The Secret Life of Josephine: Napoleon's Bird of Paradise

by Carolly Erickson

  “There. There is my signature!”

  Knowing better than to challenge this bizarre response, the man folded the paper and left the room.

  Bonaparte, his face contorted in a grimace of pain, poured more barleywater out of a pitcher and drank it.

  “There are no decent physicians here,” he remarked in a low tone. “Corvisart says he can do nothing more for me.” Corvisart was his preferred physician, who traveled with him. “I sent him back to Smolensk, with your boy.”

  “Eugene is in Smolensk?”

  “He left two days ago. I would have gone with him, but I must wait for the surrender.”

  Once again his tone changed abruptly. “It’s cold in here. Bring more wood for the fire!” Servants scurried to obey, carrying in armloads of wood and heaping them on the hearth, which was already piled high with brightly burning logs. The room was uncomfortably hot, and now began growing hotter.

  “I can’t abide a cold room. Or a cold woman,” he added in an aside, chuckling to himself. He took another pinch of snuff, hacked, spat, and wiped his spittle.

  I noted that his pacing had slowed a bit. I stood quietly, afraid that if I sat, I might offend Bonaparte and trigger his anger. I wasn’t sure what to do, what to say I had not expected to find him in the state he was in, a frame of mind partly removed from reality, partly angrily engaged with it. My task, I reminded myself, was to destroy him. To put an end to his power.

  I could start by undermining his confidence.

  “It is being said that the Russians will not surrender. That they are preparing to offer battle in an area north of here.”

  It was an invention, of course, but I soon saw that it was effective. His small eyes grew keen with interest.

  “No one is sure.”

  “I will crush them!”

  “There are tales in the army that Kutuzov has a million men and a thousand cannon.”

  “Rubbish!” But I saw, for the briefest of moments, that his expression was fearful. “There are not a thousand cannon in all of Russia.”

  “He has ordered many new ones from the German armorers.”

  “I rule the German lands.”

  “You cannot control all your territories. Is it not true that your brother

  Joseph has abandoned Madrid, leaving the country to be overrun by the British, and that there has been an attempt in Paris to take over your government?”

  A shiver of dread passed through his restless body. I thought, he has not been sleeping. He is always at his most vulnerable then.

  He shrugged, and the muscles of his cheek began to twitch involuntarily.

  “Joseph is a coward. Always was. Even as a boy. I was younger but I could always beat him in a fight. He used to give up—and then drop rocks on my head during the night, when I was asleep. He was vicious.”

  “I know. He tried to kill me.”

  “I had nothing to do with that.” He spoke hastily, defensively. “I told him to leave you alone.” The twitching in his cheek was stronger and more frequent.

  I hesitated, then became bolder.

  “It doesn’t matter now, because we are divorced. But I did have a lover during our marriage. Someone I adored, as I never loved you.”

  He gathered himself to lunge, but before he could move his face crumpled in pain, and his hands moved to his stomach.

  “For God’s sake, help me! Give me something, anything, to take this pain away!”

  I went out into the corridor where aides and messengers stood waiting. I went up to one of them.

  “I am the empress Josephine,” I said. “Do you recognize me?” “No, Your Imperial Highness.”

  I took a chance. I led the boy into the room where Bonaparte was now slumped into a chair, eyes shut, enduring a spasm of pain.

  “Sir,” I said, my voice low and cajoling, “please let me show this young man the miniature you wear.”

  I had a feeling he would be wearing my portrait, which had always been his good luck charm in battle. I was right. Preoccupied as he was with the sharp pain he was enduring, he made no resistance when I gently reached into his unbuttoned shirt—noticing, as I did so, that he was in dire need of a bath—and pulled out a chain. Hanging from it was a portrait of myself—from fifteen years earlier. I showed it to the boy.

  Immediately he knelt and murmured, “Your Imperial Highness.”

  “Go quickly and find a physician. Tell him I sent you. Bring him back here with you as fast as you can. Tell him the emperor is in need of opiates. And hurry.”

