The Barbed Crown

Chapter 9





The unveiling of Napoleonic pomp and glory came with the smell of sawdust. Adjacent to the gigantic Invalides—the Bourbon hospital for wounded soldiers that was also a church, then a “Temple of Mars” under the revolution, and now a marble stage for national pageantry—was a new, makeshift shipyard for boats being built for the invasion of England.

While larger craft were under construction on the Channel, the Seine was being used to build the péniche, sixty feet long and ten wide, which was capable of carrying sixty-six soldiers and two howitzers. The completed vessels would be floated down the river to Le Havre, then up to Channel ports to join the armada being assembled for attack. On July 15, 1804, when Napoleon’s Legion of Honor was ceremonially inaugurated, many of the boats were still half planked, ribs jutting like combs and guards posted to prevent thievery of firewood. Royal woodlands were being cut to build an invasion fleet of at least two thousand landing craft, fifty of them here.

The line of cradled péniche was a fist of war made visible. War’s glory was a bombastic parade of flags, military bands, saluting cannon, church hymn, and tramping boots on a scale Paris had never seen. As first consul, Napoleon had taken care to appear as a modestly uniformed democrat, a Gallic Thomas Jefferson. But France was not Virginia, and French passion isn’t ignited by modesty. So while it was still half a year before Bonaparte’s papal coronation would give the general a crown, the newly elected emperor put on a show.

“Vive l’empereur!” came the answering roar.

Napoleon rode across the Seine in an open golden carriage, Josephine in a white coach behind. Plumed and helmeted cuirassiers rode escort while infantry lined the route with bayonet and banners. Cavalry breastplates shone like mirrors. Sabers were blades of light. Pennants bobbed as chargers trotted. A hundred drummers thundered welcome. Field gun salutes covered the river in a fog of smoke.

No would-be assassin could come near the elevated warlord. I watched Napoleon approach our crowd of dignitaries at the Invalides with wonder and envy, mystified that Astiza and I had been invited at all. The policeman Pasques was our towering escort. Catherine had reluctantly agreed to watch Harry in return for my bargaining to spare her from torture and prison. “I’ll take you to the next one,” I promised.

“They put me in a cell and peered at me as if I were an animal,” she recounted. “They treated me as if I were common.”

“But now they want something, and our fortunes have turned,” I said, secretly doubting my own optimism. When authorities notice, trouble sticks like tar.

“You see how France loves our new emperor?” Pasques now asked. “Conspirators fear his genius, and the people adore his ambition. If you can persuade the British of his popularity, they’ll give up on the Bourbons and avoid a lot of killing. It’s a noble cause you’ve enlisted in, Monsieur Gage.”

I avoided responding. “It looks damn costly to have a king back,” I said instead. Napoleon was already reputed to have 250 servants, including 64 footmen. “Jefferson is cheaper.”

“On the contrary, Bonaparte saves money by preventing chaos.”

“He provides spectacle like the pharaohs and Caesars he hopes to emulate,” Astiza assessed. “Bread, circuses, and a new trinket for his soldiers.”

Pasques frowned. He trusted my wife even less than he trusted me.

When I told Astiza of my uncomfortable interview with Réal, she’d been sober and realistic, advising me to play along until “fate shows a way.” While Comtesse Marceau had been given the taste of a cell, Astiza and Harry had been detained in an office. Far from threatening Harry with hot tongs, a police recruit gave my boy a top to play with and let him keep it. I realized that Réal’s threats had probably been exaggerated.

Astiza said our invitation to the Legion of Honor was as intriguing as it was unavoidable. “I’m as curious as anyone.”

So how was I to regard the godlike Napoleon, who’d once chatted with me on an Egyptian beach and given me my future wife after bombarding her house? He seemed as remote as a deity now. His Mameluke bodyguard Roustan Raza, a gift from Egypt, was proud as a centaur as he trotted behind the carriage in turban, Greek costume, and curved scimitar. An entire company of these Oriental warriors followed. There were Georgian giants from the Caucasus, Abyssinian blacks, expert Arab horsemen from Syria, and sharpshooters from Malta, all recruited in Egypt and sworn to defend Napoleon with their lives.

