Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (46 page)

The emperor was reaching a new low in popularity. The public was furious when they heard that he wished his armies to return to Spain to force the installation of his brother as king. It seemed as if their men were being sent to die merely to give his brother a throne. Riots against conscription soared again, Napoleon was caricatured and detested, and courtiers considered moving their loyalties elsewhere. The vassal states were rebelling and Austria was growing braver.

He needed a huge army to subdue Spain, but he had no way of transporting supplies, as the roads were so poor over the Pyrenees. He did not care and forced his men to march. He managed to drag them to Madrid, but when he heard that the Austrians were re-arming, he immediately turned back. Even worse, news came by courier—and through spies to every ambassador in Europe—that Talleyrand and Fouché, formerly mortal rivals, had been seen in open discussion at the Tuileries. They declared they were debating a provisional government in case Napoleon died. In fact, they had plans to overthrow him.

Napoleon returned to the Tuileries and screamed public abuse at Talleyrand for three hours. “You are nothing but shit in a silk stocking!” he ranted. His minister did not reply. After the tirade, Talleyrand went to the Austrian ambassador and arranged to work for him—at a price of one million francs. Napoleon turned his attention to Fouché, saying that he wished to call up another half million men. Fouché warned him that this would be unwise. France was already at breaking point with a million men in the army—any more might push the people into a concerted riot against Napoleon.

The emperor finally recognized that his position was desperately insecure. He also had disappointing news from Russia. Grand Duchess Catherine was engaged to the Duke of Oldenburg. He resolved to retain his wife. “This year is an inopportune time to shock public opinion by repudiating the popular Empress. Already I am not loved. She is a link between me and many people, and she is responsible for attaching a part of Paris society to me which would then leave me.”
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A
USTRIA WAS INDEED
convinced that Napoleon was weak, his army overextended and lacking support at home. In April 1809, the news reached Paris that Austria had invaded Bavaria, a kingdom he considered a vassal; Napoleon decided on immediate action. He tried to leave without Josephine, but she heard the sounds of departure and dashed down the steps in her nightgown, crying as she threw herself into his carriage. Napoleon did not have the heart to send her away. He put his coat over her shoulders and ordered her luggage to be sent on later. Her victory was a hollow one. He left her in the palace at Strasbourg and sent her curt letters from the front. Hortense came to stay and brought Louis Napoleon and the baby, Charles Louis Napoleon. But it was little consolation. Josephine’s only hope was that the emperor was too distracted by battle to divorce her. “I have only one passion, only one mistress—France,” Napoleon declared. “I sleep with her, she never lets me down, she pours out her blood and her treasure; if I need 500,000 men, she gives them to me.”
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In reality, the French had fled his army—it was made up of men from the occupied states, the poor, and the desperate. The old morale and strength of purpose were gone.

The emperor had initial success and pushed on to Vienna. Once more, he moved into the Schönbrunn Palace and hoped for word from the tsar. The two sides met in battle at Essling, not far from Vienna, and the result was a stalemate. The French lost more than twenty thousand men, and although the Austrians suffered similar casualties, it seemed so much worse as Napoleon had been halted. The Austrians claimed it as a victory. The news of the failed battle reached Paris and the stock market plunged again. The French no longer believed themselves invincible. They knew that one more defeat would bring the whole house of cards tumbling down as conquered states gained the courage to expel the French armies that occupied them.

In June, Napoleon encouraged Josephine to travel to Plombières and then return to Malmaison. She lived quietly. He did not write to her often, and when he did, he sent no demands that she preside over court balls or visit the Opéra. She retreated to her flowers and plants and sank into despair.

Napoleon sent for reinforcements and, six weeks later, routed the Austrians at the Battle of Wagram. Fifty thousand men were killed. Napoleon
returned to Schönbrunn the victor and set his ministers drafting a new treaty with Austria. Marie Walewska, ever dutiful, wrote to Napoleon after the victory and asked to join him. “Yes, come to Vienna,” he replied. “I would like to give you further proof of the tender friendship I feel for you.”
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He meant to offer her more than friendship. As soon as she arrived, he began spending every afternoon with her. At the beginning of September, Marie was confirmed pregnant.

Josephine was doomed.

M
ARIE WAS THE
first of Napoleon’s mistresses whom he was sure had been entirely faithful to him. Unlike Eléonore Denuelle, she truly loved him; there had been no gentlemen callers in his absences. Napoleon was now certain that he could father a child. Marie’s pregnancy secured his lasting affection for her and meant the end of her three-year period as his mistress. As he told Lucien, “Naturally I would prefer to have my mistress crowned, but I must be allied with sovereigns.”
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He left Vienna resolved to divorce his wife and find a royal to marry.

Josephine was still at Malmaison when she received the news about Marie’s pregnancy. It seemed to her like an avalanche of bad news, for the British had also conquered Martinique, shedding much blood on the island she still loved. To her further distress, she heard that Pope Pius VII had been arrested for refusing to turn British ships away from the ports of Rome. In response, the pope had excommunicated the emperor and refused to give up his temporal power. Furious, Napoleon had him bundled roughly into a carriage and taken from the Vatican to a house arrest in northern Italy.

