Napoleon

by Andrew Roberts

  Among Napoleon’s other followers, General Charles Lefebvre-Desnouëttes was wounded in 1815, and emigrated to America. While returning to France in 1822 he was shipwrecked and drowned. Jean Rapp became a deputy of the Haut-Rhin department and later treasurer to Louis XVIII, dying in October 1821. Jacques-Louis David settled in Brussels after 1815 and returned to painting classical subjects, dying in 1825. Antoine-Jean Gros found that fewer and fewer people wanted his historical and neo-classical paintings; he died in 1835. Roustam wound up dressing in Mamluk costume for the London shows, and died in December 1845 aged sixty-five. Claude Méneval published his memoirs in 1827, was present for the return of Napoleon’s body to Paris in 1840, and died in Paris in 1850. Octave Ségur, having survived being wounded and captured in Russia in 1812, returned to France after the war, but in 1818 drowned himself in the Seine on discovering his wife’s infidelity.

  Several of Napoleon’s opponents and detractors came to sad ends. Louis de Bourrienne published vicious memoirs denigrating Napoleon in 1829 and died in a lunatic asylum at Caen in February 1834. Laure, Duchess d’Abrantès, died poverty-stricken in a wretched lodging-house in 1838, aged fifty-four. Lord Castlereagh committed suicide by cutting his own throat with a penknife on August 12, 1822. Radical poets celebrated, but Britain had lost one of her greatest foreign secretaries.

  Of Napoleon’s other opponents, René de Chateaubriand served in several ministerial and ambassadorial posts under the Bourbons but opposed Louis-Philippe, whom he dubbed ‘the bourgeois king’, until his death in 1848. His posthumous Mémoires d’Outre-Tombe (Memoirs from Beyond the Grave) castigated Napoleon severely as a tyrant, and especially blamed him for the execution of the Duc d’Enghien. Benjamin Constant was appointed to the Conseil d’État following the overthrow of the Bourbons in 1830 but died that same year. Paul Barras died at 11 p.m. on January 29, 1829. Earlier that day he had called his godson Paul Grand to his bedside and entrusted him with his memoirs, having seen the way the Bourbons had confiscated Cambacérès’ papers after his death. The authorities arrived the next morning to remove his papers, but they were too late. For various personal and legal reasons the memoirs weren’t published until the 1880s, and then turned out to be so bileful as to be of little historical value. Hippolyte Charles asked on his deathbed in 1837 that his letters from Josephine be burned, which all but five were. Karl von Schwarzenberg was loaded with honours and decorations, but suffered a stroke in 1817. Three years later he visited the battlefield of Leipzig for a ceremony to mark the battle’s seventh anniversary, had a second stroke there and died on October 15. Sir Sidney Smith was buried at Père la Chaise in 1840, his coffin draped in the Union Jack. All three eulogies were delivered by Frenchmen. Although a member of the Légion d’Honneur, it failed to send the traditional honour guard to the man who had denied Napoleon his destiny at Acre.

  Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand, Prince de Benevento, rebuked an aide for describing Napoleon’s death as an ‘event’, saying it was merely a ‘news item’. He continued to serve any regime that would have him, as foreign minister and high chamberlain to the Bourbons, and after the 1830 Revolution as ambassador to London for Louis-Philippe. He died, with the king at his bedside and the Cardinal of Paris performing extreme unction, in 1838.

  When the Duke of Wellington heard the news of Napoleon’s death he said to his friend Mrs Arbuthnot, ‘Now I may say I am the most successful general alive.’ He slept with two of Napoleon’s mistresses – Giuseppina Grassini and Mademoiselle George – became an undistinguished prime minister for two years in 1828–30, and was awarded a well-deserved state funeral in 1852. When told of the splendour of Napoleon’s reburial in Paris in 1840 he remarked, ‘Someday or other the French would be sure to make it a matter of triumph over England,’ but personally, he ‘did not care a two-penny damn about that!’

  1. The energetic and determined General Bonaparte, commander-in-chief of the Army of Italy, at the age of 27.

  2. The substantial Casa Bonaparte in central Ajaccio in the mid-nineteenth century, now one storey higher than when Napoleon was born there on a pile of tapestry in 1769.

  3. A caricature by a fellow pupil at the military academy of Brienne showing the 16-year-old Napoleon resolutely marching to defend the Corsican nationalist leader Pasquale Paoli, as one of his teachers tries to restrain him by holding onto his wig. ‘Buonaparte runs,’ it says underneath, ‘flies to help P from his enemies.’

  4. The long narrow bridge at Lodi which French troops captured on May 10, 1796, throwing open the road to Milan. It was Napoleon’s first significant victory and greatly increased his belief in his own military capacity. The painter, Louis-François Lejeune, fought in many battles of the Napoleonic Wars.

  5. Antoine-Jean Gros’s highly-stylized propaganda portrait of Napoleon carrying the flag on the bridge at the battle of Arcole on November 15, 1796, which he only did momentarily before being bundled into a ditch.

