The Josephine B. Trilogy

by Sandra Gulland

  Lake Maggiore, September 2, 1811

  Chère Maman,

  I must stay away longer than I expected. My health is a little frail.

  I am sending some trinkets for Petit and Oui-Oui. How I miss them! Embrace them for me. Speak to them often of their maman. I hope to be back in October. Will they even remember me after four months?

  How are your eyes? (No weeping, remember!) Are you applying the salve I sent you?

  I smiled, I confess, on learning that you are trying to make “economies.” Your heart is too good, maman. Your hand is always open.

  Ah, my tender, gentle maman—the trials of this world do weigh upon me. We are punished for our pleasures; if only we were rewarded for our pain.

  Your loving and dutiful daughter, Hortense

  October 11—Malmaison.

  Hortense returned in time for Petit’s seventh-year birthday fête. She is thinner, and has an air of melancholy. I suspect, but will not ask; know, but cannot say.

  [Undated]

  Bonaparte came to see me today. He seemed gloomy—it was clear that there is much on his mind. “Tsar Alexandre refuses to enforce the blockade against England,” he said, his hands on his knees. “And he promised! He’s shipping hemp to England—he knows it’s used to make rigging for their Navy. A continental blockade is the only way to get England to the peace table.”

  I watched Bonaparte go out the gate with a heavy heart. There will be war again soon, I fear. I saw it in his eyes. Le feu sacré.

  February 11, 1812, Shrove Tuesday—Malmaison.

  Carnival. Tonight there is a costume ball at the Tuileries—a ball to which I have not been invited, of course. Hortense will be performing a quadrille. She was here yesterday, showing me her intricate choreography, the lovely costumes. “Please come, Maman. I want you to see it! Nobody would know. You’d be in costume.”

  I told her it was too risky, but that was only a partial truth. I cannot bear the thought of seeing Bonaparte attend to his young wife while I stand alone in the shadows.

  February 12, Ash Wednesday.

  “Your daughter’s quadrille was brilliant,” Mademoiselle Avrillion told me. “You should have heard the cheers! Men were standing on their chairs to see her perform. What a talent she has, every move so precise, so light, so…” She made a floating motion with her hand. “So elegant. And her troupe of dancers—they were absolutely magical. It brought tears to my eyes to see them. Queen Caroline looked as if she was going to have a fit, she was so angry. Oh, everyone clapped for her dance certainly, but only out of politeness. All that dreadful clumping! And the Emperor? He loved your daughter’s quadrille, it was easy enough to see, but otherwise…? Three times I saw him yawn and pull out his timepiece. And when he and the Empress stood to take their leave, you know what I heard him hiss at her? ‘Try to be graceful.’”

  “Oh, the poor girl.”

  “Your Majesty, she didn’t smile, not even once.”

  Monday, early afternoon at Malmaison, March 9.

  Bonaparte stood at a distance, in full view of his aides. It had been months since we’d seen one another, but I had been expecting him. It was, after all, our sixteenth wedding anniversary.

  “You’ve gained weight,” he said with a smile.

  “So have you.” Even so, he looked unhealthy. “How are you, Bonaparte?”

  “Well enough.” He needed to get back in shape, he said, for the coming campaign. He’d been hunting every day in the Bois de Boulogne, to toughen himself. He’d managed to “disappear” this morning, in order to visit me.

  “You can stay a few minutes?” I invited him to join me on the stone bench under the tulip tree. “I want to hear all about your son.” He would have his first birthday in two days.

  “He’s a big, healthy boy—a bit of a temper, though.”

  Like his father, I thought fondly. “Petit and Oui-Oui tell me so many stories about him. I think it’s wonderful, the time you take with the children.”

  “Marie-Louise thinks it unnatural.”

  I’d heard that Marie-Louise rarely saw her baby, that weeks went by without her sending for him. “Certainly it’s unusual for a man to enjoy the company of children the way you do.” To dote on them. “I’d love to see your son, Bonaparte.”

