[58] The consuless did not always pay her bills. She asked Antoine Hamelin, who was in Rome, to spend a hundred thousand francs on art for her, suggesting he could spend more if he saw items he liked. Two years later, he was still plaintively asking for his money.

Josephine owned great works from Italy, many French pieces, a good haul of Dutch and Flemish canvases, and a few by Spanish and German painters. She had pictures by Rembrandt, Rubens, Metsu, Van Dyck, Ruysdael, Poussin, Lorrain, Bellini, Correggio, Raphael, da Vinci, Titian, Veronese, and a number of marbles, bronzes, mosaics, and antique vases from Egypt. She had family portraits, historical subjects, works inspired by Napoleon’s military conquests, scenes from everyday life and mythology, still lifes, and animal paintings. One of the most significant additions to her gallery—Rembrandt’s Descent from the Cross—came from the collection of the Hesse-Cassel family following the battle of Jena in 1806 (the owners had tried to hide the art in a woodshed, but Napoleon’s soldiers hunted it out).

The one glaring absence in her assortment was British paintings. Napoleon simply would not allow it—London plants were bad enough.

Josephine initially planned to hang her paintings in the salon de musique (sometimes called the galerie française). She soon ran out of space. In 1806 Berthault designed a gallery of at least sixty-five feet in length; its construction was completed in 1808. She threw a ball to celebrate the opening of the most magnificent room in all Malmaison. It was, said one visitor, “so well built, so well painted and with such taste, so perfectly lighted from above, so well proportioned that one could not hope to see a more beautiful room.”[59] Two glass doors led to a huge double archway, and works lined the walls, with vases and bronzes arranged over the tables, alongside busts of Napoleon and herself.[60]

Mme. Bonaparte was a ruthless collector, yet the works she was most drawn to, as in her garden, were often romantic or sentimental about nature and rustic life, rather than congratulatory of Napoleon. She had emotive paintings by popular female artists and more than thirty troubadour paintings—small, highly finished portraits of courtly love, such as François Fleury Richard’s Valentine of Milan Mourning the Death of Her Husband, the Duc d’Orléans (1802). Displayed at the Paris Salon of 1802, it reflected a craze for the medieval style that was all the rage. One reviewer called it a “triumph of marital love,” and Josephine snapped it up.[61]

She adored all things medieval, borrowing the look for her costume, collecting volumes on medieval culture, and subscribing to Le Journal des Troubadours.[62] She who had sold her favors for security spent hours staring at troubadour portraits, wrapped up in their notions of courtly tribute and men and women sacrificing themselves for love.

Many artists produced portrait busts of Josephine, and she especially loved the work of Antonio Canova, one of the most talented—if artistically conservative—sculptors of the day.[63] She became his primary French patron and commissioned five works by him between 1802 and 1814.[64] In 1804 the incorrigible Pauline Bonaparte tried to seize his attention by turning up in Rome and suggesting he sculpt her as a naked Venus—“There was a perfectly good fire in the studio,” she said, hoping to see her statue famous across Europe.

In 1803 Josephine received a shipment of precious objects from the recent excavations at Herculaneum and Pompeii, a gift from King Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies. In 1809 Napoleon helped grow this collection even further by ordering 180 Greek vases to be sent by his sister Caroline and her husband, Murat, recently installed as king and queen of Naples. Josephine filled the rooms with the ancient vessels and placed amphoras across the grounds and statues in the theater.

THE EARLY YEARS of the consulate at Malmaison were a golden time for Josephine. She had something that was truly hers, and she surrounded herself with the things she loved. Her home was an escape from the stiff etiquette of the Tuileries, a respite from the vultures circling to destroy her. She was a leader of style, a woman emulated and discussed, her every move charted. Her collection made her an arbiter of cultural taste. Men found her fascinating, women envied her. And yet despite the success of Malmaison, there was one man who found her increasingly resistible. The first consul had begun taking mistresses.

CHAPTER 13

Scenes with Bonaparte

“I am so miserable,” Josephine wrote to her old friend Madame de Krény, “every day there are scenes with Bonaparte, and for no reason. This is not living.” Napoleon had been acting cruel—and Josephine had discovered why. “Then eight days ago, I discovered that La Grassini was in Paris. It seems that she is the cause of all the pain I am suffering.”

Giuseppina Grassini, the tempestuous and divine twenty-seven-year-old contralto opera star, had first caught Napoleon’s eye in Mombello. In Milan, just before the Battle of Marengo in 1800, he watched her sing at La Scala and decided he must have her.

Before long, La Grassini was established in Paris in a house not far from the Tuileries. Josephine was in torment. She begged Madame de Krény to find out if Napoleon visited her or if La Grassini was smuggled into the Tuileries. “I assure you my dear, that if I was at all mistaken, I would tell you … Try too to find out where this woman lives.”[1] Details such as where La Grassini lived or how Napoleon visited her could only cause Josephine distress, but she was desperate to find out. Napoleon was soon flaunting his mistress in front of Josephine, even going so far as inviting her to Malmaison to sing.

“I am not like other men, and the ordinary laws of morality and rules of propriety do not apply to me,” Napoleon vaunted. Like tyrants throughout history, he imposed morality on the people while using his own position to pursue his sexual desires. He needed Josephine, but his belief that only she could satisfy him had waned. He still loved her, they still shared a bed, and he was still sexually fascinated by her, but he was no longer obsessed by being faithful to her. Now he was first consul, and beautiful and aristocratic women were flinging themselves at him.

Napoleon openly dallied with actresses and aristocrats, enjoying his newfound power over women. He did not mean to hurt his wife; he simply thought she should accept his behavior as befitting his greatness. But Josephine was distraught and furious when she discovered that the Bonapartes were pushing women into her husband’s path, weeping bitterly to her ladies-in-waiting of her ill treatment. However, there was little she could do. Her power over him came from her gentleness and the respite he gained in her rooms, but every time she challenged him, she lost a little of his affection. She had to understand that the price of Napoleon’s love was allowing his affairs.

Josephine’s jealousy gave her much pain. But Napoleon’s nights with his conquests bore no comparison with those he had spent with her in their early days of passion, when he had been so wildly obsessed by their boudoir that he thought of nothing else. He had showered her with kisses, craved her for hours, and never tired of her. With the new mistresses, he was practical. The consul would instruct that the lady be lying in bed, already disrobed, so that he did not have to bother watching her undress. The act of love was usually over in minutes. He took other women to slake his desire for power, not to fall in love.

There may have been one exception. The Duchesse d’Abrantès described Hortense as being “truly charming at this time, with her slim waist, her beautiful blonde hair and her big, gentle blue eyes and her grace, utterly Creole and utterly French at the same time.”[2] Hortense’s influence over Napoleon did not go unnoticed. Cruel gossip began that she was having an affair with her stepfather. The British gutter press leaped on the story, but it was also impossible for the French to resist: Napoleon seduced women, and Hortense was beautiful and so close to him. But Bourrienne declared he saw nothing in all his time with Napoleon to suggest “a connection of the nature of that charged against him,” which “was neither in accordance with his morals nor his tastes.”[3] It seems unlikely that Napoleon would seduce his virgin stepdaughter, whom he claimed he loved like a daughter—he was never a great seducer of virgins, preferring to take married women or those who had enjoyed male protectors—though the gossip swirled unrelentingly.

AS CONSUL, NAPOLEON was under threat from the monarchists and the Jacobins alike, but he was more afraid of the former. “My power depends on my glory, and my glory on my victories,” he said. For all his achievements, his position was by no means secure. He needed another military victory. “Conquest alone can maintain me.”[4]

Early in May 1800, Napoleon hurried from the palace, saying goodbye to Josephine and telling her to keep his final destination secret. His aim was to rout the Austrian army.

He set off across Europe, scribbling to her as he went. “I’ve had no letters from you,” he wrote, “a thousand tender thoughts, my sweet little one.”[5] Though his words were affectionate, he no longer wished her to join him, as he had in the past. “Here is an example to be followed,” he told the other wives and camp followers. “Citoyenne Bonaparte has remained in Paris.” The consul and his men traveled over the St. Bernard Pass and came down behind Austrian lines. On June 14 at Marengo, the Austrians fought back, and by two o’clock in the afternoon, the French army had been all but overcome.

On June 20, Josephine was about to host a reception for dignitaries and members of the government when a messenger hurried into the room and told her Bonaparte had been killed and the army defeated. She refused to believe it and continued to preside over the celebrations. Just as the dignitaries were about to go home (and the news was spreading about Bonaparte’s fall), another messenger entered the room and laid two Austrian flags at her feet, both torn apart by bullets. He announced that the French had won and Napoleon had achieved a great victory over the enemy.

As Josephine later discovered, one of Napoleon’s favorite generals, General Desaix, had arrived in the nick of time with reinforcements. He had rushed into battle and routed the army, but he had been killed by a musket ball in the process. Thanks to him, the French won the Battle of Marengo. However, it was Napoleon, as overall commander, who was seen as the champion of the hour. People poured into the streets, cannons fired, windows were hung with flags and illuminations. Napoleon returned to Paris, accompanied by his bloodstained men, on the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. He announced that the “acclamations were as sweet to my ears as the sound of Josephine’s voice.”[6] Not everyone supported him: Madame de la Tour du Pin declared that in reality, the people were unhappy under his rule.[7] “I hoped that Bonaparte would be beaten, because it was the only way to put an end to his tyranny, but I did not yet dare admit this desire,” said Madame de Staël, no longer a passionate admirer (and under intense surveillance by Napoleon’s spies for complaining about him).[8] Still, for Napoleon and his circle, Marengo made him a hero, the supreme ruler of Europe, and the man who could never be unseated.

Thanks to General Desaix, Napoleon held his grip on the public imagination. The raggle-taggle return of the decimated Army of Italy in the autumn of 1801 barely dented his popularity. The would-be Louis XVIII, aging and corpulent in Courland, was still hoping to be installed as king by the royalists, but he could not compete with Napoleon’s military might and his ability to transform himself into a legend. Napoleon set his minions to celebrating his victories in plays, tributes, and art, the most significant of which was a painting by Jacques-Louis David, former ally of Robespierre. His emotionally charged and hastily completed Napoleon Crossing the Alps (c. 1800) depicted the hero astride his rearing horse. “Commemorate me!” the consul cried to artists, musicians, and writers. “Celebrate me!”

Fouché’s network of spies hardly fostered the climate for imaginative literature—art was liable to be attacked or even quashed unless it praised the first consul. Few artists rebelled and most writers fell into line, afraid of losing their patronage. François-René de Chateaubriand and Madame de Staël were the only writers of note to protest, and both were eventually sent into exile. As Napoleon himself put it, the “minor works of literature are for me and the great are against me.” It was not an impressive time for imaginative literature in France. Empire readers secretly lapped up translated British fiction, especially the Gothic tales of Ann Radcliffe and novels of opposition.

Napoleon was suspicious of everyone, even his former allies, and artists and writers were closely monitored. “Spy on everyone except me,” he told Fouché. His minister sent his policemen to follow people who once were Napoleon’s friends; he ordered them to open and read the letters of half the population of Paris and to bribe neighbors to inform on each other.

In 1802 Madame de Staël published Delphine while living in Switzerland. She’d had more influence on the city than if she had hosted a hundred salons. “The whole of Paris is behind closed doors reading Madame de Staël’s new novel,” said the senator Pierre Louis Roederer.[9] Madame de Staël was disingenuous when she said there was “not a word about politics in it.”[10] Set in 1790–92, the novel harked back to the idealism of the Revolution. As one character declares, “Liberty is the chief happiness, the only glory of a social order.” Talleyrand was thinly disguised as a cruel and unscrupulous female character. “I hear that in her novel, Madame de Staël has described us both as women,” Talleyrand shrugged (suggesting, in other words, that she was a mannish intellectual).[11] But Napoleon was furious that the police had not suppressed the book. He told Madame de Staël never to come back to Paris. Her son begged him to reconsider and was firmly rejected. “Women should stick to knitting,” said Napoleon.[12]

MEANWHILE, POOR JOSEPHINE was struggling at the Tuileries, since Napoleon’s family had truly unsheathed their claws. Rather than being grateful that he had lifted them from virtual poverty to incredible wealth, the Bonapartes complained that he treated them unfairly—and continued to criticize Josephine’s spending. “On hearing my brothers and the impudence with which they daily demand new sums, you might think that I had spent their patrimony,” he wailed.[13] Jérôme went to sea and disobeyed his brother by marrying an American shipowner’s daughter, Betsy Patterson. When Napoleon declared she would not be allowed on French soil, Jérôme allowed the marriage to be annulled, on the promise of receiving a kingdom, and Betsy fled to Britain, where she became an attraction, trotted out at parties to declaim the horrors of life with the insane Bonapartes.

Lucien was little better: He told everyone he was responsible for the coup that had made his brother consul. Napoleon believed he had published an anonymous pamphlet, A Parallel Between Caesar, Cromwell and Bonaparte, and promptly sent him off to be ambassador to Spain. Napoleon was infuriated by his siblings’ failure to marry as he wished. Lucien refused a dynastic marriage with the queen of Parma, instead marrying Alexandrine Jouberthon, the widow of a bankrupt speculator. When Napoleon chastised his brother because he had “married a whore,” Lucien shot back “at least my whore is young and pretty.”[14] After he departed in a terrible temper, Napoleon gathered Josephine in his arms. “It is painful to find in one’s own family such stubborn opposition to interests of such magnitude. Must I, then, separate myself from everyone? Must I rely on myself alone? Well! I will suffice to myself, and you, Josephine—you will be my comfort.”[15]

At the age of thirty, the man who ruled all France could not control his family. Even the youngest, Caroline, would not do as he wished. Seventeen, blond, and only just out of Madame Campan’s, she had fallen passionately in love with General Joachim Murat, a handsome, thuggish, vulgar man with a strong Gascon accent. Napoleon looked down on him, for he was an innkeeper’s son, and thought him stupid—and also hated him for boasting (untruthfully) that he had seduced Madame Bonaparte. But Murat, thirty-two and dripping with masculinity and ambition, was determined to marry Caroline. Napoleon refused, and it was actually Josephine who attempted to push his sister’s cause. She had always tried hard with Caroline, sending her presents and fond letters when she was at school with Hortense, and now she saw her chance to be helpful.[16] Added to this, she knew Murat disliked her, and she wanted to win him around. On January 20, 1800, Josephine’s plan came to fruition: Caroline married Murat in an intimate civil ceremony at Mortefontaine, Joseph Bonaparte’s grand estate. Napoleon was annoyed, but with his wife and his family united, he had been unable to prevent the marriage from going ahead. Caroline was ecstatic. “Her beauty was striking,” wrote the Duchesse d’Abrantès. “She was fresh as a rose.” Her head was a little too big for her body, but her “skin looked as smooth as pink satin.”[17]

In encouraging the marriage, Josephine had made a major mistake: Together, the Murats were united in a mutual desire to unseat her—they still disliked her for her influence over her husband and saw no reason to be grateful to her for pushing forth their marriage. And Napoleon, peeved at being outmaneuvered, took his revenge on his wife. He gave his sister a very small dowry of thirty thousand francs but supplemented it with a diamond necklace from Josephine’s own jewelry box.[18]

Josephine was furious. Not to be beaten, she hunted for an even more expensive replacement. She settled on a set of pearls worth 250,000 francs, designed by the fashionable jeweler Foncier, which once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Having identified her prize, Josephine found the money to buy it by asking General Berthier, minister for war, for a loan. It was a shrewd move. Berthier was anxious to stay in her favor, since he was hoping to get his Italian lover, Madame Visconti, accepted at the evening soirées at the Luxembourg.[19] Josephine always listened patiently when Berthier needed to discuss his emotional problems, and he was keen to show his gratitude. He promptly offered some army contractors payment for a hospital service in Italy—if they paid him kickbacks. The money flowed in, and Josephine had her beautiful pearls. It was a story reminiscent of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

Josephine then had to fool Napoleon, who had an uncanny ability to remember each and every piece of jewelry in her collection. The necklace had to sit unworn in her jewelry box, shining temptingly at her whenever she opened the lid. Unable to face an impending party without her new pearls, she asked Bourrienne to remain by her side so he could tell Napoleon that the jewels had been long in her possession.

“How fine you are today!” said Bonaparte at the party. “Where did you get these pearls? I think I never saw them before.” “Oh! mon Dieu!” she replied, “you have seen them a dozen times! It is the necklace which the Cisalpine Republic gave me, and which I now wear in my hair.” Loyal Bourrienne backed up her lie, and Napoleon trundled off, satisfied.[20]

IN HIS DAY-TO-DAY life, Napoleon struggled to control the women of his circle. His sisters and his mother did as they pleased, and Josephine often outwitted him. In law, however, he was determined to put a control on all women; he carried a little bit of the young man who had yearned after the glamorous Parisians who wouldn’t give him a second glance. Now, he decided, his ideal woman was one who remained at home, producing sons for his army.

Madame de Rémusat felt it no exaggeration to claim that Napoleon “despised women,” for “he regarded their weakness as unanswerable proof of their inferiority.”[21] His views found their most public expression in the Civil Code, also known as the Code Napoleon.[22]

Before the consulate, there was no single set of laws to follow; instead, people were governed by local customs and charters, as in feudal times. Napoleon wished for one legal code that would define the lives of his people. The code was Napoleon’s monument, his attempt to show that he could be not only a great general but also a lawmaker and give “a direction to the public spirit.”[23]

“My greatest victory was my civil government,” he would later say while in exile on the island of St. Helena.[24] Even though he would occupy the role of a monarch—with more powers than Louis XVI had enjoyed, thanks to his direct control of the army—Napoleon created the impression that his subjects were living in a world of post-revolutionary equality.

The Civil Code was, on its face, founded on the principles that had driven the Revolution in 1789: equality before the law and the secularization of the state. It put an end to privileges of birth and enshrined a meritocracy: Government jobs should go to the most qualified. The ever growing middle classes of France were pacified and convinced that the sacrifices of the revolutionary era had not been in vain. The code was meant to keep Napoleon’s key supporters on his side by abolishing feudalism and aristocratic rank, but also by preserving the rights of wealthy men of property and implying they would only get richer. The rights of workers were, of course, irrelevant. And the real losers in the Civil Code were women.

In his new laws, Napoleon instituted harsh limits on the rights of women. The laws granting them rights over property and money that they previously possessed were abolished and replaced with laws emphasizing their duty to be obedient to their husbands and fathers; they were essentially awarded the legal status of minors. “A wife must promise obedience and fidelity in marriage,” noted one of the articles. Acquiring a divorce became a relatively straightforward process for men but very difficult to achieve for women. A man could divorce a woman for adultery, but a woman could do so only if the mistress had been brought into the family home. An adulterous wife could be imprisoned for two years and would be released only if her husband took her back. A straying husband simply paid a fine. Even the happily married were restricted: A wife’s right to handle money was very much reduced, unless she was a registered trader.

“Women these days require restraint,” he declared. “They go where they like, do what they like. It is not French to give women the upper hand.”[25] Napoleon felt the family should be treated in the same way as France. The code promoted the family as the basic financial and social unit—and the way to keep the family together was through the submission of women.

The code also reflected Napoleon’s political desire to bind the bourgeois to him. By 1804, his grasp on France was complete, with backing from the military, the property-owning classes, and the peasantry. The peasants supported him because they had been able to buy confiscated land, while the booming economy had created more work and driven down the price of bread. The property-owning nouveau riche and businessmen, speculators, traders, and bankers were delighted by their new protector. The upper echelons of the army lined their pockets with the loot they had obtained.

Is it possible to see Josephine’s unreliable behavior as partly responsible for this enshrinement of female inequality in law? Certainly, Napoleon saw himself as surrounded by women who had excessive power, but he was not only resentful of his wife. Women on campaign had only hindered operations, in his opinion, and the intellectual women of the salons, such as Madame de Staël, infuriated him with their interest in female equality. Most of all, his plans for French world domination needed a constant supply of young, fit men to be sacrificed to his aims, and women who hoped for independence or a life of intellectual or financial endeavor were a threat to this. There was a fear across Europe at the time that men and women, particularly those of the gentility and aristocracy, were becoming too enervated or frivolous to have children, and Napoleon saw reinstituting the proper gender roles as the solution. Paradoxically, he could not endure the sight of a pregnant woman, and enceinte ladies were not welcome at his gatherings (perhaps partly because of Josephine’s own failure to become pregnant).[26] But he endlessly proclaimed that it was the duty of women to be mothers. As he had told Madame de Staël, the woman he most admired in history was the one “who had the most children.”

Napoleon was always trying to impose proper gender roles on his courtiers. On one occasion, he cornered Madame de Condorcet, the beautiful salon hostess. “Madame, I do not like women who meddle in politics,” he announced. “General, you are quite right,” she replied, “but in a country where their heads are cut off, it is natural for them to want to know the reason why.”[27] “Do you still like men as much as ever, Madame?” he demanded of Josephine’s old friend Aimée de Coigny. “Yes, Sire,” Aimée replied, “when they are polite.” Few others had the chance to get the better of him. “The terror he inspires is inconceivable,” said Madame de Staël. “One has the impression of an imperious wind blowing about one’s ears when one is near that man.”

AS WELL AS bringing in civil reform and reminding everyone of his great military victories, Napoleon announced the return of the Catholic Church, abolished in the Revolution, but this time subordinate to the first consul. “Society cannot exist without inequality of wealth and inequality of wealth cannot exist without religion,” he had told Roederer. “Religion is a kind of inoculation … The people must have a religion and that religion must be in the hands of the government.” [28] Only the Church could make inequality seem natural and death in war seem less senseless. “It is not we nobles who need religion,” Napoleon said loftily, “but it is necessary for the masses and I shall establish it.”

Those who had fought for the Revolution were infuriated by the idea of reinstalling religion, but the ordinary people craved the old ways, with women in particular practicing their religion in secret. Even the most cynical could see the benefits of resting every seventh day rather than every tenth.

On Easter Sunday 1801, the populace heard the bells of Paris ringing for the first time in ten years. Most churches were missing a few, as Napoleon had requisitioned them for the war effort. At seven in the morning, in his carriage escorted by dragoons, hussars, grenadiers, and Mamelukes, he essayed forth. Josephine followed behind and seated herself by her husband in the front pew of Notre-Dame. The ceremony itself was lacking in dignity: Both Josephine and Napoleon had forgotten the rituals of worship; in fact, the only members of the congregation who seemed to remember were the ex-bishop Talleyrand and the former priest Fouché. Everybody else stumbled, knelt at the wrong times, and stood openmouthed through the prayers.

Still, the point had been made. Loire peasants, Lyon market stall owners, Breton farmers, and Dijon housewives poured into the churches. As in the old days, church became a place for the rich to show off their wealth. At some of the churches in the more fashionable areas of Paris, there was barely a free seat on Sundays as the rich elites jostled for the front pews, eager to show off their fine clothes and jewels. After a grand ceremony to celebrate the return of Catholicism, Napoleon turned to General Bernadotte, now married to his jilted fiancée, Désirée Clary. “Well, now everything was just as it had been before,” he said. “Yes,” said General Bernadotte, “except for two million men who died for liberty and who are no more.”[29]

LANGUISHING IN HIS luxurious Château de Grosbois in Val-de-Marne, aged forty-five and in continued exile from Paris and political society, Barras wrote letters to Napoleon and Josephine. “Is this the reward for what you called my great services and for which you vowed eternal gratitude?” he demanded of Napoleon. “When you were buried in Italy and your enemies attacked your republican glory, I defended you … and when your brothers were threatened, they came to me for help.”[30] The consul did not reply.

Josephine had been Barras’s companion, and he had covered up her affairs, lent her money, and kept the letters about her adultery out of the newspapers. Yet she did not reply to his letters, either. A year after Napoleon became consul, Barras was arrested at Grosbois and deported to Brussels. His papers and letters to the Bonaparte family were confiscated, denying him the chance to prove his service ever again. Of Josephine’s former circle, only Juliette Récamier was still feted by society, thanks largely to the position of her banker husband. Foreigners, dignitaries, and even the Bonaparte siblings came to Juliette’s salons, where she performed the “Attitudes,” imitating the poses from Greek myths, borrowing from the celebrated performances of Emma, Lady Hamilton, wife of the envoy to Naples—and, by 1801, the flamboyant mistress of Horatio Nelson and mother of his baby daughter. A book by Friedrich Rehberg, with guidance on how to achieve Emma’s attitudes, had sold like hotcakes across Europe. Juliette performed the poses Emma had used to captivate Nelson, the most terrible enemy of France, but she did it to promote herself as a heroine of the consulate.

On Christmas Eve 1800, Josephine was preparing to attend the premiere of Haydn’s Creation at the Opéra. It was the event of the season, and the performers had asked specifically that Napoleon be present. Fouché had passed on a rumor to the consul that there would soon be an attempt on his life, but he ignored it. He told Josephine that she must be at her most beautiful and awe Paris’s most fashionable elite. After dinner, at eight, the couple made their way outside to the carriages. Napoleon was to travel in one carriage, while Josephine, accompanied by Hortense, Caroline (who was eight months pregnant), and Napoleon’s aide-de camp, General Rapp, would follow in the second. At the last minute, Napoleon gazed at his wife’s outfit and decided it was not right. He declared the shawl from Constantinople did not suit her dress and hustled her off to change. The entire party had to wait while she hurried to her apartments to find a new shawl. By the time she returned, Napoleon had already left. She and her companions hastily boarded their carriage and set off for the performance.

As Napoleon’s coach entered the rue Saint-Niçaise, the coachman was puzzled by a cart blocking their passage. As he turned onto the next street, there was a horrific explosion not far in front of them. Napoleon later said that it felt as though the whole carriage had been swept up by the sea and was being carried along by the waves.[31] Coming behind, Josephine and the other women were thrown to the floor of their carriage, and the windows were smashed. Josephine fainted in shock; fortunately, the heavily pregnant Caroline remained calm and took charge. The roofs of several surrounding houses caved in, glass windows shattered, and some of the horses pulled free and bolted.[32] Accounts said as many as twelve civilians were killed and thirty people injured.[33] One contemporary illustration showed a small child being catapulted into the air and debris blown many feet high. In the second carriage, which was just a little way behind the first, glass lay all around, and Hortense’s dress was stained with blood from a cut to her hand caused by flying debris.

The first consul was the target of the bomb—and if he and his wife had left on time, they would have been killed. Josephine, Napoleon, Hortense, Caroline, and General Rapp were saved by an ill-matched shawl.

Napoleon continued on to the Opéra and, after hearing that Josephine was safe, calmly took his place in his box. “The rascals wanted to blow me up,” he shrugged.[34] The women arrived, pale and red-eyed, trying not to tremble as the audience greeted them with cheers and applause.

Napoleon maintained his unruffled demeanor until the party returned home to the Tuileries. Once he was back in the palace, he demanded angrily that Fouché hunt down the Jacobins responsible and ordered that a number of them should be deported. The minister’s efforts to explain that intelligence suggested royalists had coordinated the attack fell on deaf ears.[35]

Josephine had to hide her distress, as Napoleon did not like cowards. He was delighted at the way the bomb had bolstered his popularity and prompted “extreme indignation in the populace.”[36] He proclaimed that he had made a heroic escape.

AFTER THE ATTACK, Josephine worried even more about her future. True, she was the consuless, rich, celebrated, sought after, and beautiful, and she was Napoleon’s love, the talisman he credited with his military successes; as one of her friends put it, she was the “woman whom popular suspicion regarded as his good angel.”[37] But the “good angel” was desperate to have a child. At thirty-seven, she was not too old. Letizia had given birth to Jérôme when she was thirty-four, and only her husband’s death the following year had prevented her from having more children. Thérésa Tallien would have her tenth baby at the age of forty-two. But in addition to the fact that Josephine’s body had been weakened by her period of imprisonment during the Terror, her fall at Plombières had left her with a pelvic injury. It was unlikely that she would give the consul an heir.

Napoleon’s family continuously exploited Josephine’s inability to have a child. One minute they told him to discard her because she was barren, and the next they teased him that he was the infertile one. Notably, Pauline Fourès never became pregnant, and she blamed Napoleon. If any actress or courtesan mistress of his said she was with child, his brothers claimed that it was because they had seduced her. Josephine was not above suggesting that Napoleon was responsible for their lack of children. He responded by pointing out that her menses were irregular and not healthy, and she disingenuously replied that it made no difference.

Napoleon knew that he would be a laughingstock if he discarded Josephine and then failed to make a second wife pregnant. At the time, infertility was generally seen as the fault of the woman, though there was a strongly held theory that the more vigorous-looking the man, the better able he was to impregnate his partners. Despite the polish of power, Napoleon was still small, sallow, and sunken. He suffered from seizures thought to be due to an excess of nervous energy, and he fidgeted excessively. Riven by digestive difficulties and suffering from headaches, he was hardly an inspiring figure of French manhood, even at the age of thirty-two.

“It is the torment of my life not to have a child,” Napoleon told Bourrienne. “I plainly perceive that my power will never be firmly established until I have one.”[38] And the majority of the population who still loved Napoleon wanted to see him with a son.

The rumors that he was having an affair with Hortense persisted. Now, the gossips declared, he might wish to have a child with her. Hortense wept bitterly over the cruel talk, but Napoleon was rather vain about the idea, saying the gossip only reflected the “wish of the public that he should have a child.”[39] This only made Josephine feel more insecure.

She was distressed by the rumors and hated Napoleon’s unrelenting affairs. So when he decided she should travel to Plombières to attempt to renew her fertility in the waters, which he firmly believed had magic powers, she agreed. There was hard evidence for their effects: Joseph’s wife, Julie, had failed to get pregnant for four years, but she had succeeded in late 1800 after a trip to Plombières.

Just before Josephine departed, Lucien Bonaparte took her for a private conversation. “You are going to the waters,” he said. “You must get a child by some other person since you cannot have one by him.” She was utterly shocked. “Well,” he blithely continued, “if you do not wish it, or cannot help it, Bonaparte must get a child by another woman, and you must adopt it, for it is necessary to secure an hereditary successor. It is for your interest; you must know that.” “What, sir!” she replied. “Do you imagine the nation will suffer a bastard to govern it? Lucien! Lucien! You would ruin your brother! This is dreadful! Wretched should I be, were anyone to suppose me capable of listening, without horror, to your infamous proposal! Your ideas are poisonous; your language horrible!” “Well, Madame,” he retorted, “all I can say to that is, that I am really sorry for you!”[40]

In anguish, Josephine set off to Plombières, escorted by a grand entourage of cavalry and aides. General Rapp, Hortense, Madame de Lavalette, and, less comfortably for Josephine, Napoleon’s mother were accompanying her. Miserable Josephine wept continuously, and soon everyone was suffering from either a headache or travel sickness. Nothing went well. The inns were awful, and their dinner on one night was “spinach dressed with lamp-oil and red asparagus fried in curdled milk.”[41]

Fortunately, matters improved when they arrived. The town was illuminated, all the dignitaries were assembled, and the cannons fired for them. Plombières was no longer a social desert. Josephine’s visit in 1798 had made it fashionable and frequented by many, and Napoleon urged her to give balls and receptions and to continue nurturing social relations there. No wonder the local doctor, Grosjean, who published a study on the medicinal properties of the baths in 1803, praised the “salutary waters which Providence has bestowed upon our commune”—thanks to Josephine’s attempt to get pregnant by visiting the baths, everyone was getting rich in Plombières.[42]

Napoleon was elated upon her return, for she told him that her menses had returned. But his elation was short-lived. She failed to get pregnant. When Napoleon’s sister Elisa hinted subtly that Josephine was the one at fault, Josephine reminded her that she already had two children, Hortense and Eugène. “But, sister, you were younger then,” Elisa answered. Napoleon arrived in the room just as his wife burst into tears. “There are some truths better left unsaid,” he remarked.

Josephine’s many enemies were constantly plotting her downfall—and hissing to Napoleon that he should get a divorce. And so she embarked on the most ruthless act she had ever committed. In a desperate attempt to keep her husband to herself, she decided to sacrifice her daughter.

CHAPTER 14

“My Stepfather Is a Comet”

“I am his superstition rather than his love,” Josephine told a friend. “He considers me one of the rays of his star.”[1] But wives needed to breed. So she conjured up a plan. If eighteen-year-old Hortense married Louis Bonaparte, they could have a child, and that child would be the heir to Napoleon and Josephine, a sharer in the blood of both of them.

She told Napoleon, and he was delighted by the idea. Bourrienne was sent to break the news to Hortense. “You know it is her great sorrow no longer to have a child,” he said to the teenager. “I assure you intrigues are constantly being formed to persuade the First Consul to obtain a divorce. Only your marriage can strengthen the bonds on which depends your mother’s happiness.”[2] He praised Louis, told her that otherwise she would have to marry “some foreign prince,” and talked of her debt to her mother.

Hortense was shocked. Like most girls of her age and class, she had expected her parents to arrange a marriage for her but believed they would also allow her a say in the matter, even though they had blocked her marriage to Duroc. She knew how highly Napoleon esteemed her, and she could not imagine that he would ever give her to Louis. At twenty-three, he was ugly, prone to wild paranoia, and already tormented by gonorrhea. He suffered cruelly from curvature of the spine and was often ill. When he was well, he was idle, violent, and neurotic.

All this might have been leavened if he were as dazzled by Hortense as every other man, but he barely acknowledged her. She believed he hated her because he despised her mother. He was interested in books and good with money, but that was little comfort.

Hortense pleaded with her mother and stepfather to no avail. Eugène sympathized, but there was nothing he could do. “It was a question of sacrificing my romantic fantasies for my mother’s happiness,” Hortense said.[3] As a child, while playing with jewelry with Madame de Rémusat, she had declared that she wished to be the owner of hundreds of diamonds one day. Now she would be wealthy, a princess, even a queen, but her heart was broken.

Josephine moved fast. She had to marry Hortense to Louis before the Bonapartes threw their customary spanners in the works. Though the family had to admit that Hortense was gentle, beautiful, and accomplished, they had no desire to link themselves further to Josephine.

Within a few months, on January 4, 1802, the entire clan was in the drawing room in the Tuileries, watching a white-faced and sick Hortense say her vows to Louis by a makeshift altar. Josephine had given her daughter a splendidly embroidered gown and a necklace and headpiece of diamonds, but Hortense insisted on wearing a simple white dress and a string of pearls. She did not look at her groom, and he avoided speaking to her. Pale and dignified, she received a religious blessing with her new husband. Caroline and Joachim Murat, who had married two years earlier, were also blessed.

The wedding night was dismal. Lucien had told Louis that the marriage was rushed because Hortense was already pregnant with Napoleon’s child. That night, Louis tormented Hortense by reciting a list of her mother’s lovers and criticizing Josephine’s behavior. He then told her that if she gave birth to a child before the allotted nine months, he would banish her and never see her again. Hortense had to bear her situation. “My stepfather is a comet of which we are but the tail,” she said. “We must follow him everywhere without knowing where he carries us—for our happiness or for our grief.” She later received a beautiful gold and enamel watch from Josephine as a thank-you present. It was scant consolation.

The Bonapartes were furious at Josephine’s successful maneuvering. But her position was not secure. She had told Napoleon that her great wish had been to see their union blessed at the same time as that of Hortense and Louis and Caroline and Murat. A blessing, of course, would make it much harder to divorce her. Napoleon had flatly refused.

Hortense became pregnant quickly. Even that was not a joyous occasion, as she knew that behind her back, people were accusing her of being pregnant with Napoleon’s child. The British press mocked the marriage and implied that Bonaparte was keeping his stepdaughter close so he could continue the affair. In August, they speculated that she’d already had the child or was about to, suggesting it had been conceived before the wedding. Adamant to stop such “scandalous rumors,” Napoleon forced her to dance an energetic quadrille with him in public at an August ball to prove she was not in the late stages of pregnancy.[4] From a man who hated the sight of pregnant women and thought the spectacle of them dancing one of the most disgusting things in the world, this was quite a gesture—although some said that the two of them dancing only fed the gossips.

To Josephine’s delight, on October 10, Hortense gave birth to a son, Napoleon Louis Charles (known as Napoleon Charles), just a few days past the nine-month term. Napoleon declared the boy his heir, although he did not give him any such official status. Josephine felt safe—at least for the moment.

Was he Napoleon’s son? Some thought him so, the British perpetuated the gossip that he was, and certainly Napoleon was much fonder of him than he was of Hortense’s second son, Napoleon Louis. But though the consul had long since given up being faithful to his wife and was fond of his stepdaughter, he was also loyal to Lucien, and to get her pregnant would have been a betrayal. And Josephine might have been desperate, but she never could have put her daughter in her husband’s bed to keep her position. Furthermore, if the child had been Napoleon’s, he would have been much less likely to still consider divorce—and to refuse Josephine her wish for a religious blessing.

NAPOLEON CONTINUED TO wage war, threatening mainland Europe with his army and chasing the British with his navy. But as the French well knew, the British ships were much stronger than theirs—and they kept losing territory to Nelson. Napoleon decided to counter by making it clear that he would agree to peace. In March 1802, he signed a treaty with Britain at Amiens. It proved a wise move; the British economy was weakening due to the ongoing conflict, Pitt’s government had fallen, and the king was suffering from delusions. Weary of war, the ministers gave great concessions.

Amiens returned Martinique and Guadeloupe to the French and gave back territories to Holland and Spain. The treaty was a triumph for France, and Napoleon’s popularity soared once again. Towns and villages across France had been sorely tried by losing their young men to the army, and the people were tired of war. They looked forward to dominating the world through economic might rather than bloody battle.

In under two and a half years, thanks to looted gold and brutal campaigns in Italy and Europe, France had thrown off the misery of the days of the Directory. Napoleon poured money into the reconstruction of Paris, improving the parks and building bridges and roads. As he later said, “I wanted Paris to become a town of two, three, four million inhabitants, something fabulous, colossal, unknown until our time.”[5] Tourists marveled at the palaces, sampled the restaurants, and filled their trunks with souvenirs. After the imprisonment of the king, the royal collection had become public property (aside from the paintings taken by Napoleon and Josephine), and in 1793 the Louvre had opened with an exhibition of 537 paintings. The public crowded in to see the pictures once owned by the king, as well as those of the Church and nobility, and the Republic decreed that a hundred thousand livres a year should be set aside for expanding the collections. They had not reckoned on Napoleon and his avarice for art. The Louvre closed for renovations from 1796 to 1801, and when it reopened, Napoleon crammed it with his stolen booty. In 1803 it was renamed the Musée Napoléon.

The British had been banned from France since 1792, and after the Amiens treaty, they came in droves. When the British politician Charles James Fox visited in July, he declared one felt “almost breathless expectation at the thought of seeing so celebrated a city.”[6] The luckiest might be presented to Josephine at one of her receptions or shown the art at Malmaison. There, they were often rather surprised. Men such as the stolid dramatist Edmund Eyre were mesmerized by the Parisian ladies and their “state of undress really immodest” (Napoleon’s attempts to encourage higher necklines were not always successful).[7]

Josephine was thrillingly appealing to the British. Most queens were stolidly virtuous; she had been a kept mistress, veered close to being a courtesan, and been unfaithful to her husband. A British visitor said he had hardly arrived in the Palais de’Egalité—the traditional center of prostitution in the city—when a man sidled up to him. Would he care to buy The Licentious Life of Madame Bonaparte?[8] Everyone was fascinated by the woman who held the mighty Bonaparte in her hands.

Martinique paid for Josephine’s grandeur. The conquered European countries suffered huge taxes, but perhaps the biggest toll was levied on the newly regained Caribbean islands. In 1799 the Republic had ended slavery in Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti), but by 1802 Napoleon was reintroducing it, allowing more African slaves to be brought to the islands. Politically, he knew he could not push the French much harder; it was far easier to oppress colonies overseas. He wanted more money for his coffers and did not care how it was brought in. “Bonaparte is very attached to Martinique and is counting on the support of the planters of that colony; he will use all means possible to preserve their position,” Josephine wrote to her mother in 1803.[9] “You will like Bonaparte very much,” she assured her royalist mother. “He is making your daughter very happy.”[10] Still horrified at Napoleon’s failure to reinstall the king, her mother refused once again.

In August 1802, Napoleon was elected “Consul for Life” by a massive majority. Only around nine thousand of the three and a half million men who voted had not plumped for him. He had become a king, with more power than a Bourbon had ever enjoyed, thanks to his direct control over the army. He steered his way between the republicans and the royalists, offering concessions, promising favors, and flattering everyone. As he said, “There was not a party in France which did not build some special hope upon my success.”[11] For him, his people were children who could always be pacified with the promise of presents. And they rewarded him, putting as much faith in their consul as if he were a miracle worker. He was so convinced of his position that he had his birthday, August 15—a date that in Catholic countries was the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin—declared Saint Napoleon’s Day and celebrated as an annual public holiday. Within a few months, the mint was producing gold coins stamped with “Napoleon Bonaparte: First Consul.”

Malmaison, he decreed, would no longer suffice for him. There had been hurtful suggestions that it was shabby and small. One British visitor declared it “a poor old affair, washed yellow and backed by a good square patch of wood and planted without the least taste.” Bonaparte rejected Versailles as “monstrous” and instead chose the Château de Saint-Cloud as his new country seat.

