ANNE THÉRIAULT
In 1768, a 15-year-old girl traveled to the hills near her
family home in Martinique to visit a local wise woman. Desperately curious to
know what her future held, the girl handed a few coins to the
Afro-Caribbean obeah, Euphémie David, in exchange for a palm
reading. Euphémie obligingly delivered an impressive-sounding prediction: the
girl would marry twice — first, unhappily, to a family connection in France,
and later to a “dark man of little fortune.” This second husband would achieve
undreamed of glory and triumph, rendering her “greater than a queen.” But
before the girl had time to gloat over her thrilling fate, Euphémie delivered a
parting blow: in spite of her incredible success, the girl would die miserable,
filled with regret, pining for the “easy, pleasant life” of her childhood. This
prophecy would stay with the girl for the rest of her life, and she would think
of it often — sometimes with fervent hope, sometimes with despair, always with
unwavering belief that it would come true.
That girl was the future Empress Josephine Bonaparte.
Everything Euphémie predicted would come to pass, but young Josephine could not
have imagined the events that would propel her to her zenith: the rise through
Paris society, the cataclysm of the French Revolution, the brutal imprisonment
during the Reign of Terror, the transformation into an infamous Merveilleuse,
the pivotal dinner at her lover’s house where she would meet her second
husband.
She wouldn’t even have recognized the name Josephine — that
sobriquet would be bestowed by Napoleon some 18 years hence. The wide-eyed
teenager who asked Euphémie to tell her fortune still went by her childhood
nickname, Yeyette.
* * *
Josephine was christened Marie-Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de La
Pagerie, and was known formally as Rose, though to family and close friends she
was Yeyette. Born on June 23, 1763, even Josephine’s earliest years seemed
touched by fate; just four months before her birth, Martinique had been
restored to France from Britain. Had the timing been a tiny bit different,
Josephine would have been born a British citizen.
Josephine’s mother, Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois, was
a member of one of Martinique’s wealthiest families; her father was
Joseph-Gaspard de Tascher de La Pagerie, an incompetent pretty-boy who had once
been a page in the French court and spent the rest of his life telling anyone
who would listen about his glory days at Versailles. The La Pagerie family
owned a sugarcane plantation, where acres and acres of crops flourished thanks
to the labor her family stole from hundreds of enslaved African men and women.
You might think that Josephine’s father must have been
turning a tidy profit, since he had three hundred people tilling his fields and
zero wages to pay, but apparently serving bonbons to royalty isn’t great
preparation for a career in plantation management. Oh, he excelled at some
parts of it, like degradation and casual cruelty, but the whole finance part
eluded him and any money that he made in spite of himself was squandered on
mistresses and gambling. Under his hand, the plantation’s finances declined —
slowly, at first, and then, after a deadly hurricane in 1766, much more
quickly. Many of the enslaved people were killed, and the shacks where they
lived completely razed. The main house was also destroyed, and Josephine’s
family moved into the upper floor of the plantation’s sugarhouse, where the
cane juice was boiled into syrup. Despite swearing that the sugarhouse would be
a temporary residence, Joseph eventually added a veranda and called it a day.
Hurricanes aside, Josephine described her childhood as
happy. Martinique was not just geographically but also culturally distant from
France; instead of the restrictive clothing and rigid rules to which French
children were subjected, Josephine’s life was loose cotton dresses, county
rambles, and raw sugarcane snacks. Most children in Josephine’s position were
sent to France at a young age to receive a formal education, and her Aunt Edmée
offered to host her in Paris, but her father claimed not to have enough money
to send her so most of Josephine’s days were dedicated to unrestricted play
with her sister, Catherine, 18 months her junior, and the enslaved children on
the plantation. (Did the gulf between Josephine’s position and that of the
children she played with ever cause her cognitive dissonance, especially since
she would have been witness to the violence they endured? Probably not. That’s
not to say that she never felt affection for her enslaved playmates, but the
generational propagation of chattel slavery depended on children like Josephine
accepting that this was the way of the world. Like the children of most
plantation owners, Josephine had been raised to believe that she could get
whatever she wanted from the enslaved people on the plantation, whether that
was food, or care, or even entertainment.)
