Dan Snow's History Hit - 3. Napoleon: The Lover

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains discussions about sex which may not be suitable for children.Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the few commanders in history to be known for his capacity as a fierce fighter and a passionate lover. His romance with Joséphine de Beauharnais is one of the greatest in history and we know the intimate details about it because of the hundreds of passionate letters he sent to her over the years, some more explicit than others... In episode 3 of Dan's Napoleon series, he's joined by sex historian and host of Betwixt the Sheets podcast Dr Kate Lister to explore another side of the French commander- his complex attitude towards sex, his obsession with Josephine and the way their relationship coloured his emotional life.Meanwhile, Josephine was an incredible figure in her own right; she was a courtesan to rich men - glamorous and intelligent with an elegant figure and magnetic aura. When she met Napoleon in 1795, she was older than him and having had a number of strategic affairs with influential political figures, clever in her means of securing a stable life for her two children. Ridley Scott's 'Napoleon' is in cinemas on November 22nd.Produced by Mariana Des Forges, Charlotte Long and edited by Dougal Patmore.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 BLACKFRIDAY sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/.We'd love to hear from you! You can email the podcast at [e-mail] can take part in our listener survey here.

Bar Mirolo, July 17, 1796 I have received your letter, my adorable friend. It has filled my heart with joy. I am grateful to you for the trouble you have taken to send me the news. Since I left you, I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you. I have been constantly depressed. My happiness is to be near you.

I live over in my memory, your tears, your affectionate solicitude, the charms of the incomparable Josephine Kindle, a burning and a glowing flame in my heart. Napoleon and Josephine are known as the great love affair in history. They're up there with Antony and Cleopatra. They're even up there with Napoleon's nemesis, Nelson, and Lady Emma Hamilton. And the great thing about this relationship is we know the intimate details of it because of hundreds of passionate letters

he's sent to her over the years. I hope you will soon join me. I thought that I loved you months ago, but since my separation from you, I feel that I love you a thousandfold more. There's an apocryphal story that as a young girl growing up in the Caribbean island of Martinique, a fortune teller told Josephine that one day she'd be queen of France, more than a queen. Whether that really happened or not, I suspect fortune tellers told young girls they'd be queens quite a lot.

However, on this occasion, it did actually come true. In Napoleon's new world order, Josephine became the first Empress of the French. She was born in June 1763. She arrived in continental Europe as the young wife of a politician, Alexandre de Beauharnais, with whom she had two children. She'd been married at just 16. She'd found her husband unfaithful on multiple occasions, and while living in France, they soon divorced. In 1794, at the height of the French Revolution's terror, Alexandre was arrested for treason. Josephine was thrown into prison. In the end, he was sent to the guillotine,

but she managed to negotiate her release. After the revolution, Paris was perhaps a little bit like certain places after the First World War, a time of sexual liberation, renewed prosperity and freedom. The ordeal had been a terrible one for Josephine. To deal with the trauma that she'd been left with, she and other survivors lost themselves in debauchery, socialising and sex. Josephine became a mistress, a courtesan to rich men. She was glamorous, she was smart, she was alluring. She had an elegant figure with a magnetic aura. Though it's said she had bad teeth, she made sure that she only smiled rarely. She had several strategic affairs with influential political figures, but as she got older, passing 30, she knew she had to secure her future. The men she was having dalliances with weren't interested

in marriage. She had to look elsewhere. It was in 1795, at a ball hosted by Paul Barras, one of the most important men in France and her sometime lover, that she met a 26-year-old stocky Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte. Supposedly, Barras wanted rid of Josephine because she'd grown accustomed to a lavish lifestyle and she was burning through his money. She was looking for a man who could support her. And Napoleon was looking for an experienced, aristocratic woman who could help smooth his way into the upper echelons of politics and society.

It may have started as a relationship of convenience, but it wasn't long before Napoleon was smitten. You'll listen to episode three of our series on the great French commander, and the subject of the new Ridley Scott movie that everyone's talking about. Today we're delving into Napoleon's love life, with Josephine and other lovers who occupied his attention when he wasn't on the battlefield. There was only one woman who I could call on to do this episode with. A woman who I got to know as a matter of convenience, but with whom I am also now smitten. And that is the incredible Dr Kate Lister. She's a sex historian and she's the host of our sister podcast, Betwixt the Sheets.