Only fifteen minutes by carriage from the Tuileries, Saint-Cloud was a splendid château, with extensive grounds overlooking the Seine. Marie Antoinette had bought it from the Duc d’Orléans, for she thought the fresh air would be good for her children and wished for a property to leave them after her death. She had transformed it into her own pastel, feminine vision of beauty, with pale blue and green walls, drapes of white muslin and gilded sphinxes in her private apartments, golden furniture, and bronze decorations. At the time, the idea of the queen having her own palace was terribly shocking to the people, and there were rumors that she was planning to give it to the Austrian royal family. Overdecorated, overcolored, and spattered with gilt, Saint-Cloud had been for the French people yet another symbol of the corrupt and lavish Bourbon monarchy.

The contents of Saint-Cloud had been sold off after the Revolution. Now Napoleon reclaimed it for the nation, covered all the pastel colors with heavy gold wooden panels and imperial colors, and filled the place with the air of court formality Marie Antoinette had been trying keenly to escape. He stuffed the rooms full of Maison Jacob furniture, gilded ornaments, luxurious hangings, and ornate mirrors. Napoleon’s eyes could not stand bright lights or gaudy colors, so he had the mirrors draped in soft material and the lights shielded with gauze. Josephine had decorated Malmaison to pay tribute to him, with Egyptian figures and statues inspired by the Greeks and Romans. Saint-Cloud was similarly adorned with sphinxes, statues of Napoleon as a Roman hero, and giant “N”s on the doorknobs and plates. As with Malmaison, Napoleon set his beloved Percier and Fontaine to work on plans for renovations. He spent six million francs on the building and huge sums on landscaping the gardens, adding fountains and cascades that rivaled those of Versailles.

Josephine was depressed by the move to Saint-Cloud. She loved Malmaison and found the new palace forbidding and gloomy. But to Napoleon, it enshrined intimidating glory. The informality and lazy summer evenings of Malmaison were about to be a thing of the past. For Josephine, life as Napoleon’s wife was soon to be all ritual and formality, as stiff and gilded as their new furniture.

Bonaparte saw no irony in occupying a folly of Marie Antoinette’s that once incensed the French people to a murderous pitch. Instead, he began planning a court that outdid that of Louis XVI for splendor. Monarchs across Europe now prided themselves on their simplicity and lack of pomp. King George III in Britain was nicknamed “Farmer George” for his humble interest in plants and his plain court at Windsor Castle. Napoleon, conversely, believed that the lessons of Marie Antoinette’s fate were irrelevant to him; he thought the populace was more likely to pay tribute to the man who appeared in front of them adorned in gold. He began to wear a uniform of a red velvet coat embroidered with gold and a sword inlaid with some of the crown jewels. As far as he was concerned, his people would be won over easily with the cheap gift of fancy dress. Even the former Jacobins on his staff had not complained when he suggested they wear red velvet coats with a blue sash. “I have only to gild the court dress of my virtuous Republicans for them to belong to me,” he crowed.

Napoleon felt that the naturally nostalgic French would welcome a new court and that it would encourage the royalists and aristocrats to his side. Unfortunately, he had little interest in the minutiae of courtly life. He left that to Josephine, who in turn consulted Hortense’s old headmistress, Madame Campan. Jeanne-Louise Campan had been first lady of the bedchamber to Marie Antoinette from 1786 until the storming of the Tuilieries in 1792, and thus was an expert in etiquette. Bows, curtseys, court dress, and precedence became the hot topics of conversation. Napoleon took four prefects, and Josephine had to appoint four ladies-in-waiting from aristocratic backgrounds. She chose Madame de Luçay and Madame Lauriston, whose husbands worked for Napoleon, and Madame de Talhouët, who probably gave information to the royalists. The fourth woman, twenty-two-year-old Claire de Rémusat, an old friend of Hortense, would appear to be the most loyal of all—although she wrote her memoirs of the court, published by her son in 1880, in which Josephine’s failings were laid bare.

Visitors were properly awed by the gilt, the excess, and the fine liveries of the footmen. “The household of the First Consul is increasingly taking on the appearance of a court,” said the Prussian ambassador. Swedish count Armfelt decided the “grandiose public splendor” hardly less lacking than Versailles. Napoleon was sometimes so confident that he simply wore his uniform waistcoat, sword, breeches, stockings, and boots. He looked ridiculous amid all the luster and rich dress, but nobody dared laugh.

Goldsmiths and jewelers worked day and night to keep up with orders from the new court. The needles of fine dressmakers and the brushes for painting gilt onto carriages were working overtime. In the winter of 1801, more than one million yards of satin and tulle were bought for ball gowns and receptions. Napoleon encouraged dances and masques and reinstated the tradition of balls at the Opéra. It was good for trade, but also, as he put it, when people were dancing, they were not “poking their noses into politics.”[12]

Despite his affairs, Napoleon was still fascinated by his wife. “Bonaparte’s superstition about his wife is very extraordinary,” commented one British visitor. “When he came from St. Cloud, though quite ill, she came with him to satisfy his feelings, and went to bed as soon as she arrived at the Tuileries.”[13] He depended on her as a lover, a companion, and an adviser, though he was growing more impatient with her as he grew more irascible with age and power. He shouted at her in public as freely as he once caressed her. On one terrible occasion, he drove her to inspect a property he had acquired. On the way, Josephine saw a great ditch ahead. Already suffering from a migraine, she begged him to allow her to descend and make her way over the ditch on foot. Napoleon roared at her not to be such a child and whipped the horses to make them jump the ditch as fast as possible. The horses just made it, but the carriage shuddered and almost broke in half. Josephine burst into hysterical tears while Napoleon reproached her wildly for not trusting him. Such violent outbursts were becoming ever more common—but they were always followed by ardent sexual reunion. Josephine was often resentful of his anger during these reunions, but she knew not to turn him down.

At Saint-Cloud, Napoleon and Josephine slept together every night, as usual, allowing her access to him in his most private moments. Then she threw a jealous scene about a mistress, and Napoleon lost his temper. “I resolved not to return to my subjugation,” he recalled.[14] He took up residence in a room across the corridor, though he continued to spend many nights in her bed.

Although Josephine had no official title, she was the queen of Saint-Cloud. She was expected to preside over the social life of the palace. As one of her ladies-in-waiting said, “social events constitute the canvas which she embroiders, which she arranges and which give her a subject for conversation.”[15] Napoleon, who could hardly bear the small talk and endless courses of banquets and receptions, might scuttle off on the excuse of business, leaving her to entertain the guests. He decided that all young women at the court should learn to make the “Versailles Curtsey,” a low dip, and perform it when he and Josephine entered the room for formal receptions. On other occasions, ladies would have to stand when Josephine entered the room and again when she departed. Pauline and Caroline Bonaparte were spitting with fury at having to stand for Josephine, who sometimes threw them a sly smile as she floated by. The revolutionary heroine was moving into the position Marie Antoinette once occupied. In fact, the most prestigious invitation of all was to one of Josephine’s weekly dinners in her apartments. The guests would be received by the first consul and his wife, seated on thrones.

Josephine herself was rather unnerved by her new position. When ambassadors were presented to her, Napoleon commanded her to remain sitting, in the same fashion as the old queens of France. Josephine could not: She rose to meet them, holding out her hand. “I feel that I was not born, my child, for such grandeur, and I would be happier in retirement, surrounded by those I love,” she wrote to Hortense. She had always been disquieted by Napoleon’s lofty ambition; now she was positively afraid. On one occasion, witnessed by Bourrienne, she came in her “gentle and beguiling way” and settled herself on her husband’s knee, “caressed him and brushed her fingertips softly across his cheek and through his hair. Her words came in a tender rush. ‘Bonaparte, I implore you, don’t go making yourself a king. It’s that horrid Lucien who puts you up to such schemes. Please, oh, please, don’t listen to him.’ She had begged him before not to make himself a king—and Bonaparte laughed off her pleas. ‘You must be out of your mind, Josephine,’ he smiled.”

Josephine did not impress everyone, particularly the British. The writer Mary Berry thought her “distinguished looking” but much older than her portraits made her out to be. Another thought her rather ordinary. “If chance had not placed her on a pinnacle, she would escape minute observation.”[16] Certainly, her teeth—which gave her much pain—were in poor shape. All agreed, though, that Josephine’s tact and grace worked wonders; people forgot her fading beauty and rather humble past. “Her sense of the right word and the right action and her irresistible attraction convinced us all that she might have been born for the role fortune had given her.”[17]

Costume took up ever more time in her day. Napoleon told her that she must outshine every woman present. “Mme. Bonaparte, who understood to a high degree the art of being well-dressed, set an example of the greatest elegance,” observed Laure d’Abrantès.[18] Josephine bought spectacular outfits. One celebrated pink crepe dress was covered entirely with real rose petals. A tribute to her love of roses, it was divine, but she could not sit and could barely move in it. Another fine gown was made of toucan feathers, each one adorned with a pearl. She adored luxurious gloves and purchased more than a thousand pairs a year.[19] When she desired a fresh pair, they would be brought to her on a silver tray.

Napoleon wished for his wife to look opulent, but he did not always comprehend the cost. On one occasion, Claire de Rémusat saw him lecturing Josephine that she should appear “at her dazzling best in jewels and dress.” When she did not respond, he prompted, “Did you hear me, Josephine?” “Yes,” she replied sweetly, “but then you will reproach me or even go into a tantrum and refuse to pay for my purchases.” She gave him such a gently flirtatious smile, “the desire to please him so unmistakeably bright in her eyes that he would have had a heart of stone to resist her.”[20] She dreaded the times when she had to present her accounts to him. He railed that she spent excessively, gave too many presents, and did not understand the value of money. He used her spending to torment her, then compelled her to spend more.

Napoleon was trying to stake a claim to a court of spotless virtue, but he never criticized Josephine for her past. When he found out that Talleyrand had a mistress, Catherine Grand, a divorcée and former demimondaine, he forced him to marry her immediately, declaring that the diplomatic corps would protest at his behavior. At the Tuileries, Napoleon berated Catherine in front of the whole company, saying she must atone for her immorality by behaving with dignity. “In this respect, as in all others, I cannot do better than to model myself on Mme. Bonaparte,” she replied. Talleyrand resented having to marry her: He found her annoying, she was losing her looks, and his family thought little of her. Bonaparte, as Madame de Rémusat thought, “took a malign pleasure in making Talleyrand marry.”[21] From then on, Talleyrand became an enemy.

The British were particularly fond of titillating gossip, and the scabrous cartoonist James Gillray loved to recall Josephine’s dubious past. He drew her and Madame Tallien dancing naked behind a gauzy curtain, with Barras enjoying the spectacle while drinking wine and a tiny Napoleon spying from behind. Barras, Gillray said, had offered Napoleon his great promotion on the condition that he take Josephine off his hands, even though she was “smaller & thin with bad teeth, something like Cloves.”[22] Another cartoon, The Progress of the Empress Josephine, showed her different incarnations: prisoner, empress, Barras’s mistress, and “loose fish”—or lady of low morals.[23] But few paid much attention. Only one visitor, Lord Morpeth, refused to let his wife be presented to her. And certainly Napoleon did not see Josephine as his Achilles heel; for him, she was all grace and excellence.

“Love is a singular passion, turning men into beasts,” Napoleon said. “I come into season like a dog.”[24] Even though he was growing plump and had crude manners, once he was made consul for life, he found he had more sexual opportunity than he could have ever imagined. In the autumn of 1802, he dismissed Bourrienne, declaring him guilty of financial corruption. He took the keys to his secretary’s old room, adjacent to his study, and had it filled daily with fresh flowers. Actresses, dancers, and demimondaines crept in to be his lovers. His skills of seduction had not improved; he still sat and stared at those he wanted until they blushed and gave in, dazzled by his riches and power. Mademoiselle Duchesnois, an actress from the Comédie-Française, was once shown to Bourrienne’s former room by Napoleon’s faithful valet, Constant. The consul was working late in his study, and when Constant knocked on the door, he cried out, “Tell her to wait!” An hour later, Constant knocked again and he replied, “Tell her to get undressed.” The actress did as she was bade and waited undressed. Constant knocked once more and Napoleon cried: “Tell her to go home!”[25]

In the early days of their marriage, Napoleon had been delighted by Josephine’s expressions of jealousy. Now, when he was no longer faithful and was taking many lovers, her teary questions only annoyed him. “As soon as he acquired a new mistress,” wrote Claire de Rémusat, “Bonaparte became hard, violent, pitiless towards his wife.” He told her the details and liked to show an “almost savage surprise that she did not congratulate him.”[26] If she wept and complained, he turned on her ferociously.

Napoleon never understood why his wife cared about his dalliances. “She is always afraid that I will fall seriously in love,” he told Rémusat. “Does she not know then that I am not made for love? It is not in my nature to surrender to any such overwhelming feeling. Why does she worry about these fancies in which my affections are not engaged?”[27] Indeed, he was too busy to fall in love, but he had plenty of time for fast seductions. After all, as he proudly told one mistress, he could get the job done within three or four minutes. But Josephine, unable to bear his child and hated by the Bonaparte family, remembered his intense passion for her in the early days and dreaded him falling for another woman with the same ardor. Napoleon would point out that her past conduct gave her no right to complain, but she was still jealous, upbraiding him and weeping and paying spies to report back to her about his affairs.

Mademoiselle Duchesnois, like all the rest, did not last long. Soon Napoleon became entranced by her archrival on the Paris stage, the fifteen-year-old actress Marguerite-Josephine Weimar, or Mademoiselle George. The grand battle between the divas captivated all Paris. Duchesnois was generally judged the better actress, although rather plain. George was no great tragedienne, but she was beautiful. In order to try and beat her rival, she went all out to capture the first consul. An affair with Napoleon would catapult her to stardom.

Mademoiselle George met Josephine and watched her carefully, saying, “It was impossible not to succumb in the face of that soft, mysterious charm.”[28] Cleverly guessing that the best way to capture Napoleon was to be as gentle as his wife, she feigned the mien of innocence. After she followed his summons to Saint-Cloud, flunkies took her upstairs and then left her in a room “with an enormous bed and heavy curtains of silk.” Napoleon arrived, and she played the virtuous maiden for an hour or so before claiming that she could not help but give in to his charms.

Napoleon was delighted by his schoolgirl-age mistress. “I am very fond of the name Josephine but I shall call you Georgina, if you’ll allow me.”[29] With her he acted the child, romping around the staircases and playing hide-and-seek behind the curtains. All Paris heard of the affair, and when Napoleon openly visited Georgina at the theater, Josephine felt humiliated. One night Napoleon and Josephine went to see Mademoiselle George play the lead role of Emilie in Cinna, a play written in 1639 that Napoleon favored, as it congratulated absolute power. In the play, the Roman emperor Augustus orders the death of Emilie’s father. She begs Cinna, who is in love with her, to kill Augustus in revenge. In the final act, Augustus challenges Cinna, and Emilie attempts to free him by saying she seduced him into it.

Georgina was ready for her stardom. At the dramatic high point of the play, she paused before giving the line: “I have seduced Cinna, I shall seduce many more.” The crowd roared with delight, leaped up, and turned to applaud Napoleon in his box. He smiled and puffed out his chest. Josephine had to sit, ramrod-straight and smiling, hiding her humiliation.

One night she was in her Yellow Salon with Claire de Rémusat, tormenting herself with the knowledge that Napoleon was in Bourrienne’s chamber with Georgina. “I cannot stand it any longer; Mlle. George must be up there. I am going to surprise them.” She marched up the stairs with Claire following. They nearly got there—and then thought they heard Napoleon’s rather terrifying guard coming toward them. “He’ll kill us,” cried Josephine. Claire fled in terror, and Josephine chased after her. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they began to laugh, and Josephine realized she had been deluded to think she could storm into the room.[30]

One evening some weeks later, Josephine heard Georgina screaming in fear. She dashed to Bourrienne’s room, along with valets and guards, only to find Napoleon suffering from a seizure and Georgina making her exit in a state of undress. The actress was terrified that the consul had died and she would be blamed. Josephine stood there and saw with her own eyes the evidence in the rumpled sheets: Her husband could find sexual passion with women other than her.

Not long afterward, Napoleon stuffed forty thousand francs down Georgina’s dress as a goodbye present and set off in search of a replacement. He tried his hopelessly boorish seductions on every young woman he saw. Men found him naturally charismatic and fascinating, but he left women cold. Mademoiselle George had used his attentions for her advantage, but there were many women who had to submit because they had no protectors. Napoleon used them all for pleasure.

When General Junot and his young wife, Laure, came to stay at Malmaison, Napoleon promptly sent Junot away. He had known eighteen-year-old Laure since she was a child, and he had proposed to her mother, Madame Permond, before meeting Josephine. Such family connections did not dampen his fervor. At five A.M. he entered Laure’s room, sat on her bed, and read his morning correspondence. He gave her a pinch, and she pretended to be asleep. He left the room. Laure begged her husband to disobey orders and remain with her. The next night, she locked the door before going to bed—and within an hour or so, she heard Napoleon rattling at it in vain. Not to be dissuaded, he set off to find a master key. He burst into the room, ready for love, but found Junot in bed with his wife and exploded in fury.

Even when a mistress fell out of favor, Josephine knew it would not be long before another beautiful, younger woman would be frequenting her husband’s chamber. She knew Napoleon loved the way she presided over the court with grace and diplomacy, and that her presence mollified the royalists and the aristocrats. But she would no longer be his good-luck charm if one of his mistresses became pregnant.

“AMBITION IS NEVER content, even at the summit of greatness,” Napoleon declared. The peace with Britain was fragile. He had deployed French troops to Holland, which contravened the treaty with the British. For his part, he was pitched into rage by the expansionist desires of the British and their irreverent newspapers. Day after day, he stared at caricatures of Josephine in a state of undress, jokes that Hortense was his mistress, and pictures of him as a pygmy with a giant nose. Lord Whitworth, the British ambassador, calmly told Napoleon that the British press mocked everyone, but the constitution would not allow them to be silenced—which was not entirely true, since the newspapers were prevented from expressing pro-French opinion.

Napoleon detested Whitworth and was personally annoyed by his impressive height of six feet. When he demanded the British quit Malta, Whitworth replied that his government expected the consul to give up on his aggressive policies of invasion. In March 1803, Napoleon lost his temper and raged at the ambassador in public with insults so terrible that Whitworth declined to repeat them in his letters. “England wants war,” the consul roared at the ambassadors of Russia and Spain. Within two months, Whitworth had left Paris, the tourists fleeing behind him. The British promptly seized all French and Dutch merchant ships near their coasts. On May 18, they declared war on France once more, with the excuse that France had intervened in internal Swiss politics and sent troops to the country. Four days later, Napoleon declared all British men in France between the ages of eighteen and sixty would “immediately be constituted prisoners of war,” an act of capturing civilians that outraged international opinion.[31]

Simply, Bonaparte wanted to be at war with Britain again. Talleyrand was furious at the breakdown of the short-lived peace with Britain brokered by the Treaty of Amiens, his suspicions confirmed that Napoleon was happy only when he was sending his subjects into battle. As Madame de Staël put it, the “natural restlessness of his character, independently from his need to dominate, is such that he could not be content with a mere thirty million people to govern and make happy.”[32]

It was a powder keg, and Napoleon ignited it. “In three days, granted favourable circumstances and foggy weather, I could be master of London, the Parliament and the Bank,” he boasted. Peace had not suited him; he could spend only so many days watching ladies curtsey. By June, he was in his element, bustling around newly created camps for his forces and talking of erupting onto British shores. He had seen the newspapers mocking Lord Nelson for his desperate infatuation with Emma Hamilton, and he thought his old enemy had lost his desire for blood. “I will take you to London,” he boasted to Josephine. “I wish the wife of the modern Caesar to be crowned at Westminster.”

While he was surveying his ships, Josephine wrote him a heartfelt letter.

All my sadness vanished, as I read your touching letter and the expressions of your feelings for me. I am so grateful to you for taking the time to write at such length to your Josephine. You cannot think how much joy you have given to the woman you love … I will always keep your letter which I press to my heart. It will console me for your absence, and guide me when I am near you, for I want to be always in your eyes as you want me to be, your sweet and tender Josephine, my life devoted only to your happiness.

When you are happy or for a moment sad, may it be upon my bosom that you pour out your joy or your grief; may you have no feelings that I do not share. All my desires amount only to pleasing you and making you happy … Adieu, Bonaparte, I will never forget the last sentence of your letter. I have it locked in my heart. How deeply it is engraved there and with what ecstasy my own has answered it! Yes, oh yes, that is my wish too—to please you and to love you—or rather to adore you.[33]

Josephine dreaded Napoleon venturing overseas. If he died, she would be completely unprotected, as his siblings, ministers, and army generals battled to become the next consul. Fortunately for her, Napoleon changed his mind about invading when intelligence suggested he would need his armies to quell rebellion in his empire and fight back against Austria. Moreover, though he would not admit it, his naval capacity was not equal to Britain’s. The war situation changed to a game of standoff and stalemate.

On June 14, Josephine set off with Napoleon on a monthlong royal tour, traveling through northeastern France and the Low Countries. She was greeted by delighted crowds who had turned out to see her as much as the consul. For a month, she hosted receptions; for the first time, she was wearing the French crown jewels. In Picardy, Napoleon was given a pair of swans, a gift traditionally reserved for kings. He sent them back to Paris and let them swim in a lake at the Tuileries.

The consul gave the appearance of complete power, but he knew he was under threat. In 1804 a Vendéan rebel leader was arrested and confessed to his captors that he and his coconspirators had been plotting to assassinate the first consul and had been waiting only for a prince of royal blood to lead them. The government needed a scapegoat and settled on the thirty-two-year-old Duc d’Enghien, nephew of Louis XVI and a commander in the army of the prince of Condé, which had attempted to assist the Duke of Brunswick’s invasion of France in 1792. Enghien was resident in the neutral grand duchy of Baden. Napoleon sent dragoons to cross the Rhine and seize him at his home. He was imprisoned at the Château de Vincennes near Paris, where servants were already digging his grave near the dungeon.

Josephine was horrified when she heard the news from her ladies. She and her husband were at Malmaison at the time, and she hurried downstairs to find Napoleon serenely playing chess. Her royalist sympathies coming to the fore, she knelt before him and begged him not to execute the man. Her pleas were in vain. “How harshly he repelled my entreaties!” she recalled. “I clung to him! I threw myself at his feet!” He exclaimed angrily, “Meddle with what concerns you! This is not women’s business! Leave me!” He pushed her off with a violence she had not seen from him since the time he had accused her of an affair with Hippolyte on his return from Egypt.[34] Later on, she tried again, and he was even gruffer. “Go away, you are only a child, you know nothing about politics.” That evening Josephine was unable to pretend to be merry, and Madame de Rémusat, her lady-in-waiting, was pale. Napoleon demanded to know why she wore no rouge, and she replied that she had not put any on. “That could not happen to my Josephine,” he publicly pronounced. “She knows that there’s nothing more becoming to a woman than rouge—and tears.”[35] Later, he began to fondle Josephine brutally. Distressed but knowing better than to resist him, she allowed him to spend the night in her room.

Napoleon, by that point, hardly cared whether the stolid duc was guilty. He was convinced that there was nothing like an assassination attempt to firm his hold over the people and garner more power.

The consul was merciless. The duc was sentenced to death, with no proper hearing. Under a week after his arrest, on March 21 at two-thirty in the morning, Enghien was taken to the courtyard to be executed. He stood in the dark, his faithful dog beside him. Refusing a handkerchief to cover his eyes, he followed instructions to hold a lantern against his heart to direct the fire. “You are Frenchmen,” he said, “at least you will do me the service not to miss your aim.” The duc’s dignity and courage awed the marksmen. They were told they could help themselves to his clothes and money, but they refused.

The news spread like wildfire across Europe. Napoleon had crossed into a neutral state and executed a man without proper trial. The wanton killing of a royal was not only a terrible reminder of the bloody Revolution and Terror but a slap in the face to the many who still believed the royals had been specially appointed by God to rule. Josephine wept when she heard and struggled to control her feelings. “I am a woman, you know, and I confess I could cry,” she repeated over and over. She consoled herself that her husband was “not naturally cruel, it is his counsellors and flatterers who have induced him to commit so many villainous actions.”[36]

Napoleon, delighted at what he deemed an absolute success, commanded Talleyrand to throw a ball to celebrate. “The Duc d’Enghien was a conspirator like any other and he had to be treated as such,” he said. “These people wanted to throw France into confusion and to destroy the Revolution by destroying me.” Allying himself with the Revolution was absurd, but he kept it up—“I am the man of the State. I am the French Revolution. I say it, and I will uphold it.”[37]

His courtiers struggled to celebrate, and foreign visitors stood in their finery, shaking their heads at the horror.[38] Just over a week after the death of the duc, Napoleon went to the theater. His habit was to dash to his box before Josephine’s carriage arrived. This time he entered with her—he needed her popularity. As they made their appearance, he was pale and anxious, while she looked ahead, smiling as if nothing had happened. He was fortunate this time. The people in the theater erupted into shouts and cheers.

For the Parisians, who had read the false newspaper reports that cast Enghien as a conspirator, Napoleon had proved his excellence and strength once more.[39] “I have forever silenced both royalists and Jacobins,” he crowed. The Jacobins were delighted, convinced now that he would never put a Bourbon on the throne. The royalists, shocked by his actions, realized they had underestimated him. But it was too late. Three weeks after that awful night when the bullets felled Enghien, the senate assembled and duly declared that the life consul was now the emperor. Josephine was indeed, as the Martinique fortune-teller had suggested, “greater than a queen.”

CHAPTER 15

“Your Imperial Majesty”

Napoleon’s empire was announced on May 18, 1804, to a twenty-one-gun salute. He was the only person at ease, receiving the senators as they stumbled between “Citizen Consul” and “Citizen Emperor.” Josephine visibly trembled when she was called “Your Imperial Majesty.” She was now the empress of France. Surely no mere actress could unseat her now.

Madame de Staël was shocked. “For a man who had risen above every throne, to come down willingly and take his place amongst the kings!” But Napoleon’s supporters, particularly the workingmen who cheered his military victories, thought he could do no wrong. The liberals, who had deluded themselves that he was an heir of the Revolution, were scandalized. But the majority of the French were weary of bloodshed, afraid of the British threat, and desperate for security. Napoleon, a strong ruler who would brook no opposition, seemed their only option.

He had chosen “emperor” as his title. “King” was impossible, but “emperor,” he felt, would remind the French of the grandeur of Charlemagne, the holy Roman emperor. Unlike Charlemagne, he would not be traveling to Rome for the coronation. Pope Pius VII would have to come to Paris. Napoleon’s Council of State, many of them fanatical anti-clerics, were livid. They had been infuriated by Napoleon’s reestablishment of the church, and a religious coronation was, they declared, the last straw. But Napoleon brushed off their complaints. He assured them that a coronation was necessary to ensure the greatness of France, inspiring the people with pride and putting him on the same footing as every monarch in Europe.

Sixty-two-year-old Pope Pius was reluctant to minister over the coronation, for he had been deeply distressed by Napoleon’s treatment of the Duc d’Enghien. Cardinal Joseph Fesch was sent to persuade him. Fesch pleaded, he flattered, he offered gifts, and he gave a heavy-handed reminder of Napoleon’s military strength. Eventually, Pius gave in and agreed to come. As a thank-you, Napoleon gave Fesch a seat in the French senate, the position of grand almoner of the empire, and the grand cordon of the Légion d’Honneur.

Napoleon was the ruler of an empire, but unfortunately for him, his family was as ungovernable as ever. On the evening he was proclaimed emperor, he dined with them, and they did nothing but attack him for not treating them well. He decreed that his heir would be Joseph, followed by Joseph’s male descendants, and then Louis, followed by Louis’s descendants. Jérôme and Lucien, he decided, should be ruled out of inheriting, since he did not approve of their marriages. He felt that Lucien’s wife, the illiterate sister of an innkeeper, was hardly a woman to be elevated to Napoleon’s magnificent succession. Joseph and Louis were each given the title prince of the empire, a million francs a year, and an additional one third of a million francs a year in expenses. That their sisters-in-law would be princesses was too much for Elisa and Caroline, who would be without titles because Napoleon had not made their husbands princes. The sisters screamed and railed as they accused their brother of condemning them to “obscurity and contempt.”[1] Napoleon vainly puffed that he was emperor and should be able to hand out honors as he liked. Letizia was incandescent that her title would be merely “Madame Mère de Sa Majesté l’Empereur” and not “The Imperial Mother” and declared she would not attend the coronation.

Napoleon finally gave in and allowed his sisters to take the title of imperial highness. They would be princesses, although their husbands would remain commoners. Pauline had the same privileges, but she was disdainful. As she pointed out, she was already a real princess, since she was the wife of Prince Borghese. Lucien was so furious to be excluded from the succession that he stormed off to Rome. The Bonaparte family was united in only one wish: that Josephine would not become empress. The thought of having to bow and curtsey to the whore from Martinique was simply too much. The family’s hatred plunged Hortense into further suffering; her husband and his family never refrained from attacking her mother and listing her sins.

Napoleon expected Josephine to assume the role of the most splendid empress. The old days of informal gatherings and conversations with the public were over. “She is a good, easy-going woman,” Napoleon told his minister of the interior. “Her progress and her conduct will have to be dictated to her.” She now had fourteen ladies-in-waiting, copious jewels, and a huge household. Most of her ladies were drawn from the old aristocracy and, when her back was turned, complained about serving “Madame Bonaparte.” One of her new ladies-in-waiting was Elisabeth de Vaudey, a pretty thirty-one-year-old blonde with a good singing voice and a passion for intrigue. She was fond of Josephine but scornfully thought her “need to open her heart, to repeat all that happens between herself and the Emperor, takes away much of Napoleon’s confidence in her.” She saw her mistress as superficial. “Josephine is like a ten-year-old child in her generosity, her frivolity and her rapid emotions, she can weep and be comforted in minutes.” Elisabeth thought Josephine was as “ignorant as most Creoles” but had acquired “graceful manners” and wit, although she did admit that the empress was “perfectly gentle and equable; it is impossible not to be fond of her.”[2] Josephine made a mistake in telling Elisabeth her secrets, for the young woman liked to gossip, and everything Josephine told her found its way back to the emperor.

In July, Napoleon was due to travel to the coast to inspect the naval bases in preparation for another proposed invasion of Britain. Josephine, perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to get pregnant, traveled in the same month to take the spa waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, the burial place of Charlemagne. The journeys to Plombières, eating spinach dressed in lamp oil en route, were a thing of the past. Napoleon set his ministers to creating a twenty-four-page directive on the empress’s triumphal progress, the style of her entourage, and what gifts she would offer. And while Madame de La Rochefoucauld and Josephine supervised the packing of her gowns, all the mayors and shopkeepers along the way prepared gun salutes, rehearsed bands to play fanfares as she approached, and strung illuminations across their towns.

Josephine arrived in imperial magnificence (if not always exactly on time). She took four of her ladies, two women of the bedchamber, two chamberlains, a comptroller, a master of the horse, two ushers, ten footmen, coachmen, and her own kitchen staff. At least seventy horses accompanied her carriage. It was grandeur all the way, and she was greeted with “enthusiasm that erupted at the sight of the Empress in the towns through which she passed,” in the words of Mademoiselle Avrillon, one of her ladies.[3]

While inspecting the troops, Napoleon was gratified to hear excellent reports of Josephine. At Charlemagne’s tomb, she was presented with a rather grimy bone said to be that of the holy Roman emperor. She declined it graciously, saying she had “for her own support an arm as strong as Charlemagne’s.” “You are still essential to my happiness,” Napoleon wrote to her. To Josephine’s joy, he announced that he would meet her at Aix and accompany her party on a visit along the Rhine. “I cannot wait to see you and to cover you with kisses. A bachelor’s life is a horrid life and I miss my good, tender and beautiful wife.”[4] Unfortunately, he also wanted to see her lady-in-waiting, Elisabeth de Vaudey.

Like queens and princesses throughout history, Josephine chose beautiful, graceful, and accomplished ladies-in-waiting only to find her husband attempting to seduce them. “Every liberty which he takes pleases him as though it were a victory,” Madame de Rémusat observed.[5] As the party progressed through the towns of the Rhine, Napoleon and Elisabeth began an affair. As always, a new romance meant he was even more irritable with his wife. One night he hauled her out of bed in the middle of the night, demanding that she get dressed and attend him immediately, as if sleeping were an act of neglect. Another woman Napoleon pounced on was blond twenty-year-old Anna Roche de La Coste, whose main task was to read to Josephine in her chamber. She gave in to Napoleon but refused to relinquish her lover, his chamberlain, Theodore de Thiard. The emperor stumbled across them in bed together (no doubt notified by Fouché) and sent Thiard off to the Vatican. His attention was piqued by Anna’s disinterest, and in front of everybody at court, he gave her an incredibly expensive ring and demanded that Josephine bring her to a state reception. Luckily, Anna soon fell out of favor, and Napoleon amused himself by toying with Thiard and sending him on ever more impossible missions. It was unfortunate for the empress that her old friend Juliette Récamier, who had long been able to withstand Napoleon’s advances, had declined the role of lady-in-waiting (Napoleon later exiled her).

When Napoleon and Josephine returned to Paris, he took up with Adèle Duchâtel, a golden-haired court beauty in possession of a complaisant older husband. Josephine was in paroxysms of misery at the affair. One day at Saint-Cloud, she saw Adèle secretly leave the room and convinced herself that her rival was on her way to Napoleon. Madame de Rémusat tried to dissuade her, but Josephine was determined to find out what was happening. She hurtled up the stairs to Napoleon’s chamber, listened at the door, and heard the voices of Adèle and her husband. She knocked and begged to be allowed in, then burst through the door, ran to the bed, and began upbraiding her husband. Adèle started crying, and Napoleon was inflamed with fury; as Josephine recounted to Madame de Rémusat, “Bonaparte flew into so violent a passion that I hardly had time to fly before him and escape his rage. I am still trembling at the thought of it.”[6] Adèle fled and Josephine dashed away to her rooms, but he followed, screaming and shouting so loudly that the whole palace could hear. He threw every insult at her and smashed her furniture. Shrieking that she was now beyond redemption and that he’d had enough, he ordered her to leave the palace immediately. He roared that he was tired of her spying and that it was time to think of his legacy, “which demanded that he should take a wife capable of having children.”[7]

Finally confronting divorce, Josephine implored Hortense to try and win Napoleon around, but she declined. “I cannot; Louis has forbidden it. My mother will only lose a crown and there are women more unhappy than she.”[8] Poor Hortense knew from experience that Bonaparte was immovable these days. “Besides, her only hope lies in the influence she exercises over Napoleon by means of her sweet and gentle nature and her tears.” That evening he sent for Eugène and told the young man that he would divorce his mother. Eugène took the news with dignity. Rather than begging his stepfather to change his mind, he told him that if that were to happen, then it was his duty to accompany his mother wherever she went, even if she wished to return to Martinique.

As usual, Josephine wept and pleaded with Napoleon to forgive her. He gave in and took her back into his bed—partly because he was so annoyed that his family had been delighted by the news of their argument. But he was still thinking of divorce. Like a coward, he hoped she might choose to leave. As he told her, “I feel that I shall never have the strength to oblige you to leave me. I tell you plainly, however, that it is my earnest desire that you shall resign yourself to the interest of my policy and yourself spare me all the difficulties of this painful separation.”[9] Josephine, left to rely on her wits, conjured up a brilliant strategy: She bent her head in submission and said she would leave the minute she received a “direct order from Napoleon to descend the throne.”[10] He could not bear to ask her, so the question remained unresolved.

Josephine, who had come to understand how much jealousy infuriated her husband, was now playing the most docile and obedient wife. Claire de Rémusat noted how her “complete submissiveness and her attitude of unresisting victim” threw Napoleon into nervous uncertainty. His wife was jealous, too old to have children, and had been unfaithful in the early days. But she had stood by him, married him when few other women had deigned to speak to him, and perhaps most important, cared for him rather than his power. After Egypt, he declared he had forgiven her because of his love for Eugène and Hortense. Similarly, in 1804 he confessed he was very fond of his stepchildren (who, he said, never asked him for anything) and thought he owed Josephine kindness for their sake. He declared that it just didn’t seem fair to throw her aside. “My wife is a good woman who never does anyone any harm,” he sighed. He depended on her and doubted that any foreign princess could make him so content. When his minister Pierre Louis Roederer asked what he planned to do, Napoleon was muddleheaded. “It is only fair that she should be an Empress. If I was thrown into prison instead of ascending a throne, she would share my misfortune. She should share my grandeur,” he said. As he put it, “She will be crowned if it costs me 200,000 men!”[11] But he would make no firm decision.

While Josephine waited and restrained herself from losing her temper, plans for the coronation were moving ahead. Napoleon was overseeing every aspect of the ceremony at Notre-Dame. To allow his procession full access to the cathedral, he ordered that some of the surrounding houses be demolished. He instructed Percier and Fontaine, along with Jacques-Louis David, to cover the exterior of Notre-Dame with wooden boards to hide the displeasing Gothic style. The interior would look less like a cathedral and more like a themed ball at the Tuileries. Workmen erected huge slabs of painted board, strung candelabra from the ceiling, decorated the floor with tapestries and rugs, and swathed velvet over the walls. David and Isabey were instructed to design the outfits for the men, and they selected the Renaissance style of Francis I of France. They meant to evoke a more heroic age, but the ruffs and doublets were not flattering to stocky Napoleon or others in his rather corpulent court.

As the day approached, Joseph told Napoleon repeatedly that it would be best for all concerned if Josephine sat in the pews and watched the ceremony rather than being crowned. At the Tuileries, there was a model of Notre-Dame occupied by several hundred paper dolls to represent all the dignitaries who would attend the coronation. Isabey had created the model instead of drawing the series of events in pictures. The emperor doll was purple and center stage. The Josephine doll had no official seating—she was moved around and sometimes abandoned at the side of the model cathedral.

Napoleon decided that the icon of his reign would be the eagle of the Caesars, the bird of power and victory. Hunting for another symbol, something suitably memorable to outdo the fleur-de-lys, he chose the bee to evoke Childeric, the fifth-century king of the Franks. When Childeric’s tomb had been found by a mason in 1653, it was filled with precious objects and more than three hundred gold bees. Napoleon felt that the bee—symbol of resurrection, immortality, and royal authority—was another ideal icon for his reign. Fabric and carpet makers were at once set to weaving bees into every piece of material that would take them. He commissioned Fontaine to design an imperial state coach covered with stars, laurel leaves, and bees and bearing an eagle and Charlemagne’s crown at the top. Embroidered bees, gilt bees, bronze bees, all hovered and buzzed on the curtains, floor coverings, wall hangings, books, and furniture of the Tuileries, in the workshops of dressmakers and jewelers, and across the apartments of the ever loyal Josephine. She chose the symbol of the swan, graceful on the surface but scrabbling hard underwater.

The gossips were whispering that Josephine would not require a particularly handsome gown for the coronation. The celebration was only weeks away and her position was still undecided. Her paper doll was without a home in the model of Notre-Dame. As the weeks progressed and Napoleon flirted with his mistresses, courtiers began to be openly rude to her. Everyone still laughed behind their hands at Josephine’s humiliation over Adèle Duchâtel. The Bonapartes cut her out completely and refused to stand when she entered the room. They counted their chickens too quickly; they forgot how mercurial the emperor could be. One night in November, frustrated with his demanding family and their evident pleasure at Josephine’s fall, Napoleon made up his mind for good. As he watched her crumple under their cruelties, he leaped up and, in front of everyone, went to his wife, seized her in his arms, and stroked her like a child. “The Pope will be here at the end of the month,” he said. “He will crown us both. Start to prepare for the ceremony.” Josephine threw herself at Napoleon’s feet.

Now she had to beg a favor from her dressmaker. Napoleon knew exactly how he wished her to appear, and she had under five weeks to perfect her costume. She would wear an elaborate white dress swathed in gold tulle and embroidered with golden bees; there was to be a magnificent train of twenty-five yards of red velvet, adorned with yet more bees and bordered in ermine. Josephine’s apartments were a flurry of great artists, all conferring with her on the design for the costume for her ladies as well as herself. There was talk of resurrecting the old hoop of Marie Antoinette, but Josephine refused, suggesting a tulle ruff around the neck—which corresponded perfectly to Napoleon’s desire for the coronation to have a Renaissance look (although some worried that it evoked the terrifying Catherine de Medici).

Every dressmaker in Paris was working around the clock. Gold thread was at a premium, and fine embroiderers—who had fallen out of fashion in the Republic—could name their price. “It seems like a dream or a story from the Arabian nights when I remember the luxury that was displayed at that period,” recalled Madame de Rémusat.[12] The population of the city seemed to double, people were repainting their houses, dancers at the Opéra were learning new ballets, and delivery boys ran all over the city with food and drink for receptions. Notre-Dame was a hive of activity, so covered in embroidered hangings that one visitor thought God Himself would get lost there. Carts of furniture, cloth, jewels, and fine glass and china arrived daily. The “gaiety, anticipation and celebration in Paris then was unimaginable,” Josephine noted.[13] The moneylenders did the best business of all. Each lady-in-waiting was given ten thousand francs to compensate for her expenditure and gowns, but they all spent much more, even four times that amount—a huge sum when the average wage was around seven hundred francs a year.