The emperor’s real protection wasn’t his soldiers or bodyguards, however. It was the cordon of cheering French who lined the parade route in relief and hope. The long dark years of the revolution were over. I saw not a single jeering or sullen face amid the masses chanting Vive l’empereur! As intended, the conformity was intimidating. I’d been conspiring against a man who’d just won more than 99 percent of the popular vote. Still only thirty-four years old, he wasn’t just the most powerful man in France, he was the most powerful man in the world.

Madness.

It didn’t help that Napoleon’s appointees were making the order of things clear. “Severity but humanity!” Dubois had proclaimed in writing when appointed Paris prefect of police five days before. “My eye shall penetrate the innermost recesses of the criminal’s soul, but my ear shall be open to the cries of innocence and even the groans of repentance . . .”

My old foe Fouché had been reinstated as head of the national police that same day. He’d first been reminded by Napoleon that he could fall, and now was reminded that, under Napoleon, he could rise again.

So be it. I wasn’t about to martyr myself and leave my family bereft; that’s for men with greater conviction than me. So I’d convey news to England they already knew by reading French newspapers: namely, that the man they feared most was the most popular French hero since Roland and Joan of Arc. I’d once more play the murky role of double agent, never quite belonging to anyone but myself, and deciding at each crisis which path to take. My wife would search for tidbits in the ossuaries of musty records. And we’d wait for opportunity to . . .

What? Somehow undermine Napoleon’s legitimacy, as Catherine had urged. It seemed a futile goal.

I glanced at Pasques, but he wasn’t even watching us. Like everyone else he had eyes only for the emperor.

The triumphant procession commemorated a new medal of merit. The Legion of Honor was roughly modeled on the Roman legion, but it was an honorary fraternity of the best of France, a pantheon that all men could, and should, aspire to. Inductees had to either achieve something outstanding or serve the state for at least twenty-five years. It was open not only to soldiers but to scientists, inventors, artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and explorers. No women, of course.

Today was public demonstration of the society of merit Napoleon had in mind for France and Europe. Granted was prestige without the requirement of high birth. I’ve never seen a more baffling juxtaposition of symbols. Here crippled veterans and bright young scientists alike would be given democratic honor by a man more absolute than former kings. All human situations have their inconsistencies, Franklin had observed.

With Napoleon’s arrival we went inside the Invalides, its brilliantly white arched church a sumptuous backdrop for political opera. Dark-suited senators and deputies occupied the front rows of temporarily erected tiers of seats, as if elected representatives still mattered. Colonels, society ladies, contractors, savants, and artists sat in rows behind, looking down as if on an athletic contest. The main floor was jammed with the new legionnaires and the most favored generals, bishops, and ministers. An altar was ringed by Catholic clergy with splendid gowns and mitered hats, demonstrating Napoleon’s astute recruitment of the Church. The prelates were led by ninety-four-year-old Cardinal Jean-Baptiste de Belloy, who won the post by supporting the new regime and who’d moved into the Archbishop’s Palace next to Notre Dame.

The Invalides church was dominated by Napoleon, not God. Green-carpeted steps, the color of Corsica, led to a scarlet-and-gold armchair that was the day’s throne, the elevated perch canopied by a red awning gaudily crowned with ostrich plumes and a gilded imperial eagle. Standing below on the nave floor were the milling honorees. Grizzled grenadiers boasted imposing mustaches. Rising generals sported muttonchop whiskers. Courtiers and diplomats sneezed bits of snuff into lace handkerchiefs: Napoleon himself used two pounds of the inhaled tobacco a week. Male hair was in transition from powdered wig to the revolutionary pigtail and on to the newly fashionable “Titus cut” of short curls combed over the forehead. Napoleon’s youthful curtain of shoulder-length hair had been clipped to this Roman fashion to disguise a prematurely receding hairline.

There were also enough epaulettes, medals, velvets, silks, and leathers to outfit a dozen American armies. Here in Paris men could be peacocks, strutting in uniforms costing a year of laborer wages. How brilliantly they would ride into battle! They had the gusto of survivors from the catastrophe of revolution. It had been computed that of the original 1,080 members of the Convention after the fall of King Louis, 151 revolutionaries had been executed or murdered, had committed suicide, or had been driven into exile. Those remaining felt reprieved.

