He had for some time been coming round to the view that he must divorce Josephine, but hesitated to make the move, perhaps because he had got used to her and feared being alone. She was always sensible when he sought her advice. She understood him, and the world they lived in – and from where they had come. He was a man of habit, and he had passed his fortieth birthday. There had been no more talk of divorce during the first half of 1808, although he was already considering marrying a Russian princess. Josephine’s letters reveal that their relations had been particularly close during the time they spent at Bayonne and in the autumn of 1808. It was not until a full year later, on the evening of 30 November 1809, that he openly broached the subject with her at the Tuileries. She burst into tears, then collapsed, writhing in a paroxysm, and appeared to lose consciousness. Napoleon called Bausset, who had been in the next room, and together they carried her down to her bedroom.28
The process of divorcing Josephine was not going to be easy. The Code Napoléon permitted divorce by mutual consent only up to the age of forty-five, which she had passed, while the Statutes of the Imperial House which he had invented himself forbade it outright. The matter was handed over to Cambacérès to sort out, which he accomplished with the legal acrobatics he excelled at. Louis, who had taken the opportunity to seek permission to divorce Hortense, was told he could not as there were no grounds for it.29
Meanwhile, life went on as usual, and the morning after her fainting fit Josephine presided over a reception in honour of the kings of Naples, Württemberg and Holland who had come to Paris to celebrate the peace with Austria. On 3 December there was a Te Deum at Notre Dame, the following day a reception at the Hôtel de Ville followed by a banquet, a concert and a ball at the Tuileries. The banquet was a tense affair, with Napoleon in full coronation robes with his plumed hat on his head looking uneasy and impatient, while Josephine sat opposite covered in diamonds looking as though she might faint at any moment. She would not have enjoyed the presence of Letizia, Caroline and Pauline, who had never looked happier. Whether she received much comfort from her husband is doubtful, as he spent the night of 5 December with another. Once he had decided on the divorce, he had begun to philander more, which Hortense saw as a means of both making himself more interesting to women and of fortifying himself against the forthcoming separation. ‘His mind was made up, but his heart still hesitated,’ she wrote. ‘He was trying to distract it elsewhere.’ He had broken down and wept when he had informed her of his intention to divorce her mother. On 8 December Eugène arrived in Paris and the divorce was discussed with him and Josephine by Napoleon. Three days after that she had to take her place at Napoleon’s side at a party at Berthier’s estate of Grosbois.30
On 15 December, at a special meeting attended by all the family members currently in Paris – Letizia, Louis and Hortense, Jérôme and Catherine, Joseph’s wife Julie, Eugène, Murat and Caroline, and Pauline – in the presence of Cambacérès and the secretary of state for the Imperial House, Regnaud de Saint-Jean d’Angély, Napoleon and Josephine each read out prepared texts announcing their wish to divorce, and stating their reasons. The minutes of the meeting taken by Regnaud were signed by those present and passed to the privy council, which that same evening drew up the project of a senatus-consulte. This was presented to the Senate the following day by Regnaud. The meeting was presided over by Cambacérès, and Josephine’s son Eugène read out the family’s wish that ‘the founder of this fourth dynasty should grow old surrounded by direct descendants’. There was no debate, and the senatus-consulte was passed by seventy-six votes, with seven against and four abstentions. The same day, Josephine left the Tuileries.31
There then arose the delicate matter of annulling the religious marriage. There could be no question of involving the Pope, who was in solitary confinement at Grenoble. Cambacérès argued that the ceremony conducted by Cardinal Fesch had been ‘clandestine’, since there had been no witnesses present, and was therefore invalid. This could be attested by the diocesan authorities in Paris, and the marriage being invalid, there was no need of an annulment. The diocesan council ruled accordingly, fining Napoleon six francs (to be distributed to the poor) for having contracted an illegal marriage. The ruling was endorsed by a bishop who had no authority, since he had not been approved in office by the Pope.32
