Citizen Emperor

by Philip Dwyer

  Marie-Louise

  Marie-Louise, one of thirteen children, had been her father’s favourite and had been brought up to refer to Napoleon as the ‘cannibal’, the ‘usurper’ or ‘Attila’. As a child she had a doll called ‘Bonaparte’ that she delighted in torturing.38 She had even referred to her future husband as the ‘Antichrist’ and the ‘Corsican’ in some of her letters, and made the sign of the cross when she heard his name.39 She had had to flee the capital twice in her lifetime as Napoleon and his troops approached. In short, she was raised to believe that he was a bloodthirsty, cold-hearted killer and to cultivate a deep aversion.40

  Now, she had to overturn those prejudices and prepare herself, like the dutiful daughter of the Emperor she was, for marriage with a man whom she had learnt to detest. Like her great-aunt Marie-Antoinette, she had received little or no formal education at court. The primary purpose of an Austrian princess was to produce sons to help continue whatever dynasty she was eventually married into. Nevertheless, she was distraught on learning in the newspapers at the beginning of 1810 that Napoleon had divorced Josephine, aware that she would now be considered a potential wife. She wrote to her father reminding him that he had promised he would never force her to marry. But there was something else; she had met and fallen in love with Archduke Francis of Modena, her stepmother’s brother.41 Her father never replied to her letter. And yet she persisted for some time in her naive belief that he would never force her to marry against her will and that his feelings for her would take precedence over dynastic considerations. When she was made aware of the negotiations, she pleaded with him to be spared. To no avail. Francis could do little else but offer her up, regardless of whether she was his favourite or not. As an Austrian princess, as the daughter of the Emperor, Marie-Louise was prepared to make this ultimate sacrifice.42

  Francois Pascal Simon, Baron Gerard, L’impératrice Marie-Louise (The Empress Marie-Louise), 1810.

  Berthier arrived in Vienna on 8 March 1810, and in a ceremony that took place at the Hofburg Palace, officially asked of Francis, clad in his white uniform, the hand of Marie-Louise. Three days later, a marriage by proxy took place, as was the tradition for unions between reigning houses.43 Berthier stood in for Napoleon. Archduke Charles represented his father, Francis I, escorting Marie-Louise down the aisle. When Marie-Louise entered France it was to meet a husband she had never laid eyes on. The married couple became acquainted through an exchange of letters. Napoleon knew how to be gallant – ‘we set ourselves the constant task of pleasing you in every way’. Marie-Louise knew how to reciprocate – ‘I consider it an obligation to acquire the qualities that would make me agreeable to your person.’44

  She crossed the border near Braunau (the village in which Hitler was to be born seventy-nine years later) on 16 March, following a ceremony that was an exact replica of that which Marie-Antoinette had had to endure in 1770.45 A neo-classical building spanning the border had been thrown up by French engineers, and divided into three connecting rooms, one facing east which was the Austrian room, one in the middle, a sort of neutral no man’s land, and one facing west, the French room. Symbolically, she was meant to enter the Austrian room as an archduchess, and leave the French room as a French princess.46 In the process, she was divested of anything resembling or associated with her Austrian past, including her governess, with whom she had been since she was a little girl, her clothes and her pets.47 After a toilette that lasted two hours in which she was bedecked in French perfume, French clothes and a French hairstyle, Caroline met her on the other side, and accompanied her all the way to Compiègne.48 The presence of Caroline was the only false note: she had, after all, replaced another Caroline, a Bourbon queen and daughter of Francis, on the throne of Naples. Fêted along the way, Marie-Louise did not arrive in Compiègne until 27 March.