Not everyone was swept away with delight and excitement. The Bonaparte family immediately started on the counterattack. The last queen of France to be crowned was Marie de Medici in 1610, and her husband had been assassinated the next day. Did Napoleon want the same to happen? He tried to brush off their insinuations. Caroline, Elisa, and Pauline were told firmly that they would be expected to carry Josephine’s marvelous train of ermine and velvet, along with Hortense and Julie, wife of Joseph. The sisters practically fainted at the news, and Joseph roared that his wife, as a virtuous woman, could not carry Josephine’s train. He complained that even when Marie de Medici had been crowned, a distant relative had carried her train, “not the King’s own sister.” Caroline led the others in a hysterical strike of tears, pleas, and attempts at haranguing Napoleon into changing his mind. Finally, after suffering six days of constant complaints, he gave in and told his sisters that they would merely have to support the mantle during the ceremony. Each one would have a chamberlain to carry her own train. “Only my family can exert such influence over me,” sighed Napoleon, the terrifying ruler of the French empire brought low by his cross sisters—“I’ve lost sleep over this.”[14] Although the sisters had escaped the public humiliation of playing Josephine’s bridesmaids, they had lost the bigger battle. The hated “la Beauharnais,” the reviled “la vieille,” was to be crowned empress in the eyes of the world.

Josephine’s docile behavior had, as Hortense predicted, won Napoleon back to her side. But she was not satisfied. She still wished for the religious blessing Napoleon had denied her.

After the wearisome journey from Rome, Pope Pius VII, elderly and infirm, arrived and was greeted by cheering Parisians. After welcome celebrations at Fontainebleau, Pius and his attendants took up residence in fifty-six rooms of the Tuileries and, having expected a nation of atheists, were quite stunned by the religious fervor. Everyone from revolutionary generals to Jacobins flocked to the pope’s apartments, begging him to bless their belongings. Pius was presented with watches, pens, scissors, purses, and ink pots, and had to bless them all. He was followed wherever he went, and every morning huge crowds would appear under his balcony at the Tuileries, calling loudly for him to bless them.

The enthusiasm of the population was only half consolation to Pius for some of the shocking demands Napoleon had made. The new emperor had informed the pope that the service would be radically changed and that he would have to walk into the cathedral rather than be carried on a litter—an unfair demand for vainglorious Napoleon to make of the elderly and infirm pope.

On December 1, the day before the coronation, Josephine made her move. She had left it to the last minute to minimize any possible discussion. She begged for a private audience with the pope and then, weeping, told him that her marriage had been only a civil affair. Poor Pius was shocked to discover that he had been on the brink of anointing the emperor’s concubine with holy oil. Josephine had timed her attack superbly. Pius was annoyed at the constant humiliations he had received from Napoleon, and this was the final straw. He had accepted having to walk into the cathedral, he had given in to the curtailed ceremony, but he would not crown a sinful pair of cohabitees as emperor and empress. He declared that if Napoleon and Josephine were not married in a properly religious ceremony, he would not preside over the coronation.

Napoleon had to relent. He could not postpone the coronation, and Pius was not to be moved. Cardinal Fesch was sent to arrange an immediate marriage service. That night during a brief break from the preparations, at a makeshift altar hastily erected in Napoleon’s study, the emperor and empress were married by Fesch in a short ceremony at midnight. Their parish priest was not present, as was required, and the attendance of witnesses was debatable—Josephine claimed two aides-de-camp were present, but Napoleon later denied they had been there.[15] It was thus hardly legal, which was perhaps why Napoleon went through with it without resentment. At the end, Josephine asked Fesch to give her a written certification of the marriage. She thought it her surefire protection against divorce.

CHAPTER 16

“The King of Diamonds”

The second day of December 1804 was the coldest of the year. Freezing snow was followed by battering rain, but still the people took up their positions on the streets leading toward Notre-Dame. At the Tuileries, every moment had been dedicated to prepping for the forthcoming celebrations. Hairdressers had been at such a premium that many ladies were coiffed the previous evening and forced to sleep upright to preserve their hairstyle. Some courtiers had not had time to go to bed. Josephine seized a few hours’ rest, only to be awakened before six so that Isabey could paint her face with the rouge Napoleon so loved. The hairdresser teased her hair into ringlets around a pearl and diamond diadem. Her ladies dressed her in the white satin gown, embroidered in gold, with a low neckline and the ruff as a collar. A diamond belt circled her waist.

Then Josephine had to wait. Napoleon’s elaborate dress took over an hour longer than planned. He wore so many jewels that he looked like a walking mirror, and he had plucked the huge “Regent” diamond from his sword and attached it to his hat. He was delighted by his appearance, though, but others noted that the Renaissance dress of a short coat over puffed knickerbockers was hardly flattering to his apple-shaped form. “Perhaps successful on the drawing board,” commented one woman, “it was unbecoming on the Emperor, who is short, fat and awkward.” More like an overdressed child than an awe-inspiring ruler, she thought he looked “like the King of Diamonds.”

In high spirits, the King of Diamonds bounded down the stairs and, almost two hours late, left the Tuileries in the imperial state coach at ten A.M. Josephine was by his side, Joseph and Louis facing them, similarly awkward in ruffs and stiff outfits that bore an unfortunate resemblance to costumes. Eight bay horses drove the Fontaine-designed riot of gold, bees, and diamonds; the coach had eight huge glass windows through which Napoleon and Josephine could be seen. The spectators seemed more inquisitive than thrilled. “I noticed there was no real enthusiasm anywhere,” Napoleon noted, although at least, he admitted, there was no active dissent. The state coaches rumbled through the narrow streets, with the ministers, the grand chamberlain, the Bonaparte princesses, and the diplomatic corps all putting on their best look of royal dignity for the crowds. The people warmed their hands with hot pies and admired the horses.

As the imperial couple arrived at Notre-Dame, the sun came through the clouds, and amid the roar of cannons, Napoleon and Josephine stepped from their coach. Josephine was fortunate that her husband had not forced her to dress in hoops and farthingales. Her clinging gown and gold decoration were an instant hit with the crowd. Still, all the gold in the world could not hide her origins. “What beauty!” recalled one spectator. “But for me, she would always be Barras’s mistress.” Barras, in exile, had created them both, but neither Napoleon nor Josephine had a thought to spare for him.

Inside the cathedral, the spectators had been waiting since the early morning, surreptitiously eating sausages to keep warm. The elderly pope had sat on his freezing throne for hours, saying prayers and begging God to show mercy for what he was about to do. As a final insult, Napoleon had informed him that he and Josephine would not take the coronation communion. Poor Pius, once again, was humiliated by the irreligious nature of the man he had traveled so far to crown.

On arrival at Notre-Dame, the pair moved to a robing room to don their imperial robes. Napoleon attired himself as a Roman emperor, wearing a long satin gown and a mantle of purple embroidered with bees and attached at the shoulder and the waist. He was crowned with a laurel wreath and carried a scepter. Josephine donned her robes and a tiara composed of over a thousand diamonds set in platinum.

After an hour in the robing room, the procession began with the heralds-at-arms, pages, grand master of ceremonies, and Josephine’s own equerries and chamberlains. General Murat bore her crown on a cushion. Then the empress emerged, walking slowly under a canopy. Her huge mantle was carried by the five Bonaparte princesses. Despite the triumph of having their own trains carried, they were resentful of following “la vieille” and not afraid to show it. They barely lifted the mantle and let it drag on the ground so that Josephine struggled to walk. The emperor was last to appear, his crown, sword, necklace, and globe carried by his marshals. Impatient as ever, he was so eager to get to the altar that he used his scepter to prod Cardinal Fesch to hurry up.

Although the procession had been excessively magnificent, the service itself was short and arranged so that only those closest could see. French kings traditionally had lain full-length, facedown in front of the altar, for the blessing, but Napoleon knew that doing so would only invite ridicule. He was wise: Josephine prostrate on the floor would have inspired dozens of cruel cartoons. Instead, Napoleon had decided that he and Josephine would kneel at the altar for the pope’s triple unction of holy water on their heads and hands after High Mass.

At the high point of the ceremony, the pope blessed the two crowns and placed them on the altar. Quick as a flash, Napoleon seized the biggest crown and popped it onto his head. It was an act of shocking affront and typical of the emperor. The great showman had been planning it, borrowing the idea from the tsar of Russia, who had crowned himself—but the onlookers thought it all spontaneous. Sidelining the pope altogether, Napoleon then took Josephine’s crown and held it out, signaling her to come toward him. As Claire de Rémusat put it, she knelt with “such simple elegance that all eyes were delighted with the picture she presented.”[1] He placed her crown first on his own head and then on hers, over the diadem she already wore. Josephine burst into tears.

He was almost playful, as Josephine’s lady recounted, “He put it on, then took it off, and finally put it on again as if to promise her that she should wear it gracefully and lightly.”[2] Her carriage and bearing were so majestic that some of those watching became a little carried away. “I have had the honor of being presented to many real princesses,” gushed Laure Junot, “but I never saw one who, to my eyes, presented so perfect a personification of elegance and majesty.”[3]

The elegance had not come without a struggle; at the crucial moment, the Bonaparte sisters had tried to take their revenge. When Josephine walked up for her blessing, the sisters all at once loosened the mantle, threatening to let go. The empress staggered backward. Napoleon spotted it and whipped around to give his sisters a sharp reprimand. Ashamed, they huddled to resume their positions and Josephine carried on, head held high. After blessing the new rulers and completing Mass at the altar, the pope retired to the sacristy, preferring not to witness Napoleon’s civil oath to the Republic. To the presiding officers of the legislative bodies, and in resounding tones, Napoleon declared that he would “maintain the integrity and territory of the Republic, to protect political, civil and religious liberties, and the irrevocability of national property.” Even during the ceremony, he was making plans that would contravene nearly every oath.

At three P.M., the newly crowned emperor and empress departed Notre-Dame, taking a longer route back so that even more Parisians could witness their grandeur. Their carriage was surrounded by five hundred pages carrying torches to allow everybody a proper view of their rulers in the descending winter gloom. Every building was illuminated, and giant laurel-leaf “N”s hung from the balconies. At the Place de la Concorde, a huge star stood at the spot where Louis XVI had been executed. “Never have I seen on any face an expression of joy, of contentment, of good fortune, to compare with that which animated the figure of the Empress,” recalled Mademoiselle Avrillion. But the royalists scoffed at Napoleon’s sisters, “who had left their laundry behind and now appeared in all their finery and diamonds to carry the train of Barras’s former mistress.” Monarchists and revolutionaries alike were scandalized by the elevations of, as Madame de Staël said, “the bourgeois and bourgeoises of Ajaccio” (Napoleon’s hometown).[4]

Rather than hosting a ceremonial dinner, the emperor decreed that he would dine privately with his empress, much to the fury of his family. Napoleon whisked Josephine into the private salon, where he asked her to wear her crown for the meal, “because no one could wear a crown with more grace.”[5] It was a triumphant moment for her. Replete with success, she watched, with bitter irony, the courtiers who had so recently snubbed her all scrambling to please her. Confident in her position, she was inclined to be much more kindly disposed toward the Bonaparte sisters and to the other members of her husband’s entourage she distrusted—and this only added to Napoleon’s esteem for her.

Bonaparte’s improper act of crowning himself became gossip across Europe, discussed in horror by scandalized royalists and all those he had exiled. It appeared that the man’s ambition knew no bounds. It also proved a logistical headache for Jacques-Louis David, the former revolutionary who had been declared the court painter, as he had been commissioned to produce the official portrait of the coronation. For months, David struggled to find a way to show Napoleon crowning himself without making the picture appear ridiculous. After watching his master in torment, an apprentice suggested he paint Napoleon crowning Josephine. Napoleon approved the idea, and the problem was solved. Four years later, he and Josephine visited David’s studio, where the emperor spent over an hour scrutinizing every aspect of the picture. Much had been changed: Josephine and Napoleon were made to look younger and more statuesque; Madame Mère, who had left Paris in a temper, was painted into the congregation; and the Bonaparte sisters, perhaps as a sop from Napoleon, were shown standing to the side, rather than bearing the mantle. Through David’s alchemy, what had been a shocking insult to the pope and a complete usurpation of his role became refigured as an act of love and devotion from emperor to empress. Later, Napoleon railed that Josephine had indulged in “little intrigues” in order to put herself at the center of the painting. But at the time of viewing, he was most gratified. He told David that he was grateful to him “for recording for posterity the proof of the affection I wished to give to the woman who shared with me the burden of office.”[6] Not even Napoleon was quite vain enough to wish the official portrait showed him crowning himself.

The emperor’s hunger for absolute power increased daily. He retained the tribunate, the senate, and the legislative body, but they were thin pretenses that existed mainly to persuade the French that they were still living in a Republic. The emperor coined a catechism for schoolchildren. When they were asked, “What should one think of those who fail in their duties to our emperor?” they should reply, “According to the apostle St. Paul, they would be resisting the order established by God Himself and would deserve eternal damnation.” Napoleon liked religion when it suited him. In January, only a month after his coronation, he abolished one of the most celebrated innovations of the Republic: the revolutionary calendar.

The new emperor decreed everything from state policy to women’s fashion. He desired his new court at the Tuileries to outshine every other court across Europe for luxury and magnificence, outdoing even those of his Bourbon predecessors. For him, the court was a tool to demonstrate his belief that he was the most terrifying ruler in history. Essentially, his guiding aesthetic combined the style of ancient Rome with the brilliance and excess of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and Louis XVI. “What I want above all is grandeur,” he said, “what is grand above all is beautiful.” Napoleon’s favorite architectural team of Percier and Fontaine was entrusted with transforming the Tuileries. He found the palace too “bare and simple” (even though it had been redecorated since he arrived) and wished to erase all memories of the dull old Directory. Percier and Fontaine were instructed to make a new banquet room, a gallery, and a great central staircase; to hang the walls with thick silk brocades from Lyon; and to cover the place in decorated panels. Gold bees and the imperial eagle flew across curtains and adorned mahogany furniture—some much the worse for wear, thanks to Napoleon’s nervous habit of hacking into them with a penknife. He made plans for a theater and a chapel. Visitor’s eyes were dazzled by gilt, jewels, and silver everywhere they looked. The stables contained twelve hundred handsome horses, as well as dozens of carriages, all painted green. The annual budget for decorating and redecorating the imperial rooms and maintaining the palaces soared to six million francs. Napoleon had no time for suggestions that his court should reflect the aesthetic culture of Rome, which was perceived to be restrained. The days of the revolutionary symbols on the front of the Tuileries, the austere interiors, and the Committee of Public Safety were long gone. The glitter and the glamour worked to “throw dust in people’s eyes.”[7]

Napoleon was even more insistent that rules of etiquette and precedence be imposed on his courtiers, most of whom were in their twenties and thirties and too young to remember much of the ancien régime. The regulations of Louis XIV and his successors were pulled down from the library shelves. Madame Campan was questioned in minute detail, and anyone else who had been at Versailles was asked to provide information about life at the old court. A team headed by the Comte de Ségur produced the detailed volume Etiquette du Palais Impérial, which gave exact rules on everything from where people should stand at a court assembly to how they should seat themselves at dinner. Napoleon established a huge household for himself, bigger than that of Louis XVI, with a grand almoner, a grand marshal, a grand equerry, a grand huntsman, and a grand master of ceremonies. Josephine had an equally unwieldy staff of more than a hundred, including twenty ladies-in-waiting—four more than Marie Antoinette had. She also had seventeen ladies of the palace, including ladies of the wardrobe and ladies of the bedchamber. The competition to serve Josephine was intense, particularly as Napoleon often recruited his mistresses from her household. All were overseen by her dame d’honneur, Duchesse Alexandre de La Rochefoucauld, a relative of Josephine’s first husband. A Saint-Domingue heiress and an avowed ancien régime royalist in her late thirties, she made it clear that she was merely deigning to be at the court; she even cowed the emperor into silence at times. Highly efficient, she kept Josephine’s household running perfectly, overseeing the day-to-day needs, the visits, the work of the servants, and deciding on presentations and invitations.

Josephine also had an almoner, chamberlain, two equerries (one to oversee the stables), lords-in-waiting, ushers, footmen, and pages. There was hardly any point to such a huge household; most of the ladies and gentlemen had very little to do but sit about, complain, and adjust their costume. It was one great self-serving machine: Josephine dressed three times a day to give them an occupation, and whole occasions were held to give them something to anticipate. The only true purpose was to create the aspect of majesty; the court functioned as a vast, pleasing looking glass for Napoleon.

The emperor was strict about formality. All the men of Josephine’s household were to remain in her outer apartments, and if one needed to receive orders, he should scratch at the door of the bedroom, where one of her ladies “must always be in attendance, and seek permission to be introduced into her presence.” With the etiquette of “scratching,” the influence of Versailles was complete—courtiers there had been firmly instructed to scratch rather than knock at doors. There was no more republican equality; those at Napoleon’s court behaved with the subservience of a courtier to a king. “The Emperor is too grand for anybody to tell him the truth,” Josephine wrote to Eugène, “everybody who surrounds him flatters him all day long.”[8] As Madame de Rémusat recalled, “The fever of vanity seemed every day to lay stronger claim on of us.”[9]

Napoleon’s obsessive interest in constructing a new world to surround him soon extended to female fashion. Despite his own passion for seeing Josephine in diaphanous dresses and gauzy wraps, he demanded that her ladies wear embossed gowns of lamé, brocade, and satin, with mandatory velvet trains, all heavily embroidered in gold. As the men gleamed with medals, so the women must sparkle with jewels, and never wear the same gown twice. Laure Junot was firmly reminded of her duty at one court event: “Madame, you have worn that dress several times. It is becoming, but we have seen it before.”[10]

Napoleon claimed he installed strictures on fashion to assist the French manufacturers. The result was very like the stiff grandeur of the court of Marie Antoinette, down to the restrictive and cumbersome nature of the apparel—exactly what women had been so eager to throw off after the Revolution. The empress sometimes rebelled against Napoleon by wearing trains of tulle or gauzy ensembles, but she was entirely obedient to his strictures about jewels and was always wearing new ensembles. She was clever at making a dress look different with shawls and accessories, but essentially, all her gowns were made to be worn once. An inventory in 1809 found 49 grand court dresses, 676 gowns, 60 cashmere shawls (and nearly 500 other shawls in other materials), 413 pairs of gloves, and more than 200 pairs of silk stockings.

Josephine’s coronation dress was the pattern for all her court gowns. She wore empire-line waists with high embroidered collars and trains attached to the back. Her dressmaker, Leroy, was the mastermind behind her “look,” and he quickly became the most in-demand designer in Paris. Le Journal des Dames et des Modes, the fashion bible of the day, was filled with pictures of Josephine, the most stylish woman in the country. Even passionately patriotic British women nursed secret desires for a French gown à la empress.

Back in Britain, Lord Nelson and his mistress, Emma Hamilton, had set up home in Merton Place, near Wimbledon. They turned a rather ramshackle house into a tribute to his victories, with large “N”s on the walls, pieces of his ships over the staircase, and fittings from crockery to crocus planters decorated with his name and image. What Nelson was doing on the domestic level, Napoleon wished to write large over his nation. There were “N”s and “J”s, eagles and swans, everywhere. He placed the lion stolen from the column in the Piazza San Marco, Venice, in the middle of Paris and arranged the bronze horses from San Marco in the Tuileries Gardens.

Napoleon set Percier and Fontaine about feverishly making monuments to his great successes in order to remind everyone of his brilliance. He demanded that a sixty-foot-high elephant inscribed with his victories be placed over the Champs-Élysées, facing toward the Tuileries (the plans for the elephant would be replaced eventually with those for the Arc de Triomphe). He was equally delighted with the idea of a column made from melted-down Austrian cannon in the Place Vendôme to commemorate the Grand Army. Percier and Fontaine scribbled out plans for towers, giant statues, and more columns, each one unashamedly masculine in style, all situated to prove that the emperor could never be dislodged.

Now that Napoleon was emperor, he was ever more determined to have a son. He asked Josephine to feign a pregnancy and then pretend she had given birth, while he offered to find a child, probably from a mistress who was pregnant at the time. She agreed, but the chief physician refused to be party to such a deception. Certainly, it would have been nigh impossible, considering the close quarters at which everybody observed Josephine and the number of spies on her staff. When this plan failed, her position was weakened. Whenever Napoleon and Josephine argued, usually after she had asked him questions he didn’t like, he would counter by claiming he was not truly married to her. She would cry that she had the certificate of marriage to prove it; when Fesch was consulted, he agreed with her and said that the marriage was legal and validly solemnized. He advised Josephine to keep the certificate close.

AS EMPEROR, NAPOLEON had become more brutal and aggressive than ever. He was curt with his generals and courtiers and often attacked his servants. He once seized Berthier and banged his head against a stone wall; he kicked a minister in the genitals for presenting unappealing statistics. In the morning, during the ritual of dressing, he would sometimes throw nail scissors, brushes, or boxes at the servants if he felt they prodded him too hard or dressed him in something he did not like. He slapped staff, pinched court ladies and pulled their hair while he insulted them, and loved to offend anyone he could in public. Despite his incredible power, he derived a thrill from making his inferiors tremble with fear. As tyrannical as a medieval king, he screamed and shouted, complained and demanded, and everyone had to obey. Only Josephine had the ability to calm him with her soft hands and gentle words.

Many mornings, Napoleon woke up in pain, suffering from stomach spasms or a headache. As his servants tried to rub him down with eau de cologne and dress him, he tore off his clothes if they annoyed him, and slapped his valet for trying to put his coat on him. All the while, he was looking at police reports and newspapers, bills and letters. When he was dressed, he doused himself with more eau de cologne—he went through sixty bottles a month—was given his handkerchief, snuffbox, and tortoiseshell case of finely cut licorice. At nine, he would conduct private audiences with his officials, stopping at eleven to take breakfast. Then he would go to his study, pacing up and down as he dictated letters and orders to his secretary, Claude de Méneval, who had to create a new, faster form of shorthand to keep up. He would finish by dictating a few articles for the newspapers and then stomp off to find Josephine. After lunch with her, he returned to giving audiences, meeting the Council of State or dictating further orders to his officials and ministers about the business of governing his empire. After dinner, he might spend a short while in the Yellow Salon with Josephine and his generals and their wives, playing chess or billiards before retiring to his desk once more and working into the night.

When he undressed, he might throw his clothes on the floor and hit the valet to purge his frustrations from the day. Unsurprisingly, he was a poor sleeper and sometimes rose from his bed, plunged into a hot bath, and called Méneval to take down yet more orders and commands, continuing for hours until he felt tired. When he himself wrote, he scribbled so fast and shook his pen so impatiently that the paper was covered in big blots of ink.

Napoleon had always bolted his food, but as emperor, he could scarcely bear to waste a moment eating. If he demanded a meal, he expected it—and Josephine—to be in front of him immediately. Fond of roast chicken and potatoes fried with onion, he would eat as fast as he could, often not bothering with a knife and fork. He preferred Josephine not to eat in his presence—which was fortunate, because she barely would have had the chance to do so. He wanted everything around him to be hot with energy, so he had a fire lit at all times; his courtiers and attendants often fainted from the heat. His skin was almost yellow, his digestion was terrible, and he suffered from awful coughing fits that brought up blood. Sometimes he was so ill after eating that his courtiers found him lying with his head in Josephine’s lap, groaning. His mind spun even when he was trying to sleep; he found that the only way to rest was by reciting army lists over and over.

Napoleon was impatient, brimming with nervous energy, and only ceaseless activity could slake his restless mind. Even when he maintained a cool mien in public, he was constantly fidgeting under his robes, taking snuff or pushing mint pastilles into his mouth. His armchair had to be changed every three months because it was the piece of furniture that most suffered from his penknife. Beneath the imperial surface, he was still the little boy who had pulled apart chairs in school.[11] Josephine provided the calm and stillness that he could not derive from himself. While sitting for his portrait to commemorate the Battle of Arcola, he had fidgeted so much that Josephine had come to the studio and placed him on her lap in order to keep him still. Only she was allowed to pour his coffee after dinner and add sugar to it with a special gilt spoon. She was his refuge, and he relied on her to be there when he needed her. Josephine understood this. As she later wrote to Caroline, “The pride of women consists in submission and we should have no other power than such as a mild and gentle character imparts to us.”[12]

Napoleon was a genius at creating a cult of empire, and for this, the visual arts were vital. He preferred artists and craftsmen who had been beloved by the Bourbons, such as Isabey and the Jacob brothers. Jacques-Louis David, the man who had signed Alexandre’s death warrant and would have signed Josephine’s, too—and who had refused to draw Louis XVI, as he would not allow his pencil to reproduce the features of a tyrant—became Bonaparte’s great ally, eulogizing him again and again in paint. He portrayed him crossing the St. Bernard Pass, turning his hero into Hannibal on a rearing horse, rather than a dreary mule, as had been the case. His Napoleon in His Study showed the first consul hard at work in the early hours of the morning. And, of course, he painted the celebrated coronation portrait. But Napoleon never quite completely trusted David and favored the work of his pupils, chiefly François Gérard, Antoine Gros, and Jean-Auguste Ingres. Their paintings were unashamedly excessive and flattering, with Gros’s Napoleon at the Battle of Eylau showing him tending to the dying. Ingres’s almost ridiculous Napoleon I on His Imperial Throne (1806) portrayed the plump little emperor as a god—part Jupiter, part Augustus, and part Charlemagne.

Napoleon was particularly fond of Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, who created romantic, sensual portraits of his wife. The empire was a time for painters to become famous, but only if they agreed to lavish praise on the imperial couple. Gold and money poured into their workshops as they did the bidding of the emperor.

JOSEPHINE TOOK CARE of the matters of power that Napoleon could not bear. She heard petitions, patronized artists and musicians, planned dinners, fetes, and celebrations, and presided over receptions and tributes. Napoleon dreaded the evening dinners and balls. “I am not made for pleasure,” he rued.[13]

Her days rarely varied. In the morning, she and Napoleon awoke together. His valet, Constant, would go to her apartments between seven and eight A.M. and sometimes find the pair still asleep. “When the Emperor asked me for tea or for an infusion of orange flowers and started to get up, the Empress would say to him smilingly, ‘Must you get up already? Stay a little longer.’ His Majesty would answer, ‘You mean you are not asleep?’ and he would roll her up in her blanket, giving her little taps on her cheek and on her shoulders, laughing and kissing her.”[14] Then her four maids would come in and busy themselves with the task of making her look like an empress.

While Napoleon dictated his plans for conquest, Josephine was bathed, and then her face was plastered with the heavy makeup that Napoleon liked. He preferred an image that was more embellished than that of Versailles and, to the British, looked like the maquillage of courtesans. Her assistants smeared rouge in great tear shapes over her fine cheeks. She then put on her lace dressing gown as her hair was arranged by the hairdresser. As he created curls and tamed recalcitrant strands, Josephine’s ladies brought in piles of gowns, shawls, and hats for her to pick her attire for the morning—muslin and cambric in the summer, despite Napoleon’s complaints against that fabric—and velvet and wool for the winter. Marie Antoinette had chosen her clothing similarly, except she had used a book of swatches and samples to keep track of her unwieldy wardrobe. Josephine changed every item of her dress three times a day and never wore the same pair of stockings twice. The whole operation of choosing outfits, picking them up from the baskets, and trying them against her was a lengthy one. Eight dressers attended Josephine, while the mistress of the robes and the lady of honor regarded from afar.

THE EMPRESS WAS given an annual allowance of 600,000 francs to maintain her household and person, with a further 120,000 for charity. It was not enough. In modern terms, her personal expenditure would come close to two million dollars a year. Indeed, it seems surprising that she did not spend more. Her wardrobe was spectacularly costly, her jewels ludicrous, and her apartments were filled with expensive knickknacks: boxes, statues, ornamental books, vases, and glass. In addition, she saw creating an art collection for the nation as one of her most important tasks and spent huge sums on paintings. Even though she barely had the chance to visit Malmaison, she was always packing it with more seeds and plants and attempting to buy animals for her menagerie.

After she had dressed, merchants and shopkeepers would crowd into her apartments, along with artists, musicians, and entertainers. She snapped up diamonds, shawls, silks, and trinkets, never asking the price. She commissioned portraits and purchased thousands of francs’ worth of gifts. In every fashionable shop in Paris, someone was making something for the empress. The smallest gathering was an opportunity to order a new gown; one such gown was adorned with lace said to be worth 100,000 francs (one sixth of her yearly allowance). She would sometimes pay 12,000 francs for a shawl and then use it as a cushion or a blanket for her dog. She would wear a superbly expensive dress for a day and then give it to her ladies or maids, who would promptly sell it. Mademoiselle Avrillion recalled that at Mainz, she and the other ladies had offered Josephine’s old gowns as payment for the exquisite goods of the local tradesmen, who swiftly sold them to the local dignitaries. “I remember a ball there at which the Empress might have seen all the ladies of a quadrille party dressed in her cast-off clothes—I even saw German Princesses wearing them.”[15] Everyone around Josephine was making a profit from her.

Napoleon fumed about her “mad extravagance,” but she would not listen. “Every day I discover new instances of it, and it distresses me. When I speak to her—on the subject I am vexed; I get angry—she weeps. I forgive her, I pay her bills—she makes fair promises; but the same thing occurs over and over again.”[16] Under his passion for grandeur, he was an old penny-pincher at heart and made frequent decrees to reduce spending, such as instructing that all the sheets in the courtiers’ apartments should be changed only monthly. Josephine never economized and was too kindhearted—or too indolent—to haggle with merchants pressing goods on her.

As well as her gifts, her household, and her charities, she also supported her family. She sent money to her mother on Martinique and pressed her to come to court, where she would have high status as the mother of the empress. But Rose-Claire remained alone with her servants at La Pagerie. Josephine’s other relatives were not so principled. Her uncle Tascher came over, and she paid his debts and supported him and five of his children in the house on the rue de la Victoire, finding them positions at various embassies. Her maternal cousins also accepted her invitation to come to France, at her cost, and she gave generous gifts to her goddaughter, Josephine Tallien. Josephine had long since sent away Euphémie Lefèvre, her maid and probable half sister, but supported her with a pension, and Euphémie eventually was able to buy a rather large property near Malmaison. Josephine also gave money to the family of her former husband, including his aunt and her daughter, his wet nurse, his illegitimate daughter, and most generously of all, his former mistress Laure de Longpré, who once cruelly conspired with Alexandre against her. No doubt there was a superior pleasure in helping Laure. As Josephine wrote in the margin of one letter, “this lady is very infirm.”

The word got around that those in need only had to ask Josephine for help. She gave money to poverty-stricken royalists and émigré aristocrats, as well as anyone who ever served her. Her official charities were the expected ones: those that supported mothers, orphans, the sick, and the old. In 1805 her annual donations had reached 72,000 francs; by 1809, they had soared to 180,000. These sums did not include the casual amounts given to supplicants who conveyed messages to her or charities she encountered while traveling.

In 1805, in an effort to curb her spending, Napoleon declared that all merchants should be sent first to Josephine’s comptroller, but she found ways of seeing them in secret. When the emperor found an elderly milliner waiting in the blue salon, he shouted for the guards, who dragged the woman away to be imprisoned. He quickly realized his error and sent a message to release her, but the poor woman’s awful experience did not dissuade others. The merchants continued to flock to the biggest purse in town.

One of Josephine’s greatest expenses was jewelry. Though Marie Antoinette had been brought low by a diamond necklace, it seemed that Josephine could appear covered in diamonds and no one would complain. One of her ladies-in-waiting claimed that her jewelry collection could have “figured in a tale of Arabian nights.”[17] Marie Antoinette’s old jewel box was actually too small for the empress’s sparklers. A favorite necklace of twenty-seven huge diamonds was particularly coveted by Tsar Alexander, who bought it after Josephine’s death. When celebrating the marriage of her niece to the Crown Prince of Baden, Josephine wore pearls in her hair valued at a million francs. She had the crown jewels of France, as well as Napoleon’s excessive gifts of diadems, necklaces, bracelets, and every possible precious stone he could order back from his expeditions, including Oriental rubies, stones from Brazil, and ten necklaces of real pearls. The Jacob brothers made her an incredible jewel cabinet. Designed by Charles Percier, it stood at an incredible height, nearly ten feet high. Now in the Louvre, the whole thing is a monument to excess: The body was made of yew, the thirty interior drawers of solid mahogany, and it was decorated with mother-of-pearl designs—and bronzes that hid secret locks (useful to ward off Napoleon’s investigations). The central design was of the birth of the Goddess of the Earth, to whom the other goddesses and cupids hurried to give presents. Delivered in 1809, the cabinet was the most expensive item the brothers ever made, and still it was not big enough for her collection. In 1811 an inventory was made of Josephine’s jewels, which assessed them at over five million francs. The “good easy-going woman,” the Martinique plantation daughter, had become the imperial empress, bowed under the weight of precious stones.[18]

After the shopkeepers had departed, Josephine gave audiences and applied herself to her correspondence. She also went through petitions and received charitable requests. She wrote incessant letters requesting help for all types of supplicants. “People get them from me by pestering me,” she explained to the minister of war when he protested at the sheer number of notes of recommendation. At a quarter to ten, she entered her Yellow Salon in order to take the morning meal with her ladies. Hers would be a more leisurely affair than her husband’s, with soup, entrées, and roasts arranged across the table, followed by sweets. There was no formal dining room in the palace (it was generally seen as a British custom), so a white cloth would be laid out on whatever table was indicated.

In the afternoon she received visitors, many of them émigrés demanding favors, and then perhaps would take a short walk. Later, as she did not read and had little interest in needlework, she often strummed her harp, apparently always the same tune. The waiting to see whether Napoleon might appear was interminably dull, and Josephine sometimes found it difficult to bear. She once railed that she was little more than a “bejewelled slave.”

By the late afternoon, she was back in her apartments, dressing for the evening ahead, usually in one of her gold-embroidered gowns. Then she would wait to be called to dinner, which was supposed to be at six but might be delayed for hours while Napoleon worked. Most evenings they dined together for the quick twenty minutes it took him to wolf down his food. Official banquets and social celebrations were so replete with complicated dishes that they might take up most of the day. The custom of serving all the dishes together still prevailed, rather than the à la russe fashion of eating courses in sequence. The tables of the Tuileries groaned under silver candelabra, foot-high tureens of soup, and dishes of meat, fish, and fowl served on Sèvres porcelain decorated with pictures of Napoleon’s victories.

After dinner, the empress would retire to her salon and spend the evening with her courtiers, talking or playing cards or billiards. She was not particularly fond of chess, but she sportingly played whist and lotto with her visitors, ministers, ambassadors, and ladies. Napoleon forbade playing for stakes, but when he was away, she and her circle bet money, sometimes large amounts. Josephine also loved billiards, so much that it was the only game in which the emperor humored her and allowed her to beat him.

At ten, Napoleon might call her to read to him or join him in conversation; he was particularly partial to telling ghost stories. Her salon was connected to his room via a hidden staircase, and he would come to the door and tap on it as a signal that he needed her. Her ladies then had to wait for her in the salon until she returned. Invariably, by the time she arrived, they had fallen asleep, leaning against the tables for support since they were not supposed to sit down. If she was to be alone for the night, she went to bed at around midnight—allowed, for a few hours, to be free of rouge, with her hair undressed and her shoulders not weighed down by a heavy golden gown.

On days when Napoleon did not require her, Josephine saw her merchants and talked to her ladies. As one of her friends remarked, she could “idle away her days doing nothing and yet never be bored with it.”[19] They didn’t guess how frustrated she grew.

Her “mania for having her portrait painted” meant that she was often sitting for artists or planning new compositions. She would give pictures of herself to anybody and everybody—friends, relations, courtiers, tradesmen. In her hundreds of commissioned portraits, she was ever young, beautiful, elegant, and graceful, her mouth closed to shield her bad teeth. Those who wished to please her adorned their houses with her delicate face. Such was the passion for her among the public that her portraits were transferred onto china, fans, and cards, so even the poorest laborer could display the empress over his fire.

Her apartments consisted of an antechamber, a first salon, a second salon, and her own salon. In her private rooms, she had a bedroom, a dressing room, a boudoir, and a bathroom. In every one of the emperor’s palaces, the layout was the same, and the rooms were decorated in a similarly imperial manner, with stolid Jacob furniture, tapestries, gilding, and drapes. As an empress, Josephine lived her whole day in public. Ladies and servants bustled around her rooms, and everyone stared when she ventured out.

Josephine was naturally informal and enjoyed conversation and befriending people when she traveled. This, Napoleon told her sharply, would have to stop. She should always be surrounded by “splendor,” escorted by infantry and cavalry, and met by the tolling of bells rung by the town mayor or prefect. When she returned to Paris, she would be greeted by cannons, and the courtiers would line up to pay homage. To him, it was time she started behaving like an empress. She missed Malmaison terribly, where the plants grew unseen by her and her orangutan wandered the grounds alone. Even when Napoleon was away, he wished her to keep up the imperial appearance, and that meant remaining in one of his grand palaces full of mahogany eagles and obeisant courtiers rather than walking the gardens of her beloved Malmaison.

When Napoleon did agree to her visiting Malmaison, he was envious of how much she loved it. Sometimes, seized by rage, he shot her swans, uprooted her plants, and killed her pets. When she begged him not to shoot the animals during the breeding season, he was scathing. “It seems that everything is prolific at Malmaison, except Madame.”

Most of the time, Josephine could not go anywhere at all. Her life was minutely constrained, every detail reported back to Napoleon. She sat, ornate and alluring, until he had finished his work in the evening and might come to dally away ten minutes with her. Yet he relied on her emotionally and saw her as his essential helpmate. They divided the labor of imperial success. He stood for aggression, strategy, military triumph, and tyranny, while she assumed all the roles he reviled: patron of art and beauty, manners and sympathy. Her kind heart and gentle words smoothed over his anger and fooled people into thinking that Napoleon had a more humane side. “Nature,” he told his wife, “has given me a strong and resolute character; she has made you of lace and gauze.”[20] Around Napoleon, the air fizzed and crackled; he was electric, intense, and terrifying. Josephine created a bewitching spell of ease and pleasure.

Josephine showed few signs of the independent will she once had. Her energy was invested in making herself Napoleon’s elegant, perfect wife, ideally submissive, ready to respond to his every need. “Josephine was invariably, unfailingly sweet with the Emperor,” recalled Mademoiselle Avrillion, “adapting herself to his every mood, every whim with a complaisance such as I have never seen in anyone else in the world. By studying the slightest change in his expression or tone she offered him the only things he now required of her.”[21] She might be the married and consecrated empress, but Napoleon, as she knew, did as he liked, and he would divorce her if he felt it necessary—especially for the chance of having a son. Few believed that she was still capable of having a child. She was forty-one and, as the doctors had told Napoleon, her menses had ceased.

And yet he was fonder of her than he had been since Egypt. She was still the only person allowed to address him as tu. He was eminently satisfied with his act of crowning her, thus stealing authority from both the Republic and the pope, and she was his evidence that he had practically usurped the role of God in anointing a sovereign consort. Laure Junot recalled how she saw the empress enter a room at Saint-Cloud, wearing clinging white muslin secured by medallions at the shoulder. Even though Napoleon professed to detest muslin, he went to her, kissed her on the shoulder and the forehead, and took her to a mirror so he could inspect her from all sides. “Now, Josephine, I think I must be jealous, you must have some conquest in mind. Why are you so beautiful today?” She replied, “I know that you love to see me in white and so I put on a white gown, that’s all.” “Very well, then, if it was to please me, then you have indeed succeeded.”[22] He promptly kissed her again.

Napoleon remained obsessed by her jewels and dress. He regularly interfered in what she wore, pulling her low-cut gowns from her wardrobe and tearing her shawl, even throwing clothing into the fire if he thought it ugly. He would erupt into her room and demand that she change her gown or jewelry for no particular reason, forcing her to try on outfit after outfit until he was content. “I care only for the people who are useful to me—and only so long as they are useful,” he said on St. Helena.[23] He loved Josephine—but she was also beneficial to him.

THE GREAT EMPEROR was still jealous of Hippolyte Charles and would never hear his name mentioned. On one occasion, he was walking with General Duroc, and his face paled as he gripped the general’s arm. Duroc thought he was about to faint and was going to hurry for help, but the emperor silenced him furiously. Napoleon had seen Hippolyte Charles in a passing carriage—the first time he had laid eyes on the dandy since Italy.

Though Napoleon guarded and worshipped his wife, he demanded that a steady stream of beautiful young women be available in the chamber next to his. He refused to allow his wife or her spies inside. Constant would answer the door, saying firmly, “I have orders to let no one in, not even Her Majesty the Empress.” Actresses, courtiers, ladies-in-waiting, dancers, and ladies of fashion: Few refused Napoleon’s call, even though his lovemaking was brusque and he lost interest almost as soon as he had conquered a woman. The women were instructed not to wear perfume and often had to wait for him having already undressed, so that matters could be speedily conducted. They hoped for jewels, influence, and money; they were curious about the great man himself; and of course they wished to prove themselves more beautiful than Josephine.

