Napoleon, seeking order and stability, was sensitive to the idea of a revived Church, seeing in it a certain way to win approval from ordinary people. In July 1801, he signed a concordat with the Pope. ‘Go to Rome,’ Napoleon instructed one of his generals. ‘Tell the Holy Father that the First Consul wishes to make him a gift of 30 million French.’ On Easter Day 1802, in the newly restored cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, a Te Deum was sung for the first time in almost ten years. Few of the congregation could quite remember what they were expected to do. But it was not a total capitulation. The government would retain the right to nominate the higher clergy, and would be responsible for salaries. It was to be a submissive Church, despoiled of much of its great wealth.
In Bordeaux, as in all French parishes, Mass by ‘non-juror’ priests had until now been celebrated in secret, in private houses. When the local archbishop finally came back to the city, Lucie and Frédéric gathered together all their local parish priests to greet him. Later they accompanied him on a triumphal procession back to his see.
There was more to celebrate than the official return of Catholicism to France. For the first time in 10 years Europe was at peace. France had fought various battles with the Austrians, not all as victorious as Napoleon maintained, but victorious enough to sign a peace treaty at Lunéville in February 1801. Piedmont was annexed to France; Genoa became a French puppet state. Over the next few years, with total disregard for Italian aspirations for unity and independence, which Napoleon had warmly supported, various parts of Italy would be turned into mere tributaries of France. With the Peace of Amiens, signed with the British in March 1802, over a century of Anglo-French struggles were laid to rest. Fourteen thousand British prisoners were released from French jails. Martinique and Guadeloupe were returned to the French. Napoleon, eager to see the plantations prosper again, reintroduced slavery: the French slave traders had been dormant, but not ruined, having spent the fallow years as corsairs harrying British ships. Tom Paine and The Rights of Man were conveniently forgotten.
With the peace came a surge of English visitors across the Channel. They found Paris chilly, dilapidated and overwhelmingly fascinating. They came to find friends, to recover lost property, to hunt in the French forests and simply to look. The artists, Turner among them, visited the Louvre, where Vivant Denon, who had accompanied Napoleon to Egypt, had been appointed director of the Musée Central de la République. They wanted to see Europe’s looted art and many spent their days at easels copying. Those with a taste for the macabre visited Mme Tussaud’s waxworks to see Robespierre’s death mask. Others went to inspect Victor, the Aveyron savage, a boy found in the woods near Toulouse, apparently deaf and dumb and living like an animal. In the college of surgery there was a wax head of the King of Poland’s dwarf, Bébé, and wax representations of venereal diseases, the ‘miserable objects of fatal libertinism’. Theatre lovers saw the beautiful Mlle Georges play in Tancrède, and Napoleon’s favourite actor, the great Talma, in Molière’s plays, though most complained that his style was too extravagant and declamatory, and said that his ‘strutting bloated pomp, bombast gesticulation…trembling body and quivering hands’ made them laugh.
For those with musical interests, there was Gossec, nearly 70 but still active in the new Conservatoire de Musique. The French ballet, visitors agreed, set to a mishmash of tunes taken from symphonies, sonatas and operas, was not what it had been in the days of Rameau. For the greedy, Paris had never offered more restaurants, clustered around the Palais-Royal, some serving food so elaborate and architectural that they felt repelled; there were truffles, they protested, in every dish. At Very’s, you could choose from 25 different hors d’oeuvres, from herb salad to hog’s pudding. And for the scientists, there was the chance to call on Mme Lavoisier, whose father had gone to the guillotine at the same time as her husband, the famous chemist, and who had filled her salon with his ‘magnificent chemical and physical apparatus’.
The women of Paris, remarked the visitors, were all very pale; rouge had been given up in favour of white paint, à la Psyche, after a painting by Gérard. Those who called on Thérésia found that she had divorced Tallien and was living in the rue de Babylone with her new lover, the immensely rich army contractor Ouvrard. If fortunate enough to be invited into her bedroom, they discovered it to be more severe in style than that of her rival Mme Récamier, but even so its bed was shaped like a round tent, held up by the beak of a golden pelican, shrouded in white-and-crimson satin curtains with golden fringes falling in pleats to the floor.
