The Second Empress: A Novel of Napoleon's Court

by Michelle Moran

  Bonaparte Family

  The fate of the Bonaparte family is not as dismal as it might have been, given Napoleon’s exile and death. While Pauline hosted extravagant parties in her Italian villa, Madame Mère moved to the Palazzo Rinuccini (thereafter called the Palazzo Bonaparte) in Rome, where she decorated her apartments with portraits and busts of her beloved son. Although she cut a gloomy figure in her black mourning clothes, she was surrounded by servants and grandchildren, all of whom helped to alleviate the pain of her son’s downfall and subsequent death. “Twenty years ago,” she would tell her grandson wistfully, “whenever I entered the Tuileries, drums were beaten, soldiers presented arms, and crowds flocked around my carriage. Now people peer at me from behind curtains.” She died in 1836, at eighty-five years old.

  Caroline Bonaparte, who was responsible for insisting that Marie-Louise leave Sigi behind when she first entered France, died at fifty-seven. Her eldest son, Achille Murat, would later become the mayor of Tallahassee, Florida.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  IT’S HARD TO believe that only eleven years after the execution of Marie-Antoinette, and the death of nearly half a million people during France’s Revolution, the same country that had adopted the motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité went on to crown Napoleon Bonaparte emperor. The political and social chaos left in the wake of the Revolution facilitated Napoleon’s rise to power, and his unbelievable conquest of much of western Europe forged a legend out of this young general from the island of Corsica. But the legend of Napoleon and the reality were very different. Even today, with well over two hundred thousand books written on the Bonapartes, few people realize just how extreme some of the Bonaparte siblings truly were.

  In my attempt to re-create the last six years of Napoleon’s reign, I relied on the thousands of letters that have been preserved from his court, some of which are included in the novel. I also used (although far more judiciously) the memoirs of Marie-Louise, Hortense, Mademoiselle Durand, Monsieur Montholon, and Napoleon himself. Although many scenes in this novel may be hard to believe, even the most outrageous aspects of this book were taken from primary resources.

  Take, for example, the character of Pauline, who actually owned serving bowls that were modeled on her breasts. Numerous letters attest to her use of ladies-in-waiting as footstools, and although there is much speculation concerning her relationship with Napoleon, reliable sources credit her with saying that she wanted to “do as the Ptolemies did … divorce my husband and marry my brother.” Her obsession with Egypt was very real, and her desire to rule alongside her brother made the courts of Europe extremely uncomfortable. The Austrian diplomat Prince Metternich seemed to think that an illicit relationship existed between them, while Pauline herself commented many times that she and Napoleon were intimate. Even Joséphine suspected that brother and sister were having an incestuous affair. In 1805 she apparently witnessed something that distressed her so much that she burst into a room where the secretary general of the Council of State, Hochet, was chatting with the Comte de Volney. When they asked her what was wrong, she told them, “You don’t know what I’ve seen. The emperor is a scoundrel. I have just caught him in Pauline’s arms. Do you hear? In his sister Pauline’s arms!” In a family like Napoleon’s, it is not inconceivable that such a relationship might have existed. As Prince Metternich recounted, “Pauline Bonaparte was as beautiful as it was possible to be.… She was in love with herself alone, and her sole occupation was pleasure.”

  In fact, France’s imperial court had become so scandalous that the gossip made its way to Austria, and from the very beginning, Marie-Louise was vehemently opposed to Napoleon. Before her marriage she told a close friend, “I pity the unfortunate woman on whom [Napoleon’s] choice falls,” later adding that, “to see this creature would be worse torture for me than all the martyrdoms.” However, once her marriage was announced and it was clear that her father’s regency was at stake, Marie-Louise’s rhetoric softened. She decided that she was ready to make this “painful sacrifice,” however much heartache it would eventually cost her. But what she didn’t realize—and what even her father’s ministers couldn’t have prepared her for—was just how erratic Napoleon would turn out to be.

  There is no doubting the fact that Napoleon was a military genius. He took a country utterly devastated by war and built an empire that stretched from the Pyrenees to the Dalmatian coast. Yet this same man who created the Legion of Honor to promote advancement solely through merit was also obsessed with court etiquette and securing titles for himself. And while he may have had many admirable qualities on the battlefield, they did not extend to his personal life. He slept with his future mistress, the Countess Walewska, for the first time while she had fainted at his feet. Another of his mistresses, a Comédie-Française actress named Catherine Duchesnois, was instructed to meet him next door to his study. After making her wait for more than an hour, he sent word that she should “get undressed.” When he finally appeared, the matter was “all dealt with in three minutes.” This attitude toward women and sex makes his treatment of Marie-Louise on their wedding night unsurprising. When he was finished, he advised his secretary Méneval to marry a German. “They are the best women in the world: sweet, good, naïve, and as fresh as roses.”

