Royal Pains: A Rogues' Gallery of Brats, Brutes, and Bad Seeds

by Leslie Carroll

  Ill health compelled Leclerc to resign his post as Commander in Chief of the Army of Italy. He received a transfer to Paris, which delighted his wife; naturally, she couldn’t wait to shop. According to a contemporary, Madame Reinhardt, “The new vogues are of the utmost importance to her.” Although Pauline was not an intellectual, she managed to hold her own at the most fashionable Parisian salons, basking in the reflected glory of her brother’s Egyptian military victory.

  She was eager to make her own mark in the capital, however, and quickly became known for her wardrobe—or lack thereof. At a ball given in her honor by an old family friend from Corsica, Madame Permon, Pauline arrived attired as a bacchante, with her hair dressed in a band of panther skin accentuated with a cluster of golden grapes. Gold bracelets and cameos jangled on her pale, bare arms. Unfortunately her evening was ruined when an envious guest called attention to Pauline’s less than perfect ears, drawing all eyes to the physical flaw, and thereby eclipsing her exotic ensemble and fragile beauty. Pauline went home in tears.

  But she soon learned to imitate the cruelty of her rivals, mastering the Parisian sophisticate’s manner of flaying an adversary with cutting remarks. Female detractors aside, she began to attract, unsurprisingly, a cadre of male admirers.

  Leclerc was soon posted abroad, and according to Madame Permon’s daughter, Laure, Pauline began juggling three lovers. General Pierre de Ruel, later the Marquis de Beurnonville, was in his mid-forties when Pauline began having sex with him. Meanwhile she was just as enthusiastically entertaining General Moreau, the former leader of the French army in Germany, and General Etienne-Jacques Macdonald, governor of Versailles. Since her husband was also a military leader, she must have been one of those women who just couldn’t resist a man in uniform. Long gone (if she ever really existed) was the girl who had promised Stanislaus Fréron her entire heart, because it was “not made for sharing.”

  All three generals were good friends, yet they allegedly knew nothing about the others’ attachments to Pauline until, like the coquettish Célimène in Molière’s Le Misanthrope, she indiscriminately disseminated nasty comments that one of her lovers had made about another. The generals compared notes and each in turn dumped her—another plot point straight out of Le Misanthrope.

  Leclerc was the sort of man who was hard on himself, but indulgent to his young wife. According to Laure Permon, “Madame Leclerc treated her husband despotically, and yet she went in fear, not that her husband would rebuke her, but that the first consul would.” In a bloodless coup on November 19, 1799, Napoleon had become the first consul in the new Directory government, making him the most powerful man in France.

  Both Pauline and Leclerc were ambitious for his military career, but assignments in Dijon in 1800 and the following year as lieutenant general of the Army of the Observation of the Gironde, headed for Spain, resulted in little glory. Meanwhile, Pauline was envious of her younger sister Caroline. Two years Pauline’s junior, the vivacious blonde Caroline had married another of Napoleon’s aides, Joachim Murat, whose career was accelerating as Leclerc’s was stalled in neutral.

  In 1801 Napoleon recalled Leclerc from his Gironde position and placed him in command of a fleet whose mission was to retake the island of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) from the rebel slaves who had seized control under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture. Saint-Domingue was rich in sugar, indigo, coffee, and cotton, and once Leclerc had taken control of the island he was to remain there to govern it on behalf of France.

  At the time, Paris was rife with gossip about Pauline’s promiscuity, as well as her interest in the occult. She was fond of clairvoyants, tarot card readings, and divinations prophesied from reading the patterns of egg whites cracked into a glass of water, as well as the use of enemas concocted from the boiled intestines of farm animals. The capital also buzzed with rumors that she was riddled with venereal disease. One of her lovers, the Marquis de Sémonville, a former commissioner in Corsica, reminisced, “There were five of us sharing her favors in the same house before she left for Saint-Domingue . . . she was the greatest hussy you can imagine, but also the most tempting.”