Paris had become a vast bazaar, its quays along the Seine still full of bargains from sequestered houses, its fashions drawn from all over the world: waistcoats from England, linen from Holland, boots from Russia. The German dramatist August von Kotzebue, strolling past the Palais-Royal late at night, observed that the prostitutes were not as bold as before the revolution, but that there were several black girls, brought back by soldiers from Saint-Domingue and known as ‘chats en poche’–pocket cats–their ‘black skins peeping from beneath their white dresses like flies in a milk pot’.
One day Kotzebue accompanied Mme Récamier to the ruined royal abbey of Saint-Denis, where the caretaker, ordered by Robespierre to burn the coffins of Louis XIV and Henri IV in the vaults along with other royal remains, had buried them instead, 42 kings, 32 queens and 63 princes and princesses piled one on top of the other. Most visitors at some point made a pilgrimage to the spot where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette had died, and then went on to the Place du Carrousel, to see the bronze horses looted from San Marco in Venice. In the new botanical gardens, they watched keepers pouring buckets of cold water over ‘the white bear from the North’, in order to keep it in ‘tolerable patience’.
But what the foreign visitors all wanted to do was to meet the French of whom they had heard so much, even if some were squeamish about taking up introductions to men they considered tainted by violent revolution. There was Joseph Fouché, who had appropriated the Hôtel Mazarin on the Quai Voltaire, and hung it with Gobelin tapestries, though his boots were said to be muddy and his linen seldom clean. And there was Cambacérès, the second Consul, who gave dinners on Mondays and Wednesdays to 35 men–never any women: meals of exceptional grandeur served by 50 footmen in blue-and-gold livery. Foreigners flocked to pay their respects to Talleyrand, the ‘able and wily diplomat who dupes Europe’. Talleyrand’s chef Carême, to whom he had set the test of creating an entire year of menus without a single repetition, using only seasonal food, was the most famous cook in Paris, the ‘chef of kings and king of chefs’.
Above all, of course, the visitors wished to see Napoleon. There was much jostling for invitations to the Tuileries, from whose windows they could watch the First Consul–who had recently appointed himself Consul for life–review the troops, looking young and forbidding on his white horse, accompanied by his uniformed aides-de-camp and his guard of Mamelukes ‘richly habited in the Oriental style’. The more fortunate, invited to an actual audience, found the rooms of the Tuileries packed, the men in court dress, the women in décolleté, the footmen in their new green livery edged with gold. As Napoleon walked slowly round the room, an equerry at his elbow murmuring the names of the foreign guests, Josephine followed a few paces behind, her hair dressed with a diadem of precious stones. After the audience came a ‘sumptuous’ dinner. It was known that Napoleon had an excellent sense of smell and that his head was so sensitive that his valet had his master’s hats specially padded and broke them in himself.
Peace lasted just over 13 months. England, unwilling to accept France’s supremacy over Europe, alarmed by its naval activities and wishing to keep French troops out of Holland, was the first to declare war, on 18 May 1803. In France, Napoleon ordered the arrest of some 7,000 English travellers, students, artists and merchants. Most were able to hasten away to the ‘liberty, cleanliness and roast beef of old England’. For the next 11 years, all travel between France and England was suspended. Lucie was once again cut
off from her much-loved aunt Lady Jerningham and the rest of her English family.
As the months and then the years passed, friends wrote from Paris to Le Bouilh urging Frédéric to consider applying for a post in the Consular administration. All the ancien régime, they said, was rallying to Napoleon. France was larger and more powerful than it had ever been. It had a new legal code, the Code Napoléon, that effectively put an end for ever to the feudal world and was bringing order to an administration that had varied chaotically from province to province; the roads were safer, the civil war in the Vendée was over, education was spreading, there were new programmes of public works and new measures to spur economic growth. Napoleon had even weathered–though with some difficulty–the brutal murder of the innocent young Duc d’Enghien, grandson of the Prince de Condé. Kidnapped from his house in Baden, he was executed by firing squad, in response to fears that royalists were again preparing a coup d’état to return the Bourbons to the throne. But Frédéric, always cautious, always unassuming, always weighing up all sides to every question, found the role of petitioner extremely distasteful. If the Emperor desired his services, he said, he knew where to find him. It was less a question of loyalty to the deposed Bourbons–for Frédéric, like Lucie, was impressed by what Napoleon had done for France–than of genuine lack of self-promotion.
