Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Napoleon's Sex Life

Episode Date: November 21, 2023

Napoleon Bonaparte has been described in many way throughout history. Conquerer. Lover. Legend. Shrivelled Eel?Perhaps you haven't heard the last description before, but that's how a journalist described Napoleon's 'penis' when it went up for auction in 1977.Yes, you read that correctly, and it sold for $3000. Today Kate is Betwixt the Sheets with Dan Snow to talk all about the adventures of Napoleon's 'shrivelled eel'...from his first sexual experiences to his great love, Josephine.Ridley Scott's Napoleon is out in cinemas from November 22nd.This podcast was edited by Dougal Patmore and produced by Stuart Beckwith.The senior producers were Charlotte Long and Mariana Des Forges.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BETWIXTTHESHEETS1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Do you want even more shocking and scandalous history? Like why the ancient Greek statues had such small manhoods? Or what went on behind closed doors in the Georgian era? We'll sign up to History Hit, where you can see me discover the scandalous side of history, as well as hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week, covering everything from prehistoric Scotland to the Treaty of Versailles.

Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Paper Twixters, it is me, Kate Lister, you are you and we are here together, which is fabulous. I do love our time together. But before we can continue, you know what's coming. It's your fair do's warning. Here it is. This is an adult podcast, welcome by adults to other adults about adulty things, covering a range of adult subjects in an adulty way,

and you should be an adult too. Well, I certainly feel safer after that. I hope you do, too. On with the show. Why, Kate, you might be wondering. What are we doing in a New York auction house in 1977? Well, I am about to bid on a very important historical relic. Yep, here we go.

Lot number 38, Napoleon Bonaparte's penis. We didn't think that I'd be bidding on something of high standing, did you? pun very much intended, and it was certainly not of high standing in either life or death if the rumours are to be believed. When it started changing hands in the 20th century, Time magazine compared it to a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace, and another described it as a shrivelled eel. Yikes. There's no denying, though, that this dick and the man attached to it saw an awful lot of action on and off the battlefields. For $3,000, God damn it.

Well, I'm not sure they would have accepted Clana anyway. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing for fun. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, but beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Jerry.

Welcome back to Betwixtor Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister. Great figures from his. can often get lost in myth and ego, both of their own making. Historians, too, sometimes. And Napoleon is perhaps the poster boy of historical ego. But he's very much the man of the moment. In fact, I think there might be a film coming out starring Wacken Phoenix and directed by Ridley Scott.

Hmm, yes, I've heard a rumor. Actually, it's a bit more than a rumor. I've seen it, and it's really, really good. And if you can, do go and watch it on the big screen. So what better time than now to get beneath the military regalia and find out the truth about this man? Who were his great loves? How did he have time for pleasure amongst so much warmongering? Is there any truth to the aforementioned shriveled eel?

Does any of this matter, or maybe we just need to get a life? Well, today I am chatting to history hits a very own down-snow to explore all of these questions and more. I am ready to find out if you are. Hey Kate, welcome for the show. Hi, Dan. Thank you for inviting me on to the show. Good to see you. Now, this will not come as a surprise to you,

but I was a serious loser, bad hair, friendless teenager, a 14-year-old in particular. And so I feel I got some empathy for these struggling despots of history. What was Napoleon? Because Napoleon did not have an easy, tween age, early teenage life, right? I mean, he came good in the end.

Sure. But he conquered everything. He made up for it, right? But as a kid, he's from Corsica, we'd have had a strange accent. He was not, he was from a sort of a bit of a rough aristocratic background, but he would have been at school with loads of people that were much posh than him. What was that like? It was rough for him.

It was rough. He was quite awkward. He was quite clunky is sort of the only word that I could think of is when people... Very relatable. When people write about him, he's kind of scruffy, he's kind of awkward. isn't quite fit in, and it's not just the accent that makes him stand out and the fact that he does, it's not quite an impoverished background, but by the standards of the people he was running with, he was practically a peasant. That all made him stand out, but he was also, he wasn't great at talking to people. He wasn't, he wasn't blessed with like the gift of the gab and endless charm. Okay, I'm going to come to an expert here, the dating expert. Girls like the talking thing, don't they do? Right. So was he, so was he, so was he? Was he successful in his first romantic adventures? They also like the Imperial Conqueror thing.

Oh yeah, that's fine. It came... Post-house lists, he can pull anyone. What about up front? What about beginning? Right. He writes a lot in his diaries, so we have got the sources

about his earliest sexual encounters. And like many young men in France, Napoleon lost his virginity in a brothel. Huh. And he's a teenager at this point, is he? He's 18. He's 18 and running around Paris. Wow.