  61

  HALF-DRUGGED, IN CONSTANT PAIN, bloated on barleywater, Bonaparte dragged himself through his days in Moscow, keeping me beside him as his good luck charm.

  I spent my days with him, and in the evening went home to Donovan and the others, safe in the cottage on Hagop Garabidian’s estate. The long red wound in Donovan’s belly began to knit itself together, and he opened his eyes and spoke a few words. Gradually he gained strength, and was able to sit up and talk, feed himself, and even, with the aid of a stout stick, to take a few faltering steps.

  How I wished that I could spend my every waking hour with him! But Bonaparte, who had no idea Donovan was in Moscow, wanted me near him and relied on me to turn his bad luck into good. At times he was confused, and called me Marie Louise—or Marinska, his pet name for Marie Walewska—but he was in no doubt that I was the woman he wanted nearby. Sometimes he was quite lucid and knew precisely who I was.

  “Josephine, my Josephine, where did I go wrong! How did I lose you! The minute I divorced you, my luck changed,” he said ruefully one afternoon as he waited, fruitlessly, for a Russian delegation to appear.

  “Do you know how many battles I have won, how many campaigns I have carried out to victory? Nearly fifty battles, that’s how many. And a dozen campaigns or more—maybe two dozen. I leave it to the historians to keep count.”

  The numbers pleased him, but the fact remained that now, in the autumn of 1812, he sat in a ruined city, cheated of the satisfactions of victory, for neither Tsar Alexander nor his commander Kutuzov came to Moscow or sent replies to Bonaparte’s imperious demands, and as the days grew shorter and the light paled over the ravaged city, Bonaparte sat in the dark and brooded.

  “Sire, you have waited long enough for the Russian cowards to show themselves. Muster your men and lead them back to France, taking the laurels of Russia with you.” It was General Berthier, Bonaparte’s loyal, stalwart chief of staff who had been at his side on all his campaigns.

  The emperor looked balefully at his general. “First they must acknowledge me.”

  “They are Asiatics, not Europeans. It is not their way.” Clearly Berthier was exasperated. He looked over at me, signaling me to support him in his effort to rouse his master to action.

  But I had other ideas.

  “I will wait ten more days,” Bonaparte replied gravely. “Perhaps their messengers are galloping toward Moscow even now, bearing the crown of the tsars as a gift for me.”

  “Surely, Marshal Berthier, you would not wish the emperor to return to Paris without some signal token of victory. Why, he ought to be given a coronation, right here in Moscow!”

  Berthier, appalled, glared at me.

  “But Your Imperial Highness,” he sputtered, “a crown, a coronation— we could be here for weeks.”

  “Then we shall. Josephine agrees with me, don’t you my dear?”

  “Of course. Your judgment is always best.”

  “But Your Imperial Highness, there is no food left in Moscow!”

  He was wrong about that. We had food, in Hagop Garabidian’s cellar, though it was beginning to run out.

  “There are food stores in Smolensk. Prince Eugene has been sent to look after them.”

  Berthier was adamant. “If we stay here any longer, we will not only starve—we will freeze. Already the men are making bonfires in the streets at night, burning furniture from the great houses to stay warm!

  You cannot spend the winter he
re in Moscow. It is far, far colder than Paris at its worst.”

  But all Bonaparte would say was, “I cannot return to France without the crown of the tsars.” He drank his barleywater and held out his wine glass to me, watching as I poured half a dozen precious drops of the liquid opiate into it, the remedy that gave him relief from his terrible stomach pains. Before long he was drowsing, and then he fell asleep.

  Day by day Bonaparte’s most trusted aides came to him to make the same argument as Berthier. They urged him to be sensible, to spare his men, to hurry back to France and then return in the following spring to consolidate his Russian victory. They urged, pleaded, cajoled, begged. They tried to remove me forcibly from his side, accusing me of treason.

  But the emperor held onto my arm with a grip of iron, and would not let me be moved. “She is my good luck charm. Without her I am nothing,” he repeated, and the fear in his eyes was unmistakable. When late at night he sank into a deep, drugged sleep Edward came to the mansion and escorted me home, his size and strength intimidating to those who had become my declared enemies.

