1 03 246
Madame
Letizia
A Portrait of
Napoleon s Mother
by MONICA STIRLING
Napoleon's mother was a woman of
itstanding beauty, courage, energy and
gnity. Throughout her long life she
;ver ceased to be the center of the ex-
aordinary Bonaparte family. Her sense
: destiny, her aristocratic pride and her
issionate temperament contributed in
rge measure to Napoleon's own charac-
r and to his consequent place in histy.
is strange, therefore, considering the
.st number of books written about
apoleon and his brothers and sisters,
)w very few have been devoted to this
markable woman, whose personal life
as so closely linked with the chief actors
three-quarters of a century of cataclys-
ic changes.
Letizia Ramolino, born in Corsica dur-
g the reign of Louis XV, died in her
oman palace the year before Queen Vic-
ria came to the throne of England. At
irteen she married an eighteen-year-old
w student, Carlo-Maria Buonaparte.
Dgether the young couple rallied to the
Drsican struggle for independence. At
jhteen Letizia, pregnant with Napo-
(Continued on back flap)
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Biography
MADAME LETIZIA: A Portrait of Napoleon's Mother
THE FINE AND THE WICKED: The Life and Times of Ouida
MADAME LETIZIA
BY MONICA STIRLING
Harper & Brothers: New York
Copyright 1961 by Monica Stirling
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved,
No part of this book may be used or repro-
duced in any manner whatsoever without
written permission except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in . critical articles
and reviews. For information address
Harper & Brothers,
49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.
FIRST EDITION
This book was published in England
under the title A PRIDE OF LIONS.
Library of Congress catalog card number: 62-7915
To Solita
LETIZIA RAMOLINO (1750-1836)
1
I
1
1
JOSEPH
NAPOLEON
LUCIEN
ELISA
(Giuseppe)
(Napoleone)
(Lucciano)
(Maria-Anna)
1768-1844
1769-1821
1775-1840
1777-1820
married 1794
married (i) 1796
married (i) 1794
married 1797
Julie Clary
Josephine de
Catherine Boyer
Felice Pasquak
(1771-1844)
Beauharnais
(1773-1800)
Baeciocbi
i
(1763-1814)
i
(1762-1841)
2 daughters
Marriage dissolved
4 children
i
1809
5 children
married (2) 1805
married (2) 1810
Alexandrine
Marie-Louise, Arch-
Joubertbon
duchess of Austria
(1778-1855)
(1791-1847)
i
i
10 children
i son
Joseph's elder
daughter, Zenaide,
married her first
cousin, Lucien, a
remarkable orni-
thologist.
In 1952 his great-
great-great-grand-
son, Alessandro
Giunta, married
Mussolini*s grand-
daughter, Raimofida
Ciano di Cortellcqgp.
In 1954 Joseph's
great-great-great-
grandchildren num-
bered 41 Italian and
4 French.
The present Swedish royal family is de-
scended from Joseph's sister-in-law, Desirto
Clary, who married Marshal Bernadotte.
He became Charles XIV of Sweden
(18x8-44).
Napoleon's son,
NapoJeon-Franfois-
Cbarles-]oseph (i 8 1 1-
32), was given the
title King of Rome
at birth. His mother
took him to Vienna
in 1814, In June
1815 he was legally
proclaimed Napoleon
II, but he never
reigned, and died a
prisoner in Vienna.
In 1954 his great-
great-great-grand-
children numbered
over 150: 103
Italian, the rest
French, Spanish,
Polish and British.
Lucien's great-
grandson, the Comte
Giuseppe Primoli
(1852-1927), founded
the Bonaparte
Museum in Rome.
This branch now
extinct.
CARLO BUONAPARTE (1746-85)
1
1
i
i
LOUIS
PAULINE
CAROLINE
JEROME
(Luigi)
(Maria-Paola)
(Maria- Annunziata)
(Girokmo)
1778-1846
1780-1825
1782-1839
1784-1860
married 1802
married (i) 1797
married 1800
married (i) 1803
Eortense de
V if for Emmanuel
Joachim Murat
Elizabeth Patterson
fteauharnais
Leclerc
(1771-1815)
(1785-1879)
(1783-1837)
(1772-1802)
i
Marriage annulled
i
i
4 children
1804
3 sons
i son (d. 1804)
i
i child
married (2) 1803
Prime Camillo
married (2) 1807
Eorghese
Princess Catherine of
(1775-1832)
Wurttemberg
(1783-1835)
3 children
Louis's youngest This branch now
In 1 9 54 her great-
son, Louis-Napoleon extinct.
great-great-grand-
(1808-73), reigned as
children numbered
Napoleon III (ifyz-
3 8 Italian, 3 2 French,
70). After the
3 Austrian, 3 Polish,
Franco-Prussian War
2 German and
of 1870, he took
i English.
refuge in England,
The 7th Prince
His only son, the
Murat was killed in
Prime Imperial
1944 while serving
(b. 1856), was killed
in the French Army
in 1 879 while serving
during the Libera-
with the British
tion.
Army against the
Zulus. This branch
thus became extinct.
daughter of Victor
The American
branch became ex-
tinct in 1945, but
through Jer6me's
American great-
granddaughter there
are now 6 Danish
great-great-great-
grandchildren.
Of the children of
his second marriage,
the youngest, Prince
Napoleon (1822-91),
married Princess
Clotilde of Savoy,
mmanuel II of Italy.
Their son, Prince Napoleon, married Princess
Clementine of Belgium, daughter of Leopold
II and great-granddaughter of Louis-
Philippe of France. Their son, Louis-
Napoleon-] erom e-Victor, Prince Napoleon (b.
1914), is the present head of the family.
Contents
i. MORNING : CORSICA 17
1750-85
n. TRANSFORMATION 57
1785-93
in. AFTERNOON : FRANCE 83
1793-1814
iv. TRANSFORMATION 189
1814-15
v. NIGHT : ITALY 229
1815-36
EPILOGUE 293
1951
BIBLIOGRAPHY 299
INDEX 309
ILLUSTRATIONS APPEAR FOLLOWING PAGES 98 AND 194.
Acknowledgments
For generous help I want to thank His Excellency Monsieur
Gaston Palewski, French Ambassador to the Quirinal ; His
Excellency Monsieur Roland de Margery, French Ambassador
to the Holy See, and Madame de Margery ; Monsieur le
Vicomte Fleuriot de Langle, curator of the Marmottan Museum ;
the staff of the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris and of the
Museo Napoleonico in Rome. I am also very grateful to the
Marchesa Misciattelli, Madame Odette Arnaud, Mrs. St. George
Saunders, Signora Livia de Stefani, Madame la Comtesse de
Caraman, Mr. and Mrs. T. C. V. Roe, Professor Carlo Pietr-
angeli, Inspector of Museums of the City of Rome, Monsieur
Labauge and Monsieur Mardikian of the Librakie Galignani,
and Monsieur Michel Richard of the cultural department of the
French Foreign Office.
The publishers are grateful to Mrs. George Barnbridge and
Messrs. Macmillan and Co., Ltd., for permission to reproduce
the four stanzas from " A St. Helena Lullaby " from Rewards
and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling.
Author's Note
One of the problems I encountered in writing this book was
that of selecting between contradictory pieces of evidence.
There is an immense body of literature about Napoleon (the
German bibliographer Kircheisen lists 200,000 titles), and
many books have been devoted to his brothers and sisters. But
of his mother I found only five biographies in French, one in
English and one in German. The details concerning her are
scattered through her children's biographies and letters and are
often at variance. The Bonaparte story still arouses contro-
versial passion because, as a man, Napoleon was the apotheosis
of individualism, and by his genius dominated France at a period
when France dominated Europe and Europe dominated the
world.
Letizia Bonaparte's first biographer, Baron Larrey, son of
the Baron Larrey who was surgeon-in-chief with Napoleon's
armies, says it is difficult to establish the exact date of her birth
as the Ajaccio archives were destroyed by fire in 1789. The date
usually given in encyclopaedias and books of reference is 1750,
and I have accepted this because it is the date she herself gave in
the brief Souvenirs she dictated in her old age ; it is also the
date listed in the Almanach Imperial^ no copy of which went to
press without having been checked by Napoleon.
In Napoleon, a widely admired book by the eminent Soviet
historian Eugene Tarle, the author states that after Napoleon
left Elba in February 1815, to return to France, his mother
never saw him again. This is not so. She joined him in Paris
U
in April, was with him until he left for Waterloo, and, after this
battle, took her last farewell of him at Malmaison, Several
writers mention that Madame Letizia's faithful Corsican servant,
Saveria, dined with her on board the ship that took them to
Elba. I saw no reason to question this until I read the journal
of Sir Neil Campbell, the English Commissioner who acted as
Letizia's escort on this trip. He wrote : " Captain Battersby
and two of his officers, M. Saveira, a passenger, and myself, all
dined with Madame on deck." I mention these two points, one
important the other trivial, because they are typical of the
riddles that resulted from comparing the works of reputable
authors.
Where sums of money are concerned I have quoted the
original figures, thinking that attempts to give modern equiv-
alents would lead to confusion unless accompanied by details
of contemporary salaries, their purchasing power and relation
to the cost of living, all of which varied wildly during the
Revolution, Mr. Theodore Besterman, one of the greatest
scholars of this period, wrote in 1953 that in mid-eighteenth
century one French franc (livre) was equal to one modern
American dollar. There seems no doubt that the franc was the
stable currency in the world during the nineteenth century (as
the pound sterling and the dollar were to become later), and
from 1799-1914 the rate of exchange was approximately 100,000
francs (livres)= 20,000 dollars= 4,000.
I have used no fact for which there is not written evidence.
Where the problem of contradictory statements seemed in-
soluble, I have given both versions ; otherwise I have given
the one that seemed to me most in keeping with Madame
Letizia's character.
For the text of her letters I was privileged to use the col-
lection, mostly in the original Italian, in the Bonaparte Museum
in Rome. There are several ways of spelling her name, but
Letizia is how she always signed herself.
Morning : Corsica
1750-85
Elle etait belle comme les amours.
NAPOLEON
. . . Letitia Ramolino, a young woman eminent for beauty and
for strength of mind . . .
JOHN GIBSON LOCKHART: Ufe of Napoleon Buonaparte
Napoleon's mother was a 'woman comparable with Plutarch's
heroines, with Portia, Cornelia and Madame Roland. Her
impassive, firm and ardent nature recalls even more the Italian
heroines of the Middle Ages. ... It is by the perfectly Italian
quality of Madame Letizia that her son's character must be
explained.
STENDHAL : Memoires sur Napoleon
How far is St. Helena from a little child at play?
What makes you want to wander there with all the world between?
Oh, Mother, call your son again or else he'll run away.
(No one thinks of winter when the grass is green!)
KIPLING : A. St. Helena Lullaby
ON JUNE 3RD, 1764, a beautiful Corsican girl of nearly
fourteen was married in Ajaccio Cathedral to Carlo-
Maria Buonaparte, an eighteen-year-old law student whose
family belonged to the island nobility. Born Letizia Ramolino,
this girl was to enter history as Napoleon's mother, and while
she owes her fame to her son, he owed her the powerful temper-
ament that made his achievements possible.
Although Corsica was just then about to revolt once more
against the domination of the Genoese Republic, political
tension did not spoil the wedding celebrations. Political
conflict was a commonplace in this often-invaded island, but
the spectacle of a bride such as Letizia was rare. Ever since she
was a small child, her black eyes, classic features, perfect teeth
and chestnut-coloured hair had caused people to point her out
to strangers as " Ajaccio's little marvel," and cathedral gossips
said that her presence at mass was " more effective than an
anchorite's virtue " in obtaining conversions. On her wedding-
day the dramatic effect of Letizia's beauty was heightened by an
escort of more than fifty handsome and energetic male cousins.
In a country where the vendetta remained the popular form of
justice, male relatives were as valuable a part of a girl's dowry as
land, houses or money. (Later, when the English occupied
Corsica, seventeen of these " terrible cousins " successfully
ambushed fifty-four of the invaders.)
Of Italian origin, the Ramolinos were related to the Coll' Alto
family that dominated Lombardy in the fourteenth century and
settled in Corsica, the third largest island in the Mediterranean,
Madame Letizia
about a hundred years later. In 1745, Letizia's father, Gian
Girolamo Ramolino, captain of the garrison at Ajaccio, had
married Angela-Maria di Pietra Santa, a young girl who came of
an old Corsican family and grew up at Bocognano, a mountain
village rich in bandits, vendettas and giant chestnut trees. Over
half a century later, Napoleon said of Angela-Maria di Pietra
Santa that when an " argument " arose, his maternal grand-
mother could summon between two and three hundred militant
mountaineers to support her side of it.
About the time of his marriage, Gian Girolamo Ramolino
was made Inspector-General of Roads and Bridges, and fre-
quently had occasion to offer hospitality to the French soldiers
hired by Genoa to keep order in Corsica. Both Gian Girolamo's
first child, which died in infancy, and his second, which sur-
vived, were born during lulls in the conflict ; but for this second
child, Maria-Leti2ia, born in Ajaccio on August 24th, 1750,
peace soon acquired rarity value. She was only two when the
French commander, the popular Marquis de <Cursay, left the
island, with the result that the patriots in the interior immedi-
ately rose in arms. Three years later (the year Marie-Antoinette
was born in Vienna) Gian Girolamo died, leaving his daughter to
grow up surrounded by violence.
This same year the patriots chose Clemente Paoli to succeed
their leader, Gaffori, who had just been killed. Aware that he
lacked the requisite qualities for leadership, Clemente asked to
be replaced by his thirty-year-old brother, Pasquale Paoli, who
promptly returned from Naples, where he had been sharing his
father's exile and serving as an officer in the Neapolitan army.
Hostile to both Genoa and France, Paoli hoped for support
from England, where, thanks to the publication in 1768 of
BoswelTs widely read Journal of a Tour to Corsica; and Memoirs
of Pascal Paoli, he later became a popular hero.
When Letizia was seven her mother married again. Her
second husband was Franz Fesch, an intelligent and industrious
Swiss from Basle then serving in Corsica as a captain with the
20
Morning: Corsica
Genoese marines. Angela-Maria refused to marry him unless
he became a Catholic. He obeyed her wishes and was con-
sequently disinherited by his family. Always disposed to love
her relatives, Letizia became devoted to her stepfather, whose
stories of " the mainland," as Corsicans called the Continent,
together with those of the French soldiers befriended by her
father, gave her her first impressions of the strange world beyond
the Mediterranean that her son was one day to rule.
The next year Paoli drove the Genoese out of Corsica and
established himself as a benevolent dictator. During the thirteen
years he remained in power he built roads, abolished the rights
of the brigand chiefs, founded schools, printing presses and a
university at Corte, and with the church's help partially sup-
pressed the vendetta trasversa, a system of collateral revenge per-
mitting anyone whose enemy had escaped him to take revenge
on that enemy's relatives. Paoli made collateral revenge punish-
able by death, also by a " pillar of infamy " intended to per-
petuate the offender's shame. But despite Paoli's immense
prestige (he modelled himself on Plutarch's heroes, and was
widely believed to have prophetic "powers), he could not alter
the Corsicans overnight. A mixture of Greek, Roman, Phoeni-
cian and Etruscan, they were as ready to kill in a personal cause
involving honour as they were loath to provide a hangman to
kill on behalf of the state.
Corsica remained at that time very much what it had been
when the Romans left it in the fifth century. For this its geo-
graphical conformation was largely responsible. Turkish,
Tunisian and Barbary pirates constantly threatened the island's
coasts, and interior communication was made difficult, in many
regions impossible, by savage mountains and torrent-filled
gorges. Villages were isolated and a primitive wooden plough
was still the only kind available. Boswell reported that the
Corsicans were extremely brave and would never attack a
stranger unless he tried to seduce one of their women, in which
case they would immediately kill him. He also observed that
" the chief satisfaction of the islanders when not engaged in war
21
Madame Letizia
or hunting seemed to be that of lying at their ease in the open
air, recounting tales of the bravery of their countrymen, and
singing in honour of the Corsicans, and against the Genoese."
Letizia spent the first thirty-five years of her life in this small,
incisive Mediterranean world, and she never subsequently lost
the conviction, voiced by Napoleon in exile, that " everything
there was better and more beautiful than anywhere else." The
people she loved best throughout her long life all had roots in
Corsica.
When Letizia was twelve, with a highly developed mater-
nal instinct and a slender, upright figure that attracted as
much attention as her lovely face, one of the most important
figures in her life was born her half-brother Giuseppe Fesch.
From then on Letizia loved him as steadfastly as she was to
love her own children. The cast of the greatest play in centuries
was beginning to assemble. Five months later, across the
Atlantic in the island of Martinique, one of Letizia's future
daughters-in-law was born Marie-Josephine-Rose Tascher de
la Pagerie. \
The young man whom Letizia married cameras she did, of
stock originally Italian ; but his ancestors, who belonged for the
most part to what in France was called the " nobility of the
robe " (administrators, men of law, or letters), had moved to
Corsica about a hundred years later than the RaBholinos and
settled farther inland, so that, although they belonged to the
ruling class, contact with rebel territory had made them favour
Corsican independence. Carlo was fourteen when his father died,
leaving him to the care of an uncle, Lucciano Buonaparte,
Archdeacon of Ajaccio and a friend of Letizia's uncle, who was a
canon there. The first of his family to attend the new university
at Corte, Carlo left Corsica at sixteen to go to the Continent and
study law at Pisa. Handsome, graceful and animated, he
neglected none of the opportunities Pisa offered for enjoying life
and spending money. Always convinced that something would
turn up, he had still not taken his degree when the time came for
22
Morning: Corsica
him to return home and marry Letizia, with whom he had been
in love before going to Pisa.
The marriage caused some surprise locally as the Buonapartes
and the Ramolinos held different political views. But Carlo and
Letizia were wildly in love, and as Archdeacon Lucciano was
inclined to be avaricious (prolonged contact with Carlo would
probably have induced avarice in anyone, except the seven out
of Carlo's eight children who inherited his devotion to pleasure),
he thought less of politics than of Letizia's dowry, which con-
sisted of 6,705 livres, partly in land and property. Despite
temperamental differences, the marriage was to prove very
successful Letizia never loved another man, and although it is
improbable that he was completely faithful to her, Carlo never
ceased to love his wife. Later, when a friend remarked on her
obvious joy in her husband, Letizia said, " How could I fail to be
happy and proud to belong to him? He is good, handsome,
celebrated, and he loves me." Her choice of attributes, and the
order in which she placed them, are characteristic, as is the
common-sense explanation for her uncommon radiance.
After their wedding the young couple lived at the Casa
Buonaparte, then a three-storied house of chamois-coloured
stone in a narrow street called Via Malerba at one end and Via
Buonaparte at the other and overlooking a small rectangular
piazza containing acacia trees. To-day this street is named the
Rue Saint-Charles, and the piazza the Place Letizia. Only the
second floor of the Casa Buonaparte belonged to Carlo and
Letizia. The ground floor was occupied by the Archdeacon
Lucciano and Carlo's mother, whom Letizia called Mamma
Saveria, the third floor by a cousin, Maria, married to Antonio
Pozzo di Borgo. It never occurred to Letizia to object to sharing
a home with her new relatives. Corsican girls were taught to
obey their husbands without question, and besides, she liked
family life, indeed never seemed to have a surfeit of it. This was
fortunate for her, since as she began so she would have to
continue : one of a closely-knit clan.
Some years later Carlo was to bring a suit against Maria
Madame Letizia
Pozzo di Borgo for having deliberately emptied her slops over
his head from an upper window. Lawsuits were almost as
popular a diversion in Corsica as bull-fights are in Spain. This
one sparked off a long family feud that was to have dramatic
effects on Napoleon's career. For the moment, however, all was
harmony in the crowded Casa Buonaparte.
HARMONY DID NOT, however, prevail outside their home.
Two months after Carlo and Letizia were married,
French soldiers arrived to garrison Ajaccio, Bastia, Calvi, St.
Florent and Algajola. Louis XV lent these troops to the
Genoese Republic as repayment of the 80,000 livres with which
the Genoese had helped France finance her part in the Seven
Years War. The new French commander, the Comte de
Marbeuf, was a charming and competent man, later to show
himself a good friend to the young Buonapartes. He introduced
the culture of the potato into Corsica, and Boswell described
him as a worthy, open-hearted Frenchman, gay without levity
and judicious without severity, all of which was true, but did not
console Corsican patriots for the French occupation of thek
island.
These patriots began moving inland to the macchia, un-
cultivated territory submerged by aromatic trees, shrubs and
wild flowers : strawberries, myrtle, rosemary, ferns, broom,
rock-roses, lavender, fennel, lilies, cyclamen, asphodel, thorn,
arbutus, the whole mass six feet high in some parts and often so
inextricably knitted together as to present an impassable barrier
to strangers unfamiliar with the hidden trails that criss-crossed
this great natural fortress. The wind carried the heady scent of
the macchia out to sea, sometimes for as much as sixty miles.
Outlaws who took refuge here were unlikely to be captured since
no self-respecting citizen would betray them. It was from
Corsica that the French Resistance in die Second World War
adopted the expression " take to the maquis."
As sensitive to politics as a circus horse to music, Carlo began
Madame Letizia
to feel a compulsion to perform and soon attracted public
attention as an orator. Never loquacious, but fierier and
more typically Corsican than her husband, Letizia shared his
political views but was now occupied principally by child-
bearing. Still very young for this, she lost her first child in 1765,
the year he was born, and also a daughter born in 1767. The way
she endured these bereavements (particularly cruel ones to a
girl who longed for children in a country where the more
children, and especially the more sons, a woman bore her
husband, the more highly she was esteemed) revealed the extra-
ordinary stoicism she possessed even in adolescence. She was
also helped by a forceful, laconic piety that made her attend
Mass every day throughout her long life, except when pre-
vented by household crises, war or revolution. This piety
sometimes expressed itself in puerile ways. All her life she
retained the habit (which Napoleon inherited) of crossing herself
and saying " Jesus ! " on hearing news that outraged or
maddened her.
Reports of Carlo's powers as a political speaker reached
Paoli at a time when the leader was drawing up a constitution
and needed jurists, who were scarce in Corsica. He sent for
Carlo, and was so impressed by his intelligence that he asked the
young man to join him at Corte, legendary seat of the Moorish
kings and at this time Corsica's political capital. This invitation
from a childless leader on the lookout for young supporters
fired not only Carlo's patriotism but his ambition. Thanks to
Corsica's strategic position, Paoli was becoming an illustrious
European figure. France could not attempt to regain the hold
on India that she had recently lost to the English without send-
ing troops out east and Corsica lay between the great French
naval base of Toulon and the overland route east via Egypt.
Carlo therefore accepted Paoli's offer without hesitation and
sent for Letizia, who, prompt to join him, left Ajaccio for the
first of many long and dangerous journeys.
She was seventeen when she made the three days' trip to
Corte on horseback, guided by a shepherd; away from the
26
Morning: Corsica
familiar vines, olives and fig trees, up through the macchia and
the giant chestnut forests, past the fan-shaped waterfall known
as the Bride's Veil and past her mother's birth-place, Bocognano,
over the Vizzavona mountain pass to the village of Vivario,
birth-place of a ninth-century pope, and on to Corte. This
austere eagle's-nest town in the mountainous centre of Corsica
was built defensively upon a rock, and its sombre grandeur was
as different from sunlit Ajaccio on its beautiful seashore as
Letizia's adult life was to be from her childhood.
Carlo and Letizia were welcomed into the eagle's nest by
one of her uncles, Tommaso Arrighi di Casanova (father of the
cousin Napoleon was later to make Due de Padoue), and his
wife Maria Biadelli. Their house had formerly belonged to the
national hero, Gaffori, who had fought for Corsican inde-
pendence thirty years earlier, and stories of his exploits and of
his romantic wife Faustina exhilarated Letizia and strengthened
her sense of partisanship. Equally exhilarating was her first
personal contact with Paoli, described by Boswell as having " a
steadfast, keen and penetrating eye that searched his inter-
locutor's very heart," and who, in the manner of Homer's
Telemachus, kept a bodyguard of great dogs. Like many
Corsicans, Paoli combined austere morality with a love of
cutting a fine figure (his horse was caparisoned with crimson
velvet and gold lace), and he admired Letizia, whom he com-
pared with Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, quite as much as he
did Carlo, now his secretary and assistant. He missed no
opportunity to bring her to the fore, and her beauty and dignity
attracted particular attention at a luxurious reception he gave for
the Tunisian ambassador. On this occasion, Paoli's way of
treating the young Buonapartes as if they were his children
aroused some jealousy among his followers, who feared that he
was training Carlo to succeed him.
Paoli's childlessness was rumoured to be due to impotence.
Years later, Napoleon, who remembered him as plump, fair-
skinned, more like an Englishman or a German than a Corsican,
asked Letizia teasingly : " Come, Mother, now that it's all
27
Madame Letizia
past history admit that Paoli tried to flirt with you "; to which
she replied, " Oh no, had there been anything of that kind it
would have been with my sister-in-law, but between ourselves
we women knew Paoli was incapable in that respect" In any case,
Letizia's nature was not made for infidelity. Her sense of
honour was inflexible and she loved Carlo as only a grave,
tenacious nature can love a charming, frivolous one.
Presently Paoli sent Carlo on a mission to the Pope. The
young man's courtesy and erudition made an admirable impres-
sion in Rome, but he spent so much money there that he had to
borrow the fare home from the Pope's medical attendant
Saliceti, who, luckily for Carlo, was a fellow Corsican. Although
most of their money came from Letizia's dowry, she never
criticised Carlo's passion for buying embroidered satin waist-
coats and giving elaborate dinner-parties. There was more than
wifely acceptance to this. She understood Carlo's meridional
desire to cut a figure -fare bellafigura and, half a century later,
Napoleon remembered his mother telling him when he was a
small child that although he might always be poor, he must
never forget that it was worth going short of food in order to
be able to afford a handsome room, a fine jacket and a good
horse. " The Buonapartes," added Napoleon, " took them-
selves for the Bourbons, and indeed they were the Bourbons of
the island."
Letizia's third child, Giuseppe (her first to survive infancy),
was named after Carlo's father and born in January, 1768, when
Corte was in a ferment. Although Paoli's appeals to the rulers
of Europe had produced no practical assistance beyond the gift
of a sword from Frederick the Great inscribed P atria Libertas
(" Foolish as we are," remarked Lord Holland, " we are not
so foolish as to go to war because Mr. Boswell has been to
Corsica "), Paoli began planning an assault on the neighbouring
island of Capraia, then garrisoned entirely by Genoese troops.
When news of this project reached the Continent, Genoa
offered to sell Corsica to France. The offer was well-timed, as
France had recently lost her possessions in Canada as well as in
28
Morning: Corsica
India and was looking for new ones. French contingents reached
Corsica in April, even before the deal was settled, and Letizia,
who had been visiting the family in Ajaccio, rushed back to
Corte accompanied by Carlo's uncle Napoleone, her devoted
sister-in-law Geltruda, and her brother-in-law Niccolo Para-
viccini. Meanwhile Louis XV's minister Choiseul had eagerly
accepted Genoa's offer of a Mediterranean stepping-stone, and
Corsica was signed over to France at Versailles on May i5th,
1768. Letizia's future children would be born French subjects.
Outraged by the spectacle of his countrymen being treated as
chattels, Paoli rallied his partisans and asked them to choose
between resistance and surrender. Carlo then made an im-
passioned speech, saying that if freedom could be obtained
merely by wishing for it, everyone would be free, but that, on
the contrary, it required unremitting effort, based not on the
emotions but on an understanding of the true facts of the case
a statement that lost nothing from the emotional way in which it
was made. The majority voted for resistance, and the meeting
broke up amidst shouts of " 'Liberia o Morte" Carlo's family
was extremely proud of this speech, and Napoleon quoted from it
at St. Helena. Perhaps still more remarkable was Paoli's caustic
observation to Boswell : " If the event prove happy, we shall be
considered great defenders of liberty. If the event prove un-
happy, we shall be called unfortunate rebels."
TEN THOUSAND French troops landed at Bastia in August,
bearers of Louis XVs declaration that the Cors leans
were now his subjects and must act accordingly. The most
spirited of the King's new subjects promptly took to the
mountains, accompanied in many cases by their wives and
children, since Corsican girls were taught that in times of
danger their first duty was to load their husbands' rifles. Among
the patriots were Carlo, now Paoli's aide-de-camp, and Letizia.
This David and Goliath struggle appealed to European liberals
much as the Greek fight for independence was to appeal to their
descendants half a century later, and its genuinely epic quality
kept this small campaign vivid in Letizia's mind long after she
had seen crowns and coronets roll before her son's great armies
in the first mighty cataclysms of the nineteenth century.
As the French had not anticipated resistance, they were
taken by surprise and in several initial engagements defeated.
Exasperated, and determined to conquer before winter set in,
the French commander, Chauvelin, launched an attack at
Borgo which proved unsuccessful. The Corsicans took five
hundred prisoners and obtained a truce. Chauvelin then
resigned, complaining that he had been given too few troops
for his task. Although exultant, the Corsicans realised that the
French were bound to make another attempt to master them, and
would probably rely on superior numbers and equipment next
time.
When French troopships were sighted off the Corsican coast
in the spring of 1769, Leti2ia was again pregnant, but as deter-
mined as Carlo to fight to the death. It looked at first as if the
Morning: Corsica
partisans could do nothing else. The Comte de Vaux had
engineers, artillery, three cavalry regiments and forty-five
infantry battalions ; the Corsicans had only courage and
knowledge of the terrain. The French artillery opened fire near
Borgo on May 3rd. Having no artillery, Paoli moved back out
of firing range. Next day the Corsicans repelled the French at
Rapale. At dawn on the third day the Comte de Vaux assembled
all his troops on the St. Nicholas plateau and, threatened with
encirclement, the Corsicans had to shift their headquarters back
across the River Golo. In the confusion Letizia lost touch with
Carlo and had to make for the rear on her own initiative.
Although this part of the fighting was taking place in the north-
east, far from Letizia's birth-place in the south-west, she had
already acquired a minute knowledge of her untamed island, and
when at last Carlo found her and proposed to take her to safety
she was six months pregnant with Napoleon she unhesitatingly
galloped beside him up the gorges of Restonico, through a forest
of giant pines and up the slopes of Monte Rotondo, one of
Corsica's least accessible mountains, to a wild place where
granite caverns provided natural hide-outs. With the young
Buonapartes went a little band of friends and survivors.
The cave in which they are supposed to have bivouacked
is still known as " The Refugees' Grotto." At dawn, before
the horizon was misted over, most of Corsica could be seen
from there and even the coast of the mainland was visible as a
distant blur. By a curious optical illusion, the islands of Elba,
Pianosa, Formica and Monte Cristo appeared to be suspended
in the sky. The refugees' only protection in this aerie was the
wildness of the terrain between them and the French army.
Meanwhile hardship was the rule. Their food consisted of flour
provided by wandering shepherds and water from the nearby
Triggione fountain. The nights were still icy at this altitude,
and the caverns damp, but fire-smoke would have betrayed their
whereabouts. At dusk the voceratrice (girls or women with a gift
for improvising the tempestuous songs of mourning and
prophecy so characteristic of Corsica) would celebrate their dead
3*
Madame Lettzia
heroes, invoke heaven's wrath on their murderers and foretell
the coming of an avenger. A typical lament was :
Povera, orfana, ^ittella^
Sen%a cugtni carnali!
Ma per far la to vendetta
Sta siguru, vaste anche ella.
(A poor orphan maid without blood cousins but be sure
even she will suffice for the vendetta.)
There is a curiously Old Testament air about the scenes in
which Letizia participated while carrying Napoleon, and he was
later thought by some of his compatriots to be the promised
avenger.
Napoleon is perhaps the only great soldier to have had pre-
natal experience of the battlefield. When he was a French
officer of twenty, in the last stages of his youthful obsession
with Corsica, he told Paoli : " I was born when my country
was perishing ... I was cradled by the cries of the dying, the
groans of the oppressed, the tears of despair." These words
reveal an essential difference between his generation and that of
his mother. Despite his feeling for Corsica, Napoleon was
indelibly marked by his French education and by the romanti-
cism of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose famous Du Contrat
Social (1762), contained this remark about Corsica : " I have a
presentiment that one day this little island will astonish Europe."
Letizia's eyewitness view of Corsica's struggle was far nearer to
ancient Rome than to the France of Rousseau or Voltaire. Sixty
years later she still remembered this period of her life vividly
and said that, sustained by the thought of Carlo and of Corsica,
she had carried Napoleon " with the same joy, the same tranquil
happiness, the same serenity, as I experienced later when holding
him in my arms and feeding him. To obtain news of the army,
I used to leave the steep rocky hide-outs assigned to the women,
and make for the battlefields. Bullets whistled past my ears, but
I trusted in the protection of the Virgin Mary, to whom I
had consecrated my unborn son." Napoleon's knowledge of
Letizia's courage made him very scornful at St. Helena of Lady
Morning: Corsica
Lowe's refusal, on the grounds that she was pregnant, to pay a
courtesy visit on Madame Bertrand : " A ridiculous excuse. My
mother crossed the Corsican mountains on horseback when she
was carrying me." Four days after Letizia's narrow escape,
the Corsicans were forced back to the Tenda Pass and next
morning a disaster brought the struggle to an abrupt and ugly
end. The French Lieutenant-Colonel Geoffre made a feigned
attack on Calenzana, a village famous for its oil and honey,
followed by a feigned retreat. Convinced of imminent victory,
Paoli recrossed the River Golo, only to find the entire French
army massed here for a counter-attack. Heavily outnumbered,
the Corsicans were driven back across the bridge to a barrier of
stones erected by their own men. This barrier was manned by
German deserters from the French army, who had been in-
structed by the Corsicans to fire on anyone (anyone meaning any
enemy) trying to pass them. In the confusion of the unexpected
retreat some of the Germans, and some of the Corsicans who had
remained on the farther bank, fired on their own side. A
massacre resulted. Carlo's uncle, Napoleone, was among the
day's dead. A French officer who questioned wounded Corsicans
received answers worthy of Corneille's Le Cid :
" Where are your hospitals ? "
" We have none."
" Then what becomes of you ? "
" We die."
Meanwhile, the refugees of Monte Rotondo were unaware
that, far from wishing to pursue them, the Comte de Vaux
was eager to come to terms and stop the murderous guerrilla
fighting still continuing in isolated pockets of Corsica. They
were astonished when a French officer arrived on May 23rd
with a white flag and the news that they might return to their
homes unmolested. Paoli had agreed to go aboard an English
warship into honourable exile, and the Comte de Vaux re-
quested the partisans to appoint a delegation to meet him and
discuss his plans, which were " to their advantage."
Carlo's first impulse was to take Letizia home, then accom-
33
Madame Letizia
pany Paoli to England. But his irrepressible sense of opportunity
told him that Paoli's cause was finally lost, and those who wanted
him to form part of the delegation to the French pointed out that
Corsica's situation would become desperate if all patriots emi-
grated. So he and Letizia went to Corte, where the Comte de
Vaux received him in a most flattering manner. This was not so
surprising as it may seem now. In addition to being a charming,
well-bred, influential citizen who had proved himself a brave
adversary, Carlo was one of the tiny minority of educated
Corsicans who spoke French well, which made him a valuable
potential ally.
When Carlo and Letizia left Corte for Ajaccio, they decided
to take the less direct route in order to avoid the French army,
who might well prove less amenable in the field than at head-
quarters. They broke their journey at Vico, where they had
friends with whom Letizia was able to rest. Soon after leaving
there they reached the River Liamone, swollen at this season by
melted snow. As they rode alongside it, Letizia's horse slipped
down the bank and into the thundering water. Dominating
herself and her horse, she swung the terrified animal back on to
the bank without losing her head or her baby. It was incidents
of this kind that made Stendhal compare her with the heroines
of medieval Italy whom he admired for t their combination of
beauty, courage and initiative.
When the young couple reached Ajaccio on June ist, Arch-
deacon Lucciano assured Carlo he had done right not to emi-
grate, that his place was at home with his own people. Uncles
are still powerful members of Corsican families (a current
Corsican anecdote mentions an uncle saying reprovingly to a
father, " Ah, it's easy to see you have no nephews "), and since
the archdeacon was both father and uncle to him, Carlo was con-
firmed in his decision to come to terms with the French authori-
ties. That he did so with a good conscience is shown by
Letizia's having urged him to make the arduous journey to
Bastia at least a week's ride each way to bid Paoli farewell.
The French commander at Ajaccio thought none the less of Carlo
34
Morning: Corsica
for this, but, on the contrary, made a point of welcoming him
warmly on his return. There was much savagery about, but also
a great deal of chivalry.
Nine days before Letizia's nineteenth birthday she attended
a mass in Ajaccio Cathedral celebrated by Archdeacon Lucciano.
By her stood her six-year-old half-brother and her sister-in-law
Geltruda. It was the Feast of the Assumption, celebrated in
Corsica as a national holiday. Bells had been pealing since dawn,
and through the surrounding countryside rode brown-clad
horsemen who looked like bandits, thanks to their rifles and
stilettos, but were merely prosperous peasants eager to honour
the Virgin and enjoy the city's music, flowers, banners and
processions. As Letizia knelt before the altar, her labour
began. Although the Casa Buonaparte was a minute's walk
away, she reached home only just in time to give birth to a son
on the sitting-room couch. Small and fragile, with a large head
and a loud voice, the baby was named Napoleone for the uncle
killed in the struggle for Corsican independence. According to
Doctor Hereau, who attended both Letizia and, later, Napoleon's
second wife, the only abnormal feature of Napoleon's birth was
that it cost his mother no physical suffering.
Years later, when Napoleon's sparsely documented child-
hood had become the quarry from which innumerable legends
were created, his admirers swore that Letizia had given birth to
him on a carpet embroidered with a portrait of Julius Caesar.
The first time Letizia heard this she said scornfully : " Farlo
nascere sulla testa di Cesare! Aveva bisogna di questo? D'altrondi
noi non avevamo tappeti nella casa wrsu, d* estate ancora meno d'inverno"
(Pretending he was born on Caesar's head 1 Did he need that ?
Besides, we did not have carpets in Corsican homes not even
in winter, much less in summer.) Detractors, equally inventive,
suggested that Napoleon was fathered by the fifty-six-year-old
Comte de Marbeuf, but this is chronologically impossible.
Letizia and Carlo were at Corte with the patriots at the time of
Napoleon's conception. Apart from this, and the family like-
ness that stamped all Letizia's and Carlo's children as definitely
Madame Letizia
as a hallmark stamps silver, the most convincing refutation of
the libel is provided by Letizia's uncompromising character.
At this stage in his life the most interesting fact about
Napoleone was that, after being carried in his mother's womb
through a battle against France, he was the first of her children
to be born a French subject.
SOON AFTER Napoleone's birth, Carlo returned to Pisa to
take the law degree he had neglected to obtain during his
first stay there. He left Corsica full of excellent resolutions, but,
as foreign students were not obliged to attend lectures assidu-
ously, he was soon caught up in his habitual round of pleasure.
Letizia's life, meanwhile, was reduced to domestic interests.
Her fighting years seemed over, and she did not regret them.
Like many of history's most genuinely romantic figures, she had
not a romantic temperament, and far from considering domest-
icity dull, found in it a unique source of joy.
In organising her household young Letizia showed not only
a soldierly precision but strong nerves, since she who had so
marked a gift for silence was often surrounded by noise. For
example, although her mother-in-law and Napoleone's first
nurse, Mammucia Caterina, were fond of each other, they
nevertheless revelled in a feud to which each contributed
voluble backchat as to how certain household tasks should or
should not be performed mostly not. The children, too, had
the lungs of Italian tenors, and Letizia showed herself in advance
of her time in making no attempt to curb the noisiness healthy at
that age. In her Souvenirs she mentions that she cleared a large
room where they played and fought without interference on wet
days and were allowed to draw on the walls. Most inestimable
of free benefits were sun and sea. She put them on horseback as
soon as they could walk and often sent them off for long rides
with their Aunt Geltruda, who taught them all she knew of
local methods of farming. It may have been during these rides
that Napoleone learnt to deplore the way goats damaged the
37
Madame Letizia
young trees, a subject that was to lead him into many an argu-
ment with Archdeacon Lucciano, who considered his great-
nephew's hostility to goats to be the result of the " new philo-
sophy/' But just as Letizia encouraged her sons to be adventur-
ous, so she insisted on their taking knocks stoically. Her highly
developed sense of the inevitability of tragedy in everyday life
made her consider bravery an indispensable weapon rather than
a pleasing attribute.
Although strictly domestic, her life was not a lonely one.
Her mother, mother-in-law and sister-in-law paid her daily
visits, and a host of aunts, uncles and cousins shared her adora-
tion of her two little boys. Many of these visitors required
hospitality, the duties of which were traditionally considered
almost as sacred as those of religion. Corsica possessed few
inns, so travellers relied on relatives, and no matter how plain
the daily fare, it was a matter of pride that entertainment be
elaborate. (Boswell relates that when he dined with Paoli's
nephew-in-law he was offered twelve " well-drest dishes "
served on Dresden china and a variety of local wines and
liqueur.)
Nevertheless, life at the Casa Buonaparte was frugal for
everyone but Carlo, who had the charm of a spoilt child and was
treated accordingly. Clothes and furniture had to be paid for
with ready money, so were made to last as long as possible, but
food (except for imported coffee, sugar and rice) was home
grown. Wheat came from family fields, wine from family vine-
yards, oil from family olive groves. There were only two
groves of olive trees in Ajaccio, one belonging to the Jesuits, the
other to the Buonapartes. Napoleone often heard his great-
uncle Lucciano say proudly : " The Buonapartes have never
paid for bread, wine or oil." Great-uncle Lucciano also said:
" One must never sell one's land, rather debts than that." The
family (a portmanteau word that included grandparents, parents,
aunts, uncles and cousins to the furthest degrees) was given wine
and oil free of charge. Peasant customers paid with goats,
cheese or milk. Butchers' meat was exchanged for its equivalent
)*
Morning: Corsica
in sheep, cattle or goats. Blankets were woven at home from
goat hair. Letizia's dowry included a flour mill and a public
oven where all the local people baked their bread, paying in
flour or fish.
The Buonapartes' food was traditional figs, goats' milk,
cakes of maize, and a cream cheese called bructio were the basis
of their diet, with small octopi, local game, chestnut bread and
the luscious island cherries as their gastronomic treats but
their standard of personal cleanliness was far in advance of their
time. In an epoch that was by modern standards very dirty,
Letizia trained her children to clean their teeth and take daily
baths. They all had, and kept, beautiful teeth and a love of
water. Years later, when Napoleon was planning cities, he
showed an unusual interest in the creation of fountains and of
clean water supplies.
Letizia's tasks did not lack variety. Carlo and the archdeacon
were constantly occupied with lawsuits, and it was she who
organised the delivery of food supplies from the family lands,
she who doctored and nursed the children, and she who did
most of the household spinning. In addition, she attended
church punctiliously after Napoleone's birth she went sooner
than was obligatory to the churching ceremony at which
Corsican mothers made an offering to the Virgin of bread and a
coin in thanks for a safe delivery and yet found time to tell her
children episodes of Corsican history that fostered their love for
the island. Stendhal commented on Napoleone's childhood:
" By good fortune such as seldom befalls kings* sons, there was
nothing mean or small about the people who surrounded
Napoleon's cradle. Suppose he had been born in 1769, the son
of a marquis in Picardy . . . what would he have heard first ?
Anecdotes of gallantry, lies about the antiquity of his family,
gossip concerning some petty quarrel between his father and a
neighbour belonging to the minor nobility, etc. Instead of this
. . . Napoleon heard how the National Guard of a little island of
a hundred and eighty thousand inhabitants, headed by an
elected leader, dared stand up to the Kingdom of France . . .
Madame Letizia
and these stories were related to the child by a mother personally
acquainted with the battlefield Few existences have been as
free of hypocrisy and, in my opinion, as noble as that of Madame
Letizia Bonaparte."
Meanwhile Carlo was turning his stay at Pisa to some good
use. By November 3oth, he had presented his thesis and re-
ceived his degree. He was inscribed in the university's Libro di
Dottorati as " // Sig. Carlo del Qm Signer Giuseppe Buonaparte,
Nob. Patri^io Fiorentino> Samminiatese & di Ajaccio" He was the
fourteenth Buonaparte to take &' degree at Pisa since Antonio
Francesco Buonaparte had done so in 1633, and he celebrated
his doctorate by giving a banquet that, according to Napoleon,
cost the family two years' income. The occasion did warrant a
celebration, however, for with this doctorate Carlo had, without
knowing it, added an item to the collection of official documents
without which his older children could not have had the ex-
cellent French education he was to secure for them. He had a
genuine if over-optimistic sense of the value of any opportunity,
and in his volatile but loving way was as good a father as Letizia
was a mother.
40
IN THE SPRING OF 1770, a month before the fifteen-year-
old dauphin married the fourteen-year-old Austrian Arch-
duchess Marie-Antoinette, Louis XV offered privileges similar
to those of the French nobility to Corsicans whose families had
lived on the island for two hundred years and who could
provide documentary proof of having ranked as nobles during
that period. There were three kinds of nobility in Corsica, the
anciens seigneurs, descendants of the old feudal lords, such as the
Colonna and d'Istria families ; the Caporals, like the Casabiancas
and the Arrighis, whose ancestors had revolted against feudalism
in the tenth century ; and the etrangers, such as the Buonapartes,
who had come from Tuscany or Genoa. In each case the
requisite documents, or " parchments " had to be ratified by the
local Courts of Justice.
The originals of Carlo's parchments are now in the French
National Archives. They include his baptism certificate; an
acknowledgment of kinship from the Tuscan Buonapartes to
Carlo's father (un acte de reconnaissance de la famille Buonaparte de
Toscane dujuin 28, 1759 quijouit du patriciat, etpar consequence de la
plus grande noblesse, comme il est constate par un ex trait des kttres de
noblesse du 28 mai 1757 delivre par le Grand Due de To scant) \
letters patent of nobility from the Archbishop of Pisa (lettres
patentes de I'Archeveque de Pise en Toscane qui accordent au dit Charles
fexercice du titre de noble et de Patrice du 30 novembre 1769) ; an
act of ratification from the local Court of Justice (certifaat des
principaux nobles de la ville d*Ajaccio duiy aout 1771 quiprouve que la
famille Buonaparte a ete toujours au nombre des plus anciennes et
nobles, tant pour son cSte, que par rapport aux alliances qtfelle a
4*
Madame Letizia
contractees avec la noblesse du Royaume la plus distinguee) ; and a
testimony to his nobility by the Corsican Upper Chamber
(arret du Conseil Superieur de Corse du 13 septembre 1771 qui declare
la famille 'Buonaparte noble de noblesse prouvee au dela des deux cents
ans).
The Comte de Marbeuf had persuaded Louis XV to grant
Corsica a measure of self-government through a locally re-
cruited States-General. When the Corsican States-General
assembled for the first time on May ist, 1772, Carlo was elected
member of the Council of Twelve Nobles. He was already
Assessor of Ajaccio's Court of Justice, and was later to be
chosen as one of the deputies to represent Corsican interests at
Versailles. In order to provide an appropriate setting for his new
undertakings, Carlo began enlarging his house. First he built a
banqueting gallery, then a terrace for after-dinner relaxation.
(It was from Carlo that the Buonaparte children inherited their
immoderate passion for building.) He also added to his library,
already an impressive one for the time and place, over a thousand
volumes. A born spendthrift, he had some reason to feel that he
had money to play with, since between them he and Letizia
owned three houses, apart from their share of the one they lived
in, three stories of a fourth house, three vineyards, and the
Milelli, a little country villa in an olive grove on the coast out-
side Ajaccio, where the family spent the summers. Although
Letkia was only twenty-four, she had already borne six children
(four of whom died in infancy) by the time her husband paid his
first visit to the capital thek second son was one day to rule.
Carlo had been given the honour of offering Louis XVI and
Marie-Antoinette the Corsican nobility's congratulations on
thek accession to the throne. For once he seems not to have
spent more than the money allotted him for expenses. He was
enchanted by Versailles, at last a building as grand as his dreams,
and by the little King and Queen, who, still shy and eager to
please, listened respectfully to his fluent account of how agri-
culture might be developed in Corsica. Like Balzac, the imagin-
ative Carlo was prompt to see the financial possibilities of under-
42
Morning: Corsica
takings for which the time had not yet come, and on this occasion
he spoke so plausibly of what mulberry groves might mean to
Corsica that he was awarded a government subsidy to carry out
his plans.
Prompted by the Comte de Marbeuf, the young King
decided to give the children of poor Corsican nobles the
same opportunities for free education as were available to the
indigent French nobility. When Carlo told Letizia he wanted
to take advantage of this offer, she immediately agreed, and
asked that her half-brother Fesch be included in Carlo's plan.
She bore her seventh child, Lucciano (the third to survive
infancy), in 1775, and Carlo had no difficulty in obtaining
the " certificate of indigence " required by the French govern-
ment as proof of his inability to pay for the education of all his
sons.
Both Letizia and Carlo were determined their children should
be well educated. Education, like bravery, came under the head-
ing of useful weapons. All the handsome little Buonapartes
showed promise of great energy, but Napoleone was the most
intrepid of them all. Even as a child he had a passion for
military life, and would exchange the white bread given to him
to take to school for lunch for a piece of the coarse dark bread
issued to the local troops. When Letizia discovered this and
questioned him, he insisted he preferred the dark bread, and
" as I am going to be a soldier, I ought to get used to it." The
only way in which his love of the army differed from that of
millions of other small boys was in its enduring nature. He
inherited tenacity from Letizia, and perhaps from the maternal
grandmother who could summon two or three hundred Corsican
mountaineers to support her side of an argument. He also in-
herited Letizia's capacity for concentration, her sense of order and
responsibility, and the classical profile, piercing gaze and grave
expression that were to make Stendhal describe her face as
sublime in its tranquillity : " only the eyes moved."
As a small child, Napoleone was not an outstanding pupil,
except at mathematics, but he was always avid for information,
43
Madame Letizia
and his abnormally energetic temperament made one of his
teachers describe him as " granite heated in a volcano." Letizia
was quite capable, however, of dealing with granite. The
violence of her love for her children made her strict with them.
She sometimes sent them supperless to bed, not as a punishment
but to train them " to bear discomfort without showing it,"
and they soon learnt that when they had been disobedient, un-
truthful, or deficient in respect for their elders, not even their
easygoing papa could save them from a whipping. Carlo dis-
liked unpleasantness in every form, so he would often ask for
the offender to be let off just this once, but Letizia invariably
replied " This is my business," which was in accordance with
tradition. A Corsican wife obeyed her husband, but was obeyed
by her children. Later, during the Empire, Letizia said laugh-
ingly that no one had ever slapped so many future kings and
princesses as she had. Without her lioness's paw, the little
Buonapartes would have had no discipline, for, as she said,
" My mother-in-law and husband were so indulgent with the
children that at the slightest cry, the slightest complaint, they
ran to caress them. For my part, I was severe or indulgent as the
occasion warranted."
One of these occasions occurred when Napoleon was home
on leave as a seventeen-year-old officer. He and his baby sister
Maria-Paola were caught by Letizia in the act of imitating their
grandmother's rheumatic gait. Maria-Paola was promptly put
across Letizia's knee and spanked, while Napoleon, thinking
that despite his mother's expression (which " boded no good ")
he was safe from such undignified retribution, slipped out of the
house. Letizia made no further comment on the incident, but
next morning she refused his kiss. Later in the day she told him
he had better hurry and change as he had been invited to dine
with the governor. Delighted, he hurried upstairs and into the
trap she had prepared for him. While he was changing, she
entered the room and, having taken him by surprise, locked the
door behind her ; then, with Carlo's whip, she gave him the
beating she considered warranted. Many years later, at St.
44
Morning: Corsica
Helena, he spoke with mixed admiration and indignation of the
way she had ambushed him that day.
None of Letizia's children resented her severity nor, which is
perhaps more remarkable, did they despise Carlo's indulgence.
Even Napoleone, who soon realised that " my father would have
eaten up all his money if Madame had not checked him," found
Carlo so endearing that once, when Letizia sent him to a local
cafe to see if Papa were gambling again, the child's only fear was
" lest Papa's feelings be hurt/'
Maria-Anna, Letizia's eighth child and first daughter to
survive infancy, was born in 1777, a year after the American
Declaration of Independence* The family seemed likely to
prove a large one, and when Carlo was re-elected deputy for the
Corsican nobility the following year he decided to take his two
eldest sons and young Fesch to France with him. Fesch had
been granted a scholarship to the seminary of Aix-en-Provence,
Carlo was paying for Giuseppe to go to the college at Autun
that would prepare him for the seminary, and Napoleone was to
accompany his brother and study French until the result of
Carlo's request for a military school scholarship for him came
through. The Abbe Varese, a cousin of Letizia's who had been
appointed subdeacon of Autun Cathedral, accompanied them.
Three months before they left, Letizia's ninth child, Luigi, was
born.
Leaving Corsica was a turning point in the children's lives.
Giuseppe was ten, Napoleone nine, and neither could speak
French. Next time Napoleon saw his home he would be a man,
a young French artillery officer who had shed the final " e "
from his Christian name, though not yet the " u " from his
surname, and had almost forgotten his native tongue.
On the evening of December nth, 1778, Letizia took the two
children to the Lazarists to be blessed by the father superior.
Next day they set out on horseback and by mules as far as Corte,
where they took a carriage, lent them by the Comte de Marbeuf,
to Bastia, the ancient capital that originated as a fourteenth-
century citadel and is to-day a small edition of Genoa. There
4J
Madame Letizia
they spent the night in an uncomfortable inn. Years later
Napoleon retained vivid memories of an old man who had
dragged a few mattresses, too few to go round, into the room
assigned to the party. Carlo's mother and the servants had wept
bitterly when the boys left, and at the final parting only Letizia
and Napoleone remained outwardly calm. Her last word to him
was " Coraggio " (Courage). This was the first of many partings,
each of which was to increase Letizia's fears for her second son's
safety. A world of victories lay between him and St. Helena,
and he was about to take the first step towards defeat.
