I’d also like to thank my readers, especially Lady Corry, who kept asking, “When is it coming out?” For emotional support, thanks to WWW (Wilno Women Writers), my Humber group, and to Internet writing cronies. But most of all I give a heartfelt thanks to my family: my son Chet, my daughter Carrie, and especially, my husband Richard. I could not have written this book without their support, both tangible and emotional.
Praise for
Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe
“[Gulland’s] prose is so light and delicately layered, it evaporates in the wisp of a breath like fine-sugar-spun candy.”
— The Globe and Mail
“Tales of Passion is a brilliant representation of post-Revolutionary Napoleonic life…. Gulland reveals the depth of her research on every page.”
– The Vancouver Sun
“Gulland leads her readers through the looking glass of history…. [She] does a fine job evoking events that took place when the … Revolutionary period yielded to the Napoleonic era.”
– Toronto Star
“Gulland provides an intimate, deeply human view of world events. [This book] is everything a reader could hope for and more.”
– The Gazette (Montreal)
“The most wonderful thing about Gulland’s writing style is [her] genius with Josephine [and] Bonaparte.”
– Edmonton Journal
“[Josephine’s] voice is eerily clear and immediate, as if she were face to face with the reader.”
– The Bookseller
“If Josephine had stood behind Gulland’s writing chair she couldn’t have wished for a more sympathetic and attractive portrayal of herself…. Lively and entertaining.”
– Quill & Quire
“Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe is a marvelous story, told by Gulland with compassion and clarity.”
– The Chronicle Journal (Thunder Bay)
“Gulland has a gift for creating a wonderfully sensory reading experience: one can almost hear the swishing of long dresses, taste the fine wines.”
– Two Chairs
Also by Sandra Gulland
THE MANY LIVES AND SECRET SORROWS OF JOSEPHINE B.
THE LAST GREAT DANCE ON EARTH
MISTRESS OF THE SUN
What is history but a fable agreed upon? —Napoleon
Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe
is a work of fiction based on (and inspired by)
the extraordinary life of Josephine Bonaparte.
Chronology
YEAR DATE
1796 March 9 Napoleon and Josephine marry.
March 11 Napoleon leaves Paris to take command of the Army of Italy.
April 12–22 Napoleon opens his Italian campaign: six victories.
May Barras buys Grosbois.
June 20 Désirée Renaudin and Marquis de Beauharnais marry.
June 26 Josephine leaves Paris to join Napoleon in Italy.
July 13 Josephine joins Napoleon in Milan.
July 31 Josephine comes under cannon fire.
November 15–17 Napoleon is victorious at the Battle of Arcole.
late December Napoleon’s sister Pauline arrives in Milan.
1797 March 8 Thérèse sues Tallien for divorce, followed by a reconciliation that results in conception.
April 18 Victorious, Napoleon forces the Austrians to agree to a peace agreement.
May Josephine and Napoleon move to the château of Mombello for the hot summer months.
May 20 General Pichegru, a suspected Royalist agent, is elected President of the Council of Five Hundred.
June 1 Napoleon’s mother, two sisters and a brother come to Mombello, where Pauline and Elisa are married.
July 18–22 Barras persuades Lazare Hoche to bring troops close to Paris. When discovered, Hoche is accused and leaves Paris under a cloud of suspicion.
summer Eugène joins Napoleon’s staff in Italy.
September 4 “Journée du 18 Fructidor,” led by Barras. Fifty-three deputies, suspected Royalists, are arrested.
September 19 Hoche dies at Wetzlar, Germany.
October 17 Napoleon and the Austrians sign the Treaty of Campo-Formio. Eugène takes news of the treaty to Venice, Corfu and Rome.
November 16 Napoleon leaves Milan for Paris by way of Rastadt, where the treaty will be ratified.
December 20 Thérèse and Tallien’s baby dies at birth.
1798 January 2 Josephine returns to Paris.
January 3 Talleyrand gives a ball in Napoleon’s honour.
