Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (52 page)

She did everything she could to try and please the tsar. On taking tea with her, he pointed to a cup bearing her portrait and asked if he could have it. She told him that he could buy a similar cup anywhere and instead gave him a large antique cameo—showing Alexander the Great and Philip of Macedonia—that had been a gift from Pius VII on her coronation. “I wish to give you something which is not to be found anywhere else and which sometimes will make you think of me.”
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The tsar set the trend; soon all the allied leaders desired to come to Malmaison, taste the ice cream, see the orangutan, and gaze at the stupendous art collection. Josephine had become a trophy, just as Cleopatra had been for the Romans. She smiled graciously as she was treated like a spoil of war, but her heart was breaking. “I cannot be reconciled to Bonaparte’s fate,” she wrote to Hortense. He had been a brutal killer, a ruthless dispatcher of soldiers and civilians alike, but to her he was her husband, her man of bravery and skill. Her future as a captive prize of
the allies was hardly appealing. “At times I have fits of melancholy enough to kill me,” she said.
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On April 16, 1814, Napoleon wrote the last existing letter to Josephine while he waited to be sent abroad. “In my retirement, I shall substitute the pen for the sword,” he told her, saying he would tell the truth about his reign. “I have showered benefits on thousands of wretches! What did they do in the end for me? They have betrayed me. Yes all of them except our dear Eugène, so worthy of you and me,” he lamented. “Adieu, my dear Josephine. Resign yourself as I am doing and never forget one who has never forgotten and will never forget you. P.S. I expect to hear from you when I reach Elba. I am far from being in good health.”
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On April 20, he left Fontainebleau, accompanied by fourteen carriages and an escort of Polish soldiers. Josephine could hardly bear the news that her husband had been bundled off to the obscure island of Elba, twelve miles off the Tuscan coast. He had lied about his supporters: Marie Walewska had rushed to Elba, along with his mother and Pauline, and Marie Louise had tried desperately to attend him. But he thought only of Josephine.

On May 3, Louis XVIII entered Paris and was declared king—after years of living in exile, he was fat, fifty-nine, and delighted to be back in the capital. Louis-Philippe Crépin produced a painting of the king “lifting France from its ruins.” Josephine’s world had nearly disappeared. She still entertained the tsar, always dressed in her finery as she accompanied him past the shrubs from St. Lucia and the flowers from Syria and into the greenhouse that pleased him so well. On May 14, 1814, she caught a cold while out walking with Alexander. On May 23, she received the king of Prussia and the grand duke Constantine, even though she felt weak. “She seemed to me to have a mere cold and her health was usually so good that I was not at all concerned,” Hortense remembered.
¹¹
Josephine’s doctor was equally sanguine, and she herself refused to be cowed and hosted dinner and a small ball on the twenty-fifth for the Russian grand dukes, opening the dancing with the tsar. She then insisted on walking around the grounds with him, wandering past the beautiful plants in the moonlight. By the end of the evening, her fever was high, she had a rash, and she felt very unwell.

Hortense fussed around her with mustard plasters, but nothing worked. On the twenty-seventh, the tsar sent his own doctor to attend her. Josephine greeted him politely and with dignity. “I hope his interest will bring me luck,” she said. The tsar—who seemed to have little else to do in Paris other than visit Malmaison—was due again on the twenty-eighth for dinner. Josephine oversaw the preparations from her bed, to the despair of her doctor, who wished her to rest. He came out of Josephine’s chamber to tell Hortense that her mother was very ill.

On the twenty-eighth, the tsar came to see her, but she was too frail to receive guests and unable to speak. She was struggling to breathe, dropping in and out of consciousness, and in great pain. The doctors agreed that there was little hope. Josephine sent away all those who came to console her. Worried that she might infect her family, she even begged Hortense to leave. Her daughter remained outside and heard from the lady-in-waiting that Josephine occasionally uttered words in her delirium: “Bonaparte … island of Elba … King of Rome.”
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Next morning, the former empress, always aware of the need to appear grand, asked her attendants to dress her in a pink satin morning gown with matching ribbons, and put on her jewels in case the tsar came to visit. At eight o’clock, Hortense and Eugène went to wish her goodbye.

