Paris Letter/Lara Marlowe: The coronation of Emperor Napoleon I two hundred years ago tomorrow was grandiose, but it was preceded by a sleepless night, brought on by a marital crisis.
Alarmed at Napoleon's infidelities, Josephine devised a plan to bind him more closely to her. He had ordered Pope Pius VII to officiate at the coronation in Notre Dame. On the eve of the ceremony, she asked the Pope to hear her confession.
The imperial couple had lived in sin since marrying in a civil ceremony in 1796, Josephine revealed. To the fury of Napoleon, an atheist, Pius VII insisted they marry that night before God.
Josephine de Beauharnais was the widow of a guillotined aristocrat and mother of two, six years older than Napoleon and far more experienced. During his Italian campaign, his happiest period, Napoleon wrote to her: "At the head of the troops, visiting encampments, my adorable Josephine is alone in my heart, fills my spirit, absorbs my thoughts." The letter is on display at Chaumet jewellers on the Place Vendôme, in an exhibition entitled "Napoleon in Love". Visitors can also see the ring made from a cannon ball that killed Napoleon's horse at the battle of Dresden. He gave it to his Polish mistress Marie Waleska.
In these uncertain times, analysts note, it is natural for France to hark back to its last period of military greatness. The bicentennial of Napoleon's coronation has sparked a new bout of Napoleon mania. There are four exhibitions in Paris alone, and others at Versailles, Fontainebleau, Compiègne and the small château at Malmaison which Josephine retired to when he divorced her (see www.napoleon.org).
Some 50 new books have been added to the estimated 80,000 tomes on the world's most famous Frenchman.
Drouot-Richelieu will auction the draft of the Emperor's will, dictated in captivity on Saint Helena, on December 7th. The 12-page manuscript is expected to fetch up to €80,000.
The Coronation Mass, composed by Pasaillo and Lesueur and played in Notre Dame on the day, will be performed tomorrow in the Church of the Madeleine. It speaks volumes about Napoleon's ambiguous legacy that the Archbishop of Paris did not respond to requests to play the Mass in Notre Dame. Nor has the French government associated itself with commemorations.
Was the emperor a mad butcher, or the founder of modern Europe? Napoleon sacrificed some 800,000 Frenchmen on battlefields from Spain to Russia and Palestine to Sweden. The war in Iraq seems piddling by comparison; he lost 400,000 soldiers in the two-month march on Moscow.
Historians argue that the December 2nd coronation was the tipping point, the moment when the hero who brought order in the wake of Revolution veered into megalomania. In the 20th century, the Shah of Iran and Emperor Bokassa would imitate him.
Houses were razed around Notre Dame to provide unimpeded access to the cortege of 25 carriages, 152 horses, six cavalry regiments and 80,000 men. Valets distributed hot drinks and feet warmers in the cold cathedral. The first guests were required to arrive at 6 a.m., five hours before Napoleon and Josephine in their glass coach.
Meanwhile, he was donning gold buttons and diamond buckles, silk stockings woven with gold thread. The robe Napoleon wore at Notre Dame was 22 metres long and weighed 40 kilos.
Only 10 years had passed since France beheaded her king. It seems one of the country's fundamental contradictions that the Republic so quickly embraced an Emperor who ravaged Europe in the name of democracy.
The neo-classical painter Jacques-Louis David was commissioned by Napoleon to record the scene. But the Emperor wanted glory, not facts. Josephine was 41; David portrayed her as a much younger woman. Napoleon had quarrelled with his Corsican family, who disapproved of Josephine, and his mother, "Madame Mère" boycotted the ceremony. David painted her watching from a throne-like chair.
Napoleon famously seized the crown from the hands of the Pope and placed it on his own head, before crowning Josephine. But David thought the gesture aggressive, so he showed the more chivalrous moment of the crown poised above the Empress.
The 6 metre by 10 metre canvas hangs in the Louvre, where it is the second most visited painting, after the Mona Lisa.
Many French commentators saw parallels to Napoleon's coronation in the lavish enthronement of Nicolas Sarkozy as president of France's largest political party, the UMP, on Sunday. Le Canard Enchâiné showed Emperor Sarko placing a crown on the head of his ambitious wife, Cecilia.
Two hundreds years apart, the two Frenchmen share more than their short stature. Both were bullied by brothers during unhappy childhoods. Sarkozy often uses the words "strength" and "energy," like Napoleon before him. "Work is my element. I was born and shaped by work," Napoleon wrote.
It could have been a line from Sarkozy's speech.