ONE WIFE
WE have already alluded to the intensely needy period of Napoleon’s
life, which was mainly centred around the year 1795. He knew himself to
be a world conqueror; he despised the shifty intriguers who controlled
at that time both his own destiny and that of France; he bitterly envied
the few insolent survivors of the old noblesse whom he had met, while
his very bread was precariously earned. It was a maddening situation.
Then circumstances suddenly took a change for the better. By a happy
accident Barras employed him to put down the revolt of the sections, and
within a few days Napoleon found himself general of the army of the
interior, and a person of some consequence. Still, there were bitter
drops even in this first draught of success, for his position depended
solely on the whim of the readily corruptible Director, who could with a
word have sent him either to a dungeon or to a command-in-chief.
Moreover, the haughty Parisian society regarded the gaunt, desperately
earnest general of twenty-six with an amusement they made no attempt to
conceal. Parisian society had had nearly two years by now in which to
concentrate, and it was already crystallizing out. There were old
sans-culottes, now Ambassadors, Ministers or Directors. There were Army
contractors in hordes. There were their wives (either by courtesy or by
Republican law) who were just recovering from the _sans chemise_ phase
and beginning to ape the old customs of the _haut noblesse_. Finally
there were a few of the old court families along with innumerable
pretenders, ex-valets masquerading as ci-devant marquises; comtesses (as
_précieuses_ as they could manage) who had once been kitchenmaids, while
every name hinted at a “de” which had been perforce dropped during the
Terror. And because trifling was for the moment the fashion, this select
band could well afford to sneer at the ridiculous little Corsican
officer who meant everything he said, and who had had great difficulty
before the Revolution in proving the three generations of noble descent
necessary to obtain nomination as a military cadet.
Napoleon in these circumstances acted very much as he did in a military
difficulty. He selected the most advantageous objective, flung himself
upon it, and followed up his initial success without hesitation. He
broke into the charmed circle of Directory society by marrying one of
its shining lights.
Josephine, vicomtesse de Beauharnais, was a representative of the
farthest outside fringe of Court society under the old régime. Her
marriage with Beauharnais had been arranged by her aunt, who was her
father-in-law’s mistress. This unfortunate relationship, combined with
poverty and the obscurity of the family, had barred most of the doors of
pre-Revolutionary society to her, and the Beauharnais were, in the minds
of the Montmorencys and Rohans, no more worthy of notice than the merest
bourgeois. Of this fact Bonaparte cannot have been ignorant, no matter
what has been said to the contrary, but it was of no importance to him.
He cared little even for the fact that Beauharnais had been at one time
a President of the Constituent Assembly and Commander-in-Chief of the
Army of the Rhine, before meeting the fate of most of the
Commanders-in-Chief of 1794. All that mattered to Bonaparte was that
Josephine was a member of the narrow circle of the Directory, that in
fact she and Madame Tallien were the two most important women therein,
and that marriage with her would gain him admission also. The Directory
was fast becoming a close oligarchy keeping a jealous eye watching for
intruders, and Napoleon had to act at once. His policy was soon
justified, for immediately after his marriage his position was
recognized by the offer of the longed-for command of the Army of Italy.
There were other considerations as well. Josephine possessed a wonderful
charm of manner, and her taste was irreproachable. The beauty of her
figure was undoubted; that of her face was enhanced by dexterous art. To
Napoleon, starved of the good things of life, and incredibly lustful
after them, she must have appeared a houri of his Paradise. The violence
of his reaction from a forced self-control may be judged by the stream
of passionate letters which he sent her every few hours during the
opening of his campaign of Italy. Heaven knows he had difficulties
enough to contend with there, what with mutinous generals, starving
soldiers, and an enemy twice his strength, but we find him snatching a
few minutes two or three times a day to turn from his labours and
worries in order to contemplate the joys he had attained, and
endeavouring to express them on paper.
Josephine’s motives were also mixed. She was thirty-two years of age,
and she was desperately poor. Her late husband’s property was almost
entirely situated in the West Indies, and it was now held by the
English. Her dreadful experiences under the Terror, when she was
imprisoned and within an ace of being guillotined, had probably aged her
and shaken her nerve. Barras and various bankers had helped her with
funds (perhaps expecting a return, perhaps not) but such resources would
soon come to an end. In this extremity, appeared Napoleon, pressing an
urgent suit. After all, he was not too bad a match. He was already
general of the army of the interior, and between them both they ought to
screw some better appointment out of Barras. He had not a sou to bless
himself with beside his pay, but Republican generals usually found means
to become rich in a short time. If he were killed, there would be a
pension; if he survived, and was unsuccessful, divorce was easy under
Republican law. She obviously stood to gain much and to lose little.
And then it could not be denied that Napoleon had a way with him. His
fierce Southern nature would sometimes raise a response in her. After
all, she was a Creole, and her Creole blood could hardly fail to stir at
his passionate wooing. Although six years his senior, disillusioned,
experienced, hardened and shallow though she was, there were times when
his tempestuous advances carried her away.
