During this honeymoon period Josephine put him in the picture about
his old love Desiree Clary. Napoleon had earmarked her as the wife of
General Duphot, but he was assassinated in Rome late in 1797, thus
triggering French occupation of the eternal city. On 17 August 1798 she
married Bernadotte, apparently more for a desire to be married than
because of any overpowering coup de foudre for the Gascon. The marriage
was a scheme by the Bonapartist clan to neutralize or co-opt a dangerous
political rival. Joseph, Lucien and their wives had attended the wedding
ceremony and Desiree now regularly passed on to her sister Julie
Ooseph's wife) full intelligence on the Bernadotte household: who visited,
what was discussed, what was the attitude to Napoleon. Josephine had
apparently done her best to conciliate Desiree, but Desiree strongly
disliked her and used to mimic her mercilessly to Julie, the only member
of the Bonaparte clan to have a soft spot for Napoleon's wife.
The dynamics of the extended Bonaparte family were becoming
increasingly complex. The constant was the hatred felt for Josephine by
all female members of Napoleon's family - Letizia, Pauline and,
especially, Elisa. Desiree's distaste is more easily explained as simple
jealousy. There is even evidence that Desiree was still besotted with
Napoleon and dreamed of displacing Josephine and getting him back.
When she became a mother in 1799 she asked Napoleon to be godfather.
The subtext was clear: she could bear children while Josephine could not.
Napoleon asked that the boy be called Oscar after Ossian, the hero of his
beloved Macpherson epic, and Desiree duly obliged. Desiree was an
important transmission belt between the ultra-Jacobin circle of Berna
dotte and friends and the Bonapartes. She supported Napoleon's
ambitions even to the point of spying on her own husband; Bernadotte,
besotted with her, turned a blind eye. But she was the focus of sexual
jealousy, with Napoleon resentful that an enemy like Bernadotte was
married to 'his' Eugenie, and Bernadotte fuming that Napoleon had had
his wife's virginity.
Napoleon had a talent for making mortal enemies, and no enemy was
more inveterate than Jean Bernadotte. Tall, slight, with thick black hair, a
colourless face and a huge hook nose, Bernadotte was reputed to have
Moorish blood but, like many of Napoleon's followers, was in fact a
Gascon. Energetic, ruthless, mendacious and treacherous, Bernadotte
professed Jacobinism and had received his political 'education' in the
sergeant's mess. Unlike his fellow Gascon Murat, who continued to speak
with a thick country brogue, Bernadotte had polished up his accent and
gone to some pains to conceal his rude origins. Bernadotte was actually an
egomaniac of the first order, whose political beliefs were always a mask
marcin
(Marcin)
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