January 22 Eugène arrives back in Paris.
March 5 The Directors approve Napoleon’s plan to invade Egypt.
March 16 Napoleon and Joseph accuse Josephine of being involved in the Bodin Company.
May 4 Josephine and Napoleon leave for Toulon, where the fleet will depart for Egypt.
May 18 Emilie marries Lavelette.
May 19 The fleet sets sail from Toulon without Josephine.
June 14 Josephine arrives in the mountain spa of Plombières, where she undertakes a treatment for infertility.
June 20 Josephine falls from a balcony and is seriously injured.
July 21 Napoleon is victorious at the Battle of the Pyramids.
July 24 Napoleon enters Cairo in triumph.
July 27 Eugène writes from Egypt that Napoleon had been told suspicious details concerning Captain Charles and Josephine. Napoleon writes similarly to Joseph. Both letters are intercepted by the British.
August 1 The French fleet is destroyed by the British in the Battle of the Nile at Abukir.
September 16 Josephine arrives back in Paris.
November 24 The contents of Eugène’s and Napoleon’s letters are alluded to in the London Morning Chronicle.
December Rumours of Napoleon’s death.
1799 March 19 Both Napoleon and Eugène are wounded during the siege of St. John d’Acre, Eugène seriously.
April 21 Josephine buys Malmaison.
June The Bodin Company comes under investigation.
October 9 Napoleon sails into Fréjus harbour on the French Riviera.
October 13 Josephine and Hortense leave at dawn to meet
Napoleon on the road. (They miss.)
October 16 Napoleon and Eugène arrive in Paris.
October 18 Josephine and Hortense arrive back in Paris.
Bonaparte has locked Josephine out. Reconciliation.
November 9–10 “Coup d’État du 18 Brumaire.” Napoleon becomes First Consul.
November 12 Napoleon and Josephine move to the Luxembourg Palace.
1800 February 1 Thérèse gives birth to a girl, fathered by Ouvrard.
February 18 Results of the vote on the new constitution announced: 3,011,007 in favour, 1,526 opposed.
February 19 With ceremony, Napoleon and Josephine move into the Tuileries Palace.
Characters
Adélaïde Hoche: Lazare Hoche’s young wife
Agathe: Josephine’s scullery maid
Alexandre Beauharnais: Josephine’s first husband; guillotined during the Terror
Antoine: the coachman
Barras, Paul: a director; Josephine’s friend and mentor
Botot, François: Barras’s secretary
Bruno: Barras’s hall porter
Callyot: Josephine’s cook
Caroline (Maria-Anunziata) Bonaparte: Napoleon’s youngest sister
Charles, Captain Hippolyte (“Wide-Awake”): Josephine’s intimate friend and business partner
Crény, Madame de: one of the Glories
Désirée Renaudin: Josephine’s godmother and aunt; she lives with the Marquis
Elisa (Maria-Anna) Bonaparte: the oldest of Napoleon’s sisters; married to Félix Bacchiochi Émilie
Beauharnais: Josephine’s niece
Eugène Beauharnais: Josephine’s son
Fauvelet Bourrienne: Napoleon’s secretary
Fesch: Bonaparte’s uncle (by marriage)
Fortuné: Josephine’s first pug dog
Fort
unée Hamelin: one of the Glories
Fouché, Joseph: Josephine’s friend, talented in undercover work
Gontier: Josephine’s manservant
Hortense Beauharnais: Josephine’s daughter
Hugo and Louis Bodin: Josephine’s business partners
Igor: Barras’s parrot
Jérôme (Girolamo, Fifi) Bonaparte: Napoleon’s brother, his youngest sibling
Joseph (Giuseppe) Bonaparte: Napoleon’s older brother, married to Julie Clary
Julie Clary: Joseph’s quiet wife
Junot Andoche: one of Napoleon’s aides
Lazare (Lazarro) Hoche: Josephine’s former lover
Lavalette: one of Bonaparte’s aides-de-camp
Letizia Bonaparte: Napoleon’s mother
Lisette (Louise) Compoint: Josephine’s lady’s maid
Louis (Luigi) Bonaparte: Napoleon’s younger brother whom he raised like a son
Lucien (Lucciano) Bonaparte: Napoleon’s fiery younger brother
Marquis de Beauharnais: the father of Alexandre, Josephine’s first husband, and François, Émilie’s father
Mimi: Josephine’s childhood maid, a mulatto from Martinique
Minerva (Madame de Châteaurenaud): one of the Glories
Moustache: Napoleon’s courier
Napoleon (Napoleone, in Italian) Bonaparte: Josephine’s husband.
