My latest article: Carl XIV Johan's coronation 200 years ago

200 years ago today, Carl XIV Johan was crowned King of Norway in Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, which was, for many reasons, a remarkable event. For one thing, Carl Johan, the former revolutionary general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, did not have a drop of blue blood in his vein. Carl Johan did nothing to deny this and rather based his legitimacy on his military deeds, which had paved his way to the thrones of Norway and Sweden.
In the new issue of Aftenposten Historie (no 8 - 2018), Norway's largest history magazine, I write about how this came to be expressed at his coronation and in the crown jewels Carl Johan commissioned for his coronation, including the sword he had carried in the battle where he helped defeat his great rival Napoléon.

My latest articles: Empress Marie-Louise & Swedish royal dukedoms

The July issue of Majesty (Vol. 37, No. 7) went on sale in Britain last week and this month I have contributed an article on Empress Marie-Louise of the French, Napoléon I's second wife. In the eyes of posterity she has been overshadowed by her predecessor Joséphine, but she is fondly remembered in Parma, where she reigned as duchess from 1816 until her death in 1847 and where the bicentenary of her arrival is commemorated this year.
Also just out is Royalty Digest Quarterly no. 2 - 2016, in which I write about Swedish royal dukedoms - their origins, history and statistics - which might be of some interest these days, when new dukes and duchesses are born so frequently that many find it hard to keep track.

On this date: Death of Empress Joséphine 200 years ago

Today is the 200th anniversary of the death of Joséphine, Empress of the French, the first wife of Emperor Napoléon I. The Empress died at Malmaison Palace in Reuil outside Paris on 29 May 1814, aged 50, little more than a month after Napoléon's first abdication.
Born Rose Tascher de La Pagerie on Martinique on 23 June 1763, she was sent to France at the age of 16 to marry Vicomte Alexandre de Beauharnais, an arranged marriage which turned out to be unhappy. While her estranged husband was guillotined in 1794, Rose, who had been imprisoned, was lucky to be alive when the Terror came to an end a few days later.
In 1796 she went on to marry the young and promising General Napoléon Bonaparte, who gave her the name Joséphine. Theirs is often considered one of history's great love stories, but Joséphine seems at first to have been rather cool towards her husband, whose passionate letters often went unaswered. Her infidelity caused him much grief, but with his rise to power the tables were turned and it was Joséphine who found herself having to accept her husband's affairs with other women.
Having been elected Emperor of the French in 1804 Napoléon crowned Joséphine Empress, the scene which is brilliantly captured by David in his famous painting of the coronation. However, Joséphine, who had two children by her first husband, proved unable to bear Napoléon and an heir, thus putting the future of the dynasty in jeopardy. In 1809 the Emperor, at the height of his glory, therefore found that he had little choice but to put his feelings aside and divorce Joséphine. In 1810 he married Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, who the following year bore him the longed-for son, the King of Rome.
Retaining the title of Empress, Joséphine retreated to Malmaison, the château just west of Paris which had been purchased in the early days of her marriage to Napoléon. When Napoléon was forced to abdicate in April 1814 Empress Marie-Louise fled to her native Vienna, taking with her the King of Rome. Joséphine remained at Malmaison, while Emperor Alexander I of Russia set himself up as the protector of the former Empress and her children, Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy and Queen Hortense of Holland. During a chilly evening walk with the Russian Emperor Joséphine contracted pneumonia and died within days.
When Napoléon, at that time exiled to Elba, read of her death in a newspaper he shut himself in his room for days. Following his return to France, the Hundred Days and his final defeat at Waterloo in June 1815 it was to Malmaison that he retreated before surrendering to the British and being deported to St Helena, where he died in 1821. While Joséphine's last words are said to have been "Bonaparte...Elba...Marie-Louise", his were allegedly "France...the army...at the head of the army...Joséphine".
One of history's ironies is that while Napoléon repudiated Joséphine in order to sire an heir, that heir died almost a prisoner in Vienna at the age of 21, while it was Joséphine's grandson who restored the Empire as Napoléon III in 1852. Through her son, Empress Joséphine is also the ancestress of the current monarchs of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg and Belgium.
On Monday a service commemorating the bicentenary of her death will be held in the small Church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul in Rueil, where the Empress is buried. Despite the continuing appeal of their love story, Joséphine's grave, unlike Napoléon's, attracts no tourists. When I was first there, the day after having visited the Invalides, where tourists crowd around Napoléon's tomb, I found the church entirely empty. The second time I went there someone had left a rose on Empress Joséphine's tomb.

