by Alan Schom
Certainly Lucien was affable; everyone said so. He never failed to charm the ladies and to delight the gentlemen as a raconteur. However, that his manners in society were not yet exactly up to snuff was irrelevant compared to his complete lack of formal education. He had no real love of or interest in learning, despite later ostentatious literary affectations for public consumption. Indeed, two years at Brienne with Napoleon and then a brief stay at Uncle Joseph Fesch’s seminary at Aix comprised the whole of his “education.” Furthermore, displaying no interest in the military, the church, or commerce, of the five Bonaparte brothers he was the only one naturally attracted to the political arena. Growing into manhood in the more ferocious days of Jacobin politics under Robespierre, he felt himself strongly drawn to the left wing of the Revolution and considered himself a “born republican.”
He joined political clubs in Marseilles, where, despite his obvious youth, he debated and spoke frequently. Indeed, a little too brash and outspoken, the bumptious Lucien continued his vociferous politics throughout the summer of 1795, even as the counterrevolutionaries were attacking. That Lucien, among hundreds of other left-wingers, then found himself in a crowded cell in Aix that July should have surprised no one. Fortunately his brother General Bonaparte had just enough influence to extricate the feckless youth in September from his latest difficulties.
That same autumn Napoleon won further support and praise from Bar-ras in quelling Parisian riots. Again thanks to his older brother, Lucien obtained the position of commissaire politique, or political indoctrination officer, with the French army, a position that also had its lucrative financial perks. From the accused and the condemned, overnight he became the accuser of unorthodox political thought and the judge of who was fit for French society within the ranks of the French army, who was politically suitable, who was toeing the republican line, who was a true and loyal patriot. And then of course he was elected to the post of president of the Council of Five Hundred.
Meanwhile his pleasant young wife, Christine, and their first child moved into his barren, treeless, expensive estate of Plessis-Chamant near Senlis, whose sole apparent advantage was that it made him a neighbor of his brother Joseph, of whom he was very fond.
Rewarding the young man with the portfolio of the Ministry of the Interior — as Napoleon did in October 1799 — was a mistake from the beginning. Apart from briefly presiding over the Council of Five Hundred, Lucien had had no administrative experience whatsoever. It did not bode well.
Shortly after his arrival in France, when he was working as a warehouse guard with Joseph, he had met Christine Boyer, the daughter of a local publican. Despite her peasant stock, obvious lack of any but the most rudimentary education, not to mention an equal lack of good looks, everyone liked her, even the difficult General Bonaparte. She was tall, full-figured, but otherwise slender, and as Laure Junot described, she “had in her figure and carriage that native grace and ease which are imparted by the air and sky of the South.” Although her face bore traces of smallpox, aggravated by small eyes and a broad nose, “she nevertheless was pleasing because of her kind expression, sweet smile and lovely voice.” In brief, “she was as good as an angel” and devoted to her husband, in spite of his ever-roving Bonaparte eye.[382]
Even an angel, however, could not alter Lucien’s basic values, actions, and shortcomings. Although quite bright and lacking no degree of self-confidence, he had accepted this staggering ministerial responsibility far too glibly. He now controlled the lives of hundreds of employees, yet to him it was all a game. And what a delight, after the financial inconveniences of the past, to have a major ministry, with its own budget and treasury, available at his fingertips! Not surprisingly funds quickly found their way home, as his pockets jingled with the sound of government gold, and his latest mistress found a golden key to a new mansion. As rather substantial amounts continued to disappear (he was, after all, a Bonaparte), his frustrated underlings and accountants floundered in an attempt to deal with the unexpected hole in their coffers — a fact eventually duly noted by Police Minister Fouché’s minions.
