He liked to strike people of both sexes, to slap them, pull their hair,
pinch their ears and tweak their noses. Slapping servants across the face
and shoulders with a riding crop was not unusual. He once seized
Marshal Berthier by the throat and hammered his head against a stone
wall; he also kicked minister Mole in the genitals for presenting an
unpalatable set of statistics. Court observers often reported fine ladies
reduced to tears by his physical antics, generals suffering indignities and
soldiers suffering nosebleeds. His sadistic impulses would if necessary be
directed against children and animals, especially those dear to Josephine:
at Malmaison he caused her great grief by shooting her pet swans and
other wild fowl and rooting up plants. When she protested on one
occasion that he ought not to shoot animals during the breeding season,
he said scathingly and publicly: 'It seems that everything is prolific at
Malmaison - except Madame.' That his aggression had a sexual basis is
clear from one of Bourrienne's stories. It appears that during the siege of
Toulon in 1793 a young wife approached General Bonaparte and asked
him to excuse her husband from duty, as she had a clear premonition of
his death. Napoleon refused but later told Madame Bourrienne laugh
ingly that the young wife's intuition was right: the husband was killed
when a bomb took off his genitals.
The cruel streak in Napoleon meant that although he had wit, and
could therefore laugh at people, he was totally without a real sense of
humour or the absurd - which enables one to laugh with people.
Cambaceres, the Second Consul and later Grand Chancellor, was well
known to be homosexual. One morning he excused himself for being late
at Council by saying he had been detained by a lady. To general laughter
Napoleon said: 'Next time you are detained by a lady, you must say, "Get
your hat and stick and leave, monsieur. The Council is waiting for me."'
An Italian woman once upstaged him in the wit department when she
avenged one of his verbal slights. She was among the company at a court
ball shortly afterwards when Napoleon decided to have a crack at the land
of his ancestors. 'Tutti gli Italiani danzano si male,' he announced ('All
Italians dance so badly'). The quickwitted woman replied: 'Non tutti, ma
buona parte' (a clever play on words, meaning either 'Not all but a g ood
part,' or 'Not all but Bonaparte does').
The magnetic charm Napoleon is said to have exercised on men
appears to have left women cold. Clearly for them power rather than
personal charisma was the aphrodisiac. And whereas Napoleon never
used cajolery on women fo r any purpose other than seduction, with men
he could be wheedling and insinuating. He possessed that most valuable
attribute of the true charmer: the ability to make the person being spoken
marcin
(Marcin)
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