Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe

by Leslie Carroll

  But the emperor, making one of his customarily brusque, even rude remarks to women, derided Marie’s sartorial decision that evening. “White on white is no way to dress, Madame,” he told her, evidently finding the color unbecoming against her already alabaster skin. As this was his opening salvo, it’s clear that he was more comfortable on the battlefield than in the boudoir. But according to Constant, Napoleon “immediately began a conversation which she sustained with much grace and intelligence, showing that she had received a fine education, and the slight shade of melancholy diffused over her whole person rendered her still more seductive.”

  Throughout the night she pointedly declined his invitations to dance, but the pair of French officers who had the gall to flirt with her were immediately posted elsewhere by their jealous commander.

  In the aftermath of Talleyrand’s soiree, Napoleon began to pursue Marie, ardently begging her to submit to his advances—his modus operandi with other women, as he’d deluged Josephine with billets-doux after they’d first met as well. “I saw only you at the ball,” he wrote to Marie. “I desired only you, I admired only you.” Napoleon deputized the Master of the Imperial Household, Géraud Duroc, to deliver the letter to his new crush, along with a massive corsage, and became insulted when Marie refused to accept the flowers or to reply to his barrage of correspondence. According to Constant, the notion that she was miserably wed and had sacrificed herself to Count Walewski inspired him to be “more interested in her than he had ever been in any woman.”

  Receiving no response to his initial floral and epistolary entreaty, the emperor followed up with a second one:

  Did I displease you, Madame? Your interest in me seems to have waned, while mine is growing every moment…. You have destroyed my peace…. I beg you to give a little joy to my poor heart, so ready to adore you. Is it so difficult to send a reply? You owe me two.

  He signed the note with the intimate nickname “Napole.”

  The Walewskis were invited to dinner in the emperor’s honor on the night after Talleyrand’s ball. The soiree had been planned days earlier, so there was no thought of canceling at the last minute, although Marie wished she could devise a way to worm out of it. Napoleon’s persistent attentions made her frightfully uncomfortable; the reality had all but spoiled the fantasy.

  She was seated opposite the emperor at the table, and while he pointedly declined to speak to her, his gaze never left her, even as he conversed with his neighbors. He seemed to be communicating in a pantomimed code with Marshal Duroc, and at one point during the evening, when Napoleon placed his hand on his heart, the Master of the Imperial Household inquired of Marie why she was not wearing the flowers the emperor had sent her. Chafing, the countess replied that she had given them to her little son. After dinner, however, it was observed by one guest that Napoleon spoke to Marie “with an almost tender expression on his face.”

  The following morning, another letter arrived from her imperial admirer:

  There are moments in life when to be in an elevated position constitutes a real burden, and I feel it now most acutely. How can a heart, so very much in love, be satisfied? All it wants is to throw itself at your feet; but it is being restrained…my deepest longings are paralyzed…. Oh, if only you wanted it! You and you alone can remove the obstacles that separate us. My friend Duroc will tell you what to do. Oh, come, come…all your desires will be granted. Your country will be so much dearer to me if you take pity on my poor heart….

  Assuming an even greater familiarity than in his previous correspondence, the emperor signed the letter with only the initial “N.”

  A subsequent missive read: “I want to force you to love me…. Yes, force you. I have revived your country’s name. I shall do much for you…. Whenever I have thought a thing impossible to obtain, I have wanted it all the more. Nothing discourages me…. I am accustomed to having my wishes met….” Then he applied political guilt. “I have brought back to life your country’s name. I will do much more. Send an immediate answer to calm the impatient passion of N.”

  “N” also received no reply to this barrage of letters. Nor did Marie respond to his numerous invitations to dine with him. Appealing to her patriotism was too much. She closeted herself in her rooms, at sea about what to do next—for not only had the emperor inundated her with demands to become his lover, he had sent full copies of these entreaties to Marie’s husband and to her brother Benedict! The text of one missive made it clear that the fate of Poland rested in her hands.

