Ambition and Desire: The Dangerous Life of Josephine Bonaparte (10 page)

The day after she arrived, Marie-Josèphe saw her husband in the recreation area. He had become rapturously devoted to one of Marie-Josèphe’s cellmates, Delphine de Custine, the blond widow of a general, whom he called the “queen of roses.” But still he was devastated—if not surprised—to see his wife in prison, and concerned that his children had been left unprotected.

Like many of the women, Marie-Josèphe cut her hair short while in prison to avoid having the executioner cut her hair right before death. Short hair was also more practical in the lice-ridden cells where there was little chance to wash. Within a week of arriving at the prison, Marie-Josèphe’s health and spirits were low. She was deeply distressed every time she saw an acquaintance hauled off by the tribunal. Her only succor
was the comfort of her friends. As the weeks wore on, some prisoners sat huddled alone, afraid of conversing in case they were accused and guillotined for conspiracy. Marie-Josèphe always tried to keep talking. It stopped at least some of the pain. The beautiful and daring Grace Elliott, former mistress of the Duc d’Orléans, decided Marie-Josèphe was “one of the most accomplished and one of the most amiable women I have ever met.”
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She thought Marie-Josèphe had been on the side of the revolutionaries and had now changed her mind—which was probably what most people believed of the estranged wife of Alexandre.

Marie-Josèphe also befriended the glamorous twenty-year-old Thérésa Cabarrus, the mistress of Jean-Lambert Tallien. Thérésa and Jean-Lambert had met when he was sent to extend the Terror into Bordeaux. She returned to Paris with him and was promptly imprisoned. Thérésa, in contrast to the other unhappy prisoners, was determined to free herself and see the honor of France restored.

In Les Carmes, the moral strictures of the outside world were forgotten. With no idea how much longer they would live, people seized love where they could. It was easy enough to bribe one’s way out of a cell, steal through the darkness, and creep onto the pallet of another. Everybody wanted to forget their suffering, but the women had another motive: If a female prisoner fell pregnant, her name was removed from the list of those to be guillotined, and she would be allowed out of prison briefly to give birth.

Marie-Josèphe fell in love with the handsome young General Lazare Hoche, somewhat her junior at twenty-seven, charismatic and commanding, with a curly mop of black hair. Imprisoned after his enemies in the army denounced him, he was a good catch. As a valued prisoner, he had his own cell, where he ate excellent food and drank fine wines. He had married a pretty sixteen-year-old, Adelaide Dechaux, just over a week before he was imprisoned. Though he was in love with her, he could not resist the febrile atmosphere of the prison. Marie-Josèphe soon seduced him into an intense affair. She was able to spend all her free time with Hoche and deploy her many weapons: her alluring way of speaking, her soft hands, her flirtatious conversation. Night after night, she crept to his cell. But after twenty-six days, he was transferred to the Conciergerie for interview and trial.

With Hoche seemingly on the way to the guillotine, Marie-Josèphe felt hopeless. Certain she would never escape, she constantly craved her children. They had hit upon the clever idea of sending messages via their mother’s cross but intelligent pug, Fortuné. He dashed under the prison gate, negotiated the rats, and found his mistress, who took the messages from under his collar. The letters, as Marie-Josèphe said, “did me much good.”
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The siblings had even sent a heartrending letter to the tribunal, begging for the release of their parents, but it was merely placed in a file and forgotten.

One day a woman bearing a note from Marie-Josèphe came to Mademoiselle de Lannoy, asking that the children be given to her for a few hours. She then hurried them to the prison and they stood in a courtyard. A window opened, and they saw their mother and father. Hortense cried out in happiness, which alerted a sentry, and the woman rushed the children away.

On June 22, a new law was passed, denying any of the accused either a defense or the right to cross-examination. There would be no need for solid evidence. With this, the worst stage of the Terror was unleashed. Men and women, rich and poor, were tried in groups of fifty and speedily dispatched.

On July 21, Alexandre was called to the Conciergerie for his trial. As he told his wife, a group of prisoners had been interrogated and had named him as a traitor. “I am the victim of several villainous calumnies brought against me by several aristocrats, so-called patriots.” He felt keenly the injustice of being judged a “bad citizen.” Before leaving the prison, he sent Marie-Josèphe a lock of his hair to keep for the children and wrote her a touching letter, aware as he scratched out every word that his own death made hers inevitable.

I have no hope of seeing you again, my friend, nor of embracing my dear children. I shall not tell you of my regrets: my tender affection for them and the brotherly attachment that binds me to you can leave you in no doubt as to the feelings with which I take leave of life … Farewell, my friend, comfort yourself with my children, console them by enlightening them, and above all teaching them that it is on account of virtue and civic duty that
they must efface the memory of my execution and recall my services to the nation and my claims to its gratitude. Farewell, you know those whom I love, be their comforter and by your care make me live longer in their breasts. Farewell, for the last time in my life, I press you and my dear children to my breast.
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Alexandre appeared in front of the Revolutionary Tribunal on July 23, with forty-eight others. All but two were declared guilty. The next day, he was taken to the guillotine, along with the prince of Salm. Alexandre’s head rolled into the basket as the crowds around the Place de la Nation cheered. Marie-Josèphe was a widow.

She collapsed when she heard the news and retired to her cell. Marie-Josèphe knew she would be next. “My children, your father died on the scaffold and your mother will die there too,” she wrote. She recalled life on Martinique and then launched into praise of Alexandre, who, “having made me the happiest wife, was to make me the most glorious and unfortunate mother. Oh my dear Alexandre! How brief and beautiful those moments we were together and how the days which drag on since death destroyed them seem heavy and long.”
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Her time was running out.