CARLO WAS STILL at Versailles in March, 1779, when the
French Minister of War notified him that Napoleon had
been granted a scholarship to the military school at Brienne. He
immediately wrote to MarbeuPs nephew, the Bishop of Autun,
who arranged for Napoleon's transfer. The parting between
the two little boys at Autun was very painful. Giuseppe (now
known as Joseph) sobbed piteously, and although Napoleon
shed only a single tear, the master who witnessed the scene said
that his grief seemed even greater than Joseph's. As a child and
a young man Napoleon adored his elder brother, and even later,
when Joseph often, if unwittingly, served him ill he continued
to care for him. He could never entirely forget that Joseph was
the eldest son, and that in Corsica the head of the family's word
is law.
By the time Napoleon entered Brienne he could speak
French fluently, but his schoolfellows jeered at his strong
Corsican accent. He suffered ferociously from homesickness,
which transformed him from an exuberant child into a taciturn
one. Like his father, and later, his brothers and sisters, he felt a
compulsion to express himself on paper, and traces of his home-
sickness still exist in a composition he wrote at this time about a
Tahitian's overwhelming joy on seeing a tree from his native
land. Lack of pocket money made him cut a poor figure beside
the sons of French noblemen, and, smarting with humiliation,
he wrote imploring his father to send him an allowance or else
remove him from the school and let him learn a manual trade.
Unfortunately for Napoleon, it was Letizia who read this
appeal. Neither her youth nor her circumstances made for
47
Madame Letizia
indulgence, and her determination that her children should
respect their father was strengthened by her knowledge of
Carlo's extravagance. He had bought himself twelve embroider-
ed waistcoats on his last trip to Versailles, and these, together
with his elegant knee-breeches, silk stockings, silver-buckled
shoes and habit of wearing a sword, caused him to be known
locally, half admiringly, half ironically, as " Buonaparte the
Magnificent." She knew too that as a result of this magnificence,
the bedridden Uncle Lucciano had taken to hiding his savings in
his mattress. But none of this was, in her opinion, the business
of Carlo's nine-year-old son. Letizia and Napoleon were alike
in so many respects that from the first she expected more of him
than of his brothers and sisters. So now she wrote :
Figlio mio [throughout her life Letizia wrote her corres-
pondence in Italian, and when French was required, had
her letters translated by her children or, later, by her
secretaries], I have received your letter; at least, the
handwriting and signature indicate that it comes from you.
You are my favourite son, but if ever I get another such
letter from you, I shall wash my hands of Napoleone.
Where did you acquire the notion that a son might address
his father in such terms ? You may thank heaven your
father is not at home, otherwise an affront of this kind
would have sent him straight to Brienne to punish you for
your insolence. I shall hide your letter, in the hope that you
regret having written it.
You have the right to tell us your needs, but you must
realise we cannot do more than we are doing for you,
hence our silence. It is not on account of your admoni-
tions or threats that I am sending you a letter of change for
300 francs. This should convince you of our love . . .
Napoleone, I hope you will be more discreet in future,
and more respectful, and will not force me to write to you
again in this way. If so, I shall sign myself, as always,
Your loving Mother
The prospect of kindly, spendthrift Carlo setting out for
4*
Morning: Corsica
Brienne in the spirit of an Old Testament prophet is strikingly
unconvincing, but Corsican fathers had the power of life and
death over their children, and had often been known to exercise
it, so Napoleon understood Letkia's attitude. He also knew that
she had every reason to worry about the family revenues.
Letizia's life was in many respects a hard one at this time.
She was only thirty when she bore her tenth child, Mark-
Paola, and her eleventh, Maria-Annunziata, arrived fifteen
months later. Her health was so good that it had become
second nature to her to put too great a strain on it, but after a
prolonged attack of puerperal fever her doctor urged her to go
to France and take the waters at Bourbonne-les-Bains. So she
accompanied Carlo the next time his political duties took him to
Versailles. The authenticity of this trip has been contested, but
expenses for it are entered in Carlo's account book under June,
1782.
Ironically, the splendour of Versailles appealed far more to
Carlo, who would have loved to live in such a place, than to
Letizia, who was to return there as a royal personage twenty
years after Carlo's death. At the time of her first visit there were
between seventeen and eighteen thousand people at Versailles
(sixteen thousand at the King's service, the rest courtiers with-
out definite functions), and Letizia distrusted the superficiality
of this glittering, alien world. She has often been laughed at
for saying " Pourvu que fa dure " (Provided it lasts) of Napoleon's
glory, as if this remark indicated a dourly suspicious peasant
mentality ; but it really sprang from the prophetic instinct that
caused her, to be intensely troubled at Versailles by the sense of
doom she discerned in the face of the gay and frivolous young
Queen.
On their return journey the Buonapartes went to Autun,
the old Burgundian city full of Roman remains, to see their
eldest son. One of Joseph's schoolfellows described Carlo on
this occasion as tall and slender, wearing a powdered wig, silk
coat and a sword ; and Letizia as still young, carrying herself
superbly, in a white silk frock with panniers, and with a lace veil
49
Madame Letizia
over thick, chestnut-coloured hair arranged in a chignon. As
the most popular portraits of Napoleon are those showing him
as a thin, burning-eyed young general, the epitome of the
Revolution in arms, there is a lifelike incongruity about this
distinctly ancien regime picture of his handsome and youthful
parents returning home from Versailles. Next they went to
Brienne, where, to Napoleon's proud delight, all his school-
fellows pronounced Letizia as " belle comme ks amours " (as beauti-
ful as the loves). On her side, joy at seeing her favourite son
was mixed with consternation at what school discipline had
done to him. Years later, in St. Helena, Napoleon told General
Montholon : " She was so alarmed by my thinness and altered
expression that she alleged they had changed me beyond im-
mediate recognition. I was indeed changed, since I used to work
right through our recreation time, and often spent my nights
thinking over what I had learnt during the day." She was
equally alarmed by the prospect that he might be assigned to the
Navy and, twenty-two years later, she told the British officer who
escorted her to Elba that she had done all she could to dissuade
Napoleon from a naval career. (" My child, in the Navy you
have to contend with fire and water.") But no matter what
Letizia said at Brienne, no matter how steadfastly they were to
continue to love each other, Napoleon was already soaring
beyond the sphere of her protection, and what alarmed her
most was the chilling shadow of her son's future greatness.
WHEN LUCCIANO WAS eight years old, he went to join his
eldest brother Joseph at the College of Autun. Letizia
hated parting with him. Very like his father, Lucciano was a
particularly loving child, with a feminine gift for small atten-
tions of the heart, and because she missed Joseph, Napoleon
and young Fesch, Letizia had spoilt him as she had never spoilt
the others. He had also, since Carlo was now a public figure in
Corsica, more self-confidence than his elder brothers had had at
his age. As a result he was, for the time being, utterly charming.
Letizia was impressed by Napoleon, whose smouldering force
matched her own, but Lucciano disarmed her.
After Lucciano's departure for the Continent came that of
seven-year-old Maria-Aiina, for whom Carlo had obtained a
scholarship to the famous school for girls founded by Louis
XIV's morganatic wife, Madame de Maintenon, at St. Cyr.
Letizia did not accompany her husband and daughter to France
in the summer of 1784 as she was expecting another child.
During this trip Carlo went to fetch Lucciano (now Lucien)
from Autun, where Joseph took the opportunity to tell his
father that he no longer wanted to go into the Church but would
prefer an army career. This was a blow to Carlo, who had already
spent a good deal on his eldest son's education, but he promised
to discuss the matter with Napoleon when he took Lucien to
Brienne. Carlo's attitude at this juncture suggests that, although
he may not have been aware of it, he already considered Napoleon
rather than Joseph as the future head of the family.
His children's prospects were much in Carlo's mind just
Madame Letizia
then. He was only thirty-eight, but his health had lately become
alarmingly bad. Always slender, he had suddenly lost weight,
and was subject to attacks of pain and sickness that, with
characteristic optimism, he at first attributed to indigestion.
This optimism had not prevented him from recently writing to
the French Minister of Finance : " As ill-health precludes my
paying court to you, I am taking the liberty of sending you four
memoranda ... I have seven children, Monseigneur, and am
expecting an eighth, and I am almost without means, for
reasons explained in the said memoranda. I have the honour,
therefore, to ask for your protection, and for justice for my poor
family."
When Carlo and Napoleon met at Brienne, they found them-
selves in complete agreement on every point. Separation from
home and family had made Napoleon mature early, and far from
rebelling against paternal authority, he appreciated all Carlo had
done to give his children the best education available to them,
and all he was still doing to help Corsica make the best of its
connexion with France. He deplored his elder brother's change
of heart, and said that Joseph's good looks and faculty for
turning a pretty compliment would make him an admirable
garrison officer, but nothing more. Like his father, Napoleon
counted on young Fesch, now twenty and about to be ordained,
to persuade Joseph to continue his education at the seminary.
The loving and respectful letter Napoleon wrote Carlo after
this meeting, which was to be their last, must have pleased
Letizia far more than his desperate demand for pocket
money had vexed her. Napoleon said later : " My father was
an extremely handsome man of lively imagination and ardent
passions. He had a fanatical love of liberty, but dreamed of
a liberty that cannot exist at the beginning of a revolution
that overturns everything. My father would have died with the
Girondins."
Carlo took Joseph back to Corsica with him, hoping that
the boy would either think better of his rash decision or agree
to follow in his father's footsteps and study law. Napoleon,
Morning: Corsica
meanwhile, was making a great fuss of Lucien, whom he had
not seen since the latter was a baby. His precocious paternal
instinct was strongly aroused and he wrote home : " Lucien
shows great ability and willingness. He will write you a note on
the back of this. I won't help him, as I want you to see how well
he writes/' Unfortunately for both thek futures, Lucien did not
appreciate his elder brother's affection. Accustomed to being
king of the nursery castle at home and to getting his own way
through charm, he found Napoleon's love too pedagogic. Nor
did the two brothers have much time to get to know each other.
Four months after Lucien's arrival at Brienne, Napoleon was
admitted to the Ecole Militaire in Paris. His brevet of admission
as a gentleman cadet was signed by the Comte de Segur, then
Minister of War. Sixteen years later, when Napoleon was First
Consul, he gave the old count a pension and ordered the
Consular Guards at the Tuileries to present arms when he
appeared.
By the time Napoleon left Brienne for Paris, Carlo was so ill
that Letizia, then in her last month of pregnancy, borrowed
fifty livres in gold from the governor of the island and insisted
that her husband return to France and consult the famous court
doctor, Lassonne, whose earlier treatment had seemed to do him
good. Joseph and young Fesch, now an abbe, accompanied him.
None of them guessed that Carlo's illness might be cancer, and
it is unlikely that Letkia had a premonition that this was their
final parting.
The crossing to the Continent was stormy. Carlo put up a
brave show, but by the time they reached Aix, where Fesch left
for the seminary, Carlo was too ill to travel on to Paris. A well-
known Proven$al doctor advised them to try Montpellier,
famous as a medical centre. Father and son went to a cheap inn
while awaiting the Montpellier doctor's verdict, then moved to
more comfortable lodgings just outside the town. While in
Montpellier they were shown great kindness by Madame
Permon, a compatriot of theirs who had married a Frenchman,
and whose new-born baby daughter, Laure, was to marry one of
Madame Letizia
Napoleon's generals, become Duchejse d'Abrants, and eventu-
ally contribute a great deal of Napoleonic lore to the novels of
her young lover, Honor6 de Balzac. The Bonaparte story is full
of first and last meetings, strange coincidences and collisions,
and many a writer of memoirs was to exploit these opportunities
for drama. When Letizia was asked as an old woman what she
thought of the Duchesse d'Abrantes's Memoirs, she said dryly
that they amounted to fiction " and very bad fiction/'
Carlo's courage survived his realisation that he was doomed.
He talked constantly of Letizia and longed for her presence, but
forbade Joseph to summon her, saying again and again that she
would need every franc they possessed for the future. Further-
more she had given birth to her twelfth child, Girolamo, only
ten days after Carlo left Corsica.
Christmas passed without Carlo's being able to leave Mont-
pellier and by the New Year he was weakening rapidly. Joseph
sent for the Abbe Fesch, who administered the last rites on
February 24th. That afternoon Carlo's pain-clouded mind
began to wander. In his delirium he called repeatedly for
Napoleon, crying in hazy anguish, " Why doesn't he come with
his great sword and protect his father? " Still ready to gamble
on the unlikeliest chance, Carlo struggled against death until
evening, when his heart at last yielded.
Since the doctors suspected cancer, an autopsy was per-
formed. This was most unusual at that period. Even in
Paris there were no more than a hundred autopsies a year, and
medical students had to depend on stolen bodies for dissecting.
Carlo was buried in Montpellier, in a crypt belonging to a
Franciscan order. He would have been thkty-nine the following
month.
There is no record of how Letizia received the news of Carlo's
death, nor of how she survived the first shock of a bereavement
unsoftened by those funeral ceremonies which, by dramatically
acknowledging grief, make it slightly more bearable. But nearly
half a century later she wrote to a widowed granddaughter :
" I know by my own experience that it is very difficult to control
Morning: Corsica
grief caused by the loss of those we love, yet I beg you to do as I
do and harden yourself against irremediable misfortune/' As a
widow of thirty-four, Letizia had no choice but to harden her-
self against irremediable misfortunes if she was to protect her
eight children, five of them still less than ten years old.
II
Transformation
^785-93
Je trouvai appui dans le grand caractere de ma mere, et ellc
parlait de Fappui consolateur qu'elle trouvait en moL
NAPOLEON
Lorsque la guerre de la Revolution dclata, les rois ne la compri-
ent point ; ils virent une r^volte ou ils auraient du voir le
changement des nations, la fin et le commencement d'un
monde . . .
CHATEAUBRIAND : Memolres cTQutre-lombe
How far is St. Helena from a fight in Paris street ?
I haven't time to answer now the men are falling fast.
The guns begin to thunder, and the drums begin to beat.
(ffyou take the first step you will take the last!}
KIPLING : A. St. Helena ILullaby
THE DETERMINATIVE figure in Letizia's life was now
fifteen-year-old Napoleon, the only one of her children
trained for a profession. Far away from her in Paris, he did not
hear of his father's death until a month after it had taken place,
and his immediate reaction was characteristic. In cases of
bereavement a cadet was allowed the privacy of the school
infirmary, but Napoleon refused this favour, saying, " Women
must weep but a man should know how to suffer. I have not
reached my age without thinking of death." His letter to Letizia
was curiously formal, probably because he knew it would be
read by his instructors before being mailed.
" Now that the first shock is over/ 5 he wrote, " I hasten to
tell you of the profound gratitude I feel for all your goodness to
us. Try to be comforted, dear Mother ; the circumstances
demand this. We all feel redoubled tenderness for you, and shall
work to the utmost, happy if our obedience can compensate you
a little for the inestimable loss of a cherished husband." Fortun-
ately for Letizia, she did not realise at this point that Napoleon
was the only one of her children who understood the verb " to
work " as she herself understood it.
As the eldest son and nominal head of the family, Joseph had
hurried home to manage what remained of the family property.
There was no question now of his being able to enter the Army,
so he decided to go to Pisa and study for a law degree in order to
obtain a post in Corsica similar to his father's. From Paris,
Napoleon helped his elder brother by soliciting grants and
writing again and again to various ministers about the long-
overdue subsidies for Carlo's mulberry groves. In struggling to
J9
Madame Lettzia
turn his father's fancies into facts, Napoleon displayed a literal-
minded tenacity very like his mother's, and since he was a
born conqueror and had none of his father's talent for
begging charmingly, he rapidly acquired a coldly authoritative
manner.
By September of that same year Napoleon was ready to
present himself for the Ecole Militaire's final examinations.
Most of the other candidates had already been graduated from the
famous Metz artillery school. Napoleon had had only one year's
preparation, but, thanks to systematically intelligent overwork,
he passed forty-second in a class of fifty-eight. This enabled
him to skip the stage of serving as a pupil-officer and become a
lieutenant at sixteen. He was the first Corsican officer to be
graduated from the Ecole Militaire into the artillery. Being
sent to the La Fere regiment at Valence was particularly lucky
from his point of view, since Valence lay on the direct route to
Corsica, and owing to the disorderliness of the times (this was
the year of the famous Queen's necklace scandal, which Goethe
called " the preface to the French Revolution "), he soon man-
aged to secure an inordinate amount of leave.
Napoleon was as proud of his uniform as any of Stendhal's
young heroes, and became passionately vexed when one of the
Permon girls (daughter of the Madame Permon who befriended
Carlo at Montpellier) noticed how thin his legs were, and nick-
named him " Puss-in-Boots." He proudly described his regi-
ment as the best in Europe, his officers as the " most paternal,
the best and worthiest people in the world." He enjoyed even
his off-duty pursuits, and had his first flirtation with a young
girl named Caroline du Columbier a very innocent matter of
holding hands and picking cherries in the nearby countryside.
Yet for all Napoleon's absorption in his profession, his
family was seldom out of his mind. He applied for leave as soon
as regulations permitted and was allowed to go home on
September ist, 1786. With him went a trunk of books : Plato,
Montaigne, Tacitus, Livy, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Racine
and Corneille, whose superb plays, through which the alex-
So
Transformation
andrines march like an army with banners to support honour and
glory, were among his favourite reading.
Napoleon landed in Ajaccio seven years and nine months
after leaving it. All the family was on the quay to meet him,
except Lucien, at school in Brienne, and Mark-Anna, still at St.
Cyr. At first both he and his family were disconcerted, Letizia
had said goodbye to a Corsican child. She welcomed back a
French officer in a blue-and-scarlet uniform, barely able to speak
to her in their native tongue. Napoleon was at that time small
and thin, with brilliant blue-grey eyes that darkened in moments
of passion, hollow cheeks, and delicately shaped lips already
compressed from the concentrated attention he paid to what-
ever came his way. His brown hair hung straight to his shoulders
and he had a lean and hungry look. Almost at once, though,
Letizia found in this emaciated young stranger her greatest
comfort since Carlo's death. Years later he himself wrote : " I
drew support from my mother's strength of character and she
spoke of the comfort she found in me." Eager to help them
both was young Fesch, who had succeeded the now bedridden
Archdeacon Lucciano at the cathedral, and was thus, at twenty-
four, the most important ecclesiastic in Ajaccio.
Introductions as well as reunions marked Napoleon's
arrival home. He could not recognise his eight-year-old brother,
Luigi, whom he had last seen in the cradle, and two sisters and a
brother were entirely new to him : six-year-old Maria-Paola,
four-year-old Maria-Annunziata, and the baby Girolamo. The
one who impressed him most was Maria-Paola, a dazzlingly
beautiful child, who could already twist everyone, even her
mother, round her little finger. With this child (the future
Princess Borghese), Napoleon regained the capacity for youthful
laughter that he had lost when he left home. She became his
favourite sister, and never lost her power to reduce him to
laughter, even when he was genuinely angered by her latest
folly.
It was with his mother, though, that Napoleon was first
concerned. He found her more exhausted than he had ever seen
61
Madame Letizia
her. Carlo had spent most of her dowry and she was doing all
the housework herself. She was so driven that she asked her
confessor for a dispensation from churchgoing, saying: "I
believe it is a Christian obligation to attend church daily, and
indispensable on feast days, but I do not believe the Church
demands this of people who have work to do or who are mothers
of families/' Yet neither grief nor drudgery had crushed her
spirit. She mourned Carlo, but she delighted in his children.
Nothing would ever mean as much to her as la Famiglia, and she
is known to have refused two offers to marry again. Unlike her
extremely amorous children, she was able to forgo sexual love
while still young. The explanation appears to lie in her single-
mindedness. Having given her heart and body in childhood
entirely to one man, she was incapable, of making herself over to
anyone else. Yet she was as free from prudery as any great lady
of the eighteenth century, and her letters to her grandchildren
were to show a vigorous and matter-of-fact desire that they
should avail themselves of the pleasures appropriate to youth.
No matter how busy she was, she found time to listen to
Napoleon when, stimulated by new ideas, he wanted to expound
Rousseau or Plutarch to her and to Joseph. She would listen by
the hour to the pair of them declaiming Corneille :
La tendresse rfest point de F amour d'un heros :
II est honteux pour lui d'ecouter des sanglots ;
Et par mi la douceur des plus illustrts flammes,
Un peu de durete sied bien aux grandes dmes.
(Tenderness is out of place in a hero's life, it is shameful for
him to heed sobs and even in the midst of the tenderest and
most illustrious passion a little harshness becomes a great
spirit.)
Before long she found the French poet's inflexible sense of
grandeur, rectitude and duty striking a response from her own
heart. It was not surprising that she should share the enthusiasms
of this grown-up son who had seemed a stranger for a minute on
the quayside. Though they laughed easily in the family circle, and
both had a mordant sense of sarcasm, Letizia and Napoleon
62
Transformation
were fundamentally grave, even melancholy, and at this stage in
their lives he repulsed mediocrity with youthful ferocity while
she had never encountered it. Still lithe and ardent, she had
already given birth and endured bereavement, shown skill in
the home and courage on the battlefield, and become familiar
with joy and grief; yet what made her so precious to Napoleon
were the splendid negatives in her experience. At tibdrty-sk she
had never lived in an ugly landscape or drab climate, had never
been intimately acquainted with people lacking energy or
fortitude, and had never come across synthetic food, fatuous
entertainment or meretricious writing. Paoli's famous words to
Napoleon, " There is nothing modern about you, you are a
character out of Plutarch," were even more applicable to
Letizia than to her favourite son. All this, which appealed so
strongly to Napoleon, was to prove a source of strength to
Letizia throughout her long life, but would not render her
easily comprehensible to courtiers.
Stimulated by his mother and his homecoming, Napoleon
spent the beginning of his leave in working on his long-
cherished plan to write a history of Corsica and in trying to
organise a Corsican National Guard and see what could be done
towards replacing the French personnel of the municipal
authorities by Corsicans. His fervour reminded her of that shown
by his father in the same cause twenty years earlier. She took it
seriously and, always prompt to give practical expression to her
sympathies, built a little summer-house at the end of Carlo's
terrace where Napoleon could work undisturbed by the chil-
dren's noise.
By the time the family moved to the Villa Milelli for the
hottest months of .the summer, Napoleon was once more on
terms of close friendship with Joseph and had established
loving relations with the children. Because he had left home and
shouldered responsibility so early, Napoleon developed a
tendency to treat his brothers and sisters as if they were his
children, which, when they were all adults, made him alternately
over-authoritative or over-indulgent with them. By postulating
Madame Letizia
" family reasons " he prolonged his leave until he had been home
for nearly a year, but he was certainly not idle, for in addition
to studying and writing on his own account, he helped Joseph
superintend the family properties and their various harvests,
escorted Letizia to take the waters at Cuagno, and bombarded
the French authorities with requests for payment of the long-
overdue subsidy on Carlo's mulberry groves. When Arch-
deacon Lucciano's gout became much worse and local doctors
proved powerless to help him, it was Napoleon who thought of
writing to the famous Doctor Tissot of Lausanne for advice.
But Doctor Tissot merely noted in the margin of this letter : " of
slight interest, not answered." When all his letters about the
mulberry groves proved equally fruitless, Napoleon decided to
go to Paris and see what could be achieved on the spot.
He reached Paris in October, 1787, and the following month
obtained an audience with Monseigneur de Brienne, the recently
appointed Controller-General of Finances. Nothing came of
this but promises, which confirmed Napoleon in his contempt
for the dilatoriness of bureaucrats. More instructive was an
experience he came by as the result of a walk in the gardens of
the Palais-Royal (described by the historian Michelet as a place
for " le plaisir rapide, grossier, violent, le plaisir exterminates ").
Here Napoleon met a young woman with whom he fell into
conversation. With an earnestness worthy of Rousseau, he
asked her what had driven her to choose her profession. Her
replies were equally earnest. (The first six books of Rousseau's
famous Confessions had been published six years earlier and his
theory that man is naturally good influenced even people who
had not read him.) At the end of this literary exchange Napol-
eon accompanied the young woman to her room, and thus had
his first sexual experience with a prostitute. No sooner was he
back in his hotel than he hastened to write an account of the
meeting in his private notebook. Few of the male Buonapartes
considered any experience complete unless described in writing.
In December, Napoleon obtained a further six months* leave
and returned to Corsica. During his absence Letizia's financial
64
Transformation
worries had increased. Joseph needed money for his law
studies, and Lucien had suddenly decided, after two years at the
military school at Brienne, that he wanted to be a priest, which
involved giving up his military scholarship with no guarantee
that he would get one to a seminary. Such chopping and
changing exasperated Napoleon, himself phenomenally single-
minded. The equally single-minded Letizia was determined,
however, to give each of her fatherless sons an opportunity to
follow the profession to which he was best suited. In this case
Napoleon's intolerance was speedily justified. No scholarship
could be obtained at a seminary, and before long Lucien realised
he had no vocation either. Few Buonapartes had vocations
involving celibacy. Eventually Lucien returned to Ajaccio and
spent a happy, undisciplined adolescence developing his natural
taste for politics. Letizia did not discourage him, since she felt
that he had inherited this proclivity from his father and Lucien
was indeed as brilliant a speaker a$ his father had been.
During Napoleon's absence Letizia had injured a finger
while doing housework and was in urgent need of domestic
help. On his return Napoleon made her write to Joseph,
urging him to spend as little as possible in Pisa (advice as wasted
on Joseph as it would have been on Carlo), and asking him to
engage a servant. " I would prefer an experienced woman,"
she told Joseph, " not too young, about forty, for indoor work.
I would like her to do the washing, though that is not essential,
but she must be able to do the simple cooking we require, also
to sew and iron, and she must be trustworthy."
Having done the little he could to ease Letizia's situation,
Napoleon rejoined his regiment, now at Auxonne, a small
Burgundian town with an artillery school presided over by the
regiment's commander, the Baron du Teil. This excellent officer,
who loved his profession, soon noticed Napoleon's intelligence
and took special pains to teach him artillery tactics. (Napoleon
never missed an opportunity to learn something. Once, when
confined to barracks in a room containing nothing to read but a
volume of Justinian's Juris Civilis Corpus, he studied this so
Madame Letizia
thoroughly that, fifteen years later, when drawing up his famous
Code Civil, he amazed the Council of State by his knowledge of
Roman Law.)
Absorbed by Corsican affairs, Letizia had no detailed know-
ledge of the violence brewing in France until this was provided
by Napoleon, the first of the family to come into physical
contact with the revolution that was to uproot the Buonapartes
and help turn them first into beggars, then into kings. Four
months before his twentieth birthday, rioting broke out in
Seurre and Napoleon's company was sent to stop it. As his
instinctive respect for army discipline was far stronger than his
ephemeral sympathy with Rousseau's belief in human goodness,
Napoleon did not question the justice of the orders he had been
given. Even at nineteen he possessed great authority, and was
able to disperse a threatening crowd merely by ordering his men
to prepare to fire and then proclaiming, " Let honest folk go
home, I fire only on riff-raff."
Back in Auxonne more violence came his way. In July,
rioters began wrecking the Customs House. Napoleon wrote
home that the news from Paris was astonishing and " singularly
alarming." Thousands of labourers were drifting to the capital,
where approximately 120,000 out of 650,000 inhabitants were
already out of work. The King summoned the States-General
(which had not been convened since 1614), and troops were
called out to stop rioting in the Faubourg Saint- Antoine.
On July i4th, the populace of Paris stormed the Bastille
prison. Excitement spread over Europe. A Norwegian called
Steffens wrote in his Memoirs : " I was sixteen at the time. My
father came home beside himself, called his sons and said, * How
fortunate you are, what a splendid future is opening before you 1
If you do not each achieve an independent position now, it will be
your own fault. Birth and poverty will no longer be obstacles . . /
He stopped, overcome by emotion . . . Then he told us how the
Bastille had been taken and the victims of despotism freed."
There were in fact only seven prisoners in the Bastille at the time,
four of them forgers, two lunatics, and one confined there at
66
Transformation
the request of his family. This did not prevent people from
sharing Steffens's feeling that " Those first moments of en-
thusiasm, to be followed by terrible ruins, had about them a
purity that will never be forgotten." It was the beginning of
the revolutionary mood that made the youthful Wordsworth
write, " Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive."
A desire to remain alive produced the first emigration of
aristocrats, headed by Louis XVTs youngest brother, die Comte
d'Artois (the future Charles X), and by particularly unpopular
aristocratic families, such as the Polignacs. Having seen little as
yet of the mob violence that was soon to revolt him, Napoleon
thought it " intoxicating " to see people " fired by the idea of
liberty after centuries of oppression." But despite the sensations
natural to his age and position, his point of view was still that of
an onlooker. For the past three years he had spent half his time
with his family, and his first concern now was with the effect all
this was likely to have on Corsica. Not Letizia herself was more
closely bound to their island home than Napoleon on the eve of
the Revolution of which he was soon to be described as the armed
embodiment.
WHEN NAPOLEON arrived home on leave two months
after the fall of the Bastille, Corsica had already sent four
deputies to the French States-General and was expecting to be
freed at any moment from the Royal Commissioners* overlord-
ship. Letizia was elated, and both Joseph and Napoleon were
obsessed by the hope that Corsica would at last achieve self-
government. Joseph's immediate personal aim was to be elected
deputy, Napoleon's to command the local militia. Both confided
their plans to Letizia, who not only helped but understood them.
As soon as she understood what was happening in France she
had urged Napoleon not to emigrate. Excess was a part of her
nature, and just as she could be avaricious when family interests
were at stake, so she could be extravagant, even reckless, in the
same cause. On this occasion she gave her sons both backing
and money she could ill afford. Carlo's banqueting gallery
became once more the scene of political dramas, and the local
ultra-royalists complained that Napoleon was fomenting trouble
in his home town and should be ordered back to his regiment.
In December, 1789, after the newly formed Constituent Assembly
had declared Corsica no longer a French possession but an
integral part of France, Napoleon was so carried away by
enthusiasm that he asked Letizia to decorate the Casa Buonaparte
with a flag bearing the words " Vive la Nation ! Vive Paoli !
Vive Mirabeau ! " This she did. She was capable, too, of taking
an active part in events on her own initiative, and on one occasion
she put a stop to a violent clash between pro- and anti-revolu-
tionariesdeploying in the process a typical mixture of physical
68
Transformation
fearlessness and shrewd exploitation of the would-be adver-
saries' family relationships.
It was Mirabeau who had urged the new French Govern-
ment to invite Paoli back from exile to be military governor of
Corsica. Joseph was one of the three Corsican delegates chosen
to welcome the returning hero. Paoli's hopes for his country's
future had been encouraged by the reception given him in
Paris by Louis XVI and Marie- Antoinette, and he greeted Joseph
like a long-lost son and presented him with a drawing of himself
made by Carlo twenty years earlier on the back of a playing card,
a gift treasured by Letizia. At first disposed to take the entire
family under his wing, Paoli was soon forced to realise how
profoundly uncomfortable they would all find that attitude. He
went out of his way, on visiting Ajaccio, to show particular
deference to Letizia, and they were both moved by their com-
mon memories of Carlo as a brilliant impetuous boy ; neverthe-
less, he disappointed Carlo's sons by his lukewarm attitude to-
wards the local revolutionary club. Time and circumstances had
moderated Paoli's views. Exile in London had made him fond
of the English and small wonder, since much of his time had
been spent in the stimulating company of Boswell and Doctor
Johnson (who declared that General Paoli had " the loftiest port
of any man he had ever seen ") and at sixty-four the former
rebel was easily exasperated by whipper-snappers who, no
matter how courteous their attitude, clearly felt that the
desire to fight for liberty was their personal discovery. But
Paoli got no support from Letizia, who was still near enough to
her own youth, and above all to Carlo's, to feel with, as well
as for, her dynamic and dogmatic sons. Small misunderstand-
ings produced larger ones, and sk months after Paoli's return
Napoleon wrote a manifesto in which he called the old leader
a political charlatan. The municipal authorities of Ajaccio
retorted by ordering an effigy of Napoleon to be publicly
burnt. Fortunately for Letizia's peace of mind, he was due to
rejoin his regiment.
In order to lighten her domestic responsibilities, Napoleon
69
Madame Letizia
took his twelve-year-old brother, Luigi, to France with him.
No scholarship had been forthcoming for Luigi, so Napoleon
planned to support the little boy out of his pay and devote his
spare time to teaching him. Although this imposed a great strain
on Napoleon, who was already working at a pace that would
have prostrated an ordinary man, he was enchanted to have the
responsibility of " Monsieur Louis/' as he nicknamed his small
brother. In return, Louis worshipped the brother he thought of
as a father, and did all he could to make himself useful to him.
Before long Napoleon wrote home : " Louis is working hard
and learning to write French. I am teaching him mathematics
and geography. He reads history by himself. He will certainly
do well ... all the women here are in love with him. He has
acquired a thoroughly French manner, knows how to enter a
room full of people, and asks the right questions as solemnly as
if he were thirty. He is obviously going to be the best of the
four of us ... he works hard as much from inclination as from
pride, and is full of sensibility."
The revolution was soon to interrupt Louis's peaceful read-
ing of history. Six days after Napoleon had been transferred
back to Valence, Louis XVI escaped from the Tuileries with
Marie-Antoinette, his two children and his sister, Madame
Elizabeth. The royal family's flight from France had been care-
fully planned, but the King's unwieldy carriage proved too slow
for the plan to succeed. Troop movements aroused suspicion
among the already exasperated populace and the royal family
was arrested at Varennes. Dread of foreign invasion spread
through France, and with reason, since Leopold II of Germany
and Frederick William II of Prussia declared that they would use
force to restore the King's power to rule " according to the rights
of sovereigns." This threat of foreign interference naturally
outraged the majoriy of Frenchmen and worsened the un-
fortunate King's situation.
Three months after the flight to Varennes, Napoleon again
obtained leave and took Louis home with him. It was becoming
obvious that Corsica would not be able to maintain an inde-
Transformation
pendent position but must choose between the domination of
France or England. Letizia and her three elder sons believed it
would be best for Corsica to support France. This made Paoli
distrust the entire Buonaparte family. When reminded that
Carlo and Letizia had risked their lives for Corsica, he retorted
that they had nevertheless accepted French rule and that Joseph,
Napoleon and Lucien were now virtually Frenchmen. Political
tension in Ajaccio was still on the increase in October, 1791,
when the Archdeacon Lucciano died, leaving Letizia with no
older man to whom to turn for advice.
She who seldom wept did so at the bedside of the shrewd old
priest, who had been like a father to her as well as to his nephew
Carlo. His ideas and conception of life had had a strong in-
fluence on her and she was disturbed too by his prophetic last
words. Joseph, although never one to belittle himself, admitted
in his Memoirs that the archdeacon had told him at the last,
"You are the firstborn, but he" pointing at Napoleon
" will be the head of the family." Napoleon, too, never forgot
" Tu poi, Napoleone, sarai m omone " nor that the old man had
urged them to keep an eye on Lucien lest his hotheadedness
cause them trouble. The archdeacon may have been merely an
intelligent psychologist, but in a country so rich in super-
stitious beliefs his words lingered, helping to create what they
foretold.
All the gold the archdeacon had hoarded in his mattress
was left to Letizia, and although thrift had become instinctive
to her, she gave Joseph and Napoleon unrestricted use of this
windfall to farther their political plans. Three months later
Napoleon was appointed Adjutant-Major with the Corsican
Volunteers. As this was a post reserved for professional soldiers,
permission for him to accept it had to be obtained from the
Minister of War in Paris, It was granted, but not before
Napoleon had been so affected by the politically heady atmos-
phere of Ajaccio that he considered resigning from the French
Army and making his career in Corsica. Yet he wanted Corsica
to remain French, and himself sided wholeheartedly with the
7 1
Madame Let ma
new Government. Unfortunately for Napoleon's immediate
plans, the Minister of War gave permission for his new appoint-
ment without taking into account a law passed three weeks
earlier forbidding regular French Army officers to join volunteer
corps, and ordering those who had already done so to rejoin
their original regiments by April ist. Exception was made,
however, for volunteer officers with the rank of lieutenant-
colonel, so Napoleon ignored the fact that he was absent with-
out leave, and set about getting himself elected lieutenant-
colonel. Competition was keen, but after the Buonapartist
faction had gone so far as to kidnap one of the most influential
electors, Napoleon got his way and was appointed lieutenant-
colonel.
A week later, on Easter Sunday, after the Volunteers had
been attacked in the street by Paolists and a lieutenant killed,
Napoleon and Quen2a decided to enter the citadel, then in the
hands of a French regiment commanded by Colonel Maillard,
The colonel refused to admit them, and in order to avoid further
trouble ordered them to evacuate their men from Ajaccio.
Napoleon defied him without hesitation and obtained a counter-
order from the public prosecutor. Three days of sporadic
skirmishing followed, during which Napoleon vainly tried to
seize the highest and most impregnable house in the town. By
now the Paolists were so enraged that they sent denunciations to
Paris, charging that " Napokone e causa di tutto. (Napoleon is the
cause of everything.)" The French Government at once sent two
commissioners to Ajaccio to get the facts. Napoleon rode to
Bocognano to meet them and make sure they heard his version
first.
Both Paolists and royalists were determined to get rid of
Napoleon. Since he was still, technically, absent from his
regiment without leave, and therefore liable to court martial,
they had plenty of scope for their denunciations of this brash,
iron-willed young officer. Letizia and Joseph urged him to go
to Paris to defend himself at the highest level and obtain his re-
instatement in the French Army. According to Baron Larrey,
Transformation
Letizia went so far as to say : " Corsica is merely a barren rock,
an imperceptible corner of the earth. France, on the contrary, is
large, rich and densely populated. Now France is ablaze it is
a noble bonfire, my son, and worth taking the risk of being
burnt!"
BEFORE LEAVING home for Paris Napoleon assured
Letizia that she need not worry about him, since he Imd
done his duty as a French officer and would certainly be exoner-
ated of blame. His naive confidence proved justified. Frgjice
had been at war with Austria since April and the Government
could not afford to waste trained men. Nevertheless, he was two
months in Paris waiting for his commission as a captain in the
artillery to come through. v
As soon as Letizia heard that Napoleon had been reinstated,
she wrote Louis XVI a letter of thanks, one of the last of its kind
the poor man received. Unfortunately this letter has not sur-
vived. She also wrote to Napoleon, advising him to remain in
Paris on the supposition that he would be safer there than at
home. She had no idea how dangerous the political atmosphere
had already become in the capital. All religious orders had been
suppressed, emigre property was being confiscated, and revolu-
tionaries advertised their convictions by wearing green-and-
yellow striped trousers instead of breeches (hence the term
" sans-culottes "). In July the famous cry " La Patrie est en
danger ! " echoed across Europe. A fortnight later the Duke 'of
Brunswick, who was preparing to invade France, issued a
manifesto declaring that Prussia and Austria meant to rescue
Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, and that if any violence were
inflicted on the royal family Paris would be sacked and mass
executions would follow. This naturally increased revolutionary
fervour throughout France, as well as revolutionary fury.
The Tuileries was attacked in August. The sound of the
tocsin filled the air with threats of the bloodshed. Three days
74
Transformation
later the royal family was imprisoned in the Temple. By this
time Napoleon's genuine but theoretical enthusiasm for the
Revolution had lessened. He wrote home : " The men at the
top are poor creatures. When one sees events at close quarters,
one is forced to admit that the masses are not worth the trouble
individuals take to win thek support. What is happening here
in Paris is Ajaccio all over again, except that people here seem
even more small minded than at home, even more addicted to
calumny and bickering. . . ." All he saw now contributed to his
opinion that there can be no revolution without terrorism and
that a revolution is the greatest misfortune of the generation that
carries it through.
The next private problem thrust upon Letizia by the pressure
of public events was the removal of fifteen-year-old Maria-Anna
from her conspicuously aristocratic school at St. Cyr. By the
time Napoleon hurried to his sister's rescue, travelling had
become more dangerous than usual. Even the humblest vehicle
was liable to be held up by self-appointed " deputations " who
would order travellers to shout " Vive la Nation ! " and become
violent unless obeyed with enthusiasm. While Napoleon and
Maria- Anna (henceforth to be called Elisa) were on the road,
news that the invading Prussian army was at Verdun reached
Paris, where fanatics immediately broke into the prisons and
began murdering the inmates. Between 1,100 and 1,400 prisoners
were butchered during five days of these famous September
Massacres.
On thek way back to Paris, brother and sister were several
times stopped by " chamber-pots," the nickname for the vehicles
used by the Versailles revolutionaries ; and even at thek modest
hotel, the recently renamed Hotel des Patriotes Hollandais, they
were again -and again asked to show thek papers. All this was
very alarming to Elisa. Physically the most like Napoleon of his
three sisters, she was now a clever French bluestocking, indelibly
marked by the educational system Madame de Maintenon had
devised for noblemen's daughters. Familiar with Fenelon,
Racine and Madame de Sevign6, she knew more about Louis
7/
Madame Letizia
XIV and the gallantries of Versailles than about the revolu-
tionary world in which she now found herself. Napoleon's
uniform and passport still served as a protection for them, but he
found it difficult to explain Elisa's presence.
"Where is she from?"
" Her convent."
"Which convent?"
No sooner was St. Cyr named than they asked aggressively if
she was a ci-devant aristocrat. Fortunately, Elisa's looks were
not of the kind then fashionable. Napoleon said later that had
beautiful Maria-Paolina been in Elisa's place " things would have
gone badly " with them. As it was, he and Elisa managed to
catch a post-chaise to Toulon. Whenever they were stopped en
route^ his assertion that Elisa was his sister aroused catcalls, but
at least not envy, that most dangerous emotion. Asked if they
were aristocrats, Napoleon replied, " We don't have ci-devants in
Corsica. We have always fought for liberty," As most of the
hecklers did not even know where Corsica was, they could not
contest this.
Napoleon and Elisa reached Ajaccio in October, nearly a
month after the ragged revolutionary army won its first great
victory at Valmy, defeating the Prussians in a battle that, as
Goethe said, marked a new epoch in world history. Royalty was
abolished in France the next day and its place taken by the first
French republic, called the Convention in honour of the
American assembly that had met five years earlier, under the
leadership of George Washington, to draw up the constitution
of the United States of America. Soon after Napoleon and Elisa
reached Corsica, a French naval squadron appeared there. On
board was Charles-Louis Huguet Semonville, the new
French Ambassador to Constantinople, with secret instructions
from the Convention to undermine Paoli's influence in Corsica.
A minor Talleyrand, this forty-two-year-old revolutionary
marquis captivated the Buonapartes while compromising them
in the eyes of anti-French Corsicans. With Semonville was his
76
Transformation
nine-year-old stepson, the Marquis de Montholon, who, twenty-
three years later, would accompany Napoleon into exile.
Both ambassador and admiral stayed with the Buonapartes,
the former making a great impression on seventeen-year-old
Lucien who acted as his interpreter at the revolutionary club
and later went as his secretary to Toulon with dramatic results
and the latter bewitching Elisa, who found his manners as
polished as those to which she had become accustomed at St.
Cyr. The admiral seemed equally charmed by Elisa. Far the
most intelligent of the Buonaparte girls, she was amorous in the
extreme, as they all were, and possessed some of the volcanic
quality that distinguished Napoleon. Letizia was wholeheartedly
in favour of the match. At Elisa's age she herself had already
been married for two years, and, like the Buonapartist Stendhal,
she found it hard to resist a well-washed revolutionary with
the manners of an aristocrat. But public events moved too
fast for this private matter. The admiral returned to sea, and
distance put an end to what proximity had scarcely had time to
begin.
The Convention aimed to take Sardinia early in 1793. The
two Corsican volunteer battalions, still nominally under Paoli's
command, were to begin their offensive by landing on the islets
of the Madeleine, opposite the Corsican port of Bonifacio. This
small campaign, Napoleon's first and Paoli's last, started badly.
Paoli's heart was not in it. He regarded the Sardinians as
brothers and was disgusted by the republican sailors sent to
transport the Corsican troops. They were the scum of the
French ports, and as soon as they heard enemy shots, behaved so
badly that a retreat had to be sounded and the cannon left
behind.
The execution of Louis XVI completed Paoli's disillusion-
ment with the Revolution. He told Lucien, " The wretches
have guillotined their King, the best of men, a saint ! No, Corsica
wants nothing to do with them ! It would be better to become
Genoese subjects once more . . . Shame on anyone who sides
with the brigands ! " Paoli then got in communication with
77
Madame Letizia
Admiral Hood, commander of the British fleet in the Mediter-
ranean. Informed of this, the Convention sent three commis-
sioners to investigate the matter. They were still at work when
word came that Paoli was to be arrested as an English agent.
When this startling move proved to be the direct result of a
speech Lucien had made against Paoli at the Toulon revolution-
ary club, Corsicans divided into Paolists and Buonapartists.
Napoleon said later that Lucien's speech had been prompted by
Semonville, which is indeed probable ; but whatever its
cause, it fulfilled the archdeacon's prophecy and endangered the
Buonapartes' lives.
While the mass of Paoli's followers assembled at Corte, pro-
French partisans made for Bastia, Joseph among them. Paolists
in Ajaccio were ordered to capture Napoleon alive or dead, but
Letizia was informed that no harm would befall her provided
she gave a written statement disapproving of her sons' conduct.
Her only recorded comment " I thought Paoli knew me better
than that " showed that she was as ready to fight at forty-two
as she had been at eighteen.
Having escaped an attempt to assassinate him, Napoleon
slipped out of Ajaccio only to be trapped at Corsacci. Local
partisans helped him escape and return to Ajaccio. So as not to
endanger Letizia, he kept away from the Casa Buonaparte and
hid in the house of a kinsman, Levie. Other kinsmen rallied to
him, and when a Paolist search-party invaded the house at mid-
night there was no trace of Napoleon, who escaped by boat to
Macinaggio and from there rode to Bastia. This was Letizia's
first experience of the dread lest Napoleon be killed in war or
assassinated in peace that were to dominate the next twenty-
nine years of her life. A Corsican vendetta may seem an insig-
nificant matter compared with the struggles that lay ahead of
Napoleon, but it cannot have appeared insignificant to Letizia
when she had her first encounter with the Revolution in that
beloved landscape and among the familiar figures of the island
that was never again to be her home for long.
While Napoleon sailed to Bastia, the frustrated Paolists
Transformation
decided to take the forbidden collateral revenge on his family.
Letizia prepared to barricade her house and fight as Faustina
Gaffori had done half a century earlier, but she was dissuaded
from this useless gallantry by Costa of Bastelica, a devoted
partisan who arrived on May 2 3rd with a group of young
mountaineers armed with carbines and stilettos and very similar
to those who had been at her mother's beck and call. (Napoleon
never forgot what Costa had done for Letizia, and he left him
100,000 francs in his will.) They wanted to escort her to the
macchia in accordance with Napoleon's laconic message :
" Prepare yourselves. This country is not for us."
Letizia immediately entrusted her two youngest children,
Maria-Nunziata and Girolamo, to her mother, and dressed the
others for flight. She gave her keys to a cousin, Tommaso
Braccini, who removed her private papers, including recent
letters from Joseph and Lucien, to a safe place. Then she set out.
The young men of Bastelica led the way and those from Bocog-
nano brought up the rear. Letizia walked between them, hold-
ing Maria-Paola by the hand, and Elisa and Louis kept close to
their uncle, the Abb Fesch. As they hurried through the v dark-
ness, Costa told Letizia that the pro-French party meant to
seize all the ports but that Napoleon was sailing back from
Bastia with a French naval squadron headed for Ajaccio. If the
French attempt to land should fail, Napoleon planned to make
for the tower of Capitello, east of the Gulf of Ajaccio, so that
Letizia would have a chance of joining him there. Every now
and again the fugitives fancied they heard movements in the
thick undergrowth around them. Scratched by the bushes,
the terrified children began to whimper. Letizia managed to
quieten them by pointing out that since she was not crying there
was no need for them to cry. It was typical of her that at
this intensely dramatic moment she appealed to their problem-
atic reason rather than to their prolific emotions and with
success.
Their friend the Abb6 Coti met them at Milelli with the news
that the Paolists had sacked the Casa Buonaparte in Aiaccio and
79
Madame Letizia
were now close on thek heels. Without a pause they hastened on
for Capitello, avoiding all villages. It was a dark night and they
had to pass ravines, struggle through brushwood, and cross the
Campo dell'Oro bogs. Near the end of their trek they came
upon a torrent too deep and rough for the children to wade
through. Their only horse was loaded with provisions and
exhausted. Suddenly Costa remembered that he knew a man
who lived nearby and owned a horse accustomed to fording this
stream. The man was providentially at home and willing to
lend his horse. Letizia rode across the torrent with her two
daughters as successfully as, twenty-four years earlier, she had
ridden out of another torrent with Napoleon in her womb.
After she dismounted, the horse was taken back for Louis.
Then the grateful fugitives parted from all their supporters ex-
cept Costa, who continued with them, guiding the borrowed
horse. They did not know that Paoli was about to pass a decree
banishing the Buonapartes from Corsica.
On the other side of the river they almost ran into a group of
Paolists who were on their way to Ajaccio and talking fiercely of
what they had in store for the Buonapartes once they laid hands
on them. Letizia managed to keep the trembling children silent,
and long afterwards her most vivid memory of the incident was
of how thek horse stood motionless, as if it too understood the
situation. At last they reached the ruined tower of Capitello,
built long ago by the Genoese. All Letizia could do now was
wait for Napoleon to keep the rendezvous.
Shepherds brought them food, and on the morning of May
3oth, Letizia heard the sound of gunfire. The French naval
squadron was bombarding the citadel of Ajaccio. Answering
shots rang back. The citadel showed no signs of surrendering,
and since the French commander had not enough men for a
landing-party he decided to give up the attempt. From across
the gulf Letizia saw the ships move out to sea. Now, it seemed,
she and her younger children were lost. As always in moments
of danger, she took refuge in silence and stoicism. No wonder
she felt at home in the world of Corneille :
to
Transformation
Sa probite severe est digne qu'on Pestime;
Elle a tout ce qui fait un grand homme de bien.
Finally the little group watching from the tower saw a three-
master sailing in their direction. From it a long-boat came
rapidly towards the beach. A thin figure in a blue French
uniform jumped out. It was Napoleon. He ran through the
water, took his mother in his arms and burst into tears. Then
he rowed them all out to the three-master and accompanied
them to Giraglia. From there he sent them overland to pro-
French Calvi, where, although faced by the usual refugee
problems, they at least had plenty of relatives and friends.
Letizia and Maria-Paola were welcomed by the Giubegas
(Napoleon's godfather's family); Fesch found lodgings for
Elisa, Louis and himself; and when the younger children
arrived, Maria-Nunziata went to the Paraviccinis, and Girolamo,
who was ill, was cared for by the Casabiancas. Once again the
clan provided a haven for its members. Their family solidarity is
illustrated by the fact that during this time not one of the
Buonapartes is recorded as blaming Lucien for the perils to
which he had exposed them.
Joseph hurried from Bastia to plan thek future with Letizia
and Napoleon. Immediate action was essential, as they knew
Calvi was about to be besieged by the Paolists. There seemed no
solution but flight. The Buonapartes sailed from Corsica on
June nth, 1793, aboard a coaster belonging to a cousin who was
an old hand at slipping through the British fleet. Letizia's pass-
port and those of the younger children (except Luigi's which
seems to have disappeared) read :
BUONAPARTE, LETIZIA, dressmaker, age 56 [she was 42],
passport number 576.
BUONAPARTE, MARIANNE [ElisaJ, dressmaker, age 18 [she
was 1 6], passport number 577.
BUONAPARTE, PAULETTE, dressmaker, age 15 [she was 12],
passport number 578.
BUONAPARTE, ANONTIATA [j&], dressmaker, age 13 [she was
n], passport number 579.
Si
Madame Letizia
BUONAPARTE, JEROME [Gitolamo], schoolboy, age n [he
was 9], passport number 580.
This covey of dressmakers reached Toulon in two days.
There they found the family orator, Lucien, delighted to see
them and disarmingly pleased with himself for having taken so
vigorous a political stand.
82
in
^Afternoon: France
1793-1814
La vie intime et particulifcre appartenant i chaque homme
continuait son cours sous la vie generate, Fensanglantement des
batailles et la transformation des empires.
CHATEAUBRIAND: Mernoires d'Qutre-Tombe
What a chequered life was here! In her girlish days she had been
the beauty of Corsica : when she became a wife, she had to
follow her husband through great trials and dangers, but not
great enough to quell her dauntless spirit ; she was, while still
young, left a widow with eight children, to support whom she
struggled hard ; she lived to see these children raised to the
highest ranks of earthly greatness and grandeur, and she lived
also to see them fall more suddenly than they rose ; but through-
out her long career no prosperity could raise, no adversity could
depress, her calm, indomitable spirit.
WILLIAM HAZLITT : Lzfe ofNapokon Buonaparte
How far is St. Helena from an Emperor of France ?
I cannot see I cannot tell the crowns they dazzle so.
The Kings sit down to dinner, and the Queens stand up to dance.
{After open weather you may look for snow!)
KIPLING : A St. Helena ILullaby
A 1 TOULON LETIZIA found herself in a world of anarchy
and bloodshed far more horrible than any battlefield.
The port was controlled by the St. Jean revolutionary club,
extremists who flouted government orders, held up arms
destined for Corsica and refused to allow the fleet out of harbour.
At every front door hung a list of the house's occupants and
their means of livelihood. As usual in times of social upheaval,
envy, prying and denunciation masqueraded as civic virtues. A
hundred leading citizens had just been arrested and a scarlet
guillotine was already in action in the centre of the town. (It is
one of history's ironies that the guillotine, which came to sym-
bolise the Terror, should have been invented by the humane
Doctor Guillotin in order to lessen the sufferings of men
condemned to death.) For the first time Letizia saw heads
paraded on pikes. Inured to hardship, she had never before
experienced bestiality.
