Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (48 page)

The emperor arrived in Warsaw on December 18, reviewed his troops, but left abruptly only four days later as tensions with Russian forces escalated into violence. Warsaw became a city on the front lines, and the unhappily married Marie, who, in her mother’s words, had been suffering from melancholia (the nineteenth-century word
for depression) and was sleepwalking through life, found fulfillment at the hospitals tending to the wounded soldiers.

By the end of the month, Napoleon was back in Warsaw, settling in for the winter. His wife, the empress Josephine, had wished to join him. She already harbored uncomfortable premonitions of his infidelity. In October, Napoleon’s mistress Eléanore Denuelle had informed him that she was pregnant. The childless state of the imperial marriage had been a matter of great concern for some time. Josephine had given her first husband two children, but had never become enceinte by Napoleon. Eléanore’s news changed everything; to Bonaparte, it was the confirmation that Josephine’s infertility, and not his own issues, were to blame for their lack of an heir. The empress was devastated by this new turn of events. Terrified that her husband would make good on his intentions to divorce her for barrenness (and, in fact, she may have been going through menopause, as Napoleon claimed her physician told him that her menses had ceased), she cast a pall of doubt over the emperor’s suppositions by informing him that Eléanore had been two-timing him with his brother-in-law Joachim Murat. The child she carried might instead be his.

It was Napoleon’s turn to be shocked. Although he had sent Josephine passionate and erotic letters at the outset of their courtship, after she had been unfaithful to him once, early in their marriage, he never let her forget her single adulterous misstep, despite his own numerous affairs. He would continue to avenge her infidelity with another of his own.

The duplicitous Eléanore might now be yesterday’s news, but Josephine worried that her husband would remain so long in Poland that he would fall in love, and hinted as much in her correspondence to him. Napoleon’s provocative reply of January 7, 1807, is typical of the long-distance emotional cruelty he would inflict upon her.

I don’t know what you mean by ladies I am supposed to be involved with. I love only my dear little Josephine who is so good, though sulky and capricious…and lovable except when she is jealous and becomes a little devil…. As for these ladies, if I
needed to occupy my time with one of them I assure you I would want her to have pretty rosebud nipples. Is this so with the ladies you write to me about?

The truth was, however, that by the time she received the letter, Josephine’s prescient fears had borne fruit, and the gray-eyed, broad-chested, sallow-complected emperor was already smitten by one of these beauties: Countess Marie Walewska. They had been introduced at a soiree on the night of January 7, presumably just hours after Napoleon had written that note.

When Talleyrand first met the Walewskis at the welcome reception for Prince Joachim Murat in late December, he flattered the old count by pretending to remember him from the court of Louis XVI. But he immediately sensed that the luscious Marie would be a tempting morsel for the thirty-seven-year-old Napoleon. And after Talleyrand had heavily buttered up Count Walewski, wild horses could not have kept Anastase from meeting His Imperial Majesty.

Excited beyond measure at the prospect, he asked Marie to have a new evening gown made up and to wear the Walewski sapphires, which would complement the color of her eyes. The count then engaged Henriette de Vauban, an old friend from his Versailles days, to give Marie some pointers on court etiquette.

Perhaps it was due to the doubtful paternity of Eléanore Denuelle’s fetus, but Napoleon’s valet Louis Constant Wairy, known as Constant, had noted that lately his employer’s opinion of the fair sex had grown even more bitter. “They belong to the highest bidder. Power is what they like—it is the greatest of all aphrodisiacs…. I take them and forget them.”

Did Napoleon conveniently forget that the reason he’d scored so often was because he
played
the power card?

On the evening of January 7, wearing a new velvet gown, Marie stood in the receiving line waiting to meet the emperor. According to the memoirs of another guest, Madame Anna Nakwaska,

[A]s he looked around, his face gradually softened, the powerful brow relaxed…as he surveyed us with evident approval.
“Ah, qu’il y a des jolies femmes à Varsovie!”
[“Ah, there are
such pretty women in Warsaw!”] I heard him say as he stopped in front of Madame Walewska, the young wife of the old Chamberlain Anastase, who happened to be standing next to me.

