The Josephine B. Trilogy (140 page)
Agathe: Josephine’s scullery maid.
Arberg, Countess d’: Josephine’s second lady of honour, replacing Chastulé.
Auguié, Adèle: Madame Campan’s niece and Hortense’s closest friend, as well as her maid.
Avrillion, Mademoiselle: Josephine’s mistress of the wardrobe.
Bacchiochi, Elisa Bonaparte (Princess of Piombino, Grand Duchess): Napoleon’s eldest sister; married to Félix.
Beauharnais, Eugène (Viceroy of Italy): Josephine’s son by her first husband; married Princess Auguste-Amélie of Bavaria and had six children.
Beauharnais, Fanny: Josephine’s aunt through her first husband; poet and eccentric.
Beauharnais, Marquis de: the father of Alexandre, Josephine’s first husband; married to Josephine’s Aunt Désirée.
Bonaparte, Hortense Beauharnais (Queen of Holland): Josephine’s daughter by her first husband; married Napoleon’s brother Louis and had four sons (little Napoleon, Petit and Oui-Oui by her husband; Charles Auguste Demorny by Charles Flahaut).
Bonaparte, Jérôme (King of Westphalia): Napoleon’s youngest sibling; first married Elizabeth Patterson (annulled), then Princess Catherine of Württemberg; one child by his first wife, four by his second.
Bonaparte, Joseph (King of Naples, King of Spain): Napoleon’s older brother; married to Julie Clary, by whom he had two daughters.
Bonaparte, Letizia (Signora Letizia, Madame Mère): Napoleon’s mother.
Bonaparte, Louis (King of Holland): Napoleon’s brother; married Hortense and had three sons.
Bonaparte, Lucien: Napoleon’s brother; disowned by him; first married Christine, with whom he had two children; widowed, he married Alexandrine, with whom he had eleven.
Bonaparte, Napoleon (Emperor of the French, King of Italy): first wife, Josephine; second wife, Marie-Louise, by whom he had one son, Napoleon-François-Charles-Joseph.
Borghèse, Pauline Bonaparte (Princess Borghèse): Napoleon’s sister, renowned for her beauty; first married to Victor Leclerc, then widowed; subsequently married Prince Camillo Borghèse. Dermide, her son by Leclerc, died at the age of six.
Bourrienne, Fauvelet: Napoleon’s first secretary.
Cadoudal, Georges: Royalist agent, convicted of conspiracy.
Cambacérès, Jean-Jacques de: Second Consul, Arch-Chancellor.
Campan, Madame: schoolmistress and former lady-in-waiting to Queen Marie Antoinette.
Caulaincourt, Armand de: French Ambassador to Russia, Minister of Foreign Affairs. Josephine had known his family since before the Revolution and had helped them during the Terror.
Chimay, Thérèse Tallien (Princess de Chimay): Josephine’s close friend. Divorced from Tallien (who died indigent, likely suffering from venereal disease) and the mother of a number of illegitimate children by the financier Ouvrard. Ostracized by the court and polite society, she nevertheless married Prince de Chimay. One of her sons by Chimay married a woman whose biological father is believed to have been Napoleon.
Constant: Napoleon’s valet.
Corvisart, Dr. Jean: Imperial doctor to Napoleon and Josephine for many years, then doctor to Empress Marie-Louise. He conspired with the Austrians to help keep Marie-Louise and her son from joining Napoleon on Elba by telling her that her health was not strong enough for such a voyage.
Denuelle, Éléonore: Caroline’s reader, Napoleon’s mistress. Her claim that Napoleon was the father of her son, Léon, was later substantiated.
Désirée, Aunt: see Montardat.
Despréaux, Monsieur: dance master.
Duchâtel, Adèle: Josephine’s lady-in-waiting; mistress to Napoleon, courted by Eugène.
Duplan, Monsieur: hairdresser.
Duroc, Christophe: Napoleon’s aide and Hortense’s first love.
Fesch, Joseph (Archbishop of Lyons, Cardinal): Napoleon’s uncle by marriage.
Flahaut, Charles: Hortense’s lover and father of her son Charles Auguste Demorny (raised by Flahaut’s mother, the romance novelist Madame de Souza, with financial help from Hortense).
Fouché: Minister of Police, at various times; intriguer.
Frangeau, Madame: midwife.
Gazzani, Carlotta: Josephine’s reader and Napoleon’s mistress (briefly).
Georges, Mademoiselle: actress, Napoleon’s mistress.
Gontier: Josephine’s elderly manservant.
Grassini: Italian singer, Napoleon’s mistress.
Horeau, Dr.: Dr. Corvisart’s student; Josephine’s physician at the time of her death.
Isabey: portrait artist, art teacher, Josephine’s make-up artist.
Junot, Andoche: Napoleon’s aide; Governor of Paris; Caroline’s lover.
Lavalette, Émilie Beauharnais: Josephine’s niece by her first husband; married to Lavalette. After Napoleon’s second and final defeat, Émilie disguised herself as a man and took her husband’s place in prison (where he’d been condemned to death), allowing him to escape to Bavaria. Tragically, while in prison, she suffered a miscarriage and lost her sanity. Pardoned in 1822, Lavalette returned to his wife in France, but she did not recognize him. However, his attentive care partially restored her memory and their last years together were happy ones.
Leroy, Monsieur: fashion designer.
Méneval: Napoleon’s secretary, replacing Fauvelet Bourrienne.
Mimi: Josephine’s childhood maid; a mulatto from Martinique, formerly a slave. She married one of Napoleon’s cabinet guards and during the Hundred Days gave refuge to Hortense.
