flattered her by suggesting she go to Rome to see Cardinal Pesch and be
presented to the Pope, but his real motive was to get rid of her.
Napoleon scarcely fared any better with his three sisters. Caroline,
whom Talleyrand described as having 'the head of Cromwell on the body
of a pretty woman', acted treacherously towards Napoleon, to whom she
owed everything, and schemed and intrigued constantly to further her
own ambitions and those of her husband Murat. As a reward for his
sterling performance in the Marengo campaign Napoleon at the end of
r8oo appointed Murat head of the elite Army of Observation- a kind of
Praetorian guard - deliberately snubbing Bernadotte, Joseph's protege
and candidate for the post.
Bernadotte, incidentally, came close to forfeiting Napoleon's favour at
this time. His farewell address to the Army of the West in r 802 contained
coded criticisms of the First Consul, and he continued plotting with
other discontented Jacobins. Exasperated, Napoleon threatened to have
him shot if he did not mend his ways, but once again the tears of Julie
and Desiree Clary saved the treacherous Gascon's skin. Appointed
ambassador to the United States in r8o3 he followed in the Lucien
tradition of envoys by returning, unauthorized, to Paris when the
Louisiana purchase was agreed. This led to another year in disgrace until,
in r8o4, he was made Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Hanover. In
Germany he settled in to carve himself a share of the peculations of the
corrupt intendant Michaux.
Meanwhile Murat's lust for money soon saw him Commander-in
Chief in Italy, looting in the grand tradition. He and Caroline were united
by vaulting political ambitions and jealousy of Napoleon but in Milan,
where they lived like royalty, they were habitually unfaithful to each
other, Caroline discreetly, Murat less so. The driving force with Caroline
was always power, not sex. The same was true of the cynical Elisa, the
ugly sister of the family, who had been forced to marry an obscure
Corsican officer, Felix Bacchiocchi, for lack of more impressive suitors.
Madame de Remusat scathingly wrote of her: 'Those things we call arms
and legs looked as though they had been haphazardly stuck on to her
body ... a most disagreeable ensemble.' Elisa always sided with Lucien
in the family feuds, and she and Bacchiocchi went with him on his
money-making exile to the embassy in Madrid in r8oo--or. The family
bluestocking, she thereafter ran a salon at her house in the rue Maurepas,
where the painters David and Gros were frequent visitors. She
intervened with Napoleon on behalf of her friend Chateaubriand, staged
theatricals, and ran a circle for literary women. The henpecked
Bacciocchi was given a job as commander of a garrison town and
marcin
(Marcin)
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