Ouvrard: a financial genius
Pauline (Maria-Paola, Paganetta) Bonaparte: Napoleon’s beautiful and spirited younger sister
Pegasus: Eugène’s horse
Père Hoche: Lazare Hoche’s father
Pugdog: Josephine’s second pug dog
Talleyrand, Charles-Maurice: a former bishop, sometimes Minister of Foreign Affairs, always influential
Tallien, Lambert: Thérèse’s husband
Thérèse (Tallita, “Amazon”) Tallien: Josephine’s closest friend, one of the Glories
Toto: Barras’s minature greyhound
P.S.
Ideas, interviews & features
About the author
Author Biography
About the book
In the Author’s Own Words
Mud Baths & Dusty Coffins: In Search of Josephine B.
An Interview with Sandra Gulland
Read on
Recommended by Sandra Gulland
Web Detective
An Excerpt from The Last Great Dance on Earth
About the author
Sandra Gulland
Author Biography
SANDRA GULLAND was born in Florida in 1944. Her father was an airline pilot, so the family moved often, living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, then Florida again before settling in Berkeley, California.
In the fall of 1970, Gulland moved to Canada to teach Grade 2 in an Inuit village in northern Labrador, an experience she describes as “amazing.” Later, she worked as a book editor in Toronto, and in 1977 she married Richard Gulland. She gave birth to a daughter and son, and in 1980 the family moved to a log cabin near Killaloe (population 600), in northern Ontario. Gulland started an editorial and writing service, and became the principal of a parent-run alternative school. All the while, she grew vegetables (or “tried to grow vegetables,” as she puts it), raised chickens and pigs, and developed a lifelong fascination with horses. Meanwhile, and always, she was writing.
Gulland’s consuming interest in Josephine Bonaparte was sparked in 1972 when she read a biography about her. Decades of in-depth research followed, which included investigative trips to France, Italy and Martinique, consultations with period scholars and learning French.
The Many Lives & Secret Sorrows of Josephine B. was published in 1995. It was followed in 1998 by Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe and The Last Great Dance on Earth in 2000. The Josephine B. Trilogy is now published in thirteen languages. Napoleon said that he “conquered countries but that Josephine conquered hearts,” Gulland says. “It’s astonishing. She continues to do so.”
Gulland added to this hugely successful trilogy in 2008 with Mistress of the Sun, a novel based on the life of Louise de la Vallière, extraordinary horsewoman and consort to King Louis XIV.
Gulland and her husband now live half the year in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and half in northern Ontario.
About the book
“What was Napoleon and Josephine’s bedroom is now a school lunchroom, a plaque on the wall the only evidence that they were ever there.”
In the Author’s Own Words
Mud Baths & Dusty Coffins: In Search of Josephine B.
From an article by Sandra Gulland, originally published in The Globe and Mail, July 25, 1998.
Over two decades ago, I was rather badly bitten by a curiosity bug: Josephine B., it whispered. As in Bonaparte. As in wife of Napoleon. As in, simply, Josephine.
The symptoms of this affliction are obvious: books overflowing shelves, curios gathering dust, obscure portraits covering the walls of my house.
It was a case both chronic and acute: I gave up my day job as an editor and crossed the line, as they say, to the other side. I became an author. Seeking Josephine has been an adventure on a global scale. Researching the first book took me on missions to Paris and to Martinique, where Josephine was born and raised. For the second, I traced her voyage through northern Italy and into the Vosges Mountains of France.