No doubt her “skin of dazzling whiteness” and “beautifully proportioned figure” (in Constant’s words) grabbed his attention. What a couple they would make, the emperor might have thought—and the diminutive blonde wouldn’t even tower over his five-foot-six-inch frame. Guests noticed Napoleon pausing as he met Marie and gazing at her later in the evening as Talleyrand gave him the lowdown on her background. His comment about the beautiful women of Warsaw zinged about the ballroom, though gossips were quick to add that it had been directed straight at the Countess Walewska.

A few days later, Talleyrand hosted another ball, ostensibly to inaugurate the carnival season, but his true aim was to throw Napoleon and Marie together again.

Too overcome with excitement at the prospect of seeing and speaking with her hero so soon, Marie tried to beg off. But Count Walewski, who knew nothing of the backstory, and evidently had no clue that the emperor had become smitten with his wife, wouldn’t hear of it.

Napoleon had given his staff orders to find Marie as soon as she arrived and to escort her to him so that she could be his partner in the contra dance. In an eightsome formed of three other Warsaw belles, the emperor’s chief of staff, and two of his brothers-in-law (the princes Borghese and Murat), Marie danced the night away. This time, instead of being jealous of all the attention his wife was garnering from other men, Count Walewski beamed with proprietary delight. All eyes were upon Marie as they watched the emperor watch her. She was gowned in white tulle over white satin lined with pink and gold. A coronet of laurel leaves wreathed her honey blond curls as though she herself were a prize, the spoils of war awarded to the conquering hero. Even the shell-like colors of her evening dress could have been an erotic metaphor for the vestal sacrifice she was poised to become.

But the emperor, making one of his customarily brusque, even rude remarks to women, derided Marie’s sartorial decision that
evening. “White on white is no way to dress, Madame,” he told her, evidently finding the color unbecoming against her already alabaster skin. As this was his opening salvo, it’s clear that he was more comfortable on the battlefield than in the boudoir. But according to Constant, Napoleon “immediately began a conversation which she sustained with much grace and intelligence, showing that she had received a fine education, and the slight shade of melancholy diffused over her whole person rendered her still more seductive.”

Throughout the night she pointedly declined his invitations to dance, but the pair of French officers who had the gall to flirt with her were immediately posted elsewhere by their jealous commander.

In the aftermath of Talleyrand’s soiree, Napoleon began to pursue Marie, ardently begging her to submit to his advances—his modus operandi with other women, as he’d deluged Josephine with billets-doux after they’d first met as well. “I saw only you at the ball,” he wrote to Marie. “I desired only you, I admired only you.” Napoleon deputized the Master of the Imperial Household, Géraud Duroc, to deliver the letter to his new crush, along with a massive corsage, and became insulted when Marie refused to accept the flowers or to reply to his barrage of correspondence. According to Constant, the notion that she was miserably wed and had sacrificed herself to Count Walewski inspired him to be “more interested in her than he had ever been in any woman.”

Receiving no response to his initial floral and epistolary entreaty, the emperor followed up with a second one:

Did I displease you, Madame? Your interest in me seems to have waned, while mine is growing every moment…. You have destroyed my peace…. I beg you to give a little joy to my poor heart, so ready to adore you. Is it so difficult to send a reply? You owe me two.

He signed the note with the intimate nickname “Napole.”

The Walewskis were invited to dinner in the emperor’s honor on the night after Talleyrand’s ball. The soiree had been planned days earlier, so there was no thought of canceling at the last minute, although Marie wished she could devise a way to worm out of it. Napoleon’s
persistent attentions made her frightfully uncomfortable; the reality had all but spoiled the fantasy.

She was seated opposite the emperor at the table, and while he pointedly declined to speak to her, his gaze never left her, even as he conversed with his neighbors. He seemed to be communicating in a pantomimed code with Marshal Duroc, and at one point during the evening, when Napoleon placed his hand on his heart, the Master of the Imperial Household inquired of Marie why she was not wearing the flowers the emperor had sent her. Chafing, the countess replied that she had given them to her little son. After dinner, however, it was observed by one guest that Napoleon spoke to Marie “with an almost tender expression on his face.”