Though Josephine resolved not to be jealous, she struggled, for not only did Napoleon conduct his affairs with flamboyant indiscretion, he also liked to acquaint her with every detail. As he fiddled with her makeup pots or vandalized her shawls, he would talk about his latest infatuation, praising the other woman’s beauty and asking Josephine what she knew about her. Within a few days of sleeping with a new mistress, he would be telling his wife of the conquest with, as Madame de Rémusat said, “the most indecent openness.” Then he would describe “the physical imperfections and anatomical peculiarities,” as well as his thoughts on the “performance” of the ladies—information he shared with his male courtiers as well. Most of the women were half Josephine’s age, and nothing was more painful to her than hearing of lissome bodies that had not yet aged, luxuriant hair when hers was thinning and growing gray, and faces that were always bright, even in the morning. He seemed to have no particular preference for brunettes or blondes. Any pretty girl would do.

Josephine also had to watch the progress of her husband’s love affairs, as he would often attend her salon in the evening and play cards or talk with his latest lady while his wife tried not to stare from the other side of the room. She pretended calm, but she could hardly bear his behavior and spent thousands on hiring others to watch and inform on his activities, much to the anger of her husband, who railed at how “she humiliates both herself and me by surrounding me with spies.”[24] The empress demanded that her ladies-in-waiting write anonymous letters to Napoleon, reproaching him for his behavior (wisely, the ladies secretly burned the letters after they had written them), and when she knew he was with one of his mistresses, she would torment herself, weeping that she would be cast into oblivion and disgrace, forced out, and divorced.

As he began to tire of his conquest and turn his eye to another willing actress or lady-in-waiting, he would ask Josephine to help him let the woman down gently and tell her she was no longer needed: the coward’s way out. The price of Josephine’s continued presence as empress and consort was her willingness to forgive, even enable, Napoleon’s affairs. His desire for women had become so well known that people would thrust pretty girls in his way to gain influence, just as they had done with the old despotic kings. Courtiers sent their wives to flirt with him in the hope of finding out his plans. Napoleon had started offering thousands of francs as little presents to those he took for the night; men were throwing their wives, lovers, and even daughters at him for money and favors. Some women even tried to seduce members of his entourage as a way of getting to him. But what he really wanted were the women who did not wish for him, those whom he could slap, compel, or browbeat into being his mistresses.

Napoleon claimed that his affairs meant nothing, though some women did gain power from their new status. When a woman received particular favor, she naturally became a focus for courtiers and ministers who needed assistance. One Madame de X was a royalist spy, eager to undermine the Jacobins, and ready to “abuse the indulgence” of the emperor by taking action to further the exiled king’s cause. As she knew, the way to please the ever suspicious Napoleon was to share gossip about plots against him, so she invented tales about certain courtiers and “many persons were ruined during her spell of favor.”[25] Josephine was fearful of Madame de X and thought she had used her influence to try and send Eugène on an impossible mission. Luckily for her, Napoleon grew weary of Madame’s telltale tongue before she could do any lasting damage, and he asked Josephine to put an end to the affair. The empress did so, generously informing Madame de X that she wouldn’t hold any grudges.

Napoleon was too hardened to offer love to a susceptible woman and too ambitious and sexist to give a determined one a chance at power. The actresses who could use the liaison to win publicity came off the best of all. For, as Napoleon said, “Women shall have no influence at my Court; they may dislike me but I shall have peace and quietness.”[26] He thought ladies “ornamental at fetes and that was about all.”[27] He never forgot his position as an excluded young man in the post-revolutionary years, and he was not about to let any woman gain power over him now. “Women belong to the highest bidder,” he said contemptuously. “Power is what they desire … I take them and then forget them.”[28] He often sounded more like an ancien régime roué than a great emperor.

The Bonapartes were delighted by Napoleon’s constant affairs; they were always seeking ways to lure him away from “la vieille.” At the end of 1805, Caroline Murat introduced her brother to Eléonore Denuelle, a tall, dark-eyed eighteen-year-old who was a pupil of Madame Campan’s (her fomer students were very popular with the emperor). Eléonore’s husband of only a few months was in prison, which was very convenient for the emperor. When he took a fancy to her, the Murats speedily ensured her divorce and set her up as his lover. Caroline installed Eléonore in her house just outside Paris so that Napoleon could visit whenever he pleased. Fashionable gossips felt sorry for Eléonore, the virtual prisoner of the Murats, and decided her the victim of “boudoir conscription.” She herself so dreaded the visits of the pale, dull emperor, who had nothing of interest to say, that she set the clock in her bedroom half an hour forward whenever she heard he was on his way.

Caroline installed Eléonore to distract Napoleon from Josephine, and in the hope that the girl might get pregnant. Josephine had been crowned now, and Napoleon answered—when the family complained—that he would marry a new wife only after Josephine died. Unfortunately for them, she was healthy and lithe and nowhere near death. The only way they could drag Napoleon from her side was by proving that he could sire a child with another woman.

The family’s hatred of Josephine was such that they were blind to their own advantage. If Napoleon divorced his wife and married another woman, any potential child would be his heir, and his brothers and their children would be displaced from the succession. To conserve their interests, they should have bitten their tongues and pretended esteem for Josephine. Simply put, they deluded themselves that Napoleon could not father a child, so they continued in their campaign against his wife, thereby pursuing everybody’s interests but their own.

The emperor had a wandering eye. Bonaparte chased after his wife’s pretty blond niece, seventeen-year-old Stéphanie de Beauharnais, another alumna of Madame Campan. That, for Josephine, was going too far; when she realized his interest, she immediately began hunting for a husband for Stéphanie. Her ideal suitor was one living far from France.

The poor state of Hortense’s marriage did not help her mother’s cause. The couple was hopelessly out of sorts. Louis was growing sicker and more irritable every day. Even when they were not overtly at odds, they spent time apart. At Saint-Leu, their country estate, Hortense lived, as a visitor found, “lonely, ill and always afraid of letting some word at which he might be offended escape her.”[29] She loved music and drawing and often entertained her old school friends at her salon, but nothing could truly comfort her. She clung to the fact that she had been hard done by but had never been never cruel herself. As she put it, “I have wept greatly, but I have never caused others to weep.”[30]

Louis hated Josephine and told his wife that if she ever had any close contact with her mother, he would separate her from their son and shut her up in an out-of-the-way place; he warned that she must not complain to Napoleon. He spied on her and constantly upbraided her. “You are a woman, consequently a being all made up of evil and deceit,” he said. “You are the daughter of an unprincipled mother; you belong to a family that I loathe; are these not reasons enough to suspect you?”[31]

Worst of all, when Louis was suffering from a painful skin disease, he forced her to share his bed, even though the doctors told him not to. He even talked of lying in bed wearing the horribly dirty tunic of a similarly infected man (as he believed it could cure him) and said Hortense had to join him. Napoleon asked his brother to treat his wife more kindly, and Louis refused, threatening to leave France altogether. Hortense and her husband were ill matched, desperately unhappy, and far beyond the simplistic suggestions of patience and mutual understanding that Josephine and Napoleon advised. Josephine sent Hortense a letter almost deluded in its naïveté: “Why show this repugnance to Louis? Instead of making matters worse with complaining, why not try patience and kindness?” True, she had been able to surmount Napoleon’s rages with gentleness, but that was because he loved her. Louis had never loved Hortense—and he had no desire to treat her fairly. “You wish that he resembled his brother,” Josephine sighed. She blamed the failure of the marriage (which she had arranged) on Louis’s illnesses: “If poor Louis’s digestion were better, he would be much more amiable.”[32]

“I hear no more of Hortense than if she were on the Congo,” complained Napoleon. Her silence was because she was unhappy and nervous.[33] Underneath all the anger was Louis’s resentment that he had been forced by his brother to marry the daughter of the witch Josephine. Paranoid and humiliated by the rumors that his wife had been his brother’s mistress, he took his rage out on her. Napoleon had expected that the marriage would stop that particular gossip, but the British press and the anti-Napoleonic parties, as well as some courtiers, kept it going. After all, he seduced without compunction, and Josephine had been an infamous mistress—why would Hortense be any different? Hortense grew so distressed by the constant accusations that she came to wonder if her mother believed them. “How could you ever imagine that I share certain absurd, or perhaps, interested opinions?” Josephine wrote. “Surely you cannot believe that I look upon you as my rival?”[34] If they had ever been rivals, it was Josephine who’d won.

CHAPTER 17

“I Have Fulfilled My Destiny”

In April 1805, Josephine was embarking on a plan to receive another crown. Earlier that year, a Milanese delegation had come to the Tuileries to ask Napoleon to declare himself king of Milan (he of course had conquered it for France long ago). He asked his brother Joseph to accept in his stead, but Joseph refused, since he presumed that it would require him to give up his claim on the French throne. The emperor then suggested little Napoleon Charles, but his father, Louis, turned down the honor, declaring that he did not want to see his son set above him. Napoleon had to accept the crown, and eventually, he and Josephine set off for Milan. She would now be “Her Majesty Queen of Italy.” After a week of fetes and ceremonies in Lyon, a bumpy ride over the Mount Cenis Pass, and a stop to see the pope in Turin, they arrived in Milan.

Josephine walked in the coronation procession, but she was not crowned by her husband, as she had been the previous year. She merely watched, accompanied by her sister-in-law Elisa, as Napoleon ambled along holding the crown and then placed it on his own head. “God gives it to me,” he roared, “woe to him who touches it.” He had demanded celebrations reminiscent of imperial Rome, so there was a day of chariot races and gladiator-style games. Then the Italians put their own twist on the celebrations: A woman went up in a balloon and threw flowers down over the new king and queen. Nobles spent a whole year’s worth of income on the celebration.

Napoleon’s brothers and sisters watched the coronation in silent fury, fuming at how their most hated rival was now a queen. Napoleon then informed them that Eugène would be viceroy of Italy and officially adopted by Napoleon as a son of France. At this news, Caroline Murat fell ill, and her husband broke his sword across his knee. Josephine, it seemed, was impossible to unseat.

The empress, however, wept at the thought that her son would always be so far from her, despite the honor of the position. Napoleon scolded her. “If the absence of your children causes you so much pain, guess what I must always feel. The affection which you display for them makes me feel bitterly the unhappiness of having none myself.” He immediately sent her to Lake Como to take the waters, hoping against hope that she might miraculously become pregnant.

Napoleon returned to France to inspect his army for the endlessly proposed invasion of Britain. He wrote cheerfully to Josephine, who was on her best behavior, wisely restraining herself from weighing in on his affairs. She wrote to her son, “No more jealous scenes now, my dear Eugène, I can truthfully say, and so we are both much happier.”[1]

JOSEPHINE TRAVELED ON to Plombières, and Napoleon wrote to her fondly and teasingly: “I have a fine army here and a fine fleet, everything I need to pass the time agreeably,” he declared; “only my sweet Josephine is missing, but I should not say that, in matters of love, women are best left in suspense, uncertain of their power.”[2]

NAPOLEON HEARD FROM Talleyrand that Austria was preparing to join Britain and Russia against France. The emperor’s spies told him that Prussia was also considering allying with Britain. He had to embark on immediate action. He decided to march into Austria, conquer them quickly, and return to invade Britain. He was spoiling for a battle after the womanish occupation of planning ceremonies and donning robes. A magnificent win over the Austrians was just what he needed to gain favor and secure his position. After all, the route to his coronation had hardly been lined with cheering crowds. In September, he demanded eighty thousand more conscripts.

He wished to depart alone for campaign, but Josephine returned to Paris and pleaded to be allowed to come. At four in the morning, the imperial pair set off for Strasbourg in the emperor’s sleeping coach. They would travel for fifty-eight hours straight, stopping only to change horses. Napoleon was back on campaign, but he never forgot the importance of grandeur as well as strategy. Even though he would remain only briefly, the imperial apartments at the former Episcopal Palace in Strasbourg had been decorated to celebrate the emperor, and the tireless Fontaine had sent furniture and silverware so that Napoleon could dine in proper style.

After four days of celebration, he took a long bath and set off again on October 1, leaving Josephine behind. She was to be his representative in Strasbourg, giving dinners and receptions, receiving the diplomats, and touring the hospitals as the wounded soldiers arrived from the front. She even presided over an initiation ceremony for a Strasbourg Masonic lodge. “Rest easy,” he wrote. “I promise you the shortest and most brilliant of campaigns.”[3]

But it was not the campaigns she was worried about. Bored and lonely, convinced Napoleon would take mistresses as he traveled, she consoled herself in her usual way, buying art, plants, animals, dresses, and toys. She could not restrain herself from fretting. “You should have more fortitude and confidence,” he sighed. “You must be cheerful, amuse yourself.”[4]

Napoleon was determined to reach the Austrians before the Russians arrived to ally with them. He sped off in his carriage, with fifty-two more trundling behind. He was accompanied by General Berthier and his most important supplies: a telescope, brandy, a compass, pens, ink, and sealing wax. Dispatches were scribbled and flung from the window at an officer galloping beside the carriage. He dashed off a letter to Josephine every day. The whole operation proceeded at such speed that meals were kept ready to serve at any minute. Whenever Napoleon decreed it was time to eat, he hopped down from his carriage, silver dishes were whipped out, and he wolfed down his meal while his Imperial Guards stood by. The ordinary soldiers bought (or stole) food from the people they passed, storing it up so they looked, according to one soldier, like “walking larders, hung about with long sides of bacon.”[5]

Winter was falling, and the sleet and mud were so thick that Napoleon had to abandon his carriage and travel on horseback. Despite his pampered new role, he was the old Bonaparte—oblivious to bodily needs, riding for ten hours without stopping, plowing through driving rain without complaint. “I have a slight cold,” he wrote to Josephine with some understatement.

Napoleon and his army took the Austrians by surprise. They had believed he was still on the French coast, fussing over his invasion of Britain. Their soldiers were surrounded, and General Mack and his fifty thousand men surrendered at Ulm on October 20. With fifteen hundred men dead, the French saw their losses as light. Napoleon dashed off a delighted letter to Josephine. “I have fulfilled my destiny. I have destroyed the Austrian army,” he gloated. “This will be the shortest, the most successful and the most brilliant of the campaigns I have fought.” He signed off, “Adieu my Josephine, a thousand sweet kisses everywhere.”[6]

Meanwhile, the plans to attack Britain by sea were limping on. Ever since the argument with Lord Whitworth, Napoleon had cherished plans to invade, but the fleet was never quite ready, and he was never sure of the naval superiority he needed. One problem was that it was impossible to get the flotilla to sea on a single tide—it would take three tides, which would leave the ships vulnerable to attack as they waited. In August, he was ranting against Admiral Villeneuve, who was at port in Cádiz, taking cover from the harrying of the British with his combined French and Spanish fleet. When Villeneuve and his captains heard that Nelson was on his way, they agreed to stay put, but Napoleon, infuriated by the idea of his sailors trying to shelter in a port, ordered them to sail out and head to Naples. Villeneuve refused but heard Napoleon was about to dismiss him, so he had to obey. He took the fleet out of Cádiz and right into the arms of Nelson and his ships. The Battle of Trafalgar, on October 21, was a victory for the British, as they took twenty-two enemy ships and lost none. But there was a price—Admiral Nelson died from a shot in the shoulder, leaving his mistress, Emma, Lady Hamilton, to be looked after by the nation as he took his last breaths (the government, unsurprisingly, refused to fund Emma, and she died in penury in Calais in 1815).

The death of Napoleon’s great rival was small consolation for the French. For the British, Trafalgar and its near-decimation of the Franco-Spanish enemy fleet was the most magnificent victory they had ever enjoyed. The entire population bought Trafalgar brooches and Nelson mourning jewelry; the dignitaries wept at his funeral at St. Paul’s. Villeneuve was taken prisoner by the English and kept at a pub in Hampshire, with the rest of the men living at nearby houses. While there, he was allowed a day release to attend Nelson’s funeral. When he was set free, he tried and failed to return to fight. He was soon found dead of stab wounds—a verdict of suicide was recorded, but the British press declared Napoleon had ordered it (unlikely, since Villeneuve was a disgraced man without power, and Napoleon tended to kill only those who were a threat).

Napoleon’s hopes of invading Britain were finally over. He tried to brush the defeat under the carpet, telling the French press to make only a brief reference to Trafalgar in their newspapers; instead, he trumpeted the cataclysmic surrender of the Austrian forces at Ulm on October 19. Neither did he write about Trafalgar to Josephine; he boasted about his successes in Austria.

On October 22, Napoleon asked Josephine to travel to him in Munich, stopping in Baden and Stuttgart on the way. He had planned her first lone imperial journey in typically exhaustive detail. Accompanied by her ladies-in-waiting, she rode in her grand carriage, followed by those carrying her chamberlains, her luggage and the imperial jewel case. She would ride his victory march through to Vienna, staying at the courts of the electors, princes, and dukes who were his vassals. Every time she arrived in a town, she should be greeted by fanfare, cannons, and the ringing of church bells. “Be civil to all of them,” he wrote, “but accept their homage as your due.”

Josephine charmed the conquered courts with gifts and seemingly heartfelt thanks for displays of singing or fireworks, triumphal arches, and odes in her honor. Napoleon was gratified by her success at smoothing over his hard-won victories. “Have the grand fetes at Baden, Stuttgart and Munich made you forget the poor soldiers who live covered with mud, rain and blood?” he teased.[7]

Napoleon and his army battled on through Austria, but the men were exhausted and supplies were low. He knew that the allies would see him as easy pickings, far from Strasbourg and leading a demoralized, hungry army. He decided to pretend that he was about to withdraw his armies, hoping that surprise would allow him another victory. On December 1, the eve of the first anniversary of the day he was declared emperor, he waited in silence with his men at the village of Austerlitz, crouched in the freezing cold. The weather was on his side. Mist descended, and the French troops were hidden from enemy eyes. The Austro-Russian troops decided that the French were retreating, and bedded down comfortably, sure there was no need to prepare for war.

As the sun broke through at eight in the morning, the order was given and the French charged at the enemy. Within three hours, the enemy army was in tatters. The Austrian Imperial Guard was smashed, and by nightfall the Russians were retreating across an iced-over lake. Napoleon ordered his cannons to fire on the ice and declared that twenty thousand men were killed. “This is the happiest day of my life,” he told Méneval. He wrote to Josephine that it was “the grandest of all those I have fought … more than 30,000 dead, a horrible sight.” He was also tired, complaining that “my eyes have been rather bad.”[8] Fourteen-year-old archduchess Marie Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor, burst into floods of weeping when she heard the news and scribbled down that the French emperor was the “Beast of the Apocalypse” and she hoped he would die that year.

The Russians retreated and Napoleon pushed on to Vienna, taking up residence at the palace at Schönbrunn, gratified to occupy yet another royal residence. The occupation of Vienna was a terrible signal to Europe: The great Austrian empire had been humbled.

On December 5, Josephine reached Munich and heard of her husband’s great victories. She was caught up in a round of celebrations that left her no time for writing letters. “Mighty Empress! Not a single letter from you,” he complained. “Deign from the height of your splendour to concern yourself a little with your slave.”[9] Though he was still reliant on her, the talk of separation had grown so intense that those close to him were emboldened to propose other wives. A general wondered if Napoleon might capitalize on his success in Austria by marrying an Austrian archduchess, but the hero refused: “The memory of Marie Antoinette is too recent.”[10] Against the advice of Talleyrand, who recommended allying with Austria in order to intimidate Russia, Napoleon broke Austria and those it had protected into pieces—to the benefit of his relations.

Eugène, he decided, would be married almost immediately to Augusta, the eighteen-year-old daughter of the elector of Bavaria, who was, he noted to his stepson, “better looking than the portrait painted on the teacup I am sending you.”[11] He put the announcement in the French newspapers and wrote to Josephine telling her to arrange the celebrations. Eugène obeyed the instruction to “set out at all speed” and galloped from Italy, carrying the cup bearing a picture of his fiancée. Josephine begged to invite Hortense to the wedding, but Napoleon was in too much of a hurry to wait for his stepdaughter to return to Paris.

The elector of Bavaria was very unhappy about the proposed marriage, and so was his young second wife, who once hoped to marry the Duc d’Enghien—the man Napoleon so ruthlessly executed. The elector complained that Eugène was a commoner and declared his daughter was already engaged to her cousin, the crown prince of Baden. If, he said, she had to marry another, the man should be no less than Napoleon himself. Of course, Napoleon ignored the elector’s plea that he should divorce Josephine and marry Augusta. He offered the now jilted prince of Baden Stéphanie Beauharnais, Josephine’s pretty niece, in Augusta’s stead. He bribed the elector by giving him the title of king of Bavaria at the end of 1805, and decreed Eugène an imperial highness as well as viceroy of Italy and his officially adopted son. The wedding took place three days after Eugène’s posthaste arrival on January 14, 1806. Fortunately, Eugène, a spirited but gentle man, was pleased by his princess, and the two soon came to love each other. At the wedding, Napoleon flirted with the elector’s wife and became convinced she was in love with him—a high state of delusion.

Josephine was too wise to complain that the decision about her son’s marriage had been taken from her hands. With Eugène as the emperor’s officially adopted son, he might be declared heir. It seemed impossible that Napoleon could divorce her after endowing her son so munificently. She spent the first weeks of 1806 with the emperor, celebrating his victories and cosseting his pride.

Bonaparte returned from Austerlitz in January 1806, puffed up with his invincibility. Even the fact that Paris was in the grip of a financial crisis—after millions of government bonds somehow disappeared—could not dent his self-confidence. His solution was to suspend the minister of the treasury. Then he turned his attention to his favorite subject: his own glory. At thirty-six, he bestrode nations and ruled an empire of many millions of people. He possessed almost all of Europe, save a few countries that annoyingly had resisted—including Spain, Britain, and Sweden.[12] He was bloated, exhausted, a martyr to stomach pain and headaches, but the most feared man in Europe.

THE KING OF Diamonds was full of ideas to make his court even grander after attending those of Austria and Munich. He decided that the court should rehearse the ceremony of presentation, in which aristocratic ladies were “presented” to the emperor and thus admitted to court. Josephine herself had not been presented, and now she was to preside over a presentation ceremony more tortuously detailed than that of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The emperor and empress settled on their gilt thrones, flanked by the Bonaparte family on stools. Court officials and ladies-in-waiting advanced, bowing and curtseying. A lady due to be presented curtseyed at the door, then again a few steps on, then a third time in front of their imperial majesties—and then had to walk out backward, with three further curtsies. Not long into the ceremony, Napoleon was bouncing on his throne with impatience and barely able to last to the end. Etiquette, he decided, was much better if carried out by somebody else. He was bored and purged his feelings by roaring insults at anyone he considered badly dressed.

It was all the emperor’s new clothes: Foreign courts mocked the imperial court for its gold-splashed brashness, citing Napoleon as the perfect example of a nouveau riche. Yet Napoleon, a brusque fighter who cared little for the French people, saw himself as a virtual deity. As in the time of Louis XVI and his predecessors, there was a convention that the emperor could make the sun shine if he wished, and so on fete days, even in the depths of winter, shivering courtiers in light dress would declare that it was not cold and it was not raining, even as their clothes and hair were soaked through. Everyone had to pretend around the fairy king Napoleon, including Josephine.

“The life I lead here is as fatiguing as it possibly can be, never a moment to myself,” Josephine wrote to Eugène. “I go to bed very late and wake up early. The Emperor, who is very strong, copes very well with this busy life, but my health and my soul are suffering a little.”[13] The etiquette was punishing, “a daily slavery.”[14] Napoleon was obsessed with precision, and any movement too quick or aspect of costume out of place could prompt a furious dressing-down.

Josephine later told her lady-in-waiting Madame Ducrest how much “pleasure” she felt when anything interrupted “the chains of court ceremony.”[15] Napoleon demanded a court of ostentatious ritual and procedure but had no patience for it; he interrupted receptions, fidgeted through balls, and hated attending plays in the brand-new theaters in his palaces. The best actors, the most beautiful scenery, the funniest comedies, and the most mellifluous music were brought out to please him, but he sat hunched through each performance, refusing to laugh. He would then blame the play for being a failure, and attack his courtiers for not finding something truly amusing for him to watch.

“Pleasure does not inhabit palaces,” wrote Madame de Rémusat. Napoleon’s youthful court struggled with the dictates of raiment and behavior. Some of the younger wives became so confused that they barely spoke to anybody, and girls fainted with fear at the thought of being presented to the emperor. His habits of shouting at women and criticizing their attire publicly were terrifying. A woman without rouge was asked if she was just “up from childbed”; he noted the “red elbows” of one and mocked another for her ugly face.[16] The emperor, so powerful, ruler of millions, still took petty satisfaction from playground-style humiliation. Everything turned on the minutiae of etiquette—“a ribbon, a slight difference in dress, permission to pass through a particular door,” as Josephine’s lady-in-waiting put it.[17] Those who had been at Versailles or in royalist company were much more at ease and made a performance of laughing, smiling, and behaving in an unaffected fashion. The Jacobins and republicans were nervous and stiff, unaccustomed to court life and finding the ritual rather dreadful. Life was much easier for everyone when Napoleon galloped off for another military victory and Josephine presided in his stead. At the very least, they could all start playing cards for money.

The man who pored over army lists at night had little real interest in his courtiers. He hardly ever remembered anyone’s name and would stomp up to guests at receptions, demanding, “And what do you call yourself?”[18] Luckily, Josephine smoothed things over in his wake. She remembered names, the details of people’s health, families, and homes, and always had a kind word—she was the soft power. Thanks to her, Napoleon felt even more emboldened to be rude.

Josephine herself was growing ever more uneasy. She thought that her rivals were whispering about her in corners and making plans to undermine her in front of Napoleon. She was also convinced her life was under threat. She would never be left alone and each time she fell ill with indigestion, she was sure she was being poisoned.[19] “It is much to be hoped that the Empress will die,” the dreaded Fouché pondered when he thought the emperor wasn’t listening. “It would remove many difficulties.”[20]

JOSEPHINE DID FIND consolation in the forthcoming marriage of her seventeen-year-old niece, Stéphanie. Napoleon’s passion for her had given his wife much pain. But Stéphanie found the stout, sleepy prince of Baden very unappealing and demanded a king instead. Napoleon was rather delighted by her rebellion, and the two were often seen giggling together at court; but the prince could not be jilted for a second time, and so the emperor reluctantly pushed the marriage on, giving Stéphanie the territory of Breisgau, a necklace worth a million and a half francs, and a huge trousseau, as well as calling her “my daughter” before handing her over. The wedding was one of the grandest the Tuileries had ever seen. A forty-person procession approached the altar; the bride was resplendent in a silver-embroidered gown decorated in roses; hosts of ladies-in-waiting were crowned with diamonds and flowers. Napoleon wore Spanish costume, and Josephine glittered in a gown covered in different shades of gold embroidery, along with the imperial crown and pearls worth a million francs. As the fireworks exploded that night over the palace, Josephine congratulated herself on ridding herself of another rival.

JOSEPHINE’S FAMILY MEMBERS were easily sated with presents of money. The same was not true for Napoleon’s. Nothing he gave them was sufficient. He piled on the honors for his mother, giving her a court of two hundred, with nine ladies-in-waiting, a bishop, and two sub-chaplains as her confessors and a former page of Louis XVI as her equerry. As her country home, she had a wing of the Grand Trianon and later a huge château near Troyes. Napoleon’s sisters tried to outdo Josephine in their incredible spending. Pauline and Caroline would squander fifteen thousand francs on a gown and then spend more to embellish it with diamonds and pearls. When Napoleon entered the room, flanked by his shimmering sisters, his mother in court dress and his brothers in their rich uniforms, they gave the impression of a united front. The reality could not have been further from the truth. Napoleon’s family was a party of incompetents, schemers, and gangsters. They behaved as if Europe was theirs to carve up.

By 1806, Joseph was king of Naples and Sicily, Caroline and Joachim were grand duke and duchess of Berg in Germany, and Elisa was grand duchess of Tuscany. But Joseph desired a grander kingdom, and the sisters wanted to be queens. They were all poor rulers, although all rulers of Napoleon’s vassal states were in an impossible position, since they had to implement repressive measures and punitive taxation commanded from Paris. As viceroy, Eugène tried hard to defend the situation of the Italians, and they esteemed him for doing what he could to improve their lot. He buried himself in papers and meetings. “My son, you work too hard; your life is too monotonous,” Napoleon wrote to him. “You must have some more gaiety in your home; it is necessary for your wife’s happiness and your own health.”[21]

In 1806 Napoleon made Louis and Hortense king and queen of Holland. The Dutch throne was a bribe; Louis had been refusing to allow Napoleon to decree their son heir to the empire because he did not wish to be outranked. Given the present of a kingdom, he agreed. Hortense wept bitterly when she was told by her stepfather that she must leave Paris. Her health was not good, and she dreaded living outside of France with a husband whose hatred of her increased daily. She threatened that if the sufferings became too much, she would retire to a convent, for she would have no difficulty “relinquishing a crown of which she could already feel the thorns.”[22] She set off to Holland as if she were a victim about to be sacrificed.

She was right to be afraid. Louis initially demanded that she should have a fabulous court. Then, envious of her popularity, he changed his mind and made her accept a life of isolation, surrounded her with spies, and continued to insult her. He expelled those from his court who he thought were friendly with his wife. Louis was a king endeavoring to be fair to his people, and he tried to refuse the oppressive dictates from Paris. But to Hortense, he was unremittingly cruel.

Hortense had nothing to console her but painting and music and the chance to lavish affection on her small sons. Her close bond with her eldest, little Napoleon Charles, made things worse for both of them: Louis was jealous and attempted to prise the child away from her, much to the boy’s distress. Hortense sank into a state of lassitude and was so desperate for escape that she actually hoped the British might invade and take her prisoner.

AS HORTENSE AND Louis departed for Holland, Napoleon set to plotting again. After a long period of indecision, the king of Prussia had signed an agreement to ally with the tsar of Russia. They then threatened to join with Britain if the French did not withdraw from southern Germany. The French troops remained, so in August, the Prussians began to advance toward the French army. Napoleon again decided on subterfuge to gain the upper hand; he put about a story that he did not wish to go to war because he was so comfortable in his luxurious palace. In reality, he was making minutely detailed plans for conquest.

Josephine received the information that he was about to leave at four in the morning on September 24. She dashed down the stairs and threw herself on him, begging to be allowed to come. He ushered her inside his carriage, and they set off. Josephine’s ladies assembled her six carriages of clothes, equipment, and jewels and followed a few hours later. The plan was for her to remain at Mainz while Napoleon set off again. During the journey, he grew terribly dependent on her, and at Mainz, he parted from her reluctantly, weeping, convulsing, then beginning to vomit. He didn’t want to leave her, and he was feeling rather exhausted at the thought of fighting. He looked powerful in his uniform—Marshal Massena said that he looked two feet taller when he put on his general’s hat—but underneath he was suffering from an excess of fine living, and the thought of marching out into the cold was daunting. Still, he was the emperor and was better and stronger than those weak kings who sent out their generals to do their dirty work.

Left behind, Josephine carried out her duties as empress. She opened balls and receptions, listened to pleas and hosted delegations, visited the wounded and entertained German princes. She spent nearly fifty-five thousand francs on gifts for the people she met. Napoleon sent frequent letters ending with “I love and desire you” and “I love and embrace you.” But Josephine was miserable and spent every evening with tarot cards, trying to see the future. “I can’t think why you weep, you do wrong to make yourself ill,” Napoleon wrote impatiently to his wife.[23] But she had reason to feel insecure; she didn’t know it, but Napoleon’s young mistress Eléonore Denuelle was six months pregnant. Napoleon knew that Eléonore was pregnant, but it was not earth-shattering news for him. He had never been convinced of her virtue, and he suspected (correctly) that Joachim Murat had been seducing the teenager as well. And yet it might be his—which meant he had the ability to impregnate a woman and have an heir with a wife other than Josephine. He set out to seduce his mistresses with renewed confidence.

Josephine fretted and talked constantly of her husband. One night she called out to her ladies that the tarot cards had foretold a great victory. A few minutes later, the emperor’s page arrived with a letter bearing the news of the success: “Never was an army more thoroughly beaten.”[24] Napoleon had won a decisive victory over the Prussians at Jena. The king and queen took refuge in the east of Prussia, and Napoleon entered Berlin in a show of splendor, surrounded by his marshals and the Imperial Guard. He was delighted to prowl about the palace and poke around the king of Prussia’s belongings. He sat at the king’s desk and took his sword and belt, as well as a very handy silver alarm clock, which he carried with him for years.

Napoleon blamed the queen of Prussia for encouraging her husband to aggression. “How unhappy are those princes who permit their wives to interfere in affairs of state,” he wrote to Josephine. Stung, she wrote back, expressing hurt. He replied, “You seem displeased by my speaking ill of women. It is true that I detest scheming women. I am accustomed to ones who are kind, sweet and persuasive. It is your fault—you have spoiled me.”[25] Perhaps buoyed by his victories, he offered more sympathy than usual for her worries. “Talleyrand tells me you are always in tears,” he wrote after the arrival of his foreign minister in Berlin. “You must be brave and remember you are an Empress.”[26]

In November, he closed the Prussian ports to British trade—a decree he would extend to all France’s allies and vassal states. His hope was to starve Britain into surrender. His plan would bring poverty and privation to an already battered Europe, but he did not care. He was determined to be master of the continent and thus the world.

Bonaparte did not stay long in Berlin. News came through that the Russians were marching through Poland toward him. He decided to set off into Poland and crush the Russian army there, a daring plan considering his men were weary and homesick and had no greatcoats for the freezing Polish weather. When Josephine heard that her husband was advancing to battle once more, she was plunged into gloom. He sent her letters suggesting she might join him and then changed his mind. By December, she was imploring him to allow her to come. “I see that you have lost your little head. I wrote that you could come as soon as our winter quarters were decided,” he replied. “The greater one’s position, the less one can choose and the more one must depend on events and circumstances.”[27] Josephine was growing frantic. “There is only one woman for me. Do you know her? I could paint her portrait for you but it would make you conceited,” he wrote. “The winter nights are long, all alone.”[28] She replied, desperately pained because she had dreamed he had found a woman he could love. Napoleon responded sympathetically. “You say that your dream does not make you jealous, I think therefore that you are jealous and I am delighted. In any case you are wrong. In these frozen Polish plains, one dwells little on beautiful women.”[29]

Josephine pleaded with him to let her join him at Warsaw, fretting about all the beautiful girls in Poland who were desperate to please the conqueror. “Your letter made me laugh,” he wrote to her on New Year’s Eve, traveling fast toward the capital. “You idealize the females of Poland in a way they don’t deserve.”[30] Later that day, he received a message telling him that Eléonore Denuelle had given birth to a son, Charles. Convinced that Joachim had also been sleeping with the girl, he merely read the note and put it aside.

Unlike the rest of Europe, who saw Napoleon as a terrifying oppressor, the Polish saw him as a potential rescuer who would secure their independence from the Russians. The people had been dancing in the streets at the news that the French were drawing near; the ladies of influence established hospitals for the French wounded and made the palaces ready for the generals. On the approach to Warsaw, Napoleon’s carriage was surrounded by a crowd of people cheering for the French. A beautiful young woman with fair hair and blue eyes approached the carriage after begging Duroc for help through the throng. “We have been waiting for you to save us,” she gasped in perfect French. Touched by her beauty and innocence, the emperor gave her a bouquet of flowers from the coach. He kept waving his hat at her as the carriage drove away.

CHAPTER 18

“I Wish You Would Be More Reasonable”

Newly arrived in Warsaw, Napoleon wrote a letter to Josephine. He no longer wished for her presence. “I am inclined to think you should go to Paris where you are needed,” he told her. “The roads are bad and not at all safe; I cannot expose you to so many fatigues and dangers. Go back to Paris for the winter.”[1] Josephine was miserable in Mainz, but Napoleon did not care. When he was not planning battle, he was thinking obsessively about the woman who had accepted his bouquet.

At home with her baby son, the beautiful nineteen-year-old countess Marie Walewska was visited by a Polish dignitary who told her he had heard of her triumph in grasping Napoleon’s attention. He invited her to a ball held in the emperor’s honor. Her husband, a nationalist count fifty-two years her senior, pressed her to attend.

In Countess Walewska, Napoleon had met his match. Even though her husband was over seventy-two, she fully believed in the sanctity of her marriage vows. Young and idealistic, she had no desire to be a tyrannical emperor’s fleeting sexual conquest. She was intelligent and highly educated—her tutor was Nicholas Chopin, father of the future composer—spoke fluent French, and was gifted at music, geography, and history.

Marie’s father had died when she was a child. At sixteen and a half, she returned home from school to find that mother had accepted on her behalf the suit of Anastase Walewski, the richest landowner in the area. Marie had little wish to marry him (his youngest grandchild was six years older than she was), but she had no choice. In June 1805, she gave birth to a son.

Count Walewski was delighted by the attention his wife had received from Napoleon. She herself was rather afraid of the emperor’s intense response. At the ball, she wore a simple white gown, looking more like a peasant than a countess. Napoleon took her as a dancing partner, enthralled by her beauty, thrilled by her seeming virtue, and stimulated by her obvious lack of interest in him. Next morning, he woke preoccupied by Marie. He scribbled off a letter. “I saw no one but you, I admired only you; I want no one but you; I beg you to reply promptly to calm the ardour and impatience of N.” He sent the missive with General Duroc, along with a large bouquet of flowers.

When Marie received the note, she told Duroc—who was awaiting a response—“There is no answer.” The emperor was shocked to receive no reply. As his valet recorded, “he simply could not understand it; he considered himself irresistible to women, and I really believe that his amour-propre had been hurt.”[2]

That evening Duroc returned with more flowers and another letter for Marie. This time Napoleon tried a softer approach, summoned the old romantic words he used with Josephine.

Have I displeased you, Madame? I had hoped otherwise. Was it a dream on my part? Your ardour has cooled, while mine burns more and more fiercely. You have destroyed my peace! Oh give some little joy and happiness to the heart that longs to worship you![3]

For Napoleon, the siege had begun. He confessed a burning passion and pleaded with her to dine with him alone. He sent a red leather jewelry box, but Marie threw it to the floor in disgust. “He must take me for a prostitute,” she said.[4] Napoleon would not be dissuaded. When his customary offers of favors and money were refused, he tried to blackmail her. If she attended him, he would look kindly on Poland. “Your country will be dearer to me when you take pity on my poor heart,” he declared. “Whenever I have thought a thing impossible or difficult to obtain, I have desired it all the more. Nothing discourages me … I am accustomed to seeing my wishes met. Your resistance subjugates me. I want to force you, yes force you to love me, Marie. I have brought back to life your country’s name. I will do much more!”[5]

The Polish dignitaries told Marie that she was their sole hope for independence. Only the emperor could protect Polish independence in the face of mighty Russia. Everyone had to try to please him, including her. Besieged by Napoleon and constantly pushed by her own husband and his political allies to give up her virtue, poor Marie was in an impossible position. Reluctantly, she agreed to attend Napoleon in private. She arrived, agitated and trembling, afraid of her fate. But Napoleon, busy working, said she should go to a palace apartment to take supper and rest. He carried on working until late. Then, when she was almost asleep, he burst into her room and began demanding details about the nationalist Polish nobles, as if she were an informer. Then he seized her and started to force himself on her (his strategy perhaps was to wait until she was nearly asleep and thus less resistant). She tried to fight back, but he was merciless. “Remember, if you push me too far the very name of Poland and all your hopes will be broken like this watch.”[6] He then threw a watch to the floor and smashed it to smithereens with his heel. Marie was so terrified that she fainted. She woke up to find Napoleon had taken her anyway. He had a different version: “She did not struggle—overmuch,” he said.[7]

When Marie came around and began weeping, Napoleon marshaled all his charming words to console her. “You may be certain, Marie, that I will fulfill the promise I made you.” She passed on his words to her husband and the dignitaries. She had done her duty by her country, at some cost. Napoleon wrote to her again, this time addressing her as tu.

Marie, my sweet Marie! My first thought is of you, my first desire is to see you once more. You will come again, won’t you? You promised me you would. If not, then the eagle will fly to you. I shall see you at dinner, a friend tells me. Deign, then, to accept this bouquet, let it become a mysterious link which shall establish between us a secret union in the midst of the crowd surrounding us.[8]

Marie had become his mistress and could not go back. Napoleon was so delighted by her that he called her to him constantly and tried his best to be gentle with her. She was gradually won over. He admired her innocence, her patriotism and stringent virtue, and valued her loyalty. Above all, he was a vain man; through Marie’s interest in his ventures, he saw a flattering reflection of himself. For the first time since Josephine, he fell in love.

When he set off to East Prussia, Marie left behind her husband and little boy and moved to her mother’s estate, ready to attend Napoleon whenever he called her. He wrote her romantic letters from every stage of his journey, promising he would obtain a guarantee of Polish independence from the tsar.

