Napoleon and his court

by C. S. Forester

Napoleon’s sisters resembled him much more closely than did his brothers. Xerxes, watching Artemisia fighting desperately at Salamis, exclaimed, “This woman plays the man while my men play the woman,” and a dispassionate observer of the conduct of the rulers of the countries of Europe in the Napoleonic era might well say the same. One has only to compare Joseph Bonaparte flying from Vittoria, or Murat flying from Tolentino, with Caroline rallying the Neapolitans, Louise of Prussia fighting desperately hard against fate at Tilsit, and Marie Caroline of Bourbon directing Sicily’s struggle with the great conqueror.

There are obvious differences, too, between Napoleon’s treatment of his brothers and his treatment of his sisters. Joseph and Jerome and Louis he bullied unmercifully, but it was far otherwise with Pauline, Caroline and Elise. He himself admitted that he always “formed into line of battle” in preparation for an interview with Caroline, and although authorities are at variance as to when he actually said to his family that anyone would think he was trying to rob them of the inheritance of the late King, their father, it is certain that the remark was addressed to his sisters and mother. They were all of them women with a very keen sense of what they wanted, and they fought like tiger-cats to obtain it.

The three girls all married before or during the Consulate, when Napoleon had not yet attained the heights he reached later, so that the marriages they made were by no means as brilliant as they might have been, and fell far short of the marriages which Napoleon arranged for much more distant relatives who became marriageable at a later period. Elise was old enough to experience acutely the trials of poverty which overtook the family before Napoleon was promoted to important commands. She was sent as a child to school at St. Cyr, a state-supported institution under the patronage of the Bourbons, and had to leave there at the same time as the Bonaparte family had to fly from Corsica to Marseilles. During the next few years she was rather a trial to her family, for she flirted with every man she met, eligible and ineligible. One of her admirers was Admiral Truguet, who was a thoroughly good sailor and quite a good match at that time, but Madame Bonaparte declined to allow the affair to develop. In the end it was a fellow Corsican, Félix Baciocchi, who gained her hand. Baciocchi was a distant connection of the Bonaparte family, and also, by a curious coincidence, he was a relation of Charles Andrea Pozzo di Borgo, another Corsican, who is believed to have been at feud with the Bonapartes, and who certainly distinguished himself, while in the service of various European monarchs, by his virulent hatred of Napoleon.

But Baciocchi did not distinguish himself at all. He was a complete nonentity, with neither the desire nor the capacity to achieve power. At the marriage Elise only brought him thirty thousand francs as dowry (her share of the Bonaparte property, now recovered from the Paolists), but after 1797 Napoleon was able to make Elise presents of considerably greater value. Baciocchi was then a major of infantry; but during the Consulate his wife endeavoured to obtain higher military command for him. So persistently did she scheme to this end that at last in self-defence Napoleon made him a senator in order to cut short his military career.

Pauline, the next sister, married Leclerc, a capable soldier, who rendered Napoleon valuable service during the coup d’état of Brumaire. He, at least, was worthy of promotion, and Bonaparte gave it to him lavishly. But it was Caroline, the youngest, who looked after herself best. Most of the generals of the Consulate sought her hand, including Lannes, but both Napoleon and Caroline desired alliance with the greatest of them all, Moreau. However, Moreau declined the honour (thereby directly bringing about his own exile soon after), and Caroline chose for herself a husband of whose military talents she was sufficiently sure to be certain that high command would be given him, but who also was sufficiently weak-willed to be well under her thumb. Lannes was of too lofty a type to please her in this respect, and his personal devotion to Napoleon was undoubted; Caroline therefore selected a young cavalry officer, Murat.

Pauline experienced an unfortunate beginning to the career she had planned for herself and her husband. Leclerc was appointed to the command of the expeditionary force which was sent to subdue Hayti, and Pauline was ordered to accompany him. In vain she pleaded ill-health; in vain she said that her complexion would be ruined by the West Indian sun; Napoleon was adamant. Pauline kept up the plea of ill-health sufficiently well to be carried on board ship at Brest in a litter, but the expedition started. As was only to be expected, it ended in disastrous failure. Toussaint l’Ouverture, the leader of the rebellion, was indeed captured and sent to France to perish in a freezing mountain prison, but yellow fever attacked the French troops, and they died in thousands. Leclerc was one of those who perished.