Yet at other times, when he was absent, and she had once more caught the
infection of cynicism and trifling from her associates, Napoleon
appeared vaguely absurd to her. “Il m’ennuie,” she would say, languidly
turning the pages of his letters. She had no desire to leave Paris,
where she was enjoying the prestige of being the wife of a successful
general, to share with him the privations of active service. Only when
Lombardy was in his hands, and a palace and an almost royal reception
were awaiting her, did she join him.
Moreover, until she had a position to lose, she undoubtedly indulged in
flirtations. Corsican jealousy may have played a part in the furious
rages to which Napoleon gave rein, but there is no denying that
Josephine was several times indiscreet. In turn, he suspected Hippolyte
Charles, a young and handsome army contractor, Murat (at that time his
aide-de-camp) and even Junot, his blind admirer.
By the time that Napoleon was nearing supreme power, his brief passion
for Josephine had burnt itself out. He himself had already been several
times unfaithful to her, and the only feeling that still remained was
the half-pitying affection a man bears towards a discarded mistress. On
his return from Egypt he found elaborate preparations made for him. His
family, poisonously jealous of Josephine, were waiting with
circumstantial accounts of her actions, and they pressed him to obtain a
divorce. Josephine, who had set out to meet him, in order to get in the
first word, had taken the wrong road and missed him, so that the
Bonaparte family had a clear field. They made the most of it. Josephine
returned to Paris to find her husband almost determined upon divorce.
At one and the same time Napoleon had to endure the anxieties of the
_coup d’état_, the urging of his brothers and sisters and the appeals of
his wife and step-children. It must have been a severe trial, and in the
end he gave way to Josephine. Probably he realized that it was the
wisest thing he could do. He could ill afford a scandal at this crisis
in his career, and Josephine was a really useful helpmate to him. He
paid off her debts (to the amount of a mere hundred thousand pounds) and
settled down to make the best of things.
The lesson was not lost on Josephine. She was now the first lady of the
Continent, and never again did she risk the loss of that position.
Thenceforward she lived a life of rigid correctness, and instead it was
Napoleon who became more and more unfaithful to her.
It was a strange period through which Josephine now lived. On the one
hand she had reached heights of which she could never have dreamed
before; on the other was the bitter probability that all her power and
position would vanish in a moment when Napoleon made up his mind to take
the plunge. The other Bonapartes were most bitterly hostile to her, and
lost no opportunity of displaying their hostility. The only possible
method of making her position permanent was to have a child, and this
boon was denied her. And yet Napoleon found her a most invaluable ally.
Her queenly carriage and perfect taste in clothes were grateful in a
Court the awkwardness of whose manners was the jest of Europe. The
majority of Frenchmen were honestly fond of her, and her tactful
distribution of the charitable funds placed at her disposal by Napoleon
enhanced this sentiment. In her meetings with royalty she was superb;
she displayed the arrogance neither of an upstart nor of an Empress; the
Kings of Würtemberg and of Bavaria grew exceedingly fond of her. Most
important of all, perhaps, was the help which she gave Napoleon during
the Bayonne Conference. The haughty grandees of Spain, the harebrained
Prince of the Asturias and even the imbecile King himself showed her the
deepest respect, despite the fact that Napoleon was endeavouring to
coerce them into handing over the crown to his brother.
The occasions were rare, however, when Josephine was allowed to enter
into more than the mere ceremonies of international politics. She was
neither allowed to act nor to advise. At the least hint of interference
on her part Napoleon was up in arms on the instant. Current rumour
credited her with attempting to save the life of the Duc d’Enghien, and
this has frequently been affirmed since, but from what we know of
Napoleon and from what we know of Josephine we can only conclude that
her attempt was timid and that Napoleon’s refusal was blank and brief.
For Josephine there only remained a purely decorative function. Other
activities were denied to her (one cannot help thinking that she did not
strive for them with much vigour); she was placidly content to spend her
days in inspections of her wardrobe, in changing her toilettes half a
dozen times daily and talking scandal with her ladies-in-waiting.
These amusements were not quite as harmless as might be imagined, for
her passion for dress caused her to run heavily into debt, and every
jeweller in Paris knew that he had only to send her jewellery for
inspection for it to be instantly bought. To pay her debts she was put
to curious expedients. She was in continual terror lest her husband
should discover them, and she gladly paid enormous blackmail to her
creditors to postpone the day of claim. She even appealed for assistance
to Ministers and other high officials sooner than tell Napoleon.
Naturally the storms which occurred when the day of reckoning could no
longer be put off were terrible. Napoleon raged ferociously at every
discovery. He paid the debts, it is true, but he usually arbitrarily
reduced the totals by a quarter or even a half before doing so. Even
then the tradespeople made a large profit, for they not only made
allowance for his action, but they also took full advantage of
Josephine’s uninquiring nature.
The unstable situation dragged along, to the surprise of many people, to
the consternation of many others, and to the delight of even more, for
several nerve-racking years. The end had to come sooner or later, and it
came surprisingly late.