The following morning, another letter arrived from her imperial admirer:

There are moments in life when to be in an elevated position constitutes a real burden, and I feel it now most acutely. How can a heart, so very much in love, be satisfied? All it wants is to throw itself at your feet; but it is being restrained…my deepest longings are paralyzed…. Oh, if only you wanted it! You and you alone can remove the obstacles that separate us. My friend Duroc will tell you what to do. Oh, come, come…all your desires will be granted.
Your country will be so much dearer to me if you take pity on my poor heart….

Assuming an even greater familiarity than in his previous correspondence, the emperor signed the letter with only the initial “N.”

A subsequent missive read: “I want to force you to love me…. Yes, force you. I have revived your country’s name. I shall do much for you…. Whenever I have thought a thing impossible to obtain, I have wanted it all the more. Nothing discourages me…. I am accustomed to having my wishes met….” Then he applied political guilt. “I have brought back to life your country’s name. I will do much more. Send an immediate answer to calm the impatient passion of N.”

“N” also received no reply to this barrage of letters. Nor did Marie respond to his numerous invitations to dine with him. Appealing
to her patriotism was too much. She closeted herself in her rooms, at sea about what to do next—for not only had the emperor inundated
her
with demands to become his lover, he had sent full copies of these entreaties to Marie’s husband and to her brother Benedict! The text of one missive made it clear that the fate of Poland rested in her hands.

Napoleon’s valet observed his employer’s discombobulation by Marie’s rejection. “The Emperor was in a state of unusual agitation…. He could not remain still for a moment…. He got up, walked about, sat down, got up again…. He did not say a word to me, though he usually talked in an easy way while dressing…. He still had had no answer to his letters and could not understand it. He considered himself irresistible to women.”

Napoleon Bonaparte had developed a number of philosophies about the opposite sex. As a young man, he had written, “Woman is indispensable to a man’s animal organization; but she is even more essential to the satisfaction of his sensibilities.” Love had no place in the equation. “I regard love as injurious to society and as destructive to the individual’s personal happiness,” he had once pontificated. “I believe that it does more harm than good. We could thank the gods if the world were quit of it!”

And although they were “indispensable,” the serial adulterer and staunch misogynist didn’t trust women. They “misuse certain advantages in order to lead us astray and to dominate us. For one who inspires us to do good things, there are hundreds who bring us to folly.” Napoleon’s paramours held no political sway, as many royal mistresses of the past had done with their respective sovereigns. “States are lost as soon as women interfere in public affairs…. If a woman were to advocate some political move, that would seem to me sufficient reason for taking the opposite course.”

Love and politics, like oil and water, aren’t supposed to mix. The eventual romance between Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie Walewska would prove the rarest of exceptions. But acquiescence on Marie’s part was still a way off; she remained one of his most difficult conquests.

Ultimately the decision to go to the emperor (or not), to play a role
in Poland’s liberation (or not) was hers—with the unusual blessing of her spouse and siblings. Count Walewski claimed to be willing to sacrifice his marital honor in order to save his country. There were others pushing Marie’s tush toward Napoleon as well. Their contemporaries refer to a raft of letters from Polish dignitaries, including one written by Prince Joseph Poniatowski, the nephew of the kingdom’s last monarch, urging Marie to surrender herself, despite her religious and moral scruples. The correspondence compares her role to that of the Old Testament’s Esther who “gave herself for the salvation of her people; for that reason her sacrifice was glorious.”

But Marie was not yet ready to become their vestal, their lamb, or their political pawn. So reinforcements were brought in to convince her. Henriette de Vauban, Prince Poniatowski’s grande dame of mistresses, who more or less presided over a harem of younger beauties, reminded Marie of the great compliment the emperor had paid her—and Poland—by falling head over heels for a local lady. Henriette, who had coached Marie on the etiquette of Versailles, also informed the innocent countess that back in the day, the only thing that was considered objectionable at the Bourbon court was bad manners! And to refuse to at least
visit
His Imperial Majesty would constitute the height of rudeness.