On this date: Birth of Carl XIV Johan 250 years ago

Today is the 250th anniversary of the birth of King Carl XIV Johan of Sweden and of Norway. The second son of Henri Bernadotte and Jeanne St-Jean, the future King was born in 8, rue de Tran in Pau in the southwest of France on 26 January 1763. He received the name Jean, but was called Jean-Baptiste to distinguish him from his elder brother Jean, who was referred to as Jean-Évangeliste.
Obviously there was nothing at the time which indicated that Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte would ever be King of two nations. But the French Revolution made possible a meteoric rise through the ranks of the French army and beyond. He became a general in 1794 and was appointed a Marshal of the Empire by Emperor Napoléon I in May 1804. Two years later Napoléon made him Sovereign Prince and Duke of Pontecorvo, a former Papal enclave about halfway between Rome and Naples.
In 1810 he was surprisingly elected Crown Prince of Sweden and assumed the name Carl Johan. The ill-health of King Carl XIII meant that the Crown Prince soon became the real ruler of Sweden and in 1812 he changed sides, joining Napoléon’s enemies and playing a significant part in the defeat of France in 1814.
The same year he achieved what generations of Swedish warrior kings had dreamed of: the conquest of Norway. However, Carl Johan agreed to let Norway be an independent kingdom in a personal union with Sweden. Upon the death of Carl XIII on 5 February 1818 he succeeded to the Swedish and Norwegian thrones as Carl XIV Johan, thereby founding the most durable dynasty in Swedish history. He was crowned in Stockholm on 11 May and in Trondhjem (now Trondheim) on 7 September 1818.
As King of Sweden he carried out a number of significant reforms, but his increasing conservatism cost him his popularity in his old age. As King of Norway he engaged in a long power struggle with Parliament, which he eventually lost. His most important legacy in Norway is perhaps the development of Christiania (now Oslo) as a capital, with the Royal Palace as its crowning glory. He died on 8 March 1844, aged 81.
There will be no large events to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth, unlike the 200th anniversary in 1963. To a great extent this is probably the result of there being many exhibitions, books, royal visits and other events three years ago to mark the bicentenary of his election to Crown Prince. However, the anniversary was commemorated by a conference at the Royal Palace in Stockholm yesterday, focusing on Carl XIV Johan’s role as “the founder of modern Sweden” and tomorrow Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, will carry an article by me on his Norwegian reign.

Prince Carl Philip renounces Galliera inheritance

Svenska Dagbladet reports that Prince Carl Philip of Sweden has agreed to let the Galliera inheritance, which consists of an exquisite art collection and a financial fund, pass to his sister Crown Princess Victoria, although the Prince would be the legal inheritor according to the terms laid down by Emperor Napoléon I of the French.
The art collection contains some sixty Italian works and are among the jewels of the Swedish royal collection. Piero di Cosimo’s “Madonna with Child” is widely considered the greatest masterpiece of the collection, while the financial fund was worth millions already at the time of the death of King Gustaf VI Adolf in 1973.
The reason why Prince Carl Philip rather than his elder sister has, until now, been heir to the Galliera inheritance, is that this is an entail governed by male primogeniture.
The Duchy of Galliera, which lies in the province of Bologna, was bestowed by Napoléon I, Emperor of the French and King of Italy, upon the eldest child of his adopted son, Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy, on 14 May 1913. The child, named Joséphine after her paternal grandmother the Empress, also held the title Princess of Bologna, which had been given her shortly after her birth in 1807. After the fall of Napoléon, his adoptive granddaughter retained possession of her duchy, but never visited it. In 1823 she married Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden and of Norway, but as the income from the Duchy was considered too low and it lay unpractically far away from Sweden, she eventually decided to sell it. Finding a buyer took a decade, but in 1837 the Duchy was sold to Marquis Raffaele de Ferrari, who was created Duke of Galliera by Pope Gregory XVI the following year.
Works of art and furniture from the Ducal Palace in Galliera were transferred to Sweden, and in her will, drawn up on 6 June 1876, the day before her death, Dowager Queen Josephina confirmed that the collection and the money from the sale should be inherited undivided by the eldest son of each generation.
As her two eldest sons had already died, this meant that the inheritance passed to her third son, King Oscar II, from him to King Gustaf V and then to King Gustaf VI Adolf. As his eldest son had predeceased him, the Galliera inheritance passed to his grandson Carl XVI Gustaf in 1973. However, when the Act of Succession was amended in 1980, King Carl Gustaf’s eldest child, Victoria, replaced her younger brother Carl Philip as heir to the throne, which, until now, has meant that the Galliera inheritance would have split from the main royal line.
(It could be added that the title Duke of Galliera still exists. The widow of Raffaele de Ferrari, whose name lives on in the Musée Galliera, her Parisian mansion which is now a museum of fashion, bequeathed the Italian properties to Prince Antoine, Duke of Montpensier, son of King Louis-Philippe I of the French and a Prince (Infante) of Spain by his marriage to the sister of Queen Isabel II of Spain. Following the death of the Dowager Duchess in 1888, Antoine was also created Duke of Galliera by King Umberto I of Italy. The current and fifth Duke of Galliera is his great-great-grandson Don Alfonso de Orleans-Borbón y Ferrara-Pignatelli).

