Napoleon Bonaparte

by Alan Schom

  At the same time Josephine, who had long abandoned any real hope of giving her second husband children, and fearful of being ejected as a result of Napoleon’s growing insistence on the need for heirs, and of continuing strong clan pressure in favor of divorce, suggested the one remaining means of saving her marriage — sacrificing her obedient Hortense to the morose Louis. Hortense, on receiving this order, “broke down and sobbed.”[575]

  At this time Hortense was in fact infatuated with Napoleon’s favorite aide-de-camp, Gen. Gérard-Christophe Duroc. And although the latter apparently did find Hortense equally attractive, from a purely political viewpoint he knew that Napoleon preferred to marry his stepdaughter to someone bearing an important title, in order to bolster his own fledgling dynasty. Nevertheless, being very attached to both Hortense and Duroc, Napoleon for once wavered. In 1800 he suggested the possibility of their marriage, offering the otherwise penniless Duroc a five-hundred-thousand-franc nest egg. Never allowing emotions to get in the way when hard practical questions had to be resolved, Duroc coolly declined the offer and returned to the consolation of one of his several actresses. Napoleon arranged a substitute marriage for him in 1802 with a school friend of Hortense, the wealthy young Maria de la Nieves, the daughter of Don José Martinez de Hervas, the marquis d’Almenara.[576] Alas, this marriage, like most of those contrived by Napoleon, proved singularly unhappy for both parties, and Duroc hastened back to his actresses.

  Louis and Hortense were married in Josephine’s home in the Rue de la Victoire on January 4, 1802.[577] The union proved an unmitigated disaster from the very beginning, and Hortense, who had made no pretense of liking the idea of such a union, had been tearful before and after the ceremonies. To this was added the undisguised hostility of the entire Bonaparte clan, especially Madame Mère, to the marriage of Louis to a daughter of “the whore,” as Letizia Bonaparte referred to Josephine. Yet Hortense was a sweet, gentle, lively girl, incapable of harming a soul.

  To the regret of all, Napoleon simply closed his eyes to the crippling gravity of his brother’s mental illness. The importance of his own position in France, first as life consul, and then as Emperor, only aggravated the situation, as the issue of “succession” to the throne became a major preoccupation over the years as a result of his own childlessness. This preoccupation soon permeated the psyche and being of the entire covetous Bonaparte family, pitting one against another, as each sibling insisted on fresh titles, wealth, and honors, while maneuvering to establish the priority of each individual claim to the throne in the event that Napoleon did not return one day from one of his numerous military campaigns. As the announcement of the creation of the Empire approached, jealousy and bitterness hardened into a fratricidal feeling that was to undermine not only family stability but also that of the new Empire itself.[578]

  Napoleon did his best to avoid the insane power plays among his brothers and sisters. “I must therefore isolate myself from everyone. I can count on no one but myself. Very well, then!” But at the same time he was determined to protect himself, his power base, and his monumental plans. If he could not count on his own family, then the Bonapartes be damned. Thus Napoleon dropped the unobliging Lucien from any place in the imperial succession, and the wayward Jérôme as well.[579] That left Louis and Joseph.

  Having previously displaced the elder Joseph as head of the family, he now carried this one step farther in the newly devised imperial succession. Joseph, Napoleon decided, was unfit to succeed him. On learning of this decision, Joseph was outraged (assuaging his anger at Mortefontaine by firing his pistol at brother Napoleon’s portrait): “If my brother cannot entrust this to me, if he does not do for me what is expected of him [then]...to sacrifice one’s tastes, one’s ambitions, for nothing, for the mere possibility of an eventual position of power, to endure all that, and then possibly in vain, one must be either insane or a born intriguer.”[580] These sentiments did not prevent Joseph from doing just that — plotting and intriguing to the very end in an attempt to secure his “rightful” place in the Empire.

