married at all. The mayor was not present, possibly because of the
wedding's extreme lateness, and the ceremony was conducted by his
assistant, who had no legal authority to do so. Moreover, as a minor Le
Marois could not legally be a witness. To cap all, Josephine had
continued her affair with Barras right up to the eve of her wedding,
showing the shape of things to co me. The honeymoon itself was scarcely
auspicious. First, Josephine's dog Fortune, whom she insisted on having
in bed with her, bit Napoleon - whether or not in flagrante is not
recorded. Napoleon turned in his usual perfunctory love-making
performance- said to be so rapid it came close to being ejaculatio praecox.
Josephine, frustrated by this 'expeditious' approach to intercourse, took
to telling her close friends that Bonaparte was bon a rien.
A week earlier, Barras's 'wedding present' had been made official:
Napoleon's nomination as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy.
The background to this was Napoleon's abiding obsession that the key to
victory over Austria lay in Italy. While Commander of the Army of the
Interior, he continued to bombard the Directory with criticisms of the
conduct of the war on the Italian front. Increasingly, an undeclared
struggle for power took place between Napoleon in Paris and General
Scherer in Nice. Scherer, more and more irritated at Napoleon's sniping,
complained to the Directory that its boy wonder's plans were chimerical
and quixotic. After getting his way a couple of times by threatening to
resign unless the Directory backed him, Scherer finally overplayed his
hand, and the Directory accepted his resignation, effective 2 March 1796.
But when Napoleon was appointed in his stead, the Parisian press reacted
hostilely, alleging that Barras had rewarded one of his favourites because
he feared generals of real talent: Hoche, Moreau, Marceau and Pichegru
were mentioned in this category.
Once he had decided to marry Josephine, Napoleon's first task was to
get out of his engagement with Desiree. As soon as the thought of
marriage entered his mind, he started distancing himself from Desiree.
The ending of a letter to Joseph in November is eloquent: he merely sent
his regards to Desiree, no longer referring to her as 'Eugenie'. Once his
mind was definitely made up, in January 1796, he informed Desiree that
unless she got the consent of her family immediately, they must end their
engagement. This was Machiavellian, for he knew perfectly well that
Madame Clary opposed the match on grounds of her daughter's youth
and would withhold her consent while she was still a minor. The next
Desiree knew was the announcement that her beloved was married.
There is no need to doubt the sincerity of the heartbroken letter she sent
Napoleon:
marcin
(Marcin)
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