Tag: Napoleon

One of the most curious personalities in history to me is Napoleon I, who dealt an early fatal blow to the monarchy in France.

Given the Emperor’s push to get every thought on the page, he must have been obsessed with leaving his side of the story. His memoirs were recorded by Louis-Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne, who was Napoléon’s personal secretary for eleven years and, because they were recorded after he’d been defeated and was in exile, the tone of the narrative is quite serious. In the throes of early success, the newly minted general of the French army and mayor of Paris struck a different tone in the beginning of one of Napoleon’s earliest letters to Joséphine de Beauharnais.

It simply oozes sensuality: “Seven in the morning. I awaken full of you…the memory of yesterday’s intoxicating evening has left no rest to my senses…Sweet and incomparable Joséphine, I draw from your lips, from your heart, a flame which consumes me…A thousand kisses, but do not give me any for they burn my blood.” In her biography Napoléon & Joséphine: An Improbable Marriage, Evangeline Bruce writes, “From the start, General Bonaparte was impressed and intimidated by the air of quiet elegance of Joséphine’s house.” I love such details that intermingle history, literature and design; I write about how this happens quite often here on The Diary of an Improvateur.