The next day the consuls held a reception for the diplomatic corps, headed by the ambassadors of the King of Spain and the Pope, then the various administrative bodies of the Republic. A former royal chamberlain was dug out of retirement, told to conduct the proceedings exactly as they had been under the last king and handed a staff for the purpose. Bonaparte received the guests as head of state, after which they were offered coffee and hot chocolate before being conducted by Talleyrand to Josephine’s apartment to be presented to her and a gaggle of women who were already behaving as though they were in waiting. She had slipped into the role of royal consort as effortlessly as he had adopted the attitude of a head of state.
Gone was the threadbare ‘greenish’ tail-coat. He had designed a uniform for the consuls which was a clear break with the togas and plumes of the Directory. It consisted of a blue tail-coat buttoned up to the chin, with a standing collar and cuffs enhanced by gold embroidery, white breeches and stockings, and a more sumptuous version in scarlet velvet for ceremonial occasions such as this. Gone too were the lanky strands of hair limply framing his sallow face, replaced by a closer crop à la Titus. He also began to take greater care over his toilette, insisting on frequent changes of linen and manicuring his hands, of which he was inordinately proud. He bathed frequently and doused himself in eau de cologne.
A couple of days after this first reception, Bonaparte asked the minister of finance to locate the crown jewels; not long afterwards, visitors to the Tuileries noted that the first consul’s sword blazed with diamonds, its hilt topped by the famous Régent, the largest in the world. Stung by some amused comments, he felt it necessary to publish in Le Moniteur an article explaining that it was not merely a piece of jewellery but a symbol of the greatness of France.6
Bonaparte’s new role meant he had to learn to behave. Until now, he had operated in a military environment with sallies into small-town politics and wartime diplomacy. He had never had to accommodate the niceties of convention, or adapt to civil procedure, and had not had the opportunity to develop normal social skills. He was tactless and had, according to one of his ministers, all the grace of a badly-brought-up subaltern, using his fingers at table and getting up from it regardless of whether his companions had finished eating. His pronounced views, attitude and character did not predispose him to begin a social apprenticeship at his age, and he suffered from one fundamental disadvantage in his relations with others, which Germaine de Staël perceptively identified as a total lack of the faculty of empathy.7
He was kind by nature, quick to assist and reward. He found comfortable jobs and granted generous pensions to former colleagues, teachers and servants, even to a guard who had shown sympathy during his incarceration after the fall of Robespierre. He was generous to the son of Marbeuf, promoted his former commander at Toulon Dugommier and looked after his family when he died, did the same for La Poype and du Teil, and even found the useless Carteaux a post with a generous pension. Whenever he encountered hardship or poverty, he disbursed lavishly. He could be sensitive, and there are countless verifiable acts of solicitude and kindness that testify to his genuinely wishing to make people happy.8
He possessed considerable charm, and only needed to smile for people to melt. He could be a delightful companion when he adopted an attitude of bonhomie. He was a good raconteur, and people loved listening to him speak on some subject that interested him, or tell his ghost stories, for which he would sometimes blow out the candles. He could grow passionate when discussing literature or, more rarely, his feelings. When he did, he was, according to Germaine de Staël, quite seductive, though the actress Ida Saint-Elme found ‘more brusquery than tenderness’ in his attempts to charm. Claire de Rémusat also found his gaiety ‘tasteless and immoderate’, and his manners often more suited to the barrack room than the drawing room. He was generally ill at ease with women, not knowing what to say and making gauche remarks about their dress or their looks, and allowing his lack of consideration for their sex to show. Only in the presence of Josephine was he less prickly.9
