Napoleon spoke often of Josephine to his valet Marchand, who distilled those remarks into a description that forms a perfect eulogy: “She had the elegance of a Creole together with infinite grace and charm, and an evenness of temper that never failed. All her clothes were elegant and once worn by her immediately set the fashion. . . . He conceded that she was extravagant and that on several occasions he had to settle her debts, but these debts were frequently incurred through her generosity in giving presents and she exceeded everyone else by the grace of her manner as she gave them. . . . With her kind nature and sensitivity she would pity other people’s misfortunes and weep with those who came to tell her of their troubles, which, the Emperor said, often made her the prey of those who took advantage of her generosity.”
During his second exile on St. Helena, Napoleon often spoke of Josephine to General Henri-Gratien Bertrand, the manager of his household, although he had a crude way of describing the attraction. “I really loved Josephine, but I had no respect for her. She had the prettiest little cunt in the world. . . . Actually, I married her only because I believed her to be rich. She said she was, but it wasn’t true. She was a liar and an utter spendthrift, but she had a certain something that was irresistible. She was a woman to her very fingertips.”
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE
and
MARIE LOUISE OF AUSTRIA
1791-1847
married 1810-1821
“Never would I believe I could be so happy. My love for my husband grows all the time and when I can remember his tenderness I can scarcely prevent myself from crying. Even had I not loved him previously, nothing can stop me from loving him now.”
—Marie Louise, Empress of France, in 1811
MARIA LUDOVICA LEOPOLDINA FRANCISCA THERESA Josepha Lucia of Austria, better known as Marie Louise, never felt comfortable in France, the country that—in the not-too-distant past—had brutally executed her great-aunt, Marie Antoinette.
But in 1809 Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, Austria’s Foreign Minister and Minister of State, had decided it was better for his country to sleep with the enemy than to be invaded by it. Metternich urged Marie Louise’s father, Holy Roman Emperor Francis II, and Emperor of Austria (as Francis I) to sacrifice his eldest daughter to Napoleon Bonaparte.
Empress Josephine of France had proved unable to conceive and the heirless Napoleon was impatient to divorce her and remarry. His only qualification for a replacement was that she be “a walking womb.” His first choice had been Anna Pavlovna, the sister of the Russian tsar, but by the end of the first week of February 1810, when the Russians had still not agreed to the match (rumors of Napoleon’s impotence had persuaded Anna’s mother that the potential bridegroom was a risky bet), Napoleon moved on, focusing instead on his fallback uterus, Her Serene Highness Marie Louise of Austria.
According to Napoleon’s sister Caroline, who would have done anything to see the door of the Palace of Saint-Cloud hit Josephine’s derrière on her way out, Marie Louise was quite attractive, with a good figure, “charming blonde hair, hands, and feet, a cultivated mind and dignified bearing; all in all she was very amiable and sweet . . . of course she is very young.”
Since Napoleon had always regarded women as “mere machines for making children,” the young archduchess seemed like a perfect fit. It wouldn’t much matter that she was taller than he, with an ungainly walk; that she was a bit plump, and had inherited the Hapsburg/Bourbon bulging eyes and pouty lower lip in addition to a slightly hooked nose; and that she was so innocent that her parents had ensured that all of her childhood pets were female in order to protect her from learning about sex.
There was only one hitch to be overcome: given her great-aunt’s unfortunate history in France, Marie Louise was rather disinclined to meet their emperor, much less wed him. With pitch-perfect teenage hyperbole, she wrote, “To see this creature would be a worse torture for me than all the martyrdoms.”
In January 1810, when she read a newspaper account of Napoleon’s divorce from Empress Josephine, she wrote to Victoria de Poutet, the daughter of her governess, “I pity the unfortunate woman on whom his choice falls; that will certainly put an end to her fine days.” She had continued to look for news in the Frankfurt gazette that Napoleon had selected his new bride, but finding nothing, feared that she might be the chosen one. Although she steeled herself to do her duty if necessary, she also insisted that “Papa is much too kind to force me.”