  6. The battle of the Pyramids on July 21, 1798 saw the Mamluks’ power break against the well-disciplined French squares. ‘Soldiers! From the top of those pyramids, forty centuries are contemplating you.’ Napoleon took Cairo the following day.

  7. Napoleon showed genuine courage in March 1799 when tending to the French army’s plague victims in the hospital on the sea front at Jaffa.

  8. Napoleon seized power in the chaotic Brumaire coup of November 9 – 10, 1799. He was manhandled by the Council of 500 in the Orangery at the palace of St Cloud before being rescued by grenadiers, who then cleared the hall at bayonet-point.

  9. Napoleon’s younger brother Lucien, a key figure in the Brumaire coup. Napoleon opposed his marriage and they became alienated, though Lucien finally came back to support Napoleon before Waterloo.

  10. Napoleon was close for most of his life to his intelligent but weak elder brother Joseph, whom he made first King of Naples and then King of Spain, but who was politically more of a burden to him than a benefit.

  11. Napoleon’s shrewd mother, Madame Mère. When asked why she was so thrifty, despite the huge income Napoleon gave her, she replied, ‘One day I may have to find bread for all these kings I have borne.’

  12. Napoleon’s younger sister Elisa, whom he made Princess of Lucca and Piombino, and Grand Duchess of Tuscany.

  13. Napoleon’s younger brother Louis, whom he made King of Holland before dethroning him for putting Dutch interests before those of the French empire.

  14. Pushed together by Napoleon and Josephine, Hortense, Josephine’s daughter, married Louis. They had an unhappy marriage, though it produced the future Emperor Napoleon III.

  Napoleon’s alluring younger sister Pauline (15. left) was the closest to him of all his siblings, and showed him genuine love and loyalty – unlike their sister Caroline (16. right) who, despite being created Queen of Naples, betrayed Napoleon in order to try to save her throne and that of her husband, Marshal Joachim Murat.

  17. Napoleon’s impulsive youngest brother Jérôme, who married an American heiress without Napoleon’s permission, was forced to divorce and then to marry Princess Catherine of Württemberg (seated). He briefly became King of Westphalia.

  18. Josephine de Beauharnais, whom Napoleon married in March 1796, before he left for the front 48 hours later. Despite mutual infidelity and eventual divorce, he always thought of her as his lucky star. On their wedding day he gave her a gold enamelled medallion engraved, ‘To Destiny’.

  19. Napoleon was very fond of Josephine’s good-natured son Eugène de Beauharnais, whom Napoleon appointed Viceroy of Italy and to senior commands on several campaigns.

  20. Josephine’s nécessaire, its centerpiece a portrait of Napoleon.

  21. Napoleon as First Consul by Antoine-Jean Gros, pointing to the peace treaties he signed in 1801 and 1802. The flamboyant red velvet jacket was intended to encourage the luxury clothing industry of Lyons.

  22. A propaganda caricature of Napoleo
n protecting the dying Jesus from the Devil. His Concordat with Pope Pius VII, restoring the Catholic religion in France in 1802, was among his most popular reforms.

  23. The uniform of the Institut de France, to which Napoleon was elected in 1797 and which he wore regularly. He was proud of being an intellectual as well as a soldier.

  24. Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès effectively deputized for Napoleon as ruler of France when he was away on campaign. A lawyer, regicide and politician from the time of the Revolution, he devised much of what became the Code Napoleon. Napoleon didn’t mind that he was homosexual.

  25. Napoleon’s closest friend, General Louis Desaix, would have been made a marshal of the empire had he not been shot in the forehead at Marengo in June 1800.

  26. Marshal Jean Lannes was one of the few people who could always talk to Napoleon candidly, but he lost his leg at the battle of Aspern-Essling in April 1809 and died in agony some days afterwards.

  27. Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières, a confidant of Napoleon’s until he was killed by a cannonball to the chest while reconnoitring enemy positions in May 1813.

  28. Later in May 1813, General Gérard Duroc, Napoleon’s marshal of the palace and the only person outside the family to use the familiar ‘tu’, was disembowelled by a cannonball at the battle of Reichenbach.

  29. A French caricature of William Pitt the Younger on the back of King George III hiding behind a hillock and observing the powerful French invasion fleet, which threatened Britain from 1803 until it was largely sunk by Admiral Horatio Nelson at the battle of Trafalgar in October 1805.

  30. A medal hubristically designed to celebrate the successful invasion of Britain in 1804, with the inscription ‘Frappé à Londres’ (Struck in London).

  31. On Quatorze Juillet 1804, Napoleon distributed the first medals of the Légion d’Honneur. Unlike the decorations of the ancien régime, or of any other European country, the honour was open to all ranks of French society.

  32. Napoleon placed the imperial crown over his own head at his coronation in Notre Dame on December 2, 1804; as previously arranged, Pius VII merely looked on. It was the supreme moment of the self-made man.