Determined to remove his mother from a mob violence
equally distasteful to himself, Napoleon found lodgings for her
with a Widow Cordeil at La Valette, a small village on the
outskirts of Toulon. Then he gave her all the money he could
spare and left to join his regiment at Nice, promising to send her
part of his pay regularly. Fortunately, he found on arrival that
he had 3,000 livres of back pay awaiting him. From June until
September, Letizia and her five younger children depended
entirely on this. Joseph wrote from Paris, where he had gone to
try his luck, that the Convention had voted a relief fund of
600,000 livres for Corsican patriots, but as there were the usual
Madame Letizia
bureaucratic delays in distributing the money, this was no
immediate help.
The situation was confusing for native-born citizens, let
alone refugees. The Convention had sent representatives to the
province with full powers to hasten the levying of 300,000 men,
arrest suspects and dismiss moderate administrators. Wide-
spread resentment resulted, and soon after Letizia's arrival in
Toulon an army of southern insurgents marched against Paris.
In August the local revolutionaries were defeated, and Toulon
fell into the hands of the English Admiral Hood, who took
possession of it with 7,000 Spaniards, 2,000 Piedmontese, 6,000
Neapolitans and 2,000 Englishmen " in the name of the King of
France/' (As Louis XVI had already been executed, this meant
his little son, whose death in prison has still not been proved,)
Letizia and her children fled north from Toulon, first to Beausset,
then to Reonnes, a village on the road to Brignoles, where
kindly neighbours gave them food. Accustomed to indepen-
dence, Letizia never forgot this humiliating period. Later,
when reproached for showing avarice at the height of the family
fortunes, she would say dryly, " I may one day have to find bread
for all these kings I have borne."
Matters improved for her slightly in September, when
Joseph, for whom Napoleon had obtained the job of secretary to
their compatriot Saliceti, became a war commissioner. He
immediately arranged for Letizia and the children to go to
Marseille, where they were granted two rooms in a requisitioned
house that had belonged to an emigre and contained " voluptuous
wall decorations but no furniture." Whenever possible Letizia
took Maria-Paola (now known as Pauline or Paulette), Maria-
Nunziata (now Caroline) and Jerome to school, sometimes re-
tnaining to study with them so as to improve her own French.
But apart from this she could teach her daughters only the most
primitive household management. Years later, when the girls
iad all acquired coronets, an old servant said she could remem-
ser the modesty with which at this time they took it in turns to
prepare iplat sucrefot dessert ; but as food was far too scarce to
If
Afternoon: France
allow for girlish efforts at dainty recipes, this is probably one of
those pious tales designed to convince the obscure that the
famous are " just like you and me." Modest the Buonapartes'
lives certainly were, and when, long afterwards, Napoleon
came across a libellous account of Letizia's stay in Marseille, he
cried indignantly, " Ah, Madame ! . . . Poor Madame, with her
pride ! If she were to read this ! "
But while Letizia was struggling to maintain the standards of
Corsican family life in revolutionary Marseille, Napoleon's
position was about to undergo a sensational change. Hitherto
he had waited impatiently in the wings of history ; now he
appeared on the stage he was soon to dominate. While serving
with his regiment at Nice, he attracted the attention of Jean du
Teil, artillery commander of the Army of Italy and brother of
the general who had noticed Napoleon's intelligence at Auxonne.
As a result he was sent to Avignon to organise convoys to the
Army of Italy. On discovering that he could not carry out his
orders until Avignon was liberated from the insurgent federal-
ists, he spent his enforced wait outside the city in writing a
political brochure entitled Le Souper de Beaucaire. Well written in
dialogue form, it demonstrated the futility of the federalists'
attempts to defy the Convention. Napoleon paid for this to be
printed in the hope that it might attract attention and procure
him advancement. This proved an astute decision. The
brochure was read by Joseph's benefactor, Saliceti, now one of
the commissioners sent by the Convention to accompany General
Carteaux's army on its mission to quell revolt in southern France.
After proving successful in Avignon, Nice and Marseille,
Carteaux was checked by prolonged resistance in Toulon,
In September, Saliceti, who was at army headquarters,
received a visit from Napoleon returning to Nice with a convoy.
Carteaux's artillery commander had just been badly wounded, so
Saliceti quickly suggested that Captain Buonaparte be re-
quisitioned to replace him. The siege of Toulon was proceeding
so unsuccessfully that it was felt matters could scarcely be made
worse. Saliceti therefore got his way and the obscure young
Madame Letizia
Cotsican took command of the artillery. There, wrote Las
Cases in the Memorial de Sainte-Helene, " history took possession
of him and his immortality began." In the past, while waiting
in Toulon for a boat to Corsica, Napoleon had often spent his
time walking about the town and examining its fortifications.
(Eleven years later, when the young Prince de Bade complained
there was nothing to see in Mainz, Napoleon told him that
whenever one was at a loss in an unfamiliar town one should
investigate the fortifications, " in case one ever had to besiege
the city.") He had thus discovered that whichever side con-
trolled a point called L'Eguillette controlled the roadstead.
Once the English ships were within range of the French cannon,
Toulon would be forced to surrender to the government
troops. Napoleon's ceaseless energy, spirit of enterprise and
habit of sleeping only briefly and always on the ground beside his
battery, irritated the middle-aged Carteaux ; but the latter was
relieved of his command in October and in the following month
a Council of War gave Napoleon a free hand to carry out his
plans. As a result, the English evacuated Toulon on December
1 8th and Jean du Teil wrote to the Minister of War : " I lack
words to describe Buonaparte's merits. He has tremendous skill,
equal intelligence and too much bravery. It is up to you, Minister
to consecrate him to the service of the Republic,"
Promoted Brigadier-General at twenty-four, Napoleon
thought immediately of the effect on his family. Thanks to
tours of inspection which took him to Marseille, he was able to
see Letizia early in the New Year. Her pride in him was mixed
with anxiety, for he had not fought unscathed. He had had his
horse killed under him, the first of many, he had received a
bayonet thrust in the thigh that nearly cost him his leg, and
what was to prove more troublesome than his wound he had
caught a virulent attack of scabies from a dead gunner whose
place he had taken. Yet, thin and exhausted, he was prouder
than ever of his profession, and for the rest of his life would al-
ways help a soldier of whom he was told " he was at Toulon."
In February he was given command of the artillery of the Army
It
Afternoon: France
of Italy, and soon afterwards arranged for Letizia and the
children to live with him at Chateau-Salle, a comfortable country
house just outside Antibes, with gaily painted shutters and a
garden full of orange trees, palms, mimosas and eucalyptus.
Here neighbours devoted to equality, if not to liberty and
fraternity, were edified by the spectacle of young General
Buonaparte's beautiful mother doing the family washing in the
river that ran through her garden. (Napoleon had given her an
allowance of 150,000 livres a year, but recent experiences had
developed her sense of fortune's fickleness. A year ago it had
never occurred to her that she could live cut off from Corsica,
yet now her home was occupied by English soldiers invited there
by Paoli, beside whom, not so long ago, Carlo had fought for
Corsican independence.) Neighbours were less edified when
young General Buonaparte's beautiful sister, thirteen-year-old
Pauline, demonstrated her belief in the pursuit of happiness by
climbing their walls and enjoying their figs.
Before Letizia had had two months of this idyllic life, nine-
teen-year-old Lucien gave her a distressing shock, the first of
many he was to cause her. Although he now had a lucrative job
as supervisor of army supplies at Saint-Maximin, only sixty
miles from his family, he could not keep away from politics and
had managed to get himself elected president of the local
revolutionary club. Then, in May, he defied Corsican tradition
by marrying without asking the consent of the head of the
family in this case Letizia. As he was still a minor, he faked his
birth certificate. His bride, Catherine Boyer, was the illiterate
twenty-one-year-old sister of the innkeeper with whom Lucien
lodged at Saint-Maximin. " I have met a girl who is poor and
virtuous and I have married her/* he told his family. (Jean-
Jacques Rousseau again.)
Once she had met and talked with Catherine, Letizia appre-
ciated the girl's gentle, loving nature, perfectly adapted to
conjugal life. But Napoleon, who was struggling with all his
might to build up the family fortunes, thought Lucien had made
an idiotic marriage and refused to be placated. This was the
Madame Letizia
first of those quarrels between Napoleon and Lucien that were
to be the source of some of Letizia's bitterest griefs. It was a
great relief to her when, three months later, Joseph made a
marriage of which she entirely approved. His bride, Julie, was
the twenty-three-year-old daughter of Fran$ois Clary, a pros-
perous bourgeois of Marseille, who had left his children a
fortune earned in textiles. He had also left them dangerously
situated politically, since they had ties with the provincial
nobility. One member of the family committed suicide for fear
of arrest, three more members emigrated. As a result, the Clarys
were the first French family to consider the Buonapartes, with
their impeccably revolutionary background, as politically useful
friends. They had every reason to do so, since Joseph helped
save Etienne Clary from the guillotine, thus becoming the hero
of the family before he entered it as a brother-in-law. Although
small and plain, Julie was also sweet-natured, loving, devout and
rich and could display a dry wit when with people she trusted,
as she did her mother-in-law. Letizia liked Julie so much that
she was delighted when Napoleon fell in love with her pretty
younger sister, D&iree (later to become the Queen of Sweden).
But within a week of Joseph's marriage Napoleon was in no
position to think of following his example. Robespierre had
been overthrown and guillotined a month earlier, and in con-
sequence anyone connected with him, however remotely, was
suspect in government circles. Napoleon had been on friendly
terms with Robespierre's younger brother since the siege of
Toulon, and had only recently been sent to Genoa by him on a
secret mission to examine the terrain over which the Army of
Italy would have to fight. Napoleon was therefore arrested and,
on August 9th, imprisoned in the Fort Carre, within sight of
Letizia's house. While he was in prison, his friend and aide-de-
camp, Junot (Junot had been a sergeant when his courage
attracted Napoleon's attention and friendship at Toulon, and
was to end as a general and Due d'Abrants), called on Letizia
and offered to organise Napoleon's escape. Letizia often said
that she would never forget Junot kissing her hands and sobbing
90
Afternoon: France
as he swore he would liberate Napoleon or die with him:
" From that moment I considered him the sixth of my sons/'
Napoleon refused, however, to attempt to escape, sure that,
being innocent, he would be exonerated. This was an extremely
irrational belief, but once again he was proved right, although
the influence of his friend and commander Dumerbion, who
considered him an irreplaceable officer, had far more to do with
his narrow escape than had his innocence.
The accusations against Napoleon were so ridiculous that
his career seemed unlikely to suffer from them until nine months
later, when he was ordered to leave the Army of Italy for the
Army of the West, then fighting the royalist rebels in the
Vendee. As this meant transferring from the artillery to the
infantry, Napoleon objected violently and set out for Paris to
try to get his orders changed. With him went Junot, Marmont
(another of Napoleon's future marshals) and his brother Louis.
Letizia and her four younger children moved back to Marseille.
No sooner was Napoleon gone that Letizia heard that Lucien
had been arrested for " Robespierrisme," and was in the very
prison in Aix where only recently a group of royalists had
murdered the inmates. (There was little to choose between
revolutionary and royalist terrorism.) Joseph, who had lost his
job as a war commissioner, was away in Genoa on business for
his wife's family, so Letizia had to act on her own initiative. She
wrote to Chiappe, the Convention's representative to the Army
of Italy:
Citizen Representative,
I have just learnt from this morning's courier of the
arrest of my son Lucien. As none of his brothers is here and
I do not know to whom to turn, I am addressing you in the
hope that you will interest yourself in his case. He was
denounced at Saint-Maximin to one of your colleagues
whose name I do not know, I cannot imagine what he is
accused of, since there were no emigres there, and no one
perished at the hands of the law. Only a few people were
denounced, but I do not know why. I beg you, Citizen
Madame Letizia
Representative, to write to your colleague Isoard, who is
here. I await this proof of your friendship, and hope you
will not disdain my supplications. If your sister-in-law is
still at Nice, please remember me to her.
I am, Citizen Representative, with respect,
Your fellow citizen,
LETIZIA BUONAPARTE
When the news of Lucien's imprisonment reached Napoleon
he was hanging around Paris on half-pay, waiting for the result
of his demand for sick leave. His health was bad at this period,
and his sombre, brooding air earned him the reputation of
" the kind of youth one would not care to encounter at a dark
street corner." He was also the kind of youth Stendhal was to
immortalise thirty-five years later in the character of Julien
Sorel, hero of Le Rouge et k Noir. Immediately he heard of
Lucien's plight, he used his influence to obtain his brother's
release and sent him the money to come to Paris. Letizia was
becoming accustomed to treating Napoleon as her most respons-
ible child.
In August he was employed in the topographical department
of the Ministry of War, and by the end of the month had become
the Government's unofficial adviser on military operations. His
plan for the invasion of Italy won him promotion. He was head
of his department when the question of his joining the Army
of the West came up again. He still objected to this transfer, and
had decided to leave the country rather than submit, when he
heard that the Sultan of Turkey wanted French artillery officers
to train his army. As Napoleon had been fascinated since boy-
hood by both the Orient in general and the exploits of Alexander
the Great in particular, he immediately offered his services and
started making plans to get Joseph appointed French Consul in
Constantinople. He told Joseph that one must live in the
present : " A brave man must despise the future."
Then, in September, he received two astonishingly contra-
dictory pieces of news. The first was that he had been
struck off the army list for having failed to take up his com-
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Afternoon: France
mand with the Army of the West ; the second that he had been
appointed head of a military mission to Turkey. He did not have
to leave immediately, and a month later history suddenly played
into Napoleon's hands, transforming him overnight from a
suspect officer on half-pay into a national hero.
A THOUGH NAPOLEON had always been generous to his
mother, she was astonished when, in October, 1795, she
received a present of 2,000 livres from him. With this came a
letter saying, " It is all over now and my first idea is to send you
the news." What was over was Napoleon's apprenticeship. He
had just saved the Government from being overthrown by the
insurgent National Guard.
For months the Convention had been in a precarious
position, attacked from within and without. After the death of
Louis XVFs son was announced, the boy's emigre uncle, the
Comte de Provence, assumed the title of Louis XVIlf and
royalist bands such as the Compagnons de Jesus and Compagnons du
Soleil attacked revolutionaries in Lyons, Aix, Tarascon and
Marseille. Other royalists rose in the Vendee, and in June the
English landed 12,000 emigres in Brittany. With food scarce,
business at a standstill, the army unpaid, and corruption rampant,
even people without political views were grumbling, and the
bourgeoisie was becoming almost as hostile to the Government
as were the royalists. By the beginning of October, 20,000
insurgents, sections of the National Guard, already controlled
part of Paris, and had found a leader who drew up a plan for
them to assault the Tuileries in two converging groups. The
Convention determined to fight back, but by October 4th it was
rumoured all over Paris that the Government had capitulated.
In a last-minute attempt to save the situation, the Convention
made Barras head of the Army of the Interior.
That evening, Napoleon was at the Theatre Feydeau with
his friend Junot. He remarked that had he been leading the
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Afternoon: France
insurgents, he would soon have made short work of the Con-
vention. A few hours later he was in command of the Con-
vention's troops, having been called in by Barras, an intelligent,
corrupt and ambitious viscount from Provence, who was then a
member of the Convention. Barras had met Napoleon about
the time of the siege of Toulon and been unforgettably struck by
his shabbiness, intransigence and precocious military skill.
Among the men now under Napoleon's orders was his future
brother-in-law Major Joachim Murat, the histrionically hand-
some and courageous son of a Lot innkeeper. Realising that
swords and bullets would not suffice to defend the Tuileries,
Napoleon sent a squadron under Murat galloping to fetch the
cannon in the Pare de Sablons before the insurgents could
capture them. Rain delayed the insurgents, and when they
reached the church of St. Roch in the Rue Saint-Honor^ they
were confronted by forty cannon. Two or three hundred of the
insurgents were killed on the spot and Napoleon's troops routed
the rest. He had made short work of the insurrection. Three
weeks later " General Vendemiaire/' as he was now nicknamed
(because October 5 th was 1 3th Vendemiaire in the Revolutionary
calendar), was promoted commander of the Army of the Interior,
and the Convention was replaced by the Directory, a govern-
ment headed by five directors who were all former members of
the Convention, including Barras, the former lover of the woman
Napoleon was soon to marry.
Napoleon's first reaction to success was typically Corsican.
"Now our family shall lack nothing/' he wrote home. He
arranged for his mother and sisters to move from their two rooms
in Marseille to a handsome apartment in the same street, and he
even thought to send clothes for his sisters, who had started
going to balls where they attracted the kind of attention now-
adays given to film stars. It was the period of the eccentric
fashions of the Merveilleuses and Incroyables, which showed as
much as possible of the female figure without complete nudity,
fashions entirely pleasing to the nymph-like adolescent Pauline.
He gave Joseph a consular appointment, letters of introduction
9J
Madame Letizia
to the Spanish Ambassador, expert advice on Julie's financial
problems and special facilities for cashing money orders.
Indeed, he seemed unable to do enough for his elder brother.
When Joseph wanted to buy shares in two privateers, Napoleon
arranged it; when Joseph grew bored in Genoa, Napoleon
invited him to be his guest in Paris. He secured a post for
Lucien as Commissioner with the Army of the North, and also a
special assignment to accompany Freron, Commissioner-
Extraordinary to Southern France, on an official tour of inspec-
tion that would make it possible for him to visit Letizia. Louis
became a lieutenant in Napoleon's old regiment and a month
later was appointed his brother's aide-de-camp. Jerome was
sent to a good school. Letizia's half-brother, Fesch, was given
the profitable job of purveyor to the Army of Italy. Joseph's
brother-in-law gained command of a battalion of engineers.
Nor, in his desire to please his mother, did Napoleon forget
distant cousins, Ramolinos, Buonapartes, Arrighis. No matter
how often individual members of the family might disagree with
one another, the Buonapartes were united by bonds like those
of a secret society. Years later, when he was ending his life in
exile, Napoleon told Las Cases : " Joseph would have adorned
society anywhere, and Lucien any political assembly. Jerome
would have governed well in maturity. Louis would have
charmed and attracted attention anywhere. My sister Elisa had a
masculine intellect, a vigorous spirit : she must have shown
great philosophy in adversity. Caroline is very skilful and
capable. Pauline, perhaps the most beautiful woman of her time,
was and will be to the end of her life the best creature in the
world. As for my mother, she deserves every type of
veneration. What large family could present a more handsome
ensemble ! On top of that, apart from political dissensions, we
loved one another. As for me, I have never lost my brotherly
feelings. I loved them all, and I think that fundamentally they all
loved me."
Letizia's joy at this flowering of the family fortunes was
abruptly checked by an affront she had never anticipated.
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Afternoon: France
Away in Paris, Napoleon suddenly married a stranger without
even telling his mother, let alone asking her consent. This
deviation from Corsican tradition was all the more painful to
Letizia because Lucien had already committed the same offence.
According to what most modern historians now dismiss as a
" pious legend," a small incident led to Napoleon's marriage.
Immediately after his victory at St. Roch, civilians were ordered
to turn in their arms. A boy of fourteen, Eugene de Beauharnais,
called at Napoleon's headquarters to ask permission to keep a
sword that had belonged to his father, the Vicomte de Beau-
harnais, a revolutionary noble who had served as a general with
the Army of the Rhine, then been guillotined during the Terror.
Touched by the boy's courage and filial loyalty, Napoleon not
only gave permission, but gave it charmingly. He was just
beginning to discover that he could control people otherwise
than by force, and even those who disliked him, as did Chateau-
briand, admitted that his charm and his smile could be irresist-
ible. A few days later the boy's mother, Josephine de Beau-
harnais, came to thank the young general for his kindness to her
son. She was a seductive creole from Martinique, where her
aristocratic father had been a sugar planter. Born Josephine-
Rose Tascher de la Pagerie and married at fourteen, she was now
thirty-three, seven years older than Napoleon, and as great a
conqueror in the alcove as he was on the battlefield. Whether or
not there is any truth in this story, Napoleon certainly met
Josephine at this time and took to attending her receptions,
where he met not only many of the most powerful figures of the
day, but older men who would sometimes forget his presence
and assuage their nostalgia for the ancien regime by saying, " Let's
take a turn at Versailles," and then settling down to talk of the
past.
As a fashionable member of what would now be called the
Barras set, Josephine knew Napoleon was highly esteemed in
Government circles, so, instinctively, she set out to charm him.
This was not difficult, for like many brilliant young men who
have devoted most of their time to work, Napoleon was naive
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Madame Letizia
sexually. He had never before seen a woman like Josephine and
was soon at her beck and call. All thoughts of ingenuous Desiree
Clary vanished from his mind as he rapidly became obsessed by
his passion for Josephine. Years later Josephine's daughter,
Hortense, wrote in her Memoirs that at this period, when she
was thirteen, she had found herself seated at dinner beside a
young general who in order to talk to her mother " pushed
himself forward with such energy and perseverance that he wore
me out and forced me to lean back. In spite of myself, I ex-
amined his face, which was beautiful, very expressive, but re-
markably pale. He spoke passionately and seemed aware of noth-
ing but my mother."
Flattered and indolent, Josephine did nothing to discourage
her " funny little Corsican," and four months after his first visit
to her house they were married, and settled in a charming little
house between courtyard and garden in the Rue Chantereine
(later renamed Rue de la Victoire in Napoleon's honour) that
Josephine had rented for the past six months from Julie Careau,
wife of Napoleon's friend Talma, the famous actor. Josephine
had maintained the house's dramatic traditions by furnishing
the bedroom with stools shaped like drums, chairs with backs
that imitated cross-bows supported by sheaves of arrows, and a
bed draped to resemble a tent. Napoleon was not to enjoy this
boudoir battlefield long. He had recently been appointed
General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy (malicious gossip said that
this was a wedding present from Barras), and he was obliged to
leave his bride two days after their wedding.
On his way to join the Army of Italy Napoleon stopped at
Marseille to see Letizia. As this was his first visit there since
Vendemiaire the city gave him an official welcome, and for the
first time Letizia was publicly honoured as Napoleon's mother
and was presented with the palms of victory. Nevertheless, the
moment was not, from Napoleon's viewpoint, well chosen for a
family reunion. Letizia was having trouble with Pauline, the
most amorous of her incandescent daughters. (Balzac later
made an ancien regime character in Une Double Famille say to his
9*
[Photo Maurice Pet
Letizia Bonaparte
[Photos: Radio Times Hulton Picture Lil
Above left: Carlo Bonaparte,
father of Napoleon; right: Letizia|
Bonaparte, mother of Napoleon. 1
Left: General Pasquale Paoli, ?
Corsican patriot.
[Photo BuUoz]
Corte, as it was in Letizia's time
[Photo Bull
The Bonapartes' house in Ajaccio
[Photo Bu
The Bonaparte family escaping from Corsica as refugees, 1793
[Bettmann Archive]
Joseph Bonaparte
[Radio Times Hulton Picture Library]
Jerome Bonaparte
[Radio Times Hulton Picture Library
Joachim Murat
ladio Times Hulton Picture Library]
Caroline Murat,
ne Bonaparte
Louis Bonaparte
[Radio Times Hulton Picture Library]
Hortense Bonaparte,
ne de Beauharnais
[Radio Times Hulton Picture Library]
Elizabeth Patterson of Baltimore,
first wife of Jr6me Bonaparte
[Radio Times Hulton
Picture Library]
Joseph Bonaparte,
with his wife Julie,
ne Clary
Afternoon: France
prudish son, "Without the Emperor's sisters, what would
become of us ? ") Pauline had fallen in love with Lucien's
superior, the forty-year-old commissioner, Louis-Stanislas
Fr6ron. The son of a Catholic and royalist journalist and the
godson of King Stanislas of Poland, Freron had backed the
revolutionary party and founded a successfully violent left-wing
newspaper, UOrateur du Peupte, to which Marat contributed.
Freron had no more genuine talent as a journalist than he had
courage as a soldier, but he was in advance of his time in his
sense of the value of publicity. Completely heartless, he had a
genius for turning against old friends at crucial moments. But
although he had been involved in some very bloody deeds, there
was superficially nothing of the sans-culotte about him. Like
Robespierre, with whom he had been at school, he dressed as a
dandy and powdered his hair. His personality was as outwardly
brilliant as it was inwardly crapulous, and he easily dazzled the
ingenuous and ignorant Pauline. The only one of Letizia's chil-
dren who had escaped any formal education, she was at fifteen
more than ready to embark on her lifelong pursuit of love.
Jaded Freron was overwhelmed by her beauty and freshness and
welcomed her childish and passionate letters : " Ti amo sempre e
passionatissimamente, per sempre ti amo y ti amo y ti amo> shell* idol mio y
sei cuore mio, tenero amico, ti amo, amo, amo, si amatissimo amante"
(L love you always, most passionately, I love you for ever, I love
you, my beloved idol, my heart, my tender friend, I love you,
love you, love you, my most beloved lover.) This was a
typical fragment. Pauline's world was still that of the old
Corsican serenade :
S'entrassi *ndru Paradisu santu, santu,
E nm truvassi a tia, mi rfesciria.
(If I entered Paradise and found you were not there I would
flee from it.)
Letizia had hoped Napoleon would control Pauline, who
adored him, but now that he had married " an old woman with
grown-up children " (the family view of Josephine), Letizia felt
he was in no position to advise anyone about matrimony. To
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Madame Letizui
her dismay, he seemed as totally bewitched by love as Pauline.
Indeed, he had scarcely left Josephine's arms before he was
writing to her: " Every instant takes me farther from you,
adorable one, and every instant I miss you more unbearably."
Love and genius were devouring him. It was the most feverishly
imaginative period of his life, the only one in which he could
write : " What is the future ? What is the past ? What are
we ? What is the magic fluid that surrounds us and conceals the
things we most need to know ? We live and die in the midst of
marvels."
As Letizia could no longer beat him nor send him to bed
without supper, she made the best of his marriage outwardly and
wrote a socially acceptable reply to the letter he had brought her
from Josephine :
I have received your letter, Madame. It could not, of
course, add to the charming impression I had already
formed of you. My son has told me of his happiness,
which is enough to ensure not only my consent, but my
approval. My own happiness lacks nothing but the pleasure
of meeting you. I already consider you one of my children.
My son has encouraged me to hope that, as your letter
suggests, you may come through Marseille on your way to
join him, I look forward to the pleasure of having you stay
with me.
My daughters join me in the hope that you will soon
be here. Until then, my children, like myself, offer you
the same friendship and affection as they feel for their
brother.
You may be assured, Madame, of the loving attachment
of
LETIZIA BUONAPARTE, Mere
It was during this visit that Napoleon begged Letizia, with
particular emphasis to take care of herself. " If you were to die
I should have only inferiors in the world," were his words.
Napoleon was to love both his wives, in very different ways, and
at least two of his mistresses, but although he treat-ed all the
100
Afternoon: France
women in his life generously, he never respected any woman as
he respected Letizia. The natural bond between mother and
child was strengthened instead of weakened by time, and by the
course of history which gave each of them new reasons to
admire the other's fortitude.
That he was himself passionately in love did not make
Napoleon sympathise with Pauline's infatuation. He knew too
much about Freron's unsavoury private life (his actress mistress
was currently expecting her third child by him) not to urge
Letizia to withhold her consent. This was enough to cause
Lucien, still angry with Napoleon for disapproving of Catherine,
to support Pauline. Elisa, as usual at this stage in their lives,
stood by Lucien, and the cross and clever pair complicated
matters for Letizia by asking insinuatingly in what way Freron
was inferior to Josephine. So far as all the Buonapartes except
Napoleon were concerned, they were already committed in
thought, if not in deed, to a vendetta against the Beauharnais
family. None of this affected Napoleon's attitude, and by the
time he left to take up command of the army in Italy Pauline
was so distraught at his opposition that Letizia could not bring
herself to forbid all communication between the lovers, as is
shown by Pauline's letter to Freron :
Everyone is against us. I see by your letters that all your
friends have failed you, including Napoleon's wife, on whose
support you counted. In fact, she told her husband that I
would demean myself by marrying you, and that she hoped
to prevent our marriage 1 What harm have we done to her ?
Everyone is against us, we are in a miserable situation.
Do write to Napoleon. I would like to write myself.
What do you think? Address your letter to me care of
Mamma. I shall love you all my life. Love me always. My
soul, my blessing, my tender friend, I breathe only to love
you.
Indefatigable in matters of the heart, Pauline did write to
Napoleon several times. But he was too busy to attend to her.
At twenty-six he had reached one of the most fabulous moments
101
Madame Letizia
of his career, the moment evoked by Stendhal in the opening
paragraph of La Chartreuse de Parme :
On May i5th, 1796, General Bonaparte entered Milan
at the head of the young army that had just crossed the
bridge of Lodi and shown the world that, after all these
centuries, Caesar and Alexander had a successor.
102
WHEN NAPOLEON reached Nice, he found the Army of
Italy openly rebellious. Thirty-eight thousand unpaid
and ill-equipped French soldiers faced the prospect of fighting
seventy thousand crack Austrian troops, and were prepared to
despise any general sent them by " those incompetent civilians in
Paris." Within a few days, however, they were won over by the
precision of Napoleon's orders, his unaffected interest in the
smallest detail of their lives, and above all by his challenging
words : " You lack boots, clothes and bread. The enemy has
plenty of everything. It is up to you to conquer. You want to
you can forward ! " Even so toughly recalcitrant a character
as General Augereau, twelve years Napoleon's senior, was sub-
jugated. " The little bugger positively frightened me/* he said
later. "I can't understand what came over me at his first
glance/'
With his army finally in hand, Napoleon began to execute his
long-meditated plan for driving the Austrians out of Italy. A
year later, when the Austrians had to beg him to come to terms
with them, he was within sixty miles of Vienna, and had fought
fourteen battles, seventy lesser combats and taken 100,000
prisoners. Stendhal said that no general had previously won so
many great battles in so short a time or against such heavy
odds. While accumulating these victories in Italy, Napoleon
received his first and very flattering letter from Talleyrand, ex-
noble, bishop and emigre^ recently returned to France and
government office. Now forty-three, the brilliant and wily
Talleyrand was adept at reading the writing on the wall, and he
immediately divined something of the young general's genius.
103
maaame
When the two men met each was favourably impressed by the
other. Talleyrand wrote of Napoleon : " At first sight his face
appeared to me charming. A score of victories go so well with
youth, with fine eyes, with pallor and an air of exhaustion."
Nevertheless, their association, which seemed likely at first to
benefit both France and themselves, finally proved fatal to
Napoleon's empire.
From the start, this first Campaign of Italy provided splendid
material for the Napoleonic legend, and stirred not only the
popular imagination but that of the greatest French writers of
the period. No historians have done more to immortalise
Napoleon than Balzac, Stendhal, Victor Hugo and even
Napoleon's enemy, Chateaubriand. In Le Medetin de Campagm
Balzac makes a veteran say of the beginning of this campaign :
" So then Napoleon, who was still merely Bonaparte, put the
heart into us, God knows how, and we marched by day and we
marched by night, and we thrashed them at Montenotte, and we
went on to make short work of them at Rivoli, Lodi, Arcola,
Millesime : we gave them no quarter. Soldiers soon acquire a
taste for victory 1 " Those first French victories were raptur-
ously welcomed by the Italians, to whom they meant liberation
from the Austrians.
Napoleon soon became so popular that after each battle the
old soldiers held a meeting and conferred promotion on him, as
if raising him from the ranks. It was at Lodi that they gave him
the famous nickname " the Little Corporal/' It was at Lodi, too,
that Napoleon first realised that he might play a decisive part in
history : " Je sentais le monde fair sous mot" (I felt the world flee
beneath me.) When, at Arcola, Napoleon seized the flag and
led his troops across the bridge, a slender, heroic figure with
flying hair who narrowly escaped death, he entered not only
history but legend.
While the peace terms were being arranged, Napoleon set
up headquarters at Milan and invited Letizia and his family to
join him. Josephine had been reluctant to leave Paris, and as he
suspected her of infidelity, he had already sent for Pauline in the
104
Afternoon: France
hope that his sister's presence would have a restraining effect on
his wife. (This is the only occasion on record when anyone who
knew Pauline well expected restraint from her.) His brothers,
Joseph and -Louis, were already in Italy fulfilling their obliga-
tions. Louis had shown extreme bravery during the campaign
and had been the first French soldier to cross the Po. But the
troublesome Lucien, who ought to have been at his post with the
Army of the North, was lingering in Paris without leave and
inciting Freron to feel ill-used. When Napoleon ordered him to
resume his duties, Lucien complained to Letizia that his wife's
miscarriage had been due to their having been forced to travel
just then, and that Josephine was always balefully influencing
Napoleon against him. It is difficult to see what advantages the
happy-go-lucky Josephine could have obtained from urging
Napoleon (who needed no urging) to order Lucien back to work
for which he was drawing payment, but Letizia was so suspicious
of Josephine that she was inclined to believe Lucien's tale.
Just as Letizia had found it natural to treat Napoleon as a
man while he was still an overworked boy, so she sometimes
found it difficult not to continue to indulge Lucien as she had
done when he was the only child left in her nursery. He had a
quicksilver quality that reminded her of Carlo, and also, being a
person of projects rather than achievements, a disarming avail-
ability. It was because he alone of her sons was available just
then that she turned to him when his favourite sister, Elisa,
received an offer of marriage from Felice Pasquale Bacciochi, a
thirty-five-year-old army officer from Ajaccio, who had lodged
in the same house as the Buonapartes in Marseille. As Bacciochi
was Corsican, a soldier, and related to the Buonapartes through
his mother, Letizia favoured the match despite the Bacciochis'
having been pro-Paolist. Lucien realised that Napoleon was sure
to object to the introduction of pro-Paolist elements into the
family, but since he was still angry with his brother for objecting
to his own marriage with Catherine Boyer, he urged Letizia to
give Elisa and Bacciochi their way. His advice encouraged
Letizia's own inclinations, since she thought Elisa tao old
IOJ
nearly twenty for celibacy, and it was extremely evident that
Elisa shared this view. Both Letizia and Elisa had already asked
Napoleon for his consent, but by the time his answer arrived and
proved to be a refusal, Lucien had overcome his mother's doubts.
Elisa and Bacciochi were married on May ist, 1797.
Letizia therefore sailed for Italy accompanied not only by
Elisa, Bacciochi, Caroline and J6r6me, but also by an uneasy
conscience. Napoleon was to be told that his veto had arrived
only after his sister was already married, and Letizia hoped that
Napoleon would make the best of this, just as she herself had
made the best of his marriage.
This was Letizia's first trip to Italy, where so much of her
life, including her most tragic years, was to be spent. She landed
at Genoa just as Napoleon's aide-de-camp, Lavalette, was con-
cluding arrangements for the Genoese Republic to surrender to
France. The city was in an yproar and its fairy-tale marble
palaces and hanging gardens were surrounded by anti-French
demonstrators. Lavalette had not expected Letizia so soon and
insisted she have the protection of a military escort as far as
Milan. Letizia refused with a typical mixture of courage and
common sense, pointing out that as Napoleon was holding
several important Genoese citizens as hostages, no one was likely
to attack his mother.
To Lavalette's amazement, this proved correct. Moreover,
whenever Letizia appeared in public she was hailed as the mother
of the Liberator of Italy with all the enthusiasm of a country
where mothers are revered as a matter of course and closely
associated in the popular mind with the Madonna. As she
approached Milan, Napoleon rode out to meet her, accompanied
by Josephine, Fesch, Joseph, Louis and Pauline. When he dis-
mounted and ran to embrace her, she said, " To-day I am the
happiest mother in the world," words Napoleon quoted at St.
Helena as having been among his life's greatest rewards.
Here for the first time Letizia saw her extraordinary son the
centre of an extraordinary setting. Mombello, where Napoleon
had established his headquarters, was a square castle on a hill
106
Afternoon: France
outside Milan, overlooking the plain of Lombardy. Its grounds
abounded in shady alleys, grottoes and fountains, and an im-
mense avenue led up to a double flight of steps and a terrace that
surrounded the castle. Even more astonishing to Letizia than the
decor, were the actors. Three hundred Polish lancers in blue-
and-amaranth uniforms and shapskas were on guard. The poet
Arnault has left an eyewitness account : " High-ranking
officers, administrators, heads of government and magistrates
stood around Napoleon at a respectful distance. Nothing im-
pressed me so much as the attitude of this little man in the midst
of the giants whom he dominated by his character . . . Berthier,
Kilmane, Clarke, even Augereau, waited in silence for him to
address them, a favour he did not grant to everyone . . . Never
has a military headquarters more closely resembled a court. The
atmosphere was exactly like that of the Tuileries a few years
later . . . c That man/ I told Regnand on our way home, * is a
man apart. Everything yields to his genius ... he is born to rule
as others are born to be ruled. If he is not fortunate enough to
be carried off by a bullet, he will in four years' time be either in
exile or on the throne/ " It was at this point in his career that
Napoleon dropped the "u" from his surname and hence-
forward signed official papers Bonaparte, until the day when the
signature Napoleon sufficed.
To Letizia's relief, Napoleon accepted Elisa's marriage
calmly. He was not pleased by it, but nevertheless he gave his
sister a dowry of 40,000 francs and secured a military command
at Ajaccio for Bacciochi. The only condition he imposed was
that the civil ceremony by which Elisa and Bacciochi had been
married in France should be followed by a religious one at
Mombello. As this was in accordance with Letizia's own wishes,
Napoleon seized the opportunity to get her to consent to the
marriage he had planned for Pauline. The prospective husband,
Victor-Emmanuel Leclerc, was a brave and handsome officer of
twenty-five, recently promoted general. The son of a wealthy
flour merchant of Pontoise, Lederc had received a good educa-
tion before volunteering at nineteen for the Seine-et-Oise
107
Madame Let ma
battalion. He and Napoleon had been friends since the siege of
Toulon, and Leclerc had fallen in love with Pauline at a time
when she was too infatuated with Fr&on to notice the younger
man. Letizia had no difficulty in convincing her that she would
be happy with Leclerc. The inflammable little girl promptly
fell in love with him. Pauline's affections were extremely
catholic, and she was in love from now on until the day she died,
though seldom for long with the same man. She married Leclerc
there and then, and the priest who had performed the ceremony
also married Elisa and Bacciochi. Like Elisa, Pauline received
40,000 francs as dowry from her brother.
Now that Letizia was able to relax she began to long for
Corsica. Napoleon had foreseen this. He himself once said, long
after he had grown accustomed to palaces, that to lose the house
one was born in, the garden where one played as a child, was to
lose one's country. So when Corsica was liberated the previous
October he had ordered that the Casa Buonaparte be repaired
against his mother's return. This proof of her favourite son's
imaginative care for her was for Letizia the climax of a glowing
summer, during which Carlo's grandiose ambitions for her
children had begun to appear extremely modest and rational.
Before parting from Napoleon, Letizia asked herself whether
she ought to tell him that Josephine was the mistress of Hip-
polyte Charles, an entertaining nonentity who amused her idle
days, Letizia had been informed of the affair by Pauline, who
still bore Josephine a grudge for the part she fancied her sister-
in-law had played in preventing her marriage to Frron. Revolted
by Josephine's infidelity and unable to pardon her for not having
given Napoleon a child, Letizia nevertheless hesitated. Finally
she said nothing. Napoleon was still helplessly in love and
Letizia was not a trouble-maker. Silence came naturally to her.
108
THE NEWS THAT Letizia was on her way home stirred up
noisy enthusiasm in Corsica. When she landed the quay-
side was packed with cheering crowds. Ajaccio was illuminated
and guns roared a salute in honour of the mother of the Victor
of Italy, the Liberator of Corsica. Letizia accepted this calmly. It
was the sight and scent of the island itself that moved her, not
the shouting inhabitants. She did not forget that many of those
now cheering her return had only four years earlier driven her
into exile.
Despite Napoleon's orders, the Casa Buonaparte still had the
bedraggled look of a building recently vacated by an army of
occupation. (It is another of history's small ironies that Napol-
eon's future gaoler, Hudson Lowe, was among the English
officers billeted here.) Most of the furniture had been destroyed
or stolen, but the French Government had voted compensation
for "victims of the Paolist counter-revolution," so Letizia
eventually received 97,500 francs from Paris. Helped by Elisa,
Bacciochi and Lucien, who always fell on his feet and was now a
French commissioner in Corsica, she arranged her surviving
possessions and sent to Madame Clary on the mainland for
what could not be bought in Ajaccio such as white cord for
curtains, chairs upholstered in yellow damask and rolls of red,
yellow and red-and-white wall-paper. She did not grudge ex-
pense since she expected to remain in Ajaccio henceforward and
to make her house the permanent family headquarters. Joseph
favoured this plan and bought the part of the house that did not
belong to her. Her half-brother Fesch also joined her there and
109
Madame Letizia
invested some of his recently acquired money in land around
Ajaccio.
Her homecoming was not, however, as opportune as it
seemed. Despite the apparent fervour with which she had been,
welcomed, Corsica was still politically divided. Unpopular
government measures such as conscription, forced loans, the
law of hostages and the persecution of priests who refused to take
the Civil Oath, roused a violent hostility, exacerbated by former
Paolists who attributed every move they disliked to " Buona-
parte-influence " and chose this moment to pay off old grudges.
By the spring of 1798 a clash seemed imminent.
Letizia did not immediately realise what was going on, for at
this point she had a severe attack of malaria and, in addition, she
was preoccupied by anxiety about Napoleon, who had sailed
from Toulon in May in an attempt to conquer Egypt and open
the route to India. With him had gone an army of 38,000 men,
two of the Republic's best generals (Kldber and Desaix), a group
of scholars, writers and archaeologists, and his brother Louis.
News travelled slowly by to-day's standards and mail from Egypt
was often seized by the British fleet in the Mediterranean, so
Letizia was constantly in suspense. Anti-French Corsicans
added to her torments by spreading rumours of disaster, and she
was once goaded into declaring, " My son will not perish miser-
ably in Egypt as his enemies hope. I know a higher destiny
awaits him."
Relief finally arrived in the form of a surprise visit from
Louis, who, while carrying Napoleon's trophies to Paris, had
been driven on to the coast of Corsica by unfavourable winds.
He was still suffering from prolonged sea-sickness, and it says
much for his resilience that he managed to give Letizia a spirited
account of Napoleon's initial victories. After leaving Toulon,
the French had occupied Malta, landed at Aboukir and taken
Alexandria. Although Egypt was nominally ruled by the
Sultan of Turkey, it was in fact controlled by the feudal
Mamelukes, fearless horsemen who had attempted to halt the
French Army when it reached Giza, opposite Cairo, after its
no
Afternoon: France
exhausting march across the desert. In vain the Mamelukes had
flung themselves against the French infantry, which lost only
thirty men as against two thousand of the enemy. This was the
famous Battle of the Pyramids (" Soldiers, from the heights of
these pyramids, forty centuries look down on you ") that made
Napoleon master of Cairo*
Besides this public news Louis brought private information.
Napoleon had at last been told of Josephine's infidelity and was
wild with grief. Four months after he sailed for Egypt Josephine
had acquired Malmaison, a charming country house with forty-
five acres of parks and gardens beside the Seine between Paris
and Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where she indulged her passion for
gardening and, equally openly, for her lover, Hippolyte Charles.
(Recently discovered letters show that Josephine was completely
infatuated by this futile young man and, while the infatuation
lasted, spoke to him of the Bonapartes as " those monsters.")
Louis's report that Napoleon was considering divorce aroused
in Letizia an emotion as fiercely implacable as that which
prompted the Corsican votiferatrice to call down heaven's ven-
geance on the enemies of their husbands and sons.
After their family news had been exchanged, mother and son
discussed the situation in Corsica. Determined that his mother
should not be driven from her home a second time, Louis tried
to persuade her to return to France with him. Her doctor, who
wanted her to take the waters at a French spa, added his argu-
ments. Letizia finally yielded, though unwillingly. Unaware
that her life in Corsica was over, she promised herself as the ship
sailed that she would return. She was unable to keep this promise
until fifteen years later, when, for the last time, she spent a few
hours in the island that represented to her youth and love.
A?TER TAKING THE WATERS at Vichy with Louis, Letizia
went to Paris to stay with Joseph and Julie. She found
the capital so dilapidated that she scarcely recognised it as the
city she had visited with Carlo seventeen years earlier. The
aristocrats* houses, for the most part abandoned by their owners,
were mouldering and in need of fresh paint, secularised churches
were serving as government offices and looked correspondingly
drab, the streets were dirty and without pavements, and neither
light nor water supplies could be relied upon. But in spite of all
this Joseph had found and bought a splendid house, built by the
great architect Gabriel for Mademoiselle Grandi of *he Opera,
in the fashionable Rue du Rocher. All the Bonapartes except
Letizia and Napoleon took an immoderate delight in luxury,
especially in houses, objects of art and clothes. Only over food
and drink were they all naturally abstemious. Whatever their
tastes, they could henceforth indulge them, since the positions
to which Napoleon raised his brothers and sisters enabled them
to acquire fortunes without in any way running counter to the
financial ethics of the period. One has only to read Balzac, in
whose novels money plays so dramatic a part, to see the startling
ease with which fortunes were made and lost in this era.
By bringing Letizia to France Louis had thought to rescue
her from troubled air. But Paris proved no calmer than Ajaccio.
While Napoleon was in Egypt the political situation in France
had taken a turn for the worse. Anarchy was on the increase
and with it talk of reforming the constitution and electing a
" perpetual president." Fouche, the sinister, ambiguous Minister
of Police who had been trained for the priesthood and was
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Afternoon: France
described by Talleyrand as a man " whose countenance, manner
and conversation exhibited profligacy and ferocity, energy and
restlessness," thought that the country needed a figurehead. So
did his associate, the former Abbe Sieyes, that enigmatic
statesman who, when asked what he had done during the
Revolution, said " I survived." Together this formidable pair
of intriguers started looking about for a picturesque public
figure, preferably a soldier, since, as Sieyes told Fouche, " Two
things are necessary, a head and a sword/' While pursuing their
investigations, they often attended the lively receptions given
by the amiable and hospitable Joseph, Madame de Stael,
Benjamin Constant, Talleyrand and Madame Recamier were
among the guests who circulated before the observant gaze of
the self-contained Letizia, and Napoleon was often mentioned
by them as a brilliant soldier. Sieys began to think that General
Bonaparte might prove more useful than the previously suggested
General Bernadotte, " who looks like an eagle but is really a
goose," and both Sieyes and Fouche made the mistake of con-
sidering Napoleon as a sword they could handle. Just so, on a
smaller scale, had social gaiety and political plotting been com-
bined in Carlo's banqueting gallery.
After this taste of Parisian life, Letizia accompanied Julie and
Joseph to their country house at Mortefontaine, near Chantilly.
This house, now vanished, was built beside the fish-ponds
installed by the monks of Chaalis and possessed a park laid out
in the romantic style made fashionable by Rousseau, with a pro-
fusion of temples, grottoes, columns and ruins. Watteau set his
" Embarquement pour Cythere " in this typical lle-de-France
landscape, Corot painted a " Souvenir de Mortefontaine," and
it was here that Chateaubriand read his novel Atala to Louis
Bonaparte. Here too that gentle genius Gerard de Nerval lived
as a child, after his mother had died in Germany while accom-
panying his father, an army surgeon, on one of Napoleon's vast
campaigns. The child's first visits to his uncle's little house in the
woods occurred at the same period as Letizia's last visit to her
son's large one and the descriptions de Nerval was to write of
Madame Letizia
this delicate countryside with its ancient legends and lingering
traditions help us understand why Mortefontaine was the firsi
place in France where Letizia felt at home.
It was not, however, much quieter than Paris. Guests fillec
the place with gaiety. Letizia enjoyed watching her handsome
good-natured eldest son playing host, but she obstinately refused
to contribute to the social pageantry by ordering new dresses foj
herself. When Pauline, who adored clothes and was alreadj
spending a fortune on them, teased her for her avarice, Letizia
said, " Quiet, spendthrift. I have to save for your brothers
They are not all in settled positions yet. It is natural at your age
to think of pleasure, but I have more serious matters to consider
I do not want Bonaparte [Napoleon was the only one of hej
sons she called Bonaparte] to have cause for complaint. Yoi
take advantage of his good nature/* Letizia usually meani
precisely what she said (which is probably why many people
found her enigmatic) and, since she did indeed think it natural
the children should seek pleasure, she made no attempt to check
their high spirits and, so far as everyday matters were con-
cerned, fell in with all their plans. She never objected to meals
at irregular hours, and when they returned from an outing she
was always eager to hear about it. Experienced courtiers already
realised" that her children were the key to her heart. Whenever
anyone praised them, " her deliberately serene expression made
way for animation."
While his brothers and sisters were amusing themselves^
Napoleon was still fighting. In April, 1799, he defeated the
Turks at Mont-Thabor ; then lack of artillery drove him back
to Egypt, where, in July, he repulsed the Turkish Army landed
by the English at Aboukir. A month later he learnt of a ne\v
alliance against France through newspapers sent him with
ironical intent by the ^nglish Admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, and
immediately decided to find out for himself what was happening
in Paris. Without asking permission, he left General K16ber k
charge of the army, slipped through the English fleet by what
seemed a miracle, and made a stop in Ajaccio, where he gave a
114
Afternoon: France
dinner for forty guests in his father's banqueting gallery. Th
was the last time it was used by one of Carlo's sons for the pu
pose for which it had been intended. Napoleon's officers we:
delighted with Corsica and pronounced Ajaccio a splendid towj
the women seductive and the food and drink excellent. It w;
harvest time and Napoleon gave them plenty of wine, grape
pears and wild boar brought him by the peasants. This was
valedictory as well as a festive visit, for although Napoleon wi
still young, thirty, he was more than half-way through his li
and would never see Corsica again.
When he reached Frejus in October, he found France in
chaotic state. Royalists were up in arms in southern and westei
France, and also in Belgium, annexed to France for the secon
time in 1794. Dread of extreme measures prevailed, yet on]
extreme measures could reform the constitution. The Jacobi
clubs had been closed, the extreme left-wing newspapers suj
pressed and the Directory was massing troops in Paris. It ha
also, in desperation, sent to Egypt for Napoleon, although nc
until after he had already left for home on his own initiativ
His arrival had therefore been expected by the Governmen
but not his arrival as early as this and certainly not its startlin
effect on the masses. From the moment he landed in Franc
popular sympathy, excitement and fervour crystallised roun
the victorious young general, who appeared an image of coura^
and probity in the greatest contrast to the noxious manipulate:
in power.
Stendhal noted that when news of Napoleon's arrival i
France reached Paris, Fouche was ordered to arrest him bi
objected, " He is not the man to let himself be arrested and I aj
not the man to arrest him." It would certainly have bee
difficult to stop Napoleon then. All along the route crowc
shouted " Long live Bonaparte ! Long live the Little Corpora]
He has returned to save us ! " From Pontarlier the municip
authorities reported : " The news of Napoleon's arrival inFran<
so electrified our commune that many people were taken i]
others cried for joy and everyone felt this must be a dream,
Madame Letizia
Napoleon's stepdaughter Hortense, who accompanied Josephine
in a vain attempt to reach him before he saw his brothers and
sisters (there were two main roads south and, not knowing which
Napoleon had chosen, Josephine took the wrong one and
missed him), reported : " Whenever we stopped to change
horses, crowds pressed round the carriage and asked if it were
true that their * saviour * had arrived, for that was what all
France was calling him now. With Italy lost, the treasury
bankrupt, the Government devoid of both strength and reputa-
tion, Napoleon's return seemed a blessing from heaven. The
journey from Fr6jus to Paris was a series of triumphs that
showed both him and his enemies what France wanted of
him . . ."
He reached his house in Paris at six in the morning of October
1 6th, 1799. There he found Letizia, too eager to embrace him
after more than two years' separation to have waited at Joseph's
house. To his amusement she showed no surprise at the excite-
ment aroused by his homecoming. Contemporary onlookers
were again and again to wonder at her equanimity which,
because of the grandiose settings in which it was displayed,
seemed to them both mysterious and disconcerting, and presently
became legendary. It did not, apparently, occur to them that
she was in many respects as literal-minded as she was forceful.
In this case, the widespread belief that Napoleon had only to
return to undo the blunders of lesser men and substitute order
for chaos, prosperity for indigence, seemed to her well-founded.
At thirty Napoleon had already quelled a mob, rescued his
family first from death then from destitution, conquered a port
supposed impregnable, prevented a tottering government from
falling, and transformed a horde of discontented tatterdemalions
into one of the finest armies ever destined to enter history with
banners flying. Now he had arrived home, on his own initiative,
at the very moment when he was most needed. Small wonder
that Letizia thought it natural her belief in him should be shared
by others.
Louis's report from Egypt had led Letizia to believe that
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Afternoon: France
Napoleon was at last aware that both honour and dignity re-
quired him to divorce Josephine. No religious obstacle existed,
as they had not been married in church. When Letizia told him
this, Napoleon agreed with her. He was full of bitterness against
his wife, and later, when the clan gathered, his brothers and
sisters did not hesitate to pour forth all the scandalous gossip
about Josephine that Letizia had preferred to omit. They had
two days in which to harden his heart, and they made the best of
them. Then Josephine returned to Paris.
No sooner was she in front of him, distraught, tender, im-
ploring forgiveness, than Napoleon's determination wavered.
He always found it difficult to resist any woman's tears, and he
still loved Josephine. Her explanations were persuasive, her
presence even more so. They had been married only three and
a half years and for more than half that period had been separated.
When Napoleon's brothers hastened to his house to find out the
result of the interview between husband and wife, they learnt that
Napoleon and Josephine were in bed. In the street named after
Napoleon's vktories, Josephine was still the conqueror.
