disgust, giving out, for purposes of 'family honour', that his brother had
had to withdraw because of broken health and, once recovered, would be
'inspecting' units in Antwerp and Amsterdam. As King of Holland he
further enraged Napoleon by trying to evade implementation of the
Continental blockade of England, thus winning great popularity in the
Netherlands, by getting his brother to withdraw French garrisons and by
commuting death sentences on 'patriots'. But he continued neurotic,
melancholic and hypochondriacal, and his hatred of Hortense seemed to
increase daily. Despite the virtual breakdown of the marriage and the ill
omen of her first two sons (one dead, the other sickly and destined to die
young), Hortense gave birth to a third son in 1 8o8; this Louis Bonaparte
would become Louis-Napoleon or Napoleon III, though grave doubts
must be entertained as to whether Louis was really his father.
While Napoleon was always harsh in his dealings with Lucien and
Louis, he was absurdly indulgent towards Joseph and ]t!rome. In late
18os, while the Emperor was winning the great victory of Austerlitz,
Joseph spent his time lolling in Flanders and the Rhineland, giving lavish
dinner parties. When he was appointed King of Naples, he soon showed
himself to be the prey of absurd delusions. Because he was modestly
popular with the Neapolitan elite, he imagined himself to be a 'people's
king'. Unable to see that he relied totally on his brother's bayonets, he
tried to make himself more Neapolitan than the natives, ostentatiously
refused to levy a 30-million-franc war tax demanded by the Emperor, and
took a local mistress, Maria Giulia Colonna. Believing the grotesque lies
told him by his circle of sycophants, he imagined himself as a second
Philip II of Spain and toiled long hours over state papers.
Not even the fr ightful events of 18o6 served to shake Joseph
permanently out of cloud-cuckoo-land. In July that year a British
expedition landed in Calabria and defeated a larger French force at Maida
in a battle sometimes claimed as a classic of line versus column. Although
the British soon withdrew to Sicily, southern Italy exploded in guerrilla
warfare whose ferocity shocked good King Joseph. In panic he wrote to
his brother for reinforcements. French troops suppressed the rising
ruthlessly and it was contained by February 1807, but at the cost of
forced loans and the sale of crown lands; moreover, the nobility's feudal
privileges were abolished and martial law was imposed on Naples. The
feckless Joseph stayed on in his capital and allowed the so,ooo-strong
French army of occupation a free hand, while still imagining himself to
be the most popular monarch in Neapolitan history.
Jerome cut an even more absurd figure as King of Westphalia- that
artificial creation carved fr om Hesse, Brunswick, Nassau, Hanover and
marcin
(Marcin)
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