  On 20 March, Napoleon left Paris, arriving in Compiègne that evening. While waiting, he prepared himself, taking dance lessons with Princess Stéphanie and Hortense, having new clothes made, trying to make himself more fashionable and less serious, less severe, something he thought would please a young woman.49 One week later, he was to meet her in the forest between Soissons and Compiègne, where a tent had been set up which was to serve the same purpose as the wooden lodges at Braunau, as a sort of passage between two worlds. According to a strict and elaborate protocol ten pages long invented by the imperial regime, Marie-Louise was to advance towards the Emperor, kneel before him – something Napoleon appears to have insisted on, possibly as a form of domination, though queens of France did not kneel but rather bowed – and utter a set speech, which she was to learn along the way. Napoleon, wearing a costume designed by Pauline, was to help her up and embrace her. The couple could then be on their way.50

  So much for etiquette; Napoleon, who made up the rules, broke them at will. He was so impatient to see his new bride that he ignored the weeks of planning and went to meet her, under a sky that was pouring rain, in front of the church in the town of Courcelles, wearing the same grey coat he had worn at Wagram. Mind you, he had whiled away his time at Compiègne with Christine de Mathis.51 Napoleon had only seen a portrait of Marie-Louise at that point, one not particularly flattering and which left him with lingering doubts. He had, moreover, been told she was plain if not ugly.52 He is supposed to have remarked to Murat, ‘Obviously my wife is hideous as not one of these young rips has dared say the contrary . . . After all, it is a womb that I am marrying.’53 He had to be reassured by Berthier that ‘The more I know the Empress . . . the more I am certain that, although she cannot be considered a pretty woman, she has all that it takes to make Your Majesty happy.’54 She has been described as having an oval face, with hair that was somewhere between light brown and blonde, beautiful blue eyes and clear skin, although intellectually she was far from that which she could become.55 A less gracious portrait would have her as plump, plain and quiet. We have no idea what Napoleon thought of his new Empress the first time he set eyes on her; he may have been pleasantly surprised.

  Pauline Auzou, nee Desmarquets, Arrivée de l’impératrice Marie-Louise à Compiègne le 28 mars 1810 (Marie-Louise recevant les compliments et les fleurs d’un groupe de jeunes filles dans la Galerie du chartrain à Compiègne à 9h du soir) (Arrival of the Empress Marie-Louise at Compiegne, 28 March 1810 (Marie-Louise receiving compliments and flowers from a group of young women in the Galerie du chartrain at Compiegne at 9 in the evening), 1810.

  They arrived at Compiègne around ten in the evening on the 27th, when she was introduced to the gathered Bonaparte and Beauharnais family members. She also found waiting for her, to her great surprise, her dog, her birds and an unfinished tapestry Napoleon had had brought to Compiègne against protocol and without her knowledge. After the couple had dined alone with Caroline, it was time for bed. In order to overcome any scruples his young bride might have had about not yet being formally married, Napoleon remarked to Cardinal Fesch in the presence of the new Empress, ‘Is it not true that we are married?’ ‘Yes, Sire,’ Fesch supposedly replied, ‘after the civil laws.’ Decorum required Napoleon to wait for the religious ceremony to be conducted in Paris before taking Marie-Louise to bed – a proxy marriage was symbolic and not legally binding – but patience was not his strong suit, and her virtue was manhandled that same evening as the Corsican upstart of petty noble origins deflowered a princess from one of the oldest reigning houses in Europe. One author suggests that Napoleon went about it more as rapist than as lover, an overly harsh judgement.56 Marie-Louise seems to have become quickly attached to her husband. ‘I find that he gains a lot when you get to know him more closely: there is something very engaging and very eager about him that it is almost impossible to resist.’57

  Ceremonial Paris

  The imperial couple arrived in Saint-Cloud on 30 March. What followed were some of the most elaborate political events staged since Napoleon’s coronation. There was a rich and detailed round of ceremonies that included a civil wedding on 1 April (which, sin
ce the Revolution, had to take place before the religious ceremony); a State Entry into Paris which involved more than forty carriages;58 a religious wedding at the Chapel of the Louvre, celebrated with a good deal more ‘order, dignity and contemplation’ than that of the coronation;59 a state banquet at the Tuileries; a public appearance on the palace balcony; fireworks that evening, plus illumination of the Tuileries gardens; receptions held by the Senate, ministers and senior officials of the Empire; a distribution of gold and silver coins to the crowds in the garden outside. The imperial union was also meant to be celebrated in each locality by the marriage of a young girl ‘of pure heart’ to a returned soldier on leave.60 Napoleon was very much involved with the organization of the festivities. Every monument and bridge in the capital was illuminated; there was a pagan touch to it all when a Greek temple to the goddess Hymen was erected between the two towers of Notre Dame;61 festivities were arranged by the Paris municipality including a pantomime – The Union of Mars and Flora – on the Champs-Elysées that saw more than 150 people on stage; and there was free distribution of bread and meat. Once again, as with the coronation five and a half years before, it is difficult to know exactly what the people of Paris thought of all this. Witness accounts vary, but most agree that the crowds showed little enthusiasm and that there were few acclamations; they took part in the festivities out of curiosity.62