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “It will have to be arranged carefully, so that Marie-Louise does not find out.”

  [Undated]

  Baron de Canisy, first equerry to the Little King, has let me know that Madame de Montesquiou will be taking the child to the park of Bagatelle next Sunday. I am to wait for her in the little château there.

  Sunday, a beautiful spring day, bright and crisp.

  I rode to Bagatelle, as arranged.* As soon as I saw the Imperial carriage approaching, I went to the little room at the back. Soon the matronly figure of Madame de Montesquiou appeared with the baby in her arms. I stood, bowed: the King of Rome.

  “What a surprise to see you, Your Majesty,” Madame de Montesquiou said in carrying tones. (This was the fiction we’d arranged.) “I’m going to rest with the baby here for a moment,” she told her attendants in the other room.

  She sat down beside me, gently prying open the baby’s grip on her hat ribbon. “You see what a good baby he is? Watch.” She bounced him on her knees to make him laugh.

  Big forehead, heavy jaw. “He takes after the Empress,” I said, catching the baby’s eye, making a funny face at him. He gazed at me for a long moment and then jammed his fist into his mouth. Lively eyes—Bonaparte’s eyes.

  “But his spirit is that of his father,” the nanny said with a laugh, struggling to hold onto the baby as he squirmed to climb down. “Quite wilful.”

  I reached into my basket and brought out a wooden doughnut with brightly coloured objects attached to it, dangled it in front of him. He reached for it, missed, and then reached for it again, closing his fingers around the ring.

  “Do you think he’d mind?” I asked, patting my knees.

  “He’s become particular,” she said, “but we could try. He doesn’t even let his mother hold him.” She shifted the baby onto my lap.

  He was quiet, absorbed in the toy. In a reverie of emotion, I inhaled his sweet baby scent, and something else, a hint of lemon. “He smells like the Emperor,” I said, grinning (eyes stinging).

  “He was with his papa just before we came. His papa who said to send you his regards.” She looked at me tenderly. “His papa who still misses you very much, Your Majesty,” she added quietly.

  April 17, late afternoon.

  Bonaparte leaned forward, his forearms on his knees. We were sitting, as had become our custom, on the curved stone bench in the rose garden, under the tulip tree. “I’ve sent for Eugène,” he told me. “I’m giving him command of the 4th Corps: eighty thousand men. He should be pleased.”

  “Then it’s true, what everyone is saying, that there is going to be war?” Bonaparte’s silence gave me the answer. “Who will act as Regent while you are away?”

  “I’m not sure who I can trust.”

  April 22—Malmaison.

  Eugène has arrived. First he called on Hortense, who lent him a carriage to take to Saint-Cloud. “So you’ve already been to see Bonaparte?” I asked.

  “He was in meetings. He said to come back for dinner.” Eugène looked at the clock on the mantel. “Maybe I have time to go fishing.”

  I laughed. “What you have time for is a talk with your mother. I want to hear all about the children.” Josephine, five; Eugénie, three; Augustus, one (already).

  “And Auguste is due again in only three months,” Eugène said, proudly showing me the chain of miniature portraits he carried with him, one for each child. “I promised her the war would be over by then.”

  The war. “She’s going to miss you.” And worry.

  “I already miss her, Maman.” He started when the pendulum clock began to strike the hour. “Papa’s waiting!”

  9:15 P.M., a balmy evening.r />
  “Well?” I demanded, meeting Eugène at the door. I’d been anxiously waiting for him to return.

  “I got to hold the baby—Little King, as the boys call him. But only for a moment. He was fussing—teething, his nurse said. Twelve teeth at thirteen months bodes well, don’t you think?”

  “And your meeting with Bonaparte?”

  He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “He asked me to act as Regent while he’s on campaign.”

  “That’s wonderful!” I said, pretending to be surprised.

  “I refused, Maman.”

  I put my hand to my chest. Refused?

  “It’s a great honour, I know, but how could I sit at a desk in Paris while my men were fighting?”

