Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (36 page)

Now she had to beg a favor from her dressmaker. Napoleon knew exactly how he wished her to appear, and she had under five weeks to perfect her costume. She would wear an elaborate white dress swathed in gold tulle and embroidered with golden bees; there was to be a magnificent train of twenty-five yards of red velvet, adorned with yet more bees and bordered in ermine. Josephine’s apartments were a flurry of great artists, all conferring with her on the design for the costume for her ladies as well as herself. There was talk of resurrecting the old hoop of Marie Antoinette, but Josephine refused, suggesting a tulle ruff around the neck—which corresponded perfectly to Napoleon’s desire for the coronation to have a Renaissance look (although some worried that it evoked the terrifying Catherine de Medici).

Every dressmaker in Paris was working around the clock. Gold
thread was at a premium, and fine embroiderers—who had fallen out of fashion in the Republic—could name their price. “It seems like a dream or a story from the Arabian nights when I remember the luxury that was displayed at that period,” recalled Madame de Rémusat.
¹²
The population of the city seemed to double, people were repainting their houses, dancers at the Opéra were learning new ballets, and delivery boys ran all over the city with food and drink for receptions. Notre-Dame was a hive of activity, so covered in embroidered hangings that one visitor thought God Himself would get lost there. Carts of furniture, cloth, jewels, and fine glass and china arrived daily. The “gaiety, anticipation and celebration in Paris then was unimaginable,” Josephine noted.
¹³
The moneylenders did the best business of all. Each lady-in-waiting was given ten thousand francs to compensate for her expenditure and gowns, but they all spent much more, even four times that amount—a huge sum when the average wage was around seven hundred francs a year.

Not everyone was swept away with delight and excitement. The Bonaparte family immediately started on the counterattack. The last queen of France to be crowned was Marie de Medici in 1610, and her husband had been assassinated the next day. Did Napoleon want the same to happen? He tried to brush off their insinuations. Caroline, Elisa, and Pauline were told firmly that they would be expected to carry Josephine’s marvelous train of ermine and velvet, along with Hortense and Julie, wife of Joseph. The sisters practically fainted at the news, and Joseph roared that his wife, as a virtuous woman, could not carry Josephine’s train. He complained that even when Marie de Medici had been crowned, a distant relative had carried her train, “not the King’s own sister.” Caroline led the others in a hysterical strike of tears, pleas, and attempts at haranguing Napoleon into changing his mind. Finally, after suffering six days of constant complaints, he gave in and told his sisters that they would merely have to support the mantle during the ceremony. Each one would have a chamberlain to carry her own train. “Only my family can exert such influence over me,” sighed Napoleon, the terrifying ruler of the French empire brought low by his cross sisters—“I’ve lost sleep over this.”
¹⁴
Although the sisters had escaped the public humiliation of playing Josephine’s bridesmaids, they had lost the
bigger battle. The hated “la Beauharnais,” the reviled “
la vieille
,” was to be crowned empress in the eyes of the world.

Josephine’s docile behavior had, as Hortense predicted, won Napoleon back to her side. But she was not satisfied. She still wished for the religious blessing Napoleon had denied her.

After the wearisome journey from Rome, Pope Pius VII, elderly and infirm, arrived and was greeted by cheering Parisians. After welcome celebrations at Fontainebleau, Pius and his attendants took up residence in fifty-six rooms of the Tuileries and, having expected a nation of atheists, were quite stunned by the religious fervor. Everyone from revolutionary generals to Jacobins flocked to the pope’s apartments, begging him to bless their belongings. Pius was presented with watches, pens, scissors, purses, and ink pots, and had to bless them all. He was followed wherever he went, and every morning huge crowds would appear under his balcony at the Tuileries, calling loudly for him to bless them.

The enthusiasm of the population was only half consolation to Pius for some of the shocking demands Napoleon had made. The new emperor had informed the pope that the service would be radically changed and that he would have to walk into the cathedral rather than be carried on a litter—an unfair demand for vainglorious Napoleon to make of the elderly and infirm pope.