Book news: Some royal books expected in 2012

As usual I will begin the new year with a survey of some of the books due to be published this year. The royal weddings and jubilees of 2010 and 2011 helped make those two years unusually rich on the book front, but 2012 also has some jubilees and related books to offer.
First out is Queen Margrethe II of Denmark’s jubilee next week. The museums at Amalienborg and Frederiksborg will both host exhibitions to mark her forty years on the throne and the former will focus on the Queen’s dresses. To accompany the exhibition Katia Johansen, who has for many years been a curator at the Royal Collections, has written Dronningens kjoler, which will be out next week.
The recent TV show on royal jewels is expected to result in a book to be published by Lindhardt og Ringhof in April, titled De kongelige juveler, written by Anna von Lowzow and Bjarne Steen Jensen. Anna von Lowzow is identical with Anna Lerche, a filmmaker at Nordisk Film who some may remember for her work on the A Royal Family series and book nearly ten years ago, while Bjarne Steen Jensen considers himself a jewellery expert and is the author of the not very reliable Juvelerne i det danske kongehus.
While Queen Margrethe celebrates her forty years on the throne, her third cousin Queen Elizabeth II of Britain will on 6 February be able to mark the sixtieth anniversary of her accession. Several books have already been published to mark the diamond jubilee – among them books by Robert Hardman, Andrew Marr and Sarah Bradford, of which I will post reviews in the foreseeable future – and on Tuesday Sally Bedell Smith, author of several well-received biographies, will join the rank of Elizabeth II biographers with her Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch, of nearly 700 pages, to be published by Penguin.
The British historian Kate Williams’s contribution to the jubilee is Young Elizabeth: The Making of Our Queen, to be published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson on 12 April. I suppose this slim volume (208 pages) may be considered some sort of sequel to Williams’s similar book on Queen Victoria of Britain.
This will, by the way, not be Williams’s only book this year; in June her biography of the Empress Joséphine of the French, Mistress of Empires: The Extraordinary Life of Josephine Bonaparte, will be published by Hutchinson.
February will also see the 75th birthday of King Harald V of Norway, on which occasion the National Museum will open the first of their six exhibitions based on the Royal Collections. The exhibitions will be accompanied by a sumptuous book titled Arv og tradisjon – De kongelige samlinger, which will be published by Orfeus and contain contributions by Tor Bomann-Larsen, Per Egil Hegge, Nina Høye, Ingeborg Anna Lønning, Knut Ljøgodt, Widar Halén, Bjørn Høie, Knut Ormhaug, Jan Haug, Sven Gj. Gjeruldsen and myself.
Also on the occasion of the King’s 75th birthday Dag Erik Pedersens has written Idrettskongen, an authorised book on the King’s interest in sports, which will be published by Gyldendal. The Queen will turn 75 in July and in the autumn Gyldendal will publish the much-awaited authorised biography of her, written by Ingar Sletten Kolloen.
The 150th anniversary of the death of Prince Consort Albert of Britain in December 1861 was recently commemorated by a conference on male consorts in history and I hear that this conference will result in a book. Meanwhile I. B. Tauris has published two biographies of such consorts, namely Jules Stewart’s Albert: A Life and Harry Kelsey’s Philip of Spain, King of England: The Forgotten Sovereign. Although both these books bear the date 2012 they did actually go on sale before Christmas.
Another British book expected this year is Jane Ridley’s Bertie: A Biography of Edward VII, which has been postponed at least twice.

New books: Napoléon, his age and his ideas

Given that there are literally hundreds of thousands of books on Napoléon I, I generally wonder each time a new one appears what is its purpose. Many of them are obviously superfluous, but Alan Forrest’s recent book Napoleon, published by Quercus, stands out as one which is worth reading.
Forrest is professor of modern history at the University of York and may be considered one of the leading British scholars on the revolutionary and Napoleonic epochs in French history. He repeatedly states his initial reluctance to make the transition from writing social history of the revolution to a biography of Napoléon and this also influences the book, but in a good way.
If there are individuals who defined their age in such a way that their biography and the history of their era are virtually the same thing, Napoléon is obviously one of the best examples. Forrest’s book thus combines the story of Napoléon’s life with the history of France and Europe during that half-century.
The story is framed by chapters on the late Emperor’s reburial in Paris in 1840 at the beginning and his “life after death” at the end. There is less about his personal life than in many other biographies and Forrest generally avoids the lengthy accounts of campaigns and battles with which some of Napoléon’s biographers try their readers’ patience.
On the other hand Professor Forrest is particularly strong on the ideas that shaped Napoléon and his age and on the system which Napoléon created. The book is mercifully not part of the propaganda war which many of Napoléon’s biographers, perhaps in particular the British ones, still seem to be fighting. Indeed Forrest’s book is neither laudatory nor vindictive, but rather critical in the best meaning of that word and the author gives credit where he thinks credit is due and criticises what he thinks deserves to be criticised.
The book is entirely based on secondary sources and there are no new revelations to be found in this book (indeed it is by now hardly possible to find unknown primary sources), but Alan Forrest’s interpretation of the man and the age and his clear analyses make for one of the most interesting books on Napoléon to be published in recent years.