  The quarrels over who was to get what were horrendous, sometimes violent, and forever unending, leaving everyone angry, shaken, and dissatisfied, culminating in a supreme battle on October 12, 1804, when Napoleon summoned brothers Joseph and Louis, as well as the newly promoted archchancellor of the Empire, Cambacérès, and archtreasurer, Lebrun. Napoleon always insisted on having witnesses present during business conversations, even — especially — with his own outrageous brothers. Tempers flared, unguarded voices rose, and coarse language and wild accusations — which even thick solid walls, closed doors, and heavy Savonnerie tapestries could not mute — reverberated throughout the luxuriously refurnished Palace of St.-Cloud. Joseph heatedly protested Napoleon’s decision to crown Josephine, not to mention the naming of Louis and Hortense’s son as his direct heir, bypassing Joseph’s daughters. Joseph reminded Napoleon of the rights due him as the eldest. All to no avail, however. “How dare he speak to me of his rights and of his interests! To do this before me, his brother, to arouse his jealousy and pretensions, is to wound me at my most sensitive point. I shall not forget that!” On their departure Napoleon fumed: “It is as if he had said to an impassioned lover that he had fhis mistress. Well...my mistress is the power I have created. I have done far too much to achieve this conquest to permit someone else to ravish or even covet her.”

  When Roederer, who fully supported the creation of the Empire, attempted to intervene on behalf of his good friend Joseph, Napoleon lashed out:

  You forget therefore that my brothers are nothing without me, that they are great now only because I have made them so...There are thousands of men in France who have rendered far greater services to the State. But let’s face the hard facts. Joseph is not destined to reign. He is older than I: I will live longer than he, and in addition, I am in good health. Moreover, he was not born in a high enough social position to have warranted such an illusion on his part...He, like myself, was born in a most common position. But I raised myself by my own abilities. He, on the other hand, has remained exactly the same since birth. To rule in France, one must either be born in grandeur...or else be capable of distinguishing oneself above all the others...For the succession to the throne to succeed, it must therefore be passed on to our children born in that grandeur.

  What is more, Joseph had only daughters, not sons.

  Regardless of all Napoleon’s explanations, Joseph continued to see matters differently, the acrimony remaining at the breaking point, until Joseph finally threatened not to participate in the coronation ceremony if he did not get his way: “If you refuse to come to the Coronation,” a furious Napoleon replied.

  and to fulfill your functions as Grand Elector and Prince...from that very moment you may consider yourself my enemy. In such a situation how do you propose to fight me? Where is your army with which to carry out your attack? You lack everything, and I will annihilate you...I have been called upon to change the face of the world...Therefore be satisfied with being the first of my subjects. It is quite a fine role to play, that of being the second most important man in France and perhaps in the whole of Europe...Be content with being a prince, then, and don’t fret about the possible consequences of bearing such a title. When you succeed me one day, you may do whatever you wish and follow your own policies. I will no longer be there to prevent you.

  The matter was, however, finally smoothed out. Joseph would get a royal crown of his own, elsewhere in Europe. As Louis’s emotional problems were now so grievous as to preclude considering him as direct heir, he was bypassed in favor of his eldest son, Napoleon-Charles, as the immediate successor to the throne.

  Hortense reluctantly agreed to this, but Louis literally had a fit, furious that his brother wanted to bring up his son, bestowing on Louis only visiting rights.[581] “What have I done to deserve being disinherited!” a bewildered Louis asked, like a wounded animal. “No, I shall never consent to it! Rather than renounce my rights to t
he throne, rather than agree to bow my head before my own son, I will leave France...Then we will see if you will dare to kidnap a son from his father in broad daylight!”[582] A compromise was finally worked out, but Louis, who now hated his brother as only an insane man can, would never forgive him. On May 13 Napoleon had pushed through the famous Senatus Consulte, creating the Empire and defining precisely the order of succession. Title II, Articles 5 and 6, named “Louis Bonaparte and his descendants” to succeed to “the imperial dignity” through the right of primogeniture, “from male to male,” while providing for the option of adoption: “Napoleon Bonaparte may adopt the sons or grandsons of his brothers, providing they have reached the age of eighteen years and that he himself has no male children of his own at the time of adoption. His adopted sons enter into the direct line of descendance.”[583] Napoleon had won, but at the price of gaining another implacable foe.