Incensed by what she called such weakness, Letizia forgot
that she herself had been equally weak with Carlo and was still
equally weak where her daughters rather than her daughters-in-
law were concerned. Again and again, throughout her long life,
Letizia displayed equity, common sense, magnanimity and a
formal but unaffected benevolence in keeping with her appear-
ance ; but woe betide anyone within her reach who betrayed a
child of hers! When this happened her emotions divided
swiftly and unconsciously into two working-parties, preparing
mercy for her children but only justice for their enemies.
NAPOLEON WAS NOT long kept idle in Paris this time. On
the 1 8th Brumaire (November 9th), the Directory was
overthrown and he received his first taste of purely political
power. The coup d'etat had been planned by a group of con-
spirators, including Fouche, Sieyes and Talleyrand, who planned
to force all five Directors to resign and leave the executive posts
vacant. The Council of Elders and the Council of Five Hundred
were then to be induced to nominate three provisional Consuls to
replace the Directors and draw up a new constitution. As one
of these Consuls, Napoleon would be the indispensable figure-
head. The Minister of Justice was a party to the conspiracy and
the great majority of generals then in Paris could be relied on to
support it. Lucien, who had been elected President of the
Council of Five Hundred in spite of his being under the statutory
age for this post, had been active in preparing the terrain.
Attracted though he was by political intrigue, Lucien un-
doubtedly believed he was acting in the best interests of France,
and for once he and Napoleon were in agreement.
The curtain went up when the President of the Council of
Elders, who was in the plot, announced that a conspiracy to
overthrow the Government had just been discovered. This
immediately created a dramatic atmosphere, in which those
councillors not in the conspiracy readily supported a proposal
to transfer both Councils outside Paris to Saint-Cloud : a move
designed to prevent popular interference with what was to follow.
The Council appointed General Bonaparte commander of all the
armed forces in Paris and entrusted him with the safety of both
Councils. Napoleon promptly led a brilliant group of officers and
118
Afternoon: France
men to the Council of Elders and said : " You have passed a law
promising public safety. Our arms will ensure this. We desire a
republic based on liberty, equality and the sacred principles of
national representation, and I swear we will have it ! "
By next day those members of the Council of Elders who
were not in the plot had had time to realise they were being
duped and to plan concerted action with the Council of Five
Hundred. As a result, the Council of Five Hundred opened the
afternoon session by voting to maintain the constitution as it
stood. After a clumsy intervention by the Council of Elders,
Napoleon appeared before them, only to be greeted with yells of
" Down with the dictator ! " This shook him. Fearless on the
battlefield, he was nonplussed by civilian violence. The Council
of Five Hundred displayed even greater hostility, crying " Hors
la loll (Outlaw !) " words which, taken literally, amounted to a
death sentence. Some of his grenadiers rushed to protect him,
and Lucien, retaining his sense of political procedure with re-
markable sang-froid, divested himself of his parliamentary
insignia, toga and toque very slowly so as to retard the moment
of voting.
Once outside and on horseback, Napoleon was acclaimed
by his own troops, but the Corps Legislatif's guards, for the
most part hardened revolutionaries, were hesitant. Lucien
joined his brother and, on horseback beside him, made an
impassioned speech to the troops : " The President of the Five
Hundred declares that the immense majority of the Council is
momentarily at the mercy of an armed minority . . . these
reckless brigands, no doubt in the pay of the English, are setting
themselves up against the Council of Elders, and have dared to
speak of outlawing the general charged with carrying out its
decrees. I tell you that it is this ferocious minority that is out-
lawed outlawed by itself 1 I trust the Army to protect the
majority of their representatives. Generals, soldiers, and all of
you, citizens, you will acknowledge as your legislators only those
who join me now ! "
Led by Murat and Leclerc and with drums beating, the gren-
119
Maaame Lettzta
adiers entered the hall and expelled the recalcitrant deputies. At
nine o'clock that evening the Elders, and those who had rallied
to them, voted the liquidation of the Directory and its replace-
ment by three Consuls : Sieyes, Ducos and Napoleon. After
which the Councils adjourned and two Commissions of twenty-
five members each were asked to prepare a reformed constitution
under the supervision of the Consuls. From the first there was
no doubt as to which of the three Consuls was the most import-
ant.
On the evening of the i9th Brumaire, Letizia was in Paris,
attending a performance at the Theatre Feydeau (now the
Opera-Comique) with Pauline, Madame Permon, and her
daughter Laure and Junot. In her Memoirs, Laure wrote of
this evening :
Ever since we arrived, Madame Bonaparte had seemed
agitated and uneasy. She said nothing, but kept glancing at
the door of the box, and my mother and I saw that she was
expecting someone. The curtain went up, the little play
began peacefully, when the manager came on to the stage,
bowed and announced in a loud voice :
" Citizens, General Bonaparte has narrowly escaped
being assassinated at Saint-Cloud by traitors to our
country ! "
At these words Madame Leclerc [Pauline] gave a pierc-
ing scream and began to agitate herself violently, while
her mother, although just as painfully affected, was pccu-
pied only in calming her.
Madame Letizia Bonaparte was as pale as a marble
statue, but no matter how wounded her heart, the only
sign of this on her still beautiful face was a slight con-
traction of the lips.
Leaning over her daughter, she took her hands, held
them tightly in hers, and said in a trenchant voice, " Pauline!
Why make such a scene? Be quiet. Didn't you hear that
no harm has befallen your brother ? ... Be quiet then . . .
and come away. We must go and find out the news."
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Afternoon: France
Her mother's tone had more effect on Madame Leclerc than
all our attempts to comfort her ... At last we were able
to leave . . . crowds were streaming from the theatre, eager
for news . . . several people called out "There's the
General's mother and sister." ..." Where do you want to
go ? " my mother asked Madame Letizia. " To the Rue du
Rocher [Joseph's house] or to the Rue Chantereine
[Napoleon's house] ? " " To the Rue Chantereine/' said
Madame Letizia after a moment's thought. " Joseph won't
be at home, and Julie will know nothing."
So it was with Josephine that Letizia learnt that the son who
at nine years old had feared lest lack of pocket money shame
him in an aristocratic French school, was at thirty virtually the
ruler of France.
121
WHEN NAPOLEON arrived on the political scene the
public's desire for a stable government and material
prosperity outweighed any fear of dictatorship. The Paris
factories were employing only one eighth of the number of
workers employed on the eve of the Revolution, the number of
canuts (the famous Lyons silk workers) had fallen from 8,000 to
1,500 and Marseille was doing less trade in a year than it had
formerly done in six weeks. In the west, 40,000 Chouajas
(devout royalists named after the chat-huant, the screech owl
whose call they imitated as a war-cry) were up in arms inter-
cepting communications between Paris and the sea; and all
over the country so-called royalist risings were a pretext for
brigandage.
Within a prodigiously short time Napoleon justified the
hopes placed in him, revealing himself as brilliant a legislator and
administrator as he was a soldier. Since his time France has been
a kingdom, an empire and a republic, yet even to-day, after the
ravages of two world wars, the basic social structure of France is
still the one laid down by Napoleon. Authority is still vested in
prefects, the ministries are still organised according to his plans,
the educational system is still the one he devised, the Code
Napoleon still regulates judicial relations, and to belong to the
Legion of Honour is still an honour.
Despite his new eminence and the gigantic labours it involved
Napoleon remained ever thoughtful of his family. Each member
was indeed as much an integral part of him as his Corsican
accent. He made Joseph a member of the new Corps Lgislati
and soon afterwards Ambassador Extraordinary empowered to
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Afternoon: France
negotiate the peace with America. (Republican France felt
keenly sympathetic towards the young United States, often
publicly referred to as "the home of virtue and liberty/')
Lucien became Minister of the Interior ; Louis a colonel in the
Fifth Dragoons ; Pauline's husband Leclerc received a divisional
command with the Army of the Rhine; Elisa's husband
Bacciochi was promoted from Marseille to Paris ; and Letizia's
beloved half-brother Fesch, who had resumed his priestly
functions after making a religious retreat in Milan, distinguished
himself in the negotiations preparatory to the Concordat and
was made Archbishop of Lyons by his nephew.
To-day, when youth is often spoken of as if it were a con-
dition peculiar to the mid-twentieth century, it is instructive to
remember the extent to which the Bonaparte story is one of
youth triumphant. Napoleon was only thirty when he began to
rule France ; Ambassador Joseph was thirty-one, Minister
Lucien twenty-four, Colonel Louis twenty-one, and even
Letizia, sometimes described as if by this time she was akeady
an old woman weighed down by honours and bereavements, was
only forty-nine and still energetic as well as beautiful.
Soon after Napoleon became Consul, his seventeen-year-
old sister Caroline, who had been attending Madame Campan's
famous school at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, married General
Murat. Fifteen years older than Caroline, Joachim Murat
already had a flamboyant career behind him. His father had in-
tended him for the priesthood, but the boy was far too fond of
pleasure for a seminary. At twenty he volunteered for the army
and his almost insane bravery made him an incomparable
cavalry leader, who enjoyed nothing, except making love, so
much as galloping at the head of his troops, sabre in hand. He
had met Napoleon when they defended the Convention to-
gether at the Church of St. Roch, and Caroline had been in love
with him ever since he had arrived, a superb-looking officer, at
Marseille bearing news of her brother's first triumph in Italy.
Everything about him was superlatively attractive to a romantic
schoolgirl On the night of the i8th Brumaire he had sent four
Madame Letizia
grenadier guards to Madame Campari's school to reassure
Caroline as to her brother's safety. Hortense de Beauharnais,
who was a fellow pupil, reported that the arrival of four grena-
diers in the middle of the night had driven Madame Campan
to complain loudly of this " martial way " of announcing events,
but that Caroline saw in it only further proof of gallantry and
love.
Napoleon was less enthusiastic than Letizia about this
marriage. He valued Murat as a soldier, but thought his ex-
orbitance as a lover would make him a very trying husband for
an inexperienced schoolgirl. This made no impression on iron-
willed Caroline, who was far too much in love not to be all for
exorbitance. (Talleyrand said of her later that she " had the
brains of a Cromwell in the body of a pretty woman.") Even
Letizia had a weakness for Murat at first. His looks reminded
her of Carlo's, he was as stimulating as military music, and
military heroism was romantically fashionable the year Napoleon
won the battle of Marengo, and with it, domination over
Italy,
A month after the marriage of Caroline and Murat Napoleon
moved from the Luxembourg to the royal apartments in the
Tuileries, then still called the Palace of the Government. A
cheering crowd watched his carriage, drawn by six white horses,
approach the Carrousel. The other two consuls, Sieys and
Ducos, took over the Pavilion de Flore and the Hotel d'Elbeuf.
Napoleon wanted Letizia to live with him at the Tuileries, and
offered to furnish apartments for her there, but she preferred to
remain with Joseph and Julie. Not only did she dislike Josephine
and love Julie, but her attitude towards Napoleon's rise to such
exceptional power was becoming ambivalent. Though she
believed he had genius, she feared he was rising too rapidly not
to be in danger of an equally sensational fall. She could appreci-
ate splendour and had a taste for formality, but she did not want
to commit herself to court life, nor to siding exclusively with one
of her children. More than ever she wanted to be free for which-
ever child might need her most. When Joseph sold his house in
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Afternoon: France
the Rue du Rocher she went to live with Fesch in an equally
splendid house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc.
Napoleon's brothers and sisters did not always keep in mind
how much they owed to him; on the contrary, they were
becoming more and more exigent. Letizia feared that she might
presently have to act as peacemaker between them. Her fears
were soon justified. The first cause of dissension among her
children was the question of Napoleon's successor. As he had no
son, his brothers wanted him to choose one of them, or of their
children, as his heir. Josephine promptly read the writing on the
wall and began planning a marriage between her seventeen-year-
old daughter, Hortense, and her young brother-in-law Louis, in
the hope that Napoleon might accept their children as his heirs.
Letizia violently deplored this plan, all the more so because
Lucien was just then out of favour with Napoleon and she attri-
buted this to Josephine's influence. In reality it was due to
Fouche, who detested Lucien and lost no opportunity to dis-
credit him in his brother's eyes. A tireless, gifted spy, Fouche
made much of Lucien's indiscretions as Minister of the Interior
and was delighted to be able to reveal that he had written an
untimely pamphlet entitled Parallels between Casar, Cromwell, and
Bonaparte, in which he supported monarchism and asserted
" Bonaparte must be King."
Napoleon decided to overlook this but send his incorrigibly
trouble-making brother out of the country for a while. He then
appointed Lucien Ambassador to Madrid, a post which offered
plentiful opportunities for making money and love. Lucien's
gentle, devoted wife Catherine had died in childbirth four months
after Caroline's wedding, and although Lucien was soon court-
ing both the famous actress Mademoiselle George and the
equally famous Madame Recamier, his grief was genuine and a
change of scene indubitably to his advantage.
Letizia did not view Lucien's departure in this light. As soon
as she heard that Fouche had been speaking against him, she
drove to the Tuileries and requested an interview with Napoleon.
Puzzled by her formality, he at once received her. She found
12J
Madame Letizia
him alone with Josephine, who was quickly reduced to teats by
Letizia' s mordant references to Fouch6 as her daughter-in-law's
accomplice. In vain Napoleon tried to interrupt his mother and
defend his wife. He always met his match in Letizia. On leaving
the room, she turned on Josephine and said, with the calm that
made her rages so terrifying, " Will you please warn your friend
Fouche that I believe my arms are long enough to make anyone
who slanders my sons regret it."
As he saw Letizia out, Napoleon said, " So far as slandering
your sons is concerned, I see you don't read the English papers,
which speak ill not only of your dear Lucien, but of me and all
the family/'
" Possibly," said Letizia, " but whereas I can do nothing
about the English, Citizen Fouch6 is another matter."
Napoleon then reproached her with caring more for Lucien
than for himself, to which she truthfully answered, "My
favourite child is always the one who is in trouble."
She was to prove this time and again, but she sometimes
failed to see which of her children had most to bear.
Within six months of this conversation Lucien was to return
From Spain with a fortune, a resident mistress, the Marquise de
Santa Cruz, and every prospect of being given a crown by his
Drother.
126
DESPITE LETIZIA'S objections, Louis married Josephine's
daughter Hortense in January, 1802. The long and
stormy marriage of these two young people, the future King
and Queen of Holland, was doomed from the start. Louis was
still in love with Hortense's cousin, Emilie, whom Napoleon
had married off to Lavalette in order to stop Louis from bring-
ing an emigre's daughter into the family; and Hortense had
accepted Louis mainly to reassure and calm Josephine, to whom
she always showed passionate loyalty. Worst of all, Louis's
formerly charming character was beginning to be affected by
syphilis, for which there was then no certain cure. Letizia was
unaware of this, and soon after the wedding her concern was
diverted from Louis to Lucien.
While visiting a friend at Mereville, Lucien had fallen
violently in love with Alexandrine Jouberthon, a married
woman three years younger than himself. A lawyer's daughter,
she had married a rich broker, Jean-Frangois-Hippolyte
Jouberthon, when she was nineteen, and borne him two children.
By 1801, Jouberthon's business affairs were going so badly that
he sailed for San Domingo, hoping to make a second fortune
there. He left his wife little money, and she was reputed to have
had several lovers before meeting the impetuous and impatient
Lucien, who lost no time in ridding himself of the Marquise de
Santa Cruz and installing Alexandrine in her place at his country
house at Plessis. The rest of the family was immediately informed
of this by Elisa, who, in her husband's absence on duty, had
been living at Plessis, acting as hostess for Lucien and looking
after his two little daughters. She left Plessis on Alexandrine's
I2J
Madame Letizia
arrival, but was kept informed of what went on there by her
lover Fontanes, who, after visiting Lucien and his new mistress,
wrote to Elisa : " A single glance enables me to see through
the masks : the lady is beautiful, as coquettish as she is beautiful,
and as avid as she is coquettish. Her reign may prove long and
costly." As yet none of the family, not even Lucien himself,
had any idea how costly Alexandrine was to prove, and only
Letizia felt forebodings. She knew Napoleon had great ambitions
for Lucien, whom he considered the cleverest of his brothers.
Napoleon's own position had never been more brilliant. By
signing the Treaty of Amiens with England, he had given
France peace for the first time in ten years and his popularity
was at its peak.
English tourists flocking to France after the peace treaty
found pictures of Napoleon everywhere. Tons of earthenware,
porcelain, terra-cotta, plaster, ivory, bronze and marble were
turned into figurines, busts and statues of the nation's hero.
Medallions provided portable iconographies of Bonaparte the
Conqueror and Peacemaker. That August, Napoleon was elected
Consul for life by plebiscite.
Stendhal summed up what he had accomplished to date :
"The dictator's first measures were great, wise and salutary.
Everyone recognised the necessity for a strong government,
and we had a strong government. Everyone was crying out
against the corruption and lack of equity of recent governments,
and the First Consul stopped thievery and gave justice the back-
Ing of force. Everyone deplored the existence of parties that
divided and weakened France, and Napoleon put men of talent
at the head of affairs, regardless of party. Everyone feared
reaction, and Napoleon checked it with an kon hand . . . Perse-
cution had rekindled the last sparks of Catholicism, and Napoleon
protected the Church and restored the priests to their altars . . .
He abolished the law of hostages, closed the list of emigres and,
by a judicious mixture of mildness and severity, pacified western
France. The entire country longed for peace, and Napoleon
offered his enemies peace. After this offer was disdainfully
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Afternoon: France
refused by England and Austria, he conquered the latter in the
admirable campaign of Marengo, then showed reckless genero-
sity to the conquered. . . . Abandoned by Its allies, the English
Cabinet was at last forced to make peace and recognise the
Republic."
One of Napoleon's most popular moves this year was sending
an expedition to recover the island of San Domingo (now
Haiti), which France had acquired in 1697 and lost during the
Revolution, when the negroes, led by Toussaint TOuverture,
won their independence. San Domingo had prospered as a
French possession and Josephine had repeatedly deplored its
loss to Napoleon. Not only soldiers but civilian speculators
competed to take part in the expedition. Napoleon needed an
impeccably honest commander-in-chief, so he chose his brother-
in-law Leclerc. Pauline was at first appalled by the idea of
leaving her gay life in Paris for " snakes and savages," but
Leclerc did not want to leave her and their baby son Dermide
behind, and as both Letizia and Napoleon were firm about a
wife's place being with her husband, the resilient creature soon
cheered herself with thoughts of striped muslin dresses and
creole turbans.
At first all went well. Leclerc landed 20,000 men, con-
quered the island in forty days and established peaceful con-
ditions. Then an epidemic of yellow fever broke out, killing
37,250 people. In September all the frightened negroes who
had joined the French Army deserted, leaving Leclerc with only
2,000 men against 10,000, Pauline showed immense courage,
saying gaily that Bonaparte's sister couldn't be afraid, and she
refused to leave her husband when he wanted to send her to
safety. But it was he who caught the fever and died. A week
after his death his twenty-two-year-old widow sailed for France.
Of the many men Pauline loved, only her first husband inspired
in her a little fear as well as love. Her grief was violent and
genuine, and, in accordance with an old Corsican tradition, she
cut off her beautiful hair and put it in the coffin, which she took
back to France. By a gloomy coincidence, Pauline's first love,
Madame Letizia
Fr&ron, who had become prefect of southern San Domingo, also
died of yellow fever at this time.
Too ill to attend her husband's funeral, she went to stay with
Joseph, now living in the Faubourg Saint-Honor^. Here the
family gathered round her, offering every inducement to turn her
thoughts away from mourning. Letizia watched her unhappily.
She knew enough about Pauline's temperament to realise that
unless a second husband was soon found, she would un-
doubtedly commit one folly after another. But Pauline's were
not the most formidable problems confronting Letizia.
Lucien had recently come back from the country to Paris
and installed Alexandrine, now pregnant, in a house in what is
now the Place du Palais-Bourbon, It was connected with his own
house in the Rue Saint-Dominique by an underground passage.
Alexandrine gave birth to a son in May, and the next day she and
Lucien were secretly married by the priest who baptised the child.
Two days later the King of Etruria died and Napoleon, who
wanted to make an ally of Etruria in order to control Tuscany
and the port of Leghorn, suggested that Lucien should marry
the widowed Queen. She was preposterously ugly, but Napol-
eon had every reason to suppose Lucien would overlook her
appearance and welcome a throne. To his surprise Lucien
refused, but in a manner that suggested he might change his
mind. Napoleon knew of Alexandrine's existence but did not
suppose her more important to Lucien than the Marquise de
Santa Cruz had been. Shortly afterwards Napoleon appointed
Lucien to delimit the senatorships in France's newly annexed
territories. Ostensibly delighted, Lucien left for the Rhine with
a large suite, including art experts to help him buy Flemish
pictures. On his return Napoleon offered him the post of
Treasurer to the Senate, and Joseph that of Chancellor. Both
refused, saying they did not want to " compromise their rights
to the Consular succession." It did not occur to them that
rights were not involved, only favours.
Meanwhile a second husband had been found for Pauline,
a Roman prince, Camillo Borghese. At twenty-eight the Prince
1)0
Afternoon: France
Borghese was an attractive young man with regular features,
large brilliant dark eyes, and immense territorial possessions.
Although he wrote his own language incorrectly and spoke bad
French, he was enthusiastically in favour of " new ideas/* In
the summer of 1798 he had thrown his coat of arms into the
Roman bonfire where the Livre d'Or (the book of the nobility),
the cardinals' hats and the record of the Holy See's procedures
were already blazing in honour of a brave new world. Then he
had danced round the bonfire with the young Prince of Santa
Croce. Thanks to his combination of rank and riches, all this
was dismissed by the authorities as a boyish escapade. By the
time Pauline met the prince her experiences in San Domingo
seemed to her to have taken place in another life and she was
once more eager for love and gaiety. She accepted the ardent
young man, his title and his family jewels, all with equally
ingenuous delight, and in August, 1808, Paris newspapers
carried reports of the forthcoming marriage. Letizia was relieved
that Pauline was to have a husband and pleased that she herself
would have an Italian son-in-law.
Since this marriage pleased the Bonapartes, the Borgheses
and the Pope, all should have gone smoothly. Yet it did not.
Pauline and her prince had either forgotten or never noticed
that Napoleon had recently revived the ancien regime law impos-
ing one year and six weeks* mourning for a husband. So,
legally, Pauline could not remarry until December. Always
indulgent with Pauline, Napoleon said she might waive six
weeks, but insisted she wait until November. At this point
Letizia intervened and encouraged Pauline to marry at the end
of the summer. The marriage took place secretly at Morte-
fontaine in August. The reason for such precipitation was
rumoured to be " the ardour of the Italian temperament and the
frailty of widows/' and it seems likely that, in uncharacteristic-
ally urging Pauline to disobey her brother, Letizia was choosing
the lesser of two prospective scandals.
Napoleon was so vexed that he did not attend the official
wedding in November, and it was unfortunately at this point
Madame Letizia
that he heard of Lucien's secret marriage. This outraged him,
since, to his mind, the absence of any convincing evidence of
Jouberthon's death, and the illegitimacy of Lucien's son, made
this marriage both a mesalliance and an immovable obstacle to
Lucien's political advancement. In his Memoirs, which show
that he had a gift for fiction, Lucien writes : " By her entire
approbation and her particular esteem for her daughter-in-law,
whom I presented to her, our mother, the true head of the family,
gave the lie to those of her children who displayed contrary
sentiments." He adds that although LetLzia was distressed by
Napoleon's opposition to this marriage, she had to some extent
anticipated it. She advised him to be calm and show no rancour.
" With moderation," she told Lucien, " the Consul's brotherly
feelings will return, and his sense of justice, for situated as you
are in relation to each other, he knows that he has no right to
ask you to marry to suit him, any more than he married to suit
you or me. There is nothing to be said against your wife from
the point of view of birth, education or conduct." All of which
sounds more like Lucien than like his mother, who is unlikely
to have considered bigamy a bagatelle. But she certainly tried to
defend Lucien. Napoleon refused to be mollified, so in February
1805, Lucien left for Italy " with hatred in his heart." Thus
began the active phase of the almost lifelong quarrel between
Napoleon and Lucien which was to cause their mother mortifica-
tion and misery.
AICORDING TO BARON LARREY, Letizk now Opposed
Napoleon, not only in the domestic matter of Lucien's
second marriage but in the far graver one of the Due d'Enghien,
whose judicial murder did Napoleon's reputation incalculable
harm.
Several conspiracies against Napoleon had previously been
defeated, when, on the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens, the
English asked all the French emigres whom they were subsidising
to assemble at the Rhine preparatory to invading France. Among
those who responded was the Due d'Enghien, grandson of
the Prince de Conde and last of his line. Three years younger
than Napoleon, the Due d'Enghien had served in Conde's
army until it was disbanded in 1801, when he settled in Etten-
heim, near the French frontier, in order to be with his beloved
mistress, Princess Charlotte de Rohan-Rochefort. Talleyrand,
who played the part of Grey Eminence in this drama and
believed, as he later told the Czar, that " treachery is a question
of dates," informed Napoleon that the duke was preparing
to invade France. After a meeting of the three Consuls, Fouche,
Talleyrand and the judge, Regnier, three hundred French
dragoons were sent to kidnap the Due d'Enghien and take him
to Strasbourg.
There the duke composed a Profession of Faith intended for
Napoleon, in which he wrote : " A military career being the
only one in which I can henceforth, after all my family's mis-
fortunes, maintain the honour of my name, I give my sacred
word of honour that I have never had any aim other than to
Madame Letizia
serve the first power to go to war, and that if any country
other than England had been the first to fight, no matter against
whom, I should have asked with the same urgency for an
honourable military position in its army. I wish to send this
declaration of faith with my papers, in order to prevent there
being any doubt as to the object of my wishes, my actions, my
correspondence : all of which, ever since the peace, have aimed
at obtaining my return to a military career."
Napoleon's own intense feeling for the Army might have
made him respond to this letter. (Years later, in exile, he told an
English officer : " I love a good soldier who has undergone the
baptism of fire, of no matter what nationality/') Thanks to
Talleyrand, however, he did not receive it until too late. When
the Due d'Enghien was told he was to be transferred to Paris,
he expressed satisfaction and said, " A quarter of an hour's con-
versation with the First Consul will settle everything." He reach-
ed the fortress of Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris on March
2oth, and was interrogated by a Council of War in the presence of
the Prefect of Police. He displayed the courage that was as much
a part of him as his coat of arms, and admitted he had fought
against France and would do so again if the opportunity pre-
sented itself. He was immediately condemned to death and
shot in the early hours of the morning. When Alexander of
Russia subsequently raised objections, Talleyrand pointed out
that France had not asked Russia why no one had been punished
for the murder of the late Czar Paul.
Baron Larrey says that Letizia went in tears to Napoleon and
begged him to spare the Due d'Enghien, saying, " You will be
the first to fall into the abyss you are digging to-day beneath your
family's feet." The Revue Historique for May and June, 1879,
also states that Letizia was instrumental in carrying out the
duke's last request that his favourite dog and various personal
possessions be sent to the woman he loved. Both actions accord
with Letizia's character, yet must be apocryphal, unless Fesch, by
this time a cardinal and Napoleon's ambassador to the Papal
Afternoon: France
States, made a most improbable mistake in writing to Napoleon
that Letizia had arrived in Rome on March 3 1 st (only eleven days
after the duke's execution) " after having travelled for eighteen
days? which was the normal duration of such a journey at that
time. Nor is either incident mentioned in the copious Memoirs
of Hortense and the Duchesse d'Abrantes, both of whom were at
Malmaison at the time. Josephine did intercede on the Due
d'Enghien's behalf, but Napoleon was determined to " support
the revolution " against the forces of reaction represented by the
emigre army.
It has been alleged that Letizia joined Lucien in Rome only
to emphasise her displeasure with Napoleon. But here again
the evidence is conflicting. In his Memoirs, Lucien paints a
dramatic picture of his departure from Paris, describing how he
and Alexandrine threw themselves at Letizia's feet when she
cried, " Au revoir, au revoir, bientot & Rowe ! " This, he says,
took place on the eve of Easter, 1804: but on the eve of
Easter Letizia was already in Rome, as is proved by the recorded
fact that the Pope offered her a special tribunal in St. Peter's for
the Easter High Mass. In addition, a letter written by Letizia to
a French official in Rome the previous January shows that her
stay there was planned long ahead. In this letter she had
written : " It is decided that in the spring I shall pay a visit to
Italy, where I hope to recover my health and spend several
agreeable months, thanks to the beautiful climate and the
presence there of a brother and a daughter whom I love/* No
mention of Lucien and indeed, he was not in Rome when she
arrived there.
Before she left Paris, Letizia persuaded Napoleon to write
to the Pope on his brother's behalf, asking him to receive
Lucien kindly during the stay he intended making in Rome
" in order to study antiques and history." These studies were
not merely pretexts. Lucien was in many respects the most
artistic of the family and cared passionately for archaeology. Far
from wishing to interfere with his mother's visit to Italy,
Napoleon made her a present of the sumptuous carriage in
Madame Letizia
which she set out accompanied by her friend Madame Etienne
Clary (Julie's sister-in-law), by Madame Andelard, a canoness
who acted as lady-in-waiting, by her lawyer and man of business
her doctor, a maid, and by Saverk, the faithful Corsican servant
who had helped her raise her children.
The journey to Italy was a strenuous one. Writing ten
years later, Samuel Rogers, an English banker, writer and poet,
said : " The French inn is little improved. In France there are
still two classes of society. The first travel from chateau to
chateau. The last shift as they can. There is still wanting a
middle class to command into an inn the comforts and elegan-
cies of life." Letizia travelled under the name of Madame
Roccoboni, and although her incognito was respected during
the first stages of her journey, there were great festivities at
Turin, the handsome, arcaded city where the Holy Shroud is
kept. One newspaper announced grandiloquently : " We have
formed conjectures that we may not divulge as to the name and
family of this lady." In Bologna, birth-place of the great
Bibbiena theatre family, the artillery fired a salute in her honour
and a Polish cavalry escort was provided a style of welcome
entirely appropriate to this dramatic city of shadowy colonnades,
leaning towers and medieval palaces in which the past still seems
hermetically sealed.
When she reached the Papal States, Letizia found all the red
carpets laid down. At Loreto (the place to which angels trans-
ported the Holy House from Nazareth in the thirteenth century),
the Papal palace was put at her disposal. Regally escorted all the
way to Rome, she went to the Corsini Palace, at that time rented
by the French Government. The first important palace built
outside the Septimian Gate during the Renaissance, this pos-
sessed a stately garden, containing a huge magnolia tree and an
army of pines, and was haunted by memories of Catherine
Sforza, whom Gesar Borgia had brought there as a prisoner in
golden chains.
The Cardinal Secretary of State immediately called to pay
136
Afternoon; France
Letizia his respects, and within twenty-four hours every member
of the Sacred College had done the same. Letkia accepted this
initial homage with disconcerting equanimity, and since she
believed that an honour paid to her was an honour paid to
Napoleon, subsequently showed herself quite as strict on points
of etiquette as any member of the Sacred College. Fesch wrote
to Napoleon :
Your mother arrived in Rome the loth Germinal (March
3ist), Holy Saturday, after travelling for eighteen days
without stopping at Lyons or Milan. She was received in
the Papal States with the greatest distinction. At Loreto
she stayed in the Papal palace.
On her arrival in Rome, His Holiness ordered a tribune
to be erected for her in St. Peter's, similar to those of the
Queen of Sardinia and the Princess of Meckleburg, so
that she might attend Easter Mass ; but as this tribune had
to be placed behind those of the above persons, who have
been in possession of theirs for a year, she thought it her
duty to refuse the proposed honour on the grounds of
fatigue.
Yesterday I presented her to the Pope at the Quirinal,
accompanied by her daughter [Pauline] and Madame Clary,
in full gala dress, and with the greatest ceremony. The
Swiss Guards accompanied her to the first ante-room, where
she was received by Messeigneurs the gentlemen-in-
waiting, and the guard of nobles presented arms. The
Pope spoke to her of his attachment to you, and his
prayers for your well-being; he told her he would be
enchanted to see her often, and that she must remain in
his states as long as she pleased. She took her leave after
a long interview.
The Roman nobility call on her without waiting for
ricevimento days. The Dean of the Sacred College invited
all the cardinals to pay her their respects within twenty-
four hours. All, even the Neapolitans, hastened to offer
her this mark of deference usually reserved for sovereigns.
maaame
She bore herself with great dignity throughout these cere-
monies, and I believe Rome is really the place that suits her
best. She will be very comfortable here, and I shall do all
I can to make her happy . , .
This Fesch did, helped by Pauline, now one of the most
fashionable Roman princesses. Soon after her arrival, Letizia
moved from the Palazzo Corsini to the Palazzo Nunez (to-day
the Palazzo Torlonia) in the Via Bocca di Leone, a minute's
walk from the Piazza di Spagna. This palace had been bought
by the still-absent Lucien, who, with typical extravagance,
installed a swimming-pool, or a naumacbia as he preferred to call
it, and a stage for amateur theatricals. (Letizia shared her chil-
dren's enthusiasm for the theatre. She often invited the great
actor Talma, who was a close friend of Napoleon's, to her house,
and Mademoiselle George, the youthful "Venus of Paris"
who was later Napoleon's mistress, used to recite Corneille in
Letizia's salon and was once given by her an immense stuffed
bird of paradise to be used as a head-dress.) Among the plays
Lucien and his controversial second wife performed here was
Voltaire's Zaire. Lucien created a particularly personal im-
pression as Orosmane, in which role he seemed to be defending
his wife against his brother.
Pour Zaire, crois-moi sans que ton c&ur s'offenre
Elle riest pas d*un prix qui soit en ta puissance ',
Tes chevaliers fmifais et tous leurs souverains
S'uniraient vainement pour PSter de mes mains.
When Lucien arrived in Rome, Letizia joined Fesch in the
Palazzo Falconieri, a superb palace, modernised by Borromini, in
the centre of Renaissance Rome. The powerful beauty of Rome,
so in harmony with Letizia's temperament, did not take her mind
off her irremediably amorous children. Her own married life
had been so happy, so fruitful, and so in accordance with
Corsican traditions, that she had to learn to understand her
children's behaviour as one learns a foreign language. This was
not easy for her. Born steadfast and consistent, she had never
Afternoon: France
heard of the noxious effect of repressions and thought it natural
to repress what was not seemly.
The latest matrimonial trouble in the family involved
twenty-year-old Jerome, the youngest and handsomest of her
sons. His frivolity had earned him the nickname of Fifi and he
was then a naval officer, as happy-go-lucky as he was brave. A
few months earlier his ship had anchored off Martinique, the
captain had fallen ill, and Jerome had been given command with
the provisional rank of lieutenant. After a practice cruise among
the Windward Isles and a visit to Martinique, where he was
extravagantly feted at Josephine's old home, Jerome should have
returned to France. But as English ships were just then on the
lookout for him, he decided to go to North America and to sail
from there on a neutral vessel. All the Bonapartes were great
travellers, animated by the same instinct that made Mr. Micaw-
ber say, " It would be rash not to go on and see the cathedral/*
While in America, where he spent far more than the generous
allowance Napoleon had given him over and above his pay,
Jerome fell in love with an American girl, Elizabeth Patterson,
the belle of Baltimore and daughter of William Patterson,
president of the city's largest bank.
Full of energy in matters of the heart, Jerome disregarded
the fact that he was under age and so could not marry legally
without his mother's consent. He proposed to Miss Patterson
through the Spanish Ambassador and was accepted with en-
thusiasm, to the consternation of the French charge d'affaires in
Washington. This official had no instructions as to how to treat
Napoleon's youngest brother not surprisingly, since Napoleon's
youngest brother was supposed to be on the high seas at the
time. When the harassed official pointed out that any marriage
contracted in these circumstances would be null and void,
Jerome cheerfully told him to mind his own business. Then he
said that after all, on thinking it over, he had changed his mind
and would not marry just now. The charge d'affaires's relief was
so excessive that he lent Jerome all the money that improvident
young man wanted, thus enabling him to marry Elizabeth
Madame Letma
Patterson within a month. The news reached Paris via the
English Press.
When Letizia heard of this she was in no mood to sympathise
with an irresponsible scapegrace. Public events were filling her
with alarm. For although the Due d'Enghien's execution had
horrified many people in France as well as abroad, it had also
provoked a widespread desire that Napoleon's position be
strengthened. He had already been elected Consul for life two
years earlier, and when a member of the Tribunate suggested that
he become Emperor the proposition was received enthusiastic-
ally. In consequence Letma was beginning to think that he had
been right to tell Lucien that theirs was now " a political family "
and individual members must trim their personal wishes accord-
ingly. She understood, too, his desire to establish a " family of
kings " and thus federalise Europe, But she was not happy about
this new development. After the Senate had voted a constitution
of which the first article proclaimed " The government of the
Republic is entrusted to an Emperor who takes the title of
Emperor of the French," she was attacked by forebodings that
made Lucien write from Italy to Joseph :
Our mother is preoccupied by all the changes under way,
She believes the First Consul is wrong to want to assume
the crown of Louis XVI. She has bad dreams which she
confides only to me. She fears lest fanatical republicans
assassinate the Emperor, She thinks the republic has more
partisans than Napoleon realises.
Letizia had every reason to dread seeing her children caught
between the hinges of history. At fifty-three, she could remem-
ber both the mountain battlefields where the Corsicans had
defied the France of Louis XV, and the glittering Versailles of
Louis XVI and a girlish Marie-Antoinette, who bore no re-
semblance to the haggard, white-haired old woman of thirty-
seven immortalised by David on her way to the guillotine. She
could remember the stifling atmosphere of civil strife, the
hunted sensations of the refugee, the echoes of anonymous
denunciations and the sight of severed heads swaying through the
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Afternoon: France
air on pikes. She had seen her son take hold of history and bring
victory out of disaster, order out of chaos ; she had heard him
cheered as a soldier and hailed as a legislator and she had sat
helpless in a box at a theatre while on the stage a stranger an-
nounced that this same son had just narrowly escaped assas-
sination. She had plenty of material for bad dreams, and for the
fears she succinctly expressed in the words " Pourvu qw fa Jure"
141
DURING LETIZIA'S second visit to Italy, Lucien took her
to see the villa he had bought at Frascati, a fashionable
Roman summer resort in the Alban hills where there were
several magnificent villas, including that of Pauline's brother-in-
law Prince Aldobrandini. Although Frascati is only thirteen
miles from Rome, the trip there was a strenuous one. Even half
a century later, Alfred de Musset's younger brother Paul could
write : " Excursions to Frascati, Albano, Tivoli are veritable
journeys, requiring an entire day each. One reaches these green
hills only after traversing the desert that for a space of fifteen
milks contains neither tree nor blade of grass. Scattered about
lie the remains of ruined edifices, aqueducts, tombs, and frag-
ments of walls. At sunset our friend Seigneur Tito stopped the
carriage and took us through the ravines to a little valley full of
young trees. In this oasis we found a grotto containing a layer
of fresh earth. Three green oaks grew from the roof of the grotto
their leaves outlined against a sky of purest blue. A buffalo was
drinking at a fountain. At the sound of our footsteps it turned
its head, gave us a sullen look, then continued drinking."
The lower slopes of the hill on which Frascati stands were
silver-grey with olive trees, and above these came the dark
greens of oaks, pines, cypresses and ilex. On buying the Villa
Ruffinella, Lucien had decided to transform the hillside behind it
into a kind of Mount Parnassus, with fountains and grottoes
populated by statues. According to Diego AngelTs I Bonaparti a
Rowa, this led to " a number of those little quarrels so common
between poets and archaeologists in every country and especially
in Italy." Lucien had to content himself with putting the waste
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Afternoon: France
land under cultivation and planting an avenue of myrtles, where
he placed the statues he had ordered from Carrara. Once again
Letizia listened to lengthy explanations of building projects,
such as her husband had enjoyed in the days when he was
planning his banqueting gallery. Lucien evidently employed his
talents well, since the Pope was so impressed by his agricultural
and artistic improvements that he arranged for him to receive
his statues free of the usual customs* duties.
In July Letizia accompanied Pauline to take the waters at
Bagni di Lucca, a moth-coloured village on the banks of the
green River Lima, where Shelley was soon to enjoy sailing paper
boats, where Elizabeth and Robert Browning would later spend
happy summers with their American friends, the William
Wetmore Storys, and where Ouida, the flamboyant Victorian
novelist supposed by some people to have Bonaparte blood, was
to be buried. The news that Napoleon was definitely to become
Emperor had so disturbed Letizia that, while she was at Bagni di
Lucca, Fesch wrote to Napoleon without consulting her :
Your mother has gone to take the waters at Lucca. But
there are moral rather than physical reasons for her ill-
health. I noticed she felt worse every time a courier
arrived without a letter for her. She was very much
humiliated to learn of the creation of the Empire only
through the newspapers, and she has been most distressed
not to have received any special message from you for the
past three months. She begins to imagine that Your
Imperial Majesty prefers any member of the family to her
... I have done all I can for her . . . but my efforts have been
frustrated by the illness of Madame Clary, who always has
such a good effect on her . . . She does not know how to
reply when some people call her " Majesty ," others
" Empress Mother/* or " Imperial Highness." She would
like to know exactly what has been decided. She does not
want to return to Rome, and hopes that Your Imperial
Majesty will call her to Paris before the end of August,
when she plans to leave Lucca.
Madame Letizia
Public concerns were now banished from Letizia's mind by
domestic grief. That summer Pauline's only child, six-year-old
Dermide, was seized by a fever followed by violent convulsions
and died within forty-eight hours. Pauline's sorrow left Letizia
no time to attend to her own. Soon after the little boy's death
came that of Madame Clary. This struck Letizia all the more
cruelly because she loved few people outside her family circle.
With the death of this dear friend she had passed the frontier
beyond which the heart is constantly threatened by time and
death, irrevocably on the losing side. Because Letizia con-
trolled her emotions ruthlessly, it seldom occurred to anyone,
even her excitable children, that she might be inwardly dis-
traught. Her respect for other people was equalled by the self-
respect from which it sprang, and though her emotions gained
richness from the restraint she imposed upon them, they often
made her suffer. Thanks to the position Napoleon had achieved
for his family, she already qualified in the public mind as more
or less than a human being : an illustrious mother, an in-
spiringly noble figurehead. Were she alive to-day, she would be
interviewed on television as a gold-star mother or offered up as a
tranquillising example of a " most unforgettable character,"
and people would forget now as they did then that behind the
slogans was a vulnerable human being.
Still troubled by the quarrel between Napoleon and Lucien,
she did not go straight to Paris but stopped in Milan to visit
Lucien, hoping against hope to find a letter there from Napoleon
expressing the wish for a reconciliation with his brother. The
only result was that she did not reach Paris until seventeen days
after Napoleon had been crowned Emperor in Notre-Dame.
This did not prevent David, who was familiar with her appear-
ance, from including her in the official coronation picture, now
at Versailles, from which she still gazes with youthful, passionate
eyes, her slender, slightly disdainful elegance in striking contra-
diction to the rumour that she was a " simple peasant."
With the family in Paris Letizia found Napoleon's wet-
nurse, Camilla Illari, whom he had invited to the Tuileries. After
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Afternoon: France
sailing from Corsica in August, Camilla had got into diffi-
culties at Avignon through her lack of French* The parish
priest wrote to the Minister of Public Worship who wrote to
Napoleon, who immediately gave orders that she was to be
given every assistance. She reached Paris in time to attend her
favourite child's coronation, and no one in Notre-Dame under-
stood better than his old nurse Napoleon's whispered aside to
Joseph, "If only our father could see us now." Napoleon
arranged for Camilla to be privately received by the Pope, and
sent her home in a daze, laden with gifts including diamonds
from Josephine. It was far easier for Camilla Illari, the loving
peasant nurse, to adjust herself to Napoleon's overpowering new
position than it was for those who rose with him. People born
royal adapt themselves to new honours as instinctively as strong
swimmers to the sea, but the Bonapartes had no inherited pattern
of royal behaviour to depend upon, only the genius of one mem-
ber of their large and assertive family. The difficulties that
resulted from Napoleon's brothers and sisters jostling for rank-
behaving, as he said sardonically, as if he had deprived them of
"their rightful heritage from their father the Emperor"
made Letizia's role of peacemaker an increasingly exacting one,
and she faced court Hfe and her new responsibilities with a
heavy heart.
L,TIZIA NOW HAD HER own house in Paris, the [6tel de
Brienne, in the Rue Saint-Dominique, which she had
bought from Lucien for 600,000 francs. She was to be the last
private owner of this supremely elegant eighteenth-century
bStel particulier, with its pigeon-grey colouring so typical of
Paris. After Waterloo she sold it to the French Government
and it became, and still is, the War Office. To-day a few rooms
retain vestiges of their original decorations a blue salon on the
ground floor with charming sculptures of children above the
door, a red drawing-room with arabesques painted in yellow
and sepia, highlighted with gold, and Letizia's Empire boudoir
with gilt bas-reliefs on a yellow background. She arranged to be
warned by a bell whenever Napoleon's carriage drove up to her
house, in order that she might immediately dismiss whoever
was with her and thus have her son to herself.
Napoleon gave his mother the tide of Son Altesse Imperial*,
Madame la Mere de FEmpereur, and from then on she was known
to the public as " Madame Mre." He also appointed her
Protectress of the Hospital Sisters and of the Sisters of Charity
throughout the Empire, a position particularly congenial to her
since it was natural to her to manifest faith through works.
With these titles went an allowance of a million francs a year
for the upkeep of the household Napoleon established for her.
His choice of personnel showed his determination to combine
the best of both old and new regimes. Letizia's dame d'honneur
was the Vicomtesse de Fontanges, a relative of Josephine's,
whose husband had been in command of San Domingo at the
time of the Revolution. Among her other ladies-in-waiting were
146
Afternoon: France
two of Napoleon's marshals' wives, Madame Davout, Madame
Soult and Madame Junot (the former Laure Permon and future
Duchesse d'Abrantes). The post of chamberlain was given, at
his own request, .to the Due de Cosse-Brissac, who had rallied
to the new regime at the beginning of the Consulate. Her
master of horse was Colonel Detres, a heroic figure who had been
left for dead on the battlefield after receiving nineteen sabre
cuts and two bullet wounds. Her equerry was General Marc-
Antoine de la Bonniniere de Beaumont, formerly one of Louis
XVFs pages, now a cavalry inspector and married to Marshal
Davout's sister. Monseigneur de Canoviry, Bishop of Verceil,
was Letizia's chaplain. The household also included an intend-
ant, a lawyer, a reader, chaplains, doctors and secretaries. (The
post of reader to Letizia was no sinecure. They all testified that
she kept them hard at work, including Madame de Chantereine,
who had been in prison with Louis XVTs daughter, Madame
Royale.)
Napoleon provided his mother with a coat of arms (a golden
eagle trampling a golden thunderbolt against a blue background,
the thunderbolt bearing a silver escutcheon), and with a crown
set with precious stones, surmounted by eight pearls and closed
by eight semicircles supporting an orb and cross. On official
occasions her cloak was similar to Josephine's in ornamentation,
and her livery to that of Napoleon. It has been suggested that
grandeur was distasteful to her, but this does not accord with her
admonition to the child Napoleone : " Remember that it is better
to go hungry than to forgo making a fine appearance." Always
able to adapt herself to new circumstances, she was certainly
equal to these. In Un Debut dans la Vie, Balzac wrote of a
character named Oscar Husson, the son of one of Letizia's
attendants : " It may perhaps be pertinent to mention the
reason for Oscar's absurd pride, and observe that he was born in
the house of Madame, the Emperor's mother. Throughout
his early childhood he was dazzled by the imperial splendour,
and his pliant imagination was marked for ever by the stunning
pictures of that time of golden festivities."
Madame Lethia
Golden festivities were robbed of their lustre for Letizia by
the continuation of the quarrel between Napoleon and Lucien.
She fully understood Napoleon's point of view now and in April
she wrote to Lucien :
You have been told of the success of your letter to the
Emperor. On the eve of his departure [Napoleon was on
his way to Milan to be crowned King of Italy], we talked of
you, and I was extremely glad of the good will he displayed
towards you. The hope of an early reconciliation between
you children comforts my soul. You know I shall have no
peace until I have brought that about, but I cannot do so
without your help. You have always given me proofs of
deference. Now is the time to give me the greatest proof of
all. As your mother, I implore you to do this. It is not
enough to have put matters in motion, a conclusion must be
reached. Take advantage of this favourable moment. Do
not miss this excellent opportunity to be reconciled with
your brother, and to make yourself, your family and me,
happy. If you miss this chance, I have every reason to fear
you may never be offered another, and that I shall have to
drag out my days in sadness. But I assure myself that this
will not be the case and, in the consoling hope of soon
hearing that you have embraced the Emperor, I embrace
you and your family with all my heart.
A significant point in this letter eludes translation. Letisia
ddresses Lucien with the intimate " thou " except in one
entence : " I cannot do so without your help," where she uses
tie second person plural, implying that the co-operation of
Aicien's wife was essential. In the early stages of the quarrel
.etizia had been moved by Lucien's love for Alexandrine, but
ven more by his love for the son on whose account he had
carried her. So now, consistently, she urged him to reflect that
Japoleon was ready to adopt Lucien's children and give them
Dyal status if only Lucien would free himself of Alexandrine as
wife (though not necessarily as a mistress, which was what
lapoleon in any case considered her), and thus make it possible
148
Afternoon: France
for him to be given a throne and exercise his undoubted gifts for
public life.
That Letizia was not shocked by the worldliness of this
proposition indicates that she was a more sophisticated character
than is usually suggested, as well as congenitally incapable of
imagining parents refusing to sacrifice themselves for their
children. The idea of the world well lost for love seemed a
pusillanimous one to her resolute nature. Lucien, on the other
hand, was a born lover and a tenacious one. Not even Letizia,
with whom his relations were far closer domestically than hers
with Napoleon, could alter his determination to get his own
way.
To Letizia's relief, Jerome proved more pliant. He and
Elizabeth Patterson reached Lisbon from America this same
month. Instead of a fatted calf, the prodigal son found port
authorities who refused to allow his wife to land. Jerome sent
her on by .sea to Amsterdam, while he hurried to Italy te meet
Napoleon. He was genuinely in love with his foreign bride, but,
since he was as lightminded as he was ardent, all that had hap-
pened to him in the remote new world beyond the Atlantic
began to seem scarcely real once he found himself back in
Napoleon's orbit. Unlike his three elder brothers, Jerome could
hardly remember a time when Napoleon had not been a power-
ful, glamorous father-figure. He put up no resistance now,
to the disgust of Elizabeth Patterson, an ambitious girl
who had longed for Europe, She later wrote, " I hated and
loathed residence in Baltimore so much that when I thought
I was to spend my life there I tried to screw up courage to
the point of committing suicide "; and when Jer6me asked her
later why she had refused 200,000 francs a year from him and
accepted 60,000 from Napoleon she said, " I prefer to be sheltered
under the wing of an eagle to being suspended by the quill of a
goose."
Letizia wrote to Louis : " I hasten to tell you the reassuring
news just received from the Emperor. Jerome has reached
Italy and declared that he is entirely disposed to do as the
Madame Letizia
Emperor wishes. The Emperor received him like a brother,
and has given him back his friendship. He tells me of his satis-
faction and happiness. You know mine cannot be complete
until I hear that Lucien has been restored to favour, then
you will all be the objects of my satisfaction, as you are of my
love."
BEFORE NAPOLEON WENT to Italy he suggested that
Letizia should stay at the Grand Trianon at Versailles in
order to be with Pauline, who was then visiting at the Petit
Trianon. Built in 1687 to provide Louis XIV with a retreat from
the formality of life in the main palace, the Grand Trianon has
two wings joined by a peristyle of green-and-pink marble and a
fagade of rose-and-white marble. At the beginning of the
twentieth century the Grand Trianon inspired Proust's friend,
the Marquis de Castellane, to build a pink pakce in the Avenue
Malakoff. It did not, however, inspire Letizia, who is said to
have complained that the rooms were too small and the ceilings
too low. Probably the associations of the place were what caused
her to dislike it. Although the Trianon's original furniture and
objects of art had been auctioned eleven years before and were
now replaced by Empire furniture a swarm with Imperial bees,
sphinx and eagles, the place still evoked Louis XVI and Marie-
Antoinette and their pathetic cry on their accession : " We are
too young to reign ! " Even the Bourbons, when they returned
to France, tried at first to avoid Versailles.
Napoleon did not intend the Grand Trianon as a permanent
country residence for his mother. Three months later he wrote
to her from Italy that he had bought her the seventeenth-
century castle of Pont, on the banks of the Seine, south-east of
Paris, and was also giving her 60,000 francs towards furniture*
(To this sum he kter added 100,000 francs and thirteen pieces of
Gobelin tapestry.) She immediately answered :
My extreme weakness, after quite a serious illness, does not
permit me to write to Your Majesty myself, as I would have
Madame Letizia
wished, but I do not want to delay in thanking you for this
acquisition made on my behalf. I am employing my secret-
ary to tell Your Majesty that I accept this gift, and am
particularly grateful for the obliging way in which it is made.
This proof of your affection touches me infinitely, for you
know that your heart is my most precious domain. On
receiving your letter, I sent off my Intendant, and am wait-
ing for his report before making my plans. I shall certainly
inhabit this property if possible.
Only the thought of your return will keep me in Paris.
I hope the sum destined for repairs and furnishing will
prove sufficient. Everything will be done in accordance
with Your Majesty's tastes. I shall, besides, give account of
every detail.
Do not be uneasy about my health. My symptoms were
alarming at first, but, thanks to Corvisart and my other
doctors, soon checked. Exercise and country air will do
the rest. I was not able to go to Trianon, the furnishing
not being completed.
I need not repeat, Sire, my assurances of an affection
that began with Your Majesty's existence and will end
only with mine.