  I was determined to keep Bonaparte in Moscow until the first snow fell.

  As Berthier and the others repeated endlessly, the army could not march far in freezing weather. Certainly not as far as Smolensk, nearly two hundred and fifty miles away.

  Yet in his half-mad state Bonaparte continued to be opposed to leaving, and all I had to do was reinforce this reckless, heedless attitude in him until it was too late—too late for him to save what remained of his army from destruction, and himself from ruin.

  For that is what I saw ahead: his ruin. The destruction of the demon that sent the fer-de-lance. All I had to do was stiffen his resolve, convince him that I was his protection against failure, and wait for the season to change.

  THE FIRST SNOW of the fierce Russian winter fell with the gentleness of rose petals, the light, spinning flakes drifting through the chill air to land lightly on the frozen earth.

  Within hours the air was a white veil, thick with sparkling, starlike shapes that piled into mounds and drifts, obscuring houses, trees, wagons, people. The raw whiteness became a shroud, then a choking, suffocating blanket of cold that tore at the skin and made the lungs hurt and the throat ache with pain.

  Overnight the snow turned to ice, gleaming like crystal and with the sharp edges of broken glass, ice that made boots and hooves slip and glide, ice that broke into pointed shards and formed itself into long, heavy spears that fell from roofs onto people and animals below.

  With the snow came wind, a frigid, whirling wind that numbed cheeks, hands, feet and made it impossible to see one’s way, wind that tore through bone and blotted out all sound.

  Into the snow and wind walked the Grande Armee, on the day Bonaparte finally decided to abandon Moscow.

  “I am leaving,” Bonaparte announced on that morning, standing at the window of his study and watching the snow pile into drifts in the courtyard below. “Perhaps the tsar and his generals are waiting for us at Smolensk.” He turned to me.

  “There is only room in the carriage for myself and Berthier. You will have to find your way back as best you can.”

  I left him and returned to the cottage by the Dorogomilov bridge where I found Edward and Euphemia wrapped in their warmest garments and Donovan, wrapped warmly and leaning heavily on his stick, helping them to load our wagon with the remaining food from the cellar. Before long Christian arrived, followed by two Asiatic-looking men laden with piles of furs.

  “Would you believe there is still a marketplace in this godforsaken city?” he called out to us. “Look! I have found us fur coats and hats, and boots lined with sealskin. The kind the men who live in the frozen lands wear.”

  “This is the frozen land, as far as I can tell,” Euphemia said. “I’ll take one of those coats.”

  “I had to give them one of your diamond necklaces in exchange,” Christian whispered to me, indicating the men with the garments. “But it was worth the sacrifice. These furs may save our lives.”

  We bundled ourselves in the warm thick skins and pulled the outlandish hats down around our ears. Then, wrapping our poor horse in a blanket and fastening one of my wool scarves around his mouth, we set off to join the long procession of marching men, cavalry, carts, and wagons that was making its way out of the city toward the south.

  62

  I WAS SO COLD.

  It was all I could think of, how cold I was.

  Despite the fur coat, hat and boots Christian had bought for me, and the many layers of skirts and petticoats that I had put on, I could not stop shivering, and my teeth chattered constantly. I nestled down beside Donovan, but found no warmth there; he was as cold as I was.

  We attempted to follow the wagon in front of us, but it was very hard to see what was ahead, so thick was the falling snow and so blinding the whiteness all around. We felt very much alone, enveloped in the swarming snowflakes that turned everything we could discern to indistinct mounds of white.

  On and on we went, hour after hour, desperately cold and, eventually, quite hungry. But when the light failed and we stopped for the night, our bellies growling, the pitiful fire we managed to start kept sputtering, nearly going out. Edward gathered damp tree branches from under the snow and, by lining the wagon with them, kept us from turning to icicles. We hovered inside the cave of branches, our breaths steaming, our teeth still chattering. We did not freeze.

  But a fire, we discovered, can freeze if the air is cold enough, and ours provided barely enough warmth to melt our teapot full of snow. At least we had some half-brewed tea, which tasted very good and kept our stomachs from growling for a short time.