Francis had told the matchmaking Metternich that he would not compel his daughter to wed the Emperor of France. But politics and the safety of nations almost always trump a girl’s romantic preferences and this occasion was no different. With her marriage to Napoleon all but a done deal, the eighteen-year-old archduchess endeavored to conceal her disappointment from her father. Instead, she focused on the positives that might come of the match—her ability to visit the incomparable Paris museums, the possibility that her fiancé was musical (he wasn’t), and whether he might permit her to have a botanical garden.
However, before giving his final consent to the match Emperor Francis remained concerned about the legal issues surrounding Napoleon’s first marriage and divorce. Napoleon’s Deed of Separation from Josephine, dated January 14, 1810, was a civil bill of divorcement and carried no ecclesiastical authority. Did that mean that Marie Louise’s marriage to him would be bigamous? So Napoleon had his relation, Cardinal Fesch, fix things up. After three weeks of deliberation the cardinal declared their marriage invalid, claiming there had been no legitimate witnesses to the religious ceremony he had performed himself shortly before Napoleon’s imperial coronation.
When it came down to the actual proposal, Napoleon got off to a rather tasteless start. His hand-picked emissary, dispatched to the Austrian embassy in Paris with his bid for Marie Louise’s hand, was Eugène de Beauharnais—Josephine’s son.
But on February 23, 1810, Napoleon used his extraordinary epistolary gifts to pen his first letter to Marie Louise. It contained a proposal so full of tender respect that she could not possibly continue to view him as Boney the bogeyman: The brilliant qualities which make you an outstanding person have inspired us to serve and honor you. While addressing ourselves to the Emperor, your father, and begging him to entrust us with the happiness of Your Imperial Highness, may we hope that Y.I.H. will share the sentiments that prompt us to make this step? May we flatter ourselves that Y.I.H. will not be driven solely by the duty of parental obedience? Should Y.I.H. have even the least amicable feelings for us, we wish to cherish them; and we set ourselves the constant task of pleasing you in every way so that we presume that one day we shall succeed in winning Y.I.H.’s affection . . .
Marie Louise’s mother, Maria Theresa of the Two Sicilies, had died in 1807. So it fell to Napoleon himself to behave like an anxious mother of the bride and micromanage the wedding plans. As if he didn’t have enough to do trying to take over the world, he commissioned his fiancée’s trousseau of sixty-four dresses, dozens of changes of lingerie, shawls, dressing gowns, and copious quantities of jewelry. The Emperor of France even took care of ordering his future wife’s pincushions.
On the evening of March 11, 1810, just weeks after Napoleon had formally divorced Josephine, Marie Louise was married to him by proxy at the Hofburg Palace in Vienna. Her uncle, Archduke Karl, stood in for the groom. The following day, she set out for France via the same handover route that Marie Antoinette had traveled exactly forty years earlier, preparing to meet her bridegroom in the medieval forest of Compiègne.
Having received mixed reviews of Marie Louise’s looks, Napoleon decided that “So long as she is kind and gives me healthy sons, I will love her as if she were the most beautiful girl in the world.” Anxious that he might not live up to the mark, he had asked Josephine’s daughter, Hortense—Queen of Holland by virtue of her marriage to his younger brother Louis—to teach him to waltz. Unfortunately, he was hopeless and resigned himself to the fact that he was “not intended to excel as a dancer.”
Napoleon was so eager for that first glimpse of Marie Louise that he halted her cavalcade of coaches, threw open the door to her carriage, and immediately embraced her.
“Your portrait does not flatter you,” she happily declared, instantly winning his affection.
Napoleon then quizzed Marie Louise on how she had been instructed to behave toward him.
“To obey you in every way,” was her succinct reply.
The pair continued to ride in their separate carriages to the castle at Compiègne. After perfunctorily presenting her to his family, the forty-year-old emperor led his teenage bride to their bedchamber, ignoring the preplanned events for the evening, as well as his current mistress, Mme. De Mathis, who was also installed in one of the castle’s rooms. Hortense described Marie Louise’s demeanor as “. . . gentle and sweet, though a trifle embarrassed.”
