Citizen Emperor (65 page)

If the occupation of the city was orderly, the political repression that followed was severe. In flagrant contravention of the agreement Napoleon had signed with the
junta
only a few days before, he ordered the arrest of a long list of people declared traitors, including the Council of the Inquisition. Any officers who remained in the city were declared prisoners of war. The Duc de Saint-Simon was a French émigré who had chosen to fight against the French army at the siege of Madrid in May 1808, and was thus guilty of treason. Captured, he was condemned to be shot, an expression of Napoleon’s frustration at seeing French émigrés continue to fight against the Empire, despite the politics of reconciliation he had adopted early in his reign.
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Saint-Simon’s daughter, desperate to gain an audience with Napoleon in order to plead for her father’s life, eventually found him in the middle of military manoeuvres where she threw herself at his feet. Napoleon granted clemency in a display of public compassion. It was grandstanding at its most spectacular.

Antoine Charles Horace Vernet,
Napoléon Ier devant Madrid, l’Empereur recevant une députation de la ville, 3 décembre 1808
(Napoleon I before Madrid, the Emperor receiving a deputation from the city, 3 December 1808), 1810. Again we are presented with the image of merciful statesman pardoning those who had revolted against him. It contrasts with the brutal reality of Napoleon’s occupation of Madrid. On the left, a deputation from the city of Madrid implores the Emperor to accept their surrender. Gros exhibited a similar painting in 1810.

Napoleon was still in Madrid at the end of December when he received news that the British under Sir John Moore had clashed with elements of Soult’s cavalry at Sahagún, almost 300 kilometres north of Madrid. His forces set out from Madrid on 20 December. Ney led the advance party and on the evening of the 21st reached the Sierra de Guadarrama, a mountain range that lay across the road to Madrid, a natural obstacle that could be crossed fairly easily through the Guadarrama pass. The next day, the weather conditions worsened and the troops accompanying Napoleon found it difficult to follow. Napoleon never let anything as trivial as the weather get in his way. He insisted, despite snowdrifts and high winds, that the pass be negotiated. The Dragoons of the Guard were ordered over first. They got a quarter of the way up the road and then turned back, reporting that it was impossible to go any further. Napoleon nevertheless pushed his troops ahead. Some recalled that the crossing of the Sierra de Guadarrama was far worse than that of Saint-Bernard, and that the wind was so strong that the troops could hardly make any headway.
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A number of men died in the course of the day, either of cold or falling from precipices, so that Napoleon, even though he was there, in the thick of it, was openly threatened. Soldiers from the Lapisse Division goaded each other to shoot him first, accusing each other of cowardice for not doing so. Napoleon heard it all, but seemed to take it in his stride.
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In any event, his persistence paid off; they got across by the end of 23 December, although many would later recall the crossing with horror.

The pursuit proved fruitless. Moore managed to evade the French, although Napoleon’s interpretation of the British retreat was slightly out of touch with the reality. He wrote to Josephine to say that they were ‘fleeing in a terrified fashion’.
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It is true that Moore was hard pressed, and that the condition of his troops did not allow him to turn and fight a battle at any point during the retreat, but they were able to withdraw, in good order, all the way to Coruña, where he was evacuated by the Royal Navy. When Napoleon realized this was going to happen, he reduced the size of his force and handed it over to Soult.

The Courtier’s Mask . . .

Napoleon had decided to leave Spain, without having fought a standing battle. As in Egypt, and as in Russia only two years later, he informed only a few people in his entourage that he was going home. He told Joseph that he would be in Paris for twenty days or so and that he would be back around the end of February. The same day he changed his mind and wrote that it would be the end of October 1809.
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The news he received from France was not the most encouraging. He was getting alarming reports about a ‘conspiracy’ that was forming in Paris (a reference to the Talleyrand–Fouché alliance).
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It was also increasingly obvious that Austria was mobilizing its army against France. There was, therefore, good reason to return, but Napoleon also seems to have been influenced in his decision by an unrealistic assessment of the situation on the ground in Spain. He fully believed his job there was over; he had broken the back of Spanish resistance, and had thrown the Anglo-Spanish army out of Spain through Coruña.
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‘The Spanish affair is done with,’ he wrote to Jérôme, and that appears to be the extent of his thinking on the matter.
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He left instructions with a number of his commanders to crush what resistance remained, and advised Joseph on the best way to control Madrid – a few good hangings would do the trick.
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After giving the orders to have everything prepared for a dash to Paris, and writing to Joseph to spread the rumour that he would be back within a month,
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Napoleon left Valladolid on 17 January 1809, and travelled the first 120 kilometres in five hours. The news that he was leaving did not impress those left behind; nobody wanted to be in Spain.
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Paul Thiébault, who was travelling from Valladolid to Burgos, was passed by Napoleon and his aide-de-camp, galloping so fast that the rest of his retinue and his guard were a minute or two behind.
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Napoleon reached the capital on 23 January, having travelled over 1,100 kilometres in six days. He had been in Spain all of three months, but had learnt nothing. He did not come away with a better appreciation of the difficulties of occupying the country, and he appears to have been convinced that whatever resistance the French met was temporary. However, his hold over Spain in 1809 was precarious. He did not control Portugal, which would subsequently be used as an entry point by the British to introduce troops, and he had not won the hearts and minds of the Spanish people by implementing reforms. On the contrary, the Spanish resented having their traditions overturned. The instructions Napoleon left on the manner of concluding the campaign reveal how much he treated Spain as though it were another conventional war, and show the extent to which he simply did not understand what was happening on the ground.