The few women present were just as glorious, hair pinned into towers roofed with slanting hats and colorful plumes. My wife, on the advice of Catherine, had parrot feathers. To revive the silk and velvet industries that had gone moribund in the revolution, Napoleon was encouraging a move away from gauze and muslin, meaning dresses had become more opaque, with higher necklines and longer trains.

The air was rich with Catholic incense, tobacco, and perfume.

The crowd clustered around the empire’s new nuclei, the eighteen marshals Napoleon had appointed on May 19. Some generals I remembered from the Egyptian campaign. There was the handsome and redoubtable Lannes, the gloriously black-curled Murat, the stern and balding Davout, and the severe Bessieres, who commanded the Guard Cavalry. Their uniforms were outrageous rainbows of blue, red, white, green, and yellow. Murat by rumor had spent one hundred thousand francs on his. There were buttons enough to require half a morning of fastening. Sabers clanked and rattled. Boots creaked from polished leather. Spurs jangled.

“The French can be governed through their vanity,” Napoleon had reportedly said.

The marshals also represented a new tangle of marriages, appointments, and opportunities as complex as a medieval court. Catherine recited this new order with envy. Murat was married to Caroline Bonaparte, Napoleon’s sister, and rumor was that both thought the cavalryman would make a more able emperor—or at least a more dashing one—than his shorter brother-in-law. Lannes, the farmer’s son turned warrior, had returned from a profitable tenure as ambassador to Portugal with enough pocketed bribes to purchase a Paris mansion. Davout had married the sister of Charles Leclerc, and thus was brother-in-law to Leclerc’s widow Pauline, Napoleon’s sister. Massena had evolved from Italian smuggler to French military hero. Bernadotte was married to Desiree Clary, the beauty who had once been engaged to young Napoleon. Bernadotte’s sister-in-law Julie was married to Napoleon’s brother Joseph.

Napoleon was building a clan worthy of Machiavelli. A study of the army lists and genealogical tables showed France boasted 240 generals in some way related to one another. Half a dozen were publicly known to have conspired against Napoleon, and their new emperor needed war to keep them campaigning instead of plotting. The French victories at Hohenlinden and Marengo were four years past, and there was hunger for new glory. They swaggered. If they could come to grips with England’s small army, they’d rip it apart.

I was surprised to have been given gold tickets that admitted us to the main floor, since I’d little chance of being inducted into anybody’s legion of honor.

I had a different kind of celebrity and was both flattered and frightened when the odious and limping Charles-Maurice Périgord—better known as simply Talleyrand, or the “lame devil,” and the foreign minister of France—approached. His narrow head was erect, as if braced, with the limpid stare of a fish, and lips tight as a virgin. It occurred to me that the towering policeman Pasques served as a useful lighthouse in this jammed church for any official trying to find the politically compromised Ethan Gage.

I was wary. Prevented by his childhood limp from entering the military, Talleyrand was instead ordered by his family into the priesthood, where he rose to the position of Bishop of Autun despite his opinion that the entire Christian catechism was nonsense. His atheism, greed, and cynicism eventually resulted in his being defrocked. He’d also betrayed both the Bourbons he once served and the revolutionaries after by throwing in with reactionary Napoleon.

Yet Talleyrand was also credited with being the slyest foreign minister since Cardinal Richelieu. He’d spent two years in American exile at the height of the French Revolution, living as a houseguest of future vice president Aaron Burr. Later he helped embroil France in an undeclared naval war with the United States that I’d played a small part in ending. Now he’d been named grand chamberlain of the empire. He studied the map like a chessboard and manipulated kings like pawns.

His handshake was soft and without conviction. “The American electrician,” he greeted with the unction of the highborn. “You were honored for your service at our celebration at Mortefontaine.”

“I’m flattered you remember, Grand Chamberlain. My role was brief.”

He managed a thin but wooing smile, the effort seeming to pain him. “I don’t remember your being modest and, at age fifty, I remember far too much.” He turned and bowed slightly. “This is your intriguing wife?”

“Astiza, from Egypt.”