“When she saw us, she held out her arms with great emotion and uttered something we could not understand.” Splendid in her pink gown and her rubies, she received the last rites at eleven
A.M.
At noon, the empress, Napoleon’s “little Creole,” died one month short of her fifty-first birthday.

The cause of death was probably pneumonia. But in simple terms, she no longer wished to live. Without Napoleon, reduced to the trophy of the allies, she could see little estimable in her future. Her maid Mademoiselle Avrillion said “she died of grief.” She had not the spirit to live under occupation. “What fine tact, what kindness and moderation, she possessed,” said Madame du Cayla, the youthful favorite of Louis XVIII. “Her very dying, just now, is a proof of her good taste.”
¹³

Napoleon received the news of Josephine’s death from a newspaper. In shock, he hid himself away in a dark room and refused all food. “No woman was ever loved with more devotion, ardour and tenderness,” he
wrote, “only death could break a union formed by sympathy, love and true feeling.”
¹⁴

J
OSEPHINE LAY IN
state in the foyer of Malmaison for three days in her coffin of lead and mahogany. Twenty thousand members of the public attended to see the great empress. Her beautiful, seductive eyes were closed and her mouth was touched by a smile. The bells of the nearby parishes tolled throughout the day. The capital had rejoiced to be liberated from Napoleon, but they mourned his empress. Some said she had been poisoned, and the puppet king, Louis XVIII, put out an announcement praising her to quell unrest.

The news of the death of Mme. de Beauharnais has provoked general sadness. This woman was born with sweetness and something genuinely good in her manner and in her spirit. Sadly, during the terrible times of the rule of her husband she was forced to take refuge against his brutalities in her love of horticulture … She alone amongst the milieu of this Corsican upstart spoke the language of the French and understood their hearts.

On Thursday, June 2, Josephine’s coffin was taken to the church at Rueil, followed by local representatives and Imperial Guards. Behind them walked a lone footman carrying a silver casket on a cushion. Inside was the empress’s heart. The pallbearers were Alexandre de Beauharnais’s brother, François, and his uncle Claude, the Grand Duke of Baden, and Comte de Tascher, Josephine’s cousin. Eugène, Hortense, and their children walked behind the coffin. Behind them followed a long procession of courtiers and dignitaries of the imperial regime, diplomats, and friends. Thousands of people watched and cried as the empress passed by. The church, entirely draped in black, was so full that only those with invitations could attend. The rest remained outside, weeping for their old empire, their revolutionary past, and the woman herself.

In 1815, when Napoleon returned to France in an attempt to recapture his lost empire, he hurried to Malmaison and pressed those who
were with her in her final hours to tell him of her words. “I still seem to see her walking along the paths and collecting the flowers that she loved so much,” he said, wandering the gardens. “Poor Josephine! She was truly more full of charm than any other person I have ever known. She was a woman in the fullest meaning of the word: capricious and alive, and with the best of hearts.”

Epilogue

If Josephine had lived longer, she would have seen Napoleon return home, perhaps restored to her arms. “She had her failings of course,” he said, “but she at least would never have abandoned me.”
¹
Marie Louise, once so devoted, quickly forgot her husband. In the summer of 1814, she went to take the waters at Aix-les-Bains, and Metternich ensured that she was escorted by Albrecht von Neipperg, a seducer extraordinaire. She fell in love with him and eventually bore him three children. She sent Napoleon a formal greeting for the New Year of 1815 and never wrote to him again.

By the winter of 1814, Napoleon was planning to attack the allies. Disappointed that the restoration of Louis XVIII had made little impact on their day-to-day lives (they felt poorer, not richer), people were beginning to remember the emperor with fondness, and they resented the allied troops. Divisions among the allies only encouraged Napoleon to launch an attack. “You were not made to die on this island,” said Letizia. On February 26, 1815, Napoleon set off with 650 men of the guard, 100 Polish soldiers, and further volunteers. The European ministers had been in Vienna, discussing how to carve up the Napoleonic empire when they heard the unbelievable news: The former emperor had landed in France. On the night of March 19, Louis XVIII fled the Tuileries. Napoleon settled into his old home and even called Fouché back as minister of police (a mistake, as he was in the pay of the allies). The ever loyal Marie Walewska returned, too. But outside Paris, his
enemies were coming together. Napoleon decided on a preemptive strike and hurried to Belgium.

