Napolean and Josephine: The Improbable Marriage

by Evangeline Bruce

Book Overview

Provides a colorful richly textured dual portrait of the flamboyant French emperor, his sensual Creole wife, and the turbulent social, political, and cultural world in which Napoleon and Josephine... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0025178105
• ISBN13: 9780025178106
• Release Date: March 1995
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 555 Pages
• Weight: 2.03 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Napoleon lore - -

Readable book, a page turner. Very entertaining and informative, sonething hard to do with a million books already written on topic.

An unlikely marriage of opposites.

Mention the word 'Napoleon,' and what may come to mind is a short fellow with his hand stuck in his vest, a breed of cat that has abnormally short legs, or a rich pastry with thin layers and lots of sweet cream in a high stack. The origin of this term actually comes from a historical figure, who was the subject of fear, loathing and satire, who managed to conquer most of Europe in the early nineteenth century, and who fell in love with a woman. Author Evangline Bruce -- this was the only work that she published -- takes a long look at the self-proclaimed Emperor of the French, Napoleon, and his wife, the American born Josephine. Both of them came from unlikely backgrounds, both survived the Terror that came after the Revolution, and both were to play vital roles in history. It's an amazing look at one of history's more famous 'power couples.' The courtship of the pair was intense, with Napoleon firing off passionate letters, and Josephine maintaining a cool, rather remote presence. The more she refused to give in, the more he pressed her to accept his offer of marriage. His family were all firmly against his choice of a wife, and would gleefully repeat damaging gossip and would openly refer to her as la putana or that woman. Finally, he wore Josephine down -- or was it the fact that he was on the fast track to fame, and especially fortune? -- and she wed him in a quick, civil ceremony. Many of the witnesses noted that she looked rather unhappy and fatigued, and after a honeymoon of only two days, Napoleon was marching with his armies to Italy. By 1804, he had conquered Italy, conducted his Egyptian campaign, and had consolidated enough power to crown himself Emperor of the French, and Josephine was his Empress. But the relationship would flounder within six years, with a separation that was painful to them both. Napoleon was a jealous man, and tended to use and discard women as he pleased -- the author continually refers to him as a misogynist -- and when a woman ceased to be useful to him, he merely kicked her to the curb and moved on. Unable to give him the male child that he craved, Josephine agreed to a divorce, and retired from Paris to her beloved estate of Malmaison. Napoleon immediately took a young, blonde Austrian Archduchess as his second wife and was rewarded almost immediately with a son. But Europe was rebelling against his rule, and the final years of his reign as Emperor were plagued with a disasterous war in Spain, a France that was bled of men and money, and a retreat from Russia in the dead of winter that was the final blow. When the triumphant armies of the English, Prussians and Russians marched into Paris, Napoleon was well on the way to Elba, Waterloo and a final exile to a desolate island in the south Atlantic, St. Helena. As for Josephine, a day after meeting the charismatic Tsar of Russia, she caught a fever and died soon after. Her popularity with the people that she met never wavered, and she was genuinely mourned.

Long and enthralling biography

I didn't think I would be able to get through such a lengthy biography of Napoleon and Josephine, thinking myself already very familiar with their story. But I was wrong, this book is utterly fascinating, there isn't a dull sentence in it, I had no difficulty getting through it and wouldn't have minded if it had been even longer. If you have never read a book about Napoleon and Josephine, I would recommend this one, and even if you have read others, this one is probably the best there is. This extraordinary love story has never been better told. The only thing that dissapointed me about this book was to read that it was the only one Evangeline Bruce ever wrote, she died not long after it was published, but at least she lived to see this superb work in print.

A Superb Dual Biography

Evangeline Bruce must be congratulated for this excellent dual biography of Napoleon and Josephine. This is the most useful kind of biography, in that we not only learn the idiosyncratic details of individual lives, but the protagonists serve as windows through which we observe an age.I have assigned this book to my students in a 300-level seminar on "The Age of Napoleon," and it has generated innumerable classroom discussions on valuable topics: the role of women in revolutionary and imperial France, the sources of political power, the nature of Thermidorian society, and many other things. Despite the length of the book, the students ate it up.Bruce makes an occasional small error. She describes Joseph and Lucien Bonaparte as "uxorious," despite the fact that both men (indeed, all the Bonaparte men) had several lovers. She describes Andre Massena as "over six feet tall," although he was actually only about an inch taller than Napoleon. She describes General (later Marshal) Augereau as "illiterate," which was true of him before he became a general, but he had learned to read and write before the period she describes.But despite these things, her grasp of the "big picture" is so good that this book will become one of my standard texts on this period for years to come.

Interesting addition to any book list on Napoleon

Bruce brings to life the background behind Napoleon's meteoric rise and fall. The writing is lively and brings a different angle to the typical biographies of Napoleon.