She and I met, fittingly, in a former lace factory in the east end of London, to poke around into Napoleon's private life. Hey Kate, welcome to the show. Hi Dan, thank you for inviting me onto 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, 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... He conquered everything. He made up for it, right? But as a kid, he's from Corsica. He would have had a strange accent. He was from a bit of a rough, aristocratic background, but he would have been at school with loads of people that were much posher 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 are relatable when people write about him he's kind of scruffy he's kind of awkward he doesn'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 gonna come to an expert here, a dating expert. Girls like the talking thing, don't they? They do. Right. So was he successful in his first romantic adventures? They also liked the imperial conqueror thing. Oh, yeah, that's fine. Post-Houseless, he can pull anyone. But 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. And he's a teenager at this point, is he? He's 18. He's 18?

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. Yep. And therefore, I go, 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 her, 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.

So he comes 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 that he's usually disgusted by them, that he's usually like so revolted that 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 her and his opening line is, don't you think you could be doing something better to earn your living? And he then proceeds to interrogate her 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 like 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 this girl on the street and going you could be doing something better else with your time. Do you fancy a go on this, you lucky duck? That is so interesting. 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 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's very it is a transaction he's paying for it but it's very transactional 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 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 difficult? Given that we all do it, we're 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. And yet this sex is something that he wants but is totally embarrassed by or i think it comes from reading it in opposition to so you've got this this opposition of emotion and sex being that and ration and reason and philosophical thought and they're often gendered as being it's women that are emotional and seductive being it's 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 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 he's kind of coming across as a bit of a North European he does seem very uncomfortable with it but then he channeled all of it into conquering the world didn't he so maybe there's lessons for all of us here. I'm interested in the film really hangs around this relationship between Napoleon and Josephine doesn't it and it really right from the beginning it starts 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 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 yeah and I never liked that framing of it because 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 in 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 her, I think, in terms of being a courtesan.

So she's older than him, she's narrow-scratched, she's done a lot of living. I think, in terms of being a courtesan. So she's older than him, she's narrow-scratched, she's done a lot of living? She has, and her name wasn't Josephine. No, she's gone down in history as Josephine, but Josephine was Napoleon's name for her. Her name was Maria, and she went by Rose before she met Napoleon. He just, that was her name. One of her middle names was Joseph, Joseph. So I think that 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 going to, 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 stress thing, they would have bowls and they would be called survivor's bowls. And in the film, you see her with her 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 her 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 symbolizing the the revolution of people that got executed for having millions and 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 She was the mistress of a very, very wealthy man. And Napoleon was there too. And he was absolutely entranced by her. And in the film, that moment is portrayed as a very awkward, supremely talented, sort of troubled genius coming in in his uniform to this party where there's all these 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. 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, doesn't she?

And she says, you were staring at me. And he doesn't even realise 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 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. You 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 fell 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. 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 each day. And these conditions in these jails are horrendous. It's just loads of people, men, women, everyone piled in. these jails are horrendous. It's just loads of people, men, women, everyone piled in. They don't have enough food. It's dirty. It's crowded. And she was in there for a long time. Her husband was guillotined. 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 or 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, why won't you write to me? You haven't written to me. It's really funny. He's like a petulant teenager. And we never get the endless letters from Napoleon going, well, you wrote to me, you haven't written to me. 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. Okay. I'm going to read you one of Napoleon's love letters. Here we go. 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 alright 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, mi dolce amore. But give me none back, for they set my blood on fire. He's good, isn't he? He's good, I mean, it's a bit clockwork-work. 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 you 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 WhatsApp.

He would. He really 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 is 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? I think he was actually quite a good lover, you know.

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, 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. 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 he's a giver, not a taker. He seems to be like absolutely devoted to this woman.

You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were.

By subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And famously, annoyingly, the one letter that everyone's heard of, which is when he tells her not to wash. Oh. 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.

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 seen it, but I've never actually seen it. He doesn't have the Kate Lister seal of 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. Baron de Kepen.

Right. Which is really, 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 keppen was no there might be a whole story there i mean 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 keppen 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 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 letters 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 your 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. He's not having a happy time. But is that a sense that she's not as into him as he is 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 it's a really interesting insight into this a brilliant military tactician and 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's like 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 in the letter 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 he's all over the place isn't he it's all over the place it's the the napoleonic equivalent of leaving a message on red isn't it and then not getting back it is frustrating but he gets 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 because she wouldn't write to him? And because he was actually worried about her having sex with other people? Well he was perhaps right to have been.

