Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (29 page)

She adored all things medieval, borrowing the look for her costume, collecting volumes on medieval culture, and subscribing to
Le Journal des Troubadours.
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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.
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She became his primary French patron and commissioned five works by him between 1802 and 1814.
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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.

T
HE 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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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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.

A
S CONSUL
, N
APOLEON
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.”
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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.”
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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.”
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Not everyone supported him: Madame de la Tour du Pin declared that in reality, the people were unhappy under his rule.
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“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).
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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.
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Madame de Staël was disingenuous when she said there was “not a word about politics in it.”
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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).
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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.
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M
EANWHILE, POOR
J
OSEPHINE
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.
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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.