‘My health is excellent,’ Caesar wrote to Josephine on 20 August. ‘I am longing to see you, to tell you all about my feelings for you and to cover you in kisses. A bachelor’s life is a mean one, and nothing like having a good, beautiful and tender wife.’ He would soon be joining her at Aix-la-Chapelle, where she was taking the waters. ‘As it is possible that I might arrive at night, let the lovers beware,’ he wrote jestingly on 25 August, assuring her that he had been too busy for any philandering and dropping suggestive hints.26
On 1 September he was in Brussels, from where he set off on a breathless tour of inspection of the left bank of the Rhine. On 2 September, at Aix-la-Chapelle, he received news from Paris that the Russian chargé d’affaires, Oubril, had asked for passports and left, which forecast a state of war, yet Napoleon carried on as if nothing had happened. With Josephine he attended a Te Deum in the cathedral and was shown the relics of Charlemagne. On the evening of 9 September he reportedly suffered something that looked like an epileptic fit. But two days later he was on his way to Cologne, from where he went to Koblenz and on to Mainz, where he received a number of minor German rulers who came to pay their respects. Having finished inspecting French defences along the Rhine, he was back at Saint-Cloud on 12 October.
Although he knew Russia was by now well advanced in preparations for war and Austria was also arming, and Naples only waiting for a chance to strike, Napoleon showed no sign of concern. He spent the next weeks alternating between Paris and Saint-Cloud, hunting there or at Versailles or in the Bois de Boulogne, while maintaining his intent to invade England, chivvying troops and crews to practise embarking and landing. On 27 September he had written to Berthier that ‘the invasion of Ireland has been decided’, to be led by Augereau with 18,000 men supported by Marmont with another 25,000, while the rest of the army crossed the Channel to Kent. The operation was to begin on 20 October. Yet he now shifted his attention to preparations for his coronation – even taking the trouble to have his wet-nurse, Camilla Carbon Ilari, brought from Corsica to see Paris, detailing Méneval to look after her.27
His elevation had raised questions about the part his family were to play in the imperial structure. While they had for the most part been of little assistance to him, and felt no duty of obedience, they had all developed bloated ideas of their own worth, and exorbitant pretensions – Joseph actually believed that as the eldest brother he had a better claim to the throne. He was proving such a nuisance that Napoleon gave him a regiment to command and sent him off to Boulogne. But a more permanent solution was needed, and as Napoleon could hardly be president of the Republic of Italy as well as emperor of the French, he decided to turn that into a kingdom, and offered its throne to Joseph. Preliminary soundings in Vienna suggested such an arrangement might be acceptable. Joseph agreed, but kept laying down conditions, mostly concerning what he considered to be his right to succeed to the French throne.28
Having been persuaded by Josephine that he was infertile, Napoleon had fixed on his step-grandson Napoléon-Charles, the two-year-old child of Louis and Hortense. He had a special fondness for Louis, whom he had largely brought up, and adored Hortense. But Louis had turned into a neurotic hypochondriac (among his bizarre ‘cures’ was bathing in tripe). His relationship with Napoleon was fraught, as Hortense explains: ‘Brought up by him, perhaps too strictly, he conserved a kind of fear of him which robbed him of the strength to contradict him openly, as a result of which he had developed a habit of quiet defiance which hindered him in the expression of his wishes.’ Matters were made no easier by the rumour circulating that Hortense’s son was Napoleon’s; he treated him as though he were his, sitting on the floor to play with him. Louis resented this, and did everything to thwart Napoleon’s plans. So did Napoleon’s other siblings. One evening when he was playing with Napoléon-Charles, who was sitting on his knee, Napoleon addressed him, saying, ‘I advise you, my poor child, if you wish to live, never to accept any food offered by your cousins.’ Not surprisingly, Louis and Hortense protested against their son being designated as the heir apparent. But Napoleon had decided that if he failed to produce a legitimate heir himself, the succession would pass through Joseph (who had only daughters) and then through Louis.29
Letizia was given a court of her own, with an ancien-régime duke as chamberlain and Louis XVI’s erstwhile first page as equerry. After much historical research, she was given the title of ‘Madame, mère de sa Majesté l’Empereur’, generally abbreviated to ‘Madame Mère’. She took the money Napoleon gave her, but was uncooperative, siding with her favourite Lucien against him. He had meant Lucien to marry the recently widowed queen of Etruria, but Lucien had secretly married another widow, by whom he had a son. Napoleon refused to recognise the marriage and tried to get him to divorce, but Lucien stood firm. He took his wife and his art collection off to Rome, where he was joined by Letizia.