Was he? So what's going on at her end? What do we think is happening? She had an affair with a lower level, well, much lower than Napoleon because he was the top, but a lower level army guy called Ippolito Charles. And it became public knowledge. Napoleon was very, very upset. And when she went to visit him, she traveled to see him. very upset. And when she went to visit him, she travelled to see him. She 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, right? He's having loads of affairs. He had 22 at least that we know about. Oh, really? 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 has to literally throw herself at him and beg for him to take her back. And is it super embarrassing? I mean, is it public? Yeah, it's public. Is it? Yeah. No, it would 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. 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 let's say she was 32 when they met she already had two kids yeah yeah she must be it 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 were pushing for a divorce from Josephine. 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. I'm fertile. I've just proven it.

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 it's sex and relationships 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 it becomes hideously transactional and about the law and like people become more like farmyard animals that like 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 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 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 were coming, 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 hereditary system is difficult. But a hereditary 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'm Matt Lewis.

And I'm Dr. Alan Orjanaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, kings and popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions,

and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. I thought the movie really captures that kind of tempestuous nature. You have these massive fights, and 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, yeah, 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 when 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's 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 in

the the generations that follow they 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 Austerlitz is recorded about exactly where it was at exactly every point of the day. But none of the kind of blokes in the mid-19th century that are writing the first draft of history care about her influence on him and vice versa, 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 her, by her 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, like in his rule. 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 seeing 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 organising charters. The Napoleonic Code. There was a lot of good stuff that came out of the Napoleonic Code, but it wasn't particularly friendly to women. And I think that maybe Josephine playing away influenced some of that. Like he made husbands could divorce their wives on grounds of adultery,

not the other way around. It was perfectly right for a husband to murder his wife's lover, not the other way around. So 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. Their own little drama is played out through the rest of rest of french history yeah yeah this enduring legal code exactly and you know you wonder how much influence josephine had because he's writing to her these love letters but i love you i love you love you and then there's little bits about like oh i'm going into battle tomorrow

like this like huge military movements are being prefaced by please write me a letter. And you kind of wonder what influence did that have? If his head isn't in the game, if he's all, why has Josephine written me a letter? I'm not saying that's why he lost the Battle of Waterloo.

I'm just saying, I'm just 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 equivalent to Napoleon, I've got nuclear weapons. So that is a really exciting, really exciting thought. 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 actually think that either of them

had much of a choice about that. So the movie's right, and when it goes, Napoleon goes, we have to have a divorce for France. Yeah. Because I thought that was quite funny, and he's just projecting.

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, 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 a married

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 Marmont, which was a huge palatial thing, absolutely loaded, and doesn't have to have sex with her whingy husband anymore.

What's not to like? What's sad about like? What's sad about that? And there's some poor Austrian princess who's been ripped out of the Habsburg Palace and delivered to Napoleon. Austria's most deadly enemy. Yeah. But she bears him a son. And she didn't like him, you know.

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 uh would grow up to be remembered by history as napoleon ii though he never although he never uh ruled over france sadly tragic life died back with his hapsburg extended family in vienna quite young napoleon does take the baby to go 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 her house and go, look, this is the baby you couldn't give me. Ta-da! That, for me, that just harks back. He hasn't evolved much since that first conversation with the with the sex worker on the street he's 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, Kate.

That's why I'm never going to conquer an empire. That's it. You need the psychopath part of you. There you go. It makes me feel better. So he is having affairs oh yeah yeah he's 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 he's moved on from that I mean women

are throwing themselves at him but 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 to them, 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. 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 interested in is with the Polish woman, Marie, I can't pronounce her second name. Wasilewska. 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. I was really struck in the movie by Josephine's dalliance, flirtatious relationship with Alexander, the Tsar of Russia. I thought, look at these Hollywood filmmakers talking nonsense. Looked it up.

That is actually based on a real story at the time. But it was gossip at the time. 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. But yeah, they definitely, they caused gossip. Yeah. 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 a 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. It must have been devastating for him reading those reports when he was stuck on his little island in the Velva. It must have been devastating for him reading those reports when he was stuck on his little island in the Velva. It 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 to separate, Kate. Not wish to be too poetic here. It's 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 Zaj and impressed him 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. She was in her 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... It's so sad, isn't it? It is sad. The reports of what he was actually like

when he found out that she died, I mean, he was a man destroyed. He was in pieces. He was, because he'd been away for such a long time and that she died without him and she died when he was a man destroyed he was 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 and he thought he was coming back to see her I mean imagine that like you've traveled 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, she has died actually.