“I’m honored, madame. I understand you are an intellectual, a remarkable achievement for your sex.”

“Someday men will recognize that gender has little to do with the mind,” she responded. “Just as stooping to help a child makes a woman stand tall as a man.”

Now his smile widened, his eyebrows elevating. “Your reputation for wit and perception is deserved. And you study the ancients?”

“Yes. You’re a student of history, Grand Chamberlain?”

“Of power, for the good of mankind.” He looked about. “Ah, Monsieur Gage, how triumphant this all is, and how anxious! Napoleon is out to create a new court in order to be accepted as an equal by royal houses that despise and fear him. It’s a longing that will bring much blood, I predict. No new emperor can compete in stature with an ancient line of kings. I’m his servant, but I’m also nostalgic for the less complicated past. Before the revolution men knew their place, beauty was worshipped, and life was refined. Now everyone is sweaty and striving. Those who didn’t experience the security of a king will never know the full sweetness of living.”

“Sweetness for a few,” Astiza said. “Most were starving.” My wife is disturbingly honest.

“True, true.” His agreement was judicious, as if we were discussing insects. “Still, there was a civility that was lost forever. Ask your governess. She’ll tell you.”

So he knew Comtesse Marceau’s background as well. A fine hive of spies we were. “She already has,” I said.

His hand fluttered. “So many swords, so many uniforms! This is a masculine age, Madame Gage. The years of the king were a feminine era. Marie Antoinette was slandered, but the truth is she was kindly, sweet, and deserved veneration, not beheading. I believe ages come in cycles, the wise domesticity of women alternating with the heroic aggression of men, peace cycling with war, and grace followed by grandeur. Both, I believe, are necessary for human progress.”

“You’re a philosopher, Grand Chamberlain,” my wife said. “And a believer in progress?”

“Progress that always comes at a cost.”

I felt rustic next to this worldly adviser, chaperoned by a giant, and surrounded by men who might kill me if they knew all my alliances. In a crush of five thousand people, I felt lonely, save for my wife. “This gathering sparkles,” I said without conviction. “And congratulations on your own elevation, Grand Chamberlain.” Compliments are never wasted.

“Regimes fall, but I do not.” He said it lightly, and then regarded me more intently, suddenly all business. “I was disappointed not to have more correspondence from you on our strategy for the American frontier.”

That hapless adventure had been three years before. “Again, I’m surprised you remember. In any event, I didn’t find a postal system among Red Indians. But as you’re no doubt aware, I came back to help with the sale of Louisiana to my own country. I was delighted it was successfully concluded last year.”

“Yes, a bargain for both of us. I understand an exploration of it is under way by Jefferson’s secretary, a man named Lewis, with a frontiersman named Clark.”

“Clark, too? I’ve met both. An able pair, but then Jefferson is a good judge of talent.” I implied we could include me in that roster.

“A Frenchman joined them, my correspondents tell me. A voyageur you knew by the name of Pierre Radisson.”

“You follow the travels of Pierre? You are remarkably well informed.” So my old friend was off with Meriwether Lewis. The West was where he belonged.

“It’s a small world,” Talleyrand said. “And will they succeed?”

“They are very capable. But the United States has become very big.”

“I’ll be interested to hear what they discover. We’ve little idea what we sold you.” That thin smile again.

What was this about? We were spies, not ministers, and the business of police, not ambassadors. Why was Talleyrand bothering with us? “You’re working, I trust, for an end to the present war with Britain?” I said in order to say something. “The United States wishes to resume trade with both sides.” France was under British blockade.

“The United States spent money for Louisiana, borrowed from a bank in Britain, that the emperor intends to use to conquer England. A small world, indeed. As for me, I’m always working for my country at great sacrifice to myself.” It was a sardonic lie, given that the man made a fortune from every office he touched, be it religious, revolutionary, or imperial.

“Councillor Réal told me the tricolor will soon fly in London.”

“I expect stalemate, Monsieur Gage. France is the elephant and England the whale, and each is struggling to come to grips with the other. Which is why Councillor Réal and I agreed that, rather than just jail and shoot you, we would ask you for advice. To help persuade you to truly help us, you’ve been brought here to see the future of Europe.”