What to see: The Imperial Vault, Vienna

On Saturday Otto von Habsburg will be laid to rest in the Imperial Vault beneath the Capuchin Church in the New Market (Neuer Markt) in Vienna, thus literally joining his forebears.
It was in 1599 that the first Capuchin monks came to Vienna and only eighteen years later Empress Anna, consort of Empress Matthias, granted the Capuchins a church in the New Market and stipulated that she should be buried in its crypt. The Empress died a year later and was followed by her husband three months later. However, it was only in 1633 that work on the church had progressed to the extent that the imperial coffins could be transferred there.
Emperor Ferdinand III soon had to have the crypt enlarged and several expansions have followed throughout the centuries to give room for the coffins of generations of Habsburgs. Joseph II had it closed and walled up, but reopening it was one of the first acts of his brother Leopold II.
The Imperial Vault now consists of nine crypts and nearly 150 people are buried there. Only one of them is not a Habsburg relative: Countess Caroline von Fuchs-Mollard (1675-1754), who was the governess of Maria Theresia, on whose express wish she was interred with the imperial family.
The oldest of the crypts is the Founders or Angel Crypt, which contains the coffins of Emperor Matthias and Empress Anna. It is followed by the Leopold Crypt, built by Leopold I; the Karl Crypt, built by Karl VI; the Maria Theresia Crypt, built by Franz I Stephan and Maria Theresia; the Franz Crypt, built by Franz II/I; the Ferdinand and Tuscany Crypts, built by Ferdinand I; the New Crypt (built 1960-1962); and finally the Franz Joseph Crypt and the adjacent Crypt Chapel (built 1908-1909).
Emperor Matthias (1557-1619) was as mentioned the first Habsburg ruler to be buried there. He has been followed by Ferdinand III (1608-1657), Joseph I (1678-1711), Leopold I (1640-1705), Karl VI (1685-1740), Franz I Stephan (1708-1765), Maria Theresia (1717-1780), Joseph II (1741-1790), Leopold II (1747-1792), Franz II/I (1768-1835), Ferdinand I (1793-1875) and Franz Joseph I (1830-1916). The remains of the last Habsburg emperor, Karl I (1887-1922), are still in Madeira, where he died in exile following the downfall of the Empire. There is, however, a bust to his memory in the Crypt Chapel.
Another notable absentee is Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 unleashed World War I. He and his morganatic wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, is buried in the crypt of Artstetten Palace, but the vault has a plaque commemorating, as it says, “the first victims of World War I 1914-1918”.
The most sumptuous of the memorials is perhaps the double sarcophagus of Franz I Stephan and Maria Theresia (third photo), commissioned from Balthazar Ferdinand Moll long before their deaths. The sarcophagus has reliefs showing great moments of their reigns and their love for each other is symbolised by how their sculptures look each other in the eye.
The last Holy Roman Emperor and first Emperor of Austria, Franz II/I (first and fourth photos) lie in the middle of the Franz Crypt, surrounded by the coffins of his four wives. His grandson the Duke of Reichstad, aka Napoléon II, was also buried there until he was transferred to Paris in 1940.
In the adjacent New Crypt is the coffin of Empress Marie-Louise of the French (fifth photo), the faithless second consort of Napoléon I and mother of Napoléon II. Just across from her is her unfortunate nephew Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, who was executed in 1867 (sixth photo).
Visitors tend to be drawn to the Franz Joseph Crypt (second photo), where several floral tributes are normally to be found at the sarcophagi of Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose 68-year-reign spanned the times from Metternich to World War I, the restless Empress Elisabeth, who was assassinated in 1898, and Crown Prince Rudolph, who committed suicide at Mayerling in 1889.
Burials in the Imperial Vault did not cease altogether with the fall of the Astro-Hungarian Empire in 1918 (Archduke Karl, the current head of the house, actually proposed to his wife during a visit to the vault, asking her how she would like one day to be buried there!).
While the last Emperor, Karl I, is still buried where he died in 1922, his widow Zita was taken to Vienna and buried in the Imperial Vault when she died in the momentous year 1989. Her coffin is to be found in the Crypt Chapel, where her son Otto, the last Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, will be laid to rest by her side on Saturday, nearly 95 years after he walked between his parents in the funeral procession of his great-great-uncle Franz Joseph in November 1916.
Perhaps this will be the last time that the ceremony of three knocks on the door to the vault will be carried out. This was how it was done for ex-Empress Zita in 1989:
At the first knock at the door, the Capuchin custodian would ask: “Who requests entry?” The master of ceremonies would announce: “Her Majesty Zita, by the Grace of God Empress of Austria, crowned Queen of Hungary, Queen of Bohemia, of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slovenia, Galicia, Lodomeria and Illyria, Queen of Jerusalem etc., Archduchess of Austria, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Cracow, Lady of Lorraine and Salzburg, Styria, Carinthia, Krajina and Bukowina, Grand Duchess of Transylvania, Margravine of Moravia, Duchess of Upper and Lower Silesia, of Modena, Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla, of Auschwitz and Zator, of Teschen, Friaul, Ragusa and Zara, knighted Countess of Habsburg and Tyrol, of Kyburg, Görz and Gradiska, Lady of Trent and Brixen, Margravine of Upper and Lower Lausitz and in Istria, Lady of Hohenembs, Feldkirch, Bregenz, Sonnenberg etc., Countess of Trieste, of Catarro and on the Windish March, Great Voyvod and Voyvodship of Serbia etc., etc.”. “We know her not”, the custodian would reply.
A second knock. “Who requests entry?” “Zita, Her Majesty the Empress and Queen”. “We know her not”.
A third knock. “Who requests entry?” the custodian would call again and the master of ceremonies would reply: “Zita, a mortal, sinful human being”. “So come here in”, the Capuchin would say and open the gate.