When Josephine was 10, her mother finally decided to do
something about her education and sent her off to a boarding school in Fort
Royal. Life at the Maison de la Providence involved rising at 5 a.m., wearing
an ugly uniform, and spending all day indoors practicing things like
embroidery, penmanship, and religious studies; the school’s aim was to turn its
students into modest, gracious plantation ladies, so the curriculum didn’t
involve any pesky subjects like literature, history, or science. Josephine was
less than enthused and made a poor student, returned home four years later with
her knowledge of the world nearly as scanty as when she’d left.
JOSEPHINE: really, what does a girl need an education for?
JOSEPHINE: I have plenty of life skills
JOSEPHINE: I can dance, I can toss my hair, I can
coquettishly wave a fan in front of my face
JOSEPHINE: I can reel a man in with my eyes from across a
crowded ballroom
JOSEPHINE: they don’t teach you that shit in school
It’s true that Josephine did have a distinct talent for
flirtation — one that would serve her well in years to come — but the
high-society men in Martinique didn’t exactly see her as marriage material.
After all, her family couldn’t even afford a real house, let alone a dowry.
Josephine wasn’t too concerned, though: she had bigger ambitions. After years
of listening to her father wax poetical about Versailles, what Josephine wanted
more than anything was to go to France. Her family didn’t even have enough
money to marry her off to one of her island peers, let alone send her on a
chaperoned trip across the Atlantic, but when she was 16, life dropped a dream
husband in Josephine’s path.
Alexandre de Beauharnais was a beautiful, cultured
19-year-old with an army commission who also happened to be the son of a
marquis, and he was the family connection in France that Euphémie had foreseen.
Josephine’s Aunt Edmée had been the marquis’ mistress for nearly two decades,
and by the time Alexandre was of marriageable age, her position was a bit
precarious; the marquis was getting on in years, and Edmée knew she’d be left
with nothing when he died and his estate passed to Alexandre.
EDMÉE: so, I hatched a brilliant scheme
EDMÉE: a way to keep it all in the family, as it were
EDMÉE: I mean, here I have this young man who’s going to be
very rich someday
EDMÉE: and I also have a niece who, if I arrange a good
marriage for her, will be grateful enough to support me when I’m a doddering
widow
EDMÉE: it’s just basic math!
EDMÉE: which, unlike Josephine, is something I bothered to
learn
The marquis, who didn’t want to leave his beloved destitute
after his death, agreed to the plan. Alexandre also went along with it, mostly
because he couldn’t come into his inheritance until he married. Josephine’s
father was eventually convinced, and, in the fall of 1779, he and his daughter
boarded a ship bound for France.
* * *
Everything was working out just as Edmée had imagined! The
only hitch was that the groom was in love with someone else and Josephine was
gauche enough to care.
There was no danger that Alexandre would marry this other
woman, since she was already married. Marie Françoise-Laure de Girardin de
Mongérald, Madame de Longpré, was a decade older than Alexandre and
well-skilled in all the high-class French arts: seducing, dropping bon mots,
lounging languorously. Little Yeyette — chubby, physically awkward, and artless
enough to have fallen in deep smit with Alexandre as soon as she stepped off
the boat — didn’t stand a chance. What had passed for romantic skills in the
colonies were considered coarse and unsophisticated in the motherland. Even her
name was unsuitable; the first thing Alexandre did was re-christen his new
wife. Yeyette, he said, was juvenile and silly. From now on she would be known
as Marie-Josèphe, which Alexandre thought had more of an aristocratic gloss.
Speaking of aristocrats, Josephine’s dreams of joining the
court at Versailles were dashed almost as soon as she arrived in France.
Alexandre had recently given himself the title of vicomte, and when the king
found out, he was furious. Instead of inviting the Beauharnaises to court,
Louis XVI fined them for illegally creating a new title. Alexandre, a
grudge-master extraordinaire, began nursing a secret resentment for the royal
family.
Even her name was unsuitable; the first thing Alexandre
did was re-christen his new wife. Yeyette, he said, was juvenile and silly.