  Pauline and Leclerc set sail for Saint-Domingue on December 14, 1801. The conflict was a bloody one, resulting in thousands of casualties and the torching of the island’s capital city, Le Cap. But Leclerc managed to crush the rebellion in forty days, and ultimately enlisted L’Ouverture’s men in his own army. He was also able to rebuild Le Cap in nine weeks.

  While her husband was quashing the rebellion, Pauline was alleged to have alleviated her colonial boredom by indulging in numerous extramarital affairs, including ménages à trois with two other women, taking lovers of all colors and both genders. According to one rumor, among her many paramours were one of Leclerc’s subordinates, General Jean-François Debelles, nicknamed the “Apollo of the French Army” for his golden good looks, and Jean Robert Humbert, a French bureaucrat renowned for his brutality. Although the rumors of Pauline’s sexual insatiability were completely unsubstantiated, they were nonetheless both rampant and abundant. According to her detractors, none of whom were actually on Saint-Domingue at the time, “The tropical sun was, they say, astonished by the ardor of her passions.”

  Many of the allegations were part of a British smear campaign against Napoleon and his family, or were penned well over a decade later, after his ignominious fall from power. However, not all of them were written after the fact. Scurrilous remarks about his little sister’s conduct reached Napoleon in France, because he warned Pauline to behave herself.

  . . . Remember that fatigue and suffering are nothing when one shares them with one’s husband . . . make yourself beloved by . . . your affability, and behave prudently, never thoughtlessly. . . . Make sure all the world is pleased with you, and be worthy of your position.

  Napoleon reminded Pauline to Take care of your husband . . . and don’t give him any ground for jealousy. For a serious man, all flirtatious ways are insupportable. [Here, Napoleon was speaking of his marriage to Josephine as much as Leclerc and Pauline’s union.] A wife must be good and seek to pleasure, not demand. Your husband is now truly worthy of the title of my brother, given the glory he is amassing. . . . Unite with him in love and tender friendship.

  Unfortunately, Leclerc’s glory was short-lived. Responding to rumors that the French intended to reinstate slavery, the blacks rebelled again and the new governor was faced with another insurgency.

  On October 22, 1802, Leclerc contracted yellow fever. Although he rallied temporarily, only ten days later—on November 1—Victor Emmanuel Leclerc died at the age of thirty, leaving behind a twenty-two-year-old widow and their four-year-old son. Pauline inherited only a modest seventy thousand francs from his will.

  According to Napoleon’s Civil Code, she was required to mourn her husband for ten months (the previous tradition had mandated a full year’s mourning). Despite her widow’s weeds, Pauline had no shortage of admirers and suitors for her hand. After all, she was young, gorgeous, and the sister of the first consul. She had also managed to connive three hundred thousand francs out of her illustrious brother in exchange for an elaborate carriage she had previously requested, in order to compete with their younger sister Caroline’s equipage.

  After the death of her joli petit gamin, Pauline chopped off her lustrous brown locks, fashioning the hair into tiny cushions that she placed beneath the bandages on Leclerc’s lifeless face. In exchange, she demanded her husband’s blond curls as a memento mori.

  Still young, still restless, still vivacious, Pauline returned to Paris, chafing at the rules that governed her widowhood; she longed to be back in society and to once again reign as the capital’s leading beauty.

  In April 1803, Pope Pius III’s legate, Cardinal Caprara, introduced Pauline to Prince Camillo Borghese. The darkly handsome, twenty-eight-year-old prince was of modest height, with similar angular features to Pauline’s. According to Laure Junot, now the duchesse d’Abrantes, “This head wi
th coal black eyes and mane of jet black hair, it seemed to me, must contain not only passionate, but great and noble ideas.”

  She could not have been more wrong. “He had nothing to say, although a lively manner of saying it,” and, “No one was more capable of driving a four-in-hand, but no one was less capable of carrying on a conversation,” were the sort of remarks Parisians made about him.

  In historian Flora Fraser’s words, “He was, to put it plainly, a booby, if a harmless one.” Camillo’s father, the illustrious Prince Marcantonio Borghese, had deliberately stinted on his son’s education, and in that respect, at least, Camillo and the unschooled Pauline had something in common.