Imperial commemoration of Napoléon I

Last Friday (5 May) was the 190th anniversary of the death of Emperor Napoléon I of the French. The ex-Emperor died in exile at St Helena in the evening of 5 May 1821, but in 1840 his remains were brought back to France and eventually laid to rest under the dome of the Invalides.
On the anniversary there was as usual a service held in the adjacent Church of St Louis, preceded by a wreath-laying ceremony at the imperial tomb. The ceremonies were attended by among others the head of the former imperial house, Jean-Christophe, the Prince Napoléon, and his grandmother, Alix, the Princess Napoléon. This year they were saluted by a guard of honour in uniforms from the Napoleonic age.
In addition to the wreath from the Prince Napoléon there were wreaths from the Fondation Napoléon and Souvenir Napoléonien, as well as one from Ajaccio, the Corsican town where Napoléon was born in 1769.

On this date: Birth of Napoléon II 200 years ago

200 years ago today, in the morning of 20 March 1811, Paris reverberated with 101 gunshots announcing the birth of the longed-for heir to the imperial throne. In 1809 Emperor Napoléon I had divorced Empress Joséphine as she was unable to give him the heir he felt the Empire needed in order to survive him and in her place he had taken as his wife Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria. The birth of their first child nearly a year after the wedding was however complicated and the infant remained their only child.
Born at 8.20 a.m. at the Tuileries Palace, the Prince Imperial was given the names Napoléon François Joseph Charles and the title King of Rome. He was christened in Notre-Dame on 9 June 1811.
The birth of the heir might in hindsight be considered the high point of the First Empire. The decline began already the following year with the disastrous Russian campaign and in April 1814 Napoléon I was forced to abdicate and go into exile. Empress Marie-Louise fled to Vienna, taking her son with her, and the former Emperor never saw his wife or his son again.
At the end of his second reign, the so-called Hundred Days, Napoléon I abdicated on 22 June 1815 in favour of his son, who then became Emperor Napoléon II. But he remained in Vienna and his short reign came to an end on 7 July, when the fugitive Louis XVIII was again proclaimed King of France.
The former Napoléon II was renamed Franz and given the title Duke of Reichstadt by his maternal grandfather, Emperor Franz I of Austria. He lived out the remainder of his life at the Austrian court, where he was kept under surveillance and generally encouraged to forget everything about his French past, which he refused to do.
The Duke of Reichstadt died from tuberculosis at Schönbrunn Palace on 22 July 1832, aged only 21. In December 1940 his mortal remains were, on the orders of Adolf Hitler, brought to Paris and interred in the crypt where his father had been laid to rest after his remains were brought back from St Helena a hundred years earlier.
The portrait of the King of Rome wearing the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour was commissioned in 1812 from François Gérard by Empress Marie-Louise, who had it sent to her husband in Russia. It arrived on the eve of the Battle of Moskowa and the Emperor had it put on display outside his tent to inspire his troops. Today it is to be found in the Musée Napoléon Ier at Fontainebleau Palace.

An interesting article on the cameo diadem

In a recent issue of the French magazine Point de Vue (no 3231, dated 23-29 June) there is an article by the jewellery expert Vincent Meylan on the cameo diadem which Crown Princess Victoria wore on her wedding day which adds some very interesting details about the history of this beautiful tiara.
As previously mentioned an oral tradition in the Bernadotte family maintains that the tiara, which sits in a box labelled Nitot, first belonged to Empress Joséphine of the French, yet the first known depiction of it shows it not on the Empress, but worn by her daughter Queen Hortense of Holland.
The portrait was done by Anne-Louis Girodet in 1812 and miniatures based on it have been up for sale at Dorotheum in Vienna in 2007 (external link) and at Sotheby’s in London last June (external link). The article says that a miniature is now in the Swedish royal collection, but this is probably wrong as the King of Sweden as far as I know did not buy any of the two.
The question is anyway how the tiara found its way from Queen Hortense to her niece Josephina, who was portrayed wearing it shortly after she became Crown Princess of Sweden and Norway in 1823.
Based on research in the Napoléon archives in Paris, Meylan states that Queen Hortense sold a cameo tiara in 1824 for 30,000 francs, but that tiara was made of cameos and rubies rather than cameos and pearls.
However, Meylan writes that a tiara of cameos and pearls was among Empress Joséphine’s possessions at the time of her death in 1814 and that this tiara went to her son, Prince Eugène, when he and Queen Hortense divided their mother’s estate. He explains the fact that Queen Hortense was painted wearing the tiara during her mother’s lifetime by pointing out that mother and daughter had the habit of borrowing each other’s jewels.
This would explain the fact that it belonged to the future Queen Josephina several years before the death of Queen Hortense and establishes the following list of owners: Empress Joséphine – Prince Eugène – Queen Josephina – Princess Eugénie – Prince Eugen – Princess Sibylla – King Carl XVI Gustaf.
The photo is a detail of an old postcard showing the then Princess Ingrid (later Queen of Denmark) wearing the cameo diadem when she dressed as her great-great-grandmother Queen Josephina for a charity masquerade in 1933.