And that's all. 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, you know. 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 Ligny yeah but yeah so I want you know that it all contributes no doubt right it's his mental state I think his mental state deteriorated I mean what he'd been through he had a whole lifetime of this of political uncertainty the instability of the political yeah life like 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 would break anyone I think in general we're so poorly placed to judge these people in the past and really and try and get inside their heads because

they'd seen trauma like we can't believe you can't even amount like the stuff that he would have seen from her in prison elsewhere and all right and then he sees the most horrendous thing and then like the one thing that cheers him up is going out with josephine and she's gone so josephine's gone napoleon followed soon afterwards. Two stories that are contested. One is that he did say Josephine on his deathbed, his last words were Josephine. It is contested. You're giving me that academic look.

I am, which is that bit where you have to be the academic 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. 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. There's a couple at the end of the eighth. Like, no, because that's what I mean. Julius Caesar.

They're all shaggers, but you don't go Caesar, conqueror, lover, even though he was an absolute shagger, right? He 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 has 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. Caitlin, 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. By the early 1810s, the good times were pretty much over. Napoleon had only just survived a disastrous, a harrowing campaign in Russia in 1812, which was happening

alongside catastrophic defeats in the Iberian Peninsula. In 1813, he suffered probably his most consequential defeat of all, the Battle of Leipzig. On the 6th of April 1814, he'd been forced to abdicate the throne and go into exile. He was in his mid-40s. He'd been exiled to the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba, just off the coast of Italy. He had technical sovereignty over this island, but it was a pale, tiny, humiliating shadow of the empire that he'd once ruled over. His second wife, Marie-Louise, and their son had returned to her native Austria, and it was here that he learnt of Josephine's death on May 29th, 1814. He lost his throne. He lost the only woman who, later, he claimed he'd ever loved

Since their separation in 1810 Josephine and Napoleon had maintained a fond, sentimental correspondence When he found out she'd died, he locked himself in his room for two days He was distraught, he refused to see anyone Her death was a reminder A kind of symbol of his past greatness. They'd endured such trials together. They'd experienced his meteoric rise from the melee of the revolution to emperor of France. He'd shared the news with her of the

battles he'd won and those he'd lost. He'd become the man that he was, spurred on by her love. Throughout her life, Josephine had surrounded herself with the sight and the scent of violence. Two days after his dramatic return from exile, Napoleon had visited Malmaison, the private residence where Josephine had lived, and collected violets from her garden. He would wear them in a locket until his death, a reminder of their tumultuous but deep connection. The remaining years of Napoleon's life showed that he would never regain the heights that he'd reached when Josephine was by his side. He'd escaped Elba in 1815, nine months after Josephine's death.

He sailed the French mainland with a group of around a thousand supporters. He'd managed to recapture Paris, where he was welcomed by cheering crowds as the new king, Louis XVIII, had fled. But Napoleon's enemies were not going to underestimate him ever again. The moment he returned, a coalition of allies, Austrians, British, Prussians, Dutch, Russians, French, Portuguese, prepared for war against the newly reinstated French emperor. Napoleon raised a new army. His plan was to strike each of those enemy one by one before they could unite effectively against him. In June 1815, he marched into Belgium.

Napoleon's troops struck the Prussian army at the Battle of Ligny and won a victory. But it would be Napoleon's last. Just two days later, on June 18th, he fought the Battle of Waterloo. His forces were crushed by a British Allied and Prussian army. On June 22nd, 1815, a few days after Waterloo, Napoleon was forced to abdicate once again, this time for good. after Waterloo, Napoleon was forced to abdicate once again, this time for good. In October 1815, he was exiled not to the Mediterranean, but to a remote British-held island, St Helena,

in the South Atlantic Ocean, one of the most isolated places on earth. And it was here that he'd endure his final days. Tomorrow, in the final episode in our series, we explore Napoleon's remaining years on that rocky, isolated island, and we look at Napoleon's legacy as the sum of his parts. The commander, the emperor, the lover, the man whose very life is now a psychological concept. The Napoleon delusion. The Napoleon complex. What does Napoleon still

mean 200 years later? Why are books still being written and massive movies being made? Was he brilliant? Or lucky? Or both? I'm joined again by Andrew Roberts, his biographer, who probably knows him best. And we're going to examine the mythology of Napoleon. Join me for our final episode tomorrow. you