Laure Junot, a close family friend, knew Lucien better than most. She described him as “tall, ill-shaped, with long spidery arms and a small head...[He] was very near-sighted, which made him stoop and peer through squinting eyes.” His smile, nevertheless, she found “harmonious,” and
although he was rather plain looking, he pleased generally...[and] he had a very remarkable success with women who were themselves remarkable in their own right...He was endowed by nature with many talents. His mind was comprehensive, his imagination brilliant and capable of great designs...His heart was kind, and although he was sometimes carried away by his passions, no serious charge can be brought against him [regardless of accusations to the contrary] and his conduct toward his brother [Napoleon] was irreproachable...But I would not with equal confidence acclaim the soundness of his judgment.[383]
Like so many of her assessments of those around her, this one was perspicacious. Lucien’s lack of judgment would prove his undoing.
Thus in Lucien, First Consul Bonaparte had nominated a very strange minister of the interior. Nevertheless he had his reasons, beyond mere recompense for services rendered, for in this ministry Lucien could prove most useful indeed, for instance when overseeing various national elections and plebiscites. And he proved his worth when arranging the national plebiscite to legalize the Constitution of the Year VIII, which had discarded the Directorate and replaced it with the Consulate and its entirely new administrative structure. With the deft forger Lucien at the helm, it was hardly surprising that 3,011,007 people allegedly “voted” for Napoleon’s new constitution and only 1,562 rejected it (out of an eligible electorate of nine million). In reality more than five million had cast their votes, but only 1.5 million for the new constitution. Lucien had eliminated 3.5 million negative votes.[384] Future interior ministers would follow his example during the refer-endums for the life consulship and the acceptance of the Empire, thus Napoleon’s entire career was built on a policy of voter fraud. The one involved now was not only self-evident but blatantly so, and — openly criticized by Napoleon’s many opponents — it resulted in one of the greatest vote-rigging scandals in French history. Nonetheless one is tempted to ask what would have happened if Napoleon had not ordered this fraud to ensure his new consular rule? The alternative was the corruption (of another genre) and instability of the Directory.
Fouché also had a hand in the election and manipulating the outcome — further documenting his private dossier on Lucien. Alas, hundreds of individuals were in on the “secret,” so the truth was certain to come out. But it was done, and in any event there was no practical means of appeal available to the shocked or disgruntled, except of course through the newly created State Council, over which Napoleon personally presided. Once again he was in the debt of his perversely talented brother.
Thereafter, however, everything that Interior Minister Bonaparte did seemed to go awry. The administrative problems and confusion arising in Lucien’s ministry were the natural and inevitable results of his own disastrous administrative incompetence — he loathed paperwork and detail — and news of this soon reached Napoleon’s (and Fouché’s) ears, compounded by Lucien’s outrageous pilfering of that ministry’s coffers. This state of affairs would not perhaps have been totally hopeless in Napoleon’s eyes had there not been aggravating factors, including Lucien’s personal, nonministerial peccadilloes. After all, every ministry had its permanent secretary-general for just such a purpose as guiding new officials, and as for money — well, books could be doctored and the necessary funds restored by brother Napoleon.
On top of Lucien’s disastrous political position, his personal life was an utter shambles — and there he had no secretary-general to guide and protect him. His flaunting of his mistresses at a time when his wife was pregnant again, his penchant for foppishly theatrical public appearances, not to mention his glaring display of new wealth and his e
xorbitant personal expenditures on his Paris mansion — none of this could be concealed, unlike his handiwork behind the closed doors of the Interior Ministry. For Napoleon, who spent his millions privately — apart from the inevitable display made by Josephine — who always dressed conservatively and spent relatively little on himself, and who, further, avoided crowds and public acclaim like the plague itself, this was all outrageous.[385] The last thing the first consul wished to do was draw public attention to himself and his family, in a country where poverty and hardship had for so long dogged the French people.