“I doubt the emperor really needs my advice. Nor, might I add, does he need to shoot me.”

“Never forget that he could do so; the Jaeger rifle is to remind you how powerless you are to a man surrounded by an army. I’d hate for you to make a misstep. So tragic for your wife.” His glance at her was now cold. “She, too, must help us as we help you.”

“Am I to speak to Napoleon?” I could barely see the new emperor. He had on a bicorn hat with cockade, pivoted so that the ends pointed toward his shoulders, as he preferred. But at five feet six and sitting, he did not tower like a Charlemagne. He’d lost some of his campaign leanness, too, and was thicker than I remembered. His coat was military blue, his stockings and breeches white, and he wore only a few simple medals. The simplicity marked him apart. A man is truly important when he doesn’t have to show it. “I’d have to tunnel or vault just to get to him.”

“The meeting is not here, but at a later time and in a place of his choosing. Today is just to remind you of his power.”

“I am reminded.”

“Are you willing to contemplate what Réal suggested?”

I had to be careful. “I’m doubtful of the utility of such a course, but I’m also trying to save my family. I become ever more confused as to which side I’m really on.”

“That just means you’re able. Napoleon says all intelligent men are hypocrites.”

“Half a compliment, I suppose.”

“And I think Napoleon is not only intelligent, but a genius.”

I was surprised. Talleyrand by reputation had a cynical view of the abilities of everyone, especially those he had to answer to. But he was serious.

“Yes, I respect and fear him,” the chamberlain went on. “Like me, he has no friends, but he buys loyalty with reward and keeps his marshals off-balance by setting them against one another. His policemen spy on one another, don’t they, Pasques?”

“No good policeman trusts another,” the giant grunted.

“His ministers compete for favor to get their budget. Every decision goes across his desk. I’ve never seen a man work harder. Reward, divide, control. He understands power better than any politician I’ve met.”

“But to what purpose, Grand Chamberlain?” Astiza asked.

“That is a tremendously insightful question. Too few ask it.”

“I hope you’re sharing your own wisdom with him.”

“I share my experience. History will decide if it’s wisdom. Ah, it’s beginning.”

The drama unfolded as scripted. There were hymns and patriotic songs. A parade of flags, including banners captured in battle and tricolors impressively shot through by bullet and shell. Octave-Henri Gabriel, Comte de Ségur, was master of ceremonies. The Comte de Lacepede was inducted as the Legion’s first grand chancellor. He gave a windy speech, a roll call of the Legion’s grand officers was read, and then the chosen legionnaires came forward to receive their medals. The first, a wounded and crippled veteran of the revolutionary wars a decade earlier, had to be helped up the stairs for Napoleon to tenderly pin on the medal. It was a touching sight, even to me.

The requirement was service, the motto “Honor and Fatherland,” and the pay to Legion members ranged from 250 francs for an ordinary legionnaire to five thousand to Lacepede. As usual, the less a fellow needed the money, the more they gave him.

The bauble itself had a noble look. A white radiating star had the head of Napoleon in the center, pinned on the breast as a mark of distinction. No one would accuse the Corsican of false modesty.

“Civilization works through information, Monsieur Gage,” Talleyrand murmured as we watched. “That’s all we’re asking from you, that you convey what you see. As courier or go-between, you can make history.”

“So long as it safeguards my family.”

“Your family will safeguard itself. I’ll pay your new French stipend while you and your family attend Napoleon at the army camps on the Channel coast.” He turned to Astiza. “It was to be five hundred francs a month, but for your cooperation, let’s make it six.”

“You can simply pay the money to my wife here in Paris,” I said.

“But Napoleon wants her, too, along with the boy and the comtesse.”

I was surprised. “For what?”

“He’ll tell you in due time.”

The oath was to both France and emperor, the roars of Vive l’empereur shook the church, and at last we were released, long lines of men lining up at temporary privies to pee.

As the mob slowly carried us outside, I put a question to Talleyrand. “To a realist does such ceremony matter? I mean, a trinket and a ribbon? It’s like trade goods to the Indians, isn’t it?”

“Napoleon heard the same doubt in his Council of State. To which he replied, ‘By such toys are men led.’”