What to see: The former royal palace Villa Pisani, Stra

A little-known but splendid former royal palace can be found in the small town of Stra, a few kilometres outside Padua on the road to Venice. Villa Pisani was built to glorify the noble Venetian family Pisani and is situated at the bend of the Brenta Canal. There the Pisani family already owned a villa known as Santo Stefano, a simple building from the late 16th century which was demolished in 1720 to make way for a new house.
The task of building the new villa was first given to the architect Girolamo Frigimelica Roberti (1653-1732), but his plans were soon shelved. Following his death the commission was given to Francesco Maria Preti (1701-1774), who completed the work on Villa Pisani in 1756.
In 1735 Alvise Pisani had been elected the 114th Doge of the Republic of Venice and it is said that this was the reason why the villa originally had 114 rooms – today the number is officially given as 168. There are two inner courtyards, separated by the colonnade seen in the last picture. Currently the colonnade houses a sculpture by Mimmo Paladino, which is part of the exhibition “I classici del contemporaneo”, which is on until 30 September.
At the centre of the building is the most magnificent of the rooms – the Ballroom, seen in the fifth photo. The fresco, “The Glory of the Pisani Family”, was done by Giambattista Tiepolo in 1761-1762 and took him only 76 working days. The walls are decorated in trompe l’oeil technique by Pietro Visconti.
The villa itself is Palladian in style, marked by the emerging neoclassicism, but there are also still traces of Baroque. The main façade towards the canal, seen in the first and second pictures, is richly decorated, while the garden façade, seen in the third photo, is simpler. Opposite the villa is the building for the stables, itself a magnificent creation which also served as open-air banqueting hall and now also as an orangery. The Long Pond between them was built in the 20th century.
Following the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1797, the Pisani family found themselves in financial difficulties and on 11 January 1807 its then owner, Ermoloa “Alvise” Pisani, sold the villa to Napoléon I. The French Emperor also being King of Italy, this made Villa Pisani one of the two royal palaces in the Veneto region, the other being the Royal Palace in Venice (now the Correr Museum).
Napoléon himself spent only two nights at the palace – those of 28 November and 13 December 1807, on his way to and from his only visit to Venice. Ten years earlier he had stopped briefly at the villa during the campaign in Italy, commenting on Tiepolo’s masterpiece that it was a pity it was a fresco, “if it had been on canvas it would have looked superb at Fontainebleau!”
The Emperor-King gave the right of disposal to his adopted son Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy and Prince of Venice, who hired the architects Giovannia Antonio Antolini, Giuseppe Mezzani and Giuseppe Maria Soli to modernise the palace. Rebuilding, including the creation of imperial and viceregal apartments in Empire style, lasted for several years, which means that Napoléon never actually slept in the so-called “Napoleonic bed” which is now in his bedchamber.
The sixth photo shows one of the redecorated rooms – the Dining Room, which was redecorated in Pompeian style by G. Borsato and Pietro Moro in 1808-1814. The seventh picture is of a pre-imperial room, the Salon of the View-Paintings, which also holds a model of the famous maze which can be found in the palace’s park.
Following the downfall of Napoléon’s empire, Villa Pisani passed to the Habsburgs. It was a favourite residence of Empress Maria Anna, consort of the unfortunate Emperor Ferdinand. The Savoys, who took over in 1866, soon lost interest in the palace. It was abandoned in 1874 and after unsuccessful attempts at renting it out, management was entrusted to the Regional Office for Monuments in the Veneto in 1882.
Although named a national museum, Villa Pisani came to house offices and institutions of various kinds and the palace fell into disrepair. In 1934 Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler held their first meeting there. It is only in recent decades that interest in this glorious building has been revived. Still much of the furniture can be found in other places, such as the Correr Museum in Venice and the Quirinal Palace in Rome, but since the mid-1980s extensive renovation work has been carried out.
The official website:
http://www.villapisani.beniculturali.it/en/index.php