Two days after she drove away from the Tuileries, Napoleon dined with Josephine at Trianon. ‘My love, I found you weaker today than you should be,’ he wrote afterwards. ‘You have shown courage, and you must find enough to support you and not to let yourself go to a fatal melancholy, and to be content, and above all to keep up your health, which is so precious to me.’ He wrote frequently, expressing his concern and professing his enduring love for her. He visited her at Malmaison on 24 December, and she dined with him at Trianon the following day. She could barely eat, and looked as though she were about to faint. Hortense, who was present, saw Napoleon wipe away his tears more than once. When he returned to the Tuileries three days later he found the palace empty without her, and wrote saying he felt lonely there.33
He was determined to treat her well. She retained her titles and arms as Imperial Majesty. He gave her the Élysée Palace in Paris, Malmaison, and the château of Navarre near Évreux. She had a settlement on the civil list of two million francs per annum, and he threw in another million from his private chest. When it came to his notice that people were keeping away from her he made it plain that such behaviour would incur his displeasure.34
34
Apotheosis
The question of whom Napoleon should marry had resolved itself. Tsar Alexander had no intention of cementing his alliance with him, let alone letting him marry one of his sisters. Even if he had, he would have been powerless to do so. Shortly before his death his father Paul I had issued an ukaz giving his consort power to decide over his daughters’ marriages. The dowager empress loathed the very idea of Napoleon, and as soon as she heard of his intention she encouraged her elder daughter to marry Prince George of Holstein-Oldenburg. Alexander’s other sister Anna was two months short of her fifteenth birthday when, at the end of November 1809, Napoleon instructed Caulaincourt in St Petersburg to make the request for her hand. Alexander made a show of pleasure, but did nothing. When pressed a few weeks later he asked for two weeks to consider the matter and gain his mother’s approval. At the end of the two weeks he asked for another ten days, then for another week. He was still stalling at the beginning of February 1810, by which time Napoleon, fearing the snub of a refusal, had changed his mind.
A meeting of his privy council at the Tuileries on Sunday, 28 January had reviewed the three possible candidates: the Grand Duchess Anna, the twenty-eight-year-old Maria Augusta of Saxony, and the eighteen-year-old daughter of the emperor of Austria, Marie-Louise. Napoleon never seriously considered the Saxon option. His first choice would have been the Russian, as it would have cemented his alliance with Russia against Britain – and it would have tickled his vanity that his heirs could then claim descent from the Paleologue rulers of the Roman Empire of the East. Cambacérès, Murat and Fouché also favoured the Russian, but given the difficulties being made by Alexander, they concurred with Talleyrand and the others, who supported the no less grand Austrian candidate, who was descended from Louis XIV and Charles V. Informal talks had been taking place between Talleyrand and Metternich, now Austria’s chancellor, and both had come to the conclusion that such a match might distract Napoleon from his pursuit of dominion. Metternich had authorised his ambassador in Paris, Prince Karl von Schwarzenberg, to accept the offer if it were made. A week later, during a shoot at Fontainebleau, Eugène went up to Schwarzenberg and formally requested the hand of the archduchess on Napoleon’s behalf. Napoleon ordered the marriage contract to be drawn up that very day, taking as a template that between Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.1
The news was greeted with horror by Louis XVIII in England and with delight in Austria. ‘What a joy for mankind!’ exclaimed the ultimate Ha
bsburg courtier the prince de Ligne, expressing a view held by many that the match would ‘settle’ Napoleon and that, by joining him to a descendant of the ‘real Caesars’, ‘his edifice will become stable at last’. As well as promising peace and stability, the forthcoming union would go some way to restoring Austria’s position among the great powers, even though Napoleon did not envisage returning any of the territory he had taken. Public opinion in Vienna was not even put out when Berthier, recently named Prince of Wagram, arrived there to marry the archduchess by proxy. The news had also gone some way to soothe anti-French feeling elsewhere in Germany.2
Reactions in France were more mixed. The aristocracy, which had rallied to Napoleon, were delighted. Many welcomed the promise of a lasting peace settlement. But many were haunted by memories of that other Austrian marriage and its unhappy end. Others did not like the idea of what looked like yet another step back to the ancien régime. The army mostly disapproved, not so much for ideological reasons as out of sympathy for ‘la vieille’, ‘the old girl’, whom they saw as a good French wife to Napoleon and whom many even considered to have brought him luck – old soldiers could be highly superstitious.3