Alexandre wasn’t alone in feeling this way. In 1779, it was
(unsurprisingly) quite fashionable for French aristocrats to talk shit about
the monarchy. For Josephine, who had grown up with a father who was starry-eyed
about all things royal, this was one more of the many ways that the reality of
France was at disorienting with odds her expectations. Part of the problem was
that Josephine was 16, with all the gawkiness of a typical teenager. But she
was also struggling with the expectations of womanhood, vastly different in
France than in the Caribbean. She was too childish, too exuberant, and still
wearing her loose cotton dresses from Martinique. Parisian women were expected
to be sexily aloof, and women’s clothing was still very Marie Antoinette, with
high, powdered hair and panniers so wide that women had to turn sideways to get
through doors. And it was the age of the Paris salon; Alexandre’s Aunt Fanny
hosted one of the most popular gatherings in the city. In order to succeed
socially, Josephine needed not just beauty and charm, but witty opinions on art
and literature. It was a tall order for a girl whose entire education was four
years at a school meant to churn out plantation wives.
Alexandre was deeply embarrassed by his new wife, and often
left her at home when he went out for social engagements. Not long after their
wedding, he rejoined his regiment and resumed his relationship with Laure, who
was by this point pregnant with his child. Josephine, who was bored, lonely,
and in love, wrote to him often. His replies were far less frequent, though, he
found plenty of time to write letters to friends and family complaining about
his bride, who he described as an “object who has nothing to say to me” and “a
creature with whom I can find nothing in common.” His letters to Josephine
alternated between scolding and outlining lesson plans to improve her vulgar mind
and habits.
Alexandre did manage to manfully set his feelings aside and
do his husbandly duty, and on September 3, 1781, Josephine gave birth to a son,
Eugène Rose de Beauharnais. Unfortunately, this didn’t do much to improve their
conjugal situation (having a shitty dude’s baby rarely does). Alexandre was
happy enough to have a legitimate heir but still thought his wife was
unspeakably beneath him; Josephine was still lonely and miserable. Aunt Edmée
decided that the solution was to send her nephew-in-law to Italy, where she
hoped he would miss his family and forget about Laure.
As with Aunt Edmée’s last great scheme, this one didn’t
shake out quite the way she’d hoped. Alexandre returned to Paris long enough to
impregnate Josephine again, then bolted in the middle of the night to join his
mistress. Laure’s father had recently died on Martinique, and Alexandre decided
to join her in traveling there. Perhaps sensing that this act would finally
cross a line with his pliable young wife, Alexandre wrote an uncharacteristically
tender letter to Josephine saying that he loved her and hoped she would forgive
him for leaving without saying goodbye. When she didn’t reply, he accused her
of neglecting him and said that she would only have herself to blame if their marriage
failed.
JOSEPHINE: can you believe the absolute nerve of this man?
JOSEPHINE: abandoning his family to go on his little
fuck-vacation with his little fuck-friend
JOSEPHINE: and then calling me neglectful!
JOSEPHINE: don’t worry, it gets worse
JOSEPHINE: when I gave birth a few weeks early, he decided
the baby wasn’t his
JOSEPHINE: he started interrogating people on Martinique to
find “evidence” against me
JOSEPHINE: and then he sent Laure back to Paris with a
letter telling me to get out of his house
JOSEPHINE: saying that I was the vilest of creatures and
beneath all the sluts in the world
JOSEPHINE: I might not have a lot of education, but I know
irony when I see it
ALEXANDRE: well, actually, the definition of irony is …
JOSEPHINE: oh my god fuck off
Shortly after Alexandre’s return to Paris — and after
receiving a few more abusive letters from him — Josephine and Eugène moved into
a convent (the new baby, Hortense, remained at Alexandre’s house because she
could not be separated from her wet nurse). Josephine applied for spousal
support and the court adjudicator, after reading the Martinique letters and
presumably muttering “yikes!” under his breath, ordered Alexandre to pay up.
Naturally, he refused. Still, things weren’t entirely bleak for Josephine. The
convent she’d chosen (with Aunt Edmée’s help) was very popular among
aristocratic women, and she made her first Parisian friends and began to learn
the secrets of being a Society Lady. Thanks to Alexandre’s abandonment, she
finally acquired the patina he’d so desperately wanted her to have.