  However, Prince Camillo Borghese was a very wealthy booby—from an ancient and prominent Roman family with significant real estate holdings in Tuscany (including Florence), and in Rome and its environs. And their vast art collections were already world-renowned. What made Camillo an even better catch was that he was genuine titled nobility.

  Napoleon’s older brother, Joseph Bonaparte, who had been his ambassador to Rome in 1798, was one of the men who contrived the grand plan to marry the doltish Italian prince to Pauline. Most of the Bonapartes agreed to the scheme right away, and the proposed match was favored by the famiglia Borghese as well. Curiously, the only dissenting voice (or perhaps he was merely playing the devil’s advocate) was Napoleon’s.

  And yet the plan proceeded apace. Team Bonaparte contrived to make the marriage seem like Camillo’s idea—and when Pauline was responsive to it, the prince was so overwhelmed that he could scarcely believe his dream was about to come true.

  Napoleon finally agreed to the match, but insisted that Pauline wait a full twelve months after Leclerc’s death before heading to the altar again, violating his own Civil Code in favor of the old tradition.

  On August 25, 1803, the couple signed a prenuptial agreement that contained the following assurances: Napoleon would provide Pauline with a five-hundred-thousandfranc dowry; Camillo bought her three hundred thousand francs’ worth of diamonds and gave her access to the priceless Borghese family jewels. Pauline’s inheritance from Leclerc would remain hers alone. If Camillo predeceased her, she would receive an annuity of fifty thousand francs a year, plus two luxurious carriages and the right to maintain apartments in two Borghese residences.

  Although the civil marriage ceremony was not scheduled to take place until November, Pauline couldn’t wait that long; always impetuous and impatient, she had consummated her relationship with Camillo in July. So on August 28, the twenty-two-year-old Pauline clandestinely wed her prince. Somehow they managed to keep the ceremony a secret from Napoleon’s vast network of spies.

  Pauline tingled with anticipation at the prospect of making her Paris debut as a real princess. Dripping with her in-laws’ diamonds, she attended a soiree hosted by Napoleon, palpably ecstatic when she was formally announced to the assemblage as “Princess Borghese.” But she had not anticipated the dressing-down she received from her brother; after all, she was not supposed to be Princess Borghese for another quarter of a year. Napoleon was surprised, shocked, and humiliated to learn—in a public gathering, no less—that his favorite sister had flagrantly flouted his directive regarding her remarriage, coldly informing Pauline, “Please understand, Madame, that there is no princess where I am. Have more modesty and do not take a title that your sisters do not possess.”

  Although he had succeeded in mortifying her, Napoleon did not remain angry with Pauline for long. He wrote to her in Rome, advising her to Be sure to show sweetness and kindness to everyone, and great consideration for the ladies of your husband’s family. . . . Never criticize anything or say “We do this or that better in Paris.” . . . What I would most like to hear about you is that you are well behaved . . . love your husband, make your household happy, and above all do not be frivolous or capricious. You are twenty-four years old and ought to be mature and sensible by now. I love you.

  The wish was not father to the deed, however. Pauline promptly violated her brother’s precepts. She delayed a meeting in which she was to be presented to the pope because the dress she was planning to wear had not yet arrived from Paris. And she insulted her in-laws and most of Rome’s high society by failing to attend a cercle given in her honor by her mother-in-law, pleading a violent headache, although she had appeared perfectly chipper and healthy at lunchtime.

  Pauline had immediately regretted her second marriage. After their honeymoon, she took to calling Camillo a eunuch (one wonders what prevented him from performing with such a sexually charged wife, as allegations that he was homosexual have never been substantiated), and later maintained that but for her husband’s riches, she wished she had remained a widow.

  Nevertheless, Camillo, like his predecessor, remained in thrall to Pauline, instantly jealous of any man who paid attention to her. Given his wife’s beauty and flirtatiousness, the prince must have been ready to tear half the men of Italy limb from limb.