Napoleon’s sudden return to Paris did not go down well. There was all sorts of conjecture about his motives: that things were going badly in Spain and that he was abandoning its conquest; that war with Austria was inevitable; that relations with Russia had deteriorated; and that those close to him were plotting.
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There is a grain of truth to all of these suppositions. One of the first people Napoleon saw on his return was Cambacérès. That evening he berated him for not warning him of the rapprochement between Talleyrand and Fouché.
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It was not until five days later, however, on the afternoon of Saturday 28 January, during a meeting of the Council of State that there was a scene.
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The Comte de Montesquiou, recently admitted to the Council and about to be sworn in, was the only person to commit the scene to paper. Napoleon started off in a reasonable enough tone, critical of those who had intrigued behind his back without naming any names. When he saw that Talleyrand remained entirely passive, he increasingly lost his temper. The dressing down that followed lasted between thirty minutes and two hours.
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Napoleon started by complaining that they had interpreted as unfortunate a campaign that was marked by success and that they had been acting as if the succession were open. Interestingly, the minister of finance, Nicolas-François Mollien, suggests that the opinions Napoleon attributed to Fouché and Talleyrand were those to be found among the general public, and that it was this more than anything else that had made an impression on Napoleon.

During this outburst Napoleon supposedly shouted at Talleyrand the now famous phrase: ‘You are nothing but shit in silk stockings.’ It is a wonderful line, although undoubtedly apocryphal.
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It is clear though that Napoleon thought it, and probably uttered something similar to Caulaincourt years later. Throughout the ordeal, Talleyrand maintained an imperturbable façade, limiting himself when it was all over to the mildest of reactions by remarking to someone standing near by, ‘What a pity that such a great man should be so ill bred.’ Two days later, in evident disgrace, Talleyrand lost his position of grand chamberlain, although even that did not prevent him from attending court as though nothing had happened. For Talleyrand was not disgraced, or not entirely. He kept the title of ‘Vice Grand Elector’, a purely honorific position with no responsibilities. He was never again admitted to a private audience with Napoleon, who never again asked him his opinion, but he was always kept within reach. Fouché, surprisingly, retained his job, for the moment. He was dismissed from office in June 1810, supposedly for having secretly entered into peace negotiations with Britain.

Talleyrand, from a profoundly aristocratic family with an abundance of ‘good taste’ – a studied elegance, simple manners, complete self-control – cultivated a polite exterior, and one that was so deeply embedded it would never crack, even in the face of extreme adversity.
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This is about a polite façade that gave nothing away, an important element of court politics. Court society was a society of masks, a society in which one learnt to dissimulate one’s thoughts and feelings.
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Talleyrand’s inscrutable face was born of the need to protect himself from the gaze of the Other. Louis XVI, for example, would never give way to impulse or testify to feelings by some sort of physical expression. Reactions that revealed true feeling rather than calculated behaviour gave rivals a trump card that could then be used to harm or discredit.

. . . and Napoleon’s Bad Behaviour

Napoleon’s insulting behaviour, on the other hand, was a blatant sign of disrespect after which it was permissible, even justifiable, for Talleyrand to sever or manipulate the relationship with him as he saw fit.
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One suspects that Talleyrand never forgave Napoleon for what was a very public humiliation. As a result of this and other slights he was to suffer over the coming years, the love and admiration he had once felt for Napoleon were gradually transformed into hatred.
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In this particular instance, Napoleon’s verbal onslaught revealed a sense of betrayal by someone who had professed such deep affection for him on so many occasions. It is entirely possible that he knew, consciously or not, that Talleyrand had undermined his efforts at Erfurt. It is even possible that a Janus-faced Fouché had informed Napoleon of this.
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But that is only part of the story. Of petty noble origin, a rough and ready soldier without tact and with little self-control, Napoleon almost never refrained from violent outbursts, even in front of foreign dignitaries. There are innumerable examples of him insulting, abusing and even assaulting courtiers, both men and women (although admittedly he never laid a hand on any woman), almost as though he took a distinct pleasure in humiliating those beneath him.
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We know that he could lose control and lash out, sometimes using a riding crop to thrash his poor interlocutor across the head and shoulders. He did this to his secretary (when he was in Syria), and cut his groom with his whip (when in Poland). The groom had been helping him mount his horse and did so a little too vigorously, sending his imperial master flying over the other side.
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