By the time Josephine left the convent to join the marquis
and Aunt Edmée at their new house in the village of Fontainebleu, she was a
changed woman. She swished gracefully across rooms, peppered conversations with
droll remarks, and rouged her cheeks. Women’s fashions were changing; panniers
and huge coiffures were out, simpler dresses and natural hairstyles were in.
These looks both suited Josephine immensely — they were, after all, much closer
to the comfortable style that she’d grown up with — and she began to regain her
confidence.
Meanwhile, Alexandre was still being a shit. La plus ça
change! In 1785, when Josephine was in the convent, he had seized custody of
Eugène. Refusing to be cowed, she went to the provost of Paris to lodge a
complaint and wound up being awarded not only full custody of her son until he
was 5, but also custody of Hortense, a generous yearly sum for living expenses,
and the right to live wherever she wanted. Alexandre also had to formally
withdraw his accusations of infidelity. They had to remain married because
divorce was forbidden in the Catholic Church, but Josephine could start to
build a separate life for herself and her children.
* * *
Alexandre was determined to achieve Great Deadbeat Dad From
History status and continued to refuse to give Josephine any money. Which might
not have been a problem — she was living with her aunt, so she didn’t have room
and board expenses — except that Josephine had spent years trying to fill the
void Alexandre had left in her soul by buying pretty things. On credit. That
she absolutely couldn’t pay. Now, single, unable to remarry, and with no
ability to generate an income, she found herself hounded by debt collectors.
It wasn’t long before Josephine encountered one of the wild
reversals of fortune that would come to characterize her life. Fontainebleu was
where the king hunted, and she managed to befriend François Hué, the chief
clerk of the hunt. This was how she managed to secure a spot in the small group
permitted to follow the hunt, in spite of the fact that her knave of a husband
wasn’t welcome at court. It didn’t take Josephine long to figure out that
certain men — older, wealthy, married men — were only too happy to shower a
beautiful young woman with money and gifts. These men were far kinder to her
than her husband had ever been, and she found it easy to gain their affection.
Before long, her debts were paid off and then some.
Josephine probably could have continued milking rich
courtiers for their money for the rest of her life if France and its colonies
hadn’t been thrown into social upheaval. In 1788, she left for Martinique to
visit her parents; in the summer of 1790, she watched as a slave rebellion
shook the island. By the time she returned to France in October, 1790, the
Bastille had been stormed, the royal family had been removed from Versailles by
an angry mob, and everyone was wearing funny red hats.
FRANCE: yeah, so, we’re doing the whole revolution thing too
AMERICA: oh, cool! It worked out pretty OK for us
FRANCE: we were hoping you could give us a little inspo
actually
FRANCE: like, for example, what’s the best way to kill a
king?
AMERICA: we didn’t kill any kings
FRANCE: oh
FRANCE: but you murdered so many aristocrats that the
streets teemed with masterless dogs, right?
FRANCE: outlawed Christianity, invented your own calendar,
all that jazz?
AMERICA: uhhh … no, not exactly
AMERICA: but we did make a constitution!
FRANCE: honestly that sounds more like an amateur-hour
rebellion than a revolution
FRANCE: but you know what? That’s so nice for you and if
you’re happy, we’re happy
At first, the French Revolution treated the Beauharnais
family pretty well. While Josephine was in Martinique, noted king-hater
Alexandre found his calling as an anti-monarchist. Spite mixed with idealism:
an unbeatable combination! On her return to Paris, Josephine realized that her
husband’s new position opened all kinds of doors for her, even though they’d
been separated for nearly a decade. Josephine began to adopt the working class
clothing, manners, and speech of a true revolutionary citoyenne. Madame de
Beauharnais found herself inundated with invitations to salons and balls. Her
social clout grew even stronger when, during Alexandre’s first term as President
of the National Assembly, his decisive actions stopped the royal family’s
attempt to flee the country. The Vicomte de Beauharnais was a hero, and his
estranged wife was eager to exploit his new status.