  Napoleon’s valet observed his employer’s discombobulation by Marie’s rejection. “The Emperor was in a state of unusual agitation…. He could not remain still for a moment…. He got up, walked about, sat down, got up again…. He did not say a word to me, though he usually talked in an easy way while dressing…. He still had had no answer to his letters and could not understand it. He considered himself irresistible to women.”

  Napoleon Bonaparte had developed a number of philosophies about the opposite sex. As a young man, he had written, “Woman is indispensable to a man’s animal organization; but she is even more essential to the satisfaction of his sensibilities.” Love had no place in the equation. “I regard love as injurious to society and as destructive to the individual’s personal happiness,” he had once pontificated. “I believe that it does more harm than good. We could thank the gods if the world were quit of it!”

  And although they were “indispensable,” the serial adulterer and staunch misogynist didn’t trust women. They “misuse certain advantages in order to lead us astray and to dominate us. For one who inspires us to do good things, there are hundreds who bring us to folly.” Napoleon’s paramours held no political sway, as many royal mistresses of the past had done with their respective sovereigns. “States are lost as soon as women interfere in public affairs…. If a woman were to advocate some political move, that would seem to me sufficient reason for taking the opposite course.”

  Love and politics, like oil and water, aren’t supposed to mix. The eventual romance between Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie Walewska would prove the rarest of exceptions. But acquiescence on Marie’s part was still a way off; she remained one of his most difficult conquests.

  Ultimately the decision to go to the emperor (or not), to play a role in Poland’s liberation (or not) was hers—with the unusual blessing of her spouse and siblings. Count Walewski claimed to be willing to sacrifice his marital honor in order to save his country. There were others pushing Marie’s tush toward Napoleon as well. Their contemporaries refer to a raft of letters from Polish dignitaries, including one written by Prince Joseph Poniatowski, the nephew of the kingdom’s last monarch, urging Marie to surrender herself, despite her religious and moral scruples. The correspondence compares her role to that of the Old Testament’s Esther who “gave herself for the salvation of her people; for that reason her sacrifice was glorious.”

  But Marie was not yet ready to become their vestal, their lamb, or their political pawn. So reinforcements were brought in to convince her. Henriette de Vauban, Prince Poniatowski’s grande dame of mistresses, who more or less presided over a harem of younger beauties, reminded Marie of the great compliment the emperor had paid her—and Poland—by falling head over heels for a local lady. Henriette, who had coached Marie on the etiquette of Versailles, also informed the innocent countess that back in the day, the only thing that was considered objectionable at the Bourbon court was bad manners! And to refuse to at least visit His Imperial Majesty would constitute the height of rudeness.

  As Marie still appeared to be hesitating, Henriette then deputized one of Prince Poniatowski’s other mistresses, who was also a friend of the countess, to tag-team her into submission. Raven-haired Emily Cichoka managed to persuade Marie that she didn’t have to have sex with Napoleon. “Nothing need happen,” Emily assured her; Marie could just talk to the emperor—talk to him about Poland.

  To make sure she didn’t chicken out, on the chosen day both Henriette and Emily rema
ined with Marie until dark, when Marshal Duroc came to fetch her in a carriage. Heavily veiled, the countess was conveyed to a side entrance of the castle. She arrived “in a terrible state,” according to Duroc. “Pale, trembling, her eyes full of tears…she could hardly walk unaided…. Later, while she was with the emperor, I heard her sobbing…my heart ached for her.” Duroc formed the impression that Napoleon didn’t get “any satisfaction” from Marie that night, meaning that she didn’t succumb. Evidently, all they did, to the emperor’s frustration, was converse, as he called Marie “ma douce colombe”—“my sweet dove”—and endeavored to put her at ease.