Montardat, Désirée: Josephine’s godmother and aunt; first married to Monsieur Renaudin, who was suspected of trying to murder her. Her
second husband was Marquis de Beauharnais, the father of Josephine’s first husband. Shortly after the Marquis’s death, she married Pierre Danès de Montardat (“Monsieur Pierre”), the mayor of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Moreau: popular general convicted of conspiracy; exiled to America but returned from exile to join the Russian forces. He was killed by a French cannonball at the Battle of Dresden in 1813.
Moustache: Napoleon’s courier.
Murat, Caroline Bonaparte (Duchess de Berg, Queen of Naples): Napoleon’s youngest sister; married to Joachim Murat, with whom she had four children.
Murat, Joachim (Duke de Berg, King of Naples): Caroline Bonaparte’s husband.
Rémusat, Claire (“Clari”): lady-in-waiting to Josephine.
Rochefoucauld, Chastulé, Countess de la: Josephine’s distant cousin and lady of honour.
Roustam: Napoleon’s Mameluke bodyguard.
Talleyrand: Minister of Foreign Affairs and traitor.
Talma: the most renowned actor of his day.
Tascher, Stéphanie: Josephine’s niece and goddaughter.
Thérèse: see Chimay.
Walewska, Countess Marie: Napoleon’s Polish mistress, the mother of his son Alexandre.
Beauharnais Genealogy
Bonaparte Genealogy
Anyone who ventures into the Napoleonic Empire is quickly overwhelmed by the vast number of books that have been published on all aspects of the period. After over a decade of immersion in this moment in history, I still feel I have only scratched the surface. My bibliography now lists almost four hundred titles; I will note only a few.
Researching this novel, I was highly entertained—“diverted” is a suitably eighteenth-century word—by the many memoirs of the period: those of Mademoiselle Avrillion, Fauvelet Bourrienne, Las Cases, Constant, Madame Ducrest, Baron Fain, Fouché, Madame Junot, Méneval, Madame Rémusat, and especially Hortense. In all cases it was necessary to judge the veracity and objectivity of the author (who was, in many cases, a ghost writer), making the search for “truth” rather like trying to find one’s way through the hall of mirrors at a fun fair.
For information about Josephine, my mainstays have continued to be:
Impératrice Joséphine, Correspondance, 1782-1814,
compiled and edited by Maurice Catinat, Bernard Chevallier and Christophe Pincemaille (Paris: Histoire Payot, 1996) and
L’impératrice Joséphine
by Bernard Chevallier and Christophe Pincemaille (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1988) as well as Ernest John Knapton’s
Empress Josephine
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963). An award-winning biography was published as I was in the final stages of this work: Françoise Wagener’s
L’Impératrice Joséphine (1763–1814)
(Paris: Flammarion, 1999).
It is difficult to select one particular book about Napoleon: there are so many. Although decidedly pro-Napoleon, Vincent Cronin’s
Napoleon
(London: Collins, 1971) remains one of the best, in my opinion. At the very least it is highly readable and captures the spirit of the time. Frank McLynn’s
Napoleon: A Biography
(London: Pimlico, 1998) is a recent and balanced account I consulted frequently.
Other books of note: Joan Bear’s
Caroline Murat
(London: Collins, 1972); Jean-Paul Bertaud’s
Bonaparte et le duc d’Enghien; le duel des deux Frances
(Paris: Robert Laffont, 1972); Hubert Cole’s
The Betrayers: Joachim and Caroline Murat
(London: Eyre Methuen, 1972) and
Fouché: The Unprincipled Patriot
(London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1971); Émile Dard’s
Napoleon and Talleyrand
(London: Philip Allan & Co., Ltd., 1937); Walter Geer’s
Napoleon and His Family: The Story of a Corsican Clan
(London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1928); Carola Oman’s
Napoleon’s Viceroy: Eugène de Beauharnais
(New York: Funk and Wagnall, 1966); Jean Tulard’s
Fouché
(Paris: Fayard, 1998) and
Murat
(Paris: Fayard, 1999).
Three books in particular provided a wealth of wonderful detail: Bernard Chevallier’s award-winning
L’art de vivre au temps de Joséphine
(Paris: Flammarion, 1998); Maurice Guerrini’s
Napoleon and Paris: Thirty Years of History
(New York: Walker and Company, 1967); Frédéric Masson’s
Joséphine, Empress and Queen,
(Paris and London: Goupil & Co., 1899).
I am often asked to recommend a non-fiction book on the subject of Josephine and Napoleon. Evangeline Bruce’s
Napoleon and Josephine: The Improbable Marriage
(New York: Scribner, 1995) is excellent—a highly readable and generally accurate account of both personal and political worlds.
In closing, a word of caution: this subject is addictive.
With the exception of the letter of March 12, 1810 (to which information has been added), Napoleon’s letters throughout are edited versions of those he actually wrote to Josephine. The police reports are likewise authentic, as are Hortense and Émilie’s account of the journey to Plombières, Napoleon’s instructions to Eugène on how to rule Italy , and Josephine’s letter to Napoleon. The translations are my own, with help from Bernard Turle.
There have been times over the last three years when I felt that the spirits were putting roadblocks in my path, that there was a conspiracy to prevent this book from drawing to a close—a conspiracy in which I was, no doubt, an unconscious accomplice, for this hasn’t been an easy book to finish. It ends a decade of daily interaction with Josephine and her family, closes a curtain on a world that has become home to me.