He wrote regularly to Marie—and to Josephine, whom he was still encouraging to return to Paris. “Believe me, it is sometimes harder on me than on you to put off the happiness of our meeting. Say to yourself, it is proof of how precious I am to him.”[9] But he was much less sympathetic with her low spirits than he had been before he met Marie. “Be worthy of me, show more strength of character, I don’t like cowards.”[10] Paradoxically, he still expounded on his sexual passion for her. “I kiss you everywhere—everywhere—even on the little cousins.”[11]

Josephine knew she had to obey and return to Paris. Her spirits were so depressed that she struggled to maintain the grandeur and style of an empress on her return journey. She arrived back to an equally gloomy city. The ban on trade with Britain and its empire was causing great hardship. The peasants could not export their massive surplus of the harvest of 1808, and prices fell. The middle classes were without coffee, sugar, rum, chocolate, and other goods from the West Indies. Everybody resorted to speculation, the black market, and bribes.

The mood of despair did little for Napoleon’s popularity—there was talk that the army had been suffering excessively and some of the men had committed suicide. People were saying that if the Austrians and Russians allied, Napoleon would not be able to overcome them. With so many husbands, sons, and lovers away, the court was dreary and sad, with too many women cooped up together, all desperately hoping for news that their loved ones had survived.

Josephine found the Tuileries dispiriting and could hardly bear to preside over the round of court entertainments. Napoleon had no time for complaints—and he was unhappy about some reports he’d received regarding low-key outings. “If you really wish to please me, you must live exactly as you live when I am in Paris,” he told her. “Then you were not in the habit of visiting the second rate theatres.”[12] She asked him if she might receive Thérésa, now that she had married Prince de Chimay and had, in her eyes, shaken off the association with Tallien (they had divorced in 1802). Napoleon sent a furious refusal: “I find her more despicable than ever.”[13] But Josephine needed the support of friendship. She had heard the news of his “Polish wife.” Although she had little detail, she understood that he had been dissuading her from joining him because he already had a companion. Her fears about beautiful Polish women had been realized, and there was nothing she could do but try to behave as Napoleon wished. She held state receptions and dinners, attended galas at the Opéra, and received ambassadors. But the smile on her face was painted. She wrote to Eugène that her heart was “very sad at the long absence of the Emperor, in spite of his frequent letters.” The following week she wrote that if his absence went on longer, “I do not know if I will find the courage to bear it.”[14]

Napoleon spent every spare moment organizing equipment and accommodation, studying maps, and sending out reconnaissance parties. On February 11, 1807, he attacked the Russians at Eylau. He won, but only just, and twenty thousand French soldiers lost their lives. When the news of the loss arrived in Paris, the stock market plunged. Although the reports fudged the numbers, rumors of men dying in freezing conditions, stranded so far from home, traveled back anyway. Men began to flee Paris at the thought of another round of conscription into the army. Napoleon was predictably furious at his subjects’ lack of faith. “Never has France been in a better position,” he announced to Fouché. “I repeat that the Bulletin exaggerates the losses … what after all are twenty thousand dead for a great battle?”[15]

His letters slowed, and he wrote to Josephine apologizing for not being in touch, “knowing how much you worry.” She still was not allowed to come to him, though. “I am just as anxious to see you as you are to see me, and yes, I do know how to do other things besides make war, but duty comes first. All my life, I have sacrificed everything to my destiny—tranquillity, pleasure and happiness.”[16] He instructed her to be cheerful and throw banquets.[17] As he put it, and as Josephine knew so well, “An Empress cannot go where a private individual may.”[18]

Eventually, Napoleon submitted to the weather and decided to wait until the thaw before progressing. He was in good spirits when he wrote to his wife that he had moved his headquarters to a “very fine castle” in Finckenstein, in eastern Prussia. “I have several fireplaces, which is a great comfort to me: getting up often in the night, I like to see the fire.”[19] He had a very compelling reason for getting up after dark: Marie Walewska had joined him, and he would visit her rooms at night.

Marie attended him patiently, turning to books when he was occupied with military plans. The sultan of Turkey sent Napoleon thirty fine cashmere shawls, and rather than bundling them up to send to Josephine, he gave them to Marie. She accepted only one.

Josephine heard through her spies that the “Polish wife” was at Finckenstein, and she wrote to Napoleon of her suspicions. “I don’t know what you mean about ladies with whom you say I am connected. I love only my little Josephine, good, sulky and capricious, who knows how to quarrel gracefully as in everything she does; for she is always sweet except when she is jealous, then she becomes a demon … But to return to those ladies, I hope the ones you have in mind have pretty pink rosebuds.”[20] Josephine was not fooled. Napoleon was reinvigorated by his new life with Marie. As he wrote to General Murat, his “amorous drive had never been more vigorous.”[21]

Josephine knew that everyone else at court had heard about the “Polish wife.” The Bonapartes were more openly rude to her than ever, and Letizia refused to dine with her daughter-in-law on their usual Sunday evenings. Gleeful about Marie and Eléonore Denuelle’s baby son, the Bonapartes felt sure that one way or the other, they would trump their enemy.

ON THE EVENING of May 4, four-year-old Napoleon Charles, living with Hortense and Louis in Holland, fell ill of what was thought to be the croup after a bout of measles (it was more likely pneumonia or acute encephalitis, common consequences of measles). Doctors covered him with leeches and dosed him with powders, but he could not be roused and died in his mother’s arms. Hortense was hysterical and could not be separated from his body until she fainted, whereupon her hands were pried away and she was carried to her rooms. When she came to, she was screaming with horror over her son’s death and pleading to die. After a few days, she fell into a stupor. Unable to weep, talk, or eat, she was paralyzed by grief.

Josephine begged Napoleon to allow her to visit her daughter, but he refused. He had become deeply attached to Marie, and his wife seemed a weak and whining harpy. “You have had the happiness never to lose a child, but it is one of the pains and conditions attached to our miseries on earth.”[22] She was needed in Paris to maintain his status, he said; she should have more courage. “I wish that you would be more reasonable,” he wrote angrily. “Would you wish to increase my unhappiness?”[23]

The empress had been trying her best to make Napoleon the focus of her every waking moment, but now she was too tormented by grief to do so. She knew that the death of Napoleon Charles made her position very insecure. Napoleon had seen Hortense’s son as his unofficial heir. With the child dead, Josephine suspected he would be more bent on divorce.

Napoleon had lost patience with her—and also, for the first time, with his beloved Hortense. “Hortense is not being reasonable, she does not deserve our love since she only loved her child,” he blustered. “Don’t make my misery worse.”[24] He was utterly wrapped up in himself. Talleyrand suggested he mute his vainglorious behavior in front of a delegation that had come to give him condolences, but Napoleon was impatient, saying he had “not the time to waste on feelings and on grieving, like other men.”[25] Still, he did establish a prize of twelve thousand francs—a huge sum—for the doctor who could write the best essay on how to cure the croup.

Eventually, Napoleon relented and gave Josephine permission to meet her daughter in Brussels, accompanied by Louis. Away from the memories of her son, Hortense made a slow recovery. But the emperor continued to harangue Josephine about Hortense’s failure to write to him. “Why haven’t you found her an occupation? Weeping won’t do it!”[26] The party traveled on to take the waters at the Pyrenees, where Louis was kind to his wife. Hortense soon became pregnant again.

Just a month after Napoleon Charles’s death, Napoleon received further bad news. Josephine’s mother, Rose-Claire, had died at La Pagerie. Josephine had not seen her mother in nearly twenty years, since the days before the Revolution, and Napoleon knew she would be devastated. He also hated to see the court in mourning when it should be celebrating his brilliant victories. He sent orders that the funeral be splendid, as befitted the empress. Rose-Claire was buried at Trois-Îlets with great dignity. Her body was lowered into the tomb to the ringing sounds of a military salute. The news made its way to Josephine through her informers, and she sank into despair. She was shocked when Napoleon told her the news should not be made public because it would make the court unhappy. For Josephine, still pained over the loss of Napoleon Charles, it was another indicator that she was being pushed aside. She was wracked with headaches and found it difficult to sleep.

NAPOLEON REMAINED OBSESSED by his military might and saw his battle against Russia as the most important of his career so far. The students at military colleges were called up eighteen months early, and the German states were told to supply a hundred thousand men. His preparations were not in vain. On June 14, 1807, at Friedland, East Prussia, Napoleon and his men fought for nearly twenty-four hours straight to win a decisive battle over the Russians, a great victory although thirty thousand were lost across both sides.

The victorious emperor sent his faithful courier Jacques Chazal—nicknamed “Mustache” on account of his impressive facial hair—to give the news to the empress at Saint-Cloud. Mustache rode so hard that his horse dropped dead in the château courtyard. The French, weary of battle and afraid of losing more men, cheered for the win but hoped there would not be further fighting. Napoleon felt aggrieved by the lukewarm reaction and convinced himself that only Marie really cared for his victories. He could not resist dictating another aggrieved letter to Hortense. “I wish you were more courageous,” read the queen of Holland as she sat alone in her castle, still grieving. “Your mother and I had hoped to take up more place in your heart. I won a great victory on June 14.” Josephine also failed to please him. “I have received your letter of June 25 and I am hurt to see that you are entirely selfish and that you appear to be uninterested in my military success,” he wrote to her. “I too long for our reunion, when destiny shall order it.”[27] Marie Walewska, gracious and biddable, was delighted beyond measure about his victory over the tsar; by comparison, Josephine seemed like a monster of selfishness.

After Napoleon’s win, the tsar of Russia had requested an armistice, and the emperor agreed. He had no choice—his army was much depleted, and men had been fleeing the draft in Paris. Eager to style himself as a wondrous peacemaker, he set off to meet the enemy. The plan was that the tsar and the emperor would meet on a raft in the River Niemen, near the town of Tilsit in Prussia. “Sire, I hate the English as much as you do,” was Tsar Alexander’s first greeting to Napoleon. “In that case, peace is established,” replied the emperor.

“He is a pleasing-looking, young and kind-hearted emperor,” Napoleon wrote to his wife, “he has more intelligence than people usually give him credit for.”[28] Thirty-year-old Alexander was nervous, afraid of fighting, prone to mood swings, and rather lacking in intellectual strength, although he made up for it with plenty of cunning. He was outrageously good-looking, and caricaturists painted him being admired by every lady from the queen of Prussia to Britain’s Lady Hamilton. Practiced in the art of deceit, he flattered Napoleon excessively. Dazzled, Napoleon began to ponder the tsar’s sister, twenty-year-old Grand Duchess Catherine. The sixth child and fourth daughter of Tsar Paul, she was vibrant, intelligent, and one of the most eligible women in Europe. Catherine was her mother’s pet and the tsar’s absolute favorite; he wrote her devoted letters full of affection and consulted her on political matters. If Napoleon seized such a prize, his position in Europe would be secure.

At the meeting, clever Napoleon asked for little from the tsar other than Russia joining the Continental Blockade, the ban on trade with Britain. But he was cruel to Prussia. The nation would lose half its territory, pay huge reparations, and accept a lengthy occupation. Queen Louise threw herself at Napoleon’s feet to beg for clemency, but he was not a merciful conqueror. Instead, he looked down at her with disdain and asked if her dress was made from crepe or Italian muslin. Her great effort to flatter amused him but did not win her anything. “The Queen of Prussia is really charming, she wanted to make me her husband,” he wrote to Josephine. “I didn’t take any notice.”[29]

Napoleon, not yet thirty-eight, was all-powerful. Britain seemed only a pipsqueak island with a fading overseas empire. Russia joining the ban on trade was a blow for Britain, since their navy used Russian wood and supplies. The vast extent of the French empire presented a spectacle that rather resembled the “dominion of the Romans and the conquests of Charlemagne.”[30] The emperor now had forty-four palaces, and Europe was subject to his whims. But even the rulers he scorned—deranged George III, the hated king of Prussia, and all the pusillanimous princes—had the one thing he did not: a legitimate heir. As he later said at St. Helena, he returned “so certain of his destiny” that he knew divorce was inevitable.[31]

CHAPTER 19

“Cold and Often Embarrassed”

“The Emperor since his return from campaign has behaved toward his wife in a cold and often embarrassed manner,” wrote the diplomat Prince von Metternich gleefully to Vienna. “They do not share a bedroom. Many of his daily habits have changed.” Napoleon was preoccupied with his own brilliance, resentful of Josephine for not having sufficiently celebrated his victories, and thinking more and more about his need for a son.

His time with Marie Walewska had proved to him that he could live with another woman in a domestic setting. He threw a magnificent party for his thirty-eighth birthday and picked out ladies of the court for affairs. Believing they might have a chance to seize Josephine’s position, the women jostled for his affections more intensely than ever. But Napoleon also wished his next wife to be a royal princess, with money, cachet, and blue blood (so Marie had no chance of being his wife). Marriage to an Austrian or a Russian would make an alliance between his two enemies much less likely, and a foreign princess would give him the regal status he craved, as well as the true grandeur that he felt the Tuileries lacked. The courtiers, eager to please him, turned secretively to pondering possible matches. Talleyrand, Josephine’s long-trusted ally, was now working against her. Her enemies’ reasons were simple: As Fouché put it, “Napoleon’s brothers are disgracefully incompetent and we must prevent the return of the Bourbons.”[1] Lists were drawn up of viable royal brides, and ambassadors competed to push the advantage of their own princesses, showing lovely miniatures and talking of sweet tempers, grace, good health, and fine accomplishments. Talleyrand was in favor of an Austrian princess, while Fouché voted for Grand Duchess Catherine of Russia.

Josephine was terribly anxious about her fate—and she was worried about Napoleon without her. “If they should succeed in separating me from him, it is not the loss of rank I should regret,” she wrote to Eugène, “sooner or later he would discover that those who surround him are more interested in themselves than in him and he would know how he has been deceived.”[2] Eugène replied that he had heard much about divorce in Munich and Paris, but he felt sure that the emperor would treat her kindly. “He must treat you well, give you an adequate settlement and let you live in Italy with your children,” he replied. “If the Emperor wishes to have children who are truly his there is no other way.”

After Mass one Sunday, Fouché told Josephine that she should begin the “inevitable sacrifice” of a divorce and allow Napoleon to have a legitimate son. Josephine was prepared. “Did the Emperor direct you to tell me this?” The minister refused to answer, and she responded with dignity. “I see my link with the Emperor as written in the record of the highest destinies. I will never discuss the matter with anyone but him and I will never do anything without his orders.” She went straight to Napoleon and—bravely—demanded whether he had directed his minister to speak. The emperor declined all knowledge. “You know very well I could not live without you,” he said. He then asked what she thought of the proposal and whether she might “take the initiative to help him make the sacrifice if he found it necessary.” Josephine told him she would not. “Our joint destiny has been too extraordinary not to have been decided by Providence. Only you must decide my fate.”[3] She had thought carefully about what she would say. “I am too afraid of bringing us both bad luck if, of my own accord, I should separate my life from yours.” It was a brilliant strategy. Napoleon seriously believed she was his good-luck charm, and he dreaded losing his magic touch. He burst into tears at her words, and they embraced passionately. He returned to her bed once more.

He found it easy to consider the reasons for a divorce when he was apart from Josephine. But when he saw her again, he could not help loving her. He watched her presiding gracefully over the court and doubted anyone could be a more befitting consort. “I would be giving up all the charm she had brought to my private life,” he said to Talleyrand. “She adjusts her habits to mine and understands me perfectly.” And even though he took his sexual pleasure elsewhere, he still needed her. “I truly loved her, although I didn’t respect her,” he said on St. Helena. “She was a liar and a spendthrift but she had something that was irresistible. She was a woman to her very fingertips.”[4]

Although Napoleon could still fall back into Josephine’s arms, he remained angry about what he saw as her and Hortense’s excessive grief over Napoleon Charles. When he first laid eyes on Hortense after his return, he was furious. She was nervous and emaciated, tears glimmering in her eyes. “Come, come, stop this childishness. You have wept enough over your son. It is becoming ridiculous … Be gay, enjoy the pleasures of your age and don’t let me see any more tears.”[5] He soon dashed her remaining hopes that he would make her second child, Napoleon Louis, his heir, claiming that people would only think he was the father of this boy as well (really, of course, he was anticipating having his own son by another wife). Hortense wept at his words, and Napoleon was angered by her outburst when, once upon a time, he would have forgiven Hortense anything.

Although Napoleon could see the benefit in allying with Russia and marrying a grand duchess, he guessed his people might see it as betraying his duty to France. Most of all, there was no guarantee he could sire a child with another woman. One police report from December 1807 noted that the women of high society were saying that “the Empress’s sterility is not her fault, that the Emperor has never had any children; that his majesty’s relations with several women have never borne fruit but as soon as these ladies were married, they became pregnant.”[6]

The bottom line was that Napoleon was not in a position to do anything rash. His popularity was at its lowest ebb. The people were distressed by the huge loss of men in the recent wars. Theaters had stopped the custom of reading out army bulletins because too many people screamed and fainted when they heard the news of the fatalities. Men were doing everything they could to dodge conscription; unlike in previous years, their families and friends did everything they could to support them. Some fled their homes, while others were so desperate that they purposely caught syphilis or cut off one of their limbs. There were huge riots protesting conscription. If the economy had been strong, the people may have been more forgiving, but the wars in the east had been expensive, and the ban on trade with Britain had taken a terrible toll. The French, so proud of their country and so delighted by their military strength, were beginning to curse their emperor. One in ten of all conscripts had deserted.

Napoleon’s response to the resistance was to put the divorce on hold and clamp down hard on his people’s remaining freedoms. He weakened the bodies left over from the consulate. The legislative body would meet only a few weeks a year, and the Council of State would be simply a sounding board for his lengthy monologues. He had long controlled the content of the newspapers; now he suppressed all but four journals. He wished to go even further—surely, he said, all the people needed were two papers: the official Moniteur and the Journal des Dames for the ladies. Spies were everywhere, intellectuals were censored, and the press was told firmly not to mention politics. The man who once tried to write a romantic novel now believed that the arts could undermine the state. “You can make politics by talking literature, morality, art, anything in the world,” he said.[7] The emperor of the Republic was now in the position of a military dictator.

Obsessed with outdoing Russia, Napoleon had decided that his entire court would move to the hunting château of Fontainebleau that winter. While in Prussia, he had ordered the redecoration of the palace by his cherished Percier and Fontaine. No expense was spared: silk wall coverings, heavy furniture, ornate tapestries, and carvings. The throne room was entirely redecorated to promote the splendor of the empire. Napoleon wished to take the court hunting as a way to recall and outdo the ancien régime, although unlike the Bourbon kings, he was poor at shooting and struggled even to hit Josephine’s slow swans at Malmaison.

As a young woman looking for protectors, Josephine once followed the hunt, but the Fontainebleau she returned to as an empress was very different. One thousand two hundred people descended on the estates in the autumn, including all the Bonapartes and the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Napoleon decreed that a hunt must take place three times a week, even in heavy rain. All the nobles and their households had their own hunting colors for riding coats—Josephine’s was purple, and Napoleon ordered that Hortense put aside her mourning dress and wear blue and silver. The men would go ahead to hunt, and then Josephine would lead the trail of ladies in open barouches before presiding over the hunt breakfast. While she once found hunting exhilarating, now she was cast down by the cruelty and hated the ritual her husband had imposed.

She was ill at ease, and the entire court was barely more cheerful. People found it hard to celebrate with the emperor after so many men had died in battle. Napoleon complained to Talleyrand in frustration that the court “refused to be amused and sat around looking tired and sad with long faces.” As he saw it, he had given them the marvelous treat of Fontainebleau, and they repaid him with melancholy. He set up lavish entertainments celebrating his victories and decreed that every night would see a splendid ball in one of the princely apartments, conducted just as it had been in the Bourbon days. Still, his courtiers sat unhappily in their heavy robes. In truth, it was his own behavior reflected back at him; paranoid about plots and whispers, he had become so remote that, according to Madame de Rémusat, “no one could reach the Emperor except Josephine.” In the evenings he would dine with her, then expect the entire court to assemble in the room designated for the ball. Josephine would enter and take her place, then a deathly silence would settle over them until Napoleon entered, seated himself next to the empress, and “with a forbidding expression,” watched his courtiers dance. Nothing, recalled Laure Junot, could describe “the magnificence, the magical luxury that now surrounded the imperial couple,” and the contrast between it and their downcast mood.

Once, Josephine was able to lull hundreds of people into feelings of cheerful ease. Now she was sad and nervous, constantly sending her ladies to monitor the rumors about divorce. She could see that some courtiers were distancing themselves from her in preparation for a new empress. Still, she tried to obey Napoleon in everything.

At the end of the year, Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jérôme, was made the king of Westphalia, a country essentially created for him out of parts of Prussia, Hesse, and Brunswick. Princess Catherine of Württemberg was hastily brought over to marry him in a grand ceremony at court. One of the guests, the handsome widower Crown Prince Frederick Louis of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was captivated by Josephine, but she was too afraid of offending Napoleon to respond to his blandishments. Still, while Napoleon was away, she went to the theater with the crown prince. Napoleon was infuriated, declaring his wife a second Marie Antoinette and demanding that his rival leave Paris within two days.

The Bonapartes were as intent as ever on pushing Napoleon toward a divorce. But this, as usual, only persuaded him to keep his wife; his family caused him endless distress, and Josephine’s presence soothed him. Napoleon’s beautiful younger sister Caroline Murat began an intense affair with the debonair General Junot. Only twenty-four, she was as hardened in her quest for power as her siblings. Annoyed that her husband had not been given a kingdom, she wanted Junot’s support in her mission to depose her brother and put her husband in his place. Eventually, the affair soured and Caroline turned to the wily Austrian diplomat Count Metternich. He seduced Junot’s wife, Laure, around the same time, and when Caroline told her former lover, he set upon Laure with a pair of scissors and nearly killed her. Jérôme turned out to be a hopeless king, imposing huge taxes, seducing every woman in sight, and plunging his treasury into debt. With him behaving like a lascivious satyr, Pauline taking a string of lovers, the Murats prompting crimes of passion, and Louis’s malicious treatment of Hortense, it was hardly surprising that Napoleon fled to the calm of Josephine’s room.

Although Hortense was pregnant with her third child, she was desperately unhappy again. The brief reconciliation after Napoleon Charles’s death had been forgotten. Louis was treating her as cruelly as ever, and she was losing her looks thanks to her suffering. Napoleon tried to intervene. “A King commands and seeks no one’s counsel,” he wrote to his brother. “In your domestic life you should display the paternal and effeminate character you show toward your government, and toward the government the severity you show your wife.”[8] Louis did not listen. He knew that the wind was blowing toward a divorce, and he resented being stuck with the daughter of Josephine.

Napoleon’s ministers were infuriated with his indecision over the divorce. On the one hand was a son, a royal liaison, and a legacy. On the other was his Josephine, to whom he felt he owed loyalty for their long years of marriage and her support when everybody else had seen him as a Corsican upstart. The tsar hadn’t sent any firm commitment that he would hand over his sister Catherine; Napoleon read reports of various royal ladies and found none particularly engaging. At the end of the year, he traveled to Italy to celebrate his victories, without Josephine, carrying a list of twenty eligible princesses.

Josephine wrote to her son of her worries. “My own defense is to live a blameless life. I no longer go out, I have no pleasures.” She had come to resent the grandeur surrounding her. “How unhappy do thrones make people, my dear Eugène!” she wrote. “I would resign mine tomorrow, without any pain. For me the love of the Emperor is everything. If I should lose that, I would have little regret about anything else.”[9] To her deep distress, she heard that Napoleon had brought Marie over from Warsaw and installed her in a house on the Quai Voltaire. There, he visited her secretly and loved to play a game in which they disguised themselves as a bourgeois couple and he engaged the local shopkeepers in chat about the devilish Bonaparte. Desperate, Josephine attempted to distract her husband by throwing one of her ladies-in-waiting in his way. He proved happy to dally with a new woman, but he still visited Marie. Late at night, his carriage left the palace for the townhouse of the beautiful Polish countess with golden hair.

One evening in March 1808, Josephine was about to enter the Yellow Salon when she received word that Napoleon was ill. She hurried to his apartments and found him in court dress, prostrate in bed, wracked by stomach pain, and weeping hysterically. She sat beside him and he pulled her into his arms. “My poor Josephine, I can’t possibly leave you,” he wailed. He demanded that she get into bed with him, and they made passionate love. She spent the night with him, although both were restless and slept poorly. That morning, she later found out, he had resolved on a divorce, but the thought of it was so painful that it had made him ill. “Why can’t the devil of a man make up his mind?” cried Talleyrand when he heard the news of the reconciliation.

In March 1808, King Charles IV of Spain abdicated after an uprising and allowed his son to take his place in an attempt to please the people. He hated his son, who had tried to depose him the previous year. In April he appealed to Napoleon for help—an unwise move. Napoleon sent Marie Walewska home and commanded the entire Spanish royal family to meet him in Bayonne, on the French side of the Pyrenees. Once there, he sent for Josephine; he required her gentle diplomacy to charm the king, the queen, the power-hungry crown prince, and the prime minister, who was both the king’s favorite and the queen’s rumored lover. Napoleon had no desire to actually help them; he wished to persuade them into accepting his “protection.”

Josephine played the role of gracious hostess, befriending the queen and lending her clothes and jewels. A second rebellion broke out in Madrid, and Marshal Murat and his men suppressed it with savagery. Napoleon informed Charles IV that only he could save the king’s life, and the royal family agreed to give the throne to the emperor. Napoleon decreed that Joseph Bonaparte would be crowned, and he sent the Spanish royals to live under luxurious arrest. He then spent the last days in Bayonne relaxing with Josephine, pleased with a job well done. They ran hand in hand along the beach and swam in the sea. He played his usual tricks, throwing her shoes into the water and pushing her over in the sand. They were like young lovers on honeymoon.

On the way back to Saint-Cloud, Josephine continued performing as the empress, receiving gifts, sitting as guest of honor at banquets, and listening to speeches. But almost as soon as they reached the palace, Napoleon heard that there had been further uprisings in Spain, and Joseph had been so afraid of the mob that he’d fled to the frontier rather than be crowned. Worst of all, the French troops had been defeated at Bailén in Spain. The rout of the seemingly invincible French troops was shocking news for all Europe, and Napoleon knew it would prompt Austria to attack.

Josephine paid much more attention to the news that Hortense had given birth to a third son, Charles Louis Napoleon (later to be known as Louis Napoleon), on April 20. She hoped that this boy might have a hold on Napoleon’s heart.

In September, Napoleon departed to meet the tsar in Germany. Before he left, he and Josephine played “prisoner’s base” in the dark with a few courtiers, a game in which players had to run to base before another player spotted them. Footmen with torches illuminated the emperor and empress running around in their finery, until Napoleon swept Josephine away, despite the protests of the others. His lightheartedness made her feel more secure. “For the last six months he has been simply perfect to me,” she wrote to Eugène. “So when I saw him leave this morning, it was with sadness at the parting but not concern about the future.”[10] But as soon as she was out of earshot, courtiers again began gossiping. As everybody but Josephine knew, before he departed, the emperor had ordered a diadem in Paris for a new empress.

“I wish the Emperor Alexander to be dazzled by the spectacle of my power,” Napoleon decreed. He ordered all his German vassal kings and princes to attend his meeting with the tsar at Erfurt, and adorned the palace in incredible style with paintings and ornaments sent from Paris. He brought French chefs to tend to the palates of the Russians, and the company of the Comédie-Française, including Talma, its star, came to entertain them. Josephine, hitherto the greatest display of Napoleon’s power, was absent. There was good reason; he had decided he wished to awe the tsar into allowing him his sister’s hand in marriage. He saw himself as doing a great act for his country. “It would be a real sacrifice for me. I love Josephine; I will never be happier with anyone else, but my family and Talleyrand and Fouché and all the politicians insist upon it in the name of France.”[11]

After his first meeting with Napoleon in Tilsit the previous year, the tsar had arrived back in St. Petersburg to find his family and ministers furious at his gesture of peace toward the emperor. They were outraged by the harsh strictures imposed on Prussia and resented Napoleon’s demand that any French citizen who had taken exile in Russia should be expelled. When the tsar saw his darling sister again, he was even more dubious about the marriage. As he well knew, his mother, the dowager empress, would revile the idea of her beloved Catherine becoming the wife of the emperor of France. Marriage to a divorcé was scandalous, and furthermore, Napoleon was a commoner and the merciless killer of so many Russian men, as well as the cruel aggressor of Prussia.

When the tsar arrived in Erfurt, he was determined not to be beguiled by Napoleon. He enjoyed the daily hunting parties, receptions, and balls but offered no concessions. Napoleon made every effort to please, even letting his rival shine on the dance floor. “The Emperor Alexander dances, but not I. Forty years are after all, forty years,” he wrote to Josephine.[12] The emperor begged, promised, and bowed low in the hope of winning the grand duchess’s hand. “I am very busy,” Napoleon told his wife. “Conversations which last whole days and which do not improve my cold. Still all goes well. I am pleased with Alexander, he ought to be with me. If he were a woman, I think I would make him my mistress.”[13]

The emperor’s cause was actively undermined by Talleyrand, who was taking money from Austria to push its interests. On a personal level, he still resented the forced marriage to his mistress Catherine Grand, whom he did not love. Politically, he had come to fear Napoleon’s wild military ambition and believed that Europe could not be at peace if he were allowed to continue unchecked. Behind Napoleon’s back, Talleyrand suggested to the tsar that an alliance with Austria would give him more power and independence and stonewall Napoleon’s rampant desire for territory.

Napoleon decided to put his cards on the table. “Use any argument you like,” he told Talleyrand, begging his minister to persuade Alexander to hand over his sister. “Tell him I will agree with him on any of his plans for the partition of Turkey.” The tsar’s spies were aware that no movements had been made toward a divorce, and Alexander used the knowledge to play for time. He told Napoleon he would happily give his consent, but that of another was needed: Josephine. By remaining uncommitted, he got everything he wanted. In return for a promise of assistance if Austria declared war on France, Napoleon said that he would not intervene if Russia invaded Finland or Turkey, and the tsar could do as he wished with Poland. Marie Walewska’s sacrifice had been worthless.

When he returned home to his wife, Napoleon was shifty with her, failing to meet her eye. She was suspicious but too afraid to ask questions. After only ten days, he departed for Spain, asking for a good-luck kiss. She pleaded with him, “Will you never stop making war?” He replied evasively and refused to allow her to accompany him. “It is not I who direct the course of events, I only obey them.” When she wrote to him of her concerns that Austria was growing more powerful, he was dismissive. “You are in a black mood of depression,” he said. “Austria will not make war on me … nor will Russia desert us. People in Paris are mad! Things are going splendidly here.”[14]

The emperor was reaching a new low in popularity. The public was furious when they heard that he wished his armies to return to Spain to force the installation of his brother as king. It seemed as if their men were being sent to die merely to give his brother a throne. Riots against conscription soared again, Napoleon was caricatured and detested, and courtiers considered moving their loyalties elsewhere. The vassal states were rebelling and Austria was growing braver.

He needed a huge army to subdue Spain, but he had no way of transporting supplies, as the roads were so poor over the Pyrenees. He did not care and forced his men to march. He managed to drag them to Madrid, but when he heard that the Austrians were re-arming, he immediately turned back. Even worse, news came by courier—and through spies to every ambassador in Europe—that Talleyrand and Fouché, formerly mortal rivals, had been seen in open discussion at the Tuileries. They declared they were debating a provisional government in case Napoleon died. In fact, they had plans to overthrow him.

Napoleon returned to the Tuileries and screamed public abuse at Talleyrand for three hours. “You are nothing but shit in a silk stocking!” he ranted. His minister did not reply. After the tirade, Talleyrand went to the Austrian ambassador and arranged to work for him—at a price of one million francs. Napoleon turned his attention to Fouché, saying that he wished to call up another half million men. Fouché warned him that this would be unwise. France was already at breaking point with a million men in the army—any more might push the people into a concerted riot against Napoleon.

The emperor finally recognized that his position was desperately insecure. He also had disappointing news from Russia. Grand Duchess Catherine was engaged to the Duke of Oldenburg. He resolved to retain his wife. “This year is an inopportune time to shock public opinion by repudiating the popular Empress. Already I am not loved. She is a link between me and many people, and she is responsible for attaching a part of Paris society to me which would then leave me.”[15]

AUSTRIA WAS INDEED convinced that Napoleon was weak, his army overextended and lacking support at home. In April 1809, the news reached Paris that Austria had invaded Bavaria, a kingdom he considered a vassal; Napoleon decided on immediate action. He tried to leave without Josephine, but she heard the sounds of departure and dashed down the steps in her nightgown, crying as she threw herself into his carriage. Napoleon did not have the heart to send her away. He put his coat over her shoulders and ordered her luggage to be sent on later. Her victory was a hollow one. He left her in the palace at Strasbourg and sent her curt letters from the front. Hortense came to stay and brought Louis Napoleon and the baby, Charles Louis Napoleon. But it was little consolation. Josephine’s only hope was that the emperor was too distracted by battle to divorce her. “I have only one passion, only one mistress—France,” Napoleon declared. “I sleep with her, she never lets me down, she pours out her blood and her treasure; if I need 500,000 men, she gives them to me.”[16] In reality, the French had fled his army—it was made up of men from the occupied states, the poor, and the desperate. The old morale and strength of purpose were gone.

The emperor had initial success and pushed on to Vienna. Once more, he moved into the Schönbrunn Palace and hoped for word from the tsar. The two sides met in battle at Essling, not far from Vienna, and the result was a stalemate. The French lost more than twenty thousand men, and although the Austrians suffered similar casualties, it seemed so much worse as Napoleon had been halted. The Austrians claimed it as a victory. The news of the failed battle reached Paris and the stock market plunged again. The French no longer believed themselves invincible. They knew that one more defeat would bring the whole house of cards tumbling down as conquered states gained the courage to expel the French armies that occupied them.

In June, Napoleon encouraged Josephine to travel to Plombières and then return to Malmaison. She lived quietly. He did not write to her often, and when he did, he sent no demands that she preside over court balls or visit the Opéra. She retreated to her flowers and plants and sank into despair.

Napoleon sent for reinforcements and, six weeks later, routed the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram. Fifty thousand men were killed. Napoleon returned to Schönbrunn the victor and set his ministers drafting a new treaty with Austria. Marie Walewska, ever dutiful, wrote to Napoleon after the victory and asked to join him. “Yes, come to Vienna,” he replied. “I would like to give you further proof of the tender friendship I feel for you.”[17] He meant to offer her more than friendship. As soon as she arrived, he began spending every afternoon with her. At the beginning of September, Marie was confirmed pregnant.

Josephine was doomed.

MARIE WAS THE first of Napoleon’s mistresses whom he was sure had been entirely faithful to him. Unlike Eléonore Denuelle, she truly loved him; there had been no gentlemen callers in his absences. Napoleon was now certain that he could father a child. Marie’s pregnancy secured his lasting affection for her and meant the end of her three-year period as his mistress. As he told Lucien, “Naturally I would prefer to have my mistress crowned, but I must be allied with sovereigns.”[18] He left Vienna resolved to divorce his wife and find a royal to marry.

Josephine was still at Malmaison when she received the news about Marie’s pregnancy. It seemed to her like an avalanche of bad news, for the British had also conquered Martinique, shedding much blood on the island she still loved. To her further distress, she heard that Pope Pius VII had been arrested for refusing to turn British ships away from the ports of Rome. In response, the pope had excommunicated the emperor and refused to give up his temporal power. Furious, Napoleon had him bundled roughly into a carriage and taken from the Vatican to a house arrest in northern Italy.

Josephine knew there was nothing to save her. Excommunicated, Napoleon would care even less about breaking the blessing of his marriage. Under French law, only the pope could annul a royal marriage, but Napoleon ignored the law. He needed a son to stay the ambitions of his family. More important, he no longer saw Josephine as his talisman. The good luck she brought had dissipated, and someone else might grant him more. Laure Junot went to visit the empress with her daughter, and Josephine confessed she “truly suffered” at the sight of the child. “I know I will be shamefully dismissed from the bed of the man who crowned me, but God is my witness that I love him more than my life and much more than the throne.”[19] She no doubt hoped that the well-connected Laure would pass on such information at court. But Napoleon was puffed up with pride at his mistress’s pregnancy and convinced that a new marriage could change his fortunes. He ordered his ambassador in St. Petersburg to ascertain whether fifteen-year-old Grand Duchess Anna, the youngest sister of the tsar, was physically ready to bear children. He wrote to the tsar, reiterating that Alexander could do as he wished with Poland, saying that the words “Poland” and “Polish” should be “obliterated not only from any transaction but from history itself.”[20] Poor Marie, who had given up everything for him, was told to go back to her husband, heavy with the emperor’s child.

If Grand Duchess Anna was deemed too young, Napoleon had a second choice. Metternich in Paris had been intimating the excellence of seventeen-year-old Marie Louise of Austria, daughter of Francis I. She spoke good French and was biddable, healthy, and ready for motherhood.

Napoleon wrote to Josephine saying that he was leaving Munich and would be at Fontainebleau on October 26 or 27, and she should meet him there.[21] Unfortunately, the courier didn’t reach her until the morning of the twenty-sixth, and when she arrived that evening, Napoleon was already waiting for her. She entered his study to greet him. He looked up briefly from his work and said, “Ah, here at last?” She then retired to her rooms, only to see that the door between her room and his had been sealed. The order, she was told, had come from the emperor himself.

Yet he was unable to make the final break. Over the next few weeks, he dined with Josephine, but only briefly; she found she could never speak to him because there was always a gloating Bonaparte sibling sitting between them. In the evenings, Pauline threw him parties full of beautiful Italian women, but she did not invite Josephine. “There was no more tenderness, no more consideration for my mother,” Hortense recalled. “He became unjust, he tormented her.”

In the old days Josephine had awaited with pleasure Napoleon’s nighttime tap on her salon door: his request for her to read to him, soothe him, or come to his bed. In November 1809, the thought of such a tap pitched her into violent palpitations, breathlessness, and dread. She could not bear “to hear the confirmation of what she most dreaded to learn.”[22] But still the emperor said nothing. He who barely batted an eyelid at conquering countries into submission, able to send hundreds of thousands of men to their death without a second thought, could not tell his wife he wished to divorce. Napoleon asked Hortense to tell her mother the marriage was over, explaining that it would “remove a heavy burden from my heart.”[23] She said she could not.

Josephine saw all around the evidence of her fate. The ladies of the court were openly dismissive, even daring to sit in her presence. The Bonapartes laughed in her face. Through it all, she behaved with dignity, holding tight to her last days as empress.

On November 27, the court moved from Fontainebleau to Paris. Napoleon sent a telegram to Eugène asking him to join them right away. There was urgent business he required completed before the end of the year.

CHAPTER 20

“Like a Wounded Soldier”

On the evening of Thursday, November 30, 1809, Josephine and Napoleon shared a miserable dinner. She struggled not to cry and could eat nothing. According to the Comte de Beausset, the palace prefect who was attending them, she looked the “image of sadness and despair.” Napoleon’s only words while they dined were “What time is it?” Before the comte had a chance to reply, the emperor rose from the table. Josephine followed him, her handkerchief over her mouth. The coffee arrived, and the tray was offered to Josephine, so she could perform her task of pouring it for her husband. Instead, he took the tray, poured the coffee into his cup, and added the sugar, staring all the time at his wife. She gazed back in horror. He drank down the coffee, handed the tray to the page, and dismissed the comte, shutting the door behind him. “I saw in the expression of his countenance what was passing in his mind, and I knew that my hour was come,” Josephine said.

He stepped up to me—he was trembling, and I shuddered; he took my hand, pressed it to his heart, and after gazing at me for a few moments in silence he uttered these fatal words: “Josephine! my dear Josephine! You know how I have loved you!… To you, to you alone, I owe the only moments of happiness I have tasted in this world. But, Josephine, my destiny is not to be controlled by my will. My dearest affections must yield to the interests of France.[1]

She fell into hysteria and began to cry out. The emperor opened the door, and the comte saw her lying on the floor in tears. “I seemed to lose my reason,” she later recalled. Napoleon told the comte he must help get Josephine to her chambers, alerting no one. The two men bundled the empress down the stairs, the comte stumbling over his sword, Napoleon too agitated to hold the candle still. In a state of nerves, almost weeping and breathless with emotion, he poured out his heart. The comte was a renowned gossip, so perhaps it was fortunate that Napoleon was near incoherent. “National welfare,” he panted, “violence to my heart … political necessity … took me by surprise … her daughter was to have prepared her” was all that the comte could make out from the torrent of emotion.

