Josephine about her behaviour, Stephanie reluctantly accepted the
dynastic marriage Napoleon had arranged for her with Charles Louis,
Prince of Baden, but at first refused to consummate the union, vainly
hoping that Napoleon would come to her. Fighting his own libidinous
instincts, Napoleon reluctantly confided to Stephanie that she could hope
for nothing from him and should therefore be a proper wife to the Prince
of Baden. To sweeten the pill he gave her the territory of Breisgau as a
benefice, provided a necklace costing one and a half million francs for her
dowry and paid an exorbitant price fo r her trousseau. There is some
evidence that for Napoleon Eleanore Denuelle was simply a fantasy
surrogate for the unattainable Stephanie.
Since Charles Louis was the brother of the Czarina, by this marriage of
his 'daughter' Napoleon had cemented his ties with the dynasties of the
ancien regime. But the alliance caused uproar in the Bonaparte family,
with Caroline and Madame Mere especially frothing at the mouth; to
placate them Napoleon made another huge grant of money. In some ways
even more offence was given the Bonapartes by Eugene de Beauharnais's
marriage to the daughter of the King of Bavaria. According to a story told
by Napoleon to Gourgaud on St Helena, the Bavarian monarch
considered his daughter Augusta too pretty to be bartered away for
dynastic convenience and to prove his point brought her, veiled, to a
private conference with the French Emperor. When the king lifted the
veil to reveal his daughter's charms, Napoleon became flustered and
embarrassed, which the king read as coup de foudre. When both parties
had recovered from their misreadings, Napoleon introduced Augusta to
Eugene, who was a handsome and intelligent young man. Augusta took to
him immediately and told her father. she was keen on the idea of the
marriage, which was celebrated on 14 January r 8o6.
Given the general loose morality at Napoleon's court - a tone he set
himself and which was so much at odds with the official fa ce presented to
the world - it was not surprising that the imperial court quickly became a
subject fo r ridicule in European capitals. German aristocrats who
despised 'the Corsican' as an upstart, sniggered as they told stories of
masked balls where the Emperor was supposedly incognito but instantly
recognizable from his distinctive gestures and body language. A court
where money-grubbers like Soult and Massena rubbed shoulders with
masters of duplicity like Fouche and Talleyrand, where malcontents like
Bernadotte could be seen cheek-by-jowl with nymphomaniacs like
Pauline Borghese, and where the Emperor himself alternated between
lust and insult in his relation with the women, was never going to be the
headquarters of a p hilosopher-king. The entire imperial style, whether in
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