  There were two incidents that marred the ceremonies. The first was the refusal of thirteen of the twenty-seven Italian cardinals present in Paris to turn up to the wedding, having decided, finally, to protest against Napoleon’s behaviour towards the pope.63 Their pretext was that the Holy See had not recognized the divorce between Napoleon and Josephine and they did not wish to lend any weight to the marriage by their presence. Thirteen seats remained conspicuously empty therefore around the altar during the ceremony at the Louvre. Napoleon had been forewarned but, typically, did not believe they would have the gall to go through with it. If he entered the Salon Carré all smiles, he came back out furious.64 His first reaction was to have the cardinals taken out and shot.65 Reason saw the light of day. They were, however, arrested, sent into exile to various parts of eastern France where they were placed under house arrest, and they had their cardinalates and pensions taken from them. They were, furthermore, forbidden to wear purple, which is why they were commonly referred to as the ‘black cardinals’.66 This was fairly typical behaviour of course. We have seen in the past how Napoleon would eliminate anybody in any position of power who did not fully co-operate with his plans.

  The second incident involved the same kind of petty squabbling that had occurred before the coronation, again with Napoleon’s sisters and sisters-in-law refusing to carry the Empress’s train – tears, simulated fainting, categorical refusals.67 Napoleon, angry, insulted them and in the end had to deliver an imperial ‘I order it.’ The Prince Karl von Clary-Aldringen has left an amusing account of the women involved – the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, the Princess of Borghesa, the Queens of Spain and Westphalia – entering the chapel holding Marie-Louise’s train, the first grimacing, the second holding a bottle of perfume under her nose as if she were about to faint and the third simply letting go of it in mid-course.68 The most stubborn was that ‘goose’ Catherine from Westphalia. The only person to carry it with good grace was Hortense.

  One other aspect of these ceremonies is worth dwelling on, if only for what it tells us about the relationship between Napoleon’s Empire and ancien régime monarchical rituals, namely, the formal ‘Entry’ into Paris.69 Gone now was any pretence of Napoleon being a ‘republican emperor’ as he adopted wholesale the external trappings of monarchy. He had made formal entries into cities before, in order to take symbolic and in many cases actual possession of them. Formal entries were made, for example, into Milan in 1800, Munich in 1805, Berlin in 1806, Danzig in 1807 and Warsaw in 1809. As a plebiscitary dictator, Napoleon was attuned to public opinion and he understood the importance of being seen by his subjects. That is why he insisted on a formal entry into Paris, and why the procession entered through the Arc de Triomphe; it was meant to be a triumphal entry, one in which he would show off his new conquest – Marie-Louise – and thereby help create an affective bond between the imperial couple and the people.70 In some respects, the entry was the highlight of the ceremony, a sort of public inauguration of the new queen.

  Although only the foundations had been laid of the monument that was meant to celebrate Austerlitz, Napoleon ordered the construction of a life-size model made of wood, plaster and cloth. Carpenters were working non-stop for over a month to complete the task in time and although there was, to use a modern-day euphemism, some industrial unrest when the carpenters struck for higher wages, that was soon nipped in the bud. The prefect of police, Dubois, threatened them with imprisonment if they did not return to work immediately and work at the conventional rates. Napoleon and his new bride were thus able to drive through the Arc, or at least a wooden facsimile of it.