Josephine kept up the tears and hysteria all the way down the stairs, except for one moment. She put her head close to the comte and hissed, “You are holding me too tightly.” The pair finally dropped her, none too gently, on the bed, and Napoleon pulled the bell for her ladies to come. He then made a hasty exit. Josephine passed a night of despair and misery. The humiliation of the preceding days had been awful, the anticipation painful, but receiving the news was not a relief. “With what eyes do courtiers look upon a repudiated wife! I was in a state of vague uncertainty worse than death until the fatal day when he at length avowed to me what I had long before read in his looks!”[2]

Napoleon summoned Hortense and told her to go to her mother. “Nothing will make me go back on it, neither tears nor entreaties,” he cried. Hortense responded with the calm dignity that he had always esteemed. “You are the master, Sire. No one will oppose you. If your happiness requires it, that is enough. She will submit and we will all go away, taking the memory of your kindness with us.” Napoleon looked at her in shock. He could barely speak. “What! You are all going to leave me?” he cried. “You are going to desert me? Then you don’t care for me anymore?” He had not truly accepted that he might never see them again. “We cannot live near you anymore,” said Hortense with grace. “It is a sacrifice that has to be made and we will make it.”[3]

Eugène arrived and agreed with his sister. “We will all go away quietly,” he said. He told the weeping Napoleon that his first loyalty was to his mother. Devastated at the thought of losing all three, the emperor repined that Josephine should stay at court and even said the divorce should be stopped. Eugène disagreed, for “what was in his mind being known to us, the Empress could not live happily with him.” Napoleon then begged him to accept the kingdom of Italy, but Eugène refused—he did not wish to be rewarded for his mother’s despair.

“Alas! I had good reason to fear ever becoming an Empress!” Josephine cried.[4] The princely kings and vassals of Germany were arriving for a celebration of Napoleon’s Austrian victories. So every night, she had to smile at receptions and dinners attended by hundreds, regard military performances, and host the ladies at her court. But in order to prepare the ground for the divorce, Napoleon decreed that she must come to all official functions alone, so she attended the fifth anniversary of the coronation but did not travel to Paris with Napoleon or sit by his side in the cathedral. At the gala banquet that evening, the emperor was escorted by one of his sisters. Josephine walked alone to the dais and sat quickly, her legs almost collapsing beneath her.

Josephine was at her most dignified in her final weeks as empress. Napoleon was less so, often in tears, declaring himself the plaything of fate, cruelly treated by his destiny—and yet under all the hysteria, he was rational, always attempting to get the marriage certificate from her. Many were on her side, most of all the shopkeepers and fine tradesmen of Paris. Josephine’s wild spending had single-handedly supported many of the city’s luxury goods makers.

Napoleon wished the ceremony of the divorce to be a court occasion; all the courtiers jostled for an invitation and fretted over what to wear. Josephine feigned calm. The night before the ceremony, when many were openly ignoring her, she gave a polite bow to those who came up to acknowledge her. “I doubt,” wrote Pasquier, the future chancellor, “whether any woman could have acted with such perfect grace and tact.”

The night of the divorce ceremony was the grandest social occasion the court had seen in months. On December 14, everyone flocked to the throne room, resplendent in jewels and finery. The Bonapartes, as Hortense noted, “betrayed their joy by their air of satisfaction and triumph.”[5]

Josephine entered in a plain white gown, supported by Hortense. Napoleon was waiting for her, trembling so hard that his valet thought he might faint. The emperor proclaimed the divorce. “God only knows what this resolve has cost my heart,” he said. “But there is no sacrifice beyond my courage if it is in the best interests of France … I have only gratitude to express for the devotion and tenderness of my well-beloved wife. She has adorned thirteen years of my life, the memory thereof will remain forever engraved on my heart.” He wept as he pronounced that he would wish her to retain the privileges of empress.

It was Josephine’s turn to speak. All the eyes of the court were upon her. “With the permission of my dear and august husband, I proudly offer him the greatest proof of attachment and devotion ever given a husband on this earth.” She could not go on. Her words choked her, and for the first time her courage failed her. After a minute of silence, she handed the speech to one of her attendants to complete. He, too, was tearful as he read out her words: “The Emperor will always be my dearest love,” she had written. “I know how much this act, demanded by politics and wider interests, has crushed his heart.”

Napoleon, Josephine, and members of the family signed the record of proceedings. Then, in front of everyone, Napoleon kissed Josephine, took her by the hand, and led her to the apartments. Hortense battled to control her tears. Eugène fainted as soon as he left the throne room. He later referred to the time of the divorce as “the most dreadful moment of my life.”[6]

That night, her hair untidy, her face in distress, Josephine arrived in Napoleon’s bedroom. She fell on the bed, put her arms around him and caressed him. He pressed her to him. “Allons, dear Josephine. I will always be your friend.” They wept together, and then he prompted her to leave. She spent the night alone.

Now that the deed was done, Napoleon offered a generous settlement. He initially worried that her presence in Paris would be unsettling to the people and the court. But she was horrified when he asked her to consider living in Italy, and he did not force the matter. He said she would keep the title of empress, retain Malmaison, be given the Élysée Palace in Paris, and receive an allowance of three million francs in gold. He had thought carefully about her household: She was to have thirty-six attendants, including nine ladies-in-waiting, four ladies of the bedchamber, a doctor, and a knight of honor. He ordered her a Sèvres dinner service as a gift and gave her four thousand livres to “do as much planting as you like” at Malmaison.[7] He pored over the inventory of her belongings, including a fourteen-page description of her wardrobe—ten pages full of details of court dresses, notes about 280 pairs of shoes, even lists of her chemises and camisoles and nightgowns. He did not demand from her any of the gifts he had given her, most notably the art collection at Malmaison. Josephine kept her spoils of war.

As quitting lovers tend to do, Napoleon pretended to himself that things could stay the same. He fussed over her title and asked archivists to search the royal records for answers on how to treat a divorced empress—which, of course, no previous court had entertained. He made the decision that in all functions, Josephine would sit on the right of his throne and his new wife would be positioned on the left.

“I HAVE DRAWN out the path that I must follow and I will not stray from it,” Josephine wrote. “The arts and botany will be my occupations.”[8] Her departure from the Tuileries was a lengthy operation, packing her gowns, ornaments, books, pets, and other belongings into multiple carriages. On the morning after the ceremony, Napoleon came to embrace her and then hurried off, claiming he had to see to his duties. Accompanied by Hortense, the fallen empress was taken in the early-afternoon rain to Malmaison, with no emperor to see her go. Napoleon went straight to Versailles and shut himself away in the Grand Trianon. He tried to distract himself from grief by rehanging every painting. He was not so broken, however, to forget to demand Josephine’s marriage certificate. She declined to give it to him.

“We were sad and silent all the way to Malmaison,” recalled Hortense. “Her heart was heavy as she entered this place she loved so much.”[9] The next day, Josephine walked around the grounds in tears. Napoleon, in the Trianon, was equally despairing and finally could bear it no longer. He drove to Malmaison, where he and Josephine walked hand in hand in the rain. Careful to keep up appearances, as he did not want any spies reporting to foreign courts that he still had relations with his wife, he did not enter the house or embrace her but told her of his distress and described to her how lonely he was, dining on his own. That evening, he wrote to her, telling her to feel courage that he could not.

My dear, I found you today weaker than you ought to be. You have shown courage; it is necessary that you should keep it up and not subside into sadness. You must be contented and take special care of your health, which is so precious to me. If you are attached to me, and if you love me, you should show strength of mind and force yourself to be happy.[10]

However, he sent her letters about his unhappiness without her. Claire de Rémusat begged her husband to ask the emperor to “moderate his expressions of regret.” Josephine was crying so hard that her eyesight was troubled: Soon she could not bear any bright light and her vision was failing.

She kept Napoleon’s study exactly as it always was. She dusted it herself daily and showed her visitors everything, even the old armchair that he had cut with his penknife. She kept, as one put it, “a veritable cult of the Emperor” and would not allow so much as a chair to be moved. It was a shrine to him; everything was left as it had been when he was last there, right down to a book of history open at the page he had been reading.[11] His bed was there, his coat of arms hung on the walls, and items of his clothing were scattered around, just as if he were about to return. Josephine always wore full dress, in case Napoleon arrived.

She could not be consoled. “Sometimes it seems as if I am dead and all that remains is a sort of faint sensation of knowing that I no longer exist,” she wrote. Napoleon chastised her. “Savary tells me that you are always crying: that is not good,” he wrote. “I shall come to see you when you tell me you are reasonable, and that your courage has the upper hand.”[12] He was angry that the servants had seen her weeping. Malmaison, he wrote, “is full of our happy memories, which can and ought never to change, at least on my side.”[13] On Christmas Eve, he visited there, and on Christmas Day, he invited her, Hortense, and Eugène to dine with him at the Trianon.

On January 1, she called Madame de Metternich, wife of the diplomat, to meet her at Malmaison. Josephine suggested that only a marriage with an Austrian princess would make her sacrifice worthwhile. She hoped to prove to Napoleon that she only wished to help. He relented to her pleas to live at the Élysée Palace, where she would be nearer to him. Indeed, they were probably still intimate. Even in February, Napoleon was pondering a meeting with Josephine at the country house of a friend—a more private place for them to rendezvous than Malmaison. In the end, he decided they should not be under the same roof for the first year after the divorce.

On January 9, 1810, the religious marriage between Napoleon and Josephine was declared void, on the grounds that it had not been witnessed properly, the parish priest had not been present, and Napoleon’s full consent had not been obtained. The last was a provision in the law for young girls forced into marriage against their will, not a great general on the brink of crowning himself emperor of France, but Napoleon used it anyway. Though they were both free, the emperor still could not put aside his former wife. He noted that there were few other visitors at Malmaison and promptly went around his court, asking everyone if they had visited the empress. In response, carriages rumbled off, packed with courtiers eager to pay their respects to Josephine. Laure Junot visited and saw the drawing room, billiard room, and gallery thronged with people. To reach Josephine in her gallery, guests had to pass through an antechamber filled with thirty footmen and a salon of four valets with swords, as well as ladies and attendants.[14] Josephine herself was sitting by the fireplace, under a portrait of Napoleon. She wore a simple dress and a green hood that she drew over her face when she needed to hide her tears.

Napoleon might have been regularly popping over to see his former wife, but at court, he was fully engaged in pushing forward the matter of his second marriage. In early February, Napoleon’s ambassador in St. Petersburg wrote describing the prevarications of the tsar over giving his sister Anna to be the second empress. As he subtly hinted, the tsar was unlikely to come around. Realizing that a Russian wife was impossible, Napoleon hastily sent Eugène to the Austrian embassy to ask for the hand of the eighteen-year-old archduchess Marie Louise. Eugène, performing a task that weighed heavy on his soul, informed the ambassador that he must receive an immediate answer and the contract should be signed the following day. There was no time to consult Vienna. The ambassador had to accept. A jubilant Napoleon announced the news to the nation. He sent a missive to the tsar, informing him that he no longer required his sister’s hand. At the same time, the tsar wrote to Napoleon that Grand Duchess Anna was too young for marriage.

Marie Louise was given the shocking news: She was to be married to the man who had brutally attacked her country, who was divorced and twice her age. Only five years earlier, she had written in her diary how much she wished him to die. Like Marie Walewska, she was told to sacrifice herself for the good of the state. Her father ordered a splendid trousseau of clothes and jewels while fretting that the marriage was bigamous in the eyes of the Church, since the pope had not annulled Napoleon’s union with Josephine. Cardinal Fesch assured him that the pope was irrelevant and the decision of the French clerical authorities was sufficient.

Marie Louise had been prepared since childhood for a foreign marriage, and had been tutored in Spanish, English, Latin, Italian, and French, the language of the enemy. Although no great beauty, she was tall and fair and accomplished at painting landscapes and playing the piano and harp. She was also an enthusiastic reader, unlike Josephine. Spirited and not easily dominated, she had been brought up to hate the French people, who had executed her great-aunt Marie Antoinette. The archduchess rather resembled Marie Antoinette, thanks to her protruding Hapsburg lip, clear complexion, and fine golden hair, although she was taller and more robust. Her mother had died in 1807, when Marie Louise was fifteen, and her father soon married his cousin Maria Ludovika, only twenty-three herself. Marie Louise had been a much beloved, spoiled child—and now she was set to wed Napoleon, the bloodthirsty monster with a terrifying reputation. In Britain, Lord Castlereagh drily remarked that “a virgin must now and then be sacrificed to the Minotaur.”[15] The proxy marriage took place in Vienna, the banquets were thrown, and the archduchess departed for France.

NAPOLEON ORDERED A round of balls and receptions to celebrate his union with Marie Louise. Unfortunately, the public refused to play his game; the newspapers were still filled with articles about Josephine. “I told you to arrange that the journals do not speak of the Empress Josephine, but they do little else,” he railed at Fouché. “See to it that they do not repeat this new publicity.”[16] As he feared, the French populace had been disappointed by the news of his divorce. With the break from Josephine, it was to them as if the emperor had thrown his revolutionary past aside. He had claimed the glory of the Republic and now was divorcing to produce a hereditary line. Josephine was esteemed by the older generals and ministers who had participated in the Revolution, and the aristocrats and royalists saw her as their own. In a way, Marie Louise was Marie Antoinette all over again.

Josephine was beloved, but she was lonely. Napoleon refused to allow her to come to the balls and dances to celebrate the wedding. The dignitaries were too occupied to visit her, and Napoleon did not wish to do so. Every piece of news about the preparations for the archduchess’s arrival was a blow to her. All Paris seemed to be at the glittering receptions and dances—everyone except her. Napoleon even asked Hortense to be a lady-in-waiting to the new empress, a position she reluctantly accepted. One of Josephine’s few regular visitors, Hortense told her mother the details of the plans for the wedding.

Napoleon’s first marriage had been conducted speedily, during a break in composing military strategy, and had not been blessed until the night before the coronation. His second marriage, he decreed, would be very different. He demanded that it follow in exact detail the wedding of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in 1770, and he pored over the archives and the records to ensure that he missed none of the finer points. Spies told him that his fiancée was clumsy, her bosom too large, and her walk graceless. Her French was good but formal and she found small talk trying. She could not have been more unlike Josephine if she’d tried. Napoleon didn’t care.

The hardened fighter was behaving like a young man in love once more. He took waltzing lessons and had new clothes made, ordered a huge redecoration of the palaces, and devoted hours to Marie Louise’s trousseau. He had the contents laid out for him in the Tuileries and inspected court gowns, riding habits, ball dresses, shawls, shoes adorned with mink, diamond-encrusted fans, and the exquisite satin and ermine wedding dress. The Château de Compiègne, where Louis XVI had met Marie Antoinette, was chosen as the place for the first encounter between the emperor and archduchess, and Napoleon had it entirely redecorated. He studied the etiquette for the reception of Marie Louise with as much care as his battle plans, and sent his sister Caroline and a hundred attendants to meet the archduchess at Munich. Caroline was a disastrous choice: Marie Louise hated her for taking the throne of her aunt Maria Carolina of Naples, and Caroline detested the idea of her brother marrying at all. As the Bonapartes were finally realizing, their thirteen-year campaign against Josephine had not been in the family’s interest: If Napoleon produced a litter of children, they and their offspring would be thrust from the succession. They had underestimated Napoleon, hoping they might be able to marry him to a woman under their influence—and that he would struggle to have a child.

Marie Louise arrived in Munich to the icy greeting of her awful sister-in-law. Suffering from a bad cold, Marie was not in the mood to pander to Caroline, and the two proceeded together in ill humor. In 1770 Marie Antoinette had been met on an island in the middle of the Rhine, stripped of her Austrian clothes, and re-dressed in French gowns. She had given up all her belongings, even her beloved pug. Forty years later, Caroline oversaw the same ritual undressing and re-dressing of Marie Louise and also insisted that her dog be sent back. Poor Marie Louise felt nothing but dread for her impending marriage.

Napoleon, for his part, tried to please his bride, sending regular missives assuring her of his affection. “You will find a husband who wants your happiness above all else,” he told her, and then “Nothing now interests me but you.”[17]

The emperor told Josephine that she would have to leave Paris for a château in Navarre before Marie Louise arrived. “I trust that you will be pleased with what I have done for Navarre,” he wrote. “You must see how anxious I am to make myself agreeable to you. Get ready to take possession of Navarre, you will go there on 25 March, to pass the month of April.”[18] The archduchess was due to arrive on March 27. Josephine, hardly able to stand the thought of such exile, did not leave until the very last minute, after Napoleon had departed to meet his bride. She had to go without Hortense and Eugène, as both were due to attend the wedding.

Josephine and her ladies traveled to Navarre overnight. They arrived at nine to be greeted by the entire town, the mayor, and a gun salute. Josephine was heralded as the “Duchess of Navarre” (something of a demotion from empress). They were then escorted to the château. So ugly that it was known locally as “the cooking pot,” or la marmite, the two-story building was sturdy and lumpen, topped with lead, and unhappily situated at the bottom of the valley. Inside, the vast reception room was paved in marble and lit only by slits in the dome of the ceiling, so it was impossibly gloomy. The ceilings were so high that the rooms were hard to heat, and the doors and windows would not close properly. Without the rugs, drapes, and curtains of the Tuileries, hot-blooded Josephine was constantly cold, even though her staff hauled in huge loads of wood and twenty-one cauldrons of coal every day. She found the other rooms small, the woodwork rotting, and she was scandalized by the state of the grounds. The castle’s situation in the dip of the valley meant that it was surrounded by puddles of rainwater. The garden had been laid out in the Chinese style, with crisscrossing canals and streams topped by bridges and pagodas, but the waterways had been severely neglected and the ground was entirely waterlogged. The walls of the palace smelled of damp. As her new lady Madame Ducrest put it, the building had been “left a mere ruin.”[19] Josephine spent a hundred thousand francs on furnishings, but those obtained for her by one M. Pierlot were of poor quality—broken tables, torn armchairs, and tattered curtains.

She wrote to Napoleon begging for repairs and furniture. Her household was horrified by the château, and some demanded to leave, preferring to serve the new empress. Those who stayed found that the days passed so slowly, each seemed to last a lifetime. There was the occasional dinner for local dignitaries, but most evenings consisted of interminable games of patience or billiards, checkers with the elderly bishop of Evreux, or a little needlework while one of the chamberlains read aloud. Josephine could not give up her addiction to telling fortunes, and she and her ladies whiled away hours with the tarot cards, attempting to find better fates than the ones they had been handed.

As she sat in the chilly rooms of Navarre, ruing her fate but never uttering a word against Napoleon, Josephine did not contact Paul Barras or Hippolyte Charles or any other old friends—although Madame Ducrest suspected she had received Thérésa in secret at Malmaison. Her most recent admirer, Prince Frederick Louis of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, raised the possibility of marriage, but she refused. Poor Frederick Louis was forlorn, but there was no hope. Not only was Josephine still in love with Napoleon, she also dreaded having to live abroad and make a new start in her mid-forties. Perhaps she should have thrown caution to the winds. Although it would have been a comedown to the former empress to live with him in dreary Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the alternative was to remain in Navarre, listening to the tales of Marie Louise and her triumphs. Even worse, she heard rumors that Napoleon wished her to go into exile and never return to Paris.

“I have cried only occasionally for some time past,” she wrote to Hortense. “I hope that the quiet life I lead here, far from intrigue and gossip, will strengthen me and that my eyes will get well.”

While Josephine languished, the plans for Napoleon’s marriage sped ahead. On the evening of March 27, Napoleon arrived at the Château de Compiègne, counting the hours like the world’s most eager bridegroom (even though he had been with an Italian mistress until the night before). Unable to wait any longer, he catapulted off to meet Marie Louise while she was en route. He had his coachman flag down her carriage, then jumped in to embrace her. Unlike Louis XVI, who reported succinctly in his journal, “Meeting with Madame la Dauphine” regarding his encounter with Marie Antoinette at Compiègne in 1770, Napoleon was determined to celebrate his decision.

At the Tuileries, kings and queens, courtiers, little girls with bouquets, and assembled ladies had been waiting for hours. Napoleon pushed past them all and swept Marie Louise and Caroline upstairs, where he ordered supper for the three of them. He then demanded of his uncle Cardinal Fesch whether he and his new wife were properly married. Fesch told him they were married in a civil sense but not a religious one. That was enough for Napoleon; he bundled Marie Louise off to bed. He thought the evening had gone without a hitch—and for the bride, it was not as bad as she had expected. “She asked me to do it again,” Napoleon later said on St. Helena.[20] Next morning, Hortense found Marie Louise’s expression “sweet but a little embarrassed.”[21]

Nearly a week later, Napoleon and Marie Louise were married formally in a blaze of festivities in Paris. The pair drove into the city followed by thirty-two carriages of their household. The fountains were running with wine, and food was laid out at intervals across the route, but the people were not cheering wildly. Some spectators even mistook the fat little emperor, resplendent in feathers and lace, for Marie Louise’s governess. As for the future empress, she stared nervously at the people who had hated and murdered her great-aunt, with only a teenager’s idealistic hope to reassure her.

During the ceremony at the Tuileries, Hortense was to carry Marie Louise’s train, along with the dreaded Bonaparte sisters and Joseph’s wife, Julie, now the queen of Spain. Elisa, Caroline, and Pauline could hardly bear to hold the train and pretended to be ill. Marie Louise’s wedding dress suited her rather sturdy figure. “Once she is properly dressed and arranged, she will be perfectly all right,” Metternich decided. Others noted that the bride was taller than the groom.

The Austrian prince Schwarzenberg, who had been instrumental in the marriage negotiations, invited the court to a ball at his home. He erected a huge ballroom in his garden, but disastrously, when the evening was in full swing, gauze drapes caught fire from a candle, and the blaze spread through the ballroom. Napoleon and Marie Louise escaped, but other guests perished, including Schwarzenberg’s sister-in-law. Napoleon was terrified by the bad omen and was mollified only when his advisers declared that Schwarzenberg was the unlucky one. Not long after, the emperor had a piece of good news to console him. On May 10, Marie Walewska gave birth to a son, Alexandre Florian Joseph. Her husband, Count Walewski, agreed to acknowledge him as his child—accepting his responsibility for pushing his wife into Napoleon’s arms four years previously.

AFTER THE WEDDING, Napoleon reveled in his marriage and spent his days at hunts and his nights at balls and the opera, leaving his study papers untouched and even coming late to council meetings. He directed all his attention to pleasing his new bride. “I am not afraid of Napoleon, but I am beginning to think he is afraid of me,” Marie Louise told Metternich with some pride. The emperor was intimidated by real royalty. Marie Louise, unlike most of the court, was not fearful of him and spoke to him with the courage of a confident teenager. The new empress loved eating, and Napoleon arranged lengthy banquets to please her, with fourteen choices of dessert. His bolted meals were largely a thing of the past, as was the work that had made them necessary. He had no desire to go to Spain to command the army. He wished to be by Marie Louise’s side, and indeed, there was no other way for him to conceive his longed-for legitimate son. “The Emperor is very much taken with his wife,” reported Metternich, “and if the Empress continues to dominate him, she could render very great services to herself and to all of Europe. He is so evidently in love with her that his habits are subordinated to his wishes.”

After all, it was a long time—if ever—since Napoleon had been with a virgin. And yet he did not let her share his bed, as Josephine had. His excuse was that he could not bear her Germanic habit of sleeping with the windows open. In truth, he was afraid of ceding control. As he later said on St. Helena, he had been afraid she would demand to sleep with him in his bedroom, for it was the way for a woman to have power over a man. Moreover, her allowance was exactly half that of Josephine’s—300,000 francs to live on and 60,000 francs for charity. She was given some of Josephine’s jewels, but Napoleon kept many of them. She did receive Josephine’s incredible Maison Jacob jewel cabinet, after workmen had changed the locks.

Marie Louise, a pampered daughter of royalty, expected more protection from the emperor than he was willing to give. She was hauled out for propaganda reasons on her first imperial tour, forced to tour lands that once were the possession of Austria. They visited Belgium, Holland, and the Rhine, followed by dozens of coaches carrying kings, queens, viceroys, attendants, and courtiers, along with ladies-in-waiting, trunks of dresses, and boxes of gifts to be distributed. Austrian imperial progresses had never involved such pomp, and Marie Louise was miserable at the interminable audiences, cross about the weather, and suffering from headaches. Napoleon was impatient with her and fumed when she failed to please local dignitaries at receptions. Poor Marie Louise was shy and often glacial, unable to make small talk and unable to hide her boredom. On one occasion, when she went to launch a ship at Cherbourg, the minister of police wrote to the chief of her Imperial Guard escort, begging him to ensure that she would be punctual and would smile and be gentle with those who approached her. “For God’s sake, my friend, no ice,” he implored.[22]

Unlike Josephine, Marie Louise did not obey Napoleon when he railed. “Nearly two o’clock and the Emperor would not allow me to eat in the carriage! He said a woman should never have to eat. I was so angry and hungry that it gave me a fearful headache and so much bad humor that the Emperor was furious. I didn’t care. If I return in another world, I would certainly not remarry.”[23] The empress had reason to be hungry, tired, and suffering from headaches. By July, she was pregnant with Napoleon’s child.

Napoleon was thrilled by the pregnancy. Convinced he would have a son, he planned extensive celebrations and wrote down directives for the birth and christening, following exactly what had been done for the dauphin years ago. The news put the seal on Josephine’s downfall—despite all her hopes, there was no going back or living under the same roof. Marie Louise had succeeded in her duty. As Napoleon put it, “I have married a womb.” At last the decision that had caused him so much torment had proved itself the right one: He had been correct to divorce.

By this point Josephine had returned to Malmaison, after much pleading. She had written on April 19, thanking Napoleon for the permission to leave the cookpot castle after only three weeks there. “I feared I had been entirely banished from Your Majesty’s memory,” she said. “I see that I am not. I am therefore less wretched today and even as happy as it is possible henceforth for me to be.” She was all humility. “While I am at Malmaison, Your Majesty may be sure I will live as though I were a thousand leagues from Paris and Your Majesty will not be troubled in his great happiness by any expression of my own regrets.”[24]

She also promised not to remain long at Malmaison but to travel speedily to a spa. Though Napoleon encouraged her to remember that he was still her friend, his response was cool: “I have received your letter of 19 April; it is written in a bad style.” Now that Marie-Louise was pregnant, he was resistant to emotional blackmail. He encouraged her to remember that he was still her friend.[25] She wrote back humbly begging his pardon:

There was not a word which did not make me weep; but these tears were very pleasant ones. I have found my whole heart again—such as it will always be; there are affections which are life itself and which can only end with it. I was in despair that my letter of the 19th had displeased you; I do not remember the exact expressions but I know what torture I felt in writing it—grief at having no news of you.[26]

Josephine’s promise to live at Malmaison as if she were “a thousand leagues from Paris” was not truthful. She hankered after her old Paris life. She wished for invitations and balls and, most of all, Napoleon’s idea of him seated at court between both empresses. She asked to meet the new empress. Napoleon replied via Hortense that it would be impossible, telling her that “the Empress Marie Louise is alarmed by what she has heard of your mother’s attractions and the hold she is known to have over me.”[27] The new empress had wept when her husband drove her past Malmaison and proposed a visit.

Josephine was undeterred. She wished to befriend Marie Louise in an attempt to return to court. When Josephine sent a second request, Napoleon refused directly. “No, she thinks you are very old. If she sees you and your charms she would be worried, she would ask me to send you away and I would have to do it.” Marie Louise was predictably rude: “How can he want to see that old lady? And a woman of low birth!”[28]

Josephine left Malmaison and took the waters with Hortense at Aix. Hortense was newly free—her husband had abdicated his throne on July 1, largely because he no longer felt able to pursue the oppressive regime Napoleon expected, notably the ban on trade with Britain. He had left Hortense in power as regent for their eldest son, but after eight days, Napoleon declared Holland part of the French empire and removed his stepdaughter from the throne. She did not miss it. Separated from her husband, she traveled with her mother and spent time with her admirer, the Comte de Flahaut, a handsome soldier who may have been Talleyrand’s illegitimate child. In 1811 Hortense gave birth to his child in secret in Switzerland. Flahaut made her happy, flattering her and treating her like his personal goddess. It was a brief return to the days when she had just graduated from Madame Campan’s and was the jewel of Malmaison and the object of a thousand admiring glances.

Josephine left Aix to travel to Switzerland, where she was generously cheered and offered presents and tributes. Madame Ducrest went to visit her in Geneva, at l’Hôtel d’Angleterre, and saw her feted at the Festival of the Lake, where she was transported in a boat drawn by two swans to the sound of fireworks and cries of “Vive l’imperatrice!” Unfortunately, such a reception had to be rewarded with largesse: Josephine went next to the local factories, where, as Ducrest remarked, she spent hundreds of francs on souvenirs.[29]

“There is not the slightest doubt that the Empress has entered into the fourth month of her pregnancy, she is well and is very much attached to me,” Napoleon wrote to his former wife in September.[30] When Josephine was in Italy, Claire de Rémusat wrote that she should stay traveling around Europe, away from France. “You will not without grief listen to the sound of so much rejoicing, relegated as you may be to oblivion by the whole nation.” Claire mentioned “Marie Louise’s jealous disposition” and evoked a tableau of family life at the Tuileries from which Josephine would be excluded. “The Emperor will be caring for his young wife although still moved by his sentiments towards you …[He] asks of you one more sacrifice … Will you write the Emperor that the winter will be spent in Italy?”[31]

NAPOLEON, GLEEFUL AND addicted to grandeur as ever, announced that a son would be the king of Rome, a daughter the princess of Venice. He asked the indefatigable Fontaine to draw up plans for a huge palace for his son, as “the Palace of the King of Rome.” A suite of apartments in the Tuileries was lavishly decorated for the baby, furnished with silver and heavy furniture, as well as an extensive library.

Josephine had no desire to stay in Italy. Napoleon permitted her to return to France (although not Paris), and she arrived at Navarre on November 22. She was pleased to see how the gardens had been completely renovated and drained according to her plans, with new flowers brought over from Malmaison. She enjoyed having a second garden to cultivate, and grew plants almost as rare as those at Malmaison—as revealed in the Description des plantes rares cultivées à Malmaison et à Navarre (1812–17), illustrated by Redouté.

At Navarre, life was rather stiff and formal. Josephine had her lady of honor, Madame d’Arberg; various ladies-in-waiting, including Madame de Rémusat; an almoner, equerries, chamberlains, a reader, ushers, a doctor, and a secretary. She met merchants and representatives of charities in the morning and took a walk or an accompanied drive around the grounds after lunch. At dinner, people sat where they chose, and there was rarely an order of precedence in the carriages. But she was exasperated by the hierarchy of her servants—at meals the staff members were served on twenty-two different tables, since the cooks would not eat with the kitchen maids, nor would the servants who scrubbed the floors sit with those who lit the fires. Madame d’Arberg only managed to reduce the tables to sixteen.

Money was always a problem for Josephine. Napoleon was as impossible to please as ever, demanding that she keep up the style of an empress but not providing quite enough funds to do so. He wrote angrily that she should behave as if she were in the Tuileries. Her household gentlemen should not be allowed to wear frock coats; instead, they must display the court outfit of embroidered dress, swords, and feathers. She must always, he instructed, travel with an escort. He did allow her ladies free choice in their gowns, as long as they were green.

Josephine’s spirits had lifted a little after the first shock of Napoleon’s new marriage. The renovations to the house and gardens made life much more congenial. Madame Ducrest had put together a jovial household who stayed up late chatting and playing cards. The party ate late into the night, dining off Josephine’s Sèvres divorce present from Napoleon and a golden plate given by the city of Paris on the day of the coronation. On one occasion, the household decided to play dress-up, and Josephine gave them her feathery headdresses, cashmere shawls, and gowns covered in gold embroidery. She had become careless of imperial trappings and wore simple crepe dresses and caps or diadems of flowers rather than the weighty headdresses of the empress. She preferred informal gatherings and begged the inhabitants of Evreux not to celebrate her birthday (they ignored her and illuminated the town all the same). When the Navarre waterways iced over, Josephine ordered sledges from Paris for her staff, while others were pushed about in armchairs newly affixed with wheels—unfortunately, a wheel dropped off Mademoiselle Avrillion’s, and the poor woman broke her leg. On New Year’s Day 1811, rather than giving presents (the custom in the early nineteenth century was to exchange gifts on New Year’s Day rather than at Christmas), Josephine declared that she would hold a lottery for her jewels, giving away crosses, rings, brooches, and pins. Despite the informality, people were formal with her. As Madame d’Arberg said, “so few persons appear in their true character that Her Majesty is very partial to those who display any candour.”[32]

Eugène, too, welcomed the opportunity to throw off ceremony at Navarre. When he arrived for a visit, he begged not to be announced so he could dash in without any of the company rising. He won over all the ladies, and Madame Ducrest claimed it was “impossible to display greater amiability, instruction or good nature.”[33] One of their favorite occupations with him was to have a competition as to who could hook the most fish in the little rivers around the castle; they would then have the chefs fry them up for dinner. The visits of Hortense were rather sadder. Louis had begged Napoleon for a divorce, but the emperor had refused, so she was in the same position that Josephine had been in the years before the Terror—unwanted by her husband but unable to marry again.

Josephine dreaded the occasional journeys between Navarre and Paris, since Napoleon desired a true triumphal progress. She was so weary of it that on one occasion she told her ladies to dress humbly and tell everyone they encountered that the empress had passed incognito. She would then travel the next day. The ladies witnessed terrible disappointment in every town, for the burghers had all emerged in their costumes, the troops had been polishing their silver and shining their boots, and young girls had dressed up in white, holding nosegays in their hands, only to be told that the empress had already gone past and they had missed their chance of seeing her.

Still she was seen as a benefactor. “There is no danger of annoying or importuning Josephine when we enable her to relieve the distressed,” Madame de Rémusat said. Josephine received a steady stream of the poor and suffering. On one occasion, a musician came to Navarre and was so bad in his attempt at imitating a quartetto of different instruments that the ladies-in-waiting could not restrain their laughter. Josephine gave him food and money and gently reprimanded her ladies for mocking “a poor man who tried so hard to please me when he was dying with hunger.”[34]

ON MARCH 20, Josephine was dining with Madame d’Arberg, having sent her household to a dinner with the mayor of Evreux. She received an official dispatch and then heard the village bells ring out. A son had been born to Napoleon and Marie Louise. Briefly, pain spread across her features, and then she resumed her gracious manner and spoke of her pleasure at an event that gave her former husband such joy. She sent a courier with a message to congratulate her beloved Napoleon. Josephine’s household hurried back from the dinner to attend her. Torn between hope for the empire and allegiance to Josephine, Madame Ducrest wrote of “a violent emotion of anger when I recollected that the woman who held her place was completely happy.” Josephine was serene with her household. “I am well pleased to find that the painful sacrifice I made to France has proved of some advantage.”[35] She sent Napoleon a five-thousand-franc diamond pin and planned a great ball in celebration of the news.

MARIE LOUISE HAD begun to feel labor pains on the evening of March 19. The courtiers, Bonapartes, ministers, and grand officials had been waiting on standby, and the minute they heard the message from the empress’s lady-in-waiting, they donned their court dress and dashed to the appointed chamber.

At Marie Antoinette’s first accouchement in 1778, the room had been so full of dignitaries that, as Madame Campan said, “anyone might have fancied themselves in a place of public entertainment.”[36] The poor queen fitted and fainted before a doctor demanded that space be made for her and the courtiers open the shutters. After such a fiasco, Louis XVI had ordered that most of the court wait outside to protect the queen’s health. Other royal consorts had rebelled against giving birth in public—Queen Charlotte in Britain allowed only members of the cabinet and the archbishop to wait in the adjoining room. But Napoleon, as ever, wished to return to the high point of Versailles; everything was theater for him. Marie Louise’s labor was as crowded with spectators as a court jousting match. Doctors and nurses flittered among courtiers, all standing at attention. Hortense was there as Marie Louise’s lady-in-waiting, and Eugène had been summoned by Napoleon.

The labor was hard, and the emperor was shocked by what he saw. The man who could shrug off the horrors of the battlefield found his wife’s sufferings in childbirth unbearable and dashed from the room. The doctor told him that the baby was breech, and it was possible the infant might be saved only by killing the mother (he meant by an ad hoc cesarean section; so far no section had been performed in which both mother and child lived). Even though the whole point of the marriage had been to provide an heir, Napoleon did not hesitate. “Save the mother,” he said. “It is her right. We will have another child.”

Despite the difficulties, at 9:20 A.M. Marie Louise gave birth to a nine-pound boy. The doctors used forceps in the end, with Napoleon hiding in the bathroom, refusing to watch. After the birth, the child lay unmoving for seven minutes. The emperor gazed at his son, convinced he was dead. Finally, the child let out a noisy cry, and Napoleon took his son in his arms.

The Bonapartes were in an adjoining room, and Eugène watched with bitter satisfaction as Caroline and Elisa burst into despairing tears at their loss of influence when the news came that it was a boy. Outside, cannon fire was telling all Paris that Napoleon had a child. It was to be twenty-one rounds for a girl and one hundred for a boy. At the twenty-second, the people began dancing in the streets in the first spontaneous outpouring of enthusiasm for Napoleon since long before the coronation. Bonaparte watched his people celebrate with tears running down his cheeks.

“My son is fat and healthy,” he wrote to Josephine. “I trust he will continue to improve. He has my chest, my mouth and my eyes. I hope he will fulfill his destiny.”[37] Josephine pushed ahead with her plans for a huge ball at Navarre, ordering a re-laying of the floor and repainting of the rooms, as well as deliveries of ornaments, flowers, furniture, and food that kept the tradesmen of Navarre entirely afloat. Despite the extravagance, few would travel from Paris, and the guests were mainly the stolid burghers of Navarre. In a silver lamé dress and diadem of diamonds, Josephine greeted them as if they were the highest nobility. The burghers danced and ate until four in the morning, delighted by the unforgettable ball of the empress Josephine.

Again she begged Napoleon to return to Malmaison and sent Hortense to plead with him as well. He replied that he would offer her anything else. She could be governor of Rome or live in Brussels and hold a brilliant court. She was adamant; she wanted only Malmaison. Finally, he gave in and let her return to her adored house and garden.

But Malmaison was in the clutches of a financial crisis. Money had been embezzled from her accounts, and the son of the prince of Monaco, who was in charge of the stables, had sold off several horses far too cheaply. Napoleon was furious with her. “Consider how ill I must think of you, if I know that you, with 3 million francs a year, are in debt.” He told her to save as much as she spent every year. “Look after your affairs, and don’t give to everyone who wants to help himself.”[38]

He sent his treasurer to tell the empress that she must moderate her expenses and keep accurate accounts. Marie Louise, she was told, was skilled in economy and never went into debt. Josephine wept at the lecture, doubly pained to be reprimanded by an official rather than Napoleon. When the emperor heard that she had burst into tears, he was as moved as ever. “You mustn’t make her cry!” he said to the treasurer.

“I was annoyed with you about your debts,” he wrote to Josephine. “Nevertheless, never doubt my affection for you, and don’t worry any more about the present embarrassment.”[39]

She did attempt to curb her expenses. Her comptroller rented out some of her land, tried to reduce the excessive spending on plants, and attempted to claim some of her money from Martinique. But Josephine still spent wildly on clothes, hospitality, gifts, and bequests. When she discovered that one of her gentlemen, the flirtatious Monsieur de Pourtales, had been courting the naïve Mademoiselle de Castellane, she took the pair for a walk in the gardens. “You possess nothing but your name,” she said to Mademoiselle de Castellane, “M. de Pourtales is very rich; you cannot believe that he intends to marry you.” Confounded, Pourtales promptly announced that he would, and Josephine offered a dowry of a hundred thousand francs and the trousseau. She was very generous with her money and too old to change her ways. Napoleon had told her to set aside a million francs a year for her grandchildren. It was unlikely. She soon was in debt for over three million francs, despite her hefty allowance.[40]

“Tranquillity is such a sweet thing,” she wrote to Eugène. “Ambition is the only thing that can spoil it, and thank God I do not suffer from the disease.” She was attempting to put her son at ease, and she hoped he might tell Napoleon that she was content with her lot, though she still cried bitter tears over her loss. When Bourrienne came to visit her at Malmaison, she could barely speak. “I have drained my cup of despair. He has cast me off! Abandoned me! He conferred upon me the vain title of Empress only to render my fall the more marked.”[41] She also told Bourrienne:

You cannot imagine, my friend, all the miseries I have suffered since that awful day! I cannot imagine how I survived it. You cannot conceive the pain I endure on seeing descriptions of his fetes everywhere. And the first time he came to see me after his marriage, what a meeting was that! I shed so many tears!

She was spending more than ever in an attempt to dull her pain. She shrugged when she was told to avoid milliners, dressmakers, and jewelers. “I ought, indeed to be indifferent to it all, but it is a habit.”[42] She poured money into her home, and Malmaison was consequently at its most beautiful, a true château-musée. In June 1813, Josephine wrote again to Eugène from Malmaison: “The life I lead here is still the same, occupying myself only with my gallery and my plants.”[43] Her new gallery, built in the same year as the divorce, was, as Madame Ducrest said, “one of the finest sights imaginable,” and she had commissioned a proper catalog of her art collection. Foreign visitors would travel especially to see her paintings and sculptures.[44]

Josephine sent hundreds of letters pursuing the art she desired. Writing to Eugène’s minister, the general treasurer of the kingdom of Italy, she expressed thanks for advice he had offered on five paintings that he thought suitable for the gallery. “I will also buy the two paintings by Mme. Grimaldi,” she instructed.[45] “All that I desire now is the painting [by Titian] which was shown to me on the evening of my departure. Be so good as to find out the asking price for me.”[46] She busied herself launching the careers of lesser-known artists, suggesting to the directors of the yearly art exhibition in Paris, the Salon, that they display paintings by her favorite, M. Töpffer, “of whose work you have seen several examples at Malmaison.”[47] Josephine, as a divorced woman, was denied entry to the Salon. She commissioned from her beloved Canova The Dancer and Paris but refused to allow Paris to go to the exhibition. If she could not go, why should her artworks?