France’s new Constitution, amended in 1802, had given Napoleon every attribute of royal power, except the actual crown. Deciding that Malmaison was too small and modest, he and Josephine had restored the royal palace of Saint-Cloud. Here, at Sunday Mass, with the Bishop of Versailles officiating, Napoleon took the place in the Long Gallery once taken by Louis XVI. The two junior Consuls, Cambacérès and Lebrun, sat behind him. When Napoleon stood, Josephine, by his side, knelt. At night, they dined in state. Formality and manners were gradually consuming every facet of Consular life. At the Tuileries it was said that ‘the château sweats etiquette’.
In the spring of 1804, a proclamation was posted on the walls of Saint-André-en-Cubzac, inviting people to say whether or not they would like to see their First Consul made Emperor. Frédéric, who had become President of the Canton, agonised over his vote, pacing up and down the garden at Le Bouilh, Lucie watching but saying nothing. For herself, she was clear: Napoleon had earned his crown. When Frédéric told her that he had signed with a ‘yes’, she was delighted. This referendum, like Napoleon’s others, went resoundingly in his favour. At the end of November, Frédéric, as one of Bordeaux’s leading citizens, was summoned to Paris for the coronation.
All through the autumn, by night as well as by day, 3,000 workmen had laboured to clean up and embellish the city. Around Notre Dame, the various buildings that had sprouted from its walls were torn down. Tiers of seats went up. Charlemagne’s imperial insignia were brought from Aix-en-Chapelle. With extreme reluctance, Pope Pius VII agreed to travel from Rome to officiate.
On 2 December, the date set for the coronation, the day opened with a hailstorm. Courtiers wore costumes designed by David and Jean-Baptiste Isabey, a compromise between antiquity and the reign of Henri III, men who not so long before had sported red bonnets and carmagnoles decked out in laced boots, silk stockings, puffed white satin sleeves, short cloaks and plumed fur hats. Napoleon, his golden imperial coach groaning under carved garlands, medallions, allegorical figures and four great eagles, wings outspread, holding a golden crown designed by Fontaine, was so covered in diamonds and gold that spectators spoke of a ‘walking mirror’.
It was reported that 500,000 people, almost the entire population of Paris, lined the streets. When Napoleon entered Notre Dame, he put on a crimson cape, sprinkled with gold stars and lined with ermine. Josephine’s train was borne by Napoleon’s sisters, who, ill-pleased by her preferment, wore somewhat sulky expressions in David’s celebrated picture of the event. (Napoleon’s mother, known as Madame Mère, who declined to attend, was painted in later.) That night, standing on the balcony in the Tuileries, the imperial family looked out across the snowy gardens at a brilliant display of fireworks. Napoleon had contemplated an elephant for his imperial symbol, but settled on a bee.
To oversee the splendour of court life, every detail of which Napoleon supervised, two prefects of the palace were appointed, chosen, it was said, because they were shorter than the new Emperor; but while they argued about what should be done, the ci-devant nobles tittered in the background. Gradually it was turning into Versailles, all over again. The royal army had never looked more splendid, in an array of bearskins and tigerskins, lace, towering plumes, helmets and breastplates. For courtiers, there was velvet in winter and taffeta in summer, the costumes designed by Isabey.
Ladies-in-waiting were being chosen for the Empress. A letter arrived at Le Bouilh inviting Lucie to come to Paris to take up the post. She did not hesitate: she declined, remarking later that of all the women approached, who, like her, had attended Marie Antoinette, she was the only one to refuse. No court could be more attractive to her than her life at Le Bouilh with Frédéric and the children.