But what's interesting about it is he seems to have a real aversion to sex and sexuality. He's really uncomfortable around it, whereas his peers were just, you know, like, let's go, let's do it. You can't get them out of the brothel. He writes about it that he's really upset that he can't stay away from this debauchery is the word that he uses. He's quite serious-minded, isn't he? Very serious. He thinks he's a great world historical figure, even as a teenager. and therefore what the physicality, the muckiness of sex is kind of freaking him out.

He thinks mucky is a good word for it, but he's also desperately attracted to it. So the time he manages to lose his virginity, he picks up a sex worker on the street. And he writes about this in his diary like he's recording an experiment. It's the weirdest thing. And the way he talks to it, and this is from his own perspective, this is his best slant on it. You read it and you just think, you are a strange, strange duck, Napoleon. And so he goes up to this, first of all, he spots her and he thinks that she's more bashful than all of the others. So that appeals to him, right?

And then he says, he says that he's usually disgusted by them, that he's usually like so revolted to even look at him. He feels sick. But for some reason, this time he's going to go for it. So he goes over to him. His opening line is, don't you think you could be doing something better to earn your living? And he then proceeds to interrogate about where did you come from? How did you end up like this? Would you like to be doing something else?

And then he finishes it off with this weird phrasing of like, let's go back to my hotel so you can get your satisfaction or something. Treat yourself. Right. You lucky, lucky girl getting to have a go on this. And he was a virgin and he draws a kind of a discreet veil over it exactly what happens. But that's how he lost his virginity. Just going up to this girl on the street and going, you could be doing something better else with your time. Do you fancy a go on this, your lucky duck?

That is so interesting. It's weird, isn't it? I love it. It's weird. So the French Revolution has started. He's kind of knocking about. He's slightly unsure what's going on. But there are opportunities there?

There are opportunities sexually for him as well? There would have been for other people. There would have been... If he'd been more in a mind to actually indulge. But you get a sense from him that he's this really earnest young man. And he does have sex. He writes about it. It is a transaction.

He's paying for it. But it's very trans-exam. And I sort of get a sense from him, and I might be wrong on this, but a sense from him that he views sex as this kind of, this very weak distraction that only, that lesser men are concerned with. And he almost prides himself on being above that. He's not because he indulges, but he views it and people that enjoy sex as being weak and distractible. But you've literally written a book on that, which is why do we humans find sex so different? given that we all do it, we all a product of it, but we find it so difficult to rationalise, particularly if you see yourself as like an important rational being who's trying to change the world and a figure of the Enlightenment.

It's like, and yet this sex is something that he wants, but is totally embarrassed by. I think it comes from reading it in opposition. So you've got this opposition of emotion and sex being that, and ration and reason and philosophical thought. and they're often gendered as being its women that are emotional and seductive, and it's men that are sensible and have sensible thoughts. And that was very much in the mix in Enlightenment thinking.

And he was very much a product of Rousseau's philosophy, although Rousseau certainly didn't deny himself as sex when he wanted it. But I think he viewed himself as a creature of logic, reason and rationale, and he viewed sex as in opposition to that. It's really like almost a bit English. We think of French guys as being able uniquely to kind of combine these two things And we're all quite jealous of them How wonderful you can both be a philosopher and relax about sex

And yet he's kind of coming across a bit of a North European He does seem very uncomfortable with it There was an incident from when he was a teenage as well That he became aware of a friend that he had that was flamboyantly gay And was known to be gay And he punched him or he threatened to He was really really Think of him like that

But then he channeled all of it into They're conquering the world, didn't it? So maybe there's lessons for all of us here. I'm interested in the film really hangs around this relationship to Napoleon and Josephine, doesn't it? And right from the beginning, you get a sense that Josephine is sort of tolerating this kind of awkward, jumped up figure. Yeah, you do. And a lot of their history and the mystery that surrounds them is often packaged as that,

is that Napoleon was the one that was... like really invested, really intense, really over the top, like to the point where a restraining order might be required at some point. And that Josephine is framed as being much cooler to this. She was older than he was. She was 32 with two kids and he was he was 26. And it's often framed as like almost that Napoleon was the last chopper out of Saigon for her that she had to, that like there was nothing else on offer. And I never like that framing of it. But that's interesting, is it?

Because yes, she had been the lover of other senior revolutionary figures. And she kind of ended up with this Corsican because she was sort of falling from favour a little bit. I have heard that and I've read that. And I know why people say that. But I also think she had a lot going for her, you know. She was renowned as an absolute beauty. But more than that, she was charming and she was funny and she was intellectual. She was one of those people that just exudes charm.