In 1812 Josephine asked Canova to create a sculpture of the Three Graces for her. Euphrosyne, Aglaea, and Thalia, the three daughters of Zeus, presided over banquets for the guests of the gods, representing beauty, charm, and joy. Josephine, commissioning such a sculpture in the evening of her life, surely was remembering her days with Thérésa and Juliette, the three graces of Paris, and the time of wonder when all was freedom and anything seemed possible.

Carved from a single slab of white marble, The Three Graces is a masterpiece of softness and beauty. On a visit to Canova’s studio in Rome, the Duke of Bedford spotted the sculpture and fell in love with it. He was told there was no possibility of having it, for it was to go to the empress herself. Bedford was not the first art collector to be disappointed. To the chagrin of many collectors across Europe, Josephine tended to come first.

MALMAISON WAS A wonderland of exotic animals, art, and plants, and it was expensive to maintain. Guests flocked there to sample the delights of the table, to peer at the menagerie, and most of all, to tour the works of art. It was the height of fashion to partake of Josephine’s fabulous dinners, with bananas and pineapples from her greenhouses and her homemade ice cream. Josephine had brought from Italy a special ice cream maker who created the exquisite raisin- and liqueur-flavored “glacé Malmaison.” Cheerfully ignoring the ban on trade with Britain, she had a British attendant who served up Cheshire cheese and English muffins, which were rare treats for the French.

For the children of Hortense and Eugène, Malmaison was a marvelous playground. As Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III, recalled, “I can still see the Empress Josephine in her salon on the ground floor, covering me with her caresses, and even flattering my vanity by the care with which she repeated my childish sayings.” For, he said, “my grandmother spoilt me in every sense of the word.” At Malmaison, “we—my brother and I—were at liberty to do just what we liked. The Empress, who was passionately fond of plants and conservatories, allowed us to cut the sugar canes to suck, and was always telling us to ask for whatever we wanted.”[48]

The sugar, the dinners, the muffins, and the ice cream had their effect on the empress—she was growing larger. Laure Junot recalled that “one special feature of her figure assumed really incredible proportions”; she was forced to wear boned corsets to keep her rapidly expanding bosom under control. “They say you are as fat as a good Normandy farmer’s wife,” Napoleon wrote cheerfully to her.[49]

Josephine’s chamberlain, Comte Turpin de Crissé, paid tribute to her hospitality, describing a court where “dignity, grace, wit, talents and good conversation made a seat of exile into a place of enchantment and a queen without a crown into a woman surrounded by real friends.”[50] The comte was slightly biased. There was gossip that Josephine relied on him emotionally and in 1810 took a holiday with him, accompanied by only a single equerry and one lady attendant. If there was an affair, it was short-lived. The comte married in 1813 with Josephine’s blessing.

ON JUNE 8, the baby king of Rome was christened at Notre-Dame. As Napoleon had planned, the ceremony was a version of the one that had been held for Louis, grand dauphin of France. Predictably, Napoleon seized the limelight, twice taking the child from the arms of Marie Louise and raising him aloft to show the public.

Josephine desired above all to touch the child who had cost her so many tears. Napoleon was very resistant, but he finally allowed her an hour with his son in secret. The little boy was taken to play at the summer palace of Bagatelle on the outskirts of Paris, and his governess, Madame de Montesquiou, allowed Josephine to hold him and kiss him. When Marie Louise got wind of the meeting, she was furious and made Napoleon promise never to permit it again.

Napoleon was happy at the Tuileries, eating desserts with his wife and playing with his son. He had taken up with mistresses again, and brought Marie Walewska and her son, little Alexandre, to Paris. But as he dressed up as a shopkeeper to visit her, presided over celebrations, and watched the king of Rome play with gilded rattles, the empire was crumbling. The emperor had become plump and self-satisfied, indeed more like a contented shopkeeper than the obsessive military genius who once was able to ride for ten hours straight. Massively overextended, his empire was impossible to govern and police, and the resentments in the vassal states were growing. Thanks to the rapacious behavior of the French armies, states began their subordination full of grievances and distress, and matters only grew worse, with high taxes levied to pay for the price of occupation and to support Napoleon’s vast expenditure at home. His extravagant behavior (and that of Josephine) generated pure hatred in many subject states, as the people struggled to pay taxes in order to keep him and his huge court in pampered luxury in Paris. The people were also shocked by his treatment of the Church; he seized Church property and closed many of the orders, leaving monks and nuns no choice but to beg on the streets. France was no less restive than the vassal states. Scarred and traumatized after the Terror, the people had believed Napoleon would bring peace to the nation. Now they could not see where his ambition would end. “Soon Europe will not be enough for him,” wrote one, “he will wish for Asia.”[51]

Across the empire, conscription was a source of widespread misery, increased to encompass men from twenty to sixty years of age. Towns became ghostly, with women forced to take on double the work because their men were gone. The price of bread was soaring, there was widespread misery due to the Continental Blockade, and the thought of losing more men was almost too much to bear. The conscription notices posted on street corners filled towns with despair, as people gathered to look for the names of their husbands and sons.

Napoleon, the sun of his own world, thought himself immune to complaints. “I have three hundred thousand men to spend,” he said. The tsar recently had begun trading with Britain, and Napoleon saw the act as one of aggression. Determined to seize a significant military victory, he grew set on the ludicrous idea of invading Russia. He called up more than six hundred thousand men from all over his dominions, from Italy to Poland, Denmark to Switzerland. Fat, sickly, and pale, his huge torso balanced on tiny legs, suffering from a hacking cough and bladder problems, he dressed up in ermine and medals, styled himself as a leader, and demanded their allegiance.

Before departing for Russia, Napoleon visited Josephine for over two hours. She begged Constant to look after him, surprising the valet with her “care for the man who had abandoned her.”[52] The emperor left for Dresden, accompanied by Eugène, three hundred carriages, and Marie Louise, his symbol of power and riches, his means of impressing his vassals. “I leave St.-Cloud and I go to Moscow, not out of inclination or to gratify myself, but out of dry calculation,” he said.[53] He lied: He yearned for glory.

In his usual vain fashion, Napoleon announced that he would conquer Russia in twenty days. But he and his men battled with the rough terrain. “My health is fine,” he wrote to Marie Louise, and “it is very hot.”[54] The heat of the plains was exhausting, and the troops quickly ran low on supplies. The Russian serfs had expected that Napoleon would liberate them, and when he did not, they actively tried to thwart him. As for the outnumbered Russian troops, they simply retreated and let the punishing landscape do their work for them. After two months, no battle had been fought, and 150,000 of the men had deserted, died of illness or heat exhaustion, or were too weakened to fight.

Napoleon pushed on. In September, the Russians and the French clashed at the village of Borodino. At the end, 44,000 Russians lay dead or wounded on the battlefield, and Napoleon lost around 30,000 of his troops, including many generals. He declared himself the victor, and on September 15, he entered Moscow. The inhabitants had fled, aside from those too infirm to leave and the criminals and foreigners forbidden to do so. As Napoleon entered, the governor of Moscow put torches to his house and distributed explosives to gangs of citizens to set the rest of the city alight, sending several to destroy the firefighting equipment. Napoleon occupied the Kremlin and gazed at “the mountains of red, rolling flames, like immense waves of the sea. Oh, it was the most grand, the most sublime, the most terrifying sight the world had ever seen!”[55] The fires eventually burned out. Certain the tsar would sue for peace, Napoleon wrote to Alexander demanding a treaty.

Alexander, squirreled away in St. Petersburg, did not reply. Napoleon sat in the Kremlin, dawdling over his meals, playing vingt-et-un with Eugène or trying to read novels to pass the dreary hours. For the first time in years, he was kept waiting. “I shall fight to the last man in my Empire,” pronounced Alexander. “Now it is Napoleon or me; we can no longer reign together.”[56] Really, there was no need to fight at all. As the tsar knew, Napoleon could not remain in Russia forever, for he had a restive population in France who required attention, and it was now too cold to march to St. Petersburg. Under a month after they arrived, as the heavy snows began to fall, the French slunk out of the city.

“We seemed to be marching in a world of ice,” recalled one soldier. Temperatures fell to well below minus twenty degrees. Thousands of horses slithered on the snow and perished and the soldiers fell and died where they lay. “The ravages of cold were equalled by those of hunger,” wrote one Württemberg soldier. No food was too rotten or disgusting to be eaten, and no dead horse, cat, or dog was left untouched. Soldiers would watch a comrade grow weak, counting the hours until he fell to the ground and died. Then they would steal his belongings and eat his flesh. Men even gnawed on their own bodies. “All human compassion vanished,” one soldier recalled. The men’s minds were addled by the cold; “dull despair and raving madness had taken possession of many and they died muttering, with their last breath, the most horrible imprecations against God and man.”[57] It was so cold that four hundred men might gather around a fire at night and three hundred would be dead in the morning. Those who did not die of hunger and despair were picked off by the Russian troops, who followed them through the countryside. French soldiers were impaled on stakes and thrown alive into cauldrons of boiling water. The peasants, brutalized and angry, tortured them by beating them with hammers and pushing stakes down their throats. Napoleon was unruffled. “Small change,” he said, poking with his foot at the corpses on the ground.

Bonaparte left his army on December 5 and hurried on ahead. He arrived at the Tuileries just after midnight on December 19, slipping through a back door. He immediately ordered a round of balls and receptions to celebrate his return, paying no attention to the devastating dispatch sent by General Berthier, “Sir, your army exists no more.” Out of the 600,000 men who had traveled to war, only 93,000 would stagger home. Many were not in a fit state to fight ever again and barely able to return to normal life. Two hundred thousand horses had died. Napoleon’s insane plan to invade Russia was, as Talleyrand put it, “the beginning of the end.”

General Caulaincourt, who accompanied Napoleon to France, said—only half in jest—that the Prussians should take Napoleon prisoner and give him to the British to display in London like an animal in a cage. “A man such as I does not concern himself about the lives of a million men,” Napoleon said.[58] The populace, by his estimation, needed to be forced to love him—just as he had always tried to force ladies to do the same.

He did not write to Josephine from Russia, and she spent the campaign in an agony of panic over her former husband and her son. Eugène, she knew, had been wounded, but there was little news of him. Marie Louise took pity on her rival and gave Hortense some of her letters from Napoleon to read so she could pass on details to her mother. To Josephine’s great joy, Eugène survived—and unlike nearly every other man who had been on the campaign, he remained loyal to the emperor.

The emperor went to visit Josephine on his return, but he did not invite her to the celebrations. Even if it had been appropriate, she was a reminder of the military success of better days, which he could not bear. The first campaign he had undertaken since his marriage to Marie Louise had been a terrible, scandalous failure.

Josephine sat alone in Malmaison. Everyone else of fashion in Paris, it seemed, had been forced to attend what were nicknamed “the wooden leg balls,” because so many of those present were missing a limb. Those who went to the Tuileries found it a bitter diversion. “In the midst of the general consternation, people were shocked to see the Emperor entertaining at the Tuileries,” wrote Major Raymond de Montesquiou, Duc de Fezensac. “I shall always remember one of those dismal balls, at which I felt I was dancing on graves.”[59]

CHAPTER 21

“More Full of Charm”

By the beginning of 1813, the corpulent empire and its even fatter emperor were in severe trouble. Prussia had joined with Russia against France, and a campaign in Spain had been a failure. “The Emperor was invincible no longer,” the Duc de Fezensac rued. The emperor was weary. “The late hours, the hardships of war, are not for me at my age,” he said. “I love my bed, my repose, more than anything, but I must finish my work.”[1]

Napoleon’s enemies were not only external. Joachim and Caroline Murat, eager to keep their throne at all costs, had signed a pact with Vienna. Joseph had failed to impose order on Spain. Unlike his turncoat siblings, Louis was still faithful to the man who had given him power and position. He wrote to Napoleon offering to return to France and stand by his side. “My husband is a good Frenchman, he has proved it by returning to France at the point when all of Europe has turned against it,” said Hortense.[2] She, too, despite everything that Napoleon had done to her, was still loyal to the emperor.

The allies could see chinks in Napoleon’s armor. On November 22, 1813, Eugène, who had survived the Russian campaign, was visited by an aide of the king of Bavaria, his father-in-law. He offered Eugène protection if he deserted Napoleon. Eugène refused. “It is not to be denied that the Emperor’s star is beginning to wane, but that is only another reason why those who have received so much from him should remain faithful.” He wrote to Napoleon to say he had told Bavaria that he would not “commit such a despicable act; that I would, until my final breath, remain true to the oath that I made to you.”[3]

The enemy troops were drawing near Paris. Josephine’s guards at Malmaison had fled, and she had only sixteen wounded soldiers to protect her. She refused to quit the city. On March 28, 1814, Hortense sent her a message that Marie Louise was about to flee. With Napoleon outside Paris attempting to repel the invaders, Marie Louise had been left as regent, and she had been refusing to leave. The young empress was told that she and the court must leave for Blois and that the emperor would not wish her or their son to be captured by the enemy. “I would prefer my son to be killed rather than see him brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince,” she said.[4] She reluctantly agreed to depart, “very angry … especially when the Parisians are showing such eagerness to defend themselves.”[5]

The following day, Josephine traveled to Navarre, her diamonds sewn into her petticoat. “I don’t know if it is possible to express how unhappy I am,” she wrote. “I have had courage in the many sad situations in which I have found myself; I can bear these reversals of fortune; but I do not know if I have enough strength to bear the absence of my children and the uncertainty of their fate.”[6] She did not have long to wait. Hortense and her children fled to her two days later with the news that Paris had surrendered. The emperor had been captured and was under house arrest at Fontainebleau.

In Paris, the Champs-Élysées was filled with bearded Cossacks dressed in blue trousers and tunics, squatting by the road as they mended their clothes or polished their weapons. They slept outside, their horses tethered to trees. Aside from a little looting, they behaved perfectly, and the citizens of Paris lined up to inspect their new visitors. Marie Louise begged her husband to let her join him in Fontainebleau, but, sunk into a depression, he wrote to her only to pay out a million francs each to his mother, Joseph, Jérôme, Pauline, Louis, and Elisa. Once they received the money, they hurried off. “No one loves you as much as your faithful Louise,” Marie tried again. When he would not direct her, she took matters into her own hands and set off to interview her father. She was soon seized and kept by the Austrians.

Josephine was heartbroken to hear the news that the emperor had signed an agreement of abdication on April 6. The long-exiled Louis XVIII would be king in his place. Her spies told her of Napoleon’s low spirits and inability to take action. “How I have suffered in the way in which they have treated the Emperor,” she wrote to her son. “What attacks in the newspapers, what ingratitude on the part of those upon whom he showered his favours! But there is nothing more to hope for. It is finished, he is abdicating.”[7]

IN MID-APRIL JOSEPHINE returned to Malmaison, and the tsar paid a visit the following day. Hortense arrived and was shocked to see the courtyard full of Cossack soldiers and attendants. They told her that Josephine was out walking with the tsar of Russia. Hortense met them and was introduced, but she was cold with the tsar until Josephine reminded her of their precarious position. After the visit, the tsar wrote a warm letter and asked to come again. Josephine was unwilling, but Napoleon advised her to receive Alexander, for “the future of your children depends upon it.” Josephine ordered new gowns and set her household to polishing the furniture and arranging flowers.

She did everything she could to try and please the tsar. On taking tea with her, he pointed to a cup bearing her portrait and asked if he could have it. She told him that he could buy a similar cup anywhere and instead gave him a large antique cameo—showing Alexander the Great and Philip of Macedonia—that had been a gift from Pius VII on her coronation. “I wish to give you something which is not to be found anywhere else and which sometimes will make you think of me.”[8]

The tsar set the trend; soon all the allied leaders desired to come to Malmaison, taste the ice cream, see the orangutan, and gaze at the stupendous art collection. Josephine had become a trophy, just as Cleopatra had been for the Romans. She smiled graciously as she was treated like a spoil of war, but her heart was breaking. “I cannot be reconciled to Bonaparte’s fate,” she wrote to Hortense. He had been a brutal killer, a ruthless dispatcher of soldiers and civilians alike, but to her he was her husband, her man of bravery and skill. Her future as a captive prize of the allies was hardly appealing. “At times I have fits of melancholy enough to kill me,” she said.[9]

On April 16, 1814, Napoleon wrote the last existing letter to Josephine while he waited to be sent abroad. “In my retirement, I shall substitute the pen for the sword,” he told her, saying he would tell the truth about his reign. “I have showered benefits on thousands of wretches! What did they do in the end for me? They have betrayed me. Yes all of them except our dear Eugène, so worthy of you and me,” he lamented. “Adieu, my dear Josephine. Resign yourself as I am doing and never forget one who has never forgotten and will never forget you. P.S. I expect to hear from you when I reach Elba. I am far from being in good health.”[10] On April 20, he left Fontainebleau, accompanied by fourteen carriages and an escort of Polish soldiers. Josephine could hardly bear the news that her husband had been bundled off to the obscure island of Elba, twelve miles off the Tuscan coast. He had lied about his supporters: Marie Walewska had rushed to Elba, along with his mother and Pauline, and Marie Louise had tried desperately to attend him. But he thought only of Josephine.

On May 3, Louis XVIII entered Paris and was declared king—after years of living in exile, he was fat, fifty-nine, and delighted to be back in the capital. Louis-Philippe Crépin produced a painting of the king “lifting France from its ruins.” Josephine’s world had nearly disappeared. She still entertained the tsar, always dressed in her finery as she accompanied him past the shrubs from St. Lucia and the flowers from Syria and into the greenhouse that pleased him so well. On May 14, 1814, she caught a cold while out walking with Alexander. On May 23, she received the king of Prussia and the grand duke Constantine, even though she felt weak. “She seemed to me to have a mere cold and her health was usually so good that I was not at all concerned,” Hortense remembered.[11] Josephine’s doctor was equally sanguine, and she herself refused to be cowed and hosted dinner and a small ball on the twenty-fifth for the Russian grand dukes, opening the dancing with the tsar. She then insisted on walking around the grounds with him, wandering past the beautiful plants in the moonlight. By the end of the evening, her fever was high, she had a rash, and she felt very unwell.

Hortense fussed around her with mustard plasters, but nothing worked. On the twenty-seventh, the tsar sent his own doctor to attend her. Josephine greeted him politely and with dignity. “I hope his interest will bring me luck,” she said. The tsar—who seemed to have little else to do in Paris other than visit Malmaison—was due again on the twenty-eighth for dinner. Josephine oversaw the preparations from her bed, to the despair of her doctor, who wished her to rest. He came out of Josephine’s chamber to tell Hortense that her mother was very ill.

On the twenty-eighth, the tsar came to see her, but she was too frail to receive guests and unable to speak. She was struggling to breathe, dropping in and out of consciousness, and in great pain. The doctors agreed that there was little hope. Josephine sent away all those who came to console her. Worried that she might infect her family, she even begged Hortense to leave. Her daughter remained outside and heard from the lady-in-waiting that Josephine occasionally uttered words in her delirium: “Bonaparte … island of Elba … King of Rome.”[12] Next morning, the former empress, always aware of the need to appear grand, asked her attendants to dress her in a pink satin morning gown with matching ribbons, and put on her jewels in case the tsar came to visit. At eight o’clock, Hortense and Eugène went to wish her goodbye.

“When she saw us, she held out her arms with great emotion and uttered something we could not understand.” Splendid in her pink gown and her rubies, she received the last rites at eleven A.M. At noon, the empress, Napoleon’s “little Creole,” died one month short of her fifty-first birthday.

The cause of death was probably pneumonia. But in simple terms, she no longer wished to live. Without Napoleon, reduced to the trophy of the allies, she could see little estimable in her future. Her maid Mademoiselle Avrillion said “she died of grief.” She had not the spirit to live under occupation. “What fine tact, what kindness and moderation, she possessed,” said Madame du Cayla, the youthful favorite of Louis XVIII. “Her very dying, just now, is a proof of her good taste.”[13]

Napoleon received the news of Josephine’s death from a newspaper. In shock, he hid himself away in a dark room and refused all food. “No woman was ever loved with more devotion, ardour and tenderness,” he wrote, “only death could break a union formed by sympathy, love and true feeling.”[14]

JOSEPHINE LAY IN state in the foyer of Malmaison for three days in her coffin of lead and mahogany. Twenty thousand members of the public attended to see the great empress. Her beautiful, seductive eyes were closed and her mouth was touched by a smile. The bells of the nearby parishes tolled throughout the day. The capital had rejoiced to be liberated from Napoleon, but they mourned his empress. Some said she had been poisoned, and the puppet king, Louis XVIII, put out an announcement praising her to quell unrest.

The news of the death of Mme. de Beauharnais has provoked general sadness. This woman was born with sweetness and something genuinely good in her manner and in her spirit. Sadly, during the terrible times of the rule of her husband she was forced to take refuge against his brutalities in her love of horticulture … She alone amongst the milieu of this Corsican upstart spoke the language of the French and understood their hearts.

On Thursday, June 2, Josephine’s coffin was taken to the church at Rueil, followed by local representatives and Imperial Guards. Behind them walked a lone footman carrying a silver casket on a cushion. Inside was the empress’s heart. The pallbearers were Alexandre de Beauharnais’s brother, François, and his uncle Claude, the Grand Duke of Baden, and Comte de Tascher, Josephine’s cousin. Eugène, Hortense, and their children walked behind the coffin. Behind them followed a long procession of courtiers and dignitaries of the imperial regime, diplomats, and friends. Thousands of people watched and cried as the empress passed by. The church, entirely draped in black, was so full that only those with invitations could attend. The rest remained outside, weeping for their old empire, their revolutionary past, and the woman herself.

In 1815, when Napoleon returned to France in an attempt to recapture his lost empire, he hurried to Malmaison and pressed those who were with her in her final hours to tell him of her words. “I still seem to see her walking along the paths and collecting the flowers that she loved so much,” he said, wandering the gardens. “Poor Josephine! She was truly more full of charm than any other person I have ever known. She was a woman in the fullest meaning of the word: capricious and alive, and with the best of hearts.”

Epilogue

If Josephine had lived longer, she would have seen Napoleon return home, perhaps restored to her arms. “She had her failings of course,” he said, “but she at least would never have abandoned me.”[1] Marie Louise, once so devoted, quickly forgot her husband. In the summer of 1814, she went to take the waters at Aix-les-Bains, and Metternich ensured that she was escorted by Albrecht von Neipperg, a seducer extraordinaire. She fell in love with him and eventually bore him three children. She sent Napoleon a formal greeting for the New Year of 1815 and never wrote to him again.

By the winter of 1814, Napoleon was planning to attack the allies. Disappointed that the restoration of Louis XVIII had made little impact on their day-to-day lives (they felt poorer, not richer), people were beginning to remember the emperor with fondness, and they resented the allied troops. Divisions among the allies only encouraged Napoleon to launch an attack. “You were not made to die on this island,” said Letizia. On February 26, 1815, Napoleon set off with 650 men of the guard, 100 Polish soldiers, and further volunteers. The European ministers had been in Vienna, discussing how to carve up the Napoleonic empire when they heard the unbelievable news: The former emperor had landed in France. On the night of March 19, Louis XVIII fled the Tuileries. Napoleon settled into his old home and even called Fouché back as minister of police (a mistake, as he was in the pay of the allies). The ever loyal Marie Walewska returned, too. But outside Paris, his enemies were coming together. Napoleon decided on a preemptive strike and hurried to Belgium.

On June 15, the Duchess of Richmond threw a lavish ball for the allies in Brussels. As the people danced, the news came through that Napoleon was advancing. The men left to fight, still in evening dress. Three days later, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and fled toward Paris. On June 22, he abdicated in favor of his son and moved to Malmaison, where Hortense performed the honors of the table. “I will go to Malmaison: I can live there in retirement with some friends, who most certainly will come to see me only for my own sake,” he said.[2] Marie Walewska and her son came to visit him, along with other mistresses, including Madame Duchâtel, and his nine-year-old son by Eléonore Denuelle, Charles, Comte Léon. Napoleon wandered Malmaison in a state of depression, remembering his Josephine.

King Louis XVIII, restored once more by the allies, cheerfully said that Napoleon had been a good tenant and kept the Tuileries looking well. They all thought that would be the emperor’s only legacy. As he would not be allowed to stay in France, Napoleon asked for exile in Britain, believing that the British principle of fair play would mean humane treatment. When he arrived at Torbay, crowds of sightseers came to catch a glimpse of him. The prince regent, the prime minister, and the secretary of state for war claimed him as a prisoner of war and informed him that he would be sent to St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, between Africa and South America, a very long way from anywhere. He was told he could take three officers and twelve soldiers and would be treated as a general on half pay. “I am not a prisoner but the guest of England,” he complained, to no avail. To be placed for life on an island within the tropics, cut off from all communication with the world was, he thought, quite “horrible.” He declared he would have preferred the Tower of London.[3]

Napoleon was put under virtual house arrest on St. Helena and amused himself with math puzzles, gardening, and dictating his memoirs. The hero for whom, as Bourrienne said, “all Europe was too small,” and who had exhausted himself with his victories, now had years of rest.[4] He could not bear it. By March 1821, he was severely unwell, and in April his condition deteriorated. In delirium, he cried that he saw the empress:

I have just seen my good Josephine but she would not embrace me. She disappeared at the moment when I was about to take her in my arms. She was seated there. It seemed to me that I had seen her yesterday evening. She is not changed. She is still the same, full of devotion to me. She told me that we were about to see each other again, never more to part. Do you see her?[5]

Ten days later, on May 5, he died, uttering his last words: “France, armée, tête d’armée, Josephine.” At the very end, he thought of his empress.

AFTER THE DEATH of their mother, Hortense and Eugène were orphans. “My courage is gone!” Hortense said. “Alexander will soon forget the promised protection, and then I shall have to struggle alone with my two children against the hostilities people will heap on me for the sake of the name I bear.”[6] But Tsar Alexander did remember his pledge and pressed Louis XVIII to make her Duchess of Saint-Leu. When Napoleon returned in 1815, she supported him and thus was banished from France when he was finally defeated. She traveled in Germany and Italy before purchasing a château in Switzerland. Her relationship with the Comte de Flahaut continued until after Napoleon’s brief restoration, but then the comte moved to Britain and in 1817 married Margaret Elphinstone, daughter of Napoleon’s mortal enemy Admiral Lord Keith and a friend of Princess Charlotte, then heir to the British throne. Hortense and Flahaut’s son, Charles Auguste, was sent to live with his paternal grandmother. The little boy grew up to be a prosperous Paris businessman, earning a huge fortune from sugar-beet factories. Hortense lived in her Swiss château with her third son, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Her second son died in his brother’s arms in 1831 at the age of twenty-seven, of what seems to have been measles. Hortense died in 1837 at fifty-four, worn out by grief. She was buried next to Josephine in the Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul Church in Rueil.

Still, Hortense won in the end. Her third son, Charles Louis, became Napoleon III in April 1852. In 1853 he married Eugénie de Montijo, a pretty Spanish-born aristocrat, after seeing her at a ball. When he was overthrown after the failure of the Franco-Prussian War, they took refuge in Chislehurst in Kent. She died almost forty years after her husband, in 1920, after witnessing the world change in ways that Josephine never could have imagined.

EUGÈNE CONTINUED AS sensible and stoic as ever. After the fall of Napoleon, he retired to Munich and obeyed the strictures of his father-in-law, Maximilian of Bavaria, to keep out of French politics—although all his surviving children, except his second daughter, bore the middle name of Napoleon (with a second “E” for the females). Astonishingly, he succeeded in gaining seven hundred thousand francs from the Bourbons as compensation for his mother’s seized property. His six children (he lost one daughter, Caroline, in infancy) made auspicious marriages. His eldest daughter, Josephine, became queen consort to Oscar I of Sweden, the son of Désirée Clary and General Bernadotte. Josephine, like her grandmother, loved gardening, was a patroness of art, and always worked hard to promote her husband’s politics. Out of all the marriages, the most magnificent was that of his third daughter, Amelia, who became empress of Brazil. Her husband was so struck by her appearance that he apparently collapsed with emotion when he first saw her as her boat docked in Rio. Like her grandmother, she was renowned for her elegance, her gentle behavior at court, and her skill at hosting social events, a reputation that remained until her husband’s abdication in 1831. Eugène’s youngest son, Maximilian, married the eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas I, Grand Duchess Maria (in the end, someone managed to seize a grand duchess). Eugène died in 1824 at the age of forty-two. Many royal households in Europe count themselves as his descendants.

Thérésa (Tallien) retired to Prince de Chimay’s estates in the Netherlands, where she lived until 1835, leaving behind ten children fathered by four men—her first husband, Tallien, the banker Ouvrard, and Chimay. Jean Lambert Tallien fell into poverty and finally had to accept a pension of a hundred sous a month from Louis XVIII. He died of leprosy in 1820.

The free-spirited La Grassini became mistress to the Duke of Wellington in Paris, much to the shock of the newspapers. Pauline Fourès lived contentedly, surrounded by exotic birds in the home Napoleon bought for her in Paris. She wrote novels, of which the most successful was perhaps Lord Wentworth, and died in 1869. Marie Walewska remarried in 1816 but died the following year, shortly after the birth of a son. Alexandre, her son with Napoleon, became Napoleon III’s ambassador to Britain. At a London reception, a lady guest enthused about his striking resemblance to his “distinguished father.” “I had no idea, Madame,” he replied, “that you were acquainted with the late Count Walewski.”

Napoleon’s family took up occupation in Italy, welcomed by the Grand Duke of Florence and Pope Pius in Rome, still alive and willing to forgive the Bonapartes their slights. Italy had been thoroughly and cruelly conquered by the Bonapartes, its artworks and palaces looted, but their people provided refuge for the family. Letizia had returned with Napoleon to France from Elba, but he had forbidden her to accompany him to St. Helena. She died in Rome in 1836. Pauline died of consumption in Florence in 1825 at the age of forty-five. Elisa died in Trieste in 1820 at the age of forty-three. Her death particularly affected Napoleon on St. Helena; he cried that she had “shown me the way.”[7] Louis died alone in 1846 in Livorno. Caroline was arrested by the Austrians after a failed attempt to regain the Neapolitan throne. Freed, she lived with Elisa in Trieste, married a British general, and died in Italy of cancer in 1839. She was the only Bonaparte family member to attend the funeral of Hortense at Rueil, a token of respect to a school friend she had done so much to undermine and destroy.

Lucien and Joseph changed their loyalties and became preoccupied with installing Hortense’s second son on the throne as Napoleon II. His death in 1831 put an end to their hopes. Lucien turned to writing bad novels and died in Viterbo, Italy, in 1840, and Joseph died in 1844 at the grand age of seventy-six after a spell in New York and New Jersey, living off the proceeds of the stolen Spanish crown jewels. The luckiest of all was Jérôme, Napoleon’s least favorite sibling. He fought at Waterloo and lived long enough to see the ascent of Napoleon III, and thus received the rank of a French prince. He died in 1860 in a château in Villegenis and was buried in Les Invalides—the only Bonaparte to die in France.

Cardinal Fesch, who had fallen out with Napoleon for taking the side of the pope, retired to Rome after Waterloo and remained there until he died in 1839. He kept intact his incredible collection of around sixteen thousand pictures, much of it looted from the Italian campaign.[8] He left more than a thousand pieces to the Bonaparte hometown of Ajaccio on Corsica, including works by Botticelli, Bellini, and Titian. Some he left in Lyon, and the rest were sold in Rome after his death. They now hang in museums and private homes all over the world. Five paintings are in the Wallace Collection in London, including two Greuzes; and several works, including Michelangelo’s The Entombment and Raphael’s Mond Crucifixion, are in London’s National Gallery.

Napoleon’s much desired son, the “king of Rome,” lived a miserable existence as the captive of his grandfather in Vienna. On April 21, just before he died on St. Helena, Napoleon wrote him a lengthy letter. “My son should not think of avenging my death. He should profit from it,” he announced. “Let my son bring into blossom all I have sown.” He was quite sure that the Bourbons would fall after his death, and he saw the little king building an empire. “He ought to establish institutions which shall efface all traces of the feudal law, secure the dignity of men,” he wrote. “He should propagate, in all those countries now uncivilised and barbarous, the benefits of Christianity and civilisation.”[9] It was not to be. The king of Rome died of tuberculosis in Vienna at the age of twenty-one.

WHEN JOSEPHINE DIED, Eugène inherited Malmaison and sold the Hesse-Kassel paintings to the tsar in 1815. In 1819 he ordered a huge house sale. Interested parties could buy antique busts and statues, Etruscan vases, granite columns, boxes, dresses, shawls, lace, collars and feathers, objets d’art, tables, and even two mummies, one male and one female. The buyers spilled in to purchase a little of the empress’s greatness. Josephine’s treasures were dispersed across the world, her flower paintings lost, her fine furnishings broken and burned. Occasionally, her belongings come up at auction and sell for huge sums. The tsar snapped up many of her paintings and sculptures, with most now in the Hermitage, although some of the paintings have disappeared.[10]

Josephine died before she could see the sculpture of the Three Graces she had commissioned from Canova. The Duke of Bedford, who had desired it on display in the studio, immediately demanded it. The tsar also wished to own it. Luckily, Eugène claimed it for France. The Three Graces remained in Eugène’s possession until his son Maximilian, by then married to the grand duchess Maria, took it to the Hermitage. The Duke of Bedford had Canova make a copy—something that Josephine never would have allowed—and it was installed at Woburn Abbey in 1819. It is this version that is alternately displayed in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the National Galleries of Scotland.

OVER THE YEARS, Malmaison and its fine gardens fell into decline. All the furniture was stripped from the house and sold at auction. The roses were trampled, the remaining animals killed or sold off to homes that did not love them so well. In 1828, after Eugène’s death, his widow sold Malmaison to a Swedish banker, Jonas Hagerman. In 1842 Queen Christina of Sweden took over the house and used it as a country residence. In 1861 Napoleon III, who had such fond memories of nibbling sugarcane in the gardens, demanded that she sell the house to him. He opened it as a museum to coincide with the 1867 World’s Fair. The house and gardens were damaged in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and the state sold it in 1877 to an estate agent who parceled off the land.

In 1896 a philanthropist, Daniel Iffla, bought the château and some of the land and donated it to France in 1904. A new museum was opened there in 1906.

Malmaison is a story of grandeur and neglect in one, a reminder of power and how quickly it fades. The rolling estates have been eaten into by the expansion of Paris. For long years Josephine’s picture gallery echoed emptily; once more, it is visited and enjoyed. If you walk into the gallery and look out onto the rose gardens, you might imagine yourself a guest at one of Josephine’s parties, watching as she walks toward you over the grass in her long white gown.

JOSEPHINE LIVED AN incredible life, rising from a humble childhood in Martinique to great power and glory. She experienced the highs and lows of rule and the pains of exile. Her tastes set the trends for art, fashion, gardening, and decoration, and her manner as a consort became seen as the ideal, with Empress Eugénie imitating her, much to the delight of the people.

Most of all, Napoleon and Josephine’s romance is celebratated as one for the ages, a coup de foudre both mysterious and passionate. Although they were married only fourteen years, they shaped each other’s legacies, and theirs is one of the great love stories of history. Napoleon needed Josephine to spin him from general to politician, to smooth his way, to charm his opposition. She threw in her lot with him, gambling that he would lift himself beyond mere military glory. She won her bet, and yet it came at a price. Marriage to him was exhausting, and she had to pretend she was someone she was not for much of her life.

This year, 2014, marks the two hundredth anniversary of Josephine’s death. Her life in many ways reveals the miseries that come with having power; yet we are still entranced by the story of the woman who captured the emperor’s heart. Napoleon never stopped thinking of her, surrounding himself with pictures of her at St. Helena (and eating off plates bearing her face). She has exercised a similar power over future generations, the empress whom France never forgot.

In 1811 Josephine wrote to Hortense saying that she had been entertaining her grandsons and had asked Louis Napoleon, the future Napoleon III, “who I resembled.” He replied that she “looked like the loveliest woman in Paris.” As she told Hortense, it was an “answer that shows he sees me more with his heart than with his eyes.”[11] This, to me, is the key to her appeal: flawed, vulnerable, engaging, powerful—a woman to be seen with the heart rather than the eyes.

Empress Josephine in Her Coronation Robes, by François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard, 1807–08 (illustration credit i1.1)

Josephine’s home, La Pagerie, as it is now (illustration credit i1.2)

Alexandre de Beauharnais (illustration credit i1.3)

Eugène de Beauharnais, Josephine’s only son. Napoleon made him viceroy of Italy. (illustration credit i1.4)

Hortense as a child (illustration credit i1.5)

Josephine visits her husband, Alexandre, at the prison in Luxembourg in 1794. Jean-Louis Victor Viger du Vigneau, 1867. (illustration credit i1.6)

A letter from Napoleon to Josephine (illustration credit i1.7)

Madame Thérésa Tallien. The glamorous heroine of the end of the Terror had three husbands, and ten children by various lovers. (illustration credit i1.8)

Paul Barras—handsome, rich, debauched, and ruthless. By Louis Blanc. (illustration credit i1.9)

Ci-devant Occupations! or Madame Tallien and the Empress Josephine Dancing Naked Before Barras in the Winter of 1797, by James Gillray, 1805. Both ladies, the cartoon declares, were Barras’s “humble dependents.” (illustration credit i1.10)

The first known portrait of Napoleon, by Andrea Appiani, 1797. He is twenty-eight. (illustration credit i1.11)

The Three Graces, by Antonio Canova, 1814 (illustration credit i1.12)

General Bonaparte at the Bridge of Arcole, by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, c. 1801 (illustration credit i1.13)

Empress Josephine, by Robert Lefèvre, 1806 (illustration credit i1.14)

The house at Malmaison (illustration credit i1.15)

View of the Wooden Bridge by Auguste Garneray. The garden at Malmaison. (illustration credit i1.16)

View of the Salon de Musique, Malmaison, by Auguste Garneray, 1812. Josephine’s picture gallery was her pride and joy. (illustration credit i1.17)

Josephine’s dining room at Malmaison. She decorated the house in a mixture of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman styles. (illustration credit i1.18)

Josephine’s formal bedroom at Malmaison. She lies between golden swans, an eagle watches over her bed, and the ceiling is painted as the sky. (illustration credit i1.19)

Josephine, by Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, 1809. A bust of Eugène is on the left, Malmaison lies in the background, and the hydrangea flowers (hortensia) symbolize her daughter. Letters lie at her feet. (illustration credit i1.20)

Josephine kneels to be crowned by Napoleon (detail), by Jacques-Louis David, 1807. David showed Napoleon crowning Josephine—a neat solution, as a painting of Napoleon crowning himself would have been ridiculed.

The Consecration of Emperor Napoleon I and the Crowning of Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804, by Jacques-Louis David, 1807 (illustration credit i1.21)

Napoleon’s sisters at the Coronation (detail), by Jacques-Louis David, 1807

Napoleon’s mother at the Coronation (detail), by Jacques-Louis David, 1807 (illustration credit i1.22)

One of Josephine’s court gowns, 1805. The dress is elaborately embroidered with thread made of real silver. (illustration credit i1.23)

Josephine’s tiara (illustration credit i1.24)

Queen Hortense by Fleury-François Richard, 1815. Artistic, sensitive and beautiful, Hortense was doomed to misery when her mother compelled her to marry Louis Bonaparte. (illustration credit i1.25)

Queen Hortense with Her Son, Napoleon Charles, by François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard, 1806. The little boy died a year later from croup. He was just four years old, and his death plunged Hortense into deep despair. (illustration credit i1.26)

Imperial Botany, or: A Peep at Josephine’s Collection of English Exoticks, Captain Williams (attributed to George Cruikshank), 1814. Wellington (on right) and Prince Regent (as Royal Sun-Flower) grew strong, while Napoleon (Crown Imperial) is a droopy weed. (illustration credit i1.27)

The divorce settlement of Napoleon and Josephine (illustration credit i1.28)

Empress Marie-Louise with the King of Rome by François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard, 1813. Napoleon’s longed-for son was fat and healthy—and the Emperor thought him destined to rule the world. (illustration credit i1.29)

The house at Navarre where Josephine lived when Napoleon married Marie-Louise (illustration credit i1.30)

Napoleon I on the Imperial Throne, by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1806. The emperor is styled as a god. (illustration credit i1.31)

Acknowledgments

So many new letters and documents have emerged, and yet popular notions persist of Josephine as featherbrained. In the summer of 2008, I rented a flat near the Musée de Cluny in Paris and spent every day in the Archives Nationales, studying Josephine’s letters and the memoirs of her friends and enemies. It became clear that her reputation as excessively “feminine,” lacking intellect or ambition, was a carefully cultivated power play that worked perfectly until the very end. This was the Josephine I wanted to explore in this book. Josephine’s own propaganda of the gentle consort occupied only by trivialities is very seductive. But in a merciless time, she had to be tough to survive, and her letters lay bare her ruthless determination. It feels fitting that she chose as her symbol a swan, a bird that appears graceful but is scrabbling underneath the surface—and has a pretty unforgiving bite.