If you think it’s weird that many aristocrats were low-key
treating the revolution as a fun new trend they could conspicuously consume
rather than, I don’t know, a way to help the masses achieve socioeconomic
equality, you’re not wrong. The lower-class sans-culottes (literally, “without
fancy pants”) were less than impressed that the same members of the upper
classes who had promised them freedom seemed pretty happy to propagate the
system they paid lip service to dismantling, and while Josephine and her
friends played dress-up and fêted the Revolution, the country was locked in
turmoil. The sans-culottes were demanding more radical change, several
international powers were threatening invasion, and there was a violent
counter-revolutionary movement within France itself; on top of all this, there
were questions of loyalty and morality within the ranks of the supporters of
the Revolution. This critical mass of unrest helped usher in the Reign of
Terror, a time of political purges that would lead to the executions of 17,000
men and women and the deaths of 10,000 more in prison. (Not-so-fun fact: the
beginning of the Reign of Terror was announced in the National Convention by
Bertrand Barère, who said, literally, “Let us make terror the order of the
day.” You would think they might want to, I don’t know, use some kind of
euphemism, but no, they straight up announced they were going to terrorize
people like that was a good thing, which is a hell of a PR spin.)
Louis XVI was already dead by then, and Marie Antoinette
soon followed. After that it was just people denouncing each other left, right,
and center, and the prisons began to fill. Josephine scrambled to shore up the
lie that she was just another working class gal; she had her children apprenticed
as a carpenter and a dressmaker, and declared herself a sans-culotte. She even
began referring to herself as an American, probably hoping to hide her origins
as a plantation owner’s daughter as slavery had been outlawed by France’s new
government. It was a pretty brazen lie, and nobody was buying what she was
selling: the Beauharnais’ social status was widely known and no aristocrats
were safe, not even those who supported the Revolution. In March, Alexandre was
accused of treason, arrested, and sent to Les Carmes, a prison housed in a
former convent. In April, Josephine followed him.
Les Carmes was a fetid cesspool and it was widely known that
no one ever left alive, so obviously there was one thing all of its inmates
were desperate to do: fuck each other. If there is one true aphrodisiac in this
life, it is the feeling that the apocalypse is nigh and there are no earthly
consequences for anything. Religion had been abolished, social mores had been
obliterated, and the only good thing left was desperate, hot Armageddon sex.
There were literally no downsides; every last stricture had been removed,
including the fear of pregnancy, since anyone who managed to conceive a child
in these dire circumstances received a stay of execution. The fucking situation
was completely win/win.
In Les Carmes, Alexandre had fallen in love with a woman
named Delphine de Custine; shortly after her arrival, Josephine began a
relationship with General Lazare Hoche.
ALEXANDRE: you know, this might sound weird, given all those
times I called you a slut
ALEXANDRE: but I’m actually happy for you and Lazare?
JOSEPHINE: no, I totally get it, I feel the same way about
you and Delphine
ALEXANDRE: all that time we spent making each other
miserable feels, like, I don’t know
ALEXANDRE: a luxury we can’t afford anymore
JOSEPHINE: is this your version of an apology?
ALEXANDRE: let’s just say that I have … regrets
JOSEPHINE: this is, like, the healthiest our marriage has
ever been
Josephine slowly adapted to life in Les Carmes. Like many of
the women there, she cropped her hair, a style that would come to be known as
“coiffure à la guillotine.” She befriended the other inmates and became
particularly close with Grace Elliott, a Scottish courtesan and spy, and Térésa
Cabarrus, the young mistress of revolutionary leader Jean-Lambert Tallien (who
was still free). The de Beauharnais children, meanwhile, had figured out a
brilliant way to communicate with their parents: Josephine’s pug, Fortuné. They
would tuck letters under the dog’s collar and send him off into the streets of
Paris; he was small enough to wriggle under the prison gates and smart enough
to always find his mistress in the crowded maze of cells. The letters brought a
small measure of comfort to her miserable life.
Every morning, the Revolutionary Tribunal came to collect
those who were about to be executed. Every evening, the remaining prisoners
went to bed wondering if their number would be up next.
On July 21, 1793, Alexandre was brought to trial. The
conclusion was foregone: by this point, legislation had been passed to waive
the rights of the accused to defense or cross-examination. On July 23, the
Revolutionary Tribunal declared that Alexandre de Beauharnais was a traitor. On
July 24, he was taken to the guillotine.