  Our turnips and beets were frozen, our flour had melded itself into frigid clumps and had Edward not found some dead birds, their small bodies still faintly warm, we would have had to go to sleep hungry. We skinned and half-boiled the birds, ate them ravenously, and lay down to sleep.

  In the morning all was as it had been the day before: an all-enveloping whiteness, snow clouds that obscured the sun and fierce cold. We started ahead, but had not gone far before we began to see soldiers on the road— not living soldiers, but frozen ones, lying along the roadway, half covered in the newly fallen snow. Some looked as if they had fallen asleep, their faces peaceful, others stared open-eyed, open-mouthed into a vacant emptiness.

  They were beyond help. We crossed ourselves hurriedly and went on, trying not to think, soon we will be like them, dead by the roadside.

  “Damn Bonaparte!” I shouted. “I hope he dies too!” But I knew he was in a warm carriage, not an open wagon like ours, with every luxury, even his favorite silk-lined boots, boots he wore in order to protect the beautiful soft feet he was so proud of. And even as I cursed him, I realized, I had played an important part in keeping him in Moscow. I had played on his overweening pride, his jealousy, his physical weaknesses, to prevent him from leaving. And now I was looking at the result.

  Yet as I stared at the frozen soldiers, I imagined I could hear what Orgulon would say—what Euphemia did say—that the evil Bonaparte had loosed upon the world must be destroyed, and that we were witnessing its destruction. It was a lesser evil, brought about to prevent a greater one.

  I buried my face in Donovan’s comforting shoulder and cried.

  Fighting the cold, rubbing my arms again and again in an effort to bring some warmth back into them, tensing my muscles against the onslaughts of the merciless wind, I felt myself grow very tired. I was numb in mind and body both. I looked at my companions, ice-covered, frostbitten, and felt oddly detached from them. I could not feel the care and concern I normally felt. I was too sunken in my own wretchedness.

  We spoke little to one another. It was all we could do to carry out our necessary tasks. We had no energy to spare in looking out for anyone but ourselves. I felt a dreadful aloneness. I could not even bring myself to pray, beyond repeating the words, Our Father, Our Father, again and again, until they were an all but meani
ngless buzz in my ears, a small sound pitted against the vast silence.

  Then there came a day of sun, and thaw.

  Not all the snow melted, of course, there were only droplets that melted, and then small rivulets at our feet, and, by midday, streams that appeared from nowhere at the verges of the emerging muddy roadway.

  The pale, weak sun felt warm and I lifted my face to its rays.

  We were able to make a real, hot fire for the first time in days. Euphemia concocted a broth from our flour and vegetables and we had a meal of sorts, though we burned our mouths on the hot soup, we were so eager to drink it. We laughed—how long had it been since we had laughed! We smiled at each other. Donovan and I embraced, lovingly

  Then we heard the hoofbeats.

  From a distance came riders, not riders in the blue jackets of cuirassiers or the grey-blue greatcoats of lancers, but the brown skins and furs of Cossacks!

  “Get back!” Donovan called out, indicating that Euphemia and I should get behind the men, who were drawing their muskets. Euphemia obeyed him at once.

  “I can fire that,” I said confidently, taking up one of the guns. “My father taught me when I was a girl.”

  “Here.” Donovan handed me the cane knife he always carried. “Use this if you have to.”

  There were four riders, far more fleet, despite the snow and mud of the road, than our plodding horsedrawn wagon. Donovan and Edward wounded two of the men, who veered away, but that left two others, who continued to bear down on us, whipping their big, strong-looking horses, yelling at the top of their lungs, long curved sabers drawn.

  I began throwing things out of the wagon, the carpets we had been sleeping on, our bronze teapot and cooking pot, our few personal possessions and last of all, my precious jewelry box.

  The box landed on a patch of ice and the priceless rubies, emeralds and sapphires spilled out, sparkling in the wintry sunlight as if lit from within by tiny fires.

  Forgetting us, the men reined in their horses and, jumping quickly down, began to scoop up the gems.