Letizia reached Pont on August 25th, 1805, and was received
with pomp and ceremony. The inhabitants lined the route,
shouting " Vive VEmpereur I " and " Vive Madame ! " and the
Prefect of Aube reported : " Her Imperial Highness, Madame,
reached her castle at Pont on Sunday at five o'clock in the
evening. Compliments were addressed to her by the inhabitants
of Nogent. A mounted guard of honour escorted her as far as
the limits of the Commune of Pont, where another mounted
guard received her. General rejoicing was manifested by
illuminations, dancing and fireworks. Yesterday Madame
received the local authorities."
Having performed her official duties, Letizia settled into a
quiet life that was the despair of her livelier ladies-in-waiting.
Her half-brother, Cardinal Fesch, and several other ecclesiastics
1J2
Afternoon: France
joined her, and she divided her time between religious observ-
ances, walks, needlework, reading and reversi, a card game of
Spanish origin to which she was particularly addicted. It was
played by four people with a pack of cards from which the tens
had been subtracted, and the victor was whoever scored the
fewest points. Lucien says in his Memoirs : " Reversi was a
family taste that we must have inherited from our mother, who
preferred it to any other game and pkyed it to perfection,
calculating and knowing the possibilities of all the cards. I
remember that our famous Pascal Paoli, who loved the game
and played it as well as our mother, often lost to her, and used
to console himself for these defeats by saying, * Signora Letizia
has this game in her blood/ "
Daily life at Pont was not exacting. People were free to get
up when they chose. Lunch at eleven-thirty was followed by
needlework, cards and conversation, after which people dis-
persed to their apartments or paid calls. After dinner there
would be carriage rides along the banks of the Seine. On one
occasion Fesch's friend, the Italian poet Gianni, who was so
hump-backed that he could fasten his shoes without stooping,
took Letizia to visit the shrine of the Paraclete in memory of
Helo'ise and Abelard. Letizk's life provides many strange
pictures, but none stranger than this one where the stately, still-
beautiful Corsican, whose son dominated Europe, stands beside
a deformed Italian poet and solemnly contemplates a shrine set
up in that typically French landscape to celebrate a form of
illicit love far removed from her own emotional range.
* Letizia enjoyed listening to music while at the card table,
preferably vocal rather than instrumental. This was also true of
her servant and confidante Saveria, of whom Madame d* Abran-
tes writes : " She was an extraordinary woman. I shall never
forget the expression of savage sensibility on her face one day
at Pont. I was in an old abandoned gallery, where there was a
spinet which Mademoiselle de Lannay and I used to play to
pass the time. One day I was singing in a low voice, while
Madame pkyed reversi, and in this house where everything re-
Madame Letizia
minded me of Corsica far more than in my own home, I suddenly
recalled a goatherd's song from the mountains that my mother
taught me ... I was singing it softly . . . Saveria, whose room was
nearby, heard me. She came silently to me, while I was at the
spinet . . . then I heard stifled sobs. It was Saveria, who had
wanted to join in, but was choked by tears." Saveria's violent,
inarticulate nostalgia for their island home was one of the
qualities that made her almost as indispensable as Fesch to Letizia.
While the younger generation ranged proudly over Europe,
these three created a little Corsica in the French countryside.
When Napoleon said that he wished Letizia to see in the gift
of Pont a proof of his desire to please her, he undoubtedly spoke
the truth. But he also intended it to stimulate her into spending
money on the outward display he considered appropriate to her
position as the Emperor's mother. Considering the trouble
caused him by his brothers' and sisters' extravagance, it is
ironic that he never succeeded in making Letizia spend a franc
more than she thought strictly necessary. Her avarice was of
the type analysed by Balzac in Beatrix : " When avarice has an
objective, it ceases to be a vice and becomes the means to a
virtue. Its excessive privations become continual offerings, and
it reveals at last the grandeur concealed beneath its pettiness."
The grandeur in this case was the strength of Letizia' s determin-
ation to provide for her improvident children and already
thirteen grandchildren. In her own words : " We Corsicans
are familiar with revolutions. All this may come to an end, and
then what will happen to children whose imprudent generosity
makes them give with both hands, without thought of past ex
future ? When that happens, I shall be there, and it is better they
turn to their mother, rather than to those who may betray or
abandon them." Letizia was not a fearless woman, but a woman
who mastered her fears.
Justifiably alarmed by her children's capacity to spend and
by the way even shrewd Fesch poured money out on his picture
galleries, Letizia avoided putting all her financial eggs in one
basket and invested in Corsica, Italy, Spain and even London.
Afternoon: France
She was typically secretive about this. Only by chance did the
French minister at Naples discover in 1803 that she had invested
50,000 francs with a local banker who had subsequently failed.
Had she told Napoleon, he would have obtained compensation
for her, but she preferred to say nothing and cut her losses.
Meantime her imprudently generous children continued to
rise in the world like eaglets. In 1805 Napoleon made Elisa
hereditary Princess of Piombino, explaining that this state was
badly governed and therefore he was entrusting it to his sister,
" not from fraternal tenderness but from political prudence."
His belief that Elisa would govern well proved justified. Her
husband was given command of the troops assigned to protect
the coast and communications between Elba and Corsica. In
the months that followed, Napoleon made Joseph King of
Naples, Louis King of Holland, and Jerome (who had married
Princess Catherine of Wiirttemberg after the annulment of his
American marriage) King of Westphalia. Caroline's husband,
Murat, became Duke of Berg-Cleves. For the first time Letkia
heard herself called by the tide that was to become part of her
legend : Mater l^gum. Mother of Kings.
NELSON'S VICTORY AT Trafalgar in October, 1805, gave
England command at sea, but France remained master of
the Continent. Six weeks later, on the first anniversary of his
coronation, Napoleon won the most spectacular of his military
victories, that of Austerlite, where the French defeated twice
their number of Austrians and Russians in a battle still studied
as a model in military schools the world over. When the thick
white fog enveloping both sides was suddenly pierced by sun-
light, the French Army gave a thunderous cheer and Napoleon
cried, " The sun of Austerlits has risen." The column in the
Place Vendome is made of bronze from cannon captured by the
French at this battle.
While Napoleon was away, Letizia saw so little of Josephine
that he finally wrote to tell his mother that he wished her, when
in Paris, to attend his wife's Sunday dinners, since these were
family reunions and in his absence Josephine became the head of
the family. But in this matter Napoleon could not control
Letizia. She was much with Fesch at this time, and he fostered
the militantly Corsican qualities that made her ever ready to
fight the world outside for the inner world of blood relatives.
It was Fesch who guided her taste and lent her pictures when she
furnished her Paris house, and who persuaded the museum of the
French School to give her Le Brun's picture of St. Charles
Borremeo, " patron of the Emperor's father," for her chapel.
Even her religion was imbued with family feeling, so it was not
likely she would accept Napoleon's childless and unfaithful wife
as the proper head of the clan.
The prestige of this clan reached its highest point after the
Afternoon: France
victory of Jena, in 1806, gave Napoleon control of the Prussian
monarchy, and that of Friedland, in 1807, opened up Russia to
him. Two months before 'his thirty-eighth birthday he had
become the most powerful ruler in Europe : Emperor of the
French, King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation,
Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine. When he and
Alexander, Czar of all the Russias, met at Tilsit, they did so as
equals. This glittering encounter took place in a tent erected on
a raft in the middle of the River Niemen. The two Emperors
embarked simultaneously from opposite banks and embraced
amid the cheers of the assembled armies. A Russian spectator of
this interview, David Davidov, reported that Napoleon was " a
fabulous being, the most remarkable war captain since Alexander
the Great and Julius Caesar . . . and the greatest politician, law-
giver, administrator, and conqueror, who amazed the armies of
all Europe/'
Two weeks later France and Russia signed a treaty of alliance.
The effect in Paris was dramatic. The Polish Countess Helene
Potocka wrote to her husband : " I cannot tell you how lively
and animated Paris was yesterday. The Emperor is expected
every minute, almost everyone has returned. Yesterday evening,
July 24th, the peace was announced by torchlight. ., The herald-
at-arms, followed by scores of torch-bearers and immense
crowds, went all over Paris, which was magnificently illuminated
for the occasion ... the Place Vendome was superb, the streets
packed and the Faubourg Saint-Germain was as excited as the
Palais-Royal. I drove about in an open carriage with Madame
d'Hautpoul and two of the Badens. The warmth and beauty of
the night had brought everyone out of doors, and the streets
were so full of joyously cheering crowds that carriages could
scarcely get through ... At the Te Deum in Notre-Dame the
Empress was graceful and well dressed . . . but the one I looked
at most was the Emperor's mother. There she was, that happiest
of women, whom no man can ever rob of the glory of having
given birth to the most extraordinary man to appear in centuries.
How proud she must be ! A great people prostrate before her
Madame Letizia
son, the vaults echoing with acclamations, it is the most wonder-
ful part a woman can play in this world ! She is beautiful, still
looks young, and no one will say of her, c What, is that his
mother ? ' " The politician and writer Comte Beugnot, who met
her for the first time at this period, said that Letizia resembled
Raphael's St. Anne.
Letizia was indeed a proud woman, but not, at this stage, as
happy as people supposed. In the Souvenirs she dictated in old
age she says : " Everyone called me the happiest mother in the
world, whereas in fact my life was constantly full of grief and
suffering. Every time a courier arrived I expected to hear the
terrible news of the Emperor's death on the battlefield." She
was much moved when, at one of the big military reviews held
in Paris at this time, several regiments marched by with flags
torn by bullets and blackened by powder and Napoleon bared
his head and said, " Salute, gentlemen, it is the glory of France
that is passing before you."
Throughout this period when Napoleon was altering the
map of Europe, the quarrel between him and Lucien persisted,
as did Letizia's desire to end it. Acutely sensitive to her emo-
tions, Fesch had tried to help her by writing Lucien an admoni-
tory letter, which merely drew the bitter reply : " At least have
the common sense not to put me on the same plane as Jerome,
and spare me the useless shame of your cowardly advice . . .
You had better hide your base sentiments under your purple,
and make your way in silence along the highway of ambition."
This time Lucien had gone too far even for Letizia. She
wtote to him : " I cannot refrain from telling you that you have
treated him [Fesch] very badly. All he said certainly came from
the deske to see you happy, and on equal terms with your
brothers. He does not deserve to be treated in this way, and you
should look for an opportunity to soften the distress you have
caused him ... I am destined to pass my life in sadness and
desolation. However, I have done with speaking to you of this
matter. In future I shall silently deplore your disgrace and my
own
Afternoon: France
All Lucien's brothers and sisters were beginning to think him
unreasonable, and even his favourite EUsa wrote to him:
" Proposals have been made that you would have considered
acceptable a year ago . . . to-day you refuse them ... so long as he
[Napoleon] finds family support for his policies, which must be
his first consideration, he will not turn to strangers. You should
not try to negotiate with the master of the world on equal terms.
Nature made us children of the same father, but his achievements
have made us his subjects. Although sovereigns, we owe every-
thing to him. There is a noble pride in admitting this, and it
seems to me that our only glory should be in showing him that
we are worthy of him and of our family . . . Mamma and all of us
would be so happy to be reunited, and to make only one family
politically. Dear Lucien, do this for us who love you, and for
the sake of the people my brother will give you to govern and
whose happiness you will ensure/'
At this point the Pope's intervention strengthened Lucien's
determination to resist his brother. Despite all that Napoleon's
sense of political expediency had made him do for the Church,
relations between him and the Pope had deteriorated. When the
Pope took the unprecedented step of going to Paris to crown
Napoleon, he had hoped to recover some of the papal territories
in northern Italy conquered by the French. Not only was this
hope frustrated, but, since Napoleon needed to safeguard the
lines of communication between the Imperial territories in the
north and the new Kingdom of Naples, he gradually gained
control of still more papal possessions. So the Pope, who was
already on friendly terms with Lucien, saw no reason not to
stand godfather to his newly-born daughter, thus tacitly approv-
ing of Lucien's second marriage.
Obstinately refusing to admit defeat, Letizia persuaded
Lucien to take advantage of Napoleon's visit to Italy to meet
him there in December, 1802. Joseph, also in Italy, showed
tact and energy in attempting to induce a conciliatory attitude in
both his brothers. Napoleon and Lucien finally met in many-
coloured Mantua, the city where Titans assault Olympus on the
Madame Letizia
walls of the Palazzo del Te. There is a Shakespearean quality
about this encounter between the spectacular Emperor whose
" reared arm crested the world," and his younger brother who
had renounced crowns and coronets for love. Unfortunately
Lucien wanted to have it both ways. Reports of the meeting,
including those of the protagonists, vary widely. In his Memoirs
Lucien makes them sound like actors in a boulevard drama :
LUCIEN: I am determined to do all I can, compatible with
honour, to please your Majesty,
NAPOLEON: And political necessity, do you count that as
nothing ? You might have been a king, like your
brothers.
LUCIEN: And my wife's honour, Sire, and my children's
status ?
NAPOLEON: Your wife? You know she is not that and
never has been.
Baron Larrey reports that both brothers were exceedingly
embarrassed and that when Lucien referred to Alexandrine,
Napoleon said, " I repeat that I am sure she has been slandered
to me ... several people have spoken well of her to me, includ-
ing Mamma, who loves her, she told me, because she makes you
happy and is a good mother/'
Either way, only a deadlock resulted. Napoleon was
obsessed by the need to find a successor, and his fear that he
might be obliged to divorce Josephine made him harshly
insistent that Lucien sacrifice inclination to duty. He repeated
that, once Lucien had divorced Alexandrine, he would have the
same rights to the Imperial succession as his brothers, would be
given a throne and could continue to live with Alexandrine,
provided she received no royal honours. The interview lasted
sk hours and at the end of it Lucien offered to give Napoleon
his eldest daughter, Charlotte, and to relinquish his rights to the
Imperial succession on condition he be given an official position
outside France in which his family might share. He then asked
for the Grand Cordon of the Legion of Honour " as a gesture
of good will."
ffo
Afternoon: France
Waiting nervously in Paris, Letizia wrote : " On the i ith of
this month Joseph wrote me from Bologna that he had found
the Emperor very well disposed towards you, and that you had
gone to meet him. This news gave me great pleasure and con-
tentment, as you will understand. Ever since then I have been,
and still am, in the gfeatest anxiety to learn the result of your
meeting, but your silence on a matter of such importance and one
on which, as you know, my happiness depends, is beginning to
destroy the hopes I had conceived, for I am sure you would not
have delayed an instant in telling me had a perfect reconciliation
resulted."
Napoleon meanwhile informed Joseph : " I met Lucien at
Mantua, and talked with him for several hours. No doubt he
has told you of the spirit in which he set out. But his thoughts
and language are so remote from mine that I found it difficult to
grasp his meaning . . . Lucien seemed torn by conflicting
sentiments, without the force to take a definite stand. He seemed
to want to send his eldest girl to her grandmother in Paris. If he
is still of the same mind, I wish to be informed ... I have
exhausted all the means in my power to make Lucien see reason."
Still as eager for reconciliation as ever her ancestors had been
to maintain a vendetta, LetLda continued to plead with her sons.
But the quarrel was not to end until nearly eight years later,
when the sun that had blazed for Napoleon at Austerlitz was
about to set at Waterloo.
161
THE EMPIRE HAD never been more brilliant, more studded
with opportunities for youth, talent and ambition than in
the spring of 1808. After concluding his alliance with Russia,
Napoleon founded the Imperial nobility by creating thirty-one
dukes, approximately five hundred counts and fifteen hundred
barons. The rights of primogeniture were restored, and the
new nobles could render their titles hereditary by providing
their eldest sons with landed property of a value that varied
according to rank. Personally Napoleon attached little intrinsic
value to the titles he created, but he said they were necessary
" to enable France to re-enter Europe." The Revolution had
made France a pariah in a continent of monarchies, and what
Napoleon did now enabled him to treat crowned heads on
terms of equality. It was for this reason too that he insisted
upon being crowned by the Pope.
Yet the alliance with Russia did not prove the blessing it had
seemed likely to be. By antagonising Turkey and Persia, it under-
mined French influence in the Orient and involved Napoleon in
further wars and annexations. The Continental blockade against
England had to be continued, and now resulted in the fatal war
with Spain. Portugal, which Napoleon had wanted Lucien to
rule, was at this time virtually an English colony. After the
French alliance with Russia, Napoleon ordered Portugal to close
its ports to English trade, and when it refused Junot marched into
Lisbon with 40,000 men. Napoleon's brother-in-law Murat
brought a French army into the Spanish side of the peninsula,
ostensibly to support Junot, Spain being deplorably governed,
the arrival of French troops excited an already overwrought
162
Afternoon: France
population. A popular uprising at Aranjuez forced King
Charles IV to abdicate in favour of his son, Prince Ferdinand.
Both appealed to Murat, who responded by marching into
Madrid with his army.
Napoleon then summoned the Spanish royal family to
Bayonne. After a sordid domestic quarrel, Prince Ferdinand
returned the crown to his father, who promptly turned it over
to Napoleon. The proceedings took on the aspect of a baroque
game of musical chairs when Napoleon passed the Spanish
crown on to Joseph, who accepted it with alacrity, thus vacating
the throne of Naples which Napoleon bestowed on Murat, to
the delight of Caroline, who thus became Queen of Naples. Four
of Caroline's five brothers were kings, but she was the only one
of Letizia's daughters to become a queen.
Napoleon had not expected any resistance from a country as
poverty stricken and appallingly governed as Spain, but within a
few weeks 150,000 peasants and partisans rose in arms against
him. Eleven years later, in exile, he said : " The greatest fault
I committed was the Spanish expedition. I was led into this by
the belief that in order to safeguard the French throne, the
Bourbons must be driven from Spain. I thought them more
powerful than they were." This war marked the beginning of
the end of his empire. It also marked a subtle change in Napol-
eon's character. Stendhal thought that prosperity had gradually
altered and weakened his nature, that he had been wrong to be so
astonished by his own success, and that he should have had more
contempt for his fellow rulers. From then on he drank in
flattery, thought nothing impossible for him and could not bear
to be contradicted. Soon any criticism seemed like insolence, or
worse, stupidity. Because he chose men badly, he soon found
that actions succeeded only when he himself carried them out.
Still foremost among his preoccupations was the problem of
the succession, into which a new factor had now been intro-
duced. Two years earlier Napoleon had come to suppose that,
since Josephine had borne her first husband two children, it was
he who was sterile. Then, as the result of a brief and casual
163
Madame Letizia
affair with Eleonore Denuelle, a young woman employed by his
sister Caroline as a reader, a son was born to him. There was no
doubt as to his paternity, so when his favourite nephew
Napoleon-Louis Charles, the son of Hortense and Louis whom
he had wished to adopt, died of croup the following year,
Napoleon began to think not of choosing another heir, but of
begetting one. Letizia, almost as stricken as Hortense' by the
death of the bright and promising Napoleon-Louis, longed more
than ever for Napoleon to have children of his own and told
Madame d'Abrant^s : " I only hope the Emperor will have the
courage this time to do what not only France but all Europe
anxiously expects of him. His divorce is now a necessity."
Finally convinced of this, Napoleon said wearily, " Politics
have no heart, only a head," and told Josephine that he and she
must part. The Pope was the only public figure to object offici-
ally to the divorce, but by that time Napoleon had had enough
of the Pope. When the latter excommunicated him, Napoleon
told Murat, " He is merely excommunicating himself." In
July, while Napoleon was away fighting the Austrians at
Wagram the battle which the Viennese watched from their
spires and rooftops the Pope was seized at the Quirinal by
French troops and removed first to Grenoble, then to imprison-
ment at Savona, near Genoa. When Napoleon heard of this
he wrote to Fouch : " I am angry that the Pope has been
arrested, it is a piece of folly ... but it can't be remedied ; what
is done is done."
On the evening of December i4th, 1809, Letizia, Louis and
Hortense, Caroline and Murat, J&come and Catherine, Pauliae
and Josephine's son Eugene, assembled at the Tuileries to hear
the announcement of the divorce. Joseph was in Spain, Lucien
and Elisain Italy. The palace was illuminated and everyone wore
court dress. Both Napoleon and Josephine were obviously in a
highly emotional state. Although Napoleon indulged in extra-
marital love-affairs, he was by nature uxorious, and had Josephine
not betrayed him so cruelly in their first years together he would
probably not have been able to bring himself to leave her. Even
164
Afternoon: France
as it was, they had become close friends and accomplices, and
the naturally affectionate Josephine now loved him more dearly
than he still loved her. Napoleon's voice faltered when he said,
" God knows how much this decision costs me ... I have
nothing but praise for the attachment and tenderness of my
beloved wife ... she has embellished fifteen years of my life."
Tears prevented Josdphine from reading to the end of her
declaration : " The dissolution of my marriage will not change
my feelings. The Emperor will always have in me his best
friend ... we are both proud of the sacrifice we are making for
the country." Next day their marriage was dissolved by the
Senate.
Despite Letizia's conviction that Josephine had brought
this on herself, she was disturbed by their grief. But it did not
shake her belief that in future Napoleon would care more for
" his own family " than he had done since his marriage. She
had written to Lucien that he ought not to be obstinate at a
moment when Napoleon's sentiments for his family were
" akeady quite different." Fortunately for Letizia, she could not
foresee the character of Napoleon's second wife.
NAPOLEON'S FIRST marriage had been prompted by
romantic passion ; his second was a matter of politics.
At one point he had wanted to marry the Czar's young sister,
Anne, but according to contemporary gossip Josephine helped
wreck this project by telling the Prince of Mecklenburg that
Napoleon was impotent. Repeated to the Czar's mother, this
made her hesitate to come to a decision. Napoleon always loathed
delay, and during this delay Austria offered him the Emperor's
eighteen-year-old daughter, the Archduchess Marie-Louise,
great-niece of Marie- Antoinette. The offer came purely from fear.
The Comte de Narbonne, who was in Napoleon's confidence,
had pointed out to Prince Metternich, recently Austrian Ambas-
sador in Paris, that Austria's survival depended upon her
securing the alliance with France that would otherwise be
accorded to Russia. The Emperor Francis therefore felt that
since it was useless to defy Napoleon, it would be best to
placate him.
Three months after Napoleon's divorce the little archduchess
set out for Paris in a state of terror. It was only five years since
she and her brothers and sisters had had to flee from Vienna to
Hungary in order to escape the " Corsican Ogre " after the
Austrians had been defeated by him at Ulm., Now she was to be
the ogre's bride, The marriage took place on April ist, scarcely
an auspicious date, though this was not immediately apparent.
A lymphatic and sensual gkl, she was delightfully surprised by
Napoleon and foundhim charming. For his part, Napoleon saw
in Marie-Louise a suitable mother for his children and guarantor
of his dynasty. His hopes for children were increased when, this
iff
Afternoon: France
same year, his lovely Polish mistress, the Countess Waiewska,
bore him a son. Even before Marie-Louise became pregnant, he
had decided to bestow the title of King of Rome upon his future
heir, thus revealing how deeply his active imagination was
involved with dreams of renewing the dynasty of the Caesars.
Letizia wished to care for her Habsburg daughter-in-law as
much as she did for Joseph's and Jerome's wives, but this
proved impossible. She described Marie-Louise with arid
truthfulness as insipid in both looks and speech, though with a
certain facility for expressing herself on paper. This is not
contradicted by Napoleon's declaration that Marie-Louise was
virtue itself, orderly, truthful and, unlike Josephine, asked for
money only when she needed it. He never spent an entire night
with her.
When Napoleon decided to repudiate Josephine his brothers
and sisters had hoped he might marry Lucien's daughter
Charlotte and thus consolidate the family's power. (Such a
marriage would have been permissible and not, at that time,
unusual) Ever since Napoleon and Lucien met at Mantua,
Letizia had been expecting Charlotte in Paris, yet again and
again Lucien obstructed the plan he had himself suggested.
Consistently bewildered by his inconsistency, Letizia sent her
secretary to Italy to ask Lucien the reasons for this deky. As
might have been anticipated, except by her, they were specious.
She had asked, he said, for two of her granddaughters. Always
literal, she pointed out that this was no reason for failing to
send even one of them. To this Lucien replied that since
Napoleon had divorced Josephine he felt they ought to " be
able to come to an arrangement," and that if ever he, Lucien,
sacrificed his private life it would be ** in order to prove his
attachment to his family," but that the ties he had formed were
insoluble until death. After which inconclusive exchange,
Lucien sent his eldest daughter to her grandmother. She
reached Paris in March and Letizia immediately wrote to
Lucien :
Lolotte has arrived in good health. As soon as her clothes
167
Madame Letizia
are ready I shall present her to the Emperor, and I know in
advance that she will be warmly welcomed. I will write you
next day. Pray heaven I may at the same time be able to tell
you of the only thing my happiness lacks your reconcilia-
tion.
Once again Letizia was disappointed, so much so that she
took the extreme step of writing to Lucien's wife : " You know
how many misfortunes your marriage has caused our family,
and you will realise their extent by what I am asking you to do.
The Emperor wants you to divorce, and only you can persuade
Lucien to agree to this, or, if he refuses, ask for a divorce your-
self. You will thus avoid the disgrace threatening him, your
children, and everyone belonging to you, and will confer
happiness on your husband and children. Do not hesitate be-
tween a lifetime of bitterness and grief, which is what awaits you
if you remain obdurate, and the prospect of a happy future in
which your children will be acknowledged by the Emperor and
enabled to take their places upon thrones . . . Finally, if you have
any respect for a mother who has always known how to make
sacrifices for her children, you will do this for me, and I assure
you I shall never forget it."
This was signed " your mother," as was Letizia's letter to
Lucien saying that the family's future depended on him : " The
time for arguing is over, my dear son, what you have told me
cannot alter the situation . . . your obstinacy is shortening my
life and happiness . . . this is the last time I shall ask you/ 3
Letizia never wrote heedlessly, and so rarely expressed even the
most natural and innocuous forms of self-pity that from her this
amounted to an irrepressible cry from the heart. Her distress
was so extreme that Pauline, who was staying with her, wrote to
Cardinal Fesch in Italy : " Try to make Lucien listen to reason.
The Emperor's mind is made up. If Lucien refuses to come to
Paris, he will not be permitted to stay in Rome. The Emperor is
ready to receive him back with open arms. He will give him the
rank due to him, and ensure his wife and children a brilliant
future . . . We cannot consider ourselves as ordinary private
168
Afternoon: France
people. So if Lucien will not return to us, we shall have to sever
all connexions with him. As for you, my dear Uncle, I beg you
not to see any more of his wife. She alone is responsible for our
misfortunes. If she had any pride she would behave differently.
Be firm with Lucien. It is his duty to make a sacrifice for his
mother and all his family."
None of these pleas affected Lucien, and from Letizia's point
of view the dispute was soon to take a turn for the worse.
169
FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Charlotte's visit to Paris was not a
success. Although she responded to her beautiful grand-
mother's love and had inherited the Bonaparte devotion to
family, she was what the Italians proudly called " a true Roman
Bonaparte" which meant that she sided fervently with her
father and stepmother against her uncle. She was more than
ready to ridicule the French court, and her letters home, read of
course by the censor, were as full of lese-majesty as A Yankee at
the Court of King Arthur. They were also full of gossip : " The
Queen of Naples [her Aunt Caroline] behaves very oddly. Her
husband has left for Naples and she did not accompany him,
which Grandmamma thinks very bad. The worst of it is that
she spends every minute of the day with a certain Meternik
[Metternich, who was Caroline's lover], an ambassador who is
quite young. [He was thirty-six]. This attracts a lot of notice.
Princess Pauline is so ill that she does not even busy herself with
amusements. In general the Grand Duchess [Elisa] and the
Queen of Naples grieve Grandmamma by their conduct. When
I think how different they are from Mamma ! " Her father did
not allow her to stay in Paris long, and no sooner was the Roman
rebel back home than she flung herself into Lucien's arms, saying,
" Ah, my dear little Papa, how wise you are not to wish to go up
there. I am sure America would be better ! "
For Lucien had now decided to make a new life in the New
World. He asked the English Minister for a passport to
Cagliari, the King of Sardinia for permission to embark, and in
August he sailed with his wife, their children, his wife's nephew
and a daughter by her first marriage, a secretary accompanied
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Afternoon: France
by a wife and son, an almoner, a doctor, a tutor, a painter and
twenty-three servants. Lucien's idea of " retiring into private
life " involved no parsimony. His plans, however, soon went
awry.
instead of being allowed to land at Cagliari, the party was
besieged by English ships and Lucien declared a prisoner of
war. Always confident in the power of words, he " explained
his position " at length and asked for a passport to Plymouth,
meaning to sail from there to America. His captors listened
politely. Then, jubilant at having Napoleon's notoriously
dissident brother in their hands, they took him to England,
where he spent the last four years of his brother's reign as an
English country gentleman, like many other emigres, including
the future Louis XVIII and the future Charles X. His interest in
agriculture appealed to the English, as did his literary pro-
ductions. Byron was particularly appreciative of his grandilo-
quent epic on the subject of Corsica's liberation from the Moors.
As for his financial worries, these were relieved by Letizia, who
now had good reason to be glad she had invested money abroad.
Having done all she could for Lucien, Letizia turned to his
brother Louis-, who was in a far more miserable state. Obstinate,
touchy and ravaged by syphilis, Louis had been outraged when
his refusal to maintain the trade blockade against England
drove Napoleon to deprive Holland of territorial independence.
He promptly abdicated and rushed from Holland in the hope
that Napoleon would implore him to return. Instead of which
Napoleon merely wrote to Letizia : " I hasten to tell you that
the King of Holland is taking the waters at Toeplitz in Bohemia.
As you must have been very uneasy at his disappearance, I am
not losing a moment in telling you this to reassure you. His
conduct is such that only illness can explain it/* Letizia felt for
both her sons in this instance. Once when Napoleon was com-
plaining of his brothers' incompetence, as he often had reason
to do, Letizia said, " My son, you are right and wrong : right if
you compare them with yourself, because you are incomparable,
a marvel and an indefinable phenomenon. But you are wrong if
Madame Letizia
you compare them with the other kings to whom they are
superior, kings who have revealed such stupidity that it is as if
they had a veil over their eyes and fell on purpose to be replaced
by my children." When Napoleon laughed and said, " Signora
Letizia, are you too flattering me ? " she retorted, " You are un-
just to your mother. A mother does not flatter her son. You
know, Sire, that in public I treat you with all possible respect
because I am your subject ; but in private I am your mother and
you are my son and when you say c I wish this/ I may say * And
I do / wish it'"
From Bohemia, where he assumed the name Saint-Leu (that
of his country estate near Paris), Louis wrote to the three people
he considered most devoted to him his mother, his brother
Jerdme and Decazes, a civil servant who served Letizia as
secretary for a time and achieved the singular feat of pleasing
Louis, Hortense, Letizia and Louis XVIII. Thoroughly un-
balanced by now, Louis told Letizia he wanted to live with her
in the South of France, but that since Napoleon forbade this
(Louis had never asked him) he had requested permission to
stay in Germany. He asked Jerome if Napoleon would allow
him to live at Saint-Leu, and by the same mail begged Decazes
to find a purchaser for Saint-Leu.
With one of her poignant displays of calm, Letizia wrote
Louis : " I repeat what I have said in previous letters, that I will
not abandon you. But it seems to me that after taking the
waters you ought to do what I have suggested, namely come to
Saint-Leu or to Pont where I will wait for you and we can
decide what had best be done . . . your health is what is most
important. I shall always be with you." Unfortunately not
devotion, common sense or doctors could help Louis. Two
years kter paralysis attacked his upper limbs, and he could
write only if a pen were tied to his fingers.
Letizia's dearest hopes were fulfilled in March, 1811, by the
birth of Napoleon's son, Napoleon-Fran$ois-Charles-Joseph.
Wild rejoicings welcomed the ill-fated King of Rome, a city the
boy was never to see. Stendhal, then twenty-eight, noted in his
Afternoon: Francs
journal: " I was in bed with Angelina. The cannon woke us at
ten. It was the third shot. We counted the twenty-second with
transports of joy. At our nineteenth shot, which was the
twenty-second for people outside, we heard applause in the
street. Even in the most solitary places, such as the Augustin
Museum, there was applause. My wigmaker told me that in the
Rue Saint-Honore people applauded as if at the appearance of a
favourite actor. It is a great and happy event." All over Europe
bells pealed, cannon roared, cities were illuminated, torchlight
processions were succeeded by Te Deums, and peasants left
their work to shout " Long live the King of Rome ! " Napoleon
said of his new-born son : " I envy him, for glory awaits him,
whereas I had to pursue it. I shall have been Philip, he will be
Alexander. He will have only to stretch out his hands to hold
the world." Josephine sent Napoleon a loving note in which
she said, " My sacrifice has not been in vain."
Letizia's joy in the happiness of one child was soon cut
short by the grief of another. A month after the birth of
Napoleon's son, Elisa's baby, Jerome, died. Although not a
punctilious wife, Elisa had inherited the Bonaparte passion for
children and was overcome by her loss. Letizia wrote to her
son-in-law Bacciochi : " I am incapable of offering you the
least consolation, since I need consolation myself, but nothing
gives it to us in this world." Almost alone among her dkect
utterances, this brief expression of pain enables us to understand
Michelet's description of her in his History of the Nineteenth
Century : " Madame Letizia, in her Italian portraits, like the one
before my eyes, is grandly beautiful. She is mysteriously and
indefinably tragic. One cannot take one's eyes off her. The
mouth is disdainful, capable of hatred, full of the bitter honey
found only in Corsica. The eyes black, fixed, wide open are
equally enigmatic. Their gaze is directed inwards, at some
dream or passion. This gives her the strange air of a fortune-
teller or a Moorish sibyl, descended from the Carthaginians or
Saracens whose tombs are near Ajaccio."
Sibylline powers would have afforded Letizia no comfort had
Madame Letizia
she possessed them on the occasion of the King of Rome's
baptism, which took place on June 9th, 1811. Seen in retro-
spect, there is a sunset splendour, sublime or ridiculous accord-
ing to one's viewpoint, about this last majestic ceremony in-
tended to consecrate the durability of the great empire so soon to
fall. The royal cortege, similar to that of Napoleon, was not
due to assemble until five o'clock in the afternoon, but by mid-
day the route was already lined by crowds. All the sovereigns
wore elaborate court dress with an abundance of velvet, ermine,
diamonds, diadems and plumed hats. Effervescent cheering
greeted the baby when he appeared in a carriage drawn by
eight horses. He was held on the knees of the Comtesse de
Montesquieu, for whom Napoleon had revived the ancitn
rtgime tide of " Governess of the Children of France," and over
his white lace robes glittered the scarlet ribbon of the Legion of
Honour. The Parisians particularly relished this hint that there
was to be nothing Austrian about their little king. When the
cortege reached Notre-Dame the baby was wrapped in an
ermine coat with a long train carried by the Due de Valmy
(Napoleon's old companion in arms, Kellerman). At the font
he was held by his godmother, Letizia, and by the Grand Duke
of Wurzburg, acting as deputy godfather for the Emperot;
Francis. After the baptism, Napoleon, who was so radiant with
joy that Madame d'Abraats said he reminded her of the line
" Its cows de lion sont les vrais caurs de pere" took his son in his
arms, kissed him tenderly three times and held him up for every-
one to see. Whereupon, although they were in church, there was
an irrepressible outburst of applause. It was very unlike Napol-
eon's own unostentatious baptism in Ajaccio forty-one years
earlier.
Once the cheers and tumult had died away Letizia was free
to leave Paris for a long-planned visit to her youngest child,
J&rdme, King of Westphalia. After taking a cure with Pauline
at Ak-la-Chapdle (the beautiful grey city of statues that was to
become much-bombed Aachen), Letkk set out for Jerome's
palace, Na|>olconshohe. Now that Napoleon was committed to
*74
Afternoon: France
an increasingly perilous destiny, Joseph struggling to avoid his
inevitable abdication in Spain, Lucien still a prisoner in England,
and Louis a self-exiled invalid, Jerome was a unique source of
pleasure to her. Despite its partly political inception, his second
marriage was proving a most happy one. Although Princess
Catherine of Wurttemberg had come to her husband as reluc-
tantly as Marie-Louise to Napoleon, she had fallen passionately
in love with the handsome, gay, witty and affectionate Jerome,
and, being a woman of fine emotional quality, was to show him
unfailing love and loyalty for the rest of her life. Letkia was,
from the first, devoted to her, and Catherine said that her mother-
in-law " had the same gift for inspiring respect as the Empress
of Russia/*
As is often the case with self-indulgent natures, Jerome
liked giving pleasure to others almost as much as to himself,
and he was instinctively adept at those gestures that are the
small change of the heart. Letizia was surprised and touched to
discover that he had taken the trouble to send to Paris for
furniture and hangings similar to her own, in order that she
might feel at home in Westphalia. This initial discovery set the
tone for the entire visit, which was to be one of the happiest
times of Letizia's middle years. There was no end to his and
Catherine's desire to make much of her. They arranged trips to
points of interest, hunting expeditions, a state entry into Gassd
with a military guard of honour and all the authorities in
ceremonial dress, a gala with cantatas by Blangini, and a military
review displaying twenty battalions of infantry, two regiments of
cuirassiers, and two of light cavalry, nineteen hundred men in all.
They enjoyed themselves so much that she let herself be per-
suaded to prolong her visit into October.
Avarice forgotten, she showered pearls on Catherine her
own portrait set in pearls, a pearl-edged parasol with a pearl-
encrusted gold and enamel handle, and a superb pearl necklace.
She also gave her daughter-in-law sympathy and understanding,
for after Letizia had left, Catherine noted : " This separation
was very painful to me. At her age and in the times in which we
Madame Letma
live, it is very difficult to foresee the moment when we shall meet
again. The separation was doubly painful because Madame
Mre was a most delightful companion for me. She has great
wit and vigour. As I am often alone, I found her a great re-
source. Besides, a woman often feels a need to pour her heart
out to another woman." The noblest and most appealing of
Letizia's daughters-in-law, Catherine was too loyal to add
" especially when a woman adores a husband as charming and
unfaithful as Jerome."
From the gay pageantry of this musical-comedy world,
Letizia returned to Paris and the lengthening political shadows
soon to banish gaiety from her life for ever.
17*
L;TIZIA WAS AT HER castle at Pont when Napoleon left to
join the Grand Army for what was to prove the disastrous
campaign against Russia. In order to cheat her impatience for
news she went to Aix-en-Savoie (to-day's Aix-les-Bains) to take
the waters. There she found Cardinal Fesch, Pauline, Julie and
her sister Desiree (now married to Marshal Bemadotte), the
Duchesse d'Abrantes, the Duchesse de Raguse and the ex-
Empress Josephine. Most of the visitors at this fashionable spa
had relatives at the wars in Russia or in Spain, and the atmos-
phere of febrile excitement foreshadowed that of the Duchess of
Richmond's famous ball, where the guests were to maintain their
gaiety so stubbornly that, at the last, many officers had no time
to change into uniform but fought at Waterloo in evening dress.
Her brother's company was particularly precious to Letizia
since he and she had recently been separated by an incident
equally painful to both of them. Before leaving for Russia,
Napoleon had ordered the Pope, his prisoner since 1809, to be
transferred from Savona to Fontainebleau, and when Fesch
courageously objected to this Napoleon banished his uncle to his
diocese of Lyons. It says much for Fesch's good heart that he
made no attempt to draw Letizia into the quarrel but wrote her
from Lyons : " To-day, the solemnities of Easter being over, I
am writing to express the pain I felt at leaving you and die
happiness that was restored to me when I saw my church again.
This happiness will be undouded if you continue to enjoy good
health and do not forget me. Do not add to your troubles by
brooding over the reasons for my leaving Paris. I have laid
Madame Letizia
them at the foot of the Cross. God will be my strength, I put all
my trust in Him.'*
Fesch has been described as a materialistic Italian cardinal
with exclusively worldly ambitions. But the more one studies
him the more complex he appears. That he was capable of deep
and sustained emotion is shown by his relations with Letizia.
As she protected his childhood, so he protected her old age, and
in seventy years of close friendship neither ever failed the other.
His artistic sensibility might have served him better in Renais-
sance Italy than in Revolutionary France, since he had a passion
for painting and the capacity to recognise talent even when the
possessor exasperated him, as was the case with Chateaubriand,
at one time his secretary. He also had a sense of the value of
compromise that could verge on the humorous : in 1805,
when Napoleon wished the Pope to arrest the English poet,
Coleridge, then Rome correspondent for the Morning Post y it
was Fesch who saved the Pope from embarrassment and
Napoleon from making a blunder by smuggling the poet out of
Rome disguised in the uniform of the French Legation. It was
this ability to compromise that had made it possible for him
temporarily to abandon the priesthood ; but there is no com-
pelling reason to believe that because he lacked fanaticism he
also lacked sincerity in his faith. Certainly no such lack in him
troubled Letizia, and it was with regret that she left him and
returned to Paris.
After receiving a visit from Marie-Louise and going to visit
her little grandson at Saint-Cloud, Letizia returned to Pont
where she remained until the end of October, devoting most of
her time to letter-writing. She was now the centre of a postal
web that linked her with Joseph in Madrid, Julie at Morte-
fontaine, Lucien in England, Louis in Graz, Elisa in Florence,
Pauline in Aix, Caroline in Naples, Jerome and Catherine in
Westphalia, Fesch in Lyons and Napoleon wherever she could
reach him by courier. Thanks to this industry, each of her eight
children knew what was happening to the other seven. She also
acted as their business adviser, rendering them countless prac-
Afternoon: France
tical services, and kept up a continuous correspondence with
Corsica, where she and Fesch were now all-powerful. The
Prefect, Arrighi, was a cousin of theirs and never appointed even
a minor official on the island without first consulting them.
When Letizia returned to Paris in October she found the
capital in an uproar as the result of a conspiracy hatched since
Napoleon left for Russia. An unemployed general named Malet,
of proved dishonesty and eccentricity, had celebrated his release
from prison by spreading rumours that Napoleon had been
killed. He followed this up by adorning the City Hall with a
poster announcing :
The Emperor was killed on October yth at the head of his
army.
The Senate invests General Malet with command of the
armed forces and authority to do all the situation requires.
The Imperial Government is destroyed; the young
Bonaparte is declared illegitimate ; Marie-Louise's marriage
is annulled; conscription is abolished; and the Pope
restored to his estates.
A provisional government is set up at the Hotel de
Ville.
There will be a peace congress.
The preservation of honours and public functions is
guaranteed, as is the inalienability of national property.
All the signatures to this fanciful document were forgeries,
except that of Malet; nevertheless, it was momentarily as
effective as a conspiracy would be to-day if its instigators con-
trolled the Press, radio and television services. High-ranking
civil servants showed a total lack of initiative, and neither the
Prefect of Paris no the Minister of the Interior resisted when
arrested. Nevertheless, Malet was soon unmasked and Letkia
wrote to Louis : " You have read in the papers of the riot, or
rather the farce, that took place in Paris on September 23rd. I
was not yet back. The culprits are paying for their folly with
their lives and all is calm and tranquil in the capital, as through-
out the Empire."
Madame Letizia
While Letizia wrote these deliberately confident words the
Grand Army, with its complement of green-coated Wiirttem-
bergers, Portuguese in plumed shakos, white-cloaked Poles,
Italians, Croats, Dalmatians, Prussians and Austrians, was
being smothered under the Russian snows. Stendhal, who took
part in the retreat from Moscow, wrote : " The Russian
campaign turned me against snow, not on account of the perils
I underwent, but because of the hideous spectacle of human
suffering and ruthlessness. At Wilna breaches in the hospital
wall were stopped up by the frozen bodies of the dead. How,
with these memories, can one take any pleasure in snow ? "
Still unaware of the turn history was taking at the other end
of Europe, Letizia divided her time between the little King o
Rome, Julie, who was ill, and Louis's sons whom Hortense had
sent from Saint-Leu to visit their grandmother. Letizia was
deeply attached to these children and the younger boy, the
future Napoleon III, considered her a superlatively romantic
figure. This lull in Letizia's life was not to last long.
When Napoleon learnt that after his rumoured death no one
had proclaimed his son as his successor, he was so appalled that
he immediately set off for home. His two weeks' journey across
a now largely hostile Europe was one of the most perilous even
he ever made. He reached Paris on December i8th, 1812, and
for the first time Letizia saw him at grips with a disaster as
mighty as any conjured up by Corneille in the tragedies Napoleon
had so often declaimed to her when he was a boy in Corsica with
the world before him and Providence his guide.
DURING THE NEXT THREE months Napoleon worked
harder than ever, and Letizia had every reason not only
to admire her son's fortitude in adversity but to believe he would
again prove triumphant. Then, on March 30th, Marie-Louise
took the oath as P,egent Letizia would undoubtedly have done
far better in this capacity and a fortnight later Napoleon took
command of the army for what was to be his last campaign in
Germany. Not everyone on the Allied side hoped for Napoleon's
downfall. In September, Byron wrote to Thomas Moore:
" What say you to Bonaparte ? Remember, I back him against
the field, barring catalepsy and the Elements. Nay, I almost wish
him success against all countries but this were it only to choke
the Morning Post, and his undutifiil father-in-law, with that
rebellious bastard of Scandinavian adoption, Bernadotte."
Nevertheless, the Allies were victorious all along the line,
and, wanting to avoid a winter campaign, proclaimed that they
were not making war against the French people but against
Napoleon's authority outside France. This proved effective.
In December the Legislative Assembly voted against fighting on
except for independence and territorial rights. But it was too
late for such limited action. France was completely surrounded
now that the English had the upper hand in Spain, from which
Joseph had finally been driven. The Allies began crossing the
Rhine just before Christmas, 1815. Joseph's brother-in-law,
Bernadotte, who had gone over to the enemy, invaded -Holland
and Belgium and entered France by the Escaut valley. Blucher
and Schwarzenberg crossed the Rhine between Basle and
Coblenz. Napoleon had 70,000 men against the enemy's 260,000,
Madame Lethia
and, as he was to say himself, only General Bonaparte could save
the Emperor now.
It did not occur to Letizia to leave Paris and she wrote
vigorously to Fesch : " I have spoken to the Emperor as you
desired. He told me to urge you to remain in Lyons as long as
there is no danger and if the enemy approaches and it seems
likely the city will fall, you are to retire, but to remain in your
diocese doing good. I am glad to learn that Louis is with you.
The Emperor asked me why he did not come to Paris immedi-
ately. Tell him I expect him, and that his brothers should arrive
this evening. My dear brother, this is no time to cling to
etiquette. The Bourbons lost all through not knowing how
to die fighting."
Paradoxically this campaign that ended in Napoleon's
defeat was one of the most brilliant he ever fought. First he
marched on Blucher's army and drove it back to Chalons, then
he turned on Schwarzenberg and drove him back to Chaumont.
Astonished and dismayed, the Allies decided to ask for a truce,
and on February 23 rd, Prince Wenceslas de Liechtenstein was
sent to Napoleon to negotiate terms. Nothing came of this.
The French peasants were actively behind Napoleon. Maddened
by Allied looting and by fear lest a Bourbon restoration rob
them of the emigre and Church land for which they had paid,
they armed themselves with scythes, pitchforks and shotguns
and acted as snipers. In Lorraine a Russian column lost 3,000
men without encountering one French soldier.
Men who saw Napoleon at this time reported that he seemed
to^ have recovered all the genius of his youth, and he himself
said he had " donned once more the boots he had worn in
Italy/' He was uplifted by two desires : to prevent France
being driven back within her pre-Revolutionary frontiers, and
to safeguard his son's future. He had just recaptured Arcis-sur-
Aube from the Austrians when he made the mistake of writing
to Marie-Louise : " I have decided to make for the Marne so as
to drive the enemy farther back from Paris." This letter was
intercepted by the Cossacks. Bliicher sent a translation of it to
Afternoon: France
Schwarzenberg, then forwarded the original to Marie-Louise
with a bouquet of flowers. Guided by this letter, the Allies
changed their plans,
The final blow to Napoleon's hopes came partly from a
Corsican vendetta. His distant cousin and enemy, Pozzo di
Borgo, who had served Paoli and then left Corsica with the
English, was now one of the Czar's diplomats. When the Allies
learnt that Napoleon intended to attack their army in the rear,
Pozzo di Borgo urged the Czar to make for Paris at all costs :
" While you go on thinking in terms of battles you run the risk
of being defeated, because Napoleon will always be able to fight
better than you and because his army, although dissatisfied, will
always be inspired by honour, and will fight to the last man as
long as he is at hand. No matter how much his military might has
been shaken, it is still great. But his political power has been
destroyed. Times have changed . . You should attempt to end
the war by political means . . . Touch Paris with a finger and the
colossus Napoleon will come tambling down." Talleyrand was
already in secret correspondence with the future Louis XVIII,
and exercising his influence over the Czar in favour of a Bourbon
restoration. There was even treachery within Napoleon's family,
for Murat and Caroline had come to terms with Austria in the
hope of retaining their throne. They promised Austria 30,000
men to help drive the French out of Italy.
Yet comparatively few people realised what was happening.
It is difficult for us, accustomed to telephones, radio and
television, to imagine how long it took so short a time ago for
news to spread. The atmosphere retained more secrets than now,
and no television screen could repkce personal contact, word of
mouth or handwritten word transported by feet, hooves or
sailing-ships.
Thus in March, when Napoleon was fighting desperately
only eighty-five miles east of Paris, Letizia was sufficiently in the
dark to write Elisa a letter devoted almost entirely to domestic
matters : " I congratulate you on what you tell me of your
daughter's disposition and education. Please talk to her often
Madame Letizia
of her grandmother and of my love for her . . . The King of
Rome, about whom you specially inquired, is in excellent
health. He is a great joy to the Emperor and to all of us." Only
at the end does anxiety break through : " I see with distress
that more fighting is coming, and the moment is near when the
Emperor will again be in danger. I think I was born only to
suffer/* The day after she wrote this the Due d'Angouleme
arrived in Bordeaux and Louis XVIII was proclaimed King
there.
By March 28th Paris was so obviously threatened that the
Regency Council met to decide what was to become of Napol-
eon's wife and son. Napoleon had already told Joseph, now
Lieutenant-General of the Empire : ** If you receive news of
defeat or of my death, send the Empress and the King of Rome
to Rambouillet ... I would rather my son were dead than
brought up in Vienna as an Austrian prince/* Clarke, the
Minister of War, urged them to leave Paris since he saw no
chance of defending the city with the 5 0,000 men who remained ;
but Talleyrand, who hoped to be tutelary ruler should the child
succeed his father, swore that only the presence of Marie-Louise
and her son would prevent revolution in Paris. After two rounds
of voting it was settled that mother and child should leave Paris
as quickly as possible. As the meeting broke up, Talleyrand
said to Rovigo : " It is not incumbent on everyone to be swal-
lowed up in the ruins of this edifice."
Awakened by the fren2y of packing that filled the Tuileries
that night, Napoleon's son realised something of what was
happening and began to protest : " I don't want to go, and
since Papa's away I'm the master here." It was as if he had a
premonition that his short ration of happiness was already con-
sumed. He called again and again for the father he would never
see again, and was carried screaming out of the palace where he
had been born to greatness and tragedy.
At nine o'clock next morning ten large green carriages
marked with coats of arms were drawn up in the Cour du
Carrousel. The guards presented arms as Marie-Louise and
184
Afternoon: France
Madame de Montebello entered the first coach. The King of
Rome occupied the second one with his beloved governess. The
child wore a miniature National Guardsman's uniform which he
loved, as he did everything connected with his father's soldiers.
Then came Letizia, the pregnant Catherine, Jerome, and a
crowd of officials and courtiers. The procession was com-
pleted by a baggage train, a platoon of mounted grenadiers,
three squadrons of chasseurs and two pickets of lancers. The
first time Letma was a refugee she had been a fiery young bride >
capable of galloping over mountains and of fighting for the baby
she carried ; the second time she had been the widowed mother
of eight children ; now, the third time, she was a grandmother
of sixty-three, her living hostages to fortune scattered all over
Europe.
The sky was overcast, the atmosphere oppressive. Passers-
by, including Stendhal, watched in morose silence as the pro-
cession clattered out of the Tuileries towards the still rural
Champs-Elysees and Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe, which had
been begun eight years ago and was still incomplete. They
crossed the Bois de Boulogne and made a halt at Versailles,
Thirty-two years had passed since Letizia first visited Versailles
with Carlo and was disturbed by the doomed Queen's expression.
Marie-Louise and the King of Rome reached Rarnbouillet at
five in the afternoon ; Letizia, who had stopped to look after
the exhausted Catherine, not until late in the evening.
Meanwhile Joseph had stayed behind and issued a proclama-
tion to the people of Paris : " The Regency Council has pro-
vided for the safety of the Empress and the King of Rome.
I remain mthyou. Let us take up arms to defend the city . . . the
Emperor is marching to our rescue." This was true, but
Joseph lacked both the means and the ability to plan a well-co-
ordinated defence, and when the battle for Paris began, at six in
the morning of March 3oth, Napoleon was still a hundred miles
away. That same morning the refugees at Rambouillet were
awakened by a message from Joseph that the Russians had reach-
ed the outskirts of Paris. Rambouillet was no longer safe. They
Madame Letizia
immediately set out anew, but their coaches were delayed by
muddy roads. Twilight fell before the mighty ship of Chartres
Cathedral appeared to them on the horizon, and night before
Letizia and Marie-Louise found shelter in the Prefect's house.
They were not allowed to rest long. At midnight there was a
clattering of carriage wheels and horses' hoofs and Joseph
arrived to tell them that Paris had fallen. Letizia's first question
was, " Did we at least fight well ? "
That afternoon a courier reached Chartres with the news
that the Senate had repudiated Napoleon and the C2ar refused to
treat with him. (Stendhal said later that had Talleyrand not
remained in Paris, against Napoleon's orders, so as to act as
host to the Czar, France's entire future, and probably that of all
Europe, would have been altered.) Joseph had brought in-
structions for the fugitives to move south, towards the Loire.