On December 1, the day before the coronation, Josephine made her move. She had left it to the last minute to minimize any possible discussion. She begged for a private audience with the pope and then, weeping, told him that her marriage had been only a civil affair. Poor Pius was shocked to discover that he had been on the brink of anointing the emperor’s concubine with holy oil. Josephine had timed her attack superbly. Pius was annoyed at the constant humiliations he had received from Napoleon, and this was the final straw. He had accepted having to walk into the cathedral, he had given in to the curtailed ceremony, but he would not crown a sinful pair of cohabitees as emperor and empress. He declared that if Napoleon and Josephine were not married in a properly religious ceremony, he would not preside over the coronation.

Napoleon had to relent. He could not postpone the coronation, and Pius was not to be moved. Cardinal Fesch was sent to arrange an immediate
marriage service. That night during a brief break from the preparations, at a makeshift altar hastily erected in Napoleon’s study, the emperor and empress were married by Fesch in a short ceremony at midnight. Their parish priest was not present, as was required, and the attendance of witnesses was debatable—Josephine claimed two aides-de-camp were present, but Napoleon later denied they had been there.
¹⁵
It was thus hardly legal, which was perhaps why Napoleon went through with it without resentment. At the end, Josephine asked Fesch to give her a written certification of the marriage. She thought it her surefire protection against divorce.

CHAPTER 16

“The King of Diamonds”

The second day of December 1804 was the coldest of the year. Freezing snow was followed by battering rain, but still the people took up their positions on the streets leading toward Notre-Dame. At the Tuileries, every moment had been dedicated to prepping for the forthcoming celebrations. Hairdressers had been at such a premium that many ladies were coiffed the previous evening and forced to sleep upright to preserve their hairstyle. Some courtiers had not had time to go to bed. Josephine seized a few hours’ rest, only to be awakened before six so that Isabey could paint her face with the rouge Napoleon so loved. The hairdresser teased her hair into ringlets around a pearl and diamond diadem. Her ladies dressed her in the white satin gown, embroidered in gold, with a low neckline and the ruff as a collar. A diamond belt circled her waist.

Then Josephine had to wait. Napoleon’s elaborate dress took over an hour longer than planned. He wore so many jewels that he looked like a walking mirror, and he had plucked the huge “Regent” diamond from his sword and attached it to his hat. He was delighted by his appearance, though, but others noted that the Renaissance dress of a short coat over puffed knickerbockers was hardly flattering to his apple-shaped form. “Perhaps successful on the drawing board,” commented one woman, “it was unbecoming on the Emperor, who is short, fat and awkward.” More like an overdressed child than an awe-inspiring ruler, she thought he looked “like the King of Diamonds.”

In high spirits, the King of Diamonds bounded down the stairs and, almost two hours late, left the Tuileries in the imperial state coach at ten
A.M.
Josephine was by his side, Joseph and Louis facing them, similarly awkward in ruffs and stiff outfits that bore an unfortunate resemblance to costumes. Eight bay horses drove the Fontaine-designed riot of gold, bees, and diamonds; the coach had eight huge glass windows through which Napoleon and Josephine could be seen. The spectators seemed more inquisitive than thrilled. “I noticed there was no real enthusiasm anywhere,” Napoleon noted, although at least, he admitted, there was no active dissent. The state coaches rumbled through the narrow streets, with the ministers, the grand chamberlain, the Bonaparte princesses, and the diplomatic corps all putting on their best look of royal dignity for the crowds. The people warmed their hands with hot pies and admired the horses.

As the imperial couple arrived at Notre-Dame, the sun came through the clouds, and amid the roar of cannons, Napoleon and Josephine stepped from their coach. Josephine was fortunate that her husband had not forced her to dress in hoops and farthingales. Her clinging gown and gold decoration were an instant hit with the crowd. Still, all the gold in the world could not hide her origins. “What beauty!” recalled one spectator. “But for me, she would always be Barras’s mistress.” Barras, in exile, had created them both, but neither Napoleon nor Josephine had a thought to spare for him.