And she absolutely captivated any room that she was in. I think that she could have found other opportunities. But you've also got to frame it with the fact that, well, she is a single mum with two kids. She's making her money, you know, by hustling, isn't she? It's useful to think of it, I think, in terms of being a courtesan. So she's older than him, she's narrow scratch, she's done a lot of living? She has, and her name wasn't Josephine. No, she's gotten down in history as Josephine, but Josephine was Napoleon's name for her.

A name was Maria and she went by Rose before she met Napoleon That was her name One of her middle names was Joseph Joseph so I think that he But he basically just went I now give you a new name Your name is now Josephine

That's extraordinary So I wonder if that was him trying to say Let's have a blank slate You've lived, you've loved, you've suffered I'd like you to be someone different now It's a hell of a flex, isn't it That you date somebody, you sleep with someone And then you go, I'm going to change your name

I'm gonna, your name is now, Steve. But it might have been that. I mean, that's quite, I'd never thought about it before as a way of drawing a line under everything that had gone before, that she has a new identity, she's a new person to him. Whatever it was, she didn't seem to fight it. And she's certainly gone down in history as Josephine. But that was his name for her.

How did they meet? They met at, after the French Revolution, it became weirdly fashionable for people who had survived it to get together. Again, like a post-traumatic stressing, they would have bowls and they would call survival. balls. And in the film, you see her with a hair cropped really short in the beginning. That was very fashionable amongst aristocratic women that had escaped the guillotine because obviously they'd cut all their hair off. Before they went to the guillotine, you see it with

the choker on as well, that was like a status symbol because it represented the blade, which is kind of ironic. Like you can still see them today, ruby chokers, like these cost millions and millions of francs symbolising the revolution of people that got executed for having millions millions of francs. But anyway, she was there holding court. She was the mistress of a very, very wealthy man and Napoleon was there too and he was absolutely entranced by us. And in the film, that moment is portrayed as a very awkward, supremely talented, sort of troubled genius coming in in his like uniform to this party where there's always sophisticated people hanging out and being cool. And they have this moment of chemistry.

I love that in the film where he just kind of goes, I've got an army or whatever was the he says, I'm really impressive. I'm really impressive. Maybe not in this exact context, but I am. And she just walks right up to him, don't she? And she says, you were staring at me. And he doesn't even realize that he was. We don't have any records of exactly what that exchange was.

But it's often framed as she needed him. She needed his money. She needed his power. She needed his influence. He needed her too because she was very well connected. And she knew people. And people liked her. He was very awkward.

And he wasn't, I mean, he was great at rallying his troops. He was great at military. tactics and love letters, phenomenal, but just meeting people, people walking around and just charisma. He wasn't great at that, but she was. So she had all these connections. She could introduce him to people. She could finesse him.

He needed her as well. And I think that he was just one of many, many men that fall for Josephine. Because her background was quite aristocratic. So before the revolution, she was part of France's ruling class. I mean, she has a tough revolution. She has a very tough revolution. So her husband, by all accounts, was a bit of a dick. And he was playing away and he wasn't very nice.

And he got guillotined in the revolution, which he didn't deserve even... Let's just clarify that. No one deserves an atrocity. Yeah, to be gillotined, although I imagine she probably wasn't crying all that hard about it. But she was one of many aristocrats that was rounded up and kept in jail just waiting. They didn't know if they were going to be executed. They didn't know when they were going to be executed. People would come in and just take them out of the jail.

day and then just and these conditions in these jails are horrendous it's just loads of people men women everyone piled in that they don't have enough food it's dirty it's crowded and she was in there for a long time her husband was guillotine she didn't know if she was going to be guillotined and one of the things that you read about a lot in these conditions now it wasn't just in french jails all across if you were pregnant you'd get a stay of execution it was called pleading your belly and that meant that in jails a lot of women would be trying to get pregnant That makes perfect sense to me. So there'd have been lots of sexual immorality.

There'd been lots of abuse. There's no human rights in a jail waiting to be guillotined. It would have just been horrific. And she lived through that. And I think a much more sympathetic portrait of Josephine. And maybe lots of people went through that is that this is a woman dealing with what we'd probably call post-traumatic stress disorder.

And coming out of prison, she's alive. But her status in society is now dependent on powerful men. Well, it is. So she's an aristocrat. So it's going to be very difficult for her to go and get a job working down the supermarket, for example. She doesn't have that option to her. She has got a little bit of money. She's relying on aristocratic friends, but really what she needs is a wealthy protector. That was just the way this system worked. I think that she could have had other options. Everyone was entranced by her. I think that she loved Napoleon a lot more than is often allowed. I really do. Or she saw something, she knew who was going places. Yes. She backed him. I think Josephine was an amazing hustler. That's what I think.

But I do think that she loved him. We often frame it as that she didn't love him as much because we don't have as many of her love letters to him surviving. What we've got is endless letters from Napoleon going, well, you write to me, you haven't written to me, blah, whew. It's really funny. He's like a petulant teenager. And we never get the letters back from her.