They thought of making for Tours, but as General Clarke
reported typhus there, they chose Blois instead. They slept at
Chateaudun on March 3ist, and at Vendome on April ist, un-
aware that the Allies had entered Paris that morning. A local
landowner, Monsieur de la Chesnaye, wrote an account of their
passage : " The Imperial family consisted of the Empress and her
son, the King of Rome, of Joseph and Jerome Bonaparte and
their mother, Letizia. The Arch-Chancellor, Cambaceres,
accompanied these illustrious personages, who reached Vendome
on Friday, April ist, in the coaches that had been used on
December znd, 1804, for Napoleon's coronation. These
coaches, the richest and most magnificent ever seen, were dis-
played in the Place Saint-Martin. The Empress and her son
stayed with the Marquise de Soisy, who moved out so as to give
them the entire house. Joseph, King of Spain, was received at
the College. Jer6me, King of Westphalia, lodged with Madame
de Paris. Letizia their mother stayed with Monsieur Lemoine de
k Godelini&e . . , The travellers left Vendome next morning for
Blois." Again the roads were muddy and this short journey
took nine hours.
The Old Guard who had endured so much for Napoleon
1X6
Afternoon: ^France
were still ready to die for him, but the marshals and senators
whom he had enriched were not, and on April 4th, he was
forced to abdicate, ostensibly in favour of his son, in fact to
make way for Louis XVIIL Still mindful of his family, Napoleon
wrote at once to Joseph that they must all disperse : " Let the
King of Westphalia go to Brittany or to Bourges . . . I think
Madame had best join her daughter [Pauline] at Nice ; Queen
Julie and her children should go somewhere near Marseille ;
it is natural that King Louis, who has always loved the Midi,
should go to Montpellier . . . recommend the most strict economy
to everyone." He also told Marie-Louise to divide two million
francs among the family for their immediate needs.
On Good Friday the Czar's aide-de-camp, General Schouva-
loff, arrived in Blois and advised Marie-Louise to proceed with
her husband's family as far as Orleans, where she would be met
by Prince Esterhazy and the Prince de Liechtenstein, who had
orders to escort her to her father at Rambouillet. The Emperor
Francis invited Letizia to accompany Marie-Louise, but she
refused indignantly, saying she would never voluntarily separate
herself from her children. On parting from her mother-in-law,
Marie-Louise said, " I hope you will always retain benevolent
feelings towards me." Literal-minded and formidable Letizia
replied : " That will depend on you and your future conduct."
They never met again, and Letizia was mercifully unaware that
Napoleon's son was from this moment to be lost for ever to his
father's family.
**7
TV
Transformation
1814-15
. . . dans un cadre ovale d6dor^, sous une vitre moisie, une tete
bleme sur fond noir. . . . Elle ressemble Lui, elle a les monies
yeux imperatifs et les memes cheveux plats en meches collees :
son expression d'une intensit^ surprenante a je ne sais quoi de
triste, de hagard, de suppliant . . . et Ton dirait d'une morte
effrayee de se trouver dans la nuit, qui aurait mis furtivement la
tte au trou obscur de cet ovale, pour essayer de regarder a travers
la brume du verre terni ce que font les vivants et ce qu'est
devenue la gloire de son fils. . . *
PIERRE LOTI, describing a portrait of Letizia in
JLe Uvre de la fitie et de la Mort
Toujours lui ! Lui partout !
Tu domines notre age ; ange ou demon, qu'importe I
Ton aigle dans son vol haletant nous emporte !
I/ceil meme qui te fuit te retrouve partout.
Toujours dans nos tableaux tu jettes ta grande ombre.
Toujours Napoleon, ^blouissant et sombre,
Sur le seuil du sifecle est debout I
VICTOR HUGO: Lui," from Orientals
How far is St. Helena from the field of Waterloo ?
A near way a clear way the ship will take you soon.
A pleasant pkce for gentlemen with little left to do.
(Meriting never tries you till the afternoon?)
KIPLING : A. St. Helena ILullaby
ON EASTER SUNDAY churches all over France omitted the
D offline sakumfac imperatortm from the service. Letizia had
a mass said privately for Napoleon and his son. Next day she
left for Italy with Fesch, who had come to fetch her despite
many obstacles. In February, after being warned that a party of
Austrians had been specially detailed to seize him, he had fled
from Lyons to Montpellier, where the bishop sheltered him. By
chance he met there his niece Elisa, who had been expelled from
her Italian principality by the Austrians. She told him of the fall
of Paris, and after this news he could think of nothing but
Letizia's safety and welfare.
The Mayor of Orleans raised no objections to supplying them
with passports. Slightly less inaccurate than the passport with
which she had left Corsica, Letizia's read :
Age : 64 [she would be 64 in four months* time],
Height : i metre 50.
Hair: greying.
Forehead : rounded.
Eyebrows: chestnut.
Eyes : brown.
Mouth : well-made.
Chin : rounded.
Face : oval.
Complexion: clear.
Peculiarities: none.
As they left Orleans under the escort of a colonel of the
Gendarmerie, she said sadly : " It is not all over yet, alas."
That same day Napoleon was notified that the Allies had
Madame Letizia
accorded him the sovereignty of the island of Elba : " Their
Majesties the Emperor and Empress will retain their titles and
rank for their lifetime. The Emperor's mother, brothers, sisters,
nephews and nieces will retain the tide of princes of the family
wherever they reside." At the same time, Napoleon was told
that he might take 400 men with him for his garrison. Inomedi-
ately this news spread, the Old Guard began quarrelling among
themselves. They all wanted to go to Elba. The violence of
their reaction was such that 600 instead of 400 were allowed to
share Napoleon's exile.
This six hundred, a symbol of fidelity in the midst of betrayal,
set out from Fontainebleau four days after Letizia had left
Orleans. With them went six of Napoleon's favourite horses.
They marched out as if on parade, drums beating and the for-
bidden tricolour flag flying. In the same invincible spirit they
crossed a France now hostile to them and flying the white flag of
the Bourbons. Such is the power of fidelity, even over the un-
faithful, that everywhere their attitude imposed respect. In
many places the peasants gathered to cry " Vive FlELmpereur ! "
as they marched by. The first time someone shouted " Down
with the tricolour ! " the colonel halted his troops and demanded,
" Who is coward enough to insult the Guard ? " No one an-
swered. Questioned about their destination, they said, "We
don't know the place we're going to, but we're going to join the
Emperor and that's enough for us."
At one stage of their separate journeys into exile, Letizia and
Napoleon almost met. While he was under escort at Roanne,
on the Loire, a Benedictine almoner brought him the news that
Letiftia and Fesch were awaiting a safe-conduct at Saint-
Symphorien, only ten miles away. Napoleon asked the almoner
to tell them that he would look down at Saint-Symphorien as he
went by: " That will be my farewell to my mother." This mute
farewell was not, however, to be their last. In the coming year
mother and son were to share fresh perils, and to part at last
amidst the ruins of the Empire.
Letiaa and Fesch reached Italy soon after the Pope, who had
IJ2
Transformation
been liberated by Napoleon when Murat treacherously occupied
the Papal States with the Allies' consent. Their encounter at
Cesana was one of the most ironic in the gigantic game of
musical chairs being played anew all over Europe. Fesch re-
quested an audience, which was immediately granted. He told
the Pope of his wish to retire to Rome with his sister and was
generously assured that they would be welcome. They reached
Rome on May i2th and went to the palace in the Vk Giulia
which Letizia had left ten years earlier to go to Paris for Napol-
eon's coronation.
DETERMINED TO JOIN Napoleon in Elba, Letizia's next
move was to accumulate funds by selling her house in
Paris. She did not believe that the allowance granted the
Imperial family by the Treaty of Fontainebleau would ever be
paid (she was right) ; nor did she think that, considering what
had happened at Pont, looted by order of Jerome's brother-in-
law, her property would be respected for long. The new French
Minister of War, General Dupont, offered her 600,000 francs for
her house in the Rue Saint-Dominique. She promptly asked for
800,000. Dupont said she would be sorry if she stuck to that
price. She not only stuck to it but obtained it, and when Dupont
complained that he could not afford to buy the furniture and
decorations, she had these packed up and sent to Rome and
Elba.
Her next moving encounter in Rome at this time was with
Lucien, whom she had not seen for ten years. His Roman
property was intact and the Pope now made him Prince of
Canino " in recognition of his attachment to the Holy See."
Letizia was pleased that he should be thus honoured, and she
suggested that he adopt his father's coat-of-arms, which he did ;
but he could no longer claim the lion's share of her sympathies
as the least fortunate of her children. On the contrary, he and
Pauline were, as Roman princes, the only two safe from political
persecution,
Now that the disaster she had anticipated had come, it. was
difficult for her to get news of " all the kings she had borne," let
alone help them. Joseph had moved to a house on the shore of
the Lake of Geneva, but as soon as he began receiving visitors,
[Bettmann Archive]
Letizia Bonaparte
Letizia and Napoleon Bonaparte
[Radio Times Hulton Picture Libra
[Photo Vizzavona]
Letizia Bonaparte, Madame Mere
si
[Photo A.C.L., Brussd
Letizia's death-bed
Letizia Bonaparte in 1833
Transformation
Talleyrand, so often Joseph's guest in the past, declared this was
a cover for spying and persuaded the Canton of Vaud to expel
him. Harmless Julie was driven from Vichy, where she had been
taking the waters with her sister Desiree, now Crown Princess
of Sweden. Even Louis aroused suspicion in Switzerland by
paying a courtesy call on Marie-Louise when she went through
Baden on her way to Aix-en-Savoir. Jerome was isolated in
Ekensberg, an isolated castle in Wiirttemberg, together with
Catherine, who, unlike her sister-in-law Marie-Louise, had
bravely defied her father when he exhorted her to leave her
husband and " come to the bosom of her family which could
never receive a Bonaparte." The domineering King of Wurttem-
berg did not reflect that his grandchild would be irreparably a
Bonaparte and he was outraged when Catherine replied that she
owed her husband seven years of happiness and would certainly
not abandon him in misfortune. While shut up in Ekensberg,
Catherine and Jerome received a visit from Elisa, who, although
pregnant, was attempting -with characteristic energy to reach
Vienna and complain at court about the Austrians* seizure of her
Italian property. Elisa's intrepidity appealed to Letizia, who had
admired the good sense with which the most Napoleonic of her
daughters ruled her little principality and enjoyed with Pauline
a visit to the beautiful royal villa near Lucca, with bosky
gardens where Elisa had kept a tame Corsican eagle. Only
Caroline and Murat still clung at any price to the crowns
Napoleon had given them.
As often in the gravest moments of Letizia's life, her most
frivolous daughter proved the tenderest and most helpful to her.
Napoleon had not been a month in Elba before Pauline paid
him a flying visit on the pretext that she was on her way to
Naples. As faithful as a sister as she was volatile as a mistress,
Pauline did all she could to cheer her adored brother by assur-
ances that the family remained loyal to him. She then wrote to
Letizia : " I have suffered so much that I need to recover myself
near you, dear Mamma. Tell me when you intend to join the
Emperor at Elba. He seems to desire that extremely, and bade
Madame Letizia
me tell you so. I hear with sorrow that Elisa has been to
Vienna. Yet she wrote the Emperor that she wished to go to
Elba ... I hope Joseph will go to see the Emperor as he pro-
mised. It would be very bad of him otherwise. We must not
leave the Emperor alone. It is now that he is unhappy that we
must show our attachment to him."
Letizia's request for permission to visit Elba was speedily
answered by General Bertrand, who confirmed Napoleon's
eagerness to see her. Captain Tower, an Englishman in com-
mand of the frigate Carafao, who brought Letizia letters from
Elba, offered to fetch her at Civita Vecchia and take her to her
son. She accepted joyfully, but Colonel Sir Neil Campbell, the
English Commissioner to Elba whose portrait can be seen in
the elder Vernet's famous picture " Les Adieux de Fontaine-
bleau," put a stop to this plan, saying that although Captain
Tower had acted in good faith, naval regulations forbade him
to take foreign passengers without special authorisation. Com-
plications gathered round the projected visit like barnacles on a
rock. Messages went to and fro between Elba and the mainland.
Napoleon mobilised his tiny fleet. L'Abeille brought Fesch
dispatches. A small reconnoitring vessel came to fetch the ser-
vants and luggage. The brig U Inconstant was ordered to
Piombino so that Letizia might have the shortest crossing
possible. At last, ten weeks after her arrival in Rome, she was
able to start on her voyage into the beginning of her son's long
night. &
Calling herself Madame Dupont (the French equivalent of
Smith or Brown, and seldom can anyone have suited the name
jess), Letizia set out in a berlin drawn by six horses and escorted
by four of the men Lucien employed to protect his land. With
her were her chamberlain, Colonna, and two of her ladies-in-
waiting.
At Pisa the Austrian commander courteously offered her
an escort of four hussars, but at Leghorn the Austrian Count
btahrenberg was so alarmed by the rumour that Leghorn and
Uvita Vecchia were Bonapartist enrolment centres that he
196
Transformation
demanded she leave at once. There was nothing Letizia would
have liked better than to leave the port of Leghorn at once, but
Vlnconstant had not yet arrived and it would have been futile for
her to sail in a small vessel inadequately armed against the
Algerian pirates infesting the Mediterranean. At this point Sir
Neil Campbell offered himself as an escort. He noted in his diary :
July 26-28 : Landed at Leghorn, and remained to await the
expected arrival of Madame Mere.
July 29 : Arrived Madame Mere and suite in two carriages,
with six horses to each. She came from Rome, and travelled
under the name of Madame Dupont, accompanied by M.
Colonna, lately Prefect at Naples, which office, however, as
a Frenchman, he was obliged to resign when that Govern-
ment declared war on France.
July 30 : Received a visit from M. Colonna and M. Barto-
lucci, an Italian resident in Leghorn and formerly member
of the municipality under the French. They requested a
passage for Madame in a man-of-war. Among the reasons
alleged for this appeal were the disappointment of a passage
in another of His Majesty's ships, Napoleon's corvette
being absent at Genoa, and these seas being infested with
Algerian pirates. I promised to speak to the captain of the
corvette attached to my mission, who accordingly ac-
quiesced.
M. Colonna paid me a complimentary call to thank me
on the part of Madame, and to say that a visit would be
very acceptable. Promised to attend in the evening.
July 3 1 : Visited Madame, in company with Captain Batters-
by of H.M.S. Grasshopper. She got up, as if with difficulty,
some seconds after our approach, and made us sit down
upon chairs close to her. M. Colonna, her agent M.
Bartolucci, and two ladies, entered and sat down soon
afterwards. I addressed her as " Madame " and " Altesse."
She was very pleasant and unaffected. The old lady is very
handsome, of middle size, with a good figure and fresh
colour . . .
Madame Lethia
August 2 : Embarked on His Majesty's brig Grasshopper^
Captain Battersby, with Madame Letizia, M. Colonna and
two dames d'honneur, and landed at Elba the same evening.
In leaving the inn at Leghorn to walk to the boat, M.
Colonna took the arm of Madame with his hat off all the way.
Captain Battersby and myself took the arms of the two
ladies with our hats on. Crowds followed us and, on quit-
ting the shore, a number of persons hooted, and whistled,
and hissed.
Captain Battersby and two of his officers, M. Saveira
a passenger, and myself, all dined with Madame on deck.
A couch was arranged for her, from which she never stirred
during the whole voyage, except once to look out for
Napoleon's house, when she mounted upon the top of a gun
with great activity.
In this picture of the elderly woman scorning her infirmities
and dimbing on to a gun " with great activity " to catch a first
glimpse of her exiled son's house, we see once more the linea-
ments of the dazzling adolescent who galloped over the Corsican
battlefields among her kinsmen in arms.
THE ISLAND OF ELBA resembled Corsica and Sardinia with
its spectacular mountains, wild forests, sandy beaches,
eagles'-nest villages and aroma of oranges, lemons, pines,
honeysuckle, rosemary, aloes and eucalyptus. This character-
istic fragrance was what Letizia noticed first, since it was dark
when she arrived and little could be seen of the port but a few
flickering lights.
As the Grasshopper entered Portoferraio harbour there was no
sign of Napoleon. The harbour-master, one of Napoleon's
valets, and various officials arrived in a small boat to explain that
Napoleon had waited all day for his mother, then, presuming
there had been an unforeseen delay, had gone to the hermitage of
the Madonna at Marciana in the mountains. They could not tell
her, since they did not know, that he was expecting a secret visit
from his faithful Polish mistress, the Countess Walewska, and
that he had gone to make arrangements for her reception in this
out-of-the-way spot. Sir Neil Campbell suggested that Generals
Bertrand and Drouet be summoned to welcome Letizia. When
Colonna asked her for orders she appeared, according to Sk
Neil, " gravely agitated and mortified at no one coming to meet
her," and gave her assent to sending for the generals " with
great violence." Only when they arrived would she go ashore.
The Old Guard were waiting to receive her at the wharf, a
carriage drawn by six horses took her to Napoleon's Mulini
palace on a cliff top four miles from the harbour, mounted
torch-bearers escorted her up the steep streets thronged by
cheering Elbans, and she once more had the pleasure of hearing
Italian spoken all around her.
Madame Letizia
Next morning Napoleon returned. His delight at seeing his
mother compensated her for the mishap over her arrival. It also
astonished the English present, and according to Andre Pons de
THerault, an eyewitness said : " One would have to imagine an
ardent young man who, after a cruel separation, finds himself in
the presence of his beloved, to form an idea of the ineffable joy
his mother's arrival aroused in the Emperor. He gave orders,
contradicted them, said yes then no, without knowing what he
was doing."
The Villa Mulini was a charming house, its pink facade and
green shutters overlooking a typically Mediterranean garden
planted with palms, cypresses, box, arum lilies, wild geraniums,
figs and olives, vines and maize, acacias and broom, sheltered by
a low wall from which the cliff dropped sheerly into the sea.
House and garden were enclosed by the walls of a fortress built
in the middle of the sixteenth century by Cosimo I, the Medici
who transformed Portoferraio from a fishing village into a
naval station, renamed it Cosmopoli, defended it against the
French and the Turks, and introduced a seafaring population
from Sicily and Genoa. Named after the mills that surrounded
it until demolished in 1808, the villa had started as a four-room
cottage built by Giovanni-Gastone dei Medici for his gardener
in 1724. When Elba became French seventy-seven years later,
this cottage was enlarged to accommodate artillery and engineer-
ing officers. To-day the enlarged villa with its red-tiled floors,
pale-green walls, trompe fail ceilings, its Empire furniture,
drapery and chandeliers, its Napoleonic bees and Egyptian
motifs, its faded Elban flag, and the bookcase crammed with
Napoleon's leather-bound editions of the Moniteur Universel y
serves both as a museum, always crowded in the tourist season,
and as a centre for Elban archaeological studies. A plaque on
the wall commemorates Napoleon's sojourn in this " august and
sovereign house/'
There was nothing august or sovereign about it when Letizia
came to Elba. Still in the hands of workmen, the villa smelt of
new paint and mortar, and Napoleon was doing little more than
200
Transformation
camp out there. He still believed his wife and son would soon
be joining him, so had ordered another story to be added to
the house. Deprived of outlets for his energy, he not only
supervised the execution of these plans but contributed to the
v/ork, often wielding a pickaxe and sharing the workmen's lunch
of hard-boiled eggs and bread. It distressed Letkia to find him
preparing a room for Marie-Louise, its ceiling decorated with
symbols of conjugal fidelity : two doves separated by clouds
" but united by a bond that becomes closer the farther they draw
apart/* He did not know that his wife and son had reached
Vienna the very day he moved into the Villa Mulini, and he dung
to the notion of their arrival all the more desperately after he
learnt of Josephine's death at fifty-one (precisely the age at
which he himself was to die). He wept at the news and shut him-
self up in his study. Josephine had been his romantic love, and
he did not believe she would have abandoned him in misfortune.
Since the Villa Mulini was still in the builders' hands,
Napoleon had taken for Letizia the Casa Vantini, a house on one
of the staircase-streets just below the fortress. It is only a few
steps' walk from the little church of the Misericordia, where, to-
day, the sacristan will show visitors the Emperor's death mask
and a cast of his hand, both treasured in a black and gold coffin
that is a copy of the one at Les Invalides in Paris.
Letizia was to be happy in the Casa Vantini with its Empire
furniture and the trompe Fail tent that struck a fashionably
martial note. The local officials were presented to her, and every
Sunday she held a levee after Napoleon's ; but for the most part
her life was quiet and domestic. During the daytime she read,
wrote letters and worked at her tapestry ; in the evenings she
and Napoleon walked or drove together, dined and afterwards
played reversi, when he would tease her by cheating as he had
done years ago. " The Emperor," she noted, " is always busy
trying to render my stay here agreeable." He need not have made
much effort. Nothing could have been more agreeable to her than
being free for the first time in twenty-one years of fearing for her
favourite son's life on some far-flung battlefield.
201
A: ELBA NAPOLEON could never be busy enough fo his
own needs. He had talked beforehand of the delights of
rest and retirement, but within three days of his arrival he had
begun riding all over the island, inspecting local defences,
visiting the tin mines that had been a feature of Elba since the
Etruscan days, and planning the reorganisation of his tiny
kingdom as thoroughly as if it had been a great empire. He
asked questions about the salt ponds and the tunny fisheries,
decided to plant more vineyards, build roads, pave the towns,
provide more water supplies and add to the fortifications. The
Old Guard worked with the local labourers on these projects,
and on building a hospital and, of course, a theatre. The Bona-
partes found it hard to imagine life without drama, even over
and above that which their own lives provided. But all this only
reminded him of what he considered his lasting achievement :
< the construction of the Louvre, the public granaries, the Bank
of France, the Canal de TOurcq, the Paris water-supply ; the
drains, quays and many improvements in the capital." His
brothers and sisters applied their exuberant artistic instincts to
their private lives and houses, their objects of art, their novels,
poems, and ardixological studies. Napoleon spent his on
cities. Nevertheless, he persisted in trying to fill his time in
Elba. He formed a cabinet headed by the faithful General
Bertrand, Grand Marshal of the Palace, and entrusted the
military command of Portoferraio to Cambronne, whose army
consisted of the Old Guard, 800 local recruits and 200 men
labelled " miscellaneous/* It was most unlikely that this tiny
202
Transformation
world would long hold a man to whom recently realms and
islands were as plates dropped from his pocket.
In August Napoleon took Letizia to Marciana Alta, a quiet
Medici village on a hilltop overlooking the Gulf of Procdxio.
One can still rent the whitewashed, red-tiled bedroom that
Letizia occupied that summer. The superb view over the
Mediterranean is unchanged and a plaque on the house com-
memorates her stay :
NAPOLEON THE GREAT
Received appreciated hospitality
In this dwelling
The property of the brothers
The chevaliers Giuseppe and Giovanni Paolo Vadi
Their grandfather Corbona Vadi
Being then mayor of Marciana
From the 21 to the 24 of August 1814
and
LETIZIA RAMOLINO HIS AUGUST MOTHER
From August 25 until September
The Commune of Marciana
Announces this to posterity
1894
Letizia was still there on September ist, when Napoleon left
her in order to welcome a woman and child locally rumoured
to be Marie-Louise and the King of Rome. They were his
Polish mistress Marie Walewska and Alexandre, the child she
had borne him four years earlier. Accompanied by her brother
and sister, she and Napoleon stayed at the hermitage of the
Madonna. The hermits who* usually lived there vacated rooms
for Madame Walewska and Napoleon had ordered a tent to serve
as dining-room between the Hermitage and the chapel. A certain
amount of romance of the " Napoleon did not emerge from the
tent . . . until morning " kind has been woven around an en-
counter intended principally to settle the future of the little boy,
who was to prove far more fortunate than his half-brother, the
King of Rome. Whether or not Letizia was aware of this meeting
20}
Madame
is not known as she made no recorded comment, but it is in any
case unlikely to have shocked her. Despite the austerity of her
personal standards, she never complained of her children's
sexual appetites unless they threatened the interests of the
family as a whole.
Letizia spent money with such uncharacteristic lavishness
in Elba that Napoleon contributed nothing to her household
expenses, telling Bertrand that to let her pay all her own bills
was the sole way to restrain her. Not only did she spend
lavishly, but as the French Government never paid the income
promised to Napoleon, she gave a sum Baron Larrey estimates
at 500,000 piastres towards the upkeep of the Old Guard.
When old soldiers reached Elba and found no place for them-
selves in the small garrison, she insisted on seeing them before
they left and giving money to each one. In October she sent one
of her ladies-in-waiting to Rome for her diamonds ; these she
offered to Napoleon, who, much touched, refused to accept
more than a buckle for his sword-belt. Among the people on
whom she showered gifts at this time was a young gkl named
Rosa Mellini, daughter of a retired Elban colonel. Letizia
liked her so much that she asked her to be one of her ladies-in-
waiting. Rosa accepted joyfully and remained with her, acting
as daughter, friend, confidante and secretary, for the rest
of Letizia's life. From now on most of Letizia's letters were
dictated to Rosa.
No sooner was Letizia known to be in Elba than Corsicans
began flocking to her in hope of employment. " Madame/*
says Pons de FH&ault, " was Corsican in the complete sense of
the word Her accent, her habits, her memories, everything
evoked her early years, and one sometimes asked oneself if she
had ever left Corsica/' Even so, she could not assist all her
compatriots, and she wrote to Lucien : " I am very sorry not to
have been able to place Tavera, but there was nothing available.
Every day we have to refuse someone. You cannot imagine
how many people are arriving here." With this she sent Lucien a
204
Transformation
present of " fishes' eggs, very good with figs*" She also gave
him her best mahogany bed, just delivered from Paris, and asked
him to buy her a house in Rome, which she hoped to use as the
family headquarters.
At the end of October Pauline reached Elba, to the joy of her
mother and brother. Napoleon gave her the rooms he had
prepared for his wife, since he was now aware that Marie-
Louise had taken the one-eyed Austrian General Neipperg as a
lover. Neipperg had made her acquaintance in Dresden in 1812,
when she and Napoleon were there as conquerors, and after
Napoleon's defeat Metternich had encouraged the affair on the
shrewd assumption that once she had a lover Marie-Louise
would completely forget her husband. Pauline was surprised to
find in these rooms some of the Borghese furniture that her
husband had sent from Turin to Rome by sea. A storm had
driven the ship into Elba, and as Napoleon was just then short of
furniture he had requisitioned it, saying, " Like that, it remains
in the family." So did the symbols of conjugal fidelity, which
were scarcely more appropriate to Pauline's bedroom ceiling
than they would have been to that of Marie-Louise.
Letizia had brought Napoleon devotion, companionship and
moral support. Pauline, whom Stendhal called "la divine
Princesse Borghese" introduced gaiety into his exile. Always fond
of pleasure, she exaggerated this taste in order to provide amuse-
ment for Napoleon. Her beauty and her charm drew everyone
to her, and she immediately made a friend of anyone her brother
singled out. No local festivity, village concert or peasant dance
was too insignificant for her. She gave balls and receptions,
engaged singers, organised amateur theatricals, superintended
rehearsals and designed costumes ; and although she teased and
petted Napoleon and made him laugh, even against his inclina-
tion, just as she had done when she was a child, she also yielded
to him in every way and treated him with the most tender and
tactful respect. She never failed to curtsy to him precisely as she
would have done at the Tuileries, and she made dozens of small
sacrifices that from such a coquette were heroic changing out
ZOj
Madame Letizia
of a newly-arrived evening dress because Napoleon disapproved
of it, and refraining from wearing her beloved diamonds lest
their magnificence humiliate the Elba ladies. In all this Pauline
was aided and abetted by Letizia, who was never again to be as
light-hearted as when she shared Napoleon's exile.
206
DESPITE LETIZIA'S AND Pauline's efforts to lessen the
tedium of his exile, Napoleon became increasingly restless.
Elba could not absorb the energies of a man who had dreamed
of creating the United States of Europe and a vast eastern
empire, who had planned a canal to join the Mediterranean to the
Red Sea and, above all, a man who had acquired the habit of
seeing his dreams come true* He no longer believed that his
wife and son would join him ; nor did he expect the French
Government to pay the income it had promised him, though
both the Czar and Lord Castlereagh had protested about this.
Lord Castlereagh had also agreed with Talleyrand at the
Congress of Vienna, that Napoleon ought to be deported still
farther from Europe, perhaps to one of the Azores islands or to
St. Lucia or St. Helena. This proposal was discussed all over
Europe, and news of it soon reached Napoleon and added to
his fevered restlessness.
Meanwhile French public opinion had been veering in his
favour. The abrogation of the Continental blockade was
ruining French manufacturers and, despite the Bourbons*
promises, emigres were returning to seize lands for which the
owners had paid. The censorship had been re-established;
torture was restored by the royal courts in Piedmont; the
university in Paris temporarily dosed; royalist priests said
expiatory masses for the crimes of the revolution ; and twelve
thousand officers of the Grand Army were retired on half pay
while twenty thousand royalists were promoted for their
services against Revolutionary France. As a result, revolutionary
passions revived and ex-soldiers forgot their hardships, remem-
207
Madame Letizia
bered their glory, and began to long for the Little Corporal. A
popular song of that year began :
Conserve*^ bien la croix d'honneur,
A dit ITLmpereur & ses braves,
Le prix, cree par la valeur,
Netait pas fait pour des esclaves.
]e vois un avenir honteux
Se montrer pour ma belle France,
Et lorsque je quitte ces lieux,
Un roi revient sans qtfony pense.
(Take care of the cross of honour, the Emperor told his
soldiers, its value was created by valour, it was not made for
slaves. I foresee a shameful future for my beautiful France,
and as I leave here a king slips back,)
Bonapartists meeting in the street would ask each other,
" Do you believe in Christ ? " and get the reply, " Yes and in
the Resurrection."
Much of this was reported to Napoleon on the night of
February 13th, 1815, by a visitor who came to Elba disguised as
a sailor in a small felucca. This was Fleury de Chaboulon, a
former State Auditor and Sub-Prefect, who had been living in
retirement since the Restoration. He left for Naples the follow-
ing night and Napoleon immediately began to plan his incredibly
audacious return to France. The curtain was about to rise on
the Hundred Days, which Balzac called " a fairy-tale play in
three months."
208
DAYS LATER Sir Neil Campbell mentioned to
Napoleon that he had to make a trip to Leghorn and
Florence on official business. (He was also going to visit his
Italian mistress.) Napoleon expressed the hope that Sir Neil
would be back by February 28th, in time for the ball Pauline
was giving that evening. Sk Neil assured Mm that he would do
his utmost to be present. After this exchange of courtesies,
Napoleon knew that he had twelve days in which to prepare his
escape from Elba. The moment Sk Neil sailed, Napoleon
ordered Drouot to refit IJInconstant and equip her with twenty-
six cannons. This brig and six smaller vessels composed his
entire fleet.
Letizia "was not told of his plans until the day before he
sailed. In her Souvenirs she says :
One evening when we were at Portoferraio, the Emperor
seemed to me gayer than usual. He suggested Pauline and
I play a game of ecarte [a card game for two players]. A
minute later he left us and went and shut himself up in his
study. Noticing that he did not come back, I went to his
room to call him, and the chamberlain told me he had gone
into the garden. I remember it was one of the mildest spring
nights we had had ; the moon was shining brilliantly
among the trees, and the Emperor was alone, walking with
hasty steps along the alleys of the garden. Suddenly he
stopped short and, leaning his head against a fig tree, ex-
claimed, " Yet I must tell my mother." At this I went to him
and said, with the liveliest impatience, * e What is the matter
209
Madame Let ma
with you this evening? I can see you are much more
absorbed by your thoughts than usual."
His hand on his forehead, the Emperor hesitated a
moment, then replied : " Yes, I must tell you, but I forbid
you to repeat what I am going to confide in you to any-
one, not even to Pauline." He smiled, embraced me,
and went on, " Well, I must tell you that I am leaving
here."
"To go where?"
" To Paris. But above all, I want your advice."
" Ah ! Allow me to forget for a moment that I am
your mother." I reflected, then added, " Heaven will not
permit you to die by poison, nor in an activity unworthy
of you, but with your sword in your hand. Go, my son,
fulfil your destiny, you were not made to die on this
island."
Few scenes in Letizia's stormy life are more moving than this
exchange with her son in that moonlit garden by the Mediter-
ranean. She had been happy in Elba, had begun to hope that
Napoleon was genuinely reconciled to their life in this homelike
place. Yet when he offered her a chance to detain him she refused
to allow herself to act possessively and did precisely what she
asked his permission to do : forgot for a moment that she
was his mother, considered nothing but the imperative needs
of his nature and genius, and gave his plans the encourage-
ment of the one person for whose opinion he had unqualified
respect.
On the morning of Sunday, February i6th, Napoleon held
his usual levee. He then attended nine o'clock mass with
Lctfaia and Pauline. At eleven a small boat arrived, carrying a
courier. His miniature army of 1,100 (600 of the Old Guard,
with the Corsican battalion and some Polish and Elban volun-
teers) assembled at two in the afternoon. Napoleon appeared in
his legendary green uniform with the famous grey redingote,
and when he announced their embarkation for that evening
210
Transformation
the soldiers broke ranks and flung themselves into one
another's arms and at his feet, shouting " Vive FEmperexr ! "
The Elbans joined in with " Viva flmperaton ! " and " Ewwa
Napoleone ! "
Letizia and Pauline watched in tears. Napoleon had already
instructed them to wait at Portoferraio until he could send a ship
to take them to France. In his farewell speech to the National
Guard, he said : " I entrust the defence of the place to you. I
cannot give you a greater proof of confidence than by leaving
my mother and sister in your care." He also had a private con-
versation with his mother's chamberlain, in which he begged the
latter not to let Letizia out of his sight and said he counted on
Colonna to look after her. Meanwhile Letizia had taken aside
Napoleon's faithful valet Marchand, commended her son to his
care, and given him a comfit box (Napoleon always carried
aniseed-flavoured liquorice) decorated with her portrait, saying,
" Let the Emperor use this in future in place of the one he has
now. If misfortune overtakes him, do not abandon him*" Here
she broke down and put her hands over her eyes. This Marchand
who described Letizia as "perfect in her noble simplicity,"
played an important part in Napoleon's life. Fidelity ran in his
family. His mother, who was cradle-rocker to the King of Rome
had accompanied the child to Vienna, and Marchand un-
hesitatingly accompanied Napoleon both to Elba and to St,
Helena. After Napoleon's death all the Bonapartes showed
Marchand gratitude, and in 1869 he was made a count by
Napoleon III.
At four o'clock the troops were served with soup, and at
five o'clock the call to arms sounded. At seven they marched
out of the fortifications, quickly and without music, to the quay
where they embarked in small boats moored alongside. Two
hours later Napoleon embraced his mother and sister and drove
to the harbour with General Bertrand in Pauline's small carriage
drawn by four horses. The town had been lit up and lanterns
swayed all along the ramparts. The churches were packed, and
at the landing-stage the local authorities, civil and military, were
zn
Madame Letizia
waiting to wish Napoleon well. As he came aboard the brig
UInconstant}\i soldiers began to sing the Marseillaise. The sing-
ing spread from ship to ship, was taken up on shore, and travelled
through the town and all the way up to the citadel, where Letkia
had already resumed her habit of waiting impassively for news
from alien battlefields.
212
A'TER NAPOLEON HAD sailed, Letizk wrote Lucien a
letter intended to deceive anyone who might intercept it.
She sounds as wary as an author unwilling to reveal the plot of
his next book : " I leave here in three days, weather permitting.
The Emperor has gone with all his men, but I do not know
his destination. I hope to see you at Civita Vecchia, also Louis.
It is essential that you tell me if there is any reason why I
should not come to Rome, if so I will go farther. I chose
Rome on account of my extreme desire to see you, Louis and my
brother."
Next day she was on the terrace at dawn. At noon an
English corvette was signalled on its way from Leghorn with
Sk Neil Campbell, who had kept his promise to return in time
for Pauline's ball. When he heard of Napoleon's escape he
hurried to confront Letizia and Pauline and furiously assured
them that, since the Mediterranean was full of Allied ships,
Napoleon must by now be a prisoner. His anger increased at
the sight of Letkia's outward composure, maddening courtesy
and obstinate insistence that she had no idea of her son's where-
abouts. It would have been difficult for Sir Neil Campbell to
hinder Napoleon's escape, since, according to Samuel Rogers's
Italian Journal, the English Commissioner's position had been
vaguely defined as merely " a sort of policeman " who might not
even call on Napoleon uninvited. This did not lessen Sk Neil's
fury. Frustrated by Letizia's impassivity and Pauline's impert-
inence, he became, says William Hazlitt, " not a little nettled at
thek want of English plain dealing and sincerity in not betraying
213
Madame Letizia
thek son and brother into his hands, out of the love which he
[Sk Neil] bore to his native country."
His attitude was so threatening that Pauline, fearing he
might take her as a hostage, decided to follow her brother's
example. Thanks to a French officer, she was able to hke a
felucca in which she escaped at two in the morning three days
later. She landed at Viareggio, where the customs officers,
immediately subjugated, hastened to give up their rooms to her.
She would have done better, however, to remain with Letizia,
since the Austrians presently put her under house arrest in
Viareggio and thus deprived her of her last opportunity to see her
beloved brother again.
A week after Napoleon's departure, Letizia wrote to Lucien
triumphantly :
It is a pleasure for me to give you news of our dear Em-
peror's departure from this town and arrival at the Gulf of
Juan, near Antibes.
The Emperor left Portoferraio at nine o'clock in the
evening of the 26th ; on the morning of the 2yth he saw an
English corvette between him and the Continent ; at mid-
day he saw a French corvette in the direction of Corsica.
It was going to meet the fleet and exchanged words with the
Emperor's brig. The sight of all these warships made him
uneasy, but he was fully prepared to put up a fight and his
lucky star preserved him from fear and peril. So much so
that in the evening he compared the day with that of
Austerlitz.
At five in the morning of the 28th, the Emperor saw
to the north of him the vessel he had noticed the previous
evening, but at ten o'clock it vanished. The wind was
favourable, my dear son, because they covered four and a
half milks [8 miles] an hour. At ten o'clock that same
morning the Emperor had the tricolour cockade fastened to
his hat, and the troops did the same amid cries of " Vive
FEmpereur ! " The transport ships, which had remained far
behind, caught up with him at dawn on March ist. This
214
Transformation
delighted him. At last, my dear son, the fleet dropped
anchor in the Gulf of Juan and the troops disembarked.
The local inhabitants received the Emperor with joy,
[A customs officer who saw them come ashore reported
that during the afternoon the military band repeatedly
played the popular air " Ou est-ce qifon peut etre mieux qtte
dans k sein de safamille? " (Where can one be better than in
the bosom of one's family?)] Couriers were sent to every
department to announce the day of resurrection, and pro-
clamations were dispatched. The Emperor counts on the
loyalty of the troops scattered all over France, especially as
he met a courier en route from Paris to the Prince of
Monaco who assured him he would be received with open
arms by the French Army and people. The Emperor left
Lyons at midnight on March ist. He is well, and I am over-
joyed.
Equally though differently dazzled was Byron, who wrote to
Thomas Moore on March zyth : " Making every allowance
for talent and most consummate daring, there is, after all, a
good deal in luck or destiny. He might have been stopped
by our frigates or wrecked in the Gulf of Lyons, which is
particularly tempestuous or a thousand things. But he is
certainly Fortune's favourite, and
Once fairly set out on his party of pleasure,
Taking towns at his liking and crowns at his leisure,
From Elba to Lyons and Paris he goes
Making balls for the ladies and bom to his foes.
" You must have seen the account of his driving into the
middle of the royal army, and the immediate effect of his pretty
speeches. And now if he don't drub the Allies, there is * no
purchase in money/ If he can take France by himself, the devil's
in't if he don't repulse the invaders, when backed by those
celebrated sworders those boys of the blade, the Imperial
Guard, and the old and new army. It is impossible not to be
dazzled and overwhelmed by his character and career."
Napoleon's progress across France by the highway knowa
Madame Letma
to-day as the Route Napoleon was indeed dazzling and over-
whelming. In inviting his soldiers to follow him he had said,
"Victory will march rapidly. The eagle, with the national
colours, will fly from steeple to steeple up to Notre-Dame "
and that was precisely what happened. On March yth Louis
XVIII summoned the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of
Deputies to an extraordinary session. Napoleon's name was
not mentioned in the convocation, but ambiguous references to
ill-will and treachery indicated that momentous events were
under way. In Vienna, early that same morning, Metternich
received a despatch from Genoa reporting Napoleon's dis-
appearance from Elba. Six days later the Allied Governments
declared him an outlaw and public enemy. On March i9th, the
King fled from the Tuileries to Belgium.
Next day, which was the King of Rome's fourth birthday,
about two thousand travel-stained troops, each man wearing the
tricolour cockade, marched into Paris by the Boulevard Mont-
martre. Their cries of " Vive fEmpmur " were echoed by those
of the populace, who rushed to link arms with them. Growing
larger every minute, the procession was constantly and vocifer-
ously invited to halt at wine shops, where great cans of wine
were freely distributed for toasts to the Emperor and the Old
Guard. Among the well-known figures who crowded to their
windows to see Napoleon's troops enter the capital were the
actresses Mesdemoiselles George and Mars, each of whom
carried a huge bouquet of violets, which so struck the public
imagination that from then on these flowers have been con-
sidered a Bonapartist emblem. The crowds pressed on down the
boulevards and the Rue de la Paix to the Place Vendome,
where they waited for further orders.
At half past six shouts came from the direction of the
Tuileries. These grew thunderous when a small escort galloped
into the Cour du Carrousel, followed by Napoleon's carrkge.
The crowd pressed around him so ardently that he was scarcely
able to alight. A kpel torn from his coat was instantly divided
among his adorers. When he reached the bottom of the grand
216
Transformation
staircase his officers insisted on carrying him into the palace on
their shoulders. The Emperor was home again. He had
marched from the Mediterranean to the Tuileries, without firing
a shot, in barely twenty days : a phenomenally short time from a
military and political viewpoint, but an exhaustingly long one
for the elderly woman waiting for news in Elba.
217
Now IT WAS LETIZIA who grew restless. The ship
Napoleon ordered to go for her was held up and at last
she had to resign herself to sailing on the ]oachim, sent from
Naples by Caroline. This took her to the Palazzo Portici, just
outside Naples, which was the Murats' favourite residence. Ten
years later Lady Blessington described this palace : " It com-
prehends a magnificent prospect of the bay, being only divided
from the sea by a garden filled with the finest trees, plants and
flowers. No palace that I have ever seen so completely realises
the notion I had formed of an Italian one . . . This residence
owes all its comfort and elegance to the good taste of Madame
Murat, ex-Queen of Naples . . . The present sovereign and his
family [the restored Bourbons] are said to have been hardly able
to recognise their ancient abodes, when they returned from
Sicily . . . Ferdinand is reported to have said that Murat was an
excellent upholsterer, and had furnished his palaces perfectly
to his taste . . . The bedroom, bath, boudoir and library of
Madame Murat are faultless specimens of Parisian elegance and
comfort . . . One of the salons particularly attracted our attention.
The ceiling and walls were covered with panels of the most
beautiful china of the ancient and celebrated manufactory of
Capo di Monte, of which specimens are now become so rare.
The panels have landscapes and groups finely painted, and are
bordered with wreaths of flowers the size of Nature, of the richest
and most varied dyes, in alto-rilievo ; among which, birds of
the gayest plumage, squirrels and monkeys . . . We were shown
two portraits of Murat ... An air of braggadocio characterises
both, conveying the impression of a bold captain of banditti,
218
Transformation
dressed in the rich spoils he had plundered ... but the counten-
ance is remarkable for an expression of good humour . . .
Murat and his wife are remembered with kindness, if not
lamented, by the Neapolitans."
In this sunlit palace Letizia found the ambitious Caroline
surrounded by her four handsome children and determined to
regain her mother's good opinion and prove her renewed
loyalty to Napoleon. Always direct, Letizia reproached her
daughter with ingratitude and treachery, and when Caroline said
that she had acted under her husband's influence, Letizia
retorted : " If you could not control him, you should have
opposed him. But what sort of struggle did you make ? Whose
blood was shed? Only over your dead body should your
husband have been able to strike your brother, your benefactor
and master." (This conversation was later described by Napol-
eon at St. Helena.) Caroline's assurances of remorse and of
Murat's determination to make up for his momentary defection
on March 3oth he called upon the Italians to rise against the
Austrians brought about a partial reconciliation between
mother and daughter, encouraged by Fesch, who had reached
Naples three days earlier in search of his sister. In moments of
crisis Fesch's first thoughts were always for Lethia.
Joseph had already left Switzerland and rallied to Napoleon,
while Jerome hastened to Naples in order to accompany his
mother and uncle to Paris. They all three sailed on the Joachim
in April, but the wind was so unfavourable that, after tossing
for eighteen hours, they were driven back into port. The
Melpomene, sent by Napoleon from Toulon, was stink by the
English just outside the Bay of Naples. Ten days passed without
another ship coming to the Bonapartes* rescue, and with every
day their danger from the Austrians increased. On May 9th
they heard gunfire at sea, and from a hill-top Jerome saw a
French and an English vessel in combat. By skilful manoeuvring
the French ship, the Dryade, got within shelter of the coastal
defences and landed General Belliard at the fortress town of
Gaeta, north-west of Naples.
219
Madame Letizia
The orders that the general brought from Napoleon arrived
too late to prevent Murat, now his brother-in-law's only ally,
from attacking the Austrians as rashly as he had previously
supported them, thus ruining Napoleon's plan to conciliate
Austria and lessen the number of enemies he would have to face
simultaneously. Deserted by his troops, Murat fled from Naples,
disguised as a sailor. Caroline and her children were later
seized by the Austrians and taken to Trieste.
J6r6me telegraphed to the Dryade's commander to wait at
Gaeta, and he and his mother and uncle drove up the coast, past
the Grotto of the Sibyl and the Elysian Fields, a twelve and a
half hour journey through wild, bandit-infested country. They
sailed on May i3th, only just in time to elude the Austrians.
While the Dryade was off the coast of Corsica, the captain
sighted an English vessel pursuing them and decided to put in to
Bastia. As soon as the townspeople heard that the Emperor's
mother was aboard the Dryade, cheering crowds flocked to the
quayside. A salute of honour was fired as Letizia came ashore
on the governor's arm, and the streets were lined by the National
Guard and decorated with hastily improvised arches of leaves
and flowers. According to Jerome's Memoirs, he was receiving
local notabilities at the house of their cousin, the Due de Padone,
when news came that the English ship had disappeared. The
wind being favourable, they quickly re-embarked, to the
consternation of the local ladies who were already planning what
to wear for the ball Letizia was to have given that evening. As
the Dryade moved out of harbour, Letizia saw the austere
fourteenth-century citadel, the tower of St. Mary's church and
the Dragon's jetty for the kst time. She was sixty-four m&
would never see Corsica again.
The wind forced them into the Gulf of Juan and they landed
on May 2ind at precisely the spot where Napoleon had landed
nearly three months earlier. They spent the night in Antibes,
full for Letizia of memories of the home Napoleon had given
her when he was first promoted general. Many waters had
flowed through the river of that garden since she washed her
220
Transformation
children's clothes there and slapped Pauline for stealing the
neighbours' figs.
Letizia and Fesch travelled up through Frejus, Brignoles,
Aix, Avignon, the Pont Saint-Esprit and Montelimar towards
Lyons. Impetuous Jerome hastened ahead, leaving them to
return together as they had left, two wary Corsicans in a land
temporarily dominated by their dan. As Fesch was still Arch-
bishop of Lyons, they were welcomed there with pomp as well
as enthusiasm. When they reached Paris on June ist, they dis-
covered they had just missed the Ceremony of the Champ de
Mai, an impressive piece of pageantry suggested to Napoleon
by Lucien, who had arrived from Rome as the Pope's emissary
to solicit the evacuation of the papal territories occupied by
Murat. Letizia heard with joy that Joseph had acted as peace-
maker between his two brothers and that Napoleon had greeted
Lucien enthusiastically, making him a French prince and giving
him as residence the Palais-Royal, always hitherto allotted to the
younger branch of the reigning family. At the Champ de Mai
an open-air mass had been celebrated in the presence of thou-
sands of Parisians and 20,000 delegates from the provinces, after
which Napoleon had publicly sworn fidelity to the Empire-
Joseph, Lucien and Jerome stood beside him, all in uniform,
typifying family solidarity. New flags were distributed to the
Grand Army and 40,000 soldiers declared their allegiance in a
thunderous " Nous lejurons" Listening to resounding accounts
of this, Letizia could believe that her nightmares were over and,
as she had written to Lucien from Elba : " He is well and I am
overjoyed."
227
ATTENDED a special session of the Chamber on
June yth to hear Napoleon address the Legislative Assem-
bly and receive oaths of loyalty from the Senators and Deputies.
An eyewitness, Mademoiselle Cochelet, describes the occasion in
her Memoires sur la Reine Hortense et la Famlle Impmale :
Towards four o'clock there was the sound of a door open-
ing, and all eyes turned to the tribune adorned for Madame
and Queen Hortense, who were arriving followed by their
ladies-in-waiting.
The Emperor's mother must have been one of the most
beautiful women who ever existed. She was at this time
about sixty-five, and still striking on account of the regularity
of her features and the atmosphere of nobility that emanated
from all her person. I remember she wore a high-necked
lace dress, its long sleeves lined with orange satin, and a
toque with white plumes, which was decorated, as was her
bodice, with superb diamonds. Her beautiful black eyes,
with long lashes and delicately arched eyebrows, were as
brilliant as those of a young woman . . . Queen Hortense's
fair hair and complexion and her graceful movements were
in striking contrast with the classical gravity that was her
mother-in-law's dominant physical characteristic.
(Until extreme old age Letizia retained enough coquetry to
use a white "liquid cosmetic, corresponding to to-day's founda-
tion make-up, that suited her admirably but gave her neuralgia.)
On her arrival from Elba, Letizia had refused to meet
Hortense, whom she blamed for having remained in Paris
during the restoration and accepted the title of Duchesse de
222
Transformation
Saint-Leu from Louis XVIH Napoleon had already told
Hortense what he thought of this, but he also knew that she was
fundamentally devoted to him, so he persuaded his mother to
change her mind, pointing out that Hortense had been obliged
to consider her children's interests, had done all she could for
the family, and had undoubtedly behaved far better than
Caroline. Letizia received Hortense only to please him, but for
the first time a genuine affection sprang up between them, an
affection which was to be strengthened by Hortense's attitude
after Waterloo and to last the rest of their lives.
Despite the fervour with which Paris had welcomed him
back, Napoleon was in a melancholy mood. Some spring of
energy seemed broken in him. He thought constantly of his son,
who was still a prisoner in Austria. M&ieval, his former
Secretary of Portfolio, had recently seen the child in Vienna, and
reported that when asked if he had any message for his father, the
little boy pulled him aside and whispered, " Tell him, Monsieur
Meva, that I still love him dearly." For die first time Napoleon
was drawn to the past rather than the future, and when Letkia
accompanied him to Malmaison she realised that the unfaithful
but warm-hearted Josephine had been a better wife than the
voluntarily absent Marie-Louise.
On Sunday evening, June nth, Letizia and Napoleon pre-
sided over what was to tie their last family dinner. Not all her
children, were present never once had she and Carlo had an
opportunity to share a meal with all their children but it was a
joy to her to see Joseph, Napoleon, Lucien and Jerome united in
amity. Of all the family only Louis, sulking in Florence, was
absent from choice, but he was represented by his sons, eleven-
year-old Napoleon-Louis and seven-year-old Louis-Napoleon,
who were brought in by their mother Hortense, at the end of
dinner.
Napoleon showed particular tenderness to both his nephews
as if this were the only way in which he could express his love
for the child in Vienna.
Next day Napoleon left to command the Grand Army
22)
Madame Letizia
already marching to defy the rest of Europe. Once more
Letizia could do little but wait and pray. His immediate aim
was to stop the Allies from completing their preparations.
Wellington's army at Antwerp and Bliichefs on the Rhine
totalled 210,000 men, all to be concentrated in the Namur
region. Napoleon planned to get there first and prevent their
joining forces. His own army of 124,000 men crossed the
Sambre at Charleroi on June i5th. That same day the Prussians
were warned of his approach by a royalist deserter, General
Count de Bourmont. Next day Napoleon defeated Blticher at
Ligny, but without completely crushing the Prussian Army.
Then, leaving Grouchy with 30,000 men to pursue Blxicher, he
rounded on the English. Meanwhile Wellington had taken up a
strong position on the Mont-Saint-Jean plateau, south of the
village of Waterloo, barring the route to Brussels.
When the battle of Waterloo (which Wellington called " a
damned close-run thing") started on Sunday, June iSth,
Napoleon was worn out by an agonising attack of haemorrhoids
which had started two days earlier. There had been a violent
storm the previous evening, so the ground was still a morass,
and the soldiers were hampered by the mud that dung to their
boots. In order to give them some respite, and above all to
allow the ground to get dry enough for artillery manoeuvres,
Napoleon held off action until midday. This inevitable delay
was fatal to the French, since it gave the Prussians time to join
forces with the English Army. At two o'clock Bulow attacked
the right ^wing of the French Army with 30,000 men. This first
assault failed and Napoleon flung his cavalry against the English
centre. For three hours they fought with no decisive result.
Towards evening, completely paralysed, they had to give up.
Napoleon's remaining cavalry managed to repulse the Prussians
and the Guard made a last effort against the English. Two-
thirds of the Guard had been shot down when a second Prussian
corps appeared and routed the main French army. What was left
of the Old Guard, three battalions under Generals Christian*,
Cambronne and Roguet, formed a square and fought on alone.