On June 15, the Duchess of Richmond threw a lavish ball for the allies in Brussels. As the people danced, the news came through that Napoleon was advancing. The men left to fight, still in evening dress. Three days later, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and fled toward Paris. On June 22, he abdicated in favor of his son and moved to Malmaison, where Hortense performed the honors of the table. “I will go to Malmaison: I can live there in retirement with some friends, who most certainly will come to see me only for my own sake,” he said.
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Marie Walewska and her son came to visit him, along with other mistresses, including Madame Duchâtel, and his nine-year-old son by Eléonore Denuelle, Charles, Comte Léon. Napoleon wandered Malmaison in a state of depression, remembering his Josephine.

King Louis XVIII, restored once more by the allies, cheerfully said that Napoleon had been a good tenant and kept the Tuileries looking well. They all thought that would be the emperor’s only legacy. As he would not be allowed to stay in France, Napoleon asked for exile in Britain, believing that the British principle of fair play would mean humane treatment. When he arrived at Torbay, crowds of sightseers came to catch a glimpse of him. The prince regent, the prime minister, and the secretary of state for war claimed him as a prisoner of war and informed him that he would be sent to St. Helena, an island in the Atlantic Ocean, between Africa and South America, a very long way from anywhere. He was told he could take three officers and twelve soldiers and would be treated as a general on half pay. “I am not a prisoner but the guest of England,” he complained, to no avail. To be placed for life on an island within the tropics, cut off from all communication with the world was, he thought, quite “horrible.” He declared he would have preferred the Tower of London.
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Napoleon was put under virtual house arrest on St. Helena and amused himself with math puzzles, gardening, and dictating his memoirs. The hero for whom, as Bourrienne said, “all Europe was too small,” and who had exhausted himself with his victories, now had years of rest.
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He could not bear it. By March 1821, he was severely unwell, and
in April his condition deteriorated. In delirium, he cried that he saw the empress:

I have just seen my good Josephine but she would not embrace me. She disappeared at the moment when I was about to take her in my arms. She was seated there. It seemed to me that I had seen her yesterday evening. She is not changed. She is still the same, full of devotion to me. She told me that we were about to see each other again, never more to part. Do you see her?
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Ten days later, on May 5, he died, uttering his last words: “
France, armée, tête d’armée, Josephine.
” At the very end, he thought of his empress.

A
FTER THE DEATH
of their mother, Hortense and Eugène were orphans. “My courage is gone!” Hortense said. “Alexander will soon forget the promised protection, and then I shall have to struggle alone with my two children against the hostilities people will heap on me for the sake of the name I bear.”
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But Tsar Alexander did remember his pledge and pressed Louis XVIII to make her Duchess of Saint-Leu. When Napoleon returned in 1815, she supported him and thus was banished from France when he was finally defeated. She traveled in Germany and Italy before purchasing a château in Switzerland. Her relationship with the Comte de Flahaut continued until after Napoleon’s brief restoration, but then the comte moved to Britain and in 1817 married Margaret Elphinstone, daughter of Napoleon’s mortal enemy Admiral Lord Keith and a friend of Princess Charlotte, then heir to the British throne. Hortense and Flahaut’s son, Charles Auguste, was sent to live with his paternal grandmother. The little boy grew up to be a prosperous Paris businessman, earning a huge fortune from sugar-beet factories. Hortense lived in her Swiss château with her third son, Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. Her second son died in his brother’s arms in 1831 at the age of twenty-seven, of what seems to have been measles. Hortense died in 1837 at fifty-four, worn out by grief. She was buried next to Josephine in the Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul Church in Rueil.