Well, speaking of those letters, we've got some right here. I'm going to read you one of Napoleon's love letters. Here we can. Or maybe a couple. So buckle up. December 1795, so early on, so he's not like an all-conquering hero, he's doing all right at this stage. Sweet and matchless Josephine, how strangely you work upon my heart. You start at midday. In three hours, I shall see you again till then a thousand kisses me, my dolce amore, but give me none back, for they set my blood on fire.

He's good, isn't he? It's good. I mean, it's a bit clockworky. I mean, what's going on pre-midday? He writes to her obsessively, you know, like all the time. He writes to her about how, He's thinking about her all the time, and then he hopes she's thinking about him. And, oh, I know it's been two hours since I wrote to your last, but now I'm going to write to you again. He just, he can't stop it. He is obsessed with this woman. He would have been a nightmare on what's that?

He would. He would. Okay, November 21st, 1796. So his career is progressing. A kiss on your heart and one much lower down. Much lower. I'm going to bed with my heart full of your adorable image. I cannot wait to give you proofs of my ardent love. How happy.

I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf a la Creole. You know that I will never forget the little visits, you know, the little black forest. I kiss it a thousand times and wait impatiently for the moment I will be in it to live within Josephine, it's to live in the Elysian fields, kisses on your mouth, your eyes, your breast, everywhere, everywhere. You're the expert. What do you make of that? Well, one of the points in the film that I think maybe did Napoleon a bit dirty, I think he was actually quite a good lover, you know. That implies he was a better lover than he's portrayed in the movie.

He was a giver, but mind you. Because he's a taker in the movie. He is, isn't he? And it's quite abrupt. It's abrupt. Yeah, it's functional sex in the movie. But in his letters, he writes a lot about kissing her down, down way below, and about kissing her little black forest.

And I mean, you have to remember These are letters, right? Like my inbox is full of texts of people going, I'm going to rock your all night, baby. And then it's like, well, that was over in five seconds. And now you're in an... Doesn't mean anything. I do know that. I do know that.

It's very relatable. Just because he's writing it doesn't mean... Josephine might have been there just going, well, that was a lot of promising for nothing. But if we're to believe his letters, he's very intimate. He wants... And he wants to give her head.

That's what's in... the letters. And would that have been like culturally normal at the time? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that we're often surprised by people in the past having the kind of sex that we have today, but why wouldn't they? I mean, I think what's unusual about him is that he writes about it so much in his letters. I mean, you know, it's not every single letter by a long shot, but the fact that he would even mention that, I think he's a giver, not a taker. He seems to be, like, absolutely devoted to this woman. And I think that, The film, I think maybe they did him down a bit there.

I think he was a bit more of a generous lover than he's portrayed there. But then we'll never know, will we? He might have just been bigging himself up. And famously, annoyingly, the one letter that everyone's heard of, which is when he tells her not to wash. You haven't been able to stand that one up, have you? I wish that was true because it's such a good line.

And I think it really gets to, like, just the visceral, fleshy realness of sex that I'll be in Paris in three days, don't wash or don't bathe or something that's attributed to him. I can't find that actually in one of his letters. I can find historians that write about it, but when you go through their sources, they've got another historian and another book,

and it might exist. And I've just not said, but I've never actually seen. Doesn't have the Kate Lister's Cillow approval. But he does write. I want to kiss you down, down, down below, and talk about kissing her little black forest. So just because he didn't say that,

doesn't mean that that's not something that he was interested in. And did he have a nickname for her vagina? He did. He did. Baram de Kepin. Right. Which is really, and it's really funny,

but it's also, it's quite, it's like a really sweet, intimate thing that shows a really playful part of him. Mind you, I don't know who Baron de Kepin was. No, there might be a whole story there.

It might not have been a nice playful thing at all. If anyone knows, please let us know. We'd love to hear your thoughts on Baron de Kepin. What is interesting, it would not be the first couple this has happened to, or I suspect the last. As soon as they get married, their relationship seems to get slightly more fraught, a bit less sexy. They get married in March 1796, and there's a letter here in which he says, I have your letter to the 16th and 21st. There are many days when you don't write.

What do you do then? I'm not jealous, but sometimes worried. Come soon, I warn you, if you delay, you will find me ill. Fatigue, and you're out. absence are too much. Your letters, the joy of my days, and my days of happiness are not many. Because he's busy fighting the Austrians in Italy. It's not having a happy time. But is that a sense that she's not as into him as he was into her? We've got a lot of letters from Napoleon to Josephine like that. He's really upset that she hasn't written to him. And it's a really interesting insight into this, a brilliant military tactician. Some people think of as a tyrant, but a leader. And then you've got these letters where he becomes very much like a child.