The proxy marriage took place in Vienna on 11 March 1810, and two days later Marie-Louise left for France. Napoleon was in a state of childlike excitement in anticipation of her arrival, and insisted on overseeing down to the last detail the arrangements for her reception at Compiègne. He went there a week before she was due, followed by his sisters Caroline and Pauline, Joseph’s wife Julie and, later, Murat, Fesch and others. They were joined over the days by members of the court and Austrian dignitaries. To keep fit, Napoleon went hunting, enjoyed the favours of his current mistress, and took dancing lessons from Hortense, whom he asked to help him appear less grave.4
Following the protocol of 1770, Napoleon had Davout’s engineers run up a building on the frontier with three chambers representing, respectively, Austria, neutral territory, and France. When she arrived there on 16 March, Marie-Louise entered the first room, in which she shed everything associated with her Austrian past and changed into a dress of gold brocade. She then entered the central chamber with her Austrian attendants and seated herself on a dais. A French reception party entered from the other side, bringing the number of those present to around a hundred. An act of translation was read out and signed, after which her Austrian attendants departed one by one, kissing her hand as they took their leave. She was then ushered into the French chamber, where Caroline Murat took charge and she was dressed in the French fashion.5
Taking things one step further than the Bourbons, Napoleon had invented another ceremony, to take place in a specially designed tent at Soissons not far from Compiègne, in the course of which Marie-Louise was to kneel before him. But his impatience was such that it never took place. Taking only Murat with him, he drove out to meet her, and had reached the village of Courcelles when one of his coach wheels broke. It was pouring with rain, so he and Murat took shelter in the porch of the village church, and when the carriage bringing Marie-Louise drove up the coachman, recognising him, stopped. Napoleon rushed up to the carriage, opened the door and leapt in. Dripping wet in his grey overcoat, he sat down next to his astonished bride and kissed her. He then told the coachman to drive straight to Compiègne, where they arrived at half past nine in the evening.6
The little town had been illuminated, but the rain had extinguished most of the lights. There was to have been a banquet, but Napoleon decided otherwise. They supped lightly together with Caroline, after which, having ascertained from Fesch that they were actually married, instead of retiring to his prescribed quarters he quickly freshened up with eau de cologne, changed into a dressing gown, and followed Marie-Louise into hers, where he exercised his marital rights. In the morning they took breakfast and lunch in her bedroom, and were hardly parted for the next forty-eight hours. Both appeared ecstatically happy, and Napoleon later reminisced that she kept asking for more. In a letter to her father she confessed that the Corsican ogre was ‘very engaging and very eager, and almost impossible to resist’. On the evening of 29 March, only forty-eight hours after she arrived, during a concert at which La Grassini sang for them accompanied by Paër, Napoleon kept falling asleep. ‘From time to time, the empress would wake him up by saying something to him, he would give her a sweet look, adopt a serious air to reply, and then fall asleep again,’ according to an Austrian courtier present.7
The next day the couple transferred to Saint-Cloud, where on 1 April they were married in a civil ceremony (the irony of the date did not go unnoticed). The following day, in bright sunshine, they drove into Paris in two separate coaches, each drawn by eight horses, followed by another thirty-eight carriages drawn by six horses each. Escorted by detachments of all the mounted regiments of the Imperial Guard, they drove under two specially erected wood and canvas triumphal arches, one of them covering the half-built Arc de Triomphe at the Étoile, and down the Champs-Élysées to the Tuileries. The onlookers showed little interest.8