He was most at his ease with children, soldiers, servants and those close to him, in whom he took a personal interest, asking them about their health, their families and their troubles. He would treat them with a joshing familiarity, teasing them, calling them scoundrels or nincompoops; whenever he saw his physician, Dr Jean-Nicolas Corvisart, he would ask him how many people he had killed that day. His way of showing affection was giving people a little slap on the cheek, or pinching their nose or ear. He was curiously unconscious of causing pain, even when a hard pinch of the nose brought tears to the victim’s eyes, and since they regarded it as a mark of great favour, which it was, nobody objected. At the end of a stormy meeting in the course of which he roundly told off a minister about his handling of his brief, Bonaparte invited him to dine. The minister bowed, respectful but defiant, at which point he was seized by both ears, which he took as ‘the most intoxicating sign of favour for him who is honoured enough to receive it’. It was a gesture of familiarity that defused many an awkward situation. Yet real familiarity was something Bonaparte seemed to fear, and only a select few, such as Duroc and Lannes, ever got away with addressing him with the familiar tu.10
He did lose his temper, but he was quick to calm down and forgive. He did on occasion lose control and break things or stamp on his hat. He once hit the interior minister Chaptal with a roll of papers, and was known to use his riding crop, on one occasion striking a groom across the face for negligence which had led to a horse throwing him, for which he would make generous amends. Most of his rages were feigned, either to frighten people, to make an example of an officer in front of his men or a general in front of his peers, or just to test someone’s reactions. His principal interest on meeting a man was to assess whether he would be of use. He expected quick and precise answers, appreciated a snap retort if it was in order, but according to his chamberlain General Thiard, ‘his amour-propre was flattered if he noticed the signs of fear and confusion caused by his presence’. This is confirmed by Claire de Rémusat, who noted that in great as in small things, he applied the rule that ‘people only showed zeal if they were scared’. Chaptal’s assertion that ‘Nobody was at ease in his company except himself’ may sound harsh, but it is borne out by the testimony of others.11
‘The fact is that for him human life was a game of chess,’ reflected Mathieu Molé, ‘and people, religion, morality, affections, interests were so many pawns or pieces which needed to be moved about and used as the occasion demanded.’ According to Molé, ‘he was quick to grasp an individual’s character, to seek out each person’s weak spot, and to address it with remarkable skill and perceptiveness’. This suggests, as does Bonaparte’s behaviour in general, that he was no more at ease in the company of others than they in his.12
His new position aggravated the awkwardness, and his attempts to strike the right note as the head of government often went very wrong. As a token of thanks to Roederer, he decided to give him a jewelled snuffbox. On hearing of this through Talleyrand, Roederer felt offended, explaining that he would have gladly accepted a signed copy of a book on Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign, but this smacked of the classic royal gesture of giving tips to faithful servants. ‘I have done nothing for Bonaparte,’ he wrote. ‘All I wanted was to help him do what he has done for us, I mean for all patriotic Frenchmen. It is for us to give him presents, and I have an oak-leaf ready.’13
Equally gauche were his attempts to position his family in a manner he deemed appropriate. He saw it, and his close military entourage, as an extension of himself, and felt an urge to direct and control its members, both for practical reasons and in order to project a suitable image of himself. He liked to arrange the marriages not just of his family but of his military entourage too, and often selected names for their children – usually from antiquity or from the poems of Ossian; Leclerc’s son was Dermide, Bernadotte’s Oscar, Murat’s Achille.
He ensured that Letizia was comfortably
housed, and gave her enough money to live and entertain like a grande dame, but her experience of penury had made her parsimonious and, not trusting to the permanence of her son’s good fortune, she squirrelled away for a rainy day every penny he gave her, some of it in foreign banks.
Joseph continued to play a role in politics, and although he was generally supportive, he affected a degree of independence. He created his own court at Mortefontaine with literary figures and members of the old aristocracy. His wife Julie was charming and docile, universally loved for her kindness and amiability, and endlessly tolerant of Joseph’s infidelities.
Élisa, the least good-looking of the siblings but possibly the brightest, had moved to Paris and installed herself as hostess to the widowed Lucien, while her husband Bacciochi remained at his provincial military post. She held a salon with a literary flavour in which her lover, the poet Fontanes, held sway. Although she was admired by the writer René de Chateaubriand, whom she helped bring back to France and into favour with her brother, her salon was dull.