I am indebted to all those who have edited the letters and diaries of Josephine and her circle, and who have written on her life and those of her associates. The current project of the Fondation Napoléon, led by Victor André Masséna, Prince d’Essling, to publish Napoleon’s full correspondence—including letters omitted from the earlier volumes—is a joy to all Napoleon scholars. Ten volumes have been published to date, with four to come, and they have been invaluable to me, as they will be to researchers in the future.

My work would not have been possible without the efforts of archivists to conserve the papers of Josephine, Napoleon, and her circle, and I am very grateful to them all. The generosity of other scholars is always humbling. I am indebted to those who have written books that have transformed our view of Josephine and her circle—and been very helpful to me with advice, insight, and help. Bernard Chevallier, to whom anyone who works on Josephine is always greatly indebted, Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, who was always full of generous encouragement (and kindly loaned me her book), Andrew Roberts, Munro Price, Paul Strathern, Flora Fraser and the generous Mlle. Mountjoly at the Musée de la Pagerie, Martinique, have all been very welcoming, and Andrea Stuart was very kind. Sandra Gulland’s work is always inspiring. A welcome grant from the Society of Authors allowed me to consult the Archives in Martinique. Working in the Fondation Napoléon, Malmaison Archives, and Archives Nationales has been an incredible privilege, and I am very grateful to all the staff.

I am also grateful to everyone at Ballantine and Random House, always this book’s greatest support. I am very grateful to Susanna Porter, a great friend to me and the books; she has given me so much wonderful inspiration, kindness, and great patience and generosity—and a lot to Josephine, too. I have been so very fortunate to have her as my editor for almost ten years. Priyanka Krishnan has been a really splendid editor, clarifying, questioning, and so very helpful. The team at Ballantine has done brilliant things—Josephine would be so pleased!

My parents and friends have put up with repeated absences—thank you. Marcus and Persephone have kindly endured a house full of books on Josephine and done so much to support me—with love and gratitude, thank you for everything.

Listing all the papers, articles, and books I consulted would use up pages and exhaust the reader’s patience. My research focused on the letters of Josephine and her circle. A select bibliography of my sources can be found on this page.

Notes

Prologue

1.  Barras, Mémoires, II, 61.

1. La Pagerie

1.  R. Pichevin, L’Impératrice Joséphine, 64.

2.  J.B.T. Chanvalon, Voyage à la Martinique (1763), 38.

3.  Pichevin, L’Impératrice Joséphine, 44.

4.  Stuart, Josephine, 7.

5.  Anne Marie le Normand, Historical and Secret Memoirs of the Empress Josephine (London: H. S. Nichols, 1895), I, 6.

6.  Pichevin, L’Impératrice Joséphine, 26.

7.  Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette, 62.

8.  Jean Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 67.

9.  Comte de Montgaillard, Souvenirs (Paris, 1895), 277.

10.  Le Normand, Historical and Secret Memoirs, 19–20.

11.  Le Thai, May 30, 1797.

12.  Aubenas, Histoire, I, 92.

13.  Frédéric Masson, Josephine, 104.

14.  Ibid., 75.

15.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 80.

16.  Ibid., 51.

2. Sophistication

1.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 35.

2.  Ibid., 28.

3.  Ibid.

4.  Ibid., 76.

5.  Ibid., 78.

6.  “Les Registres Paroissiaux de Noisy-le-Grand,” Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire de Paris (1894), 126.

7.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 87.

8.  Ibid., 34.

9.  Ibid., 37.

10.  Ibid., 85.

11.  Ibid., 55.

12.  Ibid., 102.

13.  Ibid., 87.

14.  Montgaillard, Souvenirs du Comte Montgaillard (Paris, 1895), 85.

15.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 52.

16.  Ibid., 103.

17.  Ibid., 124.

18.  Ibid., 125.

19.  Ibid., 130.

20.  Ibid.

21.  Ibid., 137.

22.  Ibid., 149.

23.  Ibid., 151.

24.  Ibid., 152.

25.  Ibid., 162.

26.  Masson, Josephine, 117.

27.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 171.

3. “Beneath All the Sluts in the World”

1.  Archives Nationales, Paris, Y 13,795.

2.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beauharnais, 183. In Mme. la Comtesse C. D’Arjuzon, Joséphine contre Beauharnais (Paris, 1906).

3.  Hanoteau, Le Ménage Beaharnais, 184.

4.  Ibid., 201.

5.  Victor du Bled, La Société française du XVIe au XXe siècle (Paris: Perrin, 1901), 312.

6.  Mme. de Rémusat, Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat 1802–1818, I, 34.

7.  D’Arjuzon, Josephine contre Beauharnais, 13–19.

8.  Ibid., 65.

9.  Aubenas, Impératrice, I, 151.

10.  Fersen coincidentally wrote to Marie Antoinette as Josephine.

11.  Jacques Janssens, Josephine, 86.

12.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 30.

4. Revolution

1.  Fraser, Marie Antoinette, 281.

2.  Ludmila Kybalová, Olga Herbenová, and Milena Lamarová. The Pictorial Encyclopaedia of Fashion. Trans. Claudia Rosoux (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1968), 223–30.

3.  Madame de Staël, Considerations sur la Revolution française, 101.

4.  J. W. Croker, Essays on the Early Period of the French Revolution (1857), 121.

5.  Klinckowstrom, Le Comte de Fersen & la Cour de France, I, 208–9.

6.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance 1782–1814, eds. Chevallier, Catinat, and Pincemaille, 16.

7.  de Staël, Considerations, part 2, 248. See also Marquise de La Tour du Pin, Journal d’une femme de cinquante ans (1778–1815) (Paris: M. Imhaus and R. Chapelot, 1914), II, 177.

8.  William Cohen, The French Encounter with Africans, 115.

9.  Masson, Josephine de Beauharnais, 186–87.

10.  January 17, 1794, Josephine to the Committee, in Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 17.

11.  Masson, Josephine, 188.

12.  Ibid., 210.

13.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 34.

14.  Josephine to Hortense, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 19.

15.  Grace Elliott, Journal of My Life, 188.

16.  Josephine to Hortense, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 19.

17.  Manuscripts Collection, La Pagerie Museum, Martinique.

18.  Mémoires and Correspondence de l’Impératrice Joséphine, collected by Regnault (Paris, 1820).

19.  Ducrest, Mémoires sur l’Impératrice Joséphine, I, 55.

20.  Ibid., 59.

21.  Ibid.

5. “The Height of Good Manners to Be Ruined”

1.  Quoted in the Magnificent Comedy, 92.

2.  Josephine to Mme. La Pagerie, November 20, 1794, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 23.

3.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 26.

4.  Lettres inédites de Madame de Staël à Henri Meister, eds. Usteri & Ritter, 45–49.

5.  Baron de Frénilly, Recollections, 136.

6.  Ibid.

7.  Correspondance de Napoléon 1er rassemblée dans les ouvrages publiés par les soins de Napoléon III, 1858–69.

8.  January 1, 1795, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 28.

9.  G. De Sainte-Croix de la Roncière, Joséphine Impératrice, 98.

10.  Talleyrand, cited in Kybalová and others, 240.

11.  A. Aulard, Paris sous la Reaction Thermidorienne, III, 180.

12.  Ducrest, Mémoires I, 332.

13.  Frénilly, Mémoires, 65.

14.  Barras et son temps, 205.

15.  Lever, de Sade: A Biography (1993), 514–15.

16.  Pasquier, Histoire de mon temps, I, 118.

17.  Stuart, Josephine, 64.

18.  Barras, Mémoires, II, 104.

6. “What Strange Power You Have over My Heart”

1.  Bertrand, Cahiers, II, 85.

2.  Ibid., I, 55.

3.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 75.

4.  Bertrand, Cahiers, II, 198.

5.  Ibid., I, 66.

6.  Ibid., I, 75.

7.  Ibid., I, 78.

8.  Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, II, 358.

9.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 143.

10.  Bertrand, Cahiers, III, 65.

11.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 144.

12.  Masson, Napoleon inconnu, papiers inédits, II, 286.

13.  August 12, 1795, Joseph Bonaparte, Mémoires, I, 142.

14.  Ibid., I, 144.

15.  McLynn, Napoleon, 87.

16.  Ibid., 85.

17.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 145.

18.  There is much debate about Bonaparte’s height; some suggest he was as small as five feet two. The average height for a Frenchman at the time was about five feet six. It should also be remembered that the aristocracy was thought to be taller; by saying that Bonaparte was small, people were declaring him low-class.

19.  Napoleon to Joseph, Correspondance, Lettres Intime, ed. Chevallier et al., 64.

20.  Elliott’s memoirs are unreliable, but this seems very likely.

21.  Napoleon, Correspondance, Lettres Intime, 65.

22.  Barras, Mémoires, 57–59.

23.  De Staël, Correspondance, II, 65.

24.  Marmont, Mémoires, II, 52.

25.  Josephine to Napoleon, October 28, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 31.

26.  Bonazzi and Tulard, eds., Napoleon: Lettres d’amour à Josephine, 45.

27.  Ibid., 52.

28.  See Kate Williams, England’s Mistress, 254.

29.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 85.

30.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 65.

31.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 247.

32.  Josephine to Mme. Renaudin, September 6, 1796, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 47.

33.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 86.

34.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 137.

35.  Girod de l’Ain, Désirée Clary, 91.

7. “The Single Object in My Heart”

1.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 67.

2.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 86.

3.  March 14, 1796, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 49–50.

4.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 51–52.

5.  April 3, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 54–55.

6.  Ibid.

7.  April 5, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 55–56.

8.  April 7, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 66.

9.  Ibid., 67.

10.  April 24, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 66.

11.  Ibid., 63–64.

12.  Ibid.

13.  Ibid., 65.

14.  April 29, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 61.

15.  June 15, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 60.

16.  Ibid., 80.

17.  April 3, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 56.

18.  Ibid., 60.

19.  May 13, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 62.

20.  June 26, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 60.

21.  April 17, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 61.

22.  Duc de Raguse, Mémoires de Maréchal Marmont, I, 187.

23.  June 8, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 70.

24.  Arnault, Souvenirs, 392.

25.  Marmont, Mémoires, I, 87–88.

26.  Hastier, Le Grand Amour de Josephine, 70.

27.  Souvenirs et mémoires, recueil mensue; de documents (Paris, 1898), I, 55.

28.  Henry Foljambe, 188.

29.  Napoleon, Correspondance de Napoléon I, II, 72.

30.  McLynn, Napoleon, 147. In tearing the Catholic art out of context, Napoleon was denying religion. Also, Britain might have had a superior naval power, but its art was unimpressive landscapes, horses and dogs hung on the Briton’s walls, and dreary Benjamin West was in charge of the Royal Academy.

31.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 75.

32.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 74–5.

33.  Napoleon, Correspondance Générale, I, 43.

8. A Million Kisses

1.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 45.

2.  Antoine Hamelin, Douze ans de ma vie, 11–12.

3.  Ibid., 15.

4.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 45.

5.  July 17, Bonazzi, 93–94.

6.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 45.

7.  July 21, Bonazzi, 97.

8.  Hamelin, Douze ans de ma vie, 19.

9.  October 17, Napoleon, Lettres d’amour, 112–13.

10.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 113–14.

11.  Josephine to Mme. Renaudin, September 6, 1796, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 47.

12.  November 21, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 123.

13.  November 27, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 127–28.

14.  November 28, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 129.

15.  Tulard and Garros, Itineraire de Napoleon, 89.

16.  Napoleon, November 19, 1796, Correspondance de Napoléon I, II, 1201.

17.  Miot de Melito, Mémoires, II, 174–75.

18.  Carron de Nisas, Mémoires, I, 78.

19.  Abrantès, Mémoires, 66.

20.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 45.

21.  April 24, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 70.

22.  Masson, Napoleon Inconnu: Papiers Inédités, 203.

23.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 131.

24.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 150.

25.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 65.

26.  De Staël, Des Circonstances actuelles qui peuvent terminer la Révolution et des principles qui doivent fonder la République en France, 122. Emmanuel de Las Cases, Mémorial se Sainte Hélène, 1823–1824, II 195.

27.  Michel Poniatowski, Talleyrand et le Directoire, 89.

28.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, Janvier-Mai, 1829, 98.

9. “I Am So Distressed at Being Separated from Him”

1.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 565.

2.  Lucien Bonaparte, Mémoires, II, 342.

3.  McLynn, Napoleon, 153.

4.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 343.

5.  Ibid., I, 87.

6.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 87.

7.  Masson, Josephine, 124.

8.  Bertrand, Cahiers, II, 67.

9.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 247.

10.  L. Hastier, Le Grand amour de Joséphine (Paris, 1955), 152–54.

11.  Ibid., 153.

12.  March 17, 1798, Josephine to Hippolyte Charles, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 60.

13.  Ibid., 60.

14.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 67.

15.  L’Orient should have carried a thousand men, but it was crammed, which made for poor conditions.

16.  Masson, Josephine, 128.

17.  Adrien Grosjean, Nouvel essai sur les eaux minérales de Plombières (Paris, 1803), 7.

18.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 66–67.

19.  Masson, Josephine, 131.

20.  Ibid., 130.

21.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 70–71.

22.  Masson, Josephine, 137–38.

23.  Ibid., 142–43.

24.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 241.

25.  Ibid., I, 322.

26.  Bourrienne souped up his memoirs after the event and, like most memoirists, inserted himself more, so there is a possibility he might not have been there. But his picture of Bonaparte is correct: He was devastated.

27.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 322.

28.  Morand, Lettres sur l’expedition de Egypte, September 19, 1798, 171–72.

29.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 200.

30.  British Museum, Add MSS, 23003. Also, see Mémoires et Correspondance du Roi Joseph, ed. Du Casse, I, 189.

31.  Masson, Josephine, 139–40.

32.  Desvernois, Mémoires, 134.

33.  Napoleon, Correspondance, XXIX, 457.

34.  Williams, England’s Mistress, 232.

35.  British Museum, Add MSS, 23003.

36.  Morning Chronicle, November 24, 1798.

10. “All I Have Suffered”

1.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 65.

2.  Hubert, Malmaison, 14.

3.  Ibid.

4.  Ibid.

5.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 115, March 2, 1799, 82.

6.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 116, March 17, 1799, 82.

7.  Hubert, Malmaison, 14.

8.  Impératrice Joséphine, Mémoires et Correspondance de l’Impératrice Joséphine (Paris, 1820), 154–55.

9.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 126, June 24, 1799, 87.

10.  February 1799, Impératrice Josephine, Correspondance, 81.

11.  Gavoty, Les Amoureux, June 23, 279.

12.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 296.

13.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 234.

14.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 300.

15.  They were from June, the most recent they had.

16.  When she found out the truth, she took Junot as a lover and then General Kléber, who was infuriated to be left in charge of the Army of the Orient by a commander who had failed even to consult him or take his leave.

17.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 131, September 30, 1799, 89.

18.  Les Beauharnais et L’Empereur. Lettres de l’Impératrice Joséphine et de la Reine Hortense au Prince Eugène (Paris, 1936), 125–26.

19.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 56.

11. “He Owes Me Everything”

1.  D’Abrantès, Mémoires, 1, 265.

2.  Maurice Lescure, Madame Hamelin, 54.

3.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 5.

4.  Ibid., II, 7.

5.  Ibid., II, 120.

6.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 344. Bourrienne’s words were probably exaggerated, but this was the type of melodrama that Napoleon liked.

7.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 10.

8.  D’Abrantès, Mémoires, II, 92.

9.  July 18, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 105.

10.  April 24, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 166.

11.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 102.

12.  D’Abrantès, Mémoires, 1, 265.

13.  Gohier, Mémoires, II, 2.

14.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 199.

15.  Ibid., I, 250.

16.  Ibid., I, 252.

17.  Lever, de Sade, 514.

18.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 155.

19.  Ibid., I, 355.

20.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 187.

21.  Jules Bertaut, L’Impératrice Joséphine, 135.

22.  Ducrest, Mémoires, II, 33.

23.  Marquise de la Tour du Pin, Journal, 85.

24.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 352.

25.  Ibid., I, 354.

26.  As her lady-in-waiting put it, “the idleness of a Court life makes the day seem a hundred hours long” (Rémusat 131).

27.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 345.

28.  Rémusat, Mémoires, 1, 61.

29.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 365.

30.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 5.

31.  Ducrest, Mémoires, 1, 33. Mme. de Rémusat, Mémoires, 1, 29.

32.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 450.

33.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 152, 99.

34.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 153, 99.

35.  Ducrest, Mémoires, 1, 33.

36.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 420.

37.  Ibid., I, 430.

38.  Ibid., I, 463.

39.  Ibid., I, 460.

40.  See Kiefer, Empress Josephine, 29.

41.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 345.

42.  Kybalová and others, 243.

43.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, II, 120.

44.  Kybalová and others, 243.

45.  Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age, 104.

46.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 300.

47.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 12.

48.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 166, 1800, 106.

49.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 200.

50.  Bertaut, 132.

51.  C. October–November 1799, Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 93.

52.  Le Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène, in Kiefer, 26.

53.  Rémusat, L’Impératrice Joséphine (Paris: Livre Club D’Histoire, 1956), I, 13.

12. “The Most Beautiful Thing in the World”

1.  Hubert, Malmaison, 17.

2.  Ibid.

3.  Ibid., 18.

4.  Ibid., 17.

5.  Ibid., 20.

6.  “Le décor intérieur,” Musée National du château de Malmaison, 85.

7.  Gerstein, “Josephine at Malmaison,” 15.

8.  Ibid.

9.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 140, 1799, 94.

10.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 209, November 23, 1803, 137.

11.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 213, March 19, 1804, 142–43.

12.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 213, March 19, 1804, 142–43.

13.  Ventenat, Le Jardin de Malmaison, 88.

14.  Ibid., 89.

15.  To Josephine at Plombières, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 161.

16.  Napoleon made his old principal at Brienne head of the library.

17.  Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, Napoleon, the Empress and the Artist, 114.

18.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 485, June 14, 1813, 348–49.

19.  Hubert, Malmaison, 32.

20.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 485, June 14, 1813, 348–49.

21.  Fontaine, July 1, 1802, cited in Gerstein, 16.

22.  Lettres Intimes, letter X, 179.

23.  Hubert, 1989, 34–35.

24.  Fontaine, July 1, 1802, cited in Gerstein, 16.

25.  Bruce, 306.

26.  Kiefer, 12–16.

27.  In 1805 she opened the property to members of the Institut de France and administrators of the Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, publishing an invitation in the Maison encyclopédique.

28.  Lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine, réunies et préfacées par le Dr. Léon Cerf (Paris, 1928), 57.

29.  Laure Junot, Duchess of Abrantès, Autobiography and Recollections of Laura Duchess of Abrantès (widow of General Junot) (Bentley, 1893), 407.

30.  Hamilton, Napoleon, the Empress and the Artist, 118.

31.  Hamilton, 118.

32.  This was recorded in Fontaine’s journal on July 2, 1800. Cited in Bernard Chevallier, Le Château de Malmaison, des origines à 1904 (Paris: Réunions des musées nationaux, 1989), 279.

33.  Hamilton, 119.

34.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 525.

35.  Stuart, 285.

36.  Napoleon to Josephine, July 1, 1802, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 118–202.

37.  Hubert, Malmaison, 23.

38.  Ibid., 22.

39.  Ibid.

40.  Ibid., 23.

41.  Mme. Junot, cited in Hubert, 1989, 23.

42.  Napoleon to Josephine, June 19, 1802, Bonazzi, 25.

43.  François Jarry, Hortense de Beauharnais (Paris: Giovanangeli, 2009), 66.

44.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 1, 2.

45.  Jarry, 59.

46.  On this account, see Hubert, 1989, 24–25.

47.  Jarry, 66.

48.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 323.

49.  Mme. Campan, letter to Hortense, cited in Jarry, 62.

50.  Bertaut, 140.

51.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 213.

52.  Ibid., I, 525.

53.  Ibid., I, 200, of Hamilton, 115.

54.  Ibid., I, 200.

55.  August 31, 1809.

56.  Marquise de La Tour du Pin, Journal, II, 219–20,. Scholars now suggest that much of Josephine’s collection was acquired legitimately, yet it is undeniable that she had more power to buy, more access, and people sold to her because they were afraid of her husband (Pougetoux, 93–94). The Louvre wanted her pictures but had to satisfy itself with copies.

57.  Carol Solomon Kiefer, The Empress Josephine: Art & Royal Identity, exhibition catalog (Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts, 2005), 34.

58.  Kiefer, 33.

59.  Hubert, 1989, 33.

60.  On the gallery, see Gerstein, 17.

61.  L’Observateur au musée ou la critique des tableaux en vaudeville (Paris, 1802), 17.

62.  Kiefer, 41.

63.  She also collected works by Pierre Cartellier.

64.  Gerstein, 22.

13. Scenes with Bonaparte

1.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 156, July 9, 1800, 101.

2.  Duchesse d’Abrantès, cited in Bertaut, 134.

3.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 102.

4.  Ibid., I, 450.

5.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 201.

6.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 65.

7.  Marquise de La Tour du Pin, Journal, 346.

8.  De Staël, Dix années d’exil, 94.

9.  Pierre Roederer, Oeuvres, V.

10.  De Staël, Correspondances Générale, IV, 306.

11.  Paul Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoléon, 103.

12.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, VIII, 101.

13.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, II, 69.

14.  Jean Savant, Tel fut Napoléon, p 60

15.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 219.

16.  Jules Bertaut, Impératrice Joséphine (Paris: Le Club du Livre d’Histoire, 1956), 130–32.

17.  Duchesse d’Abrantès, cited in Bertaut, 130.

18.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 464.

19.  Bertaut, 130–31.

20.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 500.

21.  De Rémusat, Mémoires, 1, 11.

22.  On the Civil Code, see Patricia Mainardi, Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 12–18.

23.  Bertrand, Cahiers, I, 177.

24.  Ibid., I, 169.

25.  McLynn, Napoleon, 256.

26.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 384.

27.  De Staël, Considérations, 339.

28.  De Staël, Dix Années d’exil, 105. See also Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 30.

29.  Madame de Staël, Dix Années d’exil, 130.

30.  Savant, Tel fut Napoléon. Barras, Mémoires, II, 65.

31.  Documents particuliers (en forme de lettres) sur Napoleon Bonaparte, sur plusieurs de ses actes jusqu’ici inconnus ou mal interprétés (Paris, 1819), 103.

32.  Louis Lumet, Napoléon 1er, Empereur des Français (Paris, 1908), 67.

33.  Documents particuliers (en forme de lettres) sur Napoleon Bonaparte, sur plusieurs de ses actes jusqu’ici inconnus ou mal interprétés (Paris, 1819), 104.

34.  Memoirs of General Count Rapp, 19.

35.  Documents particuliers (en forme de lettres) sur Napoleon Bonaparte, sur plusieurs de ses actes jusqu’ici inconnus ou mal interprétés (Paris, 1819), 104.

36.  Ibid. 104.

37.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 56.

38.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 130.

39.  Ibid., II, 65.

40.  Ibid., II, 54.

41.  Ibid., II, 55.

42.  Grosjean, 4.

14. “My Stepfather Is a Comet”

1.  Bruce, Napoleon and Josephine, 64.

2.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 55.

3.  Ibid., 1, 73.

4.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 145.

5.  Bertrand, Cahiers, II, 45.

6.  Charles James Fox, Memoirs of the Latter Years of the Right Honourable Charles James Fox, 188–285.

7.  Edmund Eyre, Observations Made at Paris During the Peace (London, 1803), 54.

8.  Yorke, Letters from France.

9.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 138.

10.  Josephine to Mme. La Pagerie, 1803, BN, 9324, National Archive, Paris.

11.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 50.

12.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 630.

13.  Bertie Greatheed, An Englishman in Paris.

14.  Bertrand, Cahiers, IV, 65.

15.  Fojambe, 209.

16.  Bruce, 335.

17.  Ducrest, Mémoires I, 277.

18.  Duchesse d’Abrantès, cited in Kybalová et al, Pictorial Encyclopaedia of Fashion, 227.

19.  Du Bled, 272.

20.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 344.

21.  Ibid., I, 137.

22.  James Gillray, Ci-Devant Occupations, 1805.

23.  Thomas Rowlandson, The Progress of the Empress Josephine, 1808.

24.  Bertrand, Cahiers, 65.

25.  Constant, Mémoires, 67

26.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 231.

27.  Ibid., I, 142.

28.  Marguerite Joséphine Weimer, called Mlle. George, Mémoires inédits de Mademoiselle George, 29.

29.  Edith Saunders, Napoleon and Mademoiselle George, 55.

30.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 321.

31.  Some of these prisoners were held until Napoleon abdicated in 1814.

32.  Madame de Staël, Dix Années d’exil, 94.

33.  Masson, Madame Bonaparte, 65.

34.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 145.

35.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 191.

36.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 150.

37.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 2087.

38.  Ducrest, Mémoires, 1, 59.

39.  See Documents particuliers (en forme de lettres) sur Napoléon Bonaparte, sur plusieurs de ses actes jusqu’ici inconnus ou mal interprétés (Paris, 1819), 106.

15. “Your Imperial Majesty”

1.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 255.

2.  Fojambe, 209.

3.  Avrillion, Mémoires de Mlle. Avrillion, première femme de chamber de l’impératrice, sur la vie privée de Joséphine, sa famille et sa cour, 69.

4.  Savant, Napoleon et Joséphine.

5.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 5.

6.  Ibid., I, 306.

7.  Ibid., I, 305.

8.  Ibid., I, 309.

9.  Ibid., I, 309.

10.  Ibid., I, 313.

11.  Roederer, Oeuvres, I, 214.

12.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 315.

13.  D’Abrantès, Mémoires, I, 215.

14.  Ibid., I, 216.

15.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 247.

16. “The King of Diamonds”

1.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 65.

2.  Ibid., II, 131.

3.  Duchesse d’Abrantès, Memoirs of Madame Junot, Duchesse d’Abrantès, II, 347–48.

4.  Gautier, Madame de Staël et Napoleon, 168.

5.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 65.

6.  Bruce, Napoleon and Josephine, 373.

7.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 263.

8.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 217.

9.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 293.

10.  D’Abrantès, Mémoires, 82.

11.  Madame de Staël, Dix années d’exil, 95.

12.  Ducrest, Mémoires I, 255.

13.  Rémusat, Mémoires I, 122.

14.  Constant, Mémoires, 65.

15.  Avrillion, Mémoires, 103.

16.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 150.

17.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 40.

18.  Ibid., I, 35. Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 20.

19.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 234.

20.  Bourgeat, Lettres, 67.

21.  Avrillion, Mémoires, 156.

22.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 145.

23.  Bertrand, Cahiers, II, 75.

24.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 350.

25.  Ibid., I, 357.

26.  Ibid., I, 132.

27.  Ibid., II, 64.

28.  Sutherland, Walewska, 40.

29.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 402.

30.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 4.

31.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 224.

32.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 57.

33.  Napoleon to Josephine, August 14, 1804, Archives Nationales.

34.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 57.

17. “I Have Fulfilled My Destiny”

1.  Hanoteau, Les Beauharnais et l’Empereur, p. 64

2.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 174.

3.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 437.

4.  October 27, 1805, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

5.  Alistair Horne, Napoleon: Master of Europe, 378.

6.  Bourgeat, Napoléon: Lettres à Josèphine, 179.

7.  December 10, 1805, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 175.

8.  December 2, 1805, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 123.

9.  December 19, 1805, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 124.

10.  André Castelot, Napoléon, 65.

11.  Napoleon, Correspondance de Napoleon I, 88.

12.  By 1811, he ruled forty-four million people.

13.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 185.

14.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 55.

15.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 193.

16.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 47.

17.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I 294.

18.  Ibid., I, 333.

19.  See Mémoires of Lucien.

20.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 345.

21.  Napoleon to Eugène, Correspondance de Napoléon I, XVII, 938.

22.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I, 198.

23.  October 5, 1806, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

24.  October 16, 1806, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

25.  Savant, Napoleon et Josephine. November 6, 1806, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

26.  November 1, 1806, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 157.

27.  December 3, 1806, Ibid., 158.

28.  December 2, 1806, Ibid., 159.

29.  December 3, 1806, Ibid., 160.

30.  December 31, 1806, Ibid., 161.

18. “I Wish You Would Be More Reasonable”

1.  January 7, 1807, Napoleon to Josephine, Archives Nationales

2.  Christine Sutherland, Walewska, 68.

3.  Walewski Archives.

4.  Ibid.

5.  Ibid.

6.  Bruce, Napoleon and Josephine. Josephine correspondence, 200, from the Walewski Archives.

7.  Bertrand, Cahiers, 145.

8.  Napoleon to Marie Walewska, Napoleon, Correspondance, Lettres Intime, 85.

9.  January 11, 1807, Napoleon to Josephine, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

10.  January 18, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

11.  Bruce, 343.

12.  Napoleon, March 25, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 267.

13.  Bruce, 407, from the Archives Nationale in Paris.

14.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 200.

15.  Hanoteau, Les Beauharnais et l’Empereur, 345.

16.  March 27, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

17.  March 17, 1807, Ibid.

18.  March 25, 1807, Ibid.

19.  April 2, 1807, Ibid.

20.  May 10, 1807, Ibid.

21.  Bruce, Napoleon and Josephine, 410.

22.  Napoleon, May 14, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 283.

23.  Napoleon, May 14, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 283.

24.  May 26, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 340

25.  Rémusat, Mémoires, I. 65.

26.  June 2, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour.

27.  Bourgeat, Napoléon: Lettres à Joséphine, July 3, 1807.

28.  Napoleon, June 25, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 297.

29.  July 7, 1807, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 204.

30.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, III, 150.

31.  Bertrand, Cahiers, III, 51.

19. “Cold and Often Embarrassed”

1.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 65.

2.  Josephine, Correspondance, 217.

3.  Rémusat, Mémoires, II, 234.

4.  Bourgeat, Napoléon: Lettres à Joséphine, 67.

5.  Bertrand, Cahiers, III, 145.

6.  Maurice Guerrini, Napoleon and Paris, 183.

7.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, VIII, 101–16.

8.  Napoleon, Correspondance de Napoleon I, 86

9.  February 10, 1808, Josephine, Correspondance, 219.

10.  Josephine to Eugène, September 22, 1808, Josephine, Correspondance, 229.

11.  Caulaincourt, Mémoires, 93.

12.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 312.

13.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 313.

14.  Napoleon, Correspondance, ed. Chevallier.

15.  Cardinal Fouché, Mémoires, 87.

16.  FM, 412. Bertrand, Cahiers, IV, 56.

17.  Bruce, Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage, 438, from the Walewski Archives.

18.  Rémusat, Mémoires. Martinique would remain British until 1814.

19.  D’Abrantès, Mémoires, 182.

20.  Normand Caulaincourt, Mémoires, 456.

21.  October 22, 1809, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 207.

22.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 244.

23.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 117.

20. “Like a Wounded Soldier”

1.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, III, 64.

2.  Ibid., III, 56.

3.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 220

4.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, III, 115.

5.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 230.

6.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 207.

7.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 240.

8.  Les Beauharnais et L’Empereur. Lettres de l’Impératrice Joséphine et de la Reine Hortense au Prince Eugène (Paris, 1936), 81.

9.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 230.

10.  December 1809, Napoleon, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 359.

11.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, I, 223.

12.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 360.

13.  Napoleon to Josephine, January 17, 1810, Archives Nationales.

14.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 171.

15.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 175.

16.  Castelot, Joséphine, 200

17.  Napoleon, Correspondance, ed. Chevallier, 78.

18.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 381.

19.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 89.

20.  Betrand, Cahiers, IV, 85.

21.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, 315.

22.  Philip Mansel, The Court of France, 121.

23.  Martineau, Marie-Louise, 78.

24.  Bourgeat, Napoléon: Lettres à Joséphine, April 19, 1810.

25.  Napoleon to Josephine, April 20, 1810, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 382.

26.  April 22, 1810, Ibid., 165

27.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 178.

28.  Napoleon in Bruce, 455.

29.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 158.

30.  September 14, 1810, Correspondence, Lettres Intime, 166.

31.  Masson, Joséphine Répudiée, 199–201.

32.  Ducrest, Mémoires, I, 239.

33.  Ibid., I, 206.

34.  Ibid., 283.

35.  Ibid., I, 214–15.

36.  Fraser, Marie Antoinette, 155.

37.  March 22, 1811, Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 395.

38.  Ibid., 396.

39.  Ibid., 397.

40.  Gerstein, 12.

41.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, III, 120.

42.  Ibid., III, 140.

43.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 485, June 14, 1813, 348–49.

44.  Pougetoux, 94.

45.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, letter 464, September 25, 1812, 336.

46.  Ibid.

47.  Ibid., letter 468, October 13, 1812, 339.

48.  Baron d’Ambès, The Intimate Memoirs of Napoleon III, ed. and trans. A. R. Allinson (London: Stanley Paul & Co., 1933), I, 54.

49.  Bonazzi, Lettres d’amour, 397.

50.  Mansel, The Court of France 1789–1830, 121.

51.  François-René Chateaubriand, Mémoires, 269.

52.  Constant, Mémoires, 88.

53.  McLynn, 510.

54.  Napoleon, Correspondance, ed. Chevallier, V.

55.  Betrand, Cahiers, III, 65

56.  Fairweather, Madame de Staël, 408.

57.  Jakob Walter, Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier, trans. (London: Penguin, 1991). CH, 202.

58.  Bertrand, Cahiers, III, 145.

59.  Duc de Fezensac, Mémoires, 254.

21. “More Full of Charm”

1.  Caulancourt, Mémoires, 234.

2.  Masson, Joséphine répudiée, 306.

3.  Ibid., 308.

4.  Bonaparte, Mémoires, 445.

5.  Napoleon, Correspondance, ed. Chevallier.

6.  Ibid., I.

7.  Ibid., II, 64.

8.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, II, 179.

9.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, IV, 30.

10.  Correspondance, Lettres Intime, 208.

11.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, II, 103.

12.  Ibid., II, 106.

13.  Ibid., II, 193.

14.  Betrand, Cahiers, III, 87.

Epilogue

1.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, IV, 150.

2.  Ibid., IV, 100.

3.  Ibid., IV, 135.

4.  Ibid., IV, 150.

5.  Napoleon, Correspondance de Napoléon I, XXXII, 340.

6.  Queen Hortense, Mémoires, I, 194.

7.  Bourrienne, Mémoires, II, 145.

8.  He had offered Louis XVIII the paintings if the Bonaparte family could be permitted to return to France, but he was refused.

9.  Napoleon, Correspondance de Napoléon I, XXXII, 250.

10.  However, of the sixty-eight paintings Alexander acquired, many have been dispersed to other museums, and fifteen have disappeared entirely. Alexander Babin, “Le Voyage Pittoresque from Malmaison to St. Petersburg,” in France in Russia, 25–28.

11.  Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 297.

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Illustration Credits

i1.1  François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard (1770–1837), Empress Josephine (1763–1814), 1808, oil on canvas. Château de Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.2  La Pagerie. R.Ziff / Travel-Images.com.

i1.3  Unknown French painter of the David circle, Alexandre de Beauharnais.

i1.4  Gérard, François (1770–1837), Portrait de la reine Hortense de Digitale Beauharnais (1783–1837) enfant. Eighteenth century. Avignon, Musée Calvet. Peinture © 2013. White Images / Scala, Florence.

i1.5  Portrait de Son Altesse Impériale le prince Eugène Napoléon. Copyright © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée des Châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau) / Michèle Bellot.

i1.6  Visite de Joséphine à son mari Alexandre à la prison du Luxembourg en 1794. Copyright © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée des Châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau) / Daniel Arnaudet.

i1.7  Bonaparte, Napoleon (1769–1821), Letter to Josephine de Beauharnais (1795–96), pen and ink on paper. Private Collection. Photo copyright © Christie’s Images / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.8  Jean-Baptiste Isabey (1767–1855) (after), Portrait of Thérésa de Cabarrus (1773–1835), also known as Madame Tallien, printed by Boussod, Valadon and Company, 1895, colored lithograph. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.9  Louis Blanc (1811–82), Paul François Nicolas, Vicomte de Barras, from Histoire de la Revolution Française, French School, nineteenth century, engraving. Private Collection / Ken Welsh / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.10  James Gillray (1757–1815), Ci-devant Occupations, or Madame Talian and the Empress Josephine Dancing Naked Before Barrass in the Winter of 1797, etching with aquatint, published by Hannah Humphrey in 1805. Copyright © The Warden and Scholars of New College, Oxford / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.11  Andrea Appiani, Andrea the Elder (1754–1817), Portrait of Napoleon I Bonaparte (1769–1821), 1796, oil on board. Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, Italy / De Agostini Picture Library / Copyright © Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana—Milano / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.12  Antonio Canova (1757–1822), Three Graces, marble. Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia / Cameraphoto Arte Venezia / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.13  Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835), Napoleon I (1769–1821) on the Bridge of Arcole, oil on canvas. Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.14  Robert Lefèvre (1755–1830), The Empress Josephine, 1806, oil on canvas. Apsley House, The Wellington Museum, London, U.K. / Copyright © English Heritage Photo Library / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.15  Premier Empire: Vue du château de Malmaison, façade sur le parc, 1805. Copyright © Photo Scala, Florence.

i1.16  Louis Garneray (1783–1857), View of the Wooden Bridge on the River Near the Statue of Diane, from Views of Malmaison, engraving; aquatint by Auguste Simon Garneray (1785–1824) (after). Bibliotheque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris, France / Archives Charmet / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.17  Le salon de musique au château de la Malmaison en 1812. © Photo Scala, Florence.

i1.18  Pierre-Francois-Leonard Fontaine and Charles Percier, architects, Dining room, Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, France, nineteenth century. De Agostini Picture Library / G. Dagli Orti / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.19  Bedroom of Empress Josephine (1763–1814), French School, nineteenth century, photo. Musée Nat. du Château de Malmaison, Rueil-Malmaison, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.20  Baron Antoine-Jean Gros (1771–1835), Josephine Tasher de la Pagerie (1763–1814), Empress of the French, Gazing at a Bust of Her Son Eugène de Beauharnais (1781–1824) at Malmaison, 1808, oil on canvas. Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Palais Massena, Nice, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.21  Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon (1769–1821) and the Coronation of the Empress Josephine (1763–1814). Pope Pius VII (1742–1823). December 2, 1804, 1807, oil on canvas (detail). Louvre, Paris, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.22  Le Sacre de Napoleon (detail), 1804–1806. White Images / Scala, Florence.

i1.23  Robe de cour de l’impératrice Joséphine. © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée des Châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau) / Gérard Blot.

i1.24  Le diadème (couronne) de l’impératrice Josephine de Beauharnais (Marie-Joseph-Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie) (1763–1814). 1804–1809. White Images / Scala, Florence.

i1.25  Fleury François Richard (1777–1852), Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), oil on canvas. Fondation Dosne-Thiers (Musée Frederic Masson) Paris, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.26  Portrait en pied d’Hortense de Beauharnais, reine de Hollande (1783–1837) et son fils Napoleon Charles, 1807. Copyright © Photo Scala, Florence.

i1.27  Imperial Botany, or: A Peep at Josephine’s Collection. The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, Curzon b. 30 (83).

i1.28  Divorce Statement of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) and Empress Josephine (1763–1814) January 9, 1810, nineteenth century, pen and ink on paper. Archives du Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres, Paris, France / Archives Charmet / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.29  François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard (1770–1837), Marie Louise (1791–1847) and the King of Rome (1811–32), oil on canvas. Château de Versailles, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

i1.30  Vue du château de Navarre. Copyright © RMN-Grand Palais (Musée des Châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau) / Daniel Arnaudet.

i1.31  Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867), Napoleon I (1769–1821) on the Imperial Throne, 1806, oil on canvas. Musée de l’Armée, Paris, France / Giraudon / The Bridgeman Art Library.

BY KATE WILLIAMS

Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte

The Storms of War

The Pleasures of Men

Becoming Queen Victoria: The Tragic Death of Princess Charlotte and the Unexpected Rise of Britain’s Greatest Monarch

England’s Mistress: The Infamous Life of Lady Emma Hamilton

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KATE WILLIAMS fell in love with the eighteenth century while studying for her B.A. at the University of Oxford. She has an M.A. from Queen Mary, University of London, and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford and teaches at London University. As well as writing and lecturing, she is the Historical and Royal Analyst for CNN America and International and appears regularly on television discussing history, royal news, and culture in the United States and the United Kingdom for CBS, ABC, and BBC America. She lives in London, and in her spare time she likes to go to Paris.