Caroline Murat was in a rage at not having been given a title she regarded as due to her, and vented it on Hortense, whose children were princes while hers were not. She made such a scene, bursting into tears at table, that Napoleon relented and made her a princess. When Pauline realised that she was not going to be made one too, she stormed over to see her brother and screamed so much she actually fainted. Napoleon complied.30
The youngest brother, Jérôme, was arrogant, vain and fatuous. He was destined by Napoleon for the navy, but was a reluctant sailor, enjoying only the pleasures of life in port. He did eventually learn his craft and take command of a brig, in which he sailed to the West Indies. He was stranded there by the end of the peace of Amiens, and aimed to return by way of the United States. In Baltimore he fell in love with Elizabeth Patterson, the daughter of a local merchant, and married. He had no right to do so, as French law required parental consent up to the age of twenty-five, and when he heard of it, Napoleon refused to recognise the union. He ordered him back to France, alone, as soon as possible, but Jérôme would not be parted from his wife. ‘Inform your master,’ she wrote to the French consul in Lisbon, where they landed, ‘that Madame Bonaparte is ambitious and claims her rights as a member of the imperial family.’31
As the coronation drew near, his siblings made a concerted effort to make Napoleon divorce Josephine. That the new etiquette demanded they curtsey and bow before her was bad enough, but the idea of her being crowned was too much. Matters came to a head in an unholy row on 17 November at Saint-Cloud as the final arrangements were discussed; when they were told they would have to carry her train, his sisters mutinied. Napoleon lost his temper, threatening to strip them of all their honours if they did not behave and treat his wife with the respect due to her.32
‘My wife is a good woman who has never done them any harm,’ he said to Roederer. ‘She’s perfectly happy to play the empress, to have her diamonds, her fine dresses and the other consolations of her age! I never loved her blindly. If I made her empress it was out of a sense of justice. I am above all a just man. If I had been thrown into prison rather than mounting the throne, she would have shared my misfortune. It is only right that she should have a part in my greatness.’ He had stopped nagging her about her spending on clothes and handing money out to friends in need, which was probably uncontrollable: even though she had a yearly clear-out, distributing discarded clothing to friends and servants, a surviving inventory of her wardrobe lists forty-nine grand court dresses, 676 dresses, sixty cashmere shawls, 496 other shawls, 498 blouses, 413 pairs of stockings, 1,132 pairs of gloves, more than a thousand heron feathers, and 785 pairs of shoes. He must have realised it was a compulsive disorder. According to Hortense, he was by then so exasperated by his siblings’ attacks on Josephine that he asked her whether she would mind if he were to sire a child by another woman and pretend it was hers. He even consulted Corvisart on how this could be carried out, but the doctor refused to have anything to do with it.33
Other arrangements may have cost him less annoyance, but no less time and effort. Historians rummaged through records of early
French coronations, noting symbols and traditions. Some, such as the vigil of prayer, were deemed too religious; others, like the ceremonial robing, might diminish the new emperor. The actual crowning could not be done by the Pope, as that would have implied Napoleon held his power from him. For similar reasons the pontiff would not be borne into the cathedral on the sedia, and would have to be in place by the time the emperor arrived. The question of what his throne should look like, and the design of the coronation coach and robes, were the subject of protracted discussion, as they had to be based on precedent but must not resemble anything pertaining to the previous dynasty. The result – a bizarre mishmash of the Graeco-Roman, the Merovingian and the Carolingian, with a dash of Henri IV – beggars description.34
Napoleon had hoped to hold the coronation on 18 Brumaire, the anniversary of his seizure of power, but the Pope was not to be hurried, and the date was eventually set for 2 December. On 25 November Napoleon was at Fontainebleau and about to go hunting when news reached him that the Pope’s coach was approaching. He mounted his horse and rode out to meet him, dressed as he was in his hunting clothes. When he sighted the Pope’s travelling coach, he dismounted and walked over to greet the pontiff, who alighted. Shortly after, the imperial carriage drove up and took them the rest of the way to the palace. They spent three nights there, and on 28 November drove into Paris together. The Pope was installed in the Pavillon de Flore of the Tuileries, and as soon as word of his arrival spread, crowds of the faithful gathered outside. When he appeared at the window they knelt and held out long-concealed rosaries and images for him to bless. Napoleon rushed over to share the aura by appearing alongside him on the balcony.