  The unforgiving Louis now sat in the imperial coronation carriage, glaring at Napoleon as they proceeded to Nôtre-Dame. That he and Joseph would now become “French princes” with annual state salaries of 1 million francs each was irrelevant to Louis. That he also would be named colonel general of the carabiniers (with another 30,000 francs a year), or promoted to grand officer of the Legion of Honor, or named senator and state counselor, and given the ancient, prestigious title of imperial constable (with a salary of an additional 333,333 francs per year) — all this was irrelevant. Louis Bonaparte was seething, in a state verging on madness.

  His “Imperial Highness,” as Louis was now styled, had found the one victim who could not fight back, however — the gentle Hortense. Jealous of her every action, wishing to isolate her from all her friends, and especially her mother — for clearly “they” were all plotting together against him — he had her spied on twenty-four hours a day, every day of the year, even posting armed male servants in the halls and outside her bedroom door all night long. He also ordered her secretly — she was forbidden to tell a soul — never to spend another night under her mother’s roof! For years to come she was a virtual prisoner. Still not content, Louis threatened his pregnant wife in writing:

  If you support your mother’s interests at the expense of mine, I swear I will make you regret it. I will separate you from your son. I will have you locked up behind high walls in some utterly unknown place from which no human power can ever extricate you, and you will spend the rest of your life paying for your condescending views of me and my family. And just you take special care that none of my threats reaches my brother’s ears! All his power cannot protect you from my wrath.

  The gay, lively Hortense grew pale and fearful, and for years lived in a state of virtual terror, her only place of refuge the little house in the Rue de la Victoire she had been given as a wedding gift. It is not clear if Hortense ever revealed this note and the dangers of her situation, but her dramatic physical changes and isolation could not be concealed, nor could her depression and the obvious breakdown of this tragic marriage engineered by the hapless Josephine and a blind Napoleon. For all his faults, Napoleon would never have forced this on Hortense had he fathomed Louis’s character and what a dangerous person he had become. But this was the twenty-six-year-old Prince Louis who now sat in the carriage before them in his white coronation costume. It did not bode well for the newly laid foundations of the Empire.

  As for the other “Imperial Highness” seated across from Napoleon, Joseph Bonaparte, at least his anger verged only on jealousy, not deranged malevolence. To be sure, Joseph was just as greedy for power as Louis, despite the munificence of wealth and titles heaped on him by Napoleon as sops and distractions. In addition to his state salary of 1 million francs a year, as grand elector of the Empire he received 333,333 francs per year, not to mention a new official state residence in Paris, the Luxembourg Palace. To further soothe him, Napoleon had given him an additional tax-free sum of 350,000 francs just before the coronation. Still Joseph was not happy. Thus the two unsmiling Bonaparte brothers stared straight ahead at the new imperial couple as the glittering coronation carriage clattered across the Pont-Neuf.

  Nor were sisters Pauline, Elisa, and Caroline, in the carriages preceding Napoleon, any happier with their brother on this splendid day. Their animosity toward Josephine had, if anything, hardened since the announcement of the creation of the Empire. Indeed, all three Bonaparte sisters were no longer merely outspoken enemies of the gracious Josephine, but jealous and furious now that they had to curtsey whenever she entered the room and even had to carry her train in the ceremony. She was to be Empress, while they were but humble princesses — it was unfair! Nor would they ever forgive Napoleon’s earlier personal interference in their lives, in particular Pauline and Caroline.

  At the age of sixteen the headstrong Pauline had announced her love for the Jacobin regicide politician Stanislas Fréron. Napoleon seemed to be surrounded by hot-blooded women. Memories of Josephine’s outrageous participation in orgies, with Thérèsia Tallien and Fortunée Hamelin in their diaphanous neo-classical Greek gowns, and nightlong champagne parties at the Chaumière in the Champs-Elysées, were hard to live down. Excesses of every kind had been carried out into the wee hours of the morning, month after month. It still rankled, not to mention Josephine having been Barras’s official mistress at the Luxembourg and at his country estate; and then there was the matter of that elegant little fop Hippolyte Charles. Now Pauline, still a teenager, was throwing herself at every man in sight. “I am determined to do whatever is necessary to prevent this marriage,” brother Napoleon declared.

