Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (40 page)

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

J
OSEPHINE 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

N
APOLEON 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).