Shortly before his death, Alexandre sent Josephine a lock of
his hair and a tender letter. “I have no hope of seeing you again, my friend,
nor of embracing my dear children.” Although Alexandre didn’t come out and say
it, he and Josephine both knew that his execution spelled her doom. Less than a
week later, a guard came into Josephine’s cell and removed her bed. When one of
her cell mates asked if she was going to be given a better bed, the guard
replied that Josephine would no longer need a bed; the Revolutionary Tribunal
was coming for her that day.
Josephine just smiled serenely and comforted her friends.
They didn’t have to worry, she said, because she wasn’t going to die. She was
going to be the Queen of France. Thinking that grief had made her delusional,
her friends pretended to go along with it, asking if she’d appointed her
household yet.
Against all odds, Josephine was right, at least about
surviving; the Tribunal never came for her, and it turned out that she had her
friend Thérésa Cabarrus to thank for her life. Thérésa, tired of Tallien being
a fuckboy who was letting her languish in prison while he was living it up with
the people who put her there, had written him a scathing letter with such
choice lines as, “I die in despair at having belonged to a coward like you.”
Tallien apparently took her words to heart, because the next day he led an
attack on Robespierre in the National Convention. Robespierre was guillotined
on July 28.
That afternoon, Josephine looked out a window and saw a
peasant woman who, when she caught sight of Josephine, began gesturing wildly.
She placed a stone (pierre, in French) in her skirt of her dress (robe), and
then drew a finger across her throat. Robespierre was dead. The Reign of Terror
was over. Josephine was free.
* * *
In death, Alexandre boosted Josephine’s social status even
higher. As a survivor of the Reign of Terror and widow of a Revolutionary
martyr, she was at the top of the Parisian hierarchy. There were elite salons
and luncheons for survivors. There was even a “victim’s ball,” where attendance
was limited to people who had been imprisoned and family members of those who
had died in the Reign of Terror. Women wore thin white cotton chemises that
resembled prison uniforms, cropped hair à la guillotine, and red ribbons around
their necks to make it look like their heads had been severed. French people
truly cannot pass up one single opportunity to be extra as hell.
In spite of her popularity, Josephine was in dire straits.
As her star had risen, she’d fallen back into old spending habits; being
in-demand meant that she constantly needed more dresses, more rouge, more
everything. Now at 31 years old, she was broke, had two kids to raise on her
own, and was physically and emotionally scarred by her time in Les Carmes. She
had suffered a series of illnesses in prison — probably due to malnourishment
and the kinds of communicable diseases that flourish in filthy, overcrowded
environments — and afterwards was subject to fits of nervous collapse for the
rest of her life. On top of all that, her teeth, always cavity-prone thanks to
her childhood habit of sucking on sugarcane, were now in an advanced state of
decay; she learned to hide them with a handkerchief when speaking and got into
the habit of smiling with her lips pressed tightly together. But still, she was
determined to take advantage of the strange new hand fortune had dealt her and
make a fresh start. What other choice did she have?
Josephine’s relationship with Thérésa de Carrabus
flourished, and she served as a witness when the younger woman married
Jean-Lambert Tallien. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Thérésa was
now the most famous woman in all of France. The story of how she’d brought
about Robespierre’s downfall had spread like wildfire, and she was fêted as
“Our Lady of Thermidor” (Robespierre had been overthrown on July 27, which was
the 9th of Thermidor in the French Republican calendar). Thérésa’s style of
dress pushed the boundaries of propriety, and helped set the trend for an
aristocratic subculture called the Merveilleuses that reacted to the horrors
and privations of the Reign of Terror with an ironically decadent absurdity.
She favored gowns cut in the Neoclassical style, made with low necklines and
fabric so sheer that it left little to the imagination. Josephine soon adopted
this look for her own, wrapping herself in diaphanous robes so tight that they
couldn’t even hold pockets.
The morals of the Ancien Régime were passé, the Revolution
was over, and there was an almost delirious sense of relief — so, obviously,
everyone was still fucking everyone. The social order had been upended, and it
seemed like both everything and nothing was possible. Thérésa’s liquor-soaked
parties were the ultimate example of this, and they were attended by the crème
de la crème of Paris society. It was at these parties that Josephine met the
man who would set off the course of events that led to her becoming Empress of
France. His name was Paul Barras.
JOSEPHINE: you thought it was going to be Napoleon, didn’t
you?