Despite having played a crucial role in bringing his brother to power, Lucien’s attitude to him remained ambivalent. He made it clear that he regarded Joseph as the head of the family, and disapproved of what he saw as Bonaparte’s usurpation of that role. He was proving an able and suitably unscrupulous minister of the interior, but being a widower he felt at liberty to pursue women, and abused his position to have his way.
Caroline had married Murat, in a civil ceremony at the Luxembourg in January, followed by a pseudo-religious one in a temple at Mortefontaine. Bonaparte had opposed the match. While he appreciated his military dash and his devotion, he considered the Gascon innkeeper’s son, with his picaresque past, too coarse and low-born. ‘I do not like these silly little love marriages,’ he commented, speculating that one day she might be in a position to marry a monarch. But Caroline was headstrong and he could not afford to make an enemy of Murat. Pauline was also wayward, and Bonaparte felt obliged to lecture her on her marital duties to her husband. Louis, whom he loved most of all his brothers, he had the highest hopes for.14
Josephine was both his greatest asset and his greatest liability. She had all the necessary grace and polish to hold court, as well as the charm to win people over and soothe anger or hurt. She was, if anything, too kind and approachable, and she lent a sympathetic ear to a stream of petitioners begging her to press their case for favour or redress. Bonaparte expressed his annoyance but found it difficult to resist her pleas, which only encouraged others to join the queue. More of an irritant to him were the jewellers, dressmakers, hatters, glove-makers, cobblers and other tradesmen who swarmed on her, indulging her insatiable appetite for luxury of every kind. This was an uncontrollable urge, possibly a disorder brought on by her experiences during the Terror, and the tradesmen knew it. However much he raged, often having them ejected physically and in one case having a dressmaker thrown in prison for twenty-four hours, they crept back when he was away or occupied with work.
One of her fancies that he shared was the house at La Malmaison, which she had bought while he was in Egypt. They drove down there at every opportunity, as she loved the privacy and he the fresh air. In November 1799, shortly after the coup, she brought the architect Pierre Fontaine to see it; he agreed the site was delightful and the gardens pleasant, but thought the house a mess. He started work on it in January 1800. He had to work around their visits so as not to interfere with their leisure, and put up with criticism of his work and frequent changes of plan from Bonaparte. When he was first presented to him on 31 December, Fontaine heard of his plans for Paris, and was commissioned to embellish the Invalides, where Bonaparte intended to have the horses of St Mark’s installed along with a statue of Mars brought from Rome. He was bombarded with new ideas and projects faster than he could work on them, and found Bonaparte’s impatience as well as his attention to detail and continual questioning of costs exhausting as well as irritating.15
Fontaine was not the only one to feel the strain of the first consul’s manic urge to get as much done as quickly as possible. Berthier was pressed to purge the army of inefficient or politically suspect officers, improve conditions for the troops, see to it that they were paid and fed, organise the supply of uniforms and equipment, improve discipline and stem the endemic desertion. Every minister was similarly harassed. Nor did Bonaparte spare himself. ‘There were no fixed hours for his meals or his sleep,’ recalled Chaptal. ‘I saw him dine at five o’clock and at eleven. I saw him go to bed at eight o’clock in the evening and at four or five in the morning.’ He generally slept about seven hours out of twenty-four, but often in three short bursts. His only means of relaxation was either violent exercise such as riding, when he would gallop furiously, or a hot bath, in which he might spend up to an hour.16
Between going to the theatre and the opera, attending sessions of the Institute and inspecting troops, Bonaparte found the time to supervise such matters as the standardisation of the metre throughout French territory, appoint David as ‘painter of the government’ and give instructions concerning the next year’s Salon. He absorbed information rapidly, stripping it down to essential facts, and made snap decisions after a moment’s reflection – usually the right ones. His secretaries could hardly keep up with him as he dictated, racing ahead as though he were talking to someone in the room, never pausing and intolerant of being asked to repeat anything. He treated his secretary ‘like a machine, to which one does not speak’, as one of them put it. He would become animated as he spoke, pacing up and down his study, either bent forward with his hands in his pockets or swaggering with his hands behind his back, his right shoulder