  So much more was at stake than a battle or two! Didn’t he see that? “What did Bonaparte say?” I asked, disheartened.

  “He said he’d have felt the same.”

  April 30.

  Every able man in the Empire, it seems, has rushed to join La Grande Armée.* I am guarded by sixteen disabled soldiers, who sadly must stay behind. All of my good horses have been drafted.

  May 2, Saturday, late afternoon.

  Bands blaring, bells pealing, Eugène and his men left for Poland this morning, their muskets decorated with flowers, people hanging out the windows cheering: our glorious Grande Armée.

  Friday, May 8, storm threatening.

  “I’ve come to say goodbye,” Bonaparte said, his eyes solemn.

  “It has been a long time since you left on campaign.”

  “I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

  Yes, certainly. The marriage to Marie-Louise, the birth of an heir—all this should have secured a lasting peace.

  “At least I leave knowing that if anything should happen to me, the Empire will endure in my son.”

  “You will miss him.”

  We were both of us uncomfortable, both aware that this was the first time he’d be going into battle without a “good luck” embrace. He looked at me for a long moment, and then his footman opened the carriage door. I watched the carriage pull through the gates, not even daring to blow a kiss.

  In which we are defeated

  November 18, 1812—Malmaison.

  We’ve been months without news, rumours only. We wait and we worry. We worry and we pray.

  November 30, Monday.

  A young woman, not more than twenty, accompanied by an elderly maid, came out to Malmaison today. Mademoiselle Aurélie de Beaumont, she introduced herself, turning her straw hat in her white-gloved hands. Her father, Monsieur de Beaumont, was the bosom friend of Monsieur Bataille.

  Auguste Bataille? “Monsieur Bataille is one of my son’s aides.”

  She nodded, withdrawing some folded papers from the crown of her hat. “He has been sending my father letters.”

  “Of the campaign?” My heart jumped. News—true news, is rare. The official bulletins sent to Paris cannot be trusted, I know.

  “My father suggested that I copy the letters out for you. He thought you might desire to have news of your son, Your Majesty.”

  “Yes,” I said, almost breathless.

  “This is one of the originals.” Aurélie showed me a scrap of paper. The writing was minuscule, crossed.* “Sometimes I have to use a glass to make it out.” She promised to return when the next letter came.

  Plock. Mon ami, we’ve been in this Polish town for almost two weeks, awaiting orders from the Emperor. It feels as if we’re in the middle of nowhere. A number of us have fallen ill. The Prince Eugène’s baggage and horses have finally arrived so he will be able to tour his regiments. Salut et amitiés, Bataille.

  Thorn. Mon ami, we’re expecting the Emperor any day. I’ve been busy trying to find food for the troops and hay for the horses. We were allotted some corn, three hundred bulls and thirty thousand bushels of oats, but the corn was green and the horses got colic, and many of the soldiers have dysentery from the sour black bread. Salut, Bataille.

  Soldau. Mon ami, from Thorn we marched to Soldau. The villages are wretched. Prince Eugène sleeps in a tent, in spite of the cold. We have eighty thousand men to feed and only a few sacks of corn. Amitiés pour toujours, Bataille.

  Late evening.

  Plock, Thorn, Soldau. I’ve found a map in Bonaparte’s cabinet and am tracing the route. They are so very far away.

  Mon ami, we are in Russia now, looking for an army to fight. It’s a dull landscape—nothing but trees (a few birches) and sand. It’s after ten P.M. but so bright I am writing this without a candle. The sun wakes us at two in the morning. Toujours, Bataille.

  Vitebsk. Mon ami, how can we go on? By day we boil; by night we freeze. We’ve over three hundred sick soldiers—our men are dying of sunstroke. Thousands of horses have perished. The Emperor arrived last night. He insists on pressing on to Smolensk. Ten more days, if we survive. Adieu, Bataille.

  December 3—Malmaison.

  I’m ill with concern. Bataille’s letters both reassure and dismay. I worked all morning in the hothouse with the gardeners, but my thoughts turn always toward the northeast, toward Russia, that barren land.