S
IX DAYS AFTER
Alexandre’s execution, the guard came in for Marie-Josèphe’s trestle bed. One of her cell mates, the Duchesse d’Aiguillon, demanded to know if she would receive a better bed. “No, no, she will not need one,” he replied with a terrible smile, “because they are going to come to take her to the Conciergerie, and from there to the guillotine.”
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The women burst into tears. Marie-Josèphe calmly, as the duchesse recalled, “told them that their pain was entirely irrational, that not only would I not die, but that I would be
Queen of France
.” The duchesse thought she had gone mad but humored her by asking if she had appointed her household. “ ‘Ah! It is true, I was not thinking about that. Well my dear, I shall appoint you lady of honor, I promise you.’ ” The women wept even harder.

That afternoon, when Marie-Josèphe took the duchesse to the window to console her, they saw a peasant woman making gestures at them,
clearly desperate for them to understand. Marie-Josèphe gazed at her without comprehension as the woman repeatedly picked up her skirts. “I called out to her:
Robe!
She made a sign to show that I was right; then she picked up a stone and put it in her skirts, which she showed us again, lifting up the stone with the other hand:
Pierre!
I called out to her again.” At this the woman made a movement as if cutting her throat and then began to dance.
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Marie-Josèphe stared:
Robe? Pierre.
Then she understood. Robespierre was dead. “You see,” she said to her cellmates, “I will be the
Queen of France.
” She was given back her bed and spent “the best night in the world.”
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O
N
J
ULY
26, Thérésa Cabarrus had sent Jean-Lambert Tallien a dagger and a letter condemning him for failing to rescue her. “I die in despair at having belonged to a coward like you,” she wrote. Whether due to the letter or to the fear that he would soon follow his mistress to prison, Tallien decided on action. The next day, Robespierre was in midflow, addressing the convention, when Tallien leaped up, waving the dagger and crying, “Down with the dictator!” It was a signal to his fellow plotters Paul de Barras and Louis Fréron to rise up behind him.

The deputies turned on Robespierre, and he fled to the Hôtel de Ville. Barras stormed the building and Robespierre was dragged away. He tried to shoot himself but succeeded only in shattering his jaw. He was left bleeding on a table in the Committee of Public Safety, then moved to the same cell that Marie Antoinette had occupied. Hundreds of Parisians followed his cart to the guillotine. Robespierre, always immaculately dressed, stood in front of a furious crowd, his jaw held together with bandages, his blue coat spattered in blood. The people cheered as he was executed.

The Jacobins were now the new enemies. Barras, Tallien, and Fréron were the heroes. Tallien became the president of the convention. The Terror was over. Through the incredible revolving door of eighteenth-century France, a new political system was in charge: Thermidor. Founded on the hope of equality, it has left little to history, conserved only as the name of a lobster recipe.

In Les Carmes a few days later, Marie-Josèphe was told that she would walk free. She was among the first to be chosen, thanks to the
personal intercession of Tallien. When she received the news, she fainted. She had lost her husband and many of her friends. She had been in prison for three and a half months, and her health was ruined.

Fortunately, she was not entirely alone. General Hoche had also managed to escape the guillotine, and he wished to resume their affair.

CHAPTER 5

“The Height of Good Manners to Be Ruined”

On August 6, 1794, with little more than the dress she stood up in, Marie-Josèphe emerged into a France that once again had changed forever. With Robespierre dead, people streamed into the streets, no longer afraid to speak to one another. They saw a city in ruins. Paris was derelict and neglected, rubbish piled high and weeds growing through the cracks in the roads. Animals ran wild and beggars huddled in corners. The grand houses had been entirely despoiled: The furniture and mirrors from the interiors, and even the lead from the roofs and glass from the windows, had been snatched and sold. Bands of robbers and pickpockets scoured the streets, and murder was par for the course.

Marie-Josèphe took an apartment on the rue de l’Université for herself and her children, sharing with another female friend, Madame de Krény (Madame Hosten was still in prison). She began borrowing to survive. All her possessions at the rue Saint-Dominique were sealed away and unavailable to her, seized as the property of the state. She needed gowns, jewelry, crockery, and supplies. The marquis and Edmée had survived the Terror but they had little to give her. She threw herself into the arms of General Hoche, who whiled away his time with her, giving her presents and money when he left.

Marie-Josèphe had tried hard to conserve her beauty in prison, but it had been a hopeless quest. She was slender and her skin was fine, but her hair had thinned, her teeth were ruined, and she was often racked with nervous illness. At thirty-one, she had to use every beauty aid she could find to ensure Hoche’s affections. Luckily, he was entranced by
her sensual arts and her bedroom tricks. He wrote to his child-wife, Adelaide, telling her that he was unavoidably detained in Paris.

“We are free,” cried one newspaper, “our thoughts, our intentions, will no longer be poisoned.”
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Yet though Robespierre was dead, the people could not forget the atmosphere of denunciation and suspicion, and it was impossible to feel at ease in conversation with friends, even at home. Parisians were grateful to Tallien and his allies, but they did not trust them.

The British were still blockading Martinique, but Marie-Josèphe managed to find someone traveling to New England who would take a letter for her. “You have without doubt heard about all the awful things that have befallen me,” she wrote to her mother. “I’ve been widowed for four months! My only consolations are my children and you, dear mother, for my support. My most cherished wish is that we will be reunited one day.”
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In the wastes of Paris, poverty-stricken and desperate, she found it hard to feel grateful for her survival. “My children now only have my support and I cling to life only to make them happy,” she wrote. As a postscript, she added, “Greetings to all the slaves on the plantation,” and sent a kiss to her wet nurse.
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