Oblivious to all this, Lucien continued on his merry way, continuing to appear frequently in public — he was a popular figure — and spread his largesse in such a brash manner that talk of it became common in the Tuileries, the Tribunate, the Corps Législatif, the Senate, as well as in every street market in the capital. Lucien’s worst offense, according to current gossip, was his expenditures on one of his most famous mistresses, the celebrated Mlle. Mézeray of the Théâtre Français. This lovely actress had even more of a flair than did her lover for displaying the unexpected windfall that glittered on her arms and neck, to say nothing of the elegant new mansion Lucien had obligingly just bought for her. And all this as his wife was entering the third — and as it turned out, fatal — trimester of her pregnancy.[386] But Lucien, being not only Lucien but a Bonaparte, could not even let it go at that. Word soon leaked to the thirteen remaining newspapers in Paris (Napoleon having suppressed forty-seven others) of the interior minister’s dazzling speculations on the Bourse, and of his illegal concessions of national monopolies to certain well-known figures (in exchange for purses of gold, naturally). Indeed, it was hard to imagine a transgression this flamboyant young Bonaparte had somehow managed not to commit during the months of his public rampage.
For Police Minister Fouché, lurking in the shadows and avidly documenting every item in his special file on Lucien, it was all superb material. It permitted him to put into effect his own plan to remove Lucien from the public scene while undermining the unity of the Bonaparte clan as well as Napoleon’s position as political leader of the country. Fouché was well pleased with the new interior minister.
The unrestrained and insatiable Lucien had apparently not yet had enough. He now believed that in the event of a national election, the republican electorate would find his candidacy preferable to that of his rather high-handed brother, who was clearly veering sharply to the right. Indeed, he could already picture himself replacing Napoleon as the leader of France (especially as Napoleon had deemed it impossible for one of his brothers to be named second consul, as Lucien had at first hoped).
For Napoleon, who was busy trying to bolster his position nationally and to ensure the acceptance of his new government, Lucien’s irresponsibility was drawing too much attention and rocking the boat; this he could not tolerate. In fact the first consul had already warned his brother on more than one occasion, but to no avail.
By the summer of 1800 Lucien’s appointment had become an absolute nightmare. (Napoleon’s worst political enemy could hardly have devised a better means of attacking him.) Yet, continuing on his spree, apparently feeling himself immune, Lucien finally committed an indiscretion that topped all the others. He had a highly critical (of Napoleon) pamphlet, Parallels Between Caesar, Cromwell, Monk and Bonaparte, published at government expense and then officially distributed on his personal orders to hundreds of influential politicians and departmental prefects throughout the country.
This was all Bonaparte’s archenemy from within, Police Minister Fouché, needed to complete his bulging dossier on the crimes and misdemeanors of Lucien Bonaparte. Lucien had had several scenes with the first consul, sometimes even before Fouché (of all people), regarding Napoleon’s discarding of republican principles and policies, the very ones Napoleon himself had professed to support at St.-Cloud on 19 Brumaire. Discussing this ongoing wrangling with Napoleon’s aide-de-camp General Junot and his young wife Laure Permon, Lucien affirmed: “Well, I shall always speak that way to him, and threats on his part will not make me deviate from my path. If the men who surround my brother in the Government choose to assist him in measures oppressive to the country, I, for my part, refuse to join them, and on the day that personal freedom disappears from the Republic, I shall go and seek another country.”[387] Little did he then realize.
Fouché finally struck, making a special appointment with the first consul on November 1, 1800. Interior Minister Lucien Bonaparte was summoned to Napoleon’s small office on the second floor of the Tuileries. On entering, the twenty-five-year-old Lucien found himself facing Napoleon, Bourrienne (required as a witness), and a slyly smiling Fouché, with the infamous file in his hands.
Without any ado Napoleon ordered Fouché to read the summary of his voluminous report. It was an inquisition. Lucien grew more and more agitated as he realized the extent to which his every move and conversation had been spied on and duly documented month after month. He interrupted, screaming, and — flinging down his own portfolio — he stomped out of the room and out of the French government. Eight days later Lucien, now a widower in black, with his four young daughters, piled into a heavy coach laden with trunks and left to take up his new appointment as ambassador to the court of Madrid.[388]
“Because of the present state of affairs in Europe,” Napoleon informed the King of Spain, “I have felt it necessary to send as special envoy and new Ambassador, Citizen Lucien Bonaparte, my brother, to represent to Your Majesty just how important the conquest of Portugal is.”[389] Lucien’s demotion had been surgically swift and clean. He was never to return to the French government. It had been humiliating for Napoleon, too, to have that loathesome outsider Fouché read that scandalous disclosure before him, the first consul, about his own brother, but it had to be done.