And he said, why haven't you written to me? Write to me, please write. And he gets increasingly angry with her. And that bit of, I'm not jealous. I'm just a bit worried. Yeah, honestly, not jealous. Not jealous. And later that year, he writes, I don't love you anymore.

On the contrary, I detest you. You're a vile, mean, beastly slut. You don't write to me at all. You don't love your husband. You know how happy your letters make him. And you don't write him six lines of nonsense. And then slightly later than that, he goes, soon I hope I'll be holding you in my arms. Then I will cover you with a million hot kisses burning like the equator.

She's all over the place, isn't he? It's all over the place. It's the Napoleonic equivalent of leaving a message on red, isn't it? And they're not getting badger. It is frustrating, but he gets up like that level of anger at her. But we'll never know if that was, was that playful? Was that like an in-joke? Or did he genuinely mean to call his wife a detestable slut?

Yeah. because she wouldn't write to him. And because he was actually worried about her having sex other people. And he was, well, he was perhaps right to have been. Well, see, so what's going on at her end? What do we think is happening? She had an affair with a lower level, well, much longer Napoleon because he was the top, but a lower level army guy called Ippolita Charles.

And it became public knowledge. Napoleon was very, very upset. And when she went to visit him, she traveled to see him. actually brought Ippolita with her, which is, that's an interesting move on her part, I think. But she was having affairs. It did hit the press. He knew about it. And he nearly divorced her as well.

That's right. And actually, that's portrayed in the movie, isn't it? Where he's in Egypt and he does hear news, I think from his brother, but he does hear news in Egypt that she is being unfaithful to him. Yeah. Again, though, was that culturally... It's France. It's France. It's France. They're rich. He's having affairs. He was having affairs too. He's having loads of affairs. He had 22 at least that we know about. And a fair few illegitimate children. But, you know, patriarchy. So she's the one that's held up and is castigated and he nearly divorces her. And she's literally throw herself at him and beg for him to take her back. And is it super embarrassing? I mean, is it public? Is it public? Yeah, it's public. No, it'd be embarrassing. It would for him too, not just for her.

But yeah, there was huge public interest in this because he's the leader of the country and what you can't even keep your wife under control You can't even satisfy your wife in the bedroom It's interesting in a way that he takes her back He really loves her Yeah He could have divorced her he could have chucked out His family didn't like her very much They didn't like her from the get go

That was the perfect opportunity to have divorced her, but he didn't Because he really, really did love her and I think she could have walked away from that as well And she didn't She went back to him. It wouldn't have been as easy, but she could have been paid off and quietly gone and lived in a house somewhere. We'll be back with Dan and Napoleon after the short break.

And then there's the issue of sons and heirs, right? Which gets dynastic and gets even more complicated, as you've often talked about when it comes to like the dynamics of sex in a dynastic culture because he becomes emperor in 1804 and he needs to start a dynasty. Yeah, and it becomes this huge, pressured thing.

Why aren't there any babies? We need a baby. Let's have a baby. And a baby boy got to have a baby. And she's in her late 30s or 40s by the stage? She was 32 when they met. She already had two kids. Yeah, she must be late 30s, early 40s by this point.

No babies. And there was a big thing about who is it that can't get pregnant. Who is it him? Is it her? His family were really angry about this and we're pushing for a divorce from Joseph. I mean, they were from the very beginning. And then he gets one of his lovers pregnant.

So then it becomes this, ha ha, it wasn't me, but I'm fertile. I'm just proven it. And in the film, they play on that a little bit, but that really did happen. Not quite like it did in the film, but it was used as a he's fertile, she's the problem, she's got to go. And you've written and made so many podcasts about this.

Like, sex and relationships are complicated enough, right? But then when you have to have a baby to ensure the continuity of a state, of a regime, then what does that? I mean, that adds a whole level to it, doesn't it? It becomes hideously transactional and about the law. And, like, people become more like farmyard animals. With animal husbandry, we're trying to breed them as opposed to any kind of romance. Because now the dynasty and France is at stake here.

I thought that was some great lines in the movie when he's like, It's not me, it's not you, it's France. Yes, it's French. Sadly, what a shame. I think they did it really well in the film. There's a kind of inevitability to it. And I guess there was in real life. There aren't going to be any babies here.

For whatever reason, they're just not going to be babies. So now what you do? And it's interesting, isn't it? Like different identities. She was a lover. She was a wife. Then she's an empress. And well, hang on, if you're an empress,

then you've got to be a baby machine. That's the rule. I mean, it's really ugly, but that's it. You've got to make the babies. And he stayed with her for so long, even though no babies would come in. and the pressure that he was under. And even when they signed the divorce and they separated

and he went off and married a 19-year-old, he was still in love with her. He was still besotted with her. And any heratory system is difficult. But a ritory system where you're the first, you've basically nicked the crown. Yeah. You're the first one.