While Frédéric was in Paris, he had talked to many of his old friends, now attached to the government and the court. Talleyrand, recently named Grand Chamberlain and Vice-Elector of the Empire, on learning that Frédéric was still reluctant to petition Napoleon for an appointment, said only, ‘You will come to it’ and shrugged his shoulders. Their friend from London, M. Malouet, had been appointed Préfet Maritime at Antwerp to administer the coastal area and set up a shipyard to build the great new ships of the line. When Frédéric returned to Le Bouilh, he brought with him an invitation from M. Malouet for Humbert to become his secretary once he reached 17. Lucie was both pleased and saddened. Strongly attached to her children, she could not envisage a day when they lived away from her.
Talleyrand, while urging restraint on further territorial acquisitions, had been forced to sit by and watch Napoleon absorb Piedmont into France, sacrifice Venice to Austria, and turn the rest of northern Italy into a republic. After Russia formed an alliance with Britain and Austria joined the coalition, Napoleon, waiting at Boulogne to cross the Channel and invade England, had turned to march east, taking the lame, protesting Talleyrand with him. Victory had followed victory. At the Battle of Austerlitz, the Austrian and Russian armies lost 26,000 men to Napoleon’s 9,000. With the Peace of Pressburg, Napoleon became the master of western Europe, even if the annihilation of the Franco-Spanish fleet by Nelson at Trafalgar left Britain master of the sea. The coalition against France had been broken up, Austria was crushed, the Holy Roman Empire ceased to exist. Through battles and treaties, amnesties and deals, many brokered by the reluctant Talleyrand, Europe had been partitioned, then repartitioned.
Rewarded by the Principality of Benevento, a small enclave in the Kingdom of Naples, Prince Talleyrand was as efficient and canny as he had ever been, making millions of francs through bribes and backhanders. He continued to receive ambassadors, political colleagues, secretaries and friends during his daily public levers, when, emerging into his grand cabinet de toilette in several layers of flannel and nightcaps, he would sip camomile tea, while his long grey hair was combed, pomaded and powdered. ‘For a credulous soul’, remarked Aimée de Coigny, who had spent seven months of the revolution in prison and who knew him well, Talleyrand ‘would be a satisfactory proof of the existence of the devil…a priest who denied his God, a prelate who ransacked his Church, a nobleman who betrayed his King…a diplomat and minister always intriguing and pushing back the boundaries of excess and treason’.
Early in 1806, Lucie realised that she was pregnant for the tenth time. She was now 35. She had miscarried the previous year–her sixth miscarriage–and she resolved to take more care of herself during this pregnancy. Women in the 18th and 19th centuries could expect to spend many months of their lives pregnant; but Lucie’s constant pregnancies and miscarriages would have taxed a frailer woman.
In the spring of 1806, the family was faced with a very sad loss. Marguerite, whom Lucie ha
d ‘loved all her life as a daughter’, fell ill. She grew weaker, but remained conscious. They bade each other the ‘tenderest of farewells’. When she died, the entire household went into mourning. ‘My grief,’ wrote Lucie briefly, with the economy of phrase she reserved for her deepest emotions, ‘was deep.’
There had been other deaths, less mourned. Mme de Montesson, having thrown a ball of great splendour for the marriage of Josephine’s daughter Hortense and Napoleon’s brother Louis, with ices shaped like fruit hanging in baskets from orange trees in flower, had died at the age of 68. According to a malicious friend, she had not aged well, her face ‘crackled…like an old piece of pottery’. Napoleon, who had appreciated her advice on etiquette and her impeccable bon ton, ordered that her body lie in state for eight days in Saint-Roche.
From London came news of the death of Archbishop Dillon, at the age of 85, having been ill for two days with what Lady Jerningham described as ‘gout of the stomach’. His funeral was held in the French chapel in Little George Street and was attended by the French nobility and clergy still in exile in England. Mme de Rothe had died not long before, behaving at the last with a dignity and courage she had seldom shown in life. Of all the relationships in her ill-tempered, embittered life, her 35-year-old liaison with the Archbishop had been the most harmonious. Not wanting the elderly Archbishop to be distressed, she had said nothing to him when she realised that she was seriously ill and had only a few days left to live; when she died, he was relieved to imagine that she had not suffered. The Archbishop spent the day of her funeral eating a hearty lunch and discussing Voltaire. Neither death caused Lucie much grief. She did not even remark on that of her grandmother.
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