The hesitant King Carlos IV was soon won over by Lucien’s natural charm and affability. Lucien then began negotiating a peace treaty — the final version ultimately known as the Peace of Badajoz — among France, Spain, and Portugal. Napoleon had instructed Spain to strike at England (its navy and commerce) by invading and seizing Portugal. He was not satisfied with the original signed draft and its unprofessional wording, sent by an eager Lucien. Nor was he happy with the meager war indemnities intended for France. As was the custom (at least in some countries), substantial bribes had been paid to the leading negotiators, King Carlos IV breaking all records by presenting Lucien with five million francs’ worth of diamonds and throwing in twenty old-master paintings for good measure.[390] A treaty favorable to Spain was essential, and Carlos IV did not want Bonaparte for an enemy.
Napoleon, however, not only rejected the signed treaty sent by Lucien without his prior approval and consultation but sharply rebuked him in the process. This was too much for Lucien. He would have to return the loot if he could not achieve all he had promised the Spanish king. But once a Bonaparte always a Bonaparte, at least a Lucien Bonaparte, and — stashing his treasure in trunks and strongboxes — he secretly ordered them secured in his carriage. Packing up his children once again, he fled in the middle of the night, not even having the courage to request the return of his passports or to take leave of a very bewildered king. The ex-president of the Council of Five Hundred, ex-minister of the interior, and now ex-ambassador to Madrid reached Paris in a record five days, on November 19, 1801, one year after his departure, much to Napoleon’s astonishment. The bounder, liar, forger, and thief had returned. “Lucien’s complete lack of judgment, and of any moral sense, pushed ambition to the point of utter frenzy, and the thirst for riches, to sheer robbery,”[391] historian Louis Madelin remarked. As for the second treaty with Spain, it was eventually signed, successfully linking Spain to Napoleon’s foreign policy.
Fresh problems arose later in 1803, when Napoleon informed an idle Lucien that he was going to alter the Constitution of the Year VIII to permit him to hold the first consulship “for life,” which Lucien needless to say strongly opposed. Napoleon
had in fact tried to neutralize him and squeeze him out of public politics by foisting a politically inert senatorship on him. Frustrated over his political impotence, Lucien announced, “I intend to obtain real political freedom and the suppression of all despotism,”[392] but of course he was helpless to act.
The final severing of relations between Lucien and Napoleon came in the spring of 1804, as Napoleon was preparing to exchange his consular blue for imperial purple and in so doing, bypassed Lucien in the legal succession. The excuse for this final break was Lucien’s choice of a second wife, Alexandrine Jouberthon, a ravishing beauty and the goddess of the Paris demimonde, the alleged “widow” of one Hippolyte Jouberthon (who had fled to the West Indies earlier to escape criminal prosecution for banking irregularities and was never heard from again). She, meanwhile, had become the talk of the town, first after “posing” for various artists, then for her role as mistress of the young Comte Alexandre de la Borde, while ignoring her baby daughter.
For Napoleon this was too much, especially after Lucien whisked her away to the country and installed her as his official mistress at Plessis-Chamant. Then in May 1803 Lucien’s and Alexandrine’s bastard, Jules-Laurent-Lucien, was born, followed by a hasty civil wedding ceremony. “Betrayal! It’s sheer betrayal!” a disconcerted Napoleon fumed to Josephine on receiving the news.
On April 4, 1804, Monsieur et Madame Lucien Bonaparte left Paris for an Italian exile from which they would never return.[393] For Napoleon it was the first disappointment, the first divergence from the great master plan he was preparing for the roles allotted to his family in the conquest of Western Europe. But then the first consul had three other brothers — and with them three even greater shocks lay in store for him. The burden of genius was not always easy.