Number two is quite important. Yeah. Otherwise, you're just a little busted flush, aren't you? Exactly. You've got to make those babies. I thought the movie really captures that kind of tempestuous nature. They have these massive fights. She says you're nothing without me.

And then you also see her kind of working rooms, don't you? And he's being awkward and sort of genius-like. And she's clearly a politician. So I think they would have been a team. They were a fantastic team, actually. And they did have a really turbulent relationship. Many people did. But this was a time of people didn't really marry for love.

They married for, especially if you were rich. They married for political reasons for alliances. But I think they really, really did love each other. They could have walked away from this several times over and they didn't. They had a really tempestuous relationship. And the film, I think the film is a really good job of capturing that, actually. That switch all the time between we have responsibilities to France, but we love each other. And then who's actually in charge?

He says to her that she's nothing without him. And then she says, you're nothing without me in a different scene. And it's this real tussle between them. And I think they nailed it. And what comes out of all of it is that these are two people that are just pretty crazy about one another. What's really interesting for me, you know, I've talked. about this before, but like how, because the nature of people writing history and the generations that follow, they're not interested in that story, are they? So it is very hard for us to find

source materials for this, right? Because you have every single boot on the Battle of Ausolitz is recorded about exactly where it was exactly every point of the day. But none of the kind of blocs in the mid-19th century that are writing the first draft of history care about her influence on him and vice of it, right? It's tough to get there. There's always been an interest in Josephine. She was very much the it girl of the day. She was a socialite. People were fascinated by a hold over him. But no, people haven't been as interested in the,

did he really like to go down on a question? And also what role she played in his regime? Yeah, right? Yeah. I mean, and she played an absolute blinder because he viewed her as the place he would go to to, I don't want to say calm down, but she was like this haven for him.

She made him feel happy. And in the world that he lived in, that was pretty rare, I would have thought. You know, if you've just been seen hundreds, thousands of guys having their legs blown off by cannons, perhaps a bit of downtime is quite valuable. Yeah, he's a busy guy. He's very busy. And he's mentally very busy. Because even in between the battles, he's like writing law codes and organizing charters.

For Napoleonic code. There was a lot of good stuff that came out in the Napoleonic Code, but it wasn't particularly friendly to women. And I think that maybe Josephine playing away influenced some. of that. He made, um, husbands could divorce their wives on grounds of adultery, not the other way round. It was perfectly right for a husband to murder his wife's lover, not the other way around. So he sort of, he obviously went right, I'm going to make it illegal for you to do this ever again. And he really went to town with it. That's quite funny. So their own, their own little drama is

played out. Playing out. Through the rest of French history. Yeah. Yeah. This enduring legal code. Exactly. And, you know, you wonder how much influence Josephine had. Because he's right in. to these love letters, but I love you, I love you, love you. And then there's a little bits about like, oh, I'm going into battle tomorrow. Like there's like huge military movements are being prefaced by a, please write me a letter. And it's, you kind of wonder like, what influence did that have? If his head isn't in the game, if he's all, why has Joseph been written me a letter? I'm not saying that's why he lost the Battle of Waterloo.

I'm just saying, I was putting it out there. I'm creeping towards the position that insecure, terrified men should not be allowed to wield the power of life and death over the rest of us and control the course of history. That's an interesting point, yeah And 200 years later, the equivalence of Napoleon, I've got nuclear weapons So that is a really exciting, really exciting thought So yeah, so he is having affairs Oh yeah, yeah, this is France

Of course he's having affairs He's got over his whole not going to have sex thing, hasn't he? Well done him He has, rather, he's moved on from that I mean women are throwing themselves at him But do you know, I think that he actually viewed himself as a great romantic, which he saw as slightly different from sex. I think he saw himself as making love, especially Josephine.

But he did have affairs. He had affairs, because he was on campaign for a long time as well. As Nelson said, every man is a bachelor beyond Gibraltar. See, there you go. We didn't meet Nelson in the film, do we? He didn't show up. No, but he was there putting it around as well. But yeah, he had relationships.

There was one woman known as Pauline that he had a sustained affair with on the Egyptian campaign. She became known as Cleopatra. So other people knew about this. This wasn't secret at all. So he's playing away. There are illegitimate children, some that he acknowledges, some that he doesn't. And how much Josephine knew about this at home? I don't know.

I don't know what she would have done about it even if she did. His affair that I'm most interesting is with the Polish woman, Marie, I can't pronounce like a name. Vashelefska. What you said. And we think that may have actually shaped his policy towards Poland. He kind of resurrects Poland as a political entity. But that was quite a serious one. They had a child as well.