  33. General Jean Rapp bringing captured enemy standards to Napoleon during his greatest victory, the battle of Austerlitz, on December 2, 1805.

  34. The meticulous Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon’s chief-of-staff in every campaign except the last, was one of the essential elements of his success.

  35. André Masséna was known as ‘the Darling Child of Victory’ until he was stopped outside Lisbon by the formidable defences of the Lines of Torres Vedras. Napoleon persistently undersupported him during the campaigns in the Peninsula and shot him in the eye in a hunting accident in September 1808

  36. Michel Ney, ‘the Bravest of the Brave’, was the last Frenchman out of Russia in 1812. Three years later he promised Louis XVIII that he would bring Napoleon to Paris ‘in an iron cage’.

  37. Nicolas Soult was perfectly competent in the Peninsular War, but no match for the Duke of Wellington there, and proved to be an inadequate chief-of-staff in the Waterloo campaign.

  38. Louis-Nicolas Davout, ‘the Iron Marshal’, never lost a battle and at Auerstädt in 1806 he defeated an enemy three times his number. He was the best of all the marshals in independent command, but lacked rapport with Napoleon.

  39. Nicholas Oudinot, the son of a brewer, sustained more wounds than any other Napoleonic senior commander. He received the first of his twenty-two wounds in December 1793 and the last at Arcis in March 1814, when a spent cannonball was deflected by his Légion d’Honneur.

  40. Pierre Augereau was a tall, swaggering former mercenary, clock-seller and dancing-master who killed two men in duels and a cavalry officer in a fight. He commanded an infantry attack in a blizzard at Eylau.

  41. Joachim Murat was the greatest cavalry officer of his age, whose outlandish costumes made him conspicuous on the battlefield. Despite marrying Napoleon’s sister Caroline and being made King of Naples, Murat was the first marshal to betray him.

  42. The Battle of Jena in 1806 saw the catastrophic defeat of one of the Prussian armies. The French cannon on the extreme right are firing at Prussian positions on the Landgrafenberg plateau above the town of Jena.

  43. Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, ‘Marshal Forwards’, who was often defeated by Napoleon but who arrived decisively at the battle of Waterloo.

  44. King Frederick William III of Prussia, who Napoleon disdained and sidelined at Tilset, but who put his country on the path of reform and regeneration.

  45. Imperial grandeur: Napoleon in his Coronation robes by Jacques-Louis David.

  46. Murat’s massive cavalry charge of over 10,000 men at Eylau in February 1807, the largest of the Napoleonic Wars.

  47. The battle of Friedland in June 1807, one of Napoleon’s most brilliant victories, forced Russia to sue for peace.

  48. The Franco-Russian – Prussian peace negotiations in July 1807 began when Napoleon welcomed Tsar Alexander I to a pavilion on a specially designed raft tethered to the middle of the River Niemen near Tilsit. Alexander’s first words were, ‘I will be your second against England.’

  49. Tsar Alexander and Napoleon befriended each other at Tilsit, but by late 1810 the Tsar was chafing at the treaty he had signed there. Soon afterwards he began plotting Napoleon’s downfall.

  50. Desirée Clary was Napoleon’s first love; he proposed to her but was refused. She later married marshal Bernadotte and became Queen of Sweden.

  51. Pauline Fourès was the 20-year-old wife of a cavalry lieutenant when Napoleon took her as his mistress in Cairo after discovering Josephine’s infidelity with the hussar Hippolyte Charles.

  52. Giuseppina Grassini was a 27-year-old opera singer when Napoleon began a long affair with her in Milan in 1800.

  53. Marguerite Weimer’s stage name was ‘Mademoiselle George’ when she became Napoleon’s mistress in 1802 at the age of 15.

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  54. The Polish Countess Marie Colonna-Walewska was 20 and married to a 72-year-old Polish landowner when Napoleon met her on New Year’s Day 1807. She was to become the favourite of his twenty-two mistresses, and came to visit him on Elba in 1814 and at Fontainebleau the following year.

  55. Napoleon’s illegitimate son Count Alexandre Walewski, who became foreign minister and president of the National Assembly under Napoleon III.

  56. In 1806 Napoleon took a 17-year-old mistress, the ‘dark-eyed brunette beauty’ Éléonore Denuelle de la Plaigne, by whom he had an illegitimate son, Count Léon, who looked so like the Emperor that in later life people stared at him in the street.

  57. The actress Anne Hippolyte Boutet Salvetat took the stage name ‘Mademoiselle Mars’. In 1815 she greeted him with violets, the symbols of his springtime return to Paris.

  58. Albine de Montholon was Napoleon’s last mistress, on St Helena, and probably had a daughter by him who Albine named Joséphine-Napoléone.

  59. A tall porcelain vase made by Sèvres which belonged to Napoleon’s mother and features David’s famous portrait of Napoleon crossing the Great St Bernard Pass in 1800.

  60. The Imperial Throne from the Legislative Body, 1805.