Because of the proxy marriage in Vienna, Napoleon and Marie Louise were technically already wed. Therefore, the emperor saw no need to wait for the formal ceremony to bind them before getting down to the business of begetting an heir. His valet, Louis Constant, recalled “a long conversation” between the bridal couple, after which Napoleon returned to his own room. There he donned his dressing gown, liberally doused himself with cologne, and sneaked back into his wife’s boudoir.
The shocked courtiers were heard to murmur to each other, “Ils sont couchés”—They are in bed!
Marie Louise, carefully coached by her father to obey her husband in all things, accepted her destiny with alacrity. Napoleon recalled that after he’d taken her virginity, his nubile wife asked him to “do it again.”
The following morning, still basking in the afterglow of satiation, Napoleon told his secretary, Méneval, “Marry a German. They are the best women in the world, obliging, innocent, and fresh as roses.” Two days after he met Marie Louise, Napoleon wrote to Emperor Francis to inform him that she had fulfilled all his expectations. “I have not failed to give her and receive from her proofs of the tender sentiments which bind us together. We suit each other perfectly.”
For her part, Marie Louise described her husband as “attractive and eager,” and she soon found herself genuinely falling for him, writing, “There is something very forceful and captivating about [Napoleon], which is impossible to resist.”
Soon, the teen was besting him at billiards and sketching his portrait, while Napoleon ordered Josephine’s former apartments in the Tuileries to be repainted “virginal white.” He even preordered a layette, complete with miniature uniforms and weapons, for the son he was certain Marie Louise would give him.
On April 1, 1810, Marie Louise wed Napoleon in a civil ceremony. At three p.m. the following afternoon the religious ceremony, performed by Napoleon’s cousin Cardinal Fesch, took place in a purpose-built chapel in the Louvre.
With a heavy crown atop her upswept hair, the bride, significantly taller than the groom, was clad in a satin dress trimmed in ermine and a diamond-encrusted robe. Napoleon wore a flamboyant Spanish-style white and gold satin ensemble embroidered with golden bees. His black velvet hat was studded with rows of diamonds; among them was an enormous gem that had once been among the Bourbon crown jewels, which clasped a trio of white swan feathers, giving the diminutive autocrat the illusion of additional height.
The four hundred wedding guests included three queens—all married to Napoleon’s brothers; one of them was Josephine’s daughter Hortense de Beauharnais, whom Napoleon, with his usual lack of tact, had assigned to his new wife’s household as Marie Louise’s Mistress of the Robes. To ensure that his second nuptials would be a popular event, the emperor had free food distributed throughout Paris.
The wedding reception was hosted by Napoleon’s sister Pauline at the Château de Neuilly, which she had turned into a twinkling fairyland. Mimes imitated classical statuary. Craftsmen had manufactured a miniature reproduction of the palace at Schönbrunn in case the new empress was homesick. The delighted groom was spotted cheerfully slapping his bride’s derrière and pinching her cheeks. But a second reception, hosted by General Henri Clark, the Minister of War, was less salubrious, turning to tragedy when the wooden ballroom caught fire. After seeing Marie Louise to safety, Napoleon returned to help direct the firefighters.
Unfortunately, the imperial honeymoon was not the romantic travelogue Marie Louise had anticipated, but a Napoleon-style progress through the low countries. The food was awful; the countryside was dreary; and their sightseeing consisted of tedious inspections of mills and factories. Napoleon was grumpy, mocking his wife every time she mentioned she was hungry, claiming that she ate too much, and in any event, she shouldn’t eat in a moving coach. When Marie Louise complained of a headache, Napoleon opened the window of the carriage during a downpour so that her garments became spattered with water. At that moment, the new bride resolved that if she had her life to live over, she would never marry, an oath she didn’t keep—twice over.
Upon their return to Paris it was clear that the honeymoon was over in more ways than one. Although he spent his evenings in her company, Napoleon kept Marie Louise as confined as a fairy-tale heroine, making sure her days were filled with reading, needlework, and instruction in music, but otherwise she was isolated from the world. Other men were kept at a safe distance; even tradesmen were forbidden to speak to her.