Among the places I travelled was Mombello, Josephine and Napoleon’s summer residence during the first Italian campaign. Described in other books as palatial, the villa surprised me with its small proportions. What was their bedroom is now a school lunchroom, a plaque on the wall the only evidence that they were ever there. In Milan, their Palazzo Serbelloni was also a far cry from the glittering confection commonly described. Now it is a government office building. In Josephine’s suite, the rooms were small and dark. No wonder she was unhappy here, I thought. The sumptuous villa Manin di Passariano, northeast of Venice, on the other hand, stunned me with its majesty. It was there that Josephine smoothed tempers as Napoleon negotiated a peace treaty with Austria. But nowhere revealed more to me about Josephine than the tiny spa of Plombières-les-Bains in the mountains southeast of Paris.
I arrived there at night. Immediately after arriving in my room, I opened the doors to the balcony facing out over the village. The ancient grey houses clustered along a mountain valley, “as if they had tumbled into a crevice and were too weary to rise,” as I had Josephine describe it in the novel. She loved Plombières, as had her daughter Hortense and Hortense’s son “Oui-Oui” (also known as Napoleon III).
Doctors had recommended that Josephine “take the waters” at Plombières because she’d been unable to conceive a child with Napoleon. (Today, the waters are believed to cure intestinal problems and rheumatism, although not infertility.) As modest as the village is, it had been visited by almost all the royals and demi-royals of Europe of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Its appeal, and its history, can be traced to the Romans, who had also come for the hot mineral water that surges through the rocks under the village.
The day after my arrival, I presented myself at the deluxe Thermes Napoléon, where I managed to convey that I wished to try a variety of water treatments such as those Josephine herself might have taken in the late 18th century. An amused nurse ticked off a number of items on a card. Then, in blue plastic pantouffles and a white terry robe, I shuffled through the vast, wet marble halls to my first treatments: bain radio-gazeux (a Jacuzzi gone mad), and compresse thermale (a series of steaming towels). For my third treatment, I was encased in a heavy cocoon of warm mud followed by a vigorous massage under a shower.
“Nowhere revealed more to me about Josephine than the tiny spa of Plombières-les-Bains in the mountains southeast of Paris.”
“I’d gone to mass in the church of Josephine’s childhood; this was the church of her death.”
After a few inquiries, I located where Josephine had stayed nearby. The former inn was smaller than I’d expected. I looked up at the windows to
her corner room (now a dentist’s office), examined the height of the balcony that had given way under her, the fall nearly leaving her crippled. Immediately after her fall, a sheep was slaughtered and she was wrapped in its skin. Musicians had serenaded her as she healed, likely standing on the very cobblestones I myself was occupying.
Days later, I left Plombières for Paris, where I immediately set out for Malmaison, Josephine and Napoleons home in nearby Rueil-Malmaison. I walked through the familiar, elegant rooms, imagining. At closing, I set out on foot for the village. I was in luck: the church was open. I bought a rose at the florist’s shop across the square and, once inside the empty church, stood before Josephine’s tomb. I’d gone to mass in the church of her childhood; this was the church of her death. Both were small village churches. In between she’d been crowned empress of the French in the cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris. Overcome with a feeling Josephine might have called melancholy, I lay the rose on top of her tomb, took a few swipes at the dust, and left. I knew I would return.
Preparing to write The Last Great Dance on Earth, the last of my Josephine B. novels, I spread out the maps once again. I wanted to visit Evreux, northwest of Paris, where Josephine was often obliged to live after Napoleon remarried. I longed to see the castle of Laeken near Brussels where she consoled her grief-mad daughter. I know the facts, but the facts are not enough. The places reveal so much more.
“I know the facts, but the facts are not enough. The places reveal so much more.”
An Interview with Sandra Gulland
Tales of Passion, Tales of Woe Page 36