  Napoleon allowed the distraught countess to depart unmolested, but her hysteria had only fueled, rather than cooled, his ardor for her. Tears “tug at my heart-strings,” he admitted. He’d extracted her promise to return, and the following day a red leather jewelry case arrived for her accompanied by this letter:

  Marie, my sweet Marie—my first thought is for you—my first desire of the day is to see you again. You will return, won’t you? If not, the eagle will fly to the dove…. I will be seeing you at dinner tonight—I am told. Please accept this bouquet, as a secret link between us among the surrounding crowd. Whenever my hand touches my heart, you will know what I mean, and I want you to reciprocate the gesture at once. Love me, my sweet Marie, and don’t let your hand ever leave your heart.

  The “bouquet” was a cluster of diamonds. Marie refused the gift, hurling the jewelry box to the floor with the words, “He treats me like a prostitute.” The hero of her adolescent fantasies was in real life revealing himself to be a pushy creep.

  Marie was livid; after their discussion the night before, all the man still wanted from her was sex! She refused to wear his diamond brooch at the dinner party, but when she read the choler in his face, her hand flew to her breast in fear.

  Later that night, too afraid to refuse the emperor again, Countess Marie Walewska finally went to him. Historians disagree on what occurred, just as the players themselves gave divergent accounts of the event.

  According to Marie’s memoirs, penned many years later, which is the version given credence by the prolific biographer Christopher Hibbert, angry at being thwarted again in his efforts to seduce her, and mortally insulted that she did not desire him, Napoleon threw a spectacularly unsexy temper tantrum in front of the countess, vowing as he fumed and spumed, to utterly demolish Poland rather than save the former kingdom! “If you persist in refusing me your love I’ll grind your people into dust, like this!” To illustrate his point he threw his pocket watch to the floor and crushed it beneath his heel. Marie fainted at the violence of his temper. When she revived, she realized he had raped her and wept copiously over the loss of her honor.

  The emperor told a different story in which Marie remained compos mentis during their first sexual encounter, didn’t cry or “struggle overmuch,” and that after she dried her few tears he promised to do all he could for Poland.

  From this point on, Countess Marie Walewska became Napoleon’s mistress, her indifferent sexual submission eventually metamorphosing into genuine love. In time she became as enthusiastic and ardent a lover as he was. For her part, this married mom in some respects nearly domesticated the great conqueror, as he fantasized about a cozy relationship with her (though in truth it was anything but that), and affectionately referred to her as his “little Polish wife.”

  Meanwhile, his real wife continued to write, anxiously suggesting that she join him. Josephine had already come as far as Mainz, in Germany, when she received the following letter:

  Mon amie, I am touched by all that you tell me; but this is no time of year to travel. It is cold and the roads are bad and unsafe…. Go back to Paris…. Believe me, it is more painful for me than for you, to have to postpone for several weeks my happiness in seeing you.

  Josephine did not know that Napoleon was by then spending as much time as possible in the soft white arms of Marie Walewska. Wife and new mistress could not have been more temperamentally different. Where the slender, dusky Josephine was extravagant, the petite, pink, and golden Marie was modest, declining to accept expensive gifts from her lover. She was cautious, intellectual, and reserved to the point of shyness, while the empress was barely educated but streetwise, headstrong, and flirtatious.

  Marie was not coy; nor was she a designing woman. In fact, she fled from Napoleon’s advances, anxious to remain a faithful wife, even though she was not in love with her husband. She took her religion seriously, unlike some of the jaded ladies of the era who kept lovers with impunity. Contemporary accounts refer to Marie’s lack of sophistication, but in a complimentary way. Also praised were her innocent and unspoiled nature and her sweetness of expression. And while Countess Walewska was not exceptionally intelligent, she had received an excellent education for a Polish woman of her era and was passionately political, capable of arguing articulately and convincingly. Napoleon had become captivated not only by her fragile, pale beauty, but by the fire in her deep blue eyes when she expounded upon her one true love—the liberation of her homeland. If anyone understood the passion for conquest (or reconquest), it was Bonaparte.