JOSEPHINE: PSYCH
JOSEPHINE: I mean, don’t worry, we’re getting there
JOSEPHINE: but the list of men I was with before him is,
uhh, how do I put this?
JOSEPHINE: extensive
Paul Barras was another hero of the Revolution, a powerful
military commander who also happened to be filthy rich. Once she became his
mistress, Josephine’s money worries were finally over. She sent her children to
private schools, moved to a big house in a fancy neighborhood, and hired a huge
serving staff. Having already experienced several dramatic changes in fortune,
she knew that she should take advantage of being flush with cash while she
could. Who knew when the flow of money would stop?
Meanwhile, Barras had met Napoleon and, impressed by the
younger man’s military prowess, had taken him under his wing; the young
Corsican’s star was quietly on the rise, and Barras wanted to get in on the
ground floor. Napoleon had been born in 1769 to shabby-genteel parents, and his
life so far had been a series of improbable advances. First, he won a
scholarship to the Military School of Brienne, where he was bullied by the
other boys for being poor, Corsican, and short. Then, thanks to a natural
talent for mathematics, he gained a spot at the prestigious École Militaire in
Paris. After graduation, he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the army
and by the time he was 24, he was a brigadier general. But in spite of his
successful career, his personal life was a mess.
By the time Napoleon entered Josephine’s life, he was a
lonely, disaffected outcast. He had returned to Paris after his military
victories expecting high society to fall over itself to welcome him; it did
not. Infuriated by this rejection, the 26-year-old began writing a romance
novel. This was an especially staggering undertaking since he had absolutely no
experience with love, although that wasn’t for lack of trying. Napoleon had
been desperately pursuing relationships with various society women, but they
found him to be unkempt, crude, and boorish. The more women rejected him, the
more he wanted (and hated) them — and not just any women, either. Like a modern
4chan incel, Napoleon felt entitled to a high-status wife who matched his
high-status ambitions. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. At least, not
until he met Josephine.
It was at a dinner that Barras was hosting that Napoleon met
Josephine; the future Emperor later said that she was the first woman he’d met
in Paris who hadn’t ignored him or treated him rudely. Instead, perhaps primed
by Barras (who had purposely seated his protegé next to his mistress), she gave
him the full force of her famous charm: she listened to him, sympathized with
him, praised him. Napoleon was immediately obsessed. Josephine was polite and
allowed her new devotee to spend time with her, but she wasn’t interested in
having a sexual relationship with Napoleon.
Barras saw a fierce talent and ambition in Napoleon that he
wanted to control and hoped that he might secure his protégé’s loyalty by
passing along his mistress, which is a totally normal and respectful way to
treat women. Not long after Barras introduced Napoleon and Josephine, he put
the young brigadier general in charge of quashing a royalist uprising; Napoleon
gleefully complied, using cannons to fire grapeshot into the crowd. By the time
he was done, 300 royalists had been killed. Barras and his pals used this
uprising as an excuse to abolish the current government and install the
Directory, five men who would be in charge of everything. The Directory was led
by — you guessed it —Paul Barras, who quickly appointed Napoleon as
commander-in-chief of the Army of the Interior.
PAUL BARRAS: well, you know what they say
PAUL BARRAS: keep your friends close
PAUL BARRAS: and keep the men you want to manipulate closer
PAUL BARRAS: close enough to see you girlfriend’s …
PAUL BARRAS: never mind, that was going to be crass
As Napoleon began to gain power and social clout, Josephine
began to find him more attractive. Maybe he wore her down with his low-key
stalker behavior, maybe he began to seem more like a feasible
partner/benefactor once he started making more money, or maybe she was thinking
about Euphémie’s prediction from all those years ago. Whatever her reasons, Josephine
wrote to him saying that she was “tenderly attracted” to him and that she
wished to talk to him about “matters that will interest” him. By the end of the
year, they were sleeping together; the morning after their first liaison,
Napoleon wrote her a smitten letter saying that, “one night together has taught
me how your portrait falls short of the reality!”
It was around this time that Napoleon began calling her by
the name that would soon be notorious throughout his empire and beyond. The
days of Yeyette, Rose, and Marie-Josèphe were over. The age of Josephine had
begun.
_____
De LONGREADS, abril 2019