Napoleon wore a white satin version of court dress designed by himself, with a black velvet toque covered in diamonds topped by three white plumes, making him appear even shorter and fatter than he was, looking, according to one witness, like the king of diamonds from a pack of cards. Beaming with satisfaction he led his bride down the long gallery, lined on either side by the ladies of the court standing on three tiers. There had been the usual family rows, with his sisters balking at being made to carry Marie-Louise’s train, and Pauline took her revenge by pulling faces behind her back. Delighted as they were to see the end of Josephine, they did not welcome a new interloper. The grand salon with a ceiling depicting Apollo had been converted into a chapel, and there Cardinal Fesch married them, after which he performed the traditional royal ceremony of blessing the bed.9
By then, Napoleon was furious. Thirteen of the cardinals he had brought to Paris by force in January had failed to attend the ceremony, on the grounds that his marriage to Josephine had not been annulled. When the ceremony was over, he was heard threatening to have them shot. The following day, when he and Marie-Louise seated on their thrones received the compliments of the Senate, the Legislative, the marshals, the diplomatic corps and all the other bodies, and the cardinals’ turn came, he had them thrown out. He ordered them to be exiled to provincial towns where they were forbidden to wear their robes.10
That night Paris was illuminated and decorated as never before. Public buildings were adorned with painted canvas panels or, like the seat of the Legislative across the bridge from the place de la Concorde, turned into a ‘Temple of Hymen’, with an allegorical figure representing Peace blessing the newlyweds. Trees were decked with lanterns and private houses with candles in every window and braziers outside. But the festivities did not live up to the décor. In preparing the public fête for the people of Paris Napoleon had deliberately abandoned the tradition of having food served in the street and fountains running with wine, on the grounds that it led to brawls, and replaced it with more organised celebrations, including having food and wine delivered to the poor in their houses. But, as one contemporary noted, even the public festivals Napoleon gave were somehow stilted, and people were beginning to be made to feel their station. Those who were admitted to the more august festivities felt little different. Thibaudeau found the marriage ceremony ‘as cold and sad as a funeral’, while Captain Coignet, who had been present at the banquet, commented that ‘It may have been grand, but it was not fun.’11
Having dealt with the essentials in a session of the Council of State, on 5 April Napoleon took his bride back to Compiègne, where they spent the next three weeks. He hunted and occasionally received someone on business, but otherwise devoted all his time to his wife, petting her and showering her with presents. Aside from the fact that she liked to sleep with the window open and he with it closed, they were well suited, and he particularly appreciated her innocence and truthfulness, which contrasted with Josephine’s deprav
ity and deviousness, which had both excited and annoyed him.12
On 27 April 1810 the imperial couple set off on a tour of Belgium and the Low Countries, inspecting canals, public works and factories along the way. In Antwerp they launched a ship of the line and watched the Festival of the Giant, which included a carnivalesque procession with a huge dummy whale squirting water, a chariot of Neptune and an outsize elephant. On 5 May they attended a reception given by Louis, King of Holland. But in the course of a conversation between the two brothers Napoleon learned something that enraged him.13
He had been aware that for some time the banker Ouvrard had been in contact with the British government through his associate Pierre-César Labouchère’s cousins, the Barings of London; he had used the connection to make informal peace proposals himself. When these were rejected he lost interest, but his brother Louis did not, as he was desperate for some kind of settlement with Britain; the Dutch economy was heavily dependent on overseas trade and banking, and was crippled by the state of war. Another who was keen for an end to the conflict with Britain was Fouché. He had been sending out feelers through his own contacts in London, and sometime in 1809 he had also begun to use the Ouvrard/Labouchère channel. One of his agents had been received at the Foreign Office by Lord Wellesley. This came to Napoleon’s notice at Antwerp, and he jumped to the conclusion that Fouché was plotting behind his back. ‘Not only has the man been meddling in my family affairs without my permission [a reference to the minister’s bringing up the subject of divorce with Josephine], he now wants to make peace behind my back,’ he raged. The next day he vented his ill-humour on a deputation of Belgian clergy which had come to greet him, for having dropped regular prayers for him from the liturgy.14
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