  Mon ami, we’ve made it to Smolensk, a heap of smoking ruins. Moscow is “only” two hundred miles more, the Emperor tells us—but one mile more will kill us. The farther we chase after the enemy, the farther we are from home, the farther from food and shelter. Amitiés, Bataille.

  Mon ami, the Russian army has come to a stop—at last we will see battle. Some Cossacks were taken prisoner—savages with bandy legs. They gulped down tumblers of brandy as if it were water, holding their empty glasses out for more. Their horses are stumpy and have long tails. They’re much impressed by King Murat, his plumes and glitter. They have asked to have him as their “hetman.” They’re welcome to him! Salut, Bataille.

  Mon ami, it was bloody. Prince Eugène was rallying his troops when thousands of Cossacks fell on his reserve. He galloped back to face them head-to-head. A victory, yes, but hard won. Adieu, excéllent ami, Bataille.

  Mon ami, as we crested a hill and caught sight of the city, the soldiers broke into a run crying out, “Moscow! Moscow!” The spires and onion-shaped domes glittered in the sun like a mirage—and a mirage it is, for the Russians, a barbarous race devoid of all honour, have set fire to it, the most magnificent ancient city in all of Europe. As I write this, flames light up the sky. We are sheltered in a small wooden house outside the city. The landscape is dreary: cabbage fields and more cabbage fields. Amitiés, Bataille.

  December 14—Malmaison, cold, but bright.

  I was honoured this afternoon by a visit from Countess Walewska and her child: “the Polish wife” and her son by Bonaparte. (He looks just like Bonaparte—I was so moved.) It has taken numerous entreaties to persuade the young Countess to call on me, but now that she has, she will return, I hope. We are uniquely united by our prayers for a singular man. She turned pale and very nearly swooned after I showed her the letters from Bataille.

  Mon ami, the Tsar has not responded to the Emperor’s request for peace. King Murat has persuaded the Emperor that the Russians are in disarray and that the Cossacks are ready to quit. Therefore, we press on. Amitiés, Bataille.

  Mon ami, King Murat was defeated by the Cossacks so we’re on the move again, heading for home, if we can make it. We’re a sorry spectacle, soldiers pushing wheelbarrows of looted treasure, a rabble of prostitutes following after. The cannon keep getting stuck in the mud. À toi pour toujours, Bataille.

  Mon ami, Prince Eugène had a glorious battle, worthy of every honour, but we’ve suffered heavy casualties, and now a frost has lamed hundreds of our horses overnight. In consequence, the Emperor ordered all the carts emptied into a lake. We watched as priceless works of art sank through the ice. The enormous cross of Ivan the Terrible was the last to disappear, like some dreadful omen of doom. Cossacks harass us. They encircle us, whooping like wild beasts. We march in a freezing fog. We are at the end of the world. Bataille.
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  [Undated]

  “Your Majesty, would you prefer it if I did not bring you the letters?” Mademoiselle Aurélie asked, clutching her straw hat.

  “No! Please, you must bring them,” I said, giving her two of my rings.

  Mon ami, what was left of the Grande Armée was destroyed on the icy marshes. Those who escaped drowning were set upon by Cossacks. Prince Eugène managed to save what was left of his troops. Luck stays with him, such as it is. Two horses have been shot from under him. Bataille.

  December 17, Thursday, chilly.

  A stunned despair hangs over Paris. The extent of our losses in Russia—the death of so many of our men—has finally been revealed in Le Moniteur. Every heart is filled with the terrible apprehension that a loved one will likely not return. I am sick with fear for Eugène, Bonaparte.

  December 19, Saturday—Malmaison.

  The familiar sight of Bonaparte’s courier cantering up the drive stopped my heart. I pushed the window open, leaned out. “Monsieur Moustache! What’s happened?”

  “The Emperor is at the palace,” he yelled up.

  “Bonaparte? He’s in Paris?” How was that possible?