Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (15 page)

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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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

N
APOLEON
’
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.”
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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.”
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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