  Their union had been made in relative haste, and for the wrong reasons. In March 1804, within four months of the official “I do’s” and “I will’s,” Camillo was confiding to one of the matchmakers, Chevalier Luigi Angiolini, that he was “almost continually discontented” with Pauline. And, unsurprisingly, Pauline had already taken a lover.

  The object of Pauline’s extramarital affections was the penniless hereditary prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. They enjoyed romantic picnics in the Roman countryside during the day; and in the evenings she would send her African page boy to escort the prince (who was affecting a disguise) to her apartments in the Palazzo Borghese via a secret staircase.

  But all the disguises in the world couldn’t mask Pauline’s infidelity. Camillo caught her with a compromising letter he’d have “given the world not to have seen.” And after their relative Cardinal Fesch was unable to persuade Pauline to behave herself, Napoleon himself dispatched a scathing rebuke.

  Madame and dear Sister: I learn to sorrow that you have not had the good sense to conform to the manners and customs of the city of Rome, that you have shown disdain for its people, and that your eyes are constantly turned toward Paris. . . . Do not count on me to help, if at your age you let yourself be governed by bad advice. As for Paris, be assured you will find no support here, for I shall never receive you without your husband. If you fall out with him, it will be entirely your own fault, and then France will be forbidden you. You will lose your happiness and my friendship.

  It bears noting that Napoleon was an utter hypocrite regarding the sanctimony of matrimony. He was a prig when it came to the marriages of his promiscuous sister, and yet he enjoyed so many extramarital liaisons that he had a room adjacent to his office set aside for quickie trysts.

  However, Pauline wasn’t the powerful first consul of France, and her sexual indiscretions, while acceptable within her Paris coterie, were considered intolerable in Rome—not because she was cheating on her spouse, but because she paraded her infidelity. In contrast, Pauline’s mother-in-law had discreetly enjoyed the favors of a lover for years, but successfully kept the affair quiet.

  Pauline also flaunted her title, escalating the sibling rivalry among the Bonaparte sisters. Elisa and Caroline complained to Napoleon that Pauline was a princess while they lacked commensurate status. He tried to level the playing field by creating them imperial highnesses following the senate’s May 1803 declaration that made him Emperor of the French, but Pauline became miffed because she wanted to claim the exalted rank for her own. She went so far as to remind Caroline of the good old revolutionary days, exclaiming that her late husband Victor Emmanuel Leclerc’s Republican sensibilities would have rendered him “astonished” and “angry” at Napoleon’s elevation to emperor. Had their brother remained first consul, Pauline would have been the only Bonaparte sister to enjoy a royal title by virtue of her marriage to Prince Camillo Borghese.

  Camillo certainly didn’t want to share his wife’s body with other men, but it didn’t stop him from
being proud of it. In the summer of 1804, he commissioned the renowned sculptor Antonio Canova to immortalize Pauline as Venus Victrix—Venus Victorious. She posed nearly nude with an apple in her hand—the winner of Paris’s famous judgment—temptation in marble. Only a flimsy bit of drapery below the waist concealed from public eyes the anatomy that was familiar enough to her husband and countless lovers. At the time, Pauline was unconcerned about any potential damage to her reputation: What stunning extrovert wouldn’t want her fabulous looks preserved forever in the guise of the goddess of love and beauty? But Napoleon was predictably disgusted by her vulgarity. “Tell her from me she is no longer beautiful,” he lied, “and she will be still less so in a few years, and it is more important to be good and esteemed.” The full-size statue, known as “La Paolina” during its creation, was not completed until 1808.

  In Italy Napoleon’s flesh-and-blood sister was known as “la diva Paolina,” captivating everyone who came within her orbit; she referred to her lithe, pale limbs, dainty hands and feet, slender hips, and perky breasts as “advantages of nature.”

  But Canova had to be cajoled into executing his commission. As a native Italian he deplored the ravaging of his homeland by Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Yet even he was smitten by Pauline’s allure, although he initially proposed that she should represent Diana, goddess of the hunt.