The position of women

Hypocrisy is rife in all sexual matters right across Europe. Male leaders such as Napoleon have many mistresses and see no blame attached to their infidelity to their wives. However, women are still required to be chaste and faithful – this despite the activities of those, such as Joséphine, who defy the 'normal' order of things.

There is a great fear of women's power and sexuality. For example, in the 1800s, Dr Nicholas de Venette writes: 'The womb of a woman is in the number of insatiable things mentioned in the Scriptures. I cannot tell whether there is anything in the world its greediness may be compared unto; neither hell fire nor the earth being so devouring, as the privy parts of a lascivious woman.'

A prodigious – and somehow unnatural – sexual appetite is often associated with women in power. One story doing the rounds in Europe at this time is that Catherine the Great of Russia, who died in 1796, did so while having sex with a horse. It is wholly untrue.

Prostitution

War has resulted in a huge increase in prostitution throughout Europe. The women follow the armies wherever they go, or soldiers seek their services in towns and cities along their route. Since sex is almost entirely unprotected (there are primitive condoms made of cow's bladders and the like, but men complain that they lose all sensation if they use them), sexually transmitted diseases are rife. Napoleon's armies are particularly badly hit, with gonorrhoea and syphilis ravaging his forces.

Prostitutes are held to blame. So Napoleon attempts to ban camp-following and to compel medical inspections of brothels in areas where his troops are billeted. The Code Napoleon also introduces a system of brothel licensing throughout Europe. The Church and others are outraged at what they say amounts to the legalisation of prostitution, but only Berlin refuses outright to comply.

Napoleon's lovers

Napoleon is nothing if not a passionate lover. The problem for his lovers is that he has a number of them – although he manages with just two brides. Joséphine, of course, is the first and most famous.

Joséphine
'I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night allow my senses no rest.

'Sweet and matchless Joséphine, how strangely you work upon my heart.

'Are you angry with me? Are you unhappy? Are you upset?

'My soul is broken with grief and my love for you forbids repose. But how can I rest any more, when I yield to the feeling that masters my inmost self, when I quaff from your lips and from your heart a scorching flame?

'Yes! One night has taught me how far your portrait falls short of yourself!

'You start at midday: in three hours I shall see you again.

'Till then, a thousand kisses, mio dolce amor! but give me none back for they set my blood on fire.' Napoleon to Joséphine, 29 December 1795

Born into nobility in the West Indies, Joséphine (1763-1814) has two children, Eugène and Hortense, by her first husband – Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais, who is executed during the revolutionary Terror. She has been mistress to various leading figures in French politics by the time she encounters Napoleon, but he falls in love with her on their first meeting and they marry in 1796.

This doesn't put an end to either her affairs or Napoleon's, and they almost divorce in 1799. When they finally do in 1809, however, it seems to be mainly for reasons of state. Their marriage has been childless and Napoleon wants a son and heir to succeed him. There are also sound strategic reasons for his marriage to the Austrian princess, Marie Louise, which takes place less than two months later.

Joséphine, the great court socialite, spends the remaining years of her life devoted to her love of gardening and botany. Napoleon never quite gets over her: his last words are reputed to be 'France, the army, Joséphine!'

Marie Louise of Austria
The daughter of Francis I of Austria and great-niece of Marie Antoinette, the French queen executed during the Revolution, Marie Louise is only 19 when she marries Napoleon. The marriage does nothing to end the enmity between France and Austria, but she does give Napoleon the son he wants: François Charles Joseph, born in 1811, who is made king of Rome.

Marie Walewska
François Charles Joseph isn't Napoleon's only son. The first is Alexandre, born in 1810 to the Polish countess, Marie Walewska. Napoleon first met her when his armies took Warsaw in 1807 and they have maintained a passionate affair since. Renowned for her beauty, Marie seems to feel as strongly for Napoleon as he feels for her – she is the only one of his lovers to visit him in exile on Elba. The discovery, in 1809, that Marie is pregnant tells Napoleon that his and Joséphine's failure to have children is not his fault, and leads directly to their divorce.

Marguerite-Joséphine Weimer (Mademoiselle Georges)
Napoleon has no difficulty in attracting beautiful women. Another of his lovers is the striking actress, Marguerite-Joséphine Weimer, known as Mademoiselle Georges, who makes her debut in the Paris theatre in 1802, aged just 15. She begins her affair with Napoleon a year later. She also claims the duke of Wellington among her conquests.

Giuseppina Grassini
The opera singer Giuseppina Grassini, who performs at La Scala, is another woman who is believed to have had affairs with both Napoleon and – after the fall of Paris in 1814 – Wellington.

Napoleon's other lovers
Napoleon's other lovers include Pauline Fourès, who divorced her husband after starting an affair with Napoleon in Egypt in 1799, and possibly Désirée Clary, a Marseilles silk merchant's daughter to whom he became engaged in 1794, but jilted in favour of Joséphine. She later became the queen of Sweden.

The Spanish affair

An affair between the Spanish queen – Maria Louisa of Parma – and a member of the royal court is at the heart of Napoleon's entry into Spain and the imposition of his brother Joseph on the throne.

The courtier, Manuel de Godoy, duke of Alcudia, had been gaining influence, and the heir to the throne, Ferdinand, known as the Infante, wants to get rid of him. Godoy's followers imprison Ferdinand, but when the French army under Marshal Murat approaches Madrid, they panic and release him. Charles IV abdicates, expecting to hand over to Ferdinand, but when Murat enters Madrid on 3 March 1808, he refuses to recognise him. Three months later, Joseph is made king by Napoleon, sparking widespread resistance in Spain and the ill-fated Peninsular War.

Pleasure through pain

Donatien-Alphonse-François, Marquis de Sade, is in the mental asylum at Charenton for the 13 years up to his death in 1814. However, he has already done enough – although imprisoned for cruelty and unnatural sexual practices at Vincennes and in the Bastille – to give his name to the pursuit of sexual pleasure through causing pain. His novels, 120 Days of Sodom, Justine and Juliette have scandalised French society, even among the debauched aristocracy, of which he is a member.

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