occasionally jerking upwards in a nervous tic, developing his train of thought as he went. Not the least of the difficulties was his propensity for malapropism, substituting ‘amnesty’ for ‘armistice’, ‘convention’ for ‘constitution’, ‘session’ for ‘section’, the Elbe for the Ebro, Smolensk for Salamanca, and so on. But since his writing was almost indecipherable, they nevertheless preferred to take dictation rather than copy his notes. They never stopped him to clarify a point, as his features would set in ‘an attitude of imposing severity’ when he was at work, and it was only when he stopped that he would smile ‘with great warmth’, as one of his secretaries recalled. ‘He rarely laughed, and when he did, it was in a great burst, usually to show irony rather than great joy.’17
His contacts with others, whatever their station and whatever their relationship, were bedevilled by a mass of insecurities, social, intellectual, physical and sexual. ‘There was no kind of merit or distinction of which he was not jealous,’ according to Mathieu Molé. ‘He aspired to strength, grace, beauty, to the gift of being able to please women, and what is most curious is that his pride was so successful in containing his vanity, his real superiority in covering up his pettiness, that with so many opportunities to appear ridiculous he never did.’ His insecurities were, however, reflected in the way life was lived in the Tuileries.18
Bonaparte felt it should be conducted according to a strict etiquette in order to add dignity to his person and office, and, as he later put it, to stop people slapping him on the back – though there is no record of anyone ever having dared to do so even when he was a mere cadet. His close friend and aide since the Italian campaign, General Duroc, was put in charge of arrangements in the palace, and liveried footmen soon joined officers in uniform. Old courtiers were sought out, along with documents describing procedures at the court of Louis XVI, and quizzed about details of life at Versailles under the ancien régime. Madame Campan, former lady of the bedchamber to Marie-Antoinette, was consulted. Josephine acquired a series of noble ladies as companions. At the same time, the first consul clung to his familiar habits, walking into Josephine’s dressing room to tell her what to wear. They shared the same bedroom and lived, as he put it, ‘in a very bourgeois way’.19
He was aware how much the coterie of men of business and women of slight virtue that had gathered around B
arras and other Directors had tarnished the image of the government, and he wanted that of the consular administration to remain untainted. This accorded with his personal dislike of what he saw as profiteers and his prudish morality, and led to his banning Thérèse Tallien and other friends of Josephine’s whom he regarded as morally sullied; he took a high tone when it came to any amorous activity, other than his own, and made plain his disapproval of revealing female dress.
The result was a stuffy parody of a court, which only Bonaparte seemed satisfied with as he strutted about making awkward conversation with the ladies or holding forth on some subject. Those of his entourage who had spent the past years on campaign found it difficult to comply with the imposed rules of behaviour, and had to be called to order; Junot had an unfortunate habit of attracting a lady’s attention by slapping her on the thigh. Bonaparte himself disregarded etiquette when it suited him, and would on occasion escape the constraints of the Tuileries. He would put on an old overcoat, pull a scruffy hat over his face and walk the streets of an evening with Bourrienne to observe, and sometimes to engage people in conversation to find out what they thought of his regime.20
In their retreats in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the old aristocracy made fun of the parvenu court, which did lend itself to mockery; as the need to underline revolutionary credentials receded, old forms of dress revived, but lack of savoir-faire produced a mixture of fashions described by one as ‘a real masquerade’. Republicans were no less scathing, and when in Josephine’s drawing room people began addressing each other as ‘Madame’ rather than Citoyenne, they voiced their horror and predicted the worst.21
A routine was established, with two receptions a month for the diplomatic corps, one every second day of the décade for senators and generals, on the fourth for the members of the Legislative Body and on the sixth for those of the Tribunate and the top judiciary. Once a décade there was a parade at which Bonaparte would review troops, dressed in his blue consular uniform, wearing boots rather than stockings and pumps. These parades became a popular spectacle for Parisians and tourists alike. For the first consul they were an opportunity to demonstrate the power and discipline of the new state, and his own. They also provided an opportunity for units which had not served under him to see Paris and their new master.
Napoleon Page 31