Napoleon himself was able to gain some satisfaction even from the failure, because the men he had sent had all been drawn from the Army of the Rhine, and they were all guilty of the crime of believing that Moreau was a great man, and that Hohenlinden was a greater victory than Marengo. But, as has been said, the French died in thousands; the negroes fought stoutly, and at last after fifteen thousand Frenchmen had perished only a miserable fragment of the expeditionary force survived to be withdrawn under Rochambeau. Pauline returned to France to deplore her ruined complexion.

However, with the establishment of the Empire the sisters found plenty to occupy their minds in acquiring as much spoil as possible. Money they sought greedily, and Napoleon gave them millions of francs. They shed tears of rage when they found that the Emperor expected them to remain content with being plain Mesdames Murat, Leclerc and Baciocchi, while the hated Josephine was Sa Majesté Impériale et Royale l’Impératrice et Reine, and while plain Julie Clary and Hortense Beauharnais (Joseph’s and Louis’s wives) were Imperial and Royal Highnesses. Napoleon gave way to their bitter pleadings and at one stroke created them Princesses of the Empire, making their husbands Princes at the same time.

These names, Elise, Pauline and Caroline, were not the baptismal names of the ladies concerned. At baptism they had been given Italian names, each of them attached to the ever popular name of Maria. Their mother was Maria Letizia; while Elise was really Maria Anna, Pauline, Maria Paoletta and Caroline, Maria Annunziata. It is by these names that they are described on their marriage certificates, but they dropped them soon afterwards to assume names which appealed to them more. Changing their names did not change their natures; they intrigued and schemed and plotted; they flirted; they sought favours; they quarrelled with their husbands, with their sisters-in-law, and with each other; in fact they exhibited all the fierce self-seeking which characterized the ladies of the old monarchy. There was this difference, however. Fifty years before the Court ladies had intrigued for places, and for thousands of francs. Now they intrigued for kingdoms and millions.

Caroline early took first place in the race for power. Her husband, Murat, distinguished himself in the Austerlitz campaign by capturing the great bridge over the Danube by a trick which savoured rather of treachery, and by bold heading of cavalry charges at Austerlitz itself. He was already a Prince and second senior Marshal of the Empire; the only possible promotion left for him was a sovereignty. Napoleon, carving out his Confederation of the Rhine, found him one. A tiny area on the Rhine was obtained by exchange from Prussia and Bavaria, and Murat and Caroline became Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Berg and Cleves. Caroline was in no way satisfied. She egged her husband on to demand increases of territory, privileges of toll on the Rhine, and so on, until the little state had set both France and Prussia in a ferment. The tension hardly relaxed until, a month or two later, war broke out between the two countries. Murat went away with the Grand Army to Jena, Eylau and Friedland; Caroline stayed behind in Paris to guard their interests. She did it well. She indulged in an outrageous flirtation with Junot, Governor of Paris, and hints have not been wanting that her purpose was to arrange a revolution rather on the same lines as Mallet tried to follow in 1812. At her palace of the Elysée (now the official residence of the President of the Third Republic) she gave the most brilliant fêtes imaginable. She worked like a slave to gain popularity, so that she could gain the throne in the event of her brother’s death. Then Tilsit followed Friedland, and the Emperor returned. The campaign had brought more glory to Murat than he had as yet gained. He had headed the marvellous pursuit after Jena, when he had captured fortresses with a few regiments of Hussars, and it was largely through him that practically the whole Prussian army had fallen into the hands of the French. At Eylau, when Augereau’s corps had come reeling back through the blizzard, shattered and almost annihilated, when it seemed as though the Grand Army was at last going to taste defeat, Napoleon had called on Murat to save the day. Murat replied by charging at the head of eighteen thousand cavalry. He broke up the first Russian line, captured thousands of prisoners, and beat back the Russians until Davout and Ney were in position.