Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte by Kate Williams Page A

beaten everybody—Napoleon’s spiteful family, the politicians who whispered against her, and all the actresses and duchesses who had tried to usurp her. They would all have to watch her be crowned.
    A T TEN A.M. on December 2, the imperial coach set out from the Tuileries Palace for Notre-Dame. It was a giant concoction of gleaming gilt, drawn by eight splendid white horses and topped with a magnificent crown borne by four sculpted eagles. Napoleon and Josephine sat resplendent in their sumptuous coronation robes, just visible through the long glass windows. Crowds lined their route, along pavements that seemed to have been sprinkled in gold.
    Josephine had never looked more beautiful. She wore a long white satin gown heavily embroidered in gold, and the shining ringlets of her hair were arranged around a fabulous diadem of leaves made from a thousand diamonds and adorned with pearls. Her necklace and earrings were sapphires and emeralds surrounded by cut diamonds, and on her finger she wore a ruby—the symbol of joy and “so perfect a personification of elegance and majesty.”
    At Notre-Dame, Napoleon received his crown from the pope. He placed it on his head and then waited as Josephine advanced toward him. She knelt before him and clasped her hands, as if praying to him. Then Napoleon moved toward her and placed the crown on her head, gently, so as not to disturb her priceless diadem.
    Josephine—impoverished Creole, widow, semi-courtesan, and mistress—was now empress of all France. She had won.
    Or so she thought.
    M ARIE -J OSÈPHE -R OSE DE T ASCHER de La Pagerie grew up a carefree girl on Martinique, became a kept mistress in Paris, and ended as the most powerful woman in France. She was no great beauty, and she was six years older than her husband, but one twitch of her skirt could enthrall the man who terrorized Europe. She became the perfect consort,skilled at pleasing the crowds and reading Napoleon’s mood all the while. She was soft power to his hard power: She excelled where he could not, as a master of patronage, diplomacy, and etiquette. As a heroine of the Terror and a former aristocrat, she legitimized him in the eyes of the people as a defender of the Republic, and her kindness and gentle manner made people forget his brutality and rudeness.
    She pretended that she had no desire for power. Feigning meekness, she would say she was “not born for such grandeur.” But really, she wished for ascendancy over all those who once snubbed her.
    Josephine’s proofs of her victories were her incredible possessions: her extravagant wardrobe, her artworks, and her jewelry box spilling more diamonds than Marie Antoinette’s once had. Her home, Malmaison, was a work of art. Complete with Swiss alpine chalet and greenhouse, her gardens had hundreds of varieties of flowers never grown in France. The house was furnished with priceless paintings and statues Napoleon had stolen for her from all over the world. Josephine was one of the most powerful and energetic art collectors in history. She was a second Catherine the Great, using art to shore up her rule and confer upon herself the trappings of power. A mistress, a courtesan, a revolutionary heroine, a collector, a patron, and an empress, she was, in the words of one of her friends, “an actor who could play all roles.” 1
    To win, Josephine would do anything—abandon her friends, undermine her enemies, and inform on her rivals. She would even sacrifice her daughter.

CHAPTER 3

    “Beneath All the Sluts in the World”
    On a fine August day in 1783, twenty-year-old Marie-Josèphe was sitting with her son and daughter in the drawing room of the summerhouse at Noisy-le-Grand. She was told that a visitor had arrived to see her. Into the room swept Laure de Longpré, returned from Martinique; thirteen years Marie-Josèphe’s senior, she was sophisticated and glamorous—and sleek with pleasure over her triumph. She handed Marie-Josèphe a letter from Alexandre.