224
Transformation
A number of cantinieres^ women as fearless in battle as had
been Letizia herself, rallied to the Guard for this celebrated
" last quarter of an hour/' Among them was the typical figure of
fifty-year-old Marie-Tete-de-Bois (Wooden-headed Mary), con-
sidered by the veterans as a regimental mascot. An ugly, good-
hearted creature who smelt of pipe tobacco, wine and brandy,
she had survived seventeen campaigns and carried her six-
months-old baby through the retreat from Moscow without
either of them so much as catching a cold. Her soldier husband
and trumpet-major son had been killed defending Paris, and,
determined to serve the Emperor once more, she had marched
with the army to Waterloo and chosen to remain with the Guard
to the end. She was distributing brandy to the wounded when a
bullet hit her full in the face. A dying grenadier said teasingly,
"You don't look too good, Marie/' She answered : "Possibly,
But anyway Fm the daughter, widow and mother of soldiers,
Vive fEmpereur I " and on this she died. It was during this
fatal stage of the battle that Cambronne immortalised his name
with his famous oath. When the enemy called on him to
surrender he yelled " Merde I " a word still known to every
French schoolchild as " k mot de Cambronne" Like Marie Tete-
de-Bois and many other old soldiers whose names have faded
away, Cambronne believed that " the Guard doesn't surrender,
it dies."
An English account of the debade is provided by Fanny
Burney, who was in Brussels at the time. She wrote to her
husband : " The maimed, wounded, bleeding, fainting, arrive
still every minute . . . Jerome is said to be killed [Jerome fought
heroically but, although wounded, was to live another forty-
five years] . , . The Imperial Guard is almost completely an-
nihilated. They fought like demons. Napoleon cried out con-
tinually to them, the prisoners say, * A Bruxeiks, mes enfants ! A
Bruxef/es ! ' They were reported one day to be actually arrived
here. I never saw, never, indeed, felt such consternation . . .
Murat is dead of his wounds/' (Murat was not present at
Waterloo.)
22J
Madame Letizia
Rumours swayed both sides. The writer and politician
Benjamin Constant, who was in Paris on the day of Waterloo,
noted in his journal that a great victory was reported and a
hundred cannon fired in celebration, which increased the shock
when the news of defeat arrived. Napoleon reached Paris on
June zist and in conversation with Constant (a former opponent
who had now rallied to him) said : " If I abdicate to-day, in
two days* time you will no longer have an army. These poor
fellows do not understand your subtleties. Is it credible that
metaphysical axioms, declarations of rights, harangues from the
tribune, will stop an army disbanding ? To reject me when I
landed at Cannes, that I can conceive possible ; to abandon me
now is what I cannot understand. A government cannot be
overthrown with impunity when the enemy is only twenty-five
leagues away. Does anyone imagine that the foreign powers will
be won over by fine words ? If they had dethroned me fifteen
days ago, there would have been some spirit in it ; but as it is, I
am part of what strangers attack, so I am part of what France is
bound to defend. In giving me up, she gives up herself, she
avows her weakness, she acknowledges herself conquered, she
courts the insolence of the conqueror. It is not the love of liberty
that deposes me, but Waterloo ; it is fear, and a fear of which
your enemy will take advantage."
Fear indeed abounded. Constant noted in his journal:
" The end is approaching. A complete debacle. No more army,
no more cannon, no more means of defence . . . the Chamber
cold, not knowing how to save itself * . . the Emperor sent for
me ... He is still calm and full of spirit. I think he will abdicate
to-morrow. The wretches who were eager to serve him when
he crushed liberty are abandoning him now that he is establish-
ing it." Among those abandoning him were Talleyrand and
Foucfa, a pair described by Chateaubriand as " Vice leaning on
the arm of Crime/' On June zznd Napoleon abdicated for the
second time kx favour of his son, though he had no illusions as to
who would immediately succeed him.
Letbzia's only comfort during these apocalyptical days, many
226
Transformation
hours of which she spent restlessly pacing the gardens of the
Palace of the Elysee on Hortense's arm, came from the way
Joseph, Lucien and Jerome stood by their brother. On June
26th Lucien wrote to Pauline : " By now you will know of the
new misfortunes of the Emperor, who has just abdicated in
favour of his son. He is going to die United States of America,
where we will all join him. He is calm and full of courage, I
shall try to get to my family in Rome, so as to take them to
America ... If your health permits [Pauline was seriously ill]
we shall see each other again . . . Adieu, my dear sister Mamma,
Jerome and I embrace you warmly." The following day Napol-
eon's son was officially proclaimed Napoleon II, as ineffectually
as Louis XVTs imprisoned son had been proclaimed Louis
XVII. Meanwhile the Allies were bringing Louis XVHI back
to France, " in the baggage train,'* said those who did not want
him.
After abdicating, Napoleon went to Malmaison. The
famous roses, of which Josephine had had two hundred and
fifty varieties planted and tended by hand-picked English and
Scottish gardeners, were in bloom, and their scent reminded
him of the days when his ships had searched all over the world
for rare plants for his wife. Now the world was closing in on
him, and even at Malmaison his situation was so precarious that
the faithful Comte de k Bedoyere, whose loyalty was to cost him
his life, tried to reassure Lemia by insisting Napoleon have a
bodyguard. Young Audiffredi, a relative of Josephine's and
formerly one of the Emperor's pages, slept fully armed outside
Napoleon's bedroom door. (Refused permission to accompany
Napoleon to St. Helena, this boy returned in despair to Mar-
tinique and died at eighteen,)
By the afternoon of June 29th Napoleon was ready to leave
for the west coast port of Rochefort and so to America, The last
survivors of the Old Guard left in tears, and Hortense, who
knew that her stepfather had kept little ready money for himself,
sewed her diamond necklace into the lining of his clothes.
Shortly before his death Napoleon was to give this necklace to
227
Madame Letizia
Marchand, saying, " When you arrive in France it will enable
you to live in comfort until you receive the legacy I have left
you."
Napoleon was finally alone with Letizia when a valet knocked
at the door and announced that a National Guardsman had
arrived to say good-bye to the Emperor. It was the great actor
Talma, an old friend who could not be turned away and thus
witnessed part of a scene as moving as any in the classic tragedies
he had so often performed before mother and son. In his
Memoirs Talma wrote : " Of what a beautiful tragic scene was I
a witness. What a spectacle, this separation of Madame Mre and
her son ! Although it forced no outward signs of emotion from
the Emperor, yet the expression of his fine features, and his
attitude and unspoken thoughts were eloquent."
It was thirty-seven years since Letizia and Napoleon first
parted, when he had sailed as a child from Corsica to the country
he was to rule and from which he was now to be for ever
exiled. She hoped to join him in America, but many an obstacle
stood between them and yet another strange new world, and
now she could not restrain her tears. But all she said at the last
was " FareweD, my son," and he " Farewell, Mamma." Letizia
must have wept over her husband's death and on many another
occasion, but of the six times when she is recorded as having
done so, four were for Napoleon and one for Napoleon's son.
Both her pride and her grief were summed up in him, and in
later years she said, " My life ended with the Emperor's fall."
228
Night : Italy
1815-56
Je prevois deja tout ce qu'il faut prvoir.
Mon unique espdrance est dans mon dsespoir.
RACINE
La noble dame, en son palais de Rome,
Aime a filer ; car, bien jeune, autrefois,
Elle filait en allaitant cet homme
Qui depuis Tentoura de reines et de rois.
Pres d'elle, assise, est la vieille servante
Qui, nouveau-n6, le regut dans ses bras.
Au bruit de leurs fuseaux elles disent : H61as !
Que la fortune est d^cevante 1
BERANGER : Madame Mire
How far from St. Helena to the Gate of Heaven's Grace?
That no one knows that no one knows and no one ever will.
But fold your hands across your heart and cover up your face,
And after all your trapezings, child, He still !
KIPLING : A. St. Helena Lullaby
A-TER SAYING GOOD-BYE to Napoleon, Lettm fell ill,
so was still in Paris when Louis XVIII returned to the
throne and Talleyrand headed yet another Ministry. Fesdi
wrote to Pauline : " The Emperor supports his misfortunes with
incredible composure. Madame will stay in France with me
until her children have reached the destinations assigned them
by Providence. Lucien has gone to London to obtain passports
for the rest of the family . . . you must be at great pains to live
economically. At present we are all poor/* Like Balzac's
Bonapartist Colonel Chabert, he knew " our sun has set, and we
are all cold now."
Fesch dined with Letizia every evening and Hortense and
Julia were constantly in attendance on her. For some in-
explicable reason this displeased Louis XVHTs odious mistress,
Madame de Cayla, a former schoolfellow of Hortense and
Caroline. She complained to Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld of
the Bonapartes* " effrontery," an attribute on which she was
certainly an authority. She reported Letizia as having said that
since the Duchesse d'Orleans (mother of Louis-PhiUppe) had
remained in Paris, there was no reason for her not to do likewise
most improbable words from Letizia, who was far too proud
of her own family to base her conduct on that of the Bourbons.
Moreover, but for illness, Letizk had every reason to leave
France. Her former secretary, Decazes, was now Prefect of
Police, and perhaps because he knew the strength of her charac-
ter, set his spies on her. Even more trying, from her point of
view, was Fesch's taking it into his head that he would be
allowed to remain in his diocese. Letizk settled the matter by
2)1
Madame Letizia
asking for passports to Italy for them both. She received these
with a letter from Metternich offering her a military escort out of
Paris.
Accompanied by Prince Schwarzenberg's cuirassiers, Letizia
and Fesch set out on the road to Burgundy at four in the morn-
ing on July zoth. They stopped to rest at Bourg-en-Bresse,
where Letizia heard mass in her room. When they left the crowd
that had gathered around their carriage cried " Vive Madame
Mere!" Next they made for Geneva, where they expected
Hortense to meet them, but they were refused permission to
enter the city. Letizia told the Allied official who turned them
away: "Despite your sovereign's rage against the Emperor
Napoleon, I am prouder to be his mother than if I were the
mother of the Emperor of Russia or of your Emperor or of all
the Kings in the world."
Geneva being barred to them, they went round by Prangins,
where they stayed in Joseph's empty house before going on to
Italy. At this period the word Italy still represented a unity that
was merely geographical, since the country was divided into
seven distinct states. The Kingdoms of Naples, Tuscany and
Sardinia, and the Papal States had all recently been restored to
their pre-Napoleonic rulers ; the Duchy of Parma was en-
trusted to Marie-Louise ; Modena had been given to an Austrian
arch-duke ; and the Lombardy-Venetian Kingdom was restored
to Austria, whose influence thus dominated the peninsula.
When Letizia reached Bologna on July 3ist, the cardinal asked
the Grand Duke of Tuscany to allow them to settle in Sienna.
This request proved embarrassing all round. The grand duke
was Marie-Louise's uncle, had been a guest at the Tuileries and
was on cordial terms with Letizia and Fesch, but as his secretary
of state, Fossombroni, insisted that the presence of " these two
individuals " was politically undesirable, the grand duke felt
obliged to refuse them permission for more than a " provisional
sojourn."
Sienna, which they reached in August, was the epitome of
medieval Italy with its dusky palaces and labyrinth of flagged
232
Night: Italy
alleys. They lodged at the Locanda del Sole, a palace built for
Catherine Piccolomini, sister of Pope Pius II, and to-day
occupied by the Bank of Italy. Here too they found themselves
in trouble. The day after their arrival one of Letizia's servants
went to a cafe to read the Florentine gazette and not only com-
plained loudly that all the news was stale but sang Napoleon's
praises. Since Letizia and Fesch were under police surveillance,
this increased their undesirability as residents. Legend also has it
that Letizia came to the window of the Locanda del Sole and
applauded a group of local women who had gathered below to
sing songs in favour of Napoleon. It is most unlikely that they
would have dared to do tins, and the French historian Masson
denies it. In any case, Letizia's servant had given the Secretary
of State sufficient excuse to inform Fesch that " the complexity
of the present circumstances " forced the grand duke to con-
clude that the travellers had best continue their journey south
after taking such rest as they needed. They left Sienna after
mass on August i3th and slept at Radicofani, a gloomy and
desolate spot.
Next morning as they drove past Lake Bolsena, the largest
volcanic lake in Italy, they noticed scattered tree trunks marking
the places where Napoleon had ordered parts of the forest to be
cut down in order to dislodge the bandits who had taken up
headquarters there. From Etruscan Orvieto they went to
Montefiascone, where they spent the night, and on August i5th,
Napoleon's forty-sixth birthday, they came into the wild stretches
of die campagna and saw the dome of St. Peter's on the horizon.
Entering Rome by the Porta del Popolo, they drove unnoticed to
Fesch's palace beside the Tiber. Here they were left in peace,
since the Pope proved a magnanimous host and urged them to
stay in Rome, despite the hostility his offer aroused in many of
Fesch's fellow cardinals.
It was here that Letizia learnt how Napoleon had given up the
attempt to sail for America, which would have cost sailors* lives,
and entrusted himself to the English, who were deporting him
to St. Helena, a small island in the Atlantic one thousand two
Madame 'Letizia
hundred miles off the coast of West Africa. He reached St.
Helena in October, after over two months at sea, and although
the place was described to Letizia as " an extinct volcano, where
twelve hundred Indian and Chinese slaves ministered to five
hundred Europeans and men seldom reached the age of fifty or
even sixty," she wrote to the Allied authorities asking permission
to join her son. This plea was never answered, but a letter in
which she repeated it reached Napoleon in May, 1816, and
brought him the first news he had received of his family since
leaving Europe. From now on Rome was to be Letizia's home,
the Rome Byron described a few months later as :
The Niobe of nations ! there she stands,
Childless and crownless, in her voiceless woe*
2)4
THE ROME IN WHICH Letbda now found herself more
tolerated than welcomed was a curious mixture of the
cosmopolitan and the provincial. Of its population of 180,000,
foreigners tended to group themselves around the Piazza di
Spagna, known locally as the English Ghetto (English being a
portmanteau word for all foreigners), ecclesiastics in the Borghi,
and the working classes in Trastevere. The rare hotels accepted
clients only for a night or two, so visitors rented furnished
apartments, which were plentiful. There were four famous
cafes : the Greco (still flourishing to-day), where artists gathered ;
the Inglese, which was decorated with archaeological panels by
Piranesi and attracted rich Anglo-Saxons ; the Ruspoli, centre of
fashionable youth ; and the Veneziano, which was popular with
poets, archaeologists and the clergy. Except for the puppet show
in the Palazzo Fiano courtyard, theatres were dirty and un-
inviting. Entertaining took place almost exclusively in the
palaces of the aristocracy, and the Church dominated everything.
One of the best ways to know what daily life was like in this
cardinal-ruled world, so brilliant on the surface, so provincial
underneath, is to read Stendhal's vivid Promenades dans ^ome and
Rome, Naples, et Florence.
Everywhere she looked Letizia was reminded of her exiled
son. The rule of the French in Rome was over, but since the
sixteenth century no pope had made such an impression on the
city as had Napoleon during his fourteen years' reign over Italy.
The idea of a new Imperial Rome had been deeply rooted in him,
and he had engaged artists who understood how to transplant his
ideas into buildings and statuary. The Piazza del Popolo had been
Madame Letizia
cleared and made into the architectural delight that is still one of
the great spectacles of Rome. The Pincian hill had been trans-
formed into public gardens with marble balustrades, fountains
and terraces. The Tiber now possessed embankments. Only
the mighty palace Napoleon had planned for his son remained
imaginary. Ironically, Rome was to be the Bonapartes' great
place of refuge. Even to-day, when the head of the house is a
French prince, the majority of the " Napoleonites " are Italian.
The first of Letizia's children to escape the Allies was Joseph.
At Rochefort he had offered to impersonate Napoleon in order
to give the latter time to flee to America. When Napoleon
refused to accept this sacrifice, Joseph decided to go to America
himself. He still believed that the rest of the family would
eventually foregather there. He sailed on July 25th with a pass-
port in the name of Monsieur Bouchard, on the American brig
Commerce. During its trip the Commerce was twice accosted by
English ships, but as all the passengers' passports appeared to be
in order and the captain was unaware of Joseph's identity,
nothing prevented him from landing in New York, where he
took the name of Comte de Survilliers.
In November Letizia wrote to him : " I am taking advantage
of the opportunity offered by Mr. Cox, the American Consul in
Tunis, who is going home, to send you news of us. You can
imagine the joy it gave me to know you are in America, safe
from the vexations and persecutions of the enemies of our family
... In Rome I spend my days occupied by my children, and pre-
occupied by their misfortunes. Send me your news, and may it
please God to let me embrace you before I die. You have heard
of Murat's sad end/*
Tracked by royalists after Waterloo, Murat had taken refuge
in Corsica. There he fell into a trap laid for him by agents of
Ferdinand IV of Naples and Sicily, who persuaded him to make
an attempt to regain his kingdom. Murat sailed for Ajaccio with
250 men in early autumn, was thrown on to the coast of Calabria
by a storm, and speedily arrested by the police who had been
awaiting him- He was court-martialled on October 1 3th and shot
236
Night: Italy
that afternoon. At forty-eight he faced the firing squad with the
same bravery he had shown as a youth on the battlefield, aad,
with the same ingenuous vainglory, admonished his execu-
tioners to " spare the face."
Letizia also told Joseph that Lucien had reached home in
September, after having been interned for two months in Turin
by the King of Sardinia ; that Pauline was ill in Rome ; that the
Prince Borghese was staying in Florence ; and that she herself
was without news of Joseph's family, Jrome, Caroline and
Elisa. She concluded : " Louis is here, his health is passable.
The Cardinal has accompanied me throughout this time. He is
well and prays for you constantly. He is devoted to you and
joins me in wishing you all the happiness you could desire.
Adieu, my very dear son, remember your tender mother and be
assured she carries you in her heart."
Like Napoleon, Joseph and Elisa were never to see Letizia
again. Early in 1816 Le Moniteur published the text of a law
which deprived all the banished Bonapartes of the protection of
French embassies, legations and consulates everywhere ; it
also forbade them to travel in France or any Allied country
without a permit from an inter-allied committee that met in
Paris and might take as long as three years to come to a decision.
This " proscription," in the ancient sense of the word, applied
not only to Napoleon's mother, brothers, sisters, brothers-in-
law and sisters-in-law, but to his aunts, uncles, nephews and
nieces. To-day our universal servitude to passports, permits,
visas and currency regulations makes it difficult for us to under-
stand how outrageous such a ban then appeared to be. Even in
1800 it had been possible for a reputable English guide-book to
announce that it was " strongly inclined to believe that English
families travelling for health may, at this moment, reside in any
City of Italy with as little risk of inconvenience attributable to
war, as they could before the invasion of BONAPARTE."
The police surveillance to which all the Bonapartes were now
subjected often had ludicrous results. For example, the French
Chancellory in Rome sent a special memorandum to Paris
2)7
Madame Letizia
informing the Foreign Office that Letizia had sold her house in
the Rue Saint-Dominique. This was scarcely a top secret, since
the French Government itself had bought the house through
official channels a year earlier and it was already occupied by the
Ministry of War. Such pettifogging vigilance encouraged the
Bonapartes to use private channels for their correspondence.
Letizia's first direct news from St. Helena was given her by
Mrs. Skelton, wife of the former under-governor there. Both
Lieutenant-Colonel Skelton and his wife saw much of Napoleon
between his arrival in October, 1815, and their departure in May,
1816. They dined with him frequently, and never missed an
opportunity to show him respect and kindness. In the Memorial
de Sainte-Helene, Las Cases noted that although Napoleon's
arrival deprived the Skeltons of their house at Longwood, and
eventually put an end to their employment at St. Helena and sent
them back to Europe where they had scant means, they were the
only couple on the island to show the exile unvarying regard and
courtesy. As soon as Mrs. Skelton reached Europe she wrote to
Letizia. Fesch immediately answered : " You cannot imagine
the joy your letter gave my sister and myself. This is our first
news from Longwood . . . your letter gives us the assurance that
he was well up to May i3th. Has he received our letters ? Will
we be able to keep in touch with him? Would you be so
extremely kind as to let us know when you have news from St.
Helena ? Would it be possible for you to tell us if we may send
him anything, books or anything else?" But Lieutenant-
Colonel Skelton had no more news from St. Helena.
All Letizia's thoughts were now dominated by Napoleon.
Henceforth she always wore mourning and led so quiet and
restricted a social life that it was difficult for ambitious spies to
make a profit out of observing her. Nevertheless, they did their
best with inventions and surmises. The Bonapartes were for-
bidden to write to Corsica, and in April, 1816, it was rumoured
that Letizia was " supplying Corsican agents with millions to
foment trouble." The French Ambassador, Pressigny, com-
plained to the Cardinal Secretary of State, who called on Letizia.
Night: Itafy
It has been recorded that she told him : " I do not possess
millions, but kindly tell the Pope, in order that my words
may be reported to King Louis XVIH, that if I were fortunate
enough to have the amount charitably attributed to me, I
should not use it to foment trouble in Corsica, nor to obtain
partisans for my son in France he has plenty of those already
but to arm a fleet to rescue the Emperor from St. Helena."
Whether or not she said this, she undoubtedly thought it, and
the fact that such a story has survived indicates the strength of
her personality.
The next year the Cardinal Secretary of State found himself
constantly nagged about fictitious Bonaparte activities by the
new French Ambassador, the implacable Comte de Blacas
d'Aups, a man whose death Stendhal wished for, and whom
Chateaubriand described as " the undertaker of the monarchy/*
A former emigre, Blacas was far more royalist than the King and
suspected even the most distant and innocuous of Napoleon's
relatives of conspiratorial designs. In 1817, he was brought to
the verge of apoplexy by a rumour that the Princess of Wales
(Caroline of Brunswick) intended to stay with Lucien and his
family at Canino during her forthcoming visit to the Papal
States. Though she did not stay with Lucien this time, she did
visit him, and, since Lucien was now a Roman prince, there was
nothing Blacas could do about it except rage. Nor could Blacas
plague Pauline, who, since the Pope had shown approval of
her loyalty to her exiled brother, was once more the darling of
the salons. The cardinals might be less eager than in the past to
pay their respects to Napoleon's mother, but every distinguished
English or American visitor to Rome clamoured to meet her, or
indeed any member of the proscribed but apparently fascinating
family.
More seriously exasperating to Blacas than the Bonapartes*
social resurgence was the Santini affair, which brought Letizia
into correspondence with Lord Holland, a gifted, humane and
powerful Whig peer who had received his political training
from his uncle, Charles Fox. Giovanni-Nataie Santini was a
239
Madame Letizia
Corsican who had served with the light infantry in the Grand
Army. Fanatically devoted to Napoleon, he had accompanied
him to St. Helena and longed to shoot Sir Hudson Lowe.
Instead of which, however, Santini succeeded on his return from
St. Helena in getting Lord Holland to speak in the House of
Lords on Napoleon's behalf. At the same time a pamphlet on
the treatment of Napoleon entitled An Appeal to the British
Nation and signed by Santini but composed by a colonel who had
served under Murat, was published simultaneously in English
and French and ran into edition after edition. This caused
repercussions all over Europe. Lord Holland had already
opposed a move to confine Napoleon more strictly, saying, " To
consign to distant exile and imprisonment a foreign and captive
Chief, who after the abdication of his authority, relying on
British generosity, had surrendered himself to us in preference to
his other enemies, is unworthy of the magnanimity of a great
country ; and the treaties by which after his captivity we bound
ourselves to detain him in custody at. the will of Sovereigns to
whom he had never surrendered himself, appear to me repugnant
to the principles of equity, and utterly uncalled for by expedience
or necessity/' To-day, knowledge of concentration camps and
totalitarian states makes it hard for us to understand the wide-
spread indignation about the relatively mild treatment accorded
this caged conqueror, but widespread it was, and sincere.
Letizia wrote at once to Lord Holland :
Napoleon's mother does noc know how better to express her
gratitude to you than by telling you of the astonishment with
which she read in Lord Bathurst's reply that none of Napol-
eon's family had entrusted letters for him to the British
Minister. ^ Such effrontery proves how great an impression
your motion has made, and the benefit the Emperor may
derive from it.
I have written to my son several times through com-
mercial^ channels, and among others, through the banker
Torlonia, who assured me the letters were handed to English
nobles who generously offered to give them to the Minister.
240
Nigbt: Itafy
But I can remember the name of only one of them, Lord
Lucan, who promised my brother and myself that my
letters would be given to Lord Castlereagh in person by his
eldest daughter, to whom he would send them 00 his arrival
in Paris. Since the New Year I have entrusted other letters
to General Mathew,
Feeling, moreover, that the Emperor might not be
permitted to write, I addressed some letters to Madame la
Comtesse Bertrand, all of which have remained un-
answered.
However, Providence, which unveils lies, allowed a
lady who was in Rome last February, connected, it was said,
with an Under-Secretary of State and, if I am not mistaken,
of the name of Hamilton, to tell Captain Tower [captain of
the ship on which Letizia had gone to Elba] that she had
read letters from me to my son that had been brought to her
in her country house. Having realised the use the Ministers
made of my letters, which never reached the Emperor, I
would have refrained from offering them further subjects
for amusement if a mother could forgo all hope of com-
municating with an unhappy son. Lord Bathurst's motion
has decided me to try by every means to get news to my
son.
Permit me, therefore, I beg you, to send the enclosed
letter to Lord Bathurst. Will it be more fortunate than the
previous ones? Or do they wish to force a mother to
address her son in thoughtlessly harsh terms ? I would
rather my son supposed me dead than that he should doubt
my love and the extent to which I feel his situation and long
to see him again.
To leave the Minister no excuse, I have written two
letters, so that he may choose which he will send if you do
not think it possible to send both.
My lord, your noble character relieves me of the
necessity to tell you of my eternal gratitude, but I cannot
conceal from you that the only happy days I have known
24*
Madame Letma
since my son's captivity are those animated by the hope I
place in the power of your virtues.
May Lady Holland find here the assurance of feelings
worthy of her heart ; and may she not cease to take an
interest in my son.
(Lady Holland did all in her power to alleviate Napoleon's
captivity with letters and gifts, which included a bust of his son,
an ice-box and six shipments of books. In his will he left her a
gold snuff-box given him by Pope Pius VI and a note expressing
his " esteem and affection " for her.)
Letizia did not forget the faithful Corsican soldier whose
constancy had proved so effective. Santini had gone from
London to Brussels, then to Munich, intending to make for
Rome. But he was arrested at Como, taken to Milan and
imprisoned in a fortress at Mantua. Letiaia appealed to Metter-
nich:
An afflicted mother grasps every opportunity of alleviating
her misfortunes, and I was rejoicing in advance at the
thought of receiving news of my son when I heard of
Santini's arrival in Milan, coming from St. Helena and on
his way to Rome. Your Highness can imagine my renewed
distress at finding myself deprived of such a consolation . . .
The letters he was bringing us have been read in England,
also by the Governor of Milan. So there could be nothing
in them to disturb the peace, and the arrested man is far too
prudent to have said anything provocative. What could he
tell me, except how my son is ? And could his telling me
this enable me to alter my son's situation? . . . Will Your
Highness allow me, in the name of humanity, to beg him to
set this man free, so that he may continue his journey :
a man whose only fault is fidelity to his master, and whose
journey to Rome had as its only aim that he might enter my
service and give me news of my son.
Like most of her appeals this was unanswered and Santini
remained a prisoner until Napoleon's death. But the Bonapartes
never forgot him. Thirty-three years later, in 1850, when
242
Night: Italy
Letizia and all of her children except Jerome were dead, Napol-
eon's nephew, son of Louis and Hortense, then Prince-President
of France and shortly to become Napoleon III, decorated
Santini and appointed him guardian for life of Napoleon's tomb
in Paris.
NOWTHATSHEHAD settled in Rome, Letizia needed he*
own establishment. In 1818 she bought the Palazzo
Rinuccini, a dignified seventeenth-century palace of three stories
topped by a balustraded terrace. It is in the centre of the city at
the corner of the Corso and the Piazza Venezia, on the site of
the Septa Julia, where the enfranchised citizens of Imperial Rome
came to cast their votes. When Letizia lived there it was called
the Palazzo Bonaparte and faced a projecting wing (demolished in
this century to provide an approach to the modern Victor
Emmanuel monument) of the castellated Palazzo Venezia. The
appartamento nobile on the first floor where Letizia lived contained
nine rooms. The decorations, stucco and painted doors were all
of the eighteenth century, and she made few alterations beyond
installing some Venetian mosaic floors and exquisite white
marble chimney-pieces decorated with cherubs and swags of
fruit and flowers. The main entrance to the palace was sur-
mounted by a marble eagle with outspread wings, and Canova's
gigantic statue of Napoleon stood at the foot of the Grand
Staircase. (The plaster model for this later decorated the Duke
of Wellington's London house.) The walls of the vast tiled
ante-room were decorated with frescoes of Law and Justice in
chiaroscuro, and war trophies beneath tablets bearing the name
Bonaparte. On the ceiling of Letizia's bedroom can still be seen
a painted angel with a cornucopia shedding darkness over the
sky^ while a cherub with a poppy in its left hand makes a gesture
of silence with its right. Here she hung the portrait of her hus-
band which Napoleon had commissioned from Girodet (now in
the Ajaccio museum), David's portrait of Napoleon, and a marble
244
Night; Italy
bust of the King of Rome. Here, later, she was to keep the bed
on which Napoleon died and the little silver night-lamp that had
lit his last moments and was to light her own. Busts and por-
traits of all her children populated her rooms. The second floor
of the palace was at the disposal of her children and grand-
children. The third floor was occupied by her attendants and
servants. Lady Morgan, who complained emphatically of the
dirty and neglected state of the Roman palaces, said that the
only exceptions to this rule were the palaces of the ambassadors
and of the Bonapartes, which were distinguished by comfort,
orderliness and elegance.
During the First World War the Palazzo Bonaparte was
bought by the Misciattelli family, and it was here that the late
Marchese Piero Misciattelli prefaced and edited a remarkable
collection of Letizia's letters, many of them hitherto unpublished,
from the family papers of the Baronne de Beauverger, nee
Clary. The marchese restored the palace and gave the rooms the
look they had worn in Letizia's time. His widow, the Marchesa
Misciattelli, shares her husband's enthusiasm for the Emperors
mother and, thanks to this, one can still see Letszia's surround-
ings much as they were during the last eighteen years of her life.
By the time Letizia moved into her last home she knew the
whereabouts of each of her scattered clan. Julie and her children
were in Frankfurt, hoping to join Joseph in America, a plan that
Julie's ill-health was to defeat ; Hortense and her children were
in Switzerland, where she had bought the charming little
Arenenberg castle (to-day a Bonaparte museum and an agri-
cultural college) ; Jerome, Elisa, Caroline and their families were
in Austria Jerome and Elisa in Trieste, Caroline in Frohsdorf.
Lucien wanted to join Joseph in America but was refused
passports. Again it was Pauline who of all the children was
Letizia's mainstay and comfort. Napoleon once told General
Montholon : " My mother is a woman of great orderliness and
virtue. But like all mothers she loved her children unequally.
Pauline and I were her favourites, Pauline because she was the
loveliest and most full of grace, I perhaps because she had an
Madame Letizia
instinctive feeling that I should make our family great." Thek
stay at Elba h?d created a special bond between mother and
daughter, and although Pauline still seemed to live for pleasure,
she understood the depth of her mother's attachments. One day
when they were walking on the Pincian hill she said to the
Duchesse d'Abrants : " You see my mother lamenting over my
brother's misfortunes . . . well, this grief won't kill her, she will
suffer a long while and her unhappiness will be more terrible
than the Emperor's."
Pauline had recently bought a charming little palace (now
the seat of the French Embassy to the Vatican) near the Porta
Pia. She named it the Villa Paolina, since Letizia forbade her
to call it the Villa Bonaparte, explaining that in a city with
gardens so magnificent as those of the Pamphili, Boncompagni,
Borghese, Patrizi and Albani palaces the name of Bonaparte
must not be given to a villa with a " small, plain " garden. It is
through chance remarks like these, with their indications of
fierce pride, that one realises how mistaken is the image of
Letizia as a simple peasant, dazzled by her children.
Pauline was now separated from Prince Borghese, but
Roman society did not hold this against her. Lady Morgan,
the Irish novelist who met Letizia through Pauline, wrote:
Among all the villas of the Borghese family, there is but
one habitable and enjoyable, where English neatness, French
elegance and Italian taste, are most happily united. This
is the Villa Paolina Bonaparte Borghese, laid out, adorned,
and furnished by the Princess. Whoever has passed a
spring morning in this beautiful retreta, and partaken of one
of the Princess Borghese's weekly dejeuners, has seen the
interior of a ^oman villa under an aspect that forms a curious
solecism in Roman habits and Roman hospitality . . .
the day before we left Rome, we breakfasted at the Villa
Paolina, with a cirde composed of British nobility of both
sexes* of the Roman princes and princesses, German
Grandees and American Merchants a singular congress.
The collation was of sweetmeats, ices, light wines, coffee ;
246
Night; Italy
and the principal amusement, looking at the elegant apart-
ments of the Villa, sauntering in the gardens, and visiting
some antiquities within their walls ... it is the most hospit-
able house in Rome . . . and possesses all the agrimcnis
which wealth, rank, taste and high cultivation can bestow
... In her circles a great proportion of the conclave may
always be found ; for since the days of Pope Jean, no lady
was ever so attended by Cardinals as the beautiful Pauline.
Lucien and Louis Bonaparte, though they have fine
palaces, live exclusively in the bosom of their family. But
by far the most distinguished and interesting of that
family is the venerable mother of Napoleon. Retaining
great remains of the most brilliant beauty, dignified in
adversity as she was moderate in prosperity, her thoughts
and feelings have now but one object die prisoner of
St. Helena ; whose pride she reproved in the days of his
glory, whose fall she laments, more as the child of her
affections than the sovereign of a mighty empire. We saw
much of this venerable lady (though in general she received
no company), and fancied we could trace in her energy and
force of character the source from whence her extraordinary
son derived his talents . . . Shortly after Bonaparte's eleva-
tion to the Imperial throne, meeting his mother in the
gardens of Saint-Cloud, half playfully, half seriously, he
held his hand to her to kiss. She flung it back indignantly,
and presenting her own in the presence of his suite, said,
" It is your place to kiss the hand of her who gave you life.**
We observed the pictures of all her handsome children in
the room she occupied (where we generally found her
spinning^ with her prayer book beside her) ; there were four
of them kings when they sat for her, with the Emperor,
their brother, at their head; viz., the Kings of Spain,
Holland, Westphalia and Naples (her son-in-law Murat).
" You see," she said one day as I was looking on Napoleon's
picture, " when my son Bonaparte sat for me, I made him lay
aside his crown " ; which was the case.
Madame Letizia
Except for visits to her children, Letizia's most frequent
outings were to the Palatine hill. Here she would walk in
silence beneath stone pine and ilex among the flower-grown
ruins of the palaces of the Caesars. What remained of Domitian's
palace was occupied by an eccentric and highly fashionable
Scotsman, Charles Andrew Mills, who had built there a sham
Gothic house decorated with the Tudor rose, the Scottish
thistle, and the Irish shamrock, a monstrosity that was not
demolished until 1927. From the Palatine hill Letizia often went
to the Colosseum, its corridors then open to the sky, the walls
and arches covered by grass, pomegranate trees growing from
the parapets, the only sounds those of hundreds of birds and the
chants of pilgrims come to kiss the cross that stood where the
Christian martyrs had died. Jerome described her at this time as :
" Thin, with black eyes full of fire, the pure type of Corsican
still found in the mountains of the island in families who have
never intermarried with other races. She always wore a severe
black merino dress and an Empire-style turban . . . Everything
in her palace revealed that one was in the presence of great
sorrow, of august memories slowly being transformed into mute
and proud resignation."
Her pride was as durable as her grief, and she turned in-
stinctively to scenes of grandeur and stories of glory on the
same scale as her conquered son's past victories. When she
heard that her grandson in Vienna had been given the title
Duke of Reichstadt she said : " My grandson will never bear a
finer name than his father's. The title of Duke of Reichstadt has
no resonance, but the name of Napoleon Bonaparte will always
reverberate to the ends of the earth and the echoes of France will
repeat it/'
248
HITHERTO LETIZIA'S attitude towards Napoleon's
had been what anyone who had studied her character
would have expected. Now a new element was Introduced, one
that linked her Roman old age in the shade of the Vatican with
her Corsican childhood in a world of ballads, spells and omens,
where the saints were on friendly terms with older deities and
Balaam's ass was neither more nor less real than St. George's
dragon or the Trojan horse. This change came into her life,
almost imperceptibly at first, as the result of Pesch's increasing
piety, which encouraged her own. No one accused him of
worldUness now. He fasted excessively and was constantly
adding to his religious observances, and every Friday he would
set out barefoot and in penitent's grey garb to carry a crucifix to
the cross in the Colosseum. (Madame de Stael described one of
these processions in her novel Corinne.} A belief, older than
Christianity, in miracles and portents, began to stir in him and
he communicated it to his sister, who, in her despair at being
without news of Napoleon, was thus put into a state of mind in
which she could listen to the vaporising of Madame Klein-
muUer, a most dubious clakvoyante who may have been a spy
in the pay of Mettemich.
This charlatan soon convinced Letizia and Fesch that
Napoleon was no longer at St. Helena, with deplorable results.
In May, 1818, Fesch received a letter from General Bertrand
telling them of the death of Napoleon's maitre fh$tel y Cipriani,
as " the result of the unhealthy climate of this country where
few men reach old age. Therefore we have felt, and feel every
day, the need of a minister of our religion. You are our bishop,
249
Madame Letizia
and we desire that you send us a Frenchman or an Italian.
Please choose a cultivated man, under forty, with a mild
character and not anti-Galilean." Bertrand also asked them to
send a doctor and a French or Italian cook, preferably a man
who had already served the Bonapartes. Instead of jumping at
this opportunity to send Napoleon men of proved competence
and loyalty, Letizia and Fesch ignored an application from the
distinguished doctor, Foureau de Beauregard, who was familiar
with Napoleon's constitution and eager to go to St. Helena,
and sent instead a quack named Antommarchi, whose medical
experience consisted mainly in having prepared dissections in
Florence, an ignorant young priest, Vignali, and an old Corsican
abt>4 Buonavita, who had served in Spain, Mexico and Paraguay,
been Letizia's almoner at Elba and was now almost speechless
from apoplexy. Antommarchi was such a fool that he allowed
Sir Hudson Lowe to convince him that Napoleon was feigning
illness from political motives even when he was dying either of
cancer or of perforation of the pylorus by a peptic ulcer.
This ludicrous choice was the result of Letizia's and Fesch's
belief that Bertrand's letter must be a forgery since Napoleon
had left St. Helena. Why send gifted priests and doctors to St.
Helena when Madame Kleinmuller had seen Napoleon in a
vision being transported out of exile by angels ? Five months
after receiving General Bertrand's letter, Letizia told her
daughter-in-law Catherine that she knew Napoleon was on his
way to Malta. The following February, Fesch wrote to Las
Cases : " We are assured that three or four days before January
igth, the Emperor received permission to leave St. Helena and
that, effectively, the English are taking him elsewhere . . . Every-
thing about bis life is miraculous, and I am inclined to believe in
yet another miracle. His existence is prodigious . . ." Months
latet Fesch was still writing in the same vein : " Although the
gazettes and the English always insinuate that he is still at St.
Helena, we have reason to believe this is no longer so, and
although we do not know where he is, nor when he will appear,
we have sufficient proof to hope we shall soon be told this with
Night: Italy
certainty. There is no doubt that the gaoler of St. Helena forces
Count Bertrand to write as if Napoleon were still there." Incred-
ible as this may sound now, similar beliefs were widespread.
Napoleon's energy had filled die world with such rousing martial
music that the ensuing silence seemed unnatural.
Joseph, meanwhile, was involved in a plan to rescue his
brother which had been conceived at Champ d'Asile, a colony of
French refugees in Texas. The leader was Charles-Francois
Lallemand, one of Napoleon's most devoted officers, who had
got in touch with Jean Lafite, an adventurous French pirate who
had a fleet of ninety vessels. When Lucien heard of this he
thought it would be an excellent plan for him to go to America
and combine with Joseph and Napoleon in attempting the con-
quest of Mexico. He was refused a passport, however, and con-
fined to his estate at Canino for a short while. But the con-
spirators in America were so sure of success that a house was
built and furnished for Napoleon in New Orleans, at the corner
of Saint Louis and Chartres Streets, and an especially rapid
vessel, the Seraphim, was constructed at Charleston and just ready
to sail when news came of Napoleon's death.
For all her conviction that supernatural powers were pro-
tecting her son, Letizia did not neglect mundane channels of
appeal. When the three Allied sovereigns met at Ak-la-Chapelle
in August, 1818, she wrote to each of the three : " An inex-
pressibly afflicted mother has long hoped that the meeting of
your Imperial Majesties would restore her happiness." (It was
possible for Letizia to refer to herself unselfconsciously as an
inexpressibly afflicted mother because, despite the fortitude that
prevented her from bemoaning trifles, when it came to tragedy
she was both natural and logical enough to pity herself precisely
as she would have pitied someone else in a similar situation, She
was a literal Christian, who endeavoured to love her neighbour
as, not more nor less than, herself.)
It is impossible that you will not discuss the Emperor's
prolonged captivity, and that your greatness of spirit, your
authority, and the recollection of past events will not urge
2/J
Madame Letizia
you to deliver a prince who shared your interests and friend-
ship.
Would you allow a sovereign who threw himself in his
enemy's arms, confident of magnanimity, to persist in
the torment of exile ? My son might have taken refuge with
his father-in-law, the Emperor ; he might have relied on
the great character of the Emperor Alexander ; he might
have turned to His Prussian Majesty, who, finding himself
appealed to, would have remembered his former alliance.
Can England punish him for the trust he showed in her ?
The Emperor Napoleon is no longer to be feared ; he
is an invalid. Even were he in good health, and possessed
of the means Providence formerly put into his hands, he
abhors civil war.
Sire, I am a mother and my son's life is dearer to me
than my own. Pardon the grief that makes me take the
liberty of sending Your Imperial and Royal Majesties this
letter.
Do not render useless the move of a mother protesting
against the long cruelty exercised against her son.
In the name of Him who is essentially good, and whom
Your Imperial and Royal Majesties represent, take it upon
yourselves to put an end to my son's torments, to restore
his liberty. I ask it of God, I ask it of you who are His
lieutenants on earth.
Reasons of State have their limits and posterity, on which
immortality depends, admires above all else the con-
queror's magnanimity.
No answer came to this and Letizia said, "I knew they
would kill him/' Such moments of lucidity only drove her
sack all the more hungrily to the clairvoyante's cloudy assurances.
Both her good judgment and her resistance to tragedy began at
Last to show the ravages of time.
ZJ2
WHEN THE EMPEROR of Austria visited the Papal States
the following year, Letizia's palace was the only one
not illuminated in his honour. Its darkness was remarkable
in a city so gifted for display, and the story began circulating in
Roman drawing-rooms that the Emperor had sent his chamber-
lain to ask Letizia if she would receive his daughter Marie-
Louise. " You amaze me, Signor Ambassador/* Letizia report-
edly answered, " and you insult my daughter-in-iaw by imagin-
ing that she is travelling about instead of remaining with her
husband, a martyr at St. Helena. The lady you refer to cannot be
my daughter-in-law, but must be some adventuress taking our
name in vain, and I do not receive adventuresses/'
Of more concern to Letizia than faithless Marie-Louise were
her three other daughters-in-law, Julie, Catherine and Hortense,
all separated from her by frontiers and regulations. She kept up
as steady correspondence with them all as with her own children.
Among the latter, it was Elisa who seemed to have adapted her-
self best to their altered situation. She was able to satisfy herself
with domestic happiness and wrote Letizia from Trieste that her
home life was "perfect." Then suddenly, in July, 1820, she
caught malarial fever and died. She was only forty-three and
this was Letizia's first taste of the sorrow that comes from out-
living one's grown-up children, of the sense of revolt with which
the deaths of the young fill the old, giving them a catastrophic
feeling of time displacing itself. She wrote to Elisa's fourteen-
year-old daughter, Napoleone (an eccentric, fiery character,
whose subsequent attempt to help her cousin, the Duke of
Reichstadt, to the French throne was used by Rostand in his
Madame Letizia
famous play UAiglori) : " You have reason to feel your loss, but
it is not irreparable ; your mother is praying for you and will
obtain for you graces that will console you in your present
affliction and support you in the future ... I wish I could be
with you to guide you in the world with my experience, and
according to the principles that should govern all the children of
my family . . . " When Napoleon heard the news he said,
" Death, which seemed to have overlooked our family, now
begins to strike it."
Despite the rigorous common sense Letizia applied to all
else, she continued to rely on supernatural intervention where
Napoleon was concerned. In July, 1821, Pauline wrote to
Planat de la Faye (one of the Emperor's former officers who
became Jerome's secretary and was able to obtain permission to
go to St. Helena only when Napoleon was dying) : " All the
letters Madame and the Cardinal have received during the past
two years are considered forgeries : forged signatures, forged
letters invented by the English Government to create the belief
that the Emperor is still at St. Helena, while the Cardinal and
Madame say they know pertinently that His Majesty has been
removed by the Angels and taken to a country where his health
is very good, and they have news of him. This witch [the
clairvoyante] makes use of every political event to further her
ends. Everyone in Madame's household has been won over,
beginning with Colonna. Madame and the Cardinal wanted to
make me and my brother Louis share their beliefs, but seeing that
we both tried by every means to remove their blindness and
ended by mocking their credulity, I must keep silent about the
scenes, the quarrels, and the coldness that resulted."
A few days later, the Abbe Buonavita arrived in Rome with
a letter for Pauline from Napoleon, written on March iyth. By
this time mother and daughter were on such strained terms (it is
their only recorded quarrel) that Pauline told Planat :
They wanted to keep the Abbe Buonavita's arrival from
me. He was in Mamma's room when I went to say good-bye
as I was going to Frascati, and I was refused admittance.
jg&fr Italy
Fortunately, I learnt from the doorkeeper that the Abb was
there. I went up. Mamma said nothing to me. So I was
obliged to tell her that I knew and that I wanted to see the
Abbe and have news of the Emperor. She told me she was
expecting the Cardinal, and that the Emperor was furious
with me for having received English people. [What
Napoleon said when he heard this of Pauline was " All the
better ! It means that amount of enemies won over."]
I met Lord Anglesey at Madame's house. His wife is
charming and gives me proofs of friendship. He is a maa
of fifty-five, ugly, but loves the Emperor and his family.
My uncle scarcely leaves the duchess.
Mamma and my uncle do not believe that the Abb
Buonavita left the Emperor at St. Helena. They said,
" We do not believe a word of it, the Emperor is no longer
there, we know better/* My grief is extreme.
I threw myself at Mamma's feet, I explained the intrigue
and I begged her, for honour's sake, to send this woman
away, but she became furious with me, saying she was free
to see whomever she wanted. She is encouraged by my
uncle and Colonna . . . Finally, after a terrible scene between
us, Mamma began to be shaken, but the scene was so
violent that I have quarrelled with the Cardinal for life.
It is very fortunate that the Abb6 had a letter to give to me
in person, otherwise everything would have been concealed
from me.
Letizia realised the folly of having listened to the dak-
voyante. Thus her quarrel with Pauline was ended and her
courage restored.
ON MAY 5TH, 1821, THE day of Napoleon's death, a
" decently dressed individual " came to the Palazzo
Bonaparte and requested an audience with Letizia. The door-
man asked if he had an appointment, and since he had not,
refused to admit him. The visitor then insisted so vehemently
that the doorman gave way. In the ante-room the stranger was
again questioned, again refused admittance, and again insisted so
passionately on seeing Letizia that Colonna, hearing voices
raised, went to the door and finally admitted him.
" Madame/ 3 the stranger said to Letizia, " at this very
moment His Majesty is freed from his sufferings and is happy."
Whereupon he thrust his hand inside his jacket and drew out a
crucifix which, for a moment, Letizia thought was a dagger. He
continued solemnly : ec Your Highness, kiss your son's Saviour.
You will see this son who has caused you so much grief again,
in many years, and his name will echo through all the cities of
the world."
Madame de Sartrouville, Letizia's reader, was there at the
time and says that Colonna told her the visitor resembled
Napoleon uncannily in bearing and voice, but that, although
they searched all over Rome after he vanished, they were never
able to discover a trace of him.
Official news of Napoleon's death did not reach Rome until
July 1 6th. Everyone around Letizia conspired to keep the news
from her and a letter of hers to Jerome shows that she was still
unaware of it two days later. When at last she had to be told,
she gave a scream that echoed through the palace, flung her arms
around Napoleon's bust, and fainted.
FOR THE NEXT TWO weeks LetMa remained crushed and
numb. She scarcely wept or spoke and refused to see any-
one. Fesch answered the letters that came from her children and
grandchildren. Lucien hastened to her from Viterbo and Louis
from Florence. But none of them could help her this time.
" Unlike me," she once declared, " they have never been able to
understand the humiliation into which the Emperor's fall
plunged them/*
The French Embassy feared that the Pope, who obstinately
refused to forget that Napoleon had re-established Catholicism
in France , might allow a memorial service to be celebrated in one
of the more important Roman churches, a basilica or, worst of
all, the Sistine Chapel. After much agitated discussion and
running to and fro, the Cardinal Secretary of State, Consalvi,
notified the French Embassy that no such service would take
place. Once this was settled, Fesch persuaded Letizia to accom-
pany him to Lucien's villa in the near-by Alban hills to escape
the heat. Before leaving, she wrote to Lord Castlereagh asking
in the name of all mothers to be granted possession of Napoleon's
body : " My son has no more need of honours ; his name suffices
for his glory ; but I need to embrace his remains." This letter
of hers also contained the remarkable phrase, "inexorable
history is seated on his coffin/' Like all her pleas, this one was
unavailing.
One of the first intimates to whom she wrote was Hortense :
" Your letter brought me some comfort as my heart was touched
by your sentiments of attachment to him for whose sake I
desired my existence to be prolonged. I have no further satis-
-2/7
Madame Letizia
factions to expert in this world, except to see my other children
and grandchildren. Since fate has willed it that the family be
dispersed, let me at least have news of you as often as possible/ 3
Napoleon's death did not modify the Allied Governments
fear that his family was plotting a Bonaparte restoration,
Public reaction to his death fanned this fear. In Paris young meja
wore black armbands, mourning odes and dithyrambs were
widely circulated, shops displayed trinkets, statuettes, and
coloured prints recalling Napoleon's achievements, while a
group of officers headed by Lafayette demanded that his body be
brought home. Any play about the Grand Army was sure of a
success, and when Napoleon at Schoenbrunn and St. Helena was put
on at the St. Martin's Theatre, a hundred and fifty old soldiers
were engaged as supers, and the actor who played Sir Hudson
Lowe had to be protected by an escort when he left the theatre,
Nor was this intense emotion confined to France. Hero-worship
flared from one end of Europe to the other. The Irish, naturally,
shouted " Long live Napoleon I " but even in London Napol-
eon's former antagonists, such as Napier, showed genuine grief,
and public placards invited all those who " admired talent and
courage in adversity to mourn his premature death." In Italy,
Manzoni, the most famous poet of the time, composed a re-
sounding ode to Napoleon ; and Stendhal was repeatedly asked
both in England and in Italy for first-hand stories of the fabulous
Emperor. Even in Russia peasants hung coloured prints of the
"Farewell at Fontainebleau " in their hovels. Like Victoi
Hugo, though in a very different way, the Allied Governments
began to feel it was a case of " Lui y toujours lui"
Nevertheless, the Allies were mistaken in suspecting
Napoleon's brothers and sisters of political conspiracy. Theit
appetite for epics had been finally sated. The potential trouble-
makers were still in the nurseries and schoolrooms, where a new
generation of Bonapartes was growing up, a generation of
children who idolised the memory of the uncle most of them
had never seen, and who considered their sequestrated cousin in
Vienna the legitimate ruler of France, Las Cases's Memorial <k
Night: Italy
Sainte-Helene became thek Bible, as it was to be that of Stendhal's
Julien Sorel. This extraordinary masterpiece was published
simultaneously in French and in English in 1823. In it Las
Cases, the aristocratic chamberlain and former emigre who had
constituted himself Napoleon's shadow and accompanied him to
St. Helena, provides an intimate picture of a man of genius, in
which history, legend and reportage are mingled with
effect* Letizia, who had been in touch with Las Cases ever since
his return from St. Helena in 1817, when she had put her
fortune at his disposal, was inexpressibly moved when she read
the words in which Napoleon had described her to Las Cases :
" One of the most beautiful women of her time . . . She would
have given all she possessed to prepare my return from Elba,
and after Waterloo would have lived on dry bread without a
murmur to help restore my fortunes . . . Madame was a heroine
who thought only of her children and family, of duty and
honour,"
The effect of such a book on her excitable grandchildren is
easy to imagine, and current events soon heightened thek con-
viction that they had a special appointment with history.
Letizia's invalid son Louis was undoubtedly sincere when he
told Cardinal Consalvi that the Bonapartes were far too grateful
for the Pope's hospitality to engage in any conspiracy; but
Louis's ebullient sons had been tutored by a Colonel Armandi
who was, unknown to his employer, an ardent Carbonaro.
The Carbonari were members of a secret society that origin-
ated in Naples and aimed at freeing Italy from foreign rule and
obtaining constitutional liberties. Young nobles and educated
bourgeois formed the majority of those who rallied to the red,
blue and bkck banner, and the movement soon spread to France,
where it had links with Freemasonry and alarmed the authorities*
Particularly alarmed was the French Ambassador to Italy, who
reported home : " The Roman Carbonari and those of the Italian
peninsula draw new hope and audacity from the reunion here of
the Bonaparte family. They use those names, so rightly pro-
scribed, to rally all the passions and discontent fermenting in
Madame Letizia
Italy. It is useless to dissimulate that, given the Pope's great age
[he was 81], it is most important for the future peace of the
peninsula to isolate all individual members of the Bonaparte
family whose accumulated riches might contribute to popular
uprisings, even if they themselves are not personally esteemed."