  He also enjoyed publicly insulting the female members of his court. To Germaine de Staël, who possessed an ample bosom, he famously remarked, “You evidently nursed all your children yourself.” And according to Louis-Antoine Bourrienne, these kind of comments were typical. “He seldom said anything agreeable to women, and frequently made the rudest and most extraordinary remarks. To one he would say, ‘Good heavens, how red your arms are,’ or to another, ‘What an ugly hat!’ Or he might say, ‘Your dress is rather dirty. Don’t you ever change your clothes? I’ve seen you in that at least a dozen times.’ ”

  Among his less admirable qualities, Napoleon was unbelievably selfish as well. In one of his letters to Joséphine, he reprimands his wife over Hortense’s grief, telling her that Hortense is “not being reasonable” in mourning the passing of her son. “She does not deserve our love,” he went on, “since she only loved her child.” It was this attitude that probably explains his remark, after the tragedy in Russia, that “a man such as I does not concern himself much about the lives of a million men.”

  If I have been harsh in my treatment of Napoleon, it’s because I believe the evidence warrants it. There was a callousness in his personality that neither experience nor age ever tempered. His treatment of Pauline’s lovers in the book is accurate, as was his treatment of his secretary, Méneval. Even in the end, when misfortune might have prompted personal revelation, his greatest regret was that he “did not terrorize [France] upon [his] return from Elba.”

  While I tried to remain as close as possible to the known facts, in several places I have altered the history to fit the story. For example, I have Marie-Louise leaving for Austria in May, while her actual departure was on April 23. Similarly, the timeline for the extensive wars that Napoleon waged on his neighboring countries was changed. And while all the letters found throughout this book are authentic (some have been condensed), there are three exceptions: the letter from Napoleon to Pauline in Chapter 14, the letter from Napoleon to Joséphine in Chapter 19, and the letters in Chapter 25. The most significant change I made, however, was to Adam Neipperg’s marital life. Unable to divorce his wife, the Italian contessa Teresa Pola, Adam separated from her instead. Teresa died in 1815, while Marie-Louise was still legally married to Napoleon. The emperor’s death six years later allowed Adam and Marie-Louise to marry.

  Given the wealth of information available to us about Napoleon’s family, it was no small task to sort through the research and decide which memoirs seemed the most plausible and which letters should be included in the book. But among these many resources, a few stand out as being indispensible: Flora Fraser’s recent biography Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire, Steven Englund’s Napoleon: A Political Life, a
nd Robert Asprey’s The Reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. I should also note that the quotes at the beginning of the chapters are real, the sources ranging from letters to nineteenth-century memoirs.

  GLOSSARY

  auf Wiedersehen: German for “farewell”

  batiste: a soft, opaque fabric

  berline: a French carriage

  Bis wir uns wiedersehen, meine Liebe: German for “Until we meet again, my love”

  calèche: French for “coach”

  canard: French for “duck”

  cocher: French for “coachman”

  cour d’honneur: French for “three-sided courtyard”

  Der Menschenfresser: German for “The Ogre”

  fête: French for “party”

  fleur: French for “flower”

  Grossvater: German for “grandfather”

  La Vestale: title of an opera composed by Gaspare Spontini in 1807, to a French libretto

  Leberkäs: a German dish similar to sausage

  Légion d’honneur: Legion of Honor, an order established by Napoleon Bonaparte recognizing both civilians and soldiers based on merit

  Les Français: French for “the French”

  manteau: the long train of a dress

  mein Liebling: German for “my darling” or “my favorite”

  mein Schatzi: German for “my treasure”

  mes chéries: French for “my dears”

  mio Dio: Italian for “my God”

  mon ange: French for “my angel”

  mulâtre: French for “mulatto,” a child born of one white parent and one black parent

  parure: a set of matching jewelry, often composed of a crown, a necklace, and earrings

  pelisse: a fur jacket

  post-chaise: a fast-traveling carriage

  réticule: purse

  Schnuckelputzi: German slang for “cutie pie”

  soirée: a party

  Spätzle: small dumplings popular in Austria

  Vive l’impératrice: French for “Long live the Empress”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WOULD LIKE to thank the many people who helped make this book possible, beginning with my amazing editor, Christine Kopprasch, who endured more delays than any editor ever should (and for which I am profoundly sorry). It’s been such a pleasure working with you, and any author who finds him/herself under your guidance is a lucky author indeed. To Heather Lazare, who originally purchased this book for Crown, I am always in your debt. To Dan Lazar, who is truly a fantastic agent, I am extremely grateful. And to the many wonderful people at Crown who have worked so tirelessly behind the scenes: my copy editor Janet Biehl, my publicist Dyana Messina, my production editor Cindy Berman, Jonathan Lazzara in marketing, Lauren Dong and Megan McLaughlin in art, Luisa Francavilla in production, Laura Crisp, Christine Edwards, Jacqui LeBow, Sasha Sadikot, Michelle Riehle, and publisher Molly Stern.

  To my research assistant, Ashley Turner, you are absolutely invaluable.

  And finally, to all the friends and family whose support I could not do without, particularly in 2010: Carol Moran, Amit Kushwaha, Allison McCabe, Christopher Gortner, Cayman Jacobs, Tracy Porter, Cathy Carpenter, Julie Nelson, Jennifer Gonzalez, Julia Glick, Tracy Carpenter, Jill Rawal, and Aryn Conrad (who gave this book its title). Thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MICHELLE MORAN is the internationally bestselling author of Nefertiti, The Heretic Queen, Cleopatra’s Daughter, and Madame Tussaud. Her experiences at archaeological sites around the world motivated her to write historical fiction and continue to provide inspiration for her novels. Visit her online at MichelleMoran.com.