  On January 17, 1807, Napoleon created a provisional government for Poland, naming Prince Joseph Poniatowski Minister of War. It was a drop in the bucket compared to the hyperbole he had promised Marie if she became his mistress. The countess was now at the emperor’s side as often as practicable; he never wanted her to leave his sight. She would often join the midmorning crowds that watched him review his troops. Now that they were paramours, the tone of his frequent love notes had softened, from intense (if not outright threatening) to tender and romantic. Not since the early days of his courtship with Josephine had Napoleon been such a sentimental sap.

  You were so beautiful yesterday, that for long in the night I could still see you in my mind…. I reproached myself for having insisted you come to the parade…it was so cold.

  Naturally shy, Marie took a while to grow accustomed to having people gawk at her, and to the instant notoriety she had achieved. Distinguished visitors came to call on her—to the astonishment and delight of Count Walewski, who now behaved toward Marie more like a benevolent old uncle than a spouse. And every night, she would visit Napoleon at the castle where he was in residence.

  Though she drew respect wherever she went, it seemed that the only one who still struggled with the moral dilemmas of her doubly adulterous romance was herself.

  In early April, just weeks after France had scored a “memorable victory” (in Napoleon’s words to Josephine) at the bloody Battle of Eylau between France and the Russo-Prussian army on February 8, 1807, Marie moved into an apartment in the emperor’s new military headquarters at Schloss (castle) Finckenstein in East Prussia (part of modern-day Poland). Aware of the scandal it would engender for a respectable Polish woman, the mother of the old chamberlain Walewski’s son, to be seen slinking about an army HQ, Marie discreetly arrived and departed from a side entrance so that she would not be seen by Napoleon’s officers and troops. Nor, she was cautioned, could Josephine learn of her presence there. But the empress, who by now was receiving letters from her husband addressing her with the formal vous, rather than the familiar tu for “you,” had a sixth sense for Napoleon’s infidelities and had already surmised that he was having an affaire de coeur. Her supposition was confirmed as she headed back to Paris from Mainz. Two Polish women she encountered in Strasbourg boasted of the emperor’s new mistress. Painfully aware that Napoleon was contemplating divorce, and mourning the death of her grandson (and her husband’s potential heir), Josephine’s one consolation was that at least the Polish charmer had yet to give Boney a baby.

  Years later, Marie’s older brother Benedict would claim that his sister viewed her sojourn to Finckenstein as yet another patriotic mission. But was he just blowing smoke to mask her reputation—or was Marie herself using that as a cover story so she could rush into the arms of her lover? Because by this time, the pair were d
eeply in love. When Napoleon sat down to cards in the evenings, even though Marie did not play, “he always wanted her in the room within his sight,” according to her friend Anna Potocka. Call it true love, or his overweening desire to micromanage her life, taking care to keep other men out of the picture. This, too, was part of Napoleon’s megalomania.

  The lovers passed an idyllic six weeks together at Schloss Finckenstein, although Marie—kept like Rapunzel in the tower to preserve her honor and reputation—saw no one but her lover; Constant Wairy the valet; and Napoleon’s private secretary, the Baron de Méneval. Constant would bring the couple breakfast in their canopied bed, and later in the morning Marie would watch from the window, half-hidden behind the red damask drapes, while the emperor reviewed his troops. When he returned to the room to work she’d sit and embroider or read in front of the fireplace or the tiled porcelain stove until Constant delivered the dinner tray at eleven. Supper was served at seven in the evening; the lovebirds ate at a cozy table before the fire, because Napoleon was always cold.

  Ever the tyrant when it came to the subject of women’s fashion, he once scolded her for wearing black. “When you have restored Poland, I promise I’ll always wear pink,” she assured him, still waiting for him to keep his pledge.

  “Politics is a slow business, it is not as easy as winning a battle…. You must give me more time,” he pleaded.

  But as the days of their whirlwind spring romance progressed, Marie gradually grew less of a martyr to Polish liberation and increasingly more of a lover. “Her noble character, her serenity and her amazing lack of self-interest enchanted the Emperor…. Each day he became more and more attached to her,” Constant observed.