interlocking cabals of intriguers at this juncture sometimes defy
credibility. Caroline had numerous affairs with men of power and
influence, culminating in a torrid romance with General Junot in
r8o6-o7; her motive was to secure Junot's adherence (he was governor of
Paris) in the event of a coup in which she planned to replace her brother
with her husband. Junot was so sexually inflamed by Caroline that he
wanted to remove Murat by challenging him to a duel, but Napoleon
forbade it. When the affair ended, a broken-hearted Junot referred to
Caroline as a new Messalina.
Murat, habitually unfaithful himself, took a detached view of his wife's
adultery with Junot, for he knew her emotions were not fu lly engaged.
Her next affair, however, was a very different matter, which made him
angry and jealous. In the Austrian ambassador Metternich Talleyrand
encountered a fellow spirit but a man of even more voracious sexual
appetites. Metternich seduced Caroline with ease, and she very soon
became infatuated with him. Not content with having one conduit to the
very heart of Napoleon's decision-making, Metternich opened a second
front by seducing Laure Abrantes Junot, to Caroline's stupefaction and
consternation. Beside herself with anger, Caroline anonymously tipped
off the equally insanely jealous Junot at a masked ball. Junot taxed Laure
with her adultery and, receiving no satisfactory answer, stabbed her and
nearly killed her; incredibly the couple were later reconciled.
Metternich apart, the Murats condoned each other's infidelities, since
they were united by their vaulting ambition. In r8o7 they were in
particularly vengeful mood, brooding and resentful that Joachim had not
been made King of Poland or even the Grand Duke of Warsaw. Since
March r8o6 they had been Grand Duke and Duchess of Berg and Cleves,
enclaves on the right bank of the Rhine. Having taken the oath of
sovereign in his capital at Dusseldorf, Murat was then made a knight of
the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece - one of the ancien regime's
highest distinctions - but this was not good enough for the Murats.
Lacking a kingdom, they had to yield precedence to Camillo and Pauline
Borghese.
Perennially fe arful of Caroline Murat's mischief, Josephine tried to
secure her position with Napoleon through her daughter Hortense.
Napoleon returned to find Hortense still grieving over the death of
Napoleon-Charles. Irritated, he asked if there was anything he could do
to lift the pall of gloom, and the opportunistic Hortense suggested that he
adopt her second son Napoleon-Louis as his heir apparent. The Emperor
replied that to do that would be to confirm the scurrilous rumours that
the dead Napoleon-Charles was really his son; credibility therefore stood
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