They did. One of his most famous affairs was with Marie, the Polish aristocrat. And did he love her? I don't know. But it was certainly quite a famous affair. It resulted in a child, which was not good news for Josephine back home because that, again, was used as further proof

that she was the problem and not him. He did acknowledge the child. but he went back to Josephine again. He eventually divorced. Now the divorce, interestingly, in the movie, you get a sense that she's not quite as into it, but the divorce,

she is really upset about the divorce. She seems to have bought into the imperial mission, doesn't she? That feels about right. I don't think she had a choice. I don't actually think that either of them had much of a choice about that.

So the movie's right when it goes, Napoleon goes, we have to have a divorce for France. I thought that's quite funny and he's just projecting he's, well, he is obviously, he always assumes that his fate is that of France as well. Yeah. But I guess it is true.

The future of the regime and stability in France did depend on him having a kid. It did. And that's what it boils down to. And again, Josephine is often framed as, oh, poor Josephine. She got, was it an old or divorced, I can't remember. But whatever it was, it was very public. It would have been very embarrassing. He's gone off with him married a 19-year-old.

I personally think that she played an absolute belt there because she got to keep the title of Empress. he made sure that she kept all of her money which by the way she spent like a drunken sailor she lived in the Chateau-Mamant which was a huge palatial thing absolutely loaded and doesn't have to have sex with a winger husband anymore what's not to like

what's sad about that and there's some poor Austrian princess has been ripped out of the Habsburg Palace and delivered to Napoleon Austria's most deadly enemy but she bears him a son and she didn't like him you know in the movie

she's 15 and quite enamoured with him, but in real life, she said something like even the sight of him would make me sick or would always torture or words to that effect. But boom, there was a baby boy done. And that baby would grow up to be remembered by history of Napoleon the second, although he never ruled over France. Sadly, tragic life died back with his Habsburg extended family in Vienna quite young. And then there's that scene in the movie that I thought that can't be real.

Napoleon does take the baby to go and meet Josephine. It's extraordinary. He's such... Boundaries do not exist for this man. He's such a klutz. It's just... The idea that, you know, you've sent your wife away, your wife of 15 years,

she's now living pretty much in exile, she's been nationally humiliated so you can have this baby. You're just going to rock up at a house and go, look, this is the baby you couldn't give me. Tadda. For me, that just harks back.

He hasn't evolved much since that first conversation with the sex worker on the street. He doesn't seem to be able to... No, completely clueless. Right? But that's probably why he was such a good military tactician, not being clueless, but just being that pig-headed, that determined, that refusing to see other people's perspectives. As far as he was concerned, there's a baby, he's really happy about it. Of course she'll be happy about it. He's happy about it. That's how that one works.

I've got too much empathy, King. That's why I'm never going to conquer an empire. That's it. You need the psychopath. Part of you. There you go. Makes you feel better. I was really struck in the movie by Josephine's dalliance, flotatious relationship with Alexander, the Tsar of Russia. I thought, look at these Hollywood filmmakers talking nonsense.

Looked it up. That is actually based in a real story at the time. But it was gossip at the time. Yeah. They definitely hung out. They definitely got on really well. They did. They did.

She was, was it nine years older than he was? Maybe even more than that. I'm not sure. definitely, they caused gossip. They did. They hung out. They seemed to get along very well. It was an interesting move on behalf of Josephine, that's for sure. And because unusually, 1814 Russian troops occupying Paris, so he's there, he's the all-conquering hero. And they spend, like, chunk of time together. They spend a chunk of time together in each other's house, in relative-ish privacy, enough to get the press talking. We don't know if anything

actually happened. Now, in the movie, it's portrayed that that drives in some sense. so crazy he basically invades France and tries to get the thrown back. That's probably overplaying it a bit. But it must have been devastating for him reading those reports when he was stuck on his line in the Velba. He must have been absolutely furious about it. And in the movie, he's so pretty as well. Oh, there's art.

He's pretty. He's pretty, very, very pretty. I'm not surprised that she would want to dance with him. But he must have been absolutely raging. He never ever let go of Josephine ever, even when they were, I suppose, forced to separate. Well, and death forced them separate, Kate. Not which to be too poetic here. Because that's so interesting

that she never saw him return to power in 1815, did she? No, she didn't. She pegged out slightly before that, bless her. And one theory, it was said at the time she got cold walking around with the Tsar and impressing with her off the shoulder dresses. But that's malicious gossip, no doubt. But it was around that time,

so she falls ill and dies at this very dramatic juncture of history. I know. She never got to see him come back. I mean, she was in early 50s, I think, and it was an illness that came on quite suddenly. It's probably diphtheria, and it just, it just bam, which was alarmingly common for the time. But yeah, Napoleon arrived back and she was gone.