Like a harassed schoolmaster unable to keep order, Blacas
could not decide whether the diabolical Bonapartes were more
alarming together or apart. He was horrified when Jerome's
repudiated first wife, the American, Elizabeth Patterson,
arrived in Rome and was received by Letizia and Pauline:
"They say Jerome is coming here specially to make legal
acknowledgment of his son . . . Madame Letizia seems especially
desirous of this, and promises to provide for his future."
What Letizia especially desired was to carry out Napoleon's
instructions that his family should settle in Rome and ally them-
selves with all the princely families. " That is to say," he had
told General Bertrand in St. Helena, " all those that have pro-
duced popes, who command the world's conscience." Napoleon
had thought that his name would remain popular in Italy:
" The Italians will always consider the period when the Emperor
tried to establish their independence as a lost opportunity. He
roused the imagination of Italy . . . Prince Lucien, Bacciochi and
Princess Elisa's children are naturally in their place in Rome ;
Prince Joseph and the Queen of Naples should marry their
daughters there . . . Madame should promise 300,000 francs to
each of her grandchildren who settles in Rome . . . Lucien should
make one of his sons a Cardinal." (Lucien's grandson did be-
come one.) Blacas did not know of this advice, but, confronted
by Elizabeth Patterson and her handsome son, he felt that an
American Bonaparte, the New World coming to reinforce the
Old, was more than he could bear. He might have been relieved
could he have known that the last of the American Bonapartes
was to die in 1945, in the person of a childless old gentleman
named Jerome Napoleon, who received fatal injuries when he
stumbled over the leash of his wife's dog while walking in
Central Park.
260
THAT AUTUMN LETiziA received a visit from Antom-
marchi, newly returned from St. Helena. He wrote of his
interview : " Madame Mere's grief was still great and I was
obliged to be very careful what I said, and to spare her feelings
in a word, to give her only an outline of what I had witnessed.
On my second visit she was calmer and more resigned, and I gave
her some details, which were, however, continually interrupted
by her sobs. I stopped, whereupon the unhappy mother dried
he* tears and began to question me anew. It was a struggle
between courage and grief, never was such heart-rending
emotion seen. I saw her a third time, when she overwhelmed me
with proofs of her goodwill and satisfaction and presented me
with a diamond, which I shall never part with, since it is a gift of
the Emperor's mother."
What did her the most good at this time was the arrival in
Rome of Jerome and Catherine. Lady Blessington gives a vivid
picture of the three of them together :
Walking in the gardens of the Vigna Paktina yesterday,
with our amiable friend the owner, Mr. C Mills, we were
surprised by the arrival of the Prince and Princesse de
Montfort [as Jerome and Catherine were now tided] and
their children, with Madame Letitia Bonaparte, or Madame
Mere, as she is generally called, attended by her chaplain,
dame de compagnie^ and others of their joint suite. Having
heard that Madame Mere disliked meeting strangers, we
retired to a distant part of the garden ; but the ex-King of
Westphalia having recognised my carriage in the courtyard
sent to request us to join them, and presented us to his
261
Madame Letizia
mother, and wife. Madame Letitia Bonaparte is tall and
slight, her figure gently bowed by age, but nevertheless
dignified and graceful. Her face is, even still, remarkably
handsome, bearing proof of the accuracy of Canova's admir-
able statue of her ; and a finer personification of a Roman
matron could not be found than is presented by this Hecuba
of the Imperial dynasty. She is pale, and the expression of
her countenance is pensive, unless when occasionally
lighted up by some observations, when her dark eye glances
for a moment with animation, but quickly resumes its
melancholy character again ; yet even when animated, her
manner retains its natural dignity and composure, and she
seems born to represent the mother of kings. The Prince de
Montfort, and has excellent wife treat her with a watchful
and respectful tenderness ; each supported her, and suited
their pace to her feeble steps, listening with deep attention
to her observations. She was dressed in a robe of rich
dark-grey Levantine silk, and a bonnet of the same material,
worn over a lace cap, with a black blonde veil. Her hair was
divided a-la-Madonna [her own white hair], showing a high
and pale forehead, marked by the furrows of care. A
superb cashmere shawl that looked like a tribute from
some barbaric sovereign fell gracefully over her shoulders,
and completed one of the most interesting pictures I ever
beheld. I must not omit recording that her feet are small
and finely formed, and her hands admirable. Her voice is
low and sweet, with a certain tremulousness in it that
denotes a deep sensibility. She spoke of the Emperor
Napoleon ; and her lip quivered and her eyes filled with
tears.
" I shall soon join him in that better world where no
tears are shed," said she, wiping away those that chased each
other down her cheeks. " I thought I should have done so,
long ago, but God sees what is best for me."
Sorrow, sanctified by resignation, has given to the
countenance of this interesting woman an indescribable
262
Nigfrt: Italy
charm. The Prince and Princesse de Montfort led the
conversation to other topics, in which Madame Mere joined,
but by monosyllables ; yet her manner was gracious and
gentle, and marked by much of that affectionate earnest-
ness which characterises Italian women, and particularly
those of advanced years and elevated rank. When we had
made the tour of the garden, walking very slowly in order
to avoid fatiguing her, she entered her carriage, into
which she was assisted by Jerome and my husband ; the
ex-King and Queen of Westphalia kissed her hand, the latter
performing the ceremony with as profound a respect as if a
diadem encircled the brows of Letitia, and that she herself
had not borne one. Madame Mere invited us to visit her,
and at parting touched my forehead with her lips, and shook
hands with Lord Blessington, saying kind and flattering
things to us both. The gentlemen, including the Prince de
Montfort, all remained with their hats off until her carriage
had driven away, when that of her son and his suite followed.
There was something highly scenic in the whole scene
of our interview. Here was the mother of a modern Caesar,
walking amidst the ruins of the palace of the ancient ones,
lamenting a son whose fame had filled the four quarters of
the globe and formed an epoch in the history of Europe ;
her tottering steps supported by another son from whose
brow the diadem had been torn, and who now, shorn of his
splendour, reminded one of the poet's description of a
dethroned sovereign . . . The other supporter of Madame
Mere added much to the effect of the picture. The daughter
of kings of the old legitimate stock and allied to half the
reigning sovereigns of our day, she has nobly, femininely
and wisely adhered to the fallen fortunes of her husband,
resisted the brilliant offers of her family, and shares the
present comparatively obscure destiny of him on whose
throne her virtues shed a lustre. There is something
touchingly beautiful in the respectful tenderness of this
admirable Princess towards the aged mother of her husband,
26)
Madame Letizia
and her unceasing and affectionate attention to him, and
her children . . . Colonel Sebastiani told me that while
her children were yet in infancy, Madame Letitia Bonaparte
had been remarked for the dignity and self-possession of
her manner and conduct. With a large family and a small
income, she practised a rigid system of economy which
never degenerated into meanness ; and this prudence seemed
in her to be much more the result of a laudable pride, and
principle, than of avarice . . . With Napoleon's quick
perception of the effect produced by his near relations
on those around him, and with the fierte which formed a
characteristic of his nature, it was peculiarly fortunate
that his mother's appearance was so calculated to assert
with the rank to which she was elevated. Her tall and
slender figure, her graceful demeanour, distinguished
countenance and cold but polite manners, were well suited
to the part she had to fill . . . The Due de Reichstadt is
said to occupy much of her thoughts, which, since Napol-
eon's death, revert continually to this interesting youth.
There is so much self-control in the manners of Letitia that
conclusions are drawn more from the expression of her
countenance, significant shakes of the head, or deep sighs,
than from her words. Though gracious and kind, she is
neither demonstrative nor communicative, and there is a
natural dignity about her that must ever check the incursions
of curiosity.
264
ALTHOUGH LETIZIA NOW seemed to her great-grand-
children immeasurably old, less a human being than a page
of history mysteriously alive, she still had emotional trials ahead
of her and the capacity to feel them with intensity.
After Napoleon's death Pauline's health, never robust,
began to deteriorate visibly and was not improved by the un-
happiness of her last love-affair. She who had captivated so
many remarkable men was herself captivated by a youth, who,
though attracted by her beauty and flattered by her reputation,
saw in her an older woman whose demands must be held in
check. Neither this nor horrible physical sufferings conquered
the gallantry that had always been the counterpart of Pauline's
frivolity, and she who had throughout her life wept and laughed
with extraordinary facility, showed a stoical calm when dying of
cancer at forty-five. With her death nearly all of the remaining
light in Letizia's life was extinguished, <x They all die," she said,
" and I remain here to mourn them. I am condemned to bury
them after bringing them into the world."
Such hope as Letizia retained now centred upon her grand-
children, to whom she was an enthralling but slightly alarming
character, the heroine of the family and its beacon. Jerome's
children were to remember her as <c an old divinity carrying such
a weight of history that, in the midst of her coffee cups and the
snuff-boxes that closed with a dry snap, one felt almost unreal."
Jerome's youngest son never forgot the " extraordinary atmos-
phere of laurels and snuff " in her palace, nor the fact that even
when the talk concerned nothing beyond local gossip, " one was
aware of mighty shadows passing. A singular solemnity
26 j
Madame Letizia
dominated an atmosphere that was both domestic and epic, one
walked on tiptoe and spoke in a low voice. One was dumb-
founded when one heard the idol's voice, sometimes saying
things oddly at variance with the majesty of the setting. * My
children gave me a lot of trouble/ she said one day, c but at
least I spanked them soundly/ She never seemed to have been
amazed by the prodigies of which she was the origin. Her son's
rise had astonished her more than his fall. She accepted this
fantastic story with the simplicity of a matron who remembers
washing her children's clothes and is no longer moved by any-
thing, not even by being idolised in her old age."
But even her grandchildren seemed bent on stealing a
march on he*. In 1827, disaster overtook Lucien's ninth child,
Paul-Marie, a wild and violent character. After being expelled
from the Jesuit college at Urbino, he had been sent to study at
Bologna, where he fell passionately in love with a married
woman, the Marchesa Herrara de Avaray, and fought two duels
on her behalf. Then, at eighteen, he followed Lord Byron's
example and sailed, aboard an English ship, to fight for Greek
independence. Full of foreboding, Letizia wrote to Lucien that,
however distressing it might prove, she would rather know the
truth than continue in suspense. Soon afterwards news came
that Paul-Marie had been found dead on the bridge of his ship.
He had shot himself, whether by accident or design was never
proved.
Two years later Paul-Marie's sister, the Marchesa Honorati,
died, and that same year Letizia lost her faithful old Corsican
servant, Savetia. " I feel it sharply," she wrote to Julie. " So
long and tried an attachment is not to be found again." Mistress
and servant had spent more than half a century together, and with
Saveria went the only person except Fesch with whom Letizia
could relive the days when the fabulous Bonapartes were
neither princes nor exiles but turbulent children, playing in the
golden air of a Corsican garden.
A CALAMITOUS ACCIDENT befell Letizia four months
before her eightieth birthday. While walking in Pauline's
gardens with her chamberlain Colonna, an old family friend and
her granddaughter, Princess Charlotte (the formerly irreverent
Lolotte, now married to Prince Gabrielli and herself the mothefc
of two daughters), Letizia came to a path too narrow to walk two
abreast. Leaving Colonna's arm she went ahead, slipped on the
stony ground, fell and broke her hip. (She told her doctors that
she distinctly heard the bone crack.)
Lucien, Louis and Jerome hastened to her bedside and
summoned the best doctors available. She was too old for them
to employ the apparatus usual in such cases, so they tried a new-
treatment invented by the famous Dupuytren and placed the
injured leg in a bent position on cushions. The shock affected
her system so violently that Fesch was granted permission to
give her absolution on behalf of the Pope, a grace usually reserved
for cardinals and sovereigns. Once again, however, her fierce will
prevailed over her fragile body. Eight days after the disaster she
was out of danger, though always in pain. A covered balcony,
still to be seen on the Corso corner of the palace, was built to
provide her with privacy in which to watch the life of the piazza
below. This piazza was known then as the " Kipresa del BarheriJ"
on account of the Barbary horses that raced up the Corso during
carnival and were caught up here by swathes of material draped
all across the piazza to prevent the animals crashing to death
against the opposite walls. Later, on her doctor's orders, she
would be carried out for carriage rides. It was a matter of pride
to her to keep the Imperial arms on her carriage well furbished,
267
Madame Letizia
and when passers-by stared at her she said, " Twenty years ago,
whenever I entered the Tuileries drums were beaten, soldiers
presented arms and crowds flocked around my carriage. Now
people peer at me from behind curtains and are afraid to display
indiscreet curiosity. But this style is as good as the former!
Politeness has replaced eagerness. Twenty years ago I was Your
Highness ; to-day I am Madame Letizia." As Madame Letizia,
she was glad to speak to any Frenchman among those who
stopped to gaze.
While convalescing, Letizia received a visit from Caroline,
whom she had not seen for fifteen years, and from Caroline's
twenty-five-year-old daughter Louise, now married to the
Comte Giulio Rasponi. Time had exhausted Letizia's resent-
ment of Caroline's political perfidy. She rejoiced in the presence
of her only surviving daughter and was glad to evoke with her
the days when a young and handsome Murat had brought them
news of Napoleon's early triumphs, days that though long past
sometimes seemed nearer than the intervening ones. But time
had not exhausted the Allied Governments' fears of the Bona-
partes, and Caroline's presence in Rome was declared dangerous
on the grounds that she was the widow of a soldier of fortune
who had " dazzled Naples by his bravery and panache," and that
her two sons were likely to " arouse public interest." No matter
what their individual convictions, the Bonapartes were con-
sidered by thousands of Italians to incarnate the ideals and
principles of the French Revolution as opposed to those of the
reactionary Bourbons. In consequence, the gathering of
Letizia's children at her bedside was considered an embryo
conspiracy and Caroline was notified that force would be used
against her unless she left Rome within a week. She protested
with her usual dynamism, hoping for assistance from Metternich,
who in the past had been her lover and had worn a bracelet
woven of her hair. But the bracelet had lost its magic and
Caroline was driven from Rome, never to see her mother again.
Soon after Letizia's accident, an even worse physical disaster
befell her. She began going blind from a double cataract con-
268
Night: Italy
dition. In the long twilight that followed, before the final move
into darkness, she heard from Jerome of the July Revolution in
Paris. An ultra-reactionary ministry headed by the unpopular
Prince Jules de Polignac had driven even the mildest liberals to
oppose Louis XVIIFs successor, Charles X. On July 25th the
King had passed four decrees, two of which violated the Charter
so flagrantly as to amount to a coup d'etat. The Paris workers
began to mass two days later, and joined by the National Guard
seized the arsenal, powder factory, city hall and Notre-Dame.
By July 29th the capital was in the hands of the insurgents.
Charles X fled to Rambouillet and abdicated in favour of his
grandson, the Due de Bordeaux. France did not want him
either, and Louis-Philippe, son of the regicide Due d'Orleans,
became the new King of France.
As she listened to yet another story of mobile thrones and
barricades, Letizia thought of Napoleon's son, a prisoner in
Vienna. Had the Duke of Reichstadt been in France it was he
who would most probably have succeeded Charles X. She was
very weak now, and when Jerome brought her the news that
the French Chamber was restoring the Emperor's statue to the
top of the column in the Place Vendome, tears rolled down her
cheeks as she pressed his hand. Yet the news revived her and
that night she ate a little. For days afterwards she kept repeating
in a low voice, " The Emperor's statue on the column ! The
Emperor's statue 1 " She had by her a little model of this
statue, and touching it, she said, " If I had been in Paris, as in
the past, God might have given me strength to go up inside the
column and see for myself ... my poor eyes, how I regret them."
She did not know that in Vienna her imprisoned grandson was
equally moved by this news. When the Baron de Larue was
leaving Vienna for Paris he asked the duke if he had any
messages to send. The young man, to whom his father's country
was only a memory, replied : " I know no one in France to
whom I can send my compliments, but please greet the Place
Vendome column for me." Nearly seventy years later these
words were used with tremendous emotional effect by the play-
269
Madame Letizia
wright Edmond Rostand in his UAiglon, first performed by
Sarah Bernhardt :
L' ATTACHE: Ave^-vous pour Paris car fy serai le quatre
Quelquts commissions ? Uhonneur me serait doux . . .
L'AIGIXDN : ]e compte etre rendu dans . . . I 9 Empire avant vous !
L' ATTACHE: Si, pourtant, avant vous fetais dans le . . . TLoyaume?
L'AIGLON : Salue^ de ma part la colonne VendSme.
Letizia slept little now, and on waking would ask to be
wheeled about her apartment so as to have the sensation of
movement. Most of her time was spent in the covered balcony
where, she said, " The sun still comes to see me like a friend,
although I cannot see it " : words that poignantly recall those of
Napoleon during the last months of his life, when he would
drag himself to the open window and say, " Good morning, sun,
good morning, sun, my friend/*
The night that was closing in on her diminished neither her
pride nor her sense of the obligations pride imposes. At this
time some of her children wanted to attempt legal action against
the French Government for its failure to honour the sixth
clause in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, which promised an in-
come to each member of the fallen Emperor's family. Outraged,
Letkia wrote to Julie :
" I have just received a letter from Ravioli [their man of
business] requesting my power of attorney to enable him to
demand the execution of the sixth clause of the Treaty of
Fontainebleau. He also wishes me to ask you to send him your
power of attorney for the same purpose. I have definitely
refused . . . such an act would be an outrage to the Emperor's
memory and most inimical to his son. Besides, it would be
completely base of us to beg for anything from a government
that has maintained the fourth clause of the law of January 12th,
1818, which banishes us in perpetuity. I have no doubt that you
will reject Monsieur Ravioli's proposition with disdain. I know
you too weE not to be certain that you will never hesitate
between honour and money."
She wrote to Hortense in the same spirit, adding : " I have
2 7
Night: Italy
warned Monsieur Ravioli that I shall disavow any move he
might make in my name, and I have told him that even if all my
children thought differently I would never beg from a Bourbon,
were he ten times Due d'Orl&ns. Honour must always have
priority over money, and I will never outrage the Emperor's
memory . . . Let us be careful of what is left to us and, if we
cannot live royally, let us live like honourable private citizens,
and not expose ourselves to humiliations or self-reproach. I
wrote in this sense to Louis, Jerome and Julie long before the
question of the maintenance of the law of banishment was raised
in France. If they had listened to me they would have spared
themselves the shame of begging in vain." Determined to leave
all she possessed to Napoleon's son, she was equally determined
to leave him nothing she considered tainted.
Like her pride, her wits survived the disasters that had over-
come her body. She still followed the course of world events and
had scores of newspapers and books of history read to her, par-
ticularly those concerning her dead son, such as the twenty-
eight volumes of Victories and Conquests published during the
restoration ; the Comte de Segur's History of Napoleon and the
Grand Army of 1812 ; and Alexandre Dumas's play Napoleon
Bonaparte, a favourite which drew tears from her. One of her
readers, Madame de Sartrouville, had a habit of skipping
passages that criticised Napoleon adversely. This vexed Letizia,
and during a reading of General Lamoigne's Memoirs she asked,
" Why do you stop ? Do you think I cannot bear the truth ?
The author is right : Napoleon was not infallible. In putting
Murat on the throne of Naples he committed an unpardonable
error. He was not the Son of Mary but only, alas, of Letizia/'
271
AIONG THE GRANDCHILDREN she knew most intimately,
Letizia particularly favoured Louis's sons. The elder,
Napoleon-Louis, was a scholarly, reflective young man whose
interests included aeronautics. He often talked to his grand-
mother of his plans to invent a double-propeller for a dirigible
balloon, and she would listen with a suspension of incredulity
remarkable at her age. He remembered his uncle with intense
admiration, and in answer to questions of his on this subject
Letizia wrote : " The details I could give you about the Emperor
are too puerile to be included in his story. He has indicated
himself, in his memoirs, how history should be written. It is as
a public figure that he must be considered. His exploits must be
depicted in a manner worthy of him. His prodigious policies,
his administration and his laws must be handed down to pos-
terity. No task is harder or finer than that of the historian. The
Emperor must appear to posterity in his colossal dimensions.
His life is so rich that to enter into every detail one would have to
write volumes, thus exhausting the reader and diminishing the
hero."
But Letizia's advice to Napoleon-Louis was not all on the
side of gravity, of which Louis had given his son too much. He
married his cousin Charlotte, Joseph's second daughter who
cared so much for her family that when asked in marriage by the
Marchesa Curtilepri's son she said, " Quando si ba Fonore di
chiamarsi Bonaparte non si cambia nome" (When one has the honour
to be called Bonaparte one does not change one's name.)
Thereafter he became very solemn, and Letizia wrote to him :
" I learn with regret that you have lost the charming vivacity
272
Night: Italy
that suited you so well. I am told you are sombre, show a
tendency to neglect yourself, and are as grave as an old man. I
understand that marriage has steadied you but, believe me, my
dear child, a young man who becomes old before his time is
quite as much in the wrong as an old man who conducts himself
like a youth. You have everything essential to happiness, take
advantage of this. I fear you are studying too hard. Your health
is too precious to too many people for you to have the right to
compromise it. Be as you were in Rome . . . and take care of
your appearance so as to resemble a young gallant rather than a
scholar . . . You have been too long without writing to me. I
warn you I am very curious as to how you are spending your
time, what are your occupations, your amusements, and your
troubles. Be sure that I am ready to share in all that concerns
you. How is your aerial research progressing ? "
There was no need to advise Napoleon-Louis's younger
brother, Louis-Napoleon, to try to resemble a young gallant
rather than a scholar. The future Napoleon III had spent most
of his childhood with his mother, the charming Hortense, and
he was as interested in pleasure as in politics, which he often
discussed privately with Letizia, as shown by this letter which
she wrote to him two months after the July Revolution :
Thank you for all you say about my birthday. Please heaven
I shall soon be better, for with all my courage and resig-
nation I cannot but find it very wearing to be always seated
or lying down. As for the journey to Corsica, I do not
think that will be able to take place yet. We must see if the
French people, who have shown such energy and courage in
throwing off the yoke imposed by foreigners, will be duped
by a faction that has decided, with as much impudence as
imprudence, to settle a problem that should have been re-
solved only by the nation as a whole. By proclaiming the
Due d'Orleans King without asking the nation's assent, the
Chamber of Deputies has violated all the principles of the
revolution and assumed a terrible responsibility.
Your letter is that of a young enthusiast. To judge
2 7 )
Madame Letizia
anything it is necessary to view it objectively, and while
tendering) ustice to the vigour of the people of Paris, I
am far from seeing a philosopher's revelation in these
courageous combats. No one has ever doubted French
intrepidity. Wait before judging. You see that I am preach-
ing. I hope you will not take exception to this : my old
head, tempered by experience and time, yearns to instil
reason into your ardent young head, so beloved by me.
However, it is better at your age to have too much fire than
too little. So I hope that in spite of my sermons you will not
doubt the pleasure with which I embrace you, nor my
tender attachment.
Four months later the ardent young head was expelled from
Rome as politically undesirable. Revolutionary outbursts were
as prevalent as showers in spring that year. The drawbridge
went up before St. Angelo, and pilgrims made way for cannon
in the Colosseum. The Papal Government scented a Bonaparte
conspiracy, and this time the Papal Government was right.
Letizia's older grandchildren were as nervously excited as race
horses at the starting-point. No sooner had the future Napoleon
III been banished to Florence than the police swooped on
Jerome's palace and attempted to arrest his sixteen-year-old son,
Jerome-Napoleon, whose mother successfully appealed to the
Russian Minister and the Wiirttemberg charg6 d'affaires. The
boy seems to have been innocent of anything except admiration
for his cousins, but the Papal Government understandably found
it difficult to distinguish between so many tumultuous young
Bonapartes, each bearing Napoleon as one of their resonant
Christian names.
More serious was the result of a police raid on the home of
Lucien's Intendant, Vito Fedele. This uncovered a written
scheme to put the Duke of Reichstadt on the throne of a resus-
citated kingdom of Italy. Responsible were Louis's two sons,
the Comte Camerata (husband of Elisa's daughter Napoleone),
the Duca Sante della Rovere, the Marchese Corelli, two brothers
employed in the administration of Prince Borghese's estates, a
Night: Italy
couple of artillerymen from the Papal Army (one appropriately
named Canonieri), a sculptor, a doctor, a coachman and the
proprietor of a copying establishment. The insurgents were to
assemble in front of St. Peter's, seize the arms at the depot, and
march through the working-class districts distributing money to
be provided they hoped by Letizia. (Letizia was suspected in
Vatican circles of having offered a million francs to the con-
spirators perhaps because she managed her investments so well
that she was able to lend money to the Holy See for less interest
than was charged by the famous banker Torlonia.) They would
then attack the castle of St. Angelo, seize the Santo Spirito bank,
capture the cardinals and governors of the city, occupy the
prison and march on the Capitol to proclaim Louis-Napoleon
regent until the arrival of Napoleon's son. Wilder plots have
succeeded, but the Papal Government learnt of this one in time
to defeat it.
At the end of January, 1831, Louis's sons left Florence for
Ombria so as to be on hand when the revolutionary signal came
from Parma and Modena. Lucien's sixteen-year-old son, Pierre,
attempted to join his cousins, but was arrested and, with his
parents' consent, interned for six months in a fortress at Leg-
horn. When Bologna rose against the Papal Government in
February its new provisional government included the Bona-
partes' former tutor, Colonel Armandi, and the Marchese
Pepoli, husband of Caroline's daughter, Letizia Murat. Stendhal,
who was at Trieste waiting to take up his post as French Consul
at Civita Vecchia, reported that groups of bandits were active on
both sides.
In her palace in Rome Letizia listened to accounts of her
grandsons' unruly conduct "without seeming altogether dis-
pleased." Perhaps these fanned the embers of the fire that had
burnt so brilliantly in her when she too was young and unable to
resist the cry of " Uberta o Morte ! " But she was too old now
for such exaltation to last. Instead she would remember the fate
of Napoleon's son and teU Hortense that whatever happened
Madame Letizia
Napoleon-Louis and Louis-Napoleon must not fall into the
hands of the Austrians.
Equally fearful of this, Hortense procured an English pass-
port in the name of Lady Hamilton from the English Minister
in Tuscany, and hurried after her sons. At Forli she found only
her younger son. His elder brother had just died of measles, of
which there was an epidemic. So ended all Napoleon-Louis's
hopes of writing history and conquering the air. Letizia wrote
to his mother-in-law, Julie : " The blow we have received is all
the more terrible because unexpected. Only time can heal such a
cruel wound. I can easily imagine Charlotte's grief, and yours.
I know by my own experience that it is very difficult to control
grief caused by the loss of those we love, yet I beg you to do as I
do and harden yourself against irremediable misfortune. I
regret so much that we are separated in such sad circumstances.
Together we would help each other bear a loss so agonising to all
of us. Be brave, try to distract Charlotte from her grief. My
heart bleeds, thinking of your situation. Ill and in sorrow, you
have to force yourself to console your daughter."
Meanwhile, Hortense was smuggling Louis-Napoleon out of
Italy. Still travelling as Lady Hamilton, she took him and a
fellow conspirator, disguised as a valet, to Paris, where they
were secretly received by Louis-Philippe and Queen Amelie,
who gave them money for their journey to England. This
journey aroused such suspicious comments that Letizia wrote to
Hortense : " I admit I was distressed by your journey to France,
and what I feared has happened : it is attributed to motives that
have certainly never entered your head. The French Govern-
ment's newspapers and agents say you went to Paris only to
conspire. I am sure this is not so, but the effect is bad, and you
must contradict these falsehoods. In the present circumstances
we must expect to find our most innocent actions maliciously
construed." To this she added a fortnight later : " Urge Louis-
Napoleon from me to be more circumspect. Before taking any
step, he ought to think of the consequences and remember that
he is too young and inexperienced not to heed the advice of his
276
Night: Italy
parents and relatives. His pride must not be hurt by these
observations, which are prompted by my tender attachment to
him."
Letizia never saw Louis-Napoleon again, and he seldom took
her advice to be circumspect. The year she died he entered
France secretly and was deported to America, whence he
returned illegally to see his dying mother. He was then expelled
from Switzerland and, after taking part in an abortive rising in
France, imprisoned in the fortress of Ha. From there he
escaped to England, but returned to France in 1848, first as
President, later as Napoleon III.
-277
T CHRISTMAS, i 83 1, the Duke of Reichstadt succeeded
in sending his grandmother a portrait of himself for which
he had sat in civilian clothes so as to spare her the distress of
seeing him in Austrian uniform. His solicitude was not wasted,
for the almost blind old woman insisted on having every detail
of the portrait described to her as she hungrily ran her fingertips
over it* Her feeling for the grandson whom she could remember
as a handsome little French prince cheered by the Parisians as he
rode by in his miniature carriage drawn by two merino sheep
had been intensified by the report, brought from Vienna by her
granddaughter Napoleone, that despite all efforts to turn him
into an Austrian, Napoleon's son was passionately attached to
France and to the memory of his father.
A few months later her grandson's closest friend, Count
Anton Prokesch von Osten, a former Austrian ambassador,
arrived in Rome on a diplomatic mission, met Prince Gabrielli
and was asked by Letizia's granddaughter, Charlotte, now
Princess Gabrielli, if he would have any objection to calling on
Madame Letizia. Prokesch said that, on the contrary, he would
be delighted to do so, and a visit was immediately arranged for
the following day.
Accompanied to the Pakzzo Bonaparte by Charlotte,
Prokesch found himself in a vast, sombre, silent room where
thick curtains let in so little light that the handsome furniture
had a mysterious underwater look. As his eyes got used to the
dimness he saw a sofa from which a "noble and venerable
matron," dressed entirely in bkck, was rising with Charlotte's
help. Half-blind and half-paralysed, she greeted Prokesch, then
Night: Italy
leaned back and " in the softest voice in the world " invited him
to sit beside her. Her French was not perfect, but she managed
the language with assurance and discrimination. Stirred by the
historic nature of the moment, Prokesch spoke at length of the
Duke of Reichstadt, giving all the details likely to interest a
mother except such a mother as Marie-Louise. Letizia
listened with increasing emotion, interrupted frequently with
questions, and exclaimed over her grandson's resemblance in
character to Napoleon.
She was pleased to learn that he was treated at court " with
all the respect due to him," but above all she wanted news of the
bo/s health. Only three weeks before this interview she had
written to Hortense : " You tell me the Duke of Reichstadt's
health is not as bad as reported in the newspapers, and that he
has been seen on horseback in the streets of Vienna. It is a joy to
me to believe that and my heart seizes on this hope with avidity.
But since your letter I have learnt that he has had a relapse and I
am very much distressed by this sad news. Despite my un-
certainty as to the Duke's state (I oscillate between fear and
hope) I want to settle for the latter. He is young, and Nature
has so many resources ... I want and need to believe that he
will be victorious in this struggle between life and death." In
this state of mind Letizia drew great comfort from all that was
said by Prokesch, who had no idea he was not speaking the
truth. He had received no direct news since he left Vienna, as
the Duke of Reichstadt was forbidden to write to Rome except
with special permission and preferred, just as his father had done
at St. Helena, not to write at all rather than submit his letters to
censorship or theft.
Contact with someone who had lately seen her grandson
revived Letizia's memories of the last occasion on which she
had seen him. She described thek flight from the Tuileries, and
added bitterly that though she had often written to Marie-Louise,
her letters had never been answered. Everything Letizia had
felt, thought and wished for Napoleon's son as she meditated on
him in the darkness was summed up in the message she en-
279
Madame Letizia
trusted to Prokesch : " Above all, he must respect his father's
wishes. His hour will come. He will take his place on his
father's throne/' Prokesch said that the tender prophetic way in
which she spoke drew tears from him.
Then she painfully rose again and was led by Charlotte to
her grandson's bust, beside that of his father. She indicated both
to Prokesch, also those of her other children, saying a few words
about each one. She again referred bitterly to Marie-Louise.
Then she searched for a lock of Napoleon's hair that she wished
Prokesch to take back to her grandson. Unable to find it at
once, she promised to send it to him that evening, together with
a miniature of herself.
Prokesch kissed her hand and prepared for dismissal, but
she detained him as if unwilling to relinquish this living link
with her grandson. He said later that as he knelt at her feet,
" her whole person seemed to grow more imposing, and an air
of majestic dignity enveloped her." Trembling, she laid her
small hands on his head and said, " Since I cannot go to him,
may his grandmother's blessing be on your head. I shall soon
leave this world, but my prayers, my tears and my wishes will be
with him until the last instant of my life. Take him what I have
laid on your head and entrusted to your heart."
When Prokesch rose, Letizia embraced him and for a moment
they stood together in silence. He and Charlotte helped her
back to the sofa and he took his leave. That evening Letizia sent
him a miniature of herself with a lock of Napoleon's hair en-
dosed in the back of it, a miniature of Napoleon as First Consul
and one of Caroline. Next day she added to these a lacquer box
of mother-of-pearl counters, each stamped with an N and the
Imperial crown. The English Admiral Malcolm had brought
these from China to St. Helena as a gift for Napoleon, who had
used them when playing the Spanish game of bombre. She wanted
to collect more of Napoleon's personal belongings for her
grandson, but Prokesch left Rome before she had time to do so.
Nor would more time have availed her. On July 22nd, 1832,
the day after Prokesch's visit to Leti2ia, Napoleon's son died in
2&0
Night: Italy
Vienna of tuberculosis. He was twenty-one, and as he realised he
was dying he said, " Between my cradle and my tomb is a great
zero."
When the news reached Letizia she cried out : " This last
way of losing my son is perhaps more painful than the first. Am
I destined to outlive all my children ? "
281
MOVED BY ETIQUETTE as she had never been by her
heart, Marie-Louise wrote to her mother-in-law for the
first time in seventeen years. Even during her son's last illuess
she had neglected him for her current lover, and all she could
find to say to Letizia was that God had disposed of him. Letizia
was so sickened by this hypocrisy that she asked Fesch to answer
the letter for her. Meanwhile she herself wrote to Hortense : " I
have received from Marie-Louise a letter of which you will find
a copy enclosed. The Cardinal and I are in mourning. Lacking
courage and strength, I can add nothing to these few lines/* A
month later she wrote again to Hortense : " Your letter of
August i yth has just arrived. It finds me ill and overcome. I try
to summon courage, but there are some misfortunes against
which it is useless to harden oneself. This is one of them. It has
reopened all the barely-healed wounds of my heart, and my grief
is increased by the details I hear every day. I am desolate at see-
ing, in so short a space of time, children whom I had hoped would
dose my eyes flung into the tomb just as they were arousing our
finest hopes."
Nevertheless, she refused to forget the living to whom the
future of her family belonged. As soon as she had recovered a
little strength she altered her will, in which she had left all she
possessed to Napoleon's son. A copy of her new will, drawn up
by the notary Battista Giuseppe Offredi on September iznd,
1832, is kept in the Capitoline Archives in Rome (Instrumnti e
ttstammti se%. XX. vol. 140. 1835-36). As character-revealing a
document as Napoleon's will, it begins :
Her Highness, by the grace of God sane of mind,
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Night: Italy
intellect, and spirit, sane too as regards speech, hearing,
and bodily capacities save that of sight, and being bedridden
and not wishing to die intestate, has resolved to make her
will, over the signature of Signor Bernardo Crede.
Offredi read the complete will ih the presence of two lawyers
and eight witnesses. When the reading was over and the will
signed, he closed it with white thread and eight seals of red
Spanish wax, each stamped with the Imperial eagle.
Letizia began with a declaration of faith in the Catholic
Church. Arrangements for her funeral were to be made by
Fesch, and, considerately practical to the last, she specified that
he was to be given 7,000 scudi for immediate expenses, and to
donate whatever remained of this sum to charity. She listed the
churches where she wished masses to be said for the repose of
her soul, also the sums to be distributed to the poor in each of
the parishes concerned.
The bulk of her fortune, officially estimated at 1,700,000
francs, unofficially at 3,000,000, was to be equally divided
among Joseph, Lucien, Louis and Jerome, after smaller sums
had been put aside for Caroline and for Elisa's children. Her
palace was left to Joseph as eldest son, but its value was to be
taken into account as part of his share of the whole estate.
Legacies were to be given to Colonna, Rosa Mellini, her lawyer
Natali, her secretary Robaglia, her doctor Antonini and to all her
servants, on condition they were still in her service at the time
of her death. Her family portraits went to Fesch. She annulled
all her children's debts to her, except for 300,000 francs borrowed
by Caroline in 1815, which was to be added to the total to be
divided among all her children. In a codicil she left her heart to
Ajaccio.
Neither grief nor sickness had lessened her determination
that all she had accumulated should be of use to her dependants,
and her will included a complete inventory of all her household
goods, ranging from bread-baskets and mustard-pots to massive
silver-gilt dinner-services. Even her clothes and bed-linen,
including the sheets between which she expected to die, were
Madame Letizia
carefully portioned out. It is a will entirely devoid of waste or
sentimentality, animated throughout by her instinct to fulfil her
responsibilities to church, family and loyal dependants. She
left nothing to cherished grandchildren (except to the three who
were to receive their dead mcfther's portion), because she knew
that her children would in turn faithfully hand on all they pos-
sessed to the next generation.
Having put her affairs in order, she was far from giving up all
hold on life. Instead she set about trying to obtain possession
of the arms and heirlooms Napoleon had bequeathed to his son,
which were now rightfully hers. These included the swords he
had worn at Aboukir and Austerlitz, the sword of John III of
Poland, a watch that had belonged to Frederick the Great, four
hundred books from his library, and a collection of uniforms,
snuff-boxes, miniatures, comfit boxes and medals. Her cousin
the Due de Padoue served her as intermediary, and the last
letter she ever dictated was to him about this final struggle for
family rights made in a spirit no more and no less militant than
had driven her as an obscure widow to try again and again to
obtain for her children the money owed to Carlo for the mul-
berry groves that had seemed so promising to young Louis XVI
and Marie-Antoinette. She was more successful in her last
struggle, and, thanks to her, these treasures are still in the
family.
2*4
AT EASTER, 1833, Elisa's twenty-year-old son, Frederic-
JLjL Napoleon, was thrown from his horse while riding in
Rome, and killed. After being told of this Letizia remained
silent for several hours, then said : " There is a fatality weighing
on the third generation of Bonapartes ? they all die violent deaths/*
Among the letters of sympathy she received was one from a
French deputy, Monsieur Sapey, who suggested out of respect
for her age and griefs that the Chamber of Deputies abrogate the
law of exile in her case. She immediately answered him :
Those who realise the absurdity of the maintenance of the
law of exile against my family and who nevertheless propose
making an exception of me, have never understood either
my principles or my character.
I was widowed at thirty-four and my eight children
were my only consolation. Corsica was threatened with
separation from France. The loss of home and possessions
did not frighten me. I followed my children to the Contin-
ent. In 1814 I followed Napoleon to Elba, and in 1816,
despite my age, I would have followed him to St. Helena
had he not forbidden this, and I resigned myself to living
ia Rome, a prisoner of state. Either as an extension of the
law exiling my family from France, or as the result of Allied
protocol, persecution stopped many members of the
family who wanted to join me from coming to Rome.
I decided to do without company, and hoped for happiness
only in a future life, since I was separated from those for
whose sake I value this life, and who represent all my
memories and joy. What equivalent could I find in France
28 '/
Madame Let ma
that would not be poisoned by the injustice of powerful
men who cannot forgive the glory won by my family ?
Let me be left alone, in my honourable sufferings, to
carry my integrity to my grave. I will never separate my
lot from that of my children.
Julie, fourth child of Joseph's elder daughter, Zenalde, and
of Lucien's eldest son, Charles-Lucien, could just remember
her great-grandmother at this period as " an old lady always
dressed in black and lying on one of those uncomfortable
divans for which Canova's sculptures and Gerard's pictures have
found a niche in the history of art. Visitors were received by
Colonna . . . dry, angular, in satin knee-breeches and buckled
shoes. Madame would rise slightly to receive us, but as she was
blind she had to touch us to recognise our faces. * You are very
beautiful/ she said one day to Maria [Lucien's thirteenth child],
who indeed had regular features illuminated by huge dark eyes."
Always appreciative of beauty, Letizia intended the women
of her family to enjoy her jewels, of which she had an inventory
made two months after her eighty-fifth birthday. Among those
to whom she particularly wished to give pleasure was Jerome's
wife, but Catherine died a month later in Lausanne of inflam-
mation of the lungs. She was only fifty-three and, until now,
had never caused her husband or his family a moment's grief.
After Catherine's death Letizia would be given no fresh cause to
mourn in darkness. She had not far to go now.
AtfONG LETIZIA'S last visitors was the first of her future
biographers, Felix Larrey, a young doctor visiting Rome
with his father, Baron Larrey, former surgeon-in-chief to the
Grand Army and described by Napoleon, who left him 100,000
francs in his will, as the " most virtuous man he had ever known."
The Larreys were welcomed to the Palazzo Bonaparte by
Fesch, whom young Larrey described as " of lively intelligence,
with an affable air, a penetrating gaze and fluent speech." They
were then led into a vast square room, its walls hung with silk.
Beside a large window from which the tower of the Capitol
could be seen stood Napoleon's white-curtained bed, on which
lay Letizia, immobile but attentive to the least sound. Her
features were still beautiful, but her eyes had turned opaque
and grey from cataracts and the face was so thin that it re-
sembled " a medallion of a Roman empress."
Carlo's portrait hung over the bed and the room was popu-
lated with busts and portraits of all Letizia's children, also the
bust of the little King of Rome that Lady Holland had sent to
St. Helena as a gift for Napoleon. Josephine, Hortense and the
future Napoleon in were included in this personal pantheon of
public history.
Fesch motioned to Baron Larrey to sit down in the chair
beside Napoleon's bed. Letizia leaned towards him and said,
" I am very much touched by your kind visit, Baron Larrey, and
I thank you with all my heart. I feel as if I were seeing you to-
day as I saw you in the past, you whom the Emperor loved and
esteemed. I know how he spoke of you during his exile, and I
2g 7
Madame Letma
remember the words of his will at St. Helena." Then she gave
him her thin trembling hand.
Much moved, the baron presented his son. As the young
man bent to kiss her hand Letizia said, " Come near, my child,
let me embrace you and touch your face so as to know what it is
like, since I cannot see it." Young Larrey could scarcely speak
for emotion, but Letizia put him at ease by gently questioning
him about his mother, Ms sisters, his studies and plans for the
future. Because of his Napoleonic background, she instinctively
spoke to him as if he were one of her own grandchildren.
After a silence during which she appeared to be assembling
her thoughts, she asked Baron Larrey about his situation in
France, his birth-place in the Pyrenees and his travels and
campaigns, especially those in which he had accompanied
Napoleon. She lost nothing of his answers and young Larrey
observed that she had the rare talent of knowing how to listen.
Both father and son noticed that, as if in compensation for her
blindness, her hearing was phenomenally acute. Presently Baron
Larrey feared they might be exhausting her and made a move to
leave, but her wish to keep them longer was obviously due to
more than courtesy. When they inquired about her health she
said that what she found hardest to bear was her immobility.
Two hours after their arrival she collapsed into a semi-
somnolent state, reacting only to the sound of her children's
names, any one of which made her raise her head to the light and
open her sightless eyes. When they took their leave she gave
them her blessing and said, " May you be happy. As you are
going to Florence you will doubtless see my children. [Louis
and Caroline were there.] Give them my news ; they know I
do not forget them. Farewell, my good Larrey, thank you for
coming to see me with your dear son. Your visit has done me
good. Remember me when you are back in France."
Outside, Fesch gave them the gifts Letizia had chosen for
them, a magnificent gold-lined onyx snuff-box with a cameo lid
for Baron Larrey and for each of them a cameo of Napoleon's
head
ON JANUARY zyTH, 1836, Lctizia caught a chill that
induced a fever. The doctors summoned by Fesch seemed
to be curing her, but she knew better than they and asked for the
sacraments. It was carnival time and Rome echoed with gaiety
and tumult, but, out of respect for Letizia, no fireworks were set
off in the Piazza Venezia. Of all her children, only Lucien and
Jerome were present at the final parting. Joseph, recently
returned to Europe, was refused permission to go to her, as was
Caroline, and Louis was himself too ill to travel.
Thirty years later Keats's biographer, Lord Houghton, told
Augustus Hare : " I had a very narrow miss of seeing Madame
Mere, and I am very sorry I did not do it for it would only have
cost a scudo. She was a very long time dying, it was a kind of
lying in state, and for a scudo the porter used to let people in
behind a screen which there was at the foot of the bed, and they
looked at her through the joinings. I was only a boy then, and I
thought there was plenty of time, and put it off ; but one day she
died."
Letizia remained lucid and calm throughout her last illness.
She had been so long in darkness that the past was more vivid
to her than the present, and perhaps than the future which she
envisaged as " where no tears are shed/' Half her life had been
passed in Continental courts and palaces, but her most cherished
memories concerned the island she and Fesch and old Saveria
had kept alive in their hearts. She could remember the days
when the names of Letizia, Fesch and Saveria were inseparable
from those of Mamma Saveria, Mamma Fesch, Zia Geltruda,
Zio Lucciano, Zio Napoleone, the Ramolinos, Casanovas,
289
Madame Letizia
Arrighis and Giubegas. As she remembered, these figures grew
mysteriously younger, were joined by a group of handsome
children King Joseph was once more Giuseppe, the Emperor
once more Napoleone, surrounded by Lucciano, Maria-Anna,
Luigi, Maria-Paola, Maria-Nunziata and Girolamo. Then the
children grew smaller, vanished. " The cries of the dying, the
groans of the oppressed " rose in the smoke of a battlefield and
Letizia felt her horse move beneath her, a horse that was still
there as the cries and odours of the battlefield made way for the
sounds and scents of the macchia as she rode up to Corte to meet a
youthful Paoli, his horse caparisoned with crimson velvet and
gold lace. Then this too faded and she was once more a child
herself, Letizia Ramolino in the summer of 1764, walking
proudly and timidly up the steps of Ajaccio Cathedral to give
her hand and heart to Carlo-Maria Buonaparte.
It was seven o'clock in the evening of February 2nd, 1856,
when Letizia fell asleep for the last time. Fesch, who had re-
mained beside her throughout, closed the sightless eyes that had
seen so much. He was seventy-three and had never known life
without his sister.
Letizia left four sons, a daughter, ten grandsons, eleven
granddaughters, thirteen great-grandsons and fourteen great-
granddaughters when she at kst joined her favourite child, not
only in death but in history and in legend. That same year, in
the centre of Paris, Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe was at last
completed.
290
"ETIZIA'S DEATH WAS announced only briefly in the
^ Diaria di Roma and the Papal Government ordered that her
ineral be a very simple one, as if fearful that even the wreaths
t exiled kings might have the power to stir dormant Bona-
artism. This enforced austerity had some unexpected results.
or example, the Palazzo Bonaparte was left so unguarded that
le French painter Gigoux, in Rome by chance at the time, was
ole to walk in unchallenged.
There was no one on the staircase to announce him, and no
ne in the ante-room of Letizia's apartment. All the doors were
pen and the rooms appeared deserted. It was as if some mighty
ide had receded, leaving behind it an unnatural silence. In the
bird vast room Gigoux found the dead Letizia lying in state on
, bed covered with silver-fringed black velvet, the canopy topped
>y four silver eagles. He wrote home that he had never seen so
>eautiful a face. Another Frenchman, Joseph Mery, who also
;hanced to see her lying in state, wrote that from the room in
vhich she lay one could see the Campidoglio : " What a com-
bination ! The grandeur of Rome competing with the grandeur
}f the woman."
A requiem mass was to be said for her at Santa Maria-in-Via-
Lata, an eighth-century church built over the one where St.
Paul supposedly lodged. Carnival was still rampant when the
funeral procession set out and confetti fell on the coffin, while
tiere and there an anti-Bonapartist whistled or shouted at the
little cortege. The Bonapartes had been forbidden to display the
Imperial arms on the black draperies over the entrance, but an
Madame Letizia
Imperial eagle surmounted the initials L. R. B. and the inscrip-
tion: MATER NAPOLEONIS.
After the modest ceremony, the coffin was transported to
the little Etruscan town of Tarquinia beside Civita Vecchia,
where the French Consul, Henry Beyle, now known to the
world as Stendhal, was just beginning to write his Me moires sur
Napoleon : " I feel an almost religious sentiment on writing the
opening phrase of the history of Napoleon. It concerns the
greatest man to appear in the world since Caesar." In this
exquisite little town of medieval skyscrapers and painted
Etruscan tombs, Letizia's body was placed in the church of the
Sisters of the Passion. The word " passion " in the sense of
suffering was a most appropriate one to associate with Letizia's
long life.
Born in the reign of Louis XV, she died the year before
Queen Victoria came to the throne of England, and throughout
this long period of cataclysmic changes, her personal life was
intimately connected with history's leading actors. As an adoles-
cent she fought in a local struggle for independence ; as a young
widow she brought her children safely through a national
revolution ; as a middle-aged woman she saw her favourite son
found an, empire in which three of her other sons were kings and
one daughter a queen ; as an infirm old woman she lived on
intimate terms with tragedy, with which she had always been
acquainted, yet thanks to her love for her children she was never
condemned to the limbo reserved for those who outlive their
hearts. Nor would she ever collaborate with disaster, and it is on
account of her capacity to love and to resist that even in her
ashes live her wonted fires.
292
Fear no more the heat o* th* sun,
Nor the furious winter's rages ;
Xhou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.
SHAKESPEARE i C*yt&be/me
I/espoir est une memoire qui desire,
BALZAC : Un Prince de la Bobeme
L.TIZIA WAS NOT TO remain long among the Etruscans in
Tarquinia. She and her family had been great travellers
when living, and dead, they continued to travel.
Four years after Letizia's death the King of France, Louis-
Philippe, obtained permission from the English Government to
bring Napoleon's body home from St. Helena and grant the
wish the Emperor had expressed in his will to be buried on the
banks of the Seine amid the French people he loved so well. On
the twenty-fifth anniversary of Napoleon's arrival at St. Helena,
Louis-Philippe's sailor son, the Prince de JoinviUe, reached
Jamestown aboard the 'belle Poule. When the coffin was opened
Napoleon was found to be perfectly preserved and looking as if
asleep. The English garrison escorted the coffin to the harbour,
accompanied by cannon fire and the music of the "Dead March"
from Saul, and the Belle Poule sailed for France during a magnifi-
cent sunset.
Kneeling crowds lined the banks of the Seine all the way
from Rouen to Paris, and units of the National Guard presented
arms as the catafalque sailed up the river. Four hundred veterans
of the Grand Army gathered at Neuilly and Courbevoie, wearing
their old uniforms and headed by Lieutenant-Colonel Loubers
of the Elba battalion. It was bitterly cold the night before the
catafalque reached Neuilly, but the veterans slept at the posts
they had taken up, rolled in their shabby old coats, the last
ghostly bivouac of the Grand Army. When the cortege formed
at dawn they refused to make way for the municipal authorities,
saying, " You forget that the Emperor always marched in the
midst of the Guard." In this way they escorted their Emperor to
Madame Letizia
Paris. The city was in a state of delirium. A million people had
gathered for the occasion; a statue of Napoleon had been
placed on the Arc de Triomphe ; balconies on the Champs-
Elysees had been rented at 3,000 francs each ; and the crowds
repeatedly sang " Vive mon grand Napoleon ! " and Monnief s
song :
Ami certain de la valeur,
Fidele amant de la victoire^
II eut pour marraine la gloire,
Et pour pere le champ d'honmur . . .
Victor Hugo was one of the 100,000 spectators who occupied
the six tribunes erected in front of Les Invalides. He said that
the sun emerged from behind the clouds just as the " mountain
of gold " of the catafalque appeared amidst " a roar as solemn as
thunder." The King, the royal family and the dignitaries of
state were waiting at Les Invalides. When the cortege arrived it
was preceded by a chamberlain who announced : " The
Emperor ! " Then the Prince de Joinville stepped towards his
father the King, and said, " Sire, I present the body of Napoleon/*
Louis-Philippe answered, " I receive it in the name of France/*
Napoleon was home.
A hundred years later the King of Rome's body was brought
from the Habsburg vaults of Vienna to lie beside his father. At
last Napoleon and the child for whom he had longed were re-
united under the golden dome of Les Invalides.
Eleven years after Napoleon's body was returned to France,
Lctfaia's grandson, Louis-Napoleon, recently elected Prince-
President of France, ordered Letizia's body to be taken back to
Corsica where she had bequeathed her heart. She was escorted
from Tarquink with all the pomp denied her when she had died.
The body of Cardinal Fesch was also sent back to Corsica at that
time.
When the Second World War broke out, Letkia's great-great-
grandson, Louis, Prince Napoleon, the present head of the house,
who had been raised in exile in Belgium, volunteered for the
French Army, but was refused. Nor would the British Navy
296
accept him. He joined the Foreign Legion and served in Africa,
but was demobilised after the 1940 armistice and, since he was
not allowed to live in France, went to Switzerland. Two years
later he entered France secretly, intending to join the Free French
Forces in Algeria, He was captured by a German patrol and
interned, first at the fort of Ha, then at the prison of Fresnes.
Freed the following year (perhaps because the Germans still had
fatuous hopes of utilising him, perhaps through the inter-
vention of his cousin, the King of Italy), he got in touch with the
Resistance and joined the clandestine Carol battalion which went
into action beside the Allied troops during the Normandy
landing. Among his fellow soldiers was his cousin, Joachim,
Prince Murat, killed in this campaign. Prince Napoleon was
badly wounded in August, but soon afterwards asked General de
Gaulle, then head of the provisional government, for permission
to remain in the French Army. With typical brevity and emotion,
the general said, " Prince Napoleon has himself abrogated the
law of exile." Equally typically, General de Gaulle refused to
allow the last male Bonaparte to take the dangerous post for
which he had volunteered. This time the Bonapartes were up
against a man with a sense of history as keen, romantic and
astringent as thek own. The law of exile was legally abrogated
in 1950 and Prince Napoleon' 