There was a last-minute hitch when Josephine let slip to the Pope that she and Napoleon had never married in church. The coronation ceremony could not go ahead unless they were wed in the eyes of God, so that evening, much to Napoleon’s discomfort, Fesch conducted a secret religious marriage in the Tuileries.
The ceremonial for the coronation was devised by Louis-Philippe de Ségur, grand master of ceremonies, assisted by the prefect of the palace, Auguste de Rémusat. The logistics were in the hands of the grand equerry General Armand de Caulaincourt, and the music was composed or selected by Paisiello and Lesueur. The cathedral of Notre Dame was decorated by Fontaine. To facilitate rehearsals, the painter Isabey drew floor plans of Notre Dame and painted a series of dolls to represent the principal figures. On 29 November he brought them to a delighted Napoleon, who began playing with them and then called over the major participants to rehearse their parts.
At eight o’clock on the icy morning of 2 December, while the capital resounded to the thunder of cannon and the pealing of bells, the legislative bodies arrived at Notre Dame and took their places. Two hours later the Pope arrived, in a gilded coach drawn by eight greys, preceded as custom demanded by a prelate mounted on an ass and bearing a processional crucifix. He took his seat and waited for nearly two hours in the freezing cathedral for Napoleon, who did not leave the Tuileries until eleven o’clock. He rode with Josephine in a gilded coach drawn by eight buckskin horses, escorted by several hundred cavalry with their bands blaring, followed by other members of his family and court in their carriages. The imperial couple and their attendants alighted at the archbishop’s palace, where they donned their ceremonial robes, Napoleon’s making him look even smaller than he was with its huge ermine cloak. He snapped furiously at his sisters when they staged a last-minute protest at having to carry Josephine’s train.35
By the time they entered the cathedral, to a bombastic fanfare, the Pope and most of those present were stiff with cold. To a twenty-year-old guardsman who had slipped in to watch, the ceremony was ‘everything that the most fertile imagination could conjure up in the way of beauty, grandeur and magic’. Captain Boulart, a fervent admirer of the emperor, thought it resembled a masquerade, ‘and Bonaparte as Commander of the army of Italy seemed to [him] greater than the Napoleon who was having himself anointed in order to reign by virtue of some pretended divine right’. He did not enjoy the ceremony, which he considered a load of ‘humbug’. Republicans raged and Christians were appalled by what they saw as a cynical manipulation of the faith for political ends, and the humiliation of the Pope. Paisiello’s music for the occasion echoed these contradictions: his usual light Neapolitan lyricism is in constant conflict with fanfares of brass and drums. Only Napoleon seemed sure of his purpose, though even he found it trying. The physician Joseph Bailly was seated quite close and had a good view of him. As he sat on the throne, with the crown on his head, clutching the orb in one hand and the sceptre in the other, Napoleon suddenly felt a sneeze coming on and made ‘a singular grimace’ as he attempted to quell it.36
‘There was, in this saturnalia, plenty to laugh at and to weep over, depending on one’s taste,’ remarked the royalist baron de Frénilly. The English caricaturists certainly had a feast. In France there were pamphlets critical of the ceremony, and scurrilous jokes and graffiti scrawled on walls opposite the Tuileries. Most of the population showed more curiosity than enthusiasm as they watched the gilded carriages and brilliant troops of cavalry clatter past, and made the most of the festivities and fireworks laid on for them that evening.37
There was to have been a grand parade the following day at which regiments were to be presented with eagle finials for their standards, but it was delayed by two days as a result of Josephine’s indisposition. On the evening of 4 December a relentless downpour soaked the painted canvas of the stand that had been prepared for the imperial couple and the dignitaries, whose seats were drenched. The following day, dressed in his carnivalesque coronation robes, Napoleon presided over a painful ceremony as his marshals distributed the eagles to the regiments, which paraded ‘covered in mud and drenched in the coldest rain’ with no crowd to watch them. Their clothes were soaked, their hats flopped over their faces, their plumes drooped. ‘We were up to our knees in mud,’ recalled one guardsman.38
