On their wedding night, while they were consummating the marriage, Josephine’s pug dog Fortune, fearing that his mistress was being attacked, bit Napoleon on the leg. The dog and his insatiable mistress were all too much for Napoleon. After the necessary deed had been done, he refused further enticement and retreated to his books of strategy and tactics. After thirty-six hours, he cut the honeymoon short and went to take up his posting in Italy. It was definitely a case of “Not tonight, Josephine”.
While Napoleon threw himself into war, the voracious Josephine amused herself with a score of generous lovers. Among them was a handsome young cavalry officer, Lieutenant Hippolyte Charles. He was tall, dashing and handsome, and she immediately fell head-over-heels in love with him.
But Napoleon was missing his darling Josephine and summoned her to Milan.
“Come and join me as soon as you can,” he wrote, “so that at least before we die we can say we were happy for a few days.”
He assured her that “never was a woman loved with more devotion, more fire or more tenderness. Never has a woman been in such complete mastery of another’s heart.”
She was busy with Charles and did not respond. When he returned one day to find that, yet again, she had not arrived “sorrow crushed my soul”, he wrote. He begged her to write to him and told her: “I love you with a love beyond the limits of imagination, that every minute of my life is consecrated to you, that never an hour passes without my thinking of you, that I have never thought of another woman.”
Josephine eventually arrived, but was bored. Napoleon was occupied with the siege of Mantua at the time and she wrote home, saying how much she missed her other lovers. Napoleon, on the other hand, could hardly concentrate on the battle for kissing, teasing, fondling and caressing her “beautiful body”, even in front of a room full of people.
He did not mind going even further. The French diplomat, Miot de Melito, wrote an account of a carriage ride around Lake Maggiore. He and General Berthier sat in a state of shock, he said, while on the seat opposite, Napoleon took “conjugal liberties” with his wife. The visit made him the happiest man in the world.
“A few days ago, I thought I loved you,” he wrote afterwards, “but now since I have seen you again I love you a thousand times more. Everyday since I met you I have loved you more. Thousands of kisses — even one for Fortune, wicked beast that he is.”
This was precious little comfort for Josephine.
“My husband does not love me,” she wrote. “He worships me. I think he will go mad.”
When Napoleon and his army advanced, he wrote to her begging her to come to Brescia where “the tenderest of lovers awaits you”. She went immediately, but only because her lover, Lieutenant Charles was now attached to Napoleon’s command.
When the campaign turned disastrously against the French, Josephine, back in Milan, feared for the lives of her husband and her lover. Things may have been going badly because, instead of concentrating on the battle, Napoleon was taking the time to write long, passionate love letters to Josephine once or twice a day. There was just one thing on his mind.
“A kiss upon your heart, another a little lower, another lower still, far lower!” he wrote. On another occasion, he wrote: “I kiss your breasts, and lower down, much lower down.” It is hard to strike out decisively against the enemy when all you can think of is oral sex.
Despite the passion of his letters, Josephine rarely wrote back. When she did, she would address him as “vous” rather than the familiar “tu”. However, in her letters to Lieutenant Charles, she expresses an ardour that matches anything Napoleon came up with.
Josephine was happy to share her husband’s intimate thoughts with others. One friend she showed his letters to noted:
They were extraordinary letters; the handwriting almost indecipherable, the spelling shaky, the style bizarre and confused, but marked by a tone so impassioned, by emotions so turbulent, by expressions so vibrant and at the same time so poetic, by a love so apart from all other loves that no woman in the world could fail to take pride in having been their inspiration. Besides, what a position for a woman to find herself in — being the motivating force behind the triumphal march of an entire army.
Napoleon finally turned the tide at Rivoli; and his passion for her did seem to spur him on.
“My every action is designed with the sole purpose of reuniting with you,” he wrote. “I am driving myself to death to reach you again.”
Two days after the battle, he wrote to her in relief:
I am going to bed with my heart full of your adorable image. I cannot wait to give you proof of my ardent love. I-low happy I would be if I could assist at your undressing the little firm white breasts, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf a la Creole. You know that I never forget the little visits to, you know, the little black forest. I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the moment I will be in it. To live with Josephine is to live in the Elysian fields. Kisses on your mouth, your eyes, your breast, everywhere, everywhere.
Six days later he was back in Milan. He ran up the staircase of the Serbelloni Palace to find her bedroom empty. She was in Genoa with Lieutenant Charles. For nine days he waited for her, writing her tortured, passionate, pitiful letters:
I left everything to see you, to hold you in my arms. The pain I feel is incalculable. I don’t want you to change any plans for parties, or to be interested in the happiness of a man who lives only for you. I am not worth it. When I beg you to equal a love like mine, I am wrong. Why should I expect lace to weigh as much as gold? May the fates concentrate in me all sorrows and all grief, but give Josephine only happy days. When I am sure that she can no longer love me, I will be silent and content only to be useful to her.
After he sealed the envelope, he re-opened it and added desperately: “Oh Josephine, Josephine!”
Napoleon still did not understand his wife’s depth of feeling for Lieutenant Charles.
Although he had heard that they spent a lot of time together, he considered Charles a fop — hardly a rival for a victorious general like himself. Back in Paris, his brother and sister told Napoleon that Josephine was using her influence to secure lucrative army contracts for her lover.
When Napoleon confronted Josephine, she burst into tears and denied everything. If he wanted a divorce, he should just say so, she said. Napoleon was all too eager to believe his wife innocent. He even believed her when she said that she would break all communication with Charles. But directly after the confrontation, she wrote to Charles, saying: “No matter how they torment me, they will never separate me from my Hippolyte. My last sigh will be for him. Goodbye my Hippolyte, a thousand kisses as fiery as my heart, and as loving.”
A few days later they were back together again in a secret assignation because “only you can restore me to happiness. Tell me that you love me, that you love me alone. That will make me the happiest of women. I am yours, all yours.”
The two lovers were separated when Napoleon took Josephine to Toulon, where he was embarking his army for Egypt. Before leaving, Napoleon summoned General Dumas to his bedroom where Napoleon and Josephine were lying naked under a sheet. Once they had conquered Egypt, Napoleon said, they would send for their wives and do their utmost to impregnate them with sons. Dumas would stand godfather to the young Bonaparte.
During his Egyptian campaign in 1798, Napoleon was again told of Josephine’s unfaithfulness — and that he was the laughing-stock of Paris. To get his own back, he got his secretary to round up all the women he could find, but they were all too fat and ugly for his tastes.