As Marie Louise began to settle into her new life, the difference between the emperor’s two wives emerged, a striking study in contrasts. Where Josephine was headstrong and wildly extravagant, the cautious Marie Louise was judiciously sparing in her purchases. She even refused some of her husband’s lavish gifts. Josephine had not been well educated and had learned much of what she knew and did by being an empathetic listener and an astute mimic, but her flirtatiousness and skills as a hostess were legendary. Marie Louise was a gifted musician and exceptionally well read, but was nonetheless shy and reserved, prone to blushing at the slightest display of forwardness, and was extremely uncomfortable when she was expected to mingle with the public or hobnob among courtiers and foreign dignitaries. She was also wildly jealous of Josephine, pitting her own fertile youth against the former’s desiccated husk of a body whenever she saw the chance to illustrate the contrast. One day when they were driving past Malmaison, Napoleon asked Marie Louise if she would like to see the château. Marie Louise began to cry and commented to someone in their entourage, “How can he want to see that old lady? A woman of low birth at that.” To oblige Marie Louise Napoleon tried to obliterate all traces of his first wife from the Tuileries. Her image was painted out of portraits and her monograms were removed.
As time went on, Napoleon began to pull farther away from Josephine, in whom he had confided even after their divorce, embarrassed at finding himself falling in love with a woman half his age whom he’d all along expected to be no more than a uterus. He was as giddy as a kid at a carnival when Marie Louise became pregnant. Napoleon was particularly fond of Marie Louise’s freshness and innocence, a far cry from Josephine’s soigné worldliness. To that end, he did everything in his power to prevent the still unspoiled Marie Louise from becoming jaded. It was devilishly attractive to him that she preferred his company to any other diversion. And when she suffered from morning sickness, Napoleon went to great lengths to provide her with all sorts of entertainments that might distract her from fearing a miscarriage.
On the evening of March 19, 1811, Marie Louise went into labor. She fell asleep at around five a.m. on March 20 and the worried accoucheur warned Napoleon that he might not be able to save both mother and child. He asked the emperor to choose whose life to spare, should it come down to it. Unhesitatingly, Napoleon replied, “Well, then, save the mother. Think only of the mother.”
Out came the forceps. Frightened and weakened by labor pains, Marie Louise stirred and whimpered, “Must I be sacrificed because I’m Empress?” At around eight a.m., her child was born. The infant made no sound for seven minutes, and everyone feared the worst, but finally the baby began
to yelp and the cannons commenced to fire. The salute would be only twenty-two guns if Marie Louise had given birth to a girl. On the twenty-third boom, the people of Paris knew that their emperor had an heir.
Napoleon proudly, but rather callously, told Josephine that his son—Napoleon François Joseph Charles—“has my chest, my mouth, and my eyes. I trust he will match up to his destiny.” He spoiled the boy rotten, keeping him by his side as often as possible, dandling him on his knee while he worked in his study, and surrounding him with an entourage he considered worthy of such a princeling. Consequently, Marie Louise rarely had the opportunity to bond with her son. She grew anxious whenever she was around him, fearful of dropping him.
Nonetheless, she was quite the blissful wife, writing home, “Never would I believe I could be so happy. My love for my husband grows all the time and when I can remember his tenderness I can scarcely prevent myself from crying. Even had I not loved him previously, nothing can stop me from loving him now.”
And after seventeen months of marriage, when Napoleon had to leave her for the first time, journeying to Bologna to inspect his fleet and troops stationed there, she wrote to him, “You cannot imagine my feelings when I pass by your room and see your shutters closed.”
The Russian campaign of 1812 marked Napoleon’s first devastating losses in years. Ravaged by bitter cold and empty bellies, his men took to eating the corpses of their horses and their own fallen comrades. Abandoning what was left of his troops, Napoleon returned to France, where he hosted numerous galas, despite the dispatch from General Berthier that read, “Sire, your army exists no more.”
Notorious Royal Marriages: A Juicy Journey through Nine Centuries of Dynasty, Destiny, and Desire Page 38
