Napoleon: The Man Behind the Myth

Carteaux’s command had been given to the hardly more martial General François Doppet, a physician who dabbled in literature, and had only won high rank by finding himself in the right place at the right time. But on 15 November his nerve failed during an attack on Fort Mulgrave: he gave the order to retreat when he saw the English making a sortie, only to have a furious Buonaparte, his face bathed in blood from a light wound, gallop up and call him a jean foutre (the closest English approximation would be ‘fucking idiot’). Doppet took it well. He was aware of his limitations, and realised that chef de bataillon Buonaparte knew his business.11 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte’s orders and notes during these weeks are succinct and precise, and while their tone is commanding, he takes the trouble to explain why compliance with his demands is essential. In war, as in any other critical situation, people quickly rally to the person who gives the impression of knowing what they are about, and Buonaparte’s self-confidence was magnetic. He showed bravery and steadiness under fire, and did not spare himself, which set him apart from many of the political appointments milling around at headquarters. ‘This young officer,’ wrote General Doppet, ‘combined a rare bravery and the most indefatigable activity with his many talents. Every time I went out on my rounds, I always found him at his post; if he needed a moment’s rest, he took it on the ground, wrapped in his cloak; he was never away from his batteries.’12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Through effort and resourcefulness, Buonaparte had built up an artillery park of nearly a hundred guns and set up a dozen batteries, provided the necessary powder and shot, and trained the soldiers to man them. For his chief of staff he had picked the apparently vain and frivolous Jean-Baptiste Muiron, who had trained as an artillery officer and quickly became an enthusiastic aide. In the twenty-six-year-old Félix Chauvet he identified a brilliant commissary who earned and returned his affection as well as serving him efficiently. During an attack on one of the batteries, Buonaparte had noticed the engaging bravery under fire of a young grenadier in the battalion of the Côte d’Or named Andoche Junot. When he saw that the man also had beautiful handwriting he appropriated him as an aide, only to discover that he had trained for the artillery in the school at Châlons. A couple of weeks later, another young man joined Buonaparte’s entourage. He was the handsome nineteen-year-old Auguste Marmont, a cousin of Le Lieur de Ville sur Arce, who had trained for the artillery at Châlons with Junot.13 (#litres_trial_promo)

On 16 November a new commander arrived to take over from Doppet. He was General Jacques Dugommier, a fifty-five-year-old professional soldier, a veteran of the Seven Years’ War and the American War of Independence who knew how to call the troops to order. He had brought General du Teil and a couple of artillery officers with him, but quickly realised that Buonaparte had the situation in hand, and he did little more than endorse his decisions. ‘I can find no words to describe the merits of Buonaparte,’ he wrote to the minister of war. ‘Much technical knowledge, as much intelligence and too much bravery is only a faint sketch of the qualities of this uncommon officer.’14 (#litres_trial_promo)

On 25 November Dugommier held a council of war, attended by Saliceti and, in place of Gasparin, who had died, a newly-arrived représentant, Augustin Robespierre, younger brother of one of the leading lights of the Committee of Public Safety. They considered Dugommier’s plan, then that drawn up in Paris by Carnot. Both involved multiple attacks. Buonaparte argued that this would disperse their forces, and put forward his own plan, which consisted of a couple of feint attacks and a massive assault on forts Mulgrave, Éguillette and Balaguier, whose capture he was confident would precipitate a rapid evacuation of Hood’s fleet and the fall of the city. The plan was accepted and preparations put in hand.15 (#litres_trial_promo)

On 30 November the British commander in Toulon, General O’Hara, made a sortie and succeeded in capturing a battery and spiking its guns before moving on Ollioules. Dugommier and Saliceti managed to rally the fleeing republican forces and lead up reinforcements. They retook the battery, a battalion led by Louis-Gabriel Suchet taking O’Hara prisoner in the process, and Buonaparte unspiked the guns and opened up on the fleeing allies. He had been in the thick of the fighting and earned a mention in Dugommier’s despatch to Paris.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

The day’s fighting had nevertheless demonstrated the lack of mettle and experience of the French troops. The worsening weather combined with food shortages to sap morale. Despairing of their ability to take Toulon, Barras and Fréron considered raising the siege and taking winter quarters. Saliceti pressed Dugommier to attack, but the general hesitated, as a failed assault might cost him his head. As it was, they were being accused in Paris of lack of zeal and of living in luxury.17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Dugommier resolved to act on Buonaparte’s plan, and the batteries facing Fort Mulgrave began bombarding it on 14 December. The British batteries responded vigorously, and Buonaparte was thrown to the ground by the wind of a passing shot. The attack, by a force of 7,000 men in three columns, began at 1 a.m. on 17 December. A storm had broken and Dugommier hesitated, but Buonaparte pointed out that the conditions might actually prove favourable, and the impatience of Saliceti carried the day. The French infantry went into action in pouring rain, the darkness lit up by flashes of lightning, the sound of the guns drowned out by peals of thunder. Two of the advancing columns strayed from their prescribed route and lost cohesion as many of the soldiers fell back or fled. Other units reached Fort Mulgrave and began escalading its defences. The fighting was fierce – the attack on the fort would cost the French over a thousand casualties – but Muiron eventually forced his way into the fort, closely followed by Dugommier and Buonaparte, who had his horse shot under him at the beginning of the attack, and was wounded in the leg by an English corporal’s lance as he stormed the ramparts.

As soon as he had taken possession of the fort, Buonaparte turned its guns on those of forts Éguillette and Balaguier, and ordered Marmont to start bombarding them. The British mounted a counter-attack, but it was repulsed and they were forced to evacuate the two remaining forts. By then it was light, and Buonaparte began firing incendiary shells and red-hot cannonballs at the nearest British ships, blowing up two. He told anyone who would listen that the battle was over and Toulon was theirs, but Dugommier, Robespierre, Saliceti and others were sceptical, believing the town would only fall after a few more days’ fighting. They were wrong – the explosions of the two ships were a signal the allies could not ignore, and that morning they decided to evacuate; they began moving men out while the ships struggled in a strong wind to pull out of range of the French guns.

The evacuation proceeded through that day and the next, with the allies towing away nine French warships and blowing up a further twelve, setting fire to ships’ stores and the arsenal, and taking on board thousands of French royalists. Anyone who could get hold of a boat was rowing out to the allied ships, and some even tried swimming. They were under constant fire from batteries newly set up by Buonaparte on the promontory and the heights above the city. That night the burning ships lit up the scene, revealing what Buonaparte described as ‘a sublime but heart-rending sight’.18 (#litres_trial_promo)

The French entered the city on the morning of 19 December, looting, raping and lynching anyone they pleased to label as an enemy of the Revolution. On the quayside people were throwing themselves into the water to reach the departing British ships. Those who did not