It's so sad, isn't it? It's so sad. That line is so strange in the movie when he says Joseph's kids, I don't blame you. I don't blame you. I love that. So, that was such a great, weird, really in keeping with the kind of character built up. The reports of what he was actually like when he found out that she died, when he was a man destroyed. Was he?

in pieces. He was, because he'd been away for such long time and that she died without him and she died so suddenly. And he thought he was coming back to see her. I mean, imagine that. Like, you've travelled across oceans and you've built a fleet

and you've commanded ships and you've disobeyed a government in part to come and see this woman. And then it's, oh, sorry, she has died actually. And that's, oh, he was beyond devastated. And then without his talismanic partner, he goes and loses the Battle of Waterloo. I love the framing of that, but I'm not quite sure.

I'm not sure she, yeah. But he was certainly very sad. He was a very different man in 1815 to where he was in 1805. He was far less energetic, far more listless. He probably could have defeated the Prussians and the Brits if he'd been a little bit, shown a bit more activity. Do you think? After the Battle of Liny, yeah, a bit niche there.

But yeah, so I want, you know, it all contributes, no doubt, right? His mental state. I think his mental state deteriorated. I mean, what he'd been through, I mean, I feel quite, traumatized having sat through the movie, just like this stuff, like the sea where the horse gets hit with a cannonball, I'm going to need to take a while

with that one. But he had a whole lifetime of this, of political uncertainty. And the other thing the film got across really well is the instability of the political life. All right, so you're on top of the world one minute and everyone's cheering and giving you flowers. But the next minute the guillotine is out and they're chasing you

through the streets. I mean, the stress of that. It would break anyone. I just think in general we're so poorly placed to judge these people in the past and trying to get inside the heads because they'd seem trauma. Like we can't believe. You can't even amount, like the stuff that he would have seen regularly.

And her imprisonment and her. And then he sees the most horrendous thing. I mean, one of the things they do in the movie is they list the number of casualties in the battles and you sort of get a scale of a million people. He's just used to walking across carpets of corpses. Right? Amazing.

And then like the one thing that cheers him up going up with Josephine and she's gone. So Josephine's gone, Napoleon followed pretty soon afterwards. Two stories that are contested. One is that he did say Josephine on his death, his last words were Josephine. It is contested. I think that it's...

You're giving me that academic look. I am, I am, which is that bit where you have to be the academic coming and spoil everything for everyone. I would put money on the fact he was thinking about her when he was on his deathbed. But even if it's not true, it's part of their mythology. And it's part of the fact that we recognise how much he did love this woman.

And that's the fascinating thing about him. He has this reputation as the movie shows and talks, even the publicity stuff. He's a conqueror. Yeah. And he's an emperor. But the word lover is always quite close because of his relationship, which is not things you get with certain other Titanic figures from history. That's true.

But I can think of a couple of top shaggers. Julius Caesar? They're all shaggers, but you don't go, Caesar, conqueror, lover. even though he was an absolute shaggot, right? It was. Now, Nelson, you do, because in a way, like Nelson and Napoleon have this kind of fascinating twin narrative around being warriors but also lovers, which is...

Nelson certainly did. He's a fair with Emma Hamilton. He really loved her as well. Yeah, I think maybe Napoleon stands out as he's a lover and a fighter. Yeah. Yeah. And the other contested story is the strange story of Napoleon's penis.

Tell me about that. The story goes. that after he died, thank God, right? The doctor doing the autopsy was, some say he was paid, some say it was an accident, that he cut off a part of Napoleon that was rumoured to be his penis, which then it was displayed in a museum in like 1970,

and it's now in a private collection, and the person who owns it has been authored over $100,000 for it, and it's described as looking like a shriveled eel skin. But we will never know, Dan, if that really is Napoleon's penis. Right. Well, I'm happy with not knowing about it. I'm happy with not knowing.

I think I was happy with my life generally before I heard that story. But that, okay, so there is potentially a piece of Napoleon. There is potentially a piece of Napoleon, but we don't know if it really is. There is something that claims to be Napoleon's penis. We'll leave it at that. Kateless, thank you very much for coming on

and telling me all about Napoleon's sex life. It was my pleasure. Thank you for asking me. you for listening and thank you so much to Dan for joining me. Ridley Scott's Napoleon is out at cinemas from November the 22nd. Go and see it on the big screen. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along wherever it is that you get your podcasts. If you'd like us to explore a subject or perhaps you just wanted to say hello, you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from the affairs of

JFK to the history of swearing all coming your way. Fucking marvellous. This podcast was edited by Dougal Patmore and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producers were Charlotte Long and Mariana DeForge. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal in Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.