For once, the sun had let Napoleon down. Superstitious as he was, he might have reflected on this. He had radically altered his relationship to the French nation, a relationship which had brought him to power and restored its sense of identity. The invitations to the coronation proclaimed that Napoleon had been accorded imperial status by ‘divine providence and the constitutions of the Empire’. When he received the members of the legislative bodies who had come to swear a new oath to him as emperor, in making a speech with more than his usual number of grammatical mistakes, he addressed them as ‘My people’ and his ‘faithful subjects’, which even his staunchest supporters did not consider themselves to be. In his pursuit of a national ‘fusion’ he had been sidetracked by the lure of aristocratic grandeur, which was leading him away from the republican spirit which had inspired and given him power. Far from reconciling French society as he had hoped, the implicit contradictions alienated republicans and royalists, agnostics and Christians, nobles and proletarians. And, as Cambacérès had foretold, they put him at odds with himself.
28
Austerlitz
On 1 January 1805 Napoleon wrote to George III using the address ‘Monsieur mon frère’, customary between monarchs, proposing a new peace settlement based on a division of spheres of interest. France was not interested in overseas empire, and if allowed a dominant role in Europe would not contest Britain’s dominion over the seas. The world was large enough for both nations, he argued. The offer was dismissed in a letter addressed to ‘the head of the French government’. An unintended consequence of Napoleon’s activities at Boulogne was to make the war popular in Britain for the first time since hostilities had begun over ten years before. The threat of invasion by ‘Boney’ struck a chord in all classes of the population, and the government now had the support of the country.1
Napoleon had also written to Francis I of Austria, to inform him that he had magnanimously ceded all his rights over Italy to his brother Joseph, who would ascend the Italian throne and renounce his claim to t
hat of France, thereby ensuring that the two countries would never be united under one ruler. He expressed the hope that this sacrifice of his ‘personal greatness’ would be reciprocated by goodwill on the part of Francis, urging him to reverse the Austrian troop concentrations in Carniola and the Tyrol.2
The letter had hardly left Paris when Joseph declared that he would not, after all, renounce his right to the French throne. Napoleon then offered the crown of Italy to Louis, who also refused, equally jealous as he was of preserving his right to the imperial throne. Napoleon resolved to take the crown himself, and to appoint his stepson Eugène de Beauharnais as his viceroy. On 16 January a sick and depressed Melzi agreed to offer him the crown, and in a ceremony at the Tuileries on 17 March he was acclaimed by a number of Lombard nobles. On 31 March he left for Fontainebleau on the first leg of the journey to Milan for his coronation as King of Italy.3
Marshalled by the grand equerry Caulaincourt, carriages, horses and three sets of court officials and servants leapfrogged each other along the way, so that when the imperial couple reached a stop everything was ready for them, with a full complement of staff, while the second set raced ahead to prepare the next stage, and the third waited to clear things up once they had left. Napoleon himself now had a travelling berline, sometimes referred to as his dormeuse, as he could sleep in it, which maximised his capacity to work. The vehicle could be turned into a study, with a tabletop equipped with inkwells, paper and quills, drawers for storing papers and maps, shelves for books, and a lamp by which he could read at night. It could also be turned into a couchette, with a mattress on which he could stretch out, and a washbasin, mirrors and soap-holders so he could attend to his toilette and waste no time on arrival, and, naturally, a chamberpot. There was only room for one other person – Berthier on campaign, Méneval at other times.4
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