  The marriage was a turning point in the nature of the Empire, a period of transition, a period in which the question of dynastic succession and continuity were reformulated. An institution that had been specifically French now became ever more ‘Germanic’. Greater reliance was laid on Roman and Carolingian traditions, while the court took on an increasingly pan-European flavour.71 Between 1809 and 1815, some 26 per cent of the senior household officials were non-French, while slightly over a third of those presented at court were also not French.72 As we have seen, etiquette became much more stringent from this time on; 634 articles regulating court etiquette were modified and introduced in 1811 drawing on ancien régime texts that went as far back as 1710.73 There was too an increasing reliance on the former aristocracy both for diplomatic posts and for appointment as prefects. The number of former nobles in diplomatic missions doubled from around 30 to 60 per cent between 1800 and 1812–13. Similarly, the number of prefects who were of noble birth almost doubled to 41 per cent in that same period.74 There was even some talk of moving the court back to Versailles.75 The Trianon was restored and refurbished for Napoleon’s mother and sisters after 1805, and soft furnishings were ordered in 1811–12 for the château itself, which underwent repair work throughout the Empire. Extraneous events were to interfere before that could happen, but it is clear that the movement towards monarchy and away from the Republic had come full circle.

  Men are ‘Insufferable’

  The imperial couple left Saint-Cloud on 5 April for Compiègne – the whole court followed them – where they stayed for most of the month of April, and where Napoleon spent the closest thing to a honeymoon that his constitution allowed him.76 By all accounts he was smitten, and behaved like a lovesick puppy, devoted to his new bride,77 never leaving her alone for more than two hours at a time, showering her with expensive gifts almost every day.78 For her part, she was not insensitive to the attention she received and began to reciprocate, calling Napoleon by pet names such as ‘Po-Po’ or ‘Nana’.79

  The relationship was not entirely idyllic though, for she soon discovered what it was like to be married to a man who ruled an empire. When they left on a tour of Belgium at the end of April, visiting many of the port towns along the coast – particularly significant for a region that was once attached to the Austrian Empire – Marie-Louise, unaccustomed to travelling with a man as energetic as Napoleon, who often woke at four in the morning in order to be on the road at five, complained as only a spoilt princess could of the little inconveniences she had to put up with.80 He may have been emperor of most of Western Europe but in private he was just a married man, and was therefore involved in the spats and squabbles that occur between couples as they work their way through life together. He was used to ordering people about and to getting his own way; she was an eighteen-year-old girl away from home for the first time who kept candles alight in her room because she was afraid of ghosts.81 She hated the mediocre lodgings they were often put up in, the bad roads, the bad smells, the fatigue of
travelling for five weeks. She liked the bedroom unheated at night, he preferred it heated. She liked to travel in the carriage with the window up, he liked to have it down, ‘just to annoy me’, she wrote in her diary. She was hungry and wanted to stop for lunch, he thought that a woman ‘didn’t need to eat’.82 When he got angry and started to yell, she just sulked. Besides, he had some annoying habits, like pinching Marie-Louise’s nose, which must have become very tiring very quickly. Men, she thought, were ‘insufferable’ and if she ever returned to this world she vowed never to marry again.83 Their time in Belgium was not a particularly happy one for either of them.

  Court life at the Tuileries was not particularly gay either. Metternich found the Tuileries ‘impossibly pretentious’.84 Several weeks of receptions were marred by a tragic incident that occurred during a ball offered by the Austrian ambassador to Paris at his embassy, and to which more than 700 people were invited (1 July). A fire broke out fuelled by the turpentine that had been used to help paint the ceilings.85 The next morning, several burnt bodies were discovered, including the ambassador’s sister-in-law Princess Schwarzenberg (four months pregnant) and Princess Leyen (one of Josephine’s cousins). Several others died of their burns in the days that followed.86 The street compared it to Louis XVI’s disastrous wedding celebrations when hundreds of people were crushed to death during a fireworks display on the Place Louis XV.87 It was almost as though it were an omen of things to come, for people could not help but draw unfortunate comparisons between the Napoleonic and Bourbon regimes.