Inside the cathedral, the spectators had been waiting since the early morning, surreptitiously eating sausages to keep warm. The elderly pope had sat on his freezing throne for hours, saying prayers and begging God to show mercy for what he was about to do. As a final insult, Napoleon had informed him that he and Josephine would not take the coronation communion. Poor Pius, once again, was humiliated by the irreligious nature of the man he had traveled so far to crown.

On arrival at Notre-Dame, the pair moved to a robing room to don their imperial robes. Napoleon attired himself as a Roman emperor, wearing a long satin gown and a mantle of purple embroidered with bees and attached at the shoulder and the waist. He was crowned with a laurel wreath and carried a scepter. Josephine donned her robes and a tiara composed of over a thousand diamonds set in platinum.

After an hour in the robing room, the procession began with the heralds-at-arms, pages, grand master of ceremonies, and Josephine’s own equerries and chamberlains. General Murat bore her crown on a cushion. Then the empress emerged, walking slowly under a canopy. Her huge mantle was carried by the five Bonaparte princesses. Despite the triumph of having their own trains carried, they were resentful of following “
la vieille
” and not afraid to show it. They barely lifted the mantle and let it drag on the ground so that Josephine struggled to walk. The emperor was last to appear, his crown, sword, necklace, and globe carried by his marshals. Impatient as ever, he was so eager to get to the altar that he used his scepter to prod Cardinal Fesch to hurry up.

Although the procession had been excessively magnificent, the service itself was short and arranged so that only those closest could see. French kings traditionally had lain full-length, facedown in front of the altar, for the blessing, but Napoleon knew that doing so would only invite ridicule. He was wise: Josephine prostrate on the floor would have inspired dozens of cruel cartoons. Instead, Napoleon had decided that he and Josephine would kneel at the altar for the pope’s triple unction of holy water on their heads and hands after High Mass.

At the high point of the ceremony, the pope blessed the two crowns and placed them on the altar. Quick as a flash, Napoleon seized the biggest crown and popped it onto his head. It was an act of shocking affront and typical of the emperor. The great showman had been planning it, borrowing the idea from the tsar of Russia, who had crowned himself—but the onlookers thought it all spontaneous. Sidelining the pope altogether, Napoleon then took Josephine’s crown and held it out, signaling her to come toward him. As Claire de Rémusat put it, she knelt with “such simple elegance that all eyes were delighted with the picture she presented.”
¹
He placed her crown first on his own head and then on hers, over the diadem she already wore. Josephine burst into tears.

He was almost playful, as Josephine’s lady recounted, “He put it on, then took it off, and finally put it on again as if to promise her that she should wear it gracefully and lightly.”
²
Her carriage and bearing were so majestic that some of those watching became a little carried away. “I have had the honor of being presented to many real princesses,” gushed
Laure Junot, “but I never saw one who, to my eyes, presented so perfect a personification of elegance and majesty.”
³

The elegance had not come without a struggle; at the crucial moment, the Bonaparte sisters had tried to take their revenge. When Josephine walked up for her blessing, the sisters all at once loosened the mantle, threatening to let go. The empress staggered backward. Napoleon spotted it and whipped around to give his sisters a sharp reprimand. Ashamed, they huddled to resume their positions and Josephine carried on, head held high. After blessing the new rulers and completing Mass at the altar, the pope retired to the sacristy, preferring not to witness Napoleon’s civil oath to the Republic. To the presiding officers of the legislative bodies, and in resounding tones, Napoleon declared that he would “maintain the integrity and territory of the Republic, to protect political, civil and religious liberties, and the irrevocability of national property.” Even during the ceremony, he was making plans that would contravene nearly every oath.