Josephine knew there was nothing to save her. Excommunicated, Napoleon would care even less about breaking the blessing of his marriage. Under French law, only the pope could annul a royal marriage, but Napoleon ignored the law. He needed a son to stay the ambitions of his family. More important, he no longer saw Josephine as his talisman. The good luck she brought had dissipated, and someone else might grant him more. Laure Junot went to visit the empress with her daughter, and Josephine confessed she “truly suffered” at the sight of the child. “I know I will be shamefully dismissed from the bed of the man who crowned me, but God is my witness that I love him more than my life
and much more than the throne.”
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She no doubt hoped that the well-connected Laure would pass on such information at court. But Napoleon was puffed up with pride at his mistress’s pregnancy and convinced that a new marriage could change his fortunes. He ordered his ambassador in St. Petersburg to ascertain whether fifteen-year-old Grand Duchess Anna, the youngest sister of the tsar, was physically ready to bear children. He wrote to the tsar, reiterating that Alexander could do as he wished with Poland, saying that the words “Poland” and “Polish” should be “obliterated not only from any transaction but from history itself.”
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Poor Marie, who had given up everything for him, was told to go back to her husband, heavy with the emperor’s child.

If Grand Duchess Anna was deemed too young, Napoleon had a second choice. Metternich in Paris had been intimating the excellence of seventeen-year-old Marie Louise of Austria, daughter of Francis I. She spoke good French and was biddable, healthy, and ready for motherhood.

Napoleon wrote to Josephine saying that he was leaving Munich and would be at Fontainebleau on October 26 or 27, and she should meet him there.
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Unfortunately, the courier didn’t reach her until the morning of the twenty-sixth, and when she arrived that evening, Napoleon was already waiting for her. She entered his study to greet him. He looked up briefly from his work and said, “Ah, here at last?” She then retired to her rooms, only to see that the door between her room and his had been sealed. The order, she was told, had come from the emperor himself.

Yet he was unable to make the final break. Over the next few weeks, he dined with Josephine, but only briefly; she found she could never speak to him because there was always a gloating Bonaparte sibling sitting between them. In the evenings, Pauline threw him parties full of beautiful Italian women, but she did not invite Josephine. “There was no more tenderness, no more consideration for my mother,” Hortense recalled. “He became unjust, he tormented her.”

In the old days Josephine had awaited with pleasure Napoleon’s nighttime tap on her salon door: his request for her to read to him, soothe him, or come to his bed. In November 1809, the thought of such a tap pitched her into violent palpitations, breathlessness, and dread.
She could not bear “to hear the confirmation of what she most dreaded to learn.”
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But still the emperor said nothing. He who barely batted an eyelid at conquering countries into submission, able to send hundreds of thousands of men to their death without a second thought, could not tell his wife he wished to divorce. Napoleon asked Hortense to tell her mother the marriage was over, explaining that it would “remove a heavy burden from my heart.”
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She said she could not.

Josephine saw all around the evidence of her fate. The ladies of the court were openly dismissive, even daring to sit in her presence. The Bonapartes laughed in her face. Through it all, she behaved with dignity, holding tight to her last days as empress.

On November 27, the court moved from Fontainebleau to Paris. Napoleon sent a telegram to Eugène asking him to join them right away. There was urgent business he required completed before the end of the year.

CHAPTER 20

“Like a Wounded Soldier”

On the evening of Thursday, November 30, 1809, Josephine and Napoleon shared a miserable dinner. She struggled not to cry and could eat nothing. According to the Comte de Beausset, the palace prefect who was attending them, she looked the “image of sadness and despair.” Napoleon’s only words while they dined were “What time is it?” Before the comte had a chance to reply, the emperor rose from the table. Josephine followed him, her handkerchief over her mouth. The coffee arrived, and the tray was offered to Josephine, so she could perform her task of pouring it for her husband. Instead, he took the tray, poured the coffee into his cup, and added the sugar, staring all the time at his wife. She gazed back in horror. He drank down the coffee, handed the tray to the page, and dismissed the comte, shutting the door behind him. “I saw in the expression of his countenance what was passing in his mind, and I knew that my hour was come,” Josephine said.

He stepped up to me—he was trembling, and I shuddered; he took my hand, pressed it to his heart, and after gazing at me for a few moments in silence he uttered these fatal words: “Josephine! my dear Josephine! You know how I have loved you!… To you, to you alone, I owe the only moments of happiness I have tasted in this world. But, Josephine, my destiny is not to be controlled by my will. My dearest affections must yield to the interests of France.
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She fell into hysteria and began to cry out. The emperor opened the door, and the comte saw her lying on the floor in tears. “I seemed to lose my reason,” she later recalled. Napoleon told the comte he must help get Josephine to her chambers, alerting no one. The two men bundled the empress down the stairs, the comte stumbling over his sword, Napoleon too agitated to hold the candle still. In a state of nerves, almost weeping and breathless with emotion, he poured out his heart. The comte was a renowned gossip, so perhaps it was fortunate that Napoleon was near incoherent. “National welfare,” he panted, “violence to my heart … political necessity … took me by surprise … her daughter was to have prepared her” was all that the comte could make out from the torrent of emotion.