  But scarcely had he disposed of Fréron than Pauline was caught in an embarrassing embrace with the handsome young colonel Victor Emmanuel Leclerc. Clearly something had to be done. Napoleon decided to rush through a marriage with Leclerc, whom at least he liked very much. Thus, barely a month after the end of the Fréron fiasco, on June 17, 1799, the civil and religious ceremonies of Pauline and Leclerc took place in Napoleon’s palace outside Milan at Montebello. Now she would have to behave herself.

  Napoleon was pleased with the choice of Leclerc. Having first met him during the siege of Toulon, he found him honest, courageous, and a good officer with great potential. Unfortunately the marriage was to prove shortlived. Leclerc, heading an invasion force to recapture the island of Hispaniola, fell victim — like most of his army — to yellow fever, and died in November 1802. Pauline returned to France in 1803, in broken health and aged by many years, despite later flattering portraits by famous artists.

  On November 6, 1803, she married the very wealthy, remarkably unintelligent Roman prince Camillo Borghese. The once-beautiful Pauline remained for the rest of her life in “a state of admirable ignorance, lacking any intellectual endowment” but at least secured in a nominal marriage, though not one that prevented her from engaging in a long career of sexual exploits that only her sister Caroline managed to surpass. It was many years before Pauline could forgive her brother’s interference in her private life. (The Bonapartes knew how to carry a grudge.)

  Maria Nunziata, rechristened by Lucien and thereafter known as Caroline, not only matched the record of the provocative Pauline, but, being a little more intelligent — if equally ignorant — proved a real troublemaker later for Napoleon in political matters. Murat, the tall, powerful, dashing cavalry officer with black curly locks and a wide smile, was Caroline’s ultimate choice as mate. From Napoleon’s viewpoint it could not have been much worse (which delighted Caroline all the more). Murat, a womanizer of repute (he had even broadcast his earlier conquest of Josephine), came from a much lower social class than the Bonapartes. The son of a reasonably prosperous estate manager and innkeeper near Cahors, he had been surprisingly well educated, remaining in school until 1787, when at the age of twenty he joined the army. Indeed, he was far better educated not only than most of the newly proclaimed marshals of the Empire in 1804 (except, for example, Berthier and Davout), but probably than Napoleon himself. Although Murat had a flair for bizarre costumes and uniforms,
the perceptive Bourrienne found Caroline’s husband to be “noble, polite, gallant, and, on a battlefield, twenty men commanded by Murat were worth a regiment.”[584]

  Murat and Caroline seemed to be in the throes of wild infatuation, which worried Napoleon. “I do not at all like these marriages of little lovebirds,” he reflected. “These impassioned couples consult only their own volcanic feelings...To be sure, she is marrying a brave man, but in my position that simply does not suffice.”[585] Nevertheless the civil marriage took place near Paris on January 18, 1800, with brother Napoleon’s grudging approval in the face of Caroline’s tantrums and emotional pyrotechnics. “Murat pleases my sister, and no one can possibly call me a snob now, seeking only grandes alliances. If I had given my sister a nobleman for a spouse, all the Jacobins would have protested against the counter-Revolution.”[586] It was acceptance by rationalization of a situation he was helpless to prevent.

  All these female problems were simply too much for him, as exhausting as any military campaign. For better or worse the Murat who had cuckolded him had joined the Bonaparte clan and their destinies. Of all Bonaparte’s sisters, Caroline was to prove the most independent “anti-Bonaparte,” the greatest hindrance to Napoleon and his fledgling Empire, openly conspiring in political opposition, out for herself even at the expense of her husband. By the time of the coronation she was already a budding foe and outspoken opponent of Napoleon.