New books: Biography of Princess Pauline Borghese

A few days ago John Murray of London published Venus of Empire: The Life of Pauline Bonaparte by Flora Fraser, which was published already in February in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf as Pauline Bonaparte: Venus of Empire.
Napoléon I’s favourite sister, Princess Pauline Borghese (1780-1825) was famous for being, in Metternich’s words, “as beautiful as it is possible to be” and for her many lovers. She is also remembered for the fact that she was the only one of the Emperor’s siblings who went with him to share his misfortune in exile.
The book is well written, but the problem is that Princess Pauline really did not do much in her short life. For 250 pages her illnesses and her lovers succeed each other while the great events of her time unfold in the background, something which unfortunately makes the book a bit boring at times.
This is not the first biography of Princess Pauline, but compared to other biographers Flora Fraser has succeeded quite well in bringing to life Pauline’s two husbands – the promising General Victor Leclerc, who died while on an expedition to the Caribbean in 1802, and the rather insignificant Prince Camillo Borghese, scion of that great Roman family.
Flora Fraser comes from a truly literary family, which includes, among others, her mother Antonia Fraser, herself a noted biographer, her stepfather the Nobel laureate Harold Pinter, her grandmother Elizabeth Longford and her grandfather the late Lord Longford. She has earlier written biographies of Emma, Lady Hamilton, George IV’s consort Queen Caroline and the daughters of George III. Her next book will be a biography of George and Martha Washington.

The first chapter of the book can be read here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/chapters/chapter-pauline-bonaparte.html?ref=review

Sunday Times’s review (10 May):

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6236087.ece

Daily Express’s review (8 May):

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/99731

The New York Times’s review (19 March):

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/books/review/Becker-t.html?ref=firstchapters

Washington Times’s review (8 March):

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/08/books-pauline-bonaparte-venus-of-empire/print/

On this date: Eighteen Marshals of the French Empire

On 19 May 1804, the day after he had been elected Emperor of the French by the Senate, Napoléon I appointed eighteen Marshals of the Empire – fourteen active and four honorary. The names of the new marshals were published in the following order:

1. Louis Alexandre Berthier (1753-1815), later Sovereign Prince of Neuchâtel, Duke of Valengin, Prince of Wagram
2. Joachim Murat (1767-1815), later Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves, King of Naples
3. Bon-Adrien Jeannot de Moncey (1754-1842), later Duke of Conegliano
4. Jean Baptiste Jourdan, Count (1762-1833)
5. André Massena (1758-1817), later Duke of Rivoli, Prince of Essling
6. Charles Augereau (1757-1816), later Duke of Castiglione
7. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte (1763-1844), later Sovereign Prince of Pontecorvo, King of Sweden and Norway
8. Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult (1769-1851), later Duke of Dalmatia
9. Guillaume Marie Brune, Count (1763-1815)
10. Jean Lannes (1769-1809), later Duke of Montebello
11. Edouard Mortier (1768-1835), later Duke of Treviso
12. Michel Ney (1769-1815), later Duke of Elchingen, Prince of the Moskova
13. Louis Nicolas Davout (1770-1823), later Prince of Eckmühl, Duke of Auerstädt
14. Jean Baptiste Bessières (1768-1813), later Duke of Istria
15. François Christophe de Kellermann (1737-1820), later Duke of Valmy
16. François Joseph Lefebvre (1755-1820), later Duke of Danzig
17. Dominique-Cathérine de Pérignon, Marquis (1754-1818)
18. Jean Mathieu Philibert Sérurier, Count (1742-1819)

Later in Napoléon’s reign a further eight marshals were appointed: Victor, Macdonald, Marmont, Oudinot, Suchet, Gouvion-St. Cyr, Poniatowski and Grouchy.
In December 1804 the Marshals took part in the Emperor’s coronation and in the ceremony of the distribution of the eagle standards to the regiments of the Army and the National Guards three days later, both events captured by Jacques-Louis David. The photo above shows a detail of his painting of the latter event, less famous than his coronation painting Le Sacre. Napoléon is surrounded by his Marshals, while Bernadotte looks away. When the painting was completed Bernadotte had left France to become Crown Prince of Sweden and would two years later join forces with Napoléon’s enemies. He was not the only Marshal not to stay loyal to the Emperor. The other photo shows a Marshal of the Empire's baton.

What to see: Villa Reale, Milan

The Villa Reale in Milan, also known as Villa Belgiojoso or Villa Bonaparte, is one of the most splendid buildings in Milan. Situated at Via Palestro the empire-style palace was commissioned by the Austrian politician Count Ludovico di Barbiano e Belgiojoso (1728-1801) from the Viennese-born architect Leopold Pollack (1751-1806) and completed in 1790.

Following the French conquest of Northern Italy the villa, now renamed Villa Bonaparte, became the home of Napoléon I’s adopted son, Prince Eugène, who reigned as Viceroy of Italy from 1805. With his wife Auguste he preferred the large villa, situated between two gardens, to the Royal Palace in the very centre of the city, which they only used for official and ceremonial functions. It was at the Villa Reale that their first child, the future Queen Josephina of Sweden and Norway, was born on 14 March 1807. Napoléon himself also stayed there when visiting Milan.
After Napoléon’s fall Northern Italy again came under the control of the Habsburgs. Field Marshal Count Josef Radetzky, who was in command of the Austrian army in Italy, later came to live at the villa, where he died in 1858. Today Villa Reale houses the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, which in Italy normally means 19th century art – indeed the museum is also known as “Museo Ottocento”. It also houses three other smaller art collections.
The first photo shows the garden façade, the second the façade towards the courtyard. In the third picture is the ballroom, followed by the dining room with its ceiling painting “Apollo and the Muses” by the great Italian neoclassical painter Andreas Appiani (1754-1817). Then a sculpture gallery and finally one of the palace’s many other sumptuous rooms.

What to see: Empress Joséphine’s tomb, Rueil-Malmaison

While hundreds or even thousands of people every day flock to the Invalides to see the sarcophagus of Emperor Napoléon I few go to see the tomb of his first wife, Empress Joséphine, in the parish church of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul in Rueil-Malmaison, just outside Paris.

Hers was the “most extraordinary destiny in history”, wrote the historian André Castelot. Born on a plantation in Martinique she first came to France as the child-bride of the nobleman Alexandre de Beauharnais, who soon deserted her. Unlike him she narrowly escaped execution during the Terror of 1794, became the mistress of Paul Barras, one of the Directors who ruled France in those years, and then became the wife of the up-and-coming General Napoléon Bonaparte.
Soon he ruled most of Europe and after eight years of marriage Joséphine found herself Empress of the French and Queen of Italy. But after thirteen years of childless marriage the Emperor divorced her to be able to beget an heir. This longed-for heir was to die at 21, bringing Napoléon’s line to an end, while it was Joséphine’s grandson who restored the French Empire and her descendants who sit on five of the ten European thrones today.
The repudiated Empress died at her small palace Malmaison on 29 May 1814, just as Napoléon had fallen from power and been deported to Elba. The monument on the tomb was done by the sculptors Cartellier and Berthault and paid for by the Empress’s children Eugène and Hortense. It was completed in 1825 and shows Joséphine kneeling in her famous pose from Le Sacre, David’s painting of her coronation. Queen Hortense’s tomb is on the opposite side and in the church is also the tomb of Joséphine’s uncle, Robert Tascher de La Pagerie.
On 26 April 1821, nine days before he died at St Helena, lonely and deserted by his second wife, Napoléon had expressed a wish to be buried with Joséphine in Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul if the Bourbons would not let him rest in Saint-Denis, but after nineteen years in a nameless grave on St Helena it was to the Invalides that his remains were brought.
There are always lots of people in the Invalides. The first time I visited Joséphine’s tomb the church was empty. The second time I came there it was also empty, but someone had left a flower for the good Empress.
The first two pictures show the Empress’s tomb, followed by the exterior and interior of the church and the tomb of Queen Hortense.

What to see: The former Royal Palace, Venice

When incorporating Venice into the Kingdom of Italy on 1 May 1806 Napoléon I, Emperor of the French and King of Italy thought he needed a suitable residence in that city. For various reasons the Doge’s Palace was rejected and the imperial eyes fell on the 16th century Procuratie Nuove along the southern end of St Mark’s Square. In the middle of the western end stood the small church of San Geminiano, which had to make way when the Emperor-King in January 1807 announced his intention to link the Procuratie Vecchie on the northern side of the square and the Procuratie Nuove on the southern side by creating the new royal palace, today known as the Ala Napoleonico (the Napoleonic Wing).
This plan had been worked out by the architect Giovanni Antonio Antolini (1756-1841), who had been commissioned by Napoléon’s adopted son Prince Eugène, Viceroy of Italy and Prince of Venice. Antolini was dismissed in 1810 and the work was continued by Giuseppe Soli (1745-1823) and Lorenzo Santi (1783-1866).
The palace came to consist of the new Napoleonic Wing and the Procuratie Nuove as well as the Biblioteca Marciana and part of the old Mint. It was however not yet completed when Napoléon fell from power and Venice once again came under Habsburg rule. Because of the Habsburgs’ wish for remodelling and changes the works continued until the 1840s. In 1919 the King of Italy gave the State the use of the palace, which came to house the Correr Museum and the National Archaeological Museum.
Napoléon himself was never much popular in Venice, where the harsh treatment of the first French occupation in 1797 was vividly remembered and where the choice of Milan as capital of the Kingdom of Italy was resented. He visited Venice only once, in November-December 1807, bringing with him Prince Eugène, the King and Queen of Bavaria, three of his siblings, his brother-in-law Joachim Murat and the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Bavaria.
The first picture shows the façade of the Napoleonic Wing with the Procuratie Nuove to the left. Having become almost black with the years the façade is now being cleaned, which explains the scaffolding. Second is the monumental staircase, which took the place of the San Geminiano church. The third photo shows Antonia Canova’s “Venere Italica” in the Dining Hall (Sala da Pranzo). Another dining room is in the fourth photo, followed by a glimpse into the Ballroom (Salone da Ballo), which is now used for temporary exhibitions. The sixth picture shows the Napoleonic Gallery (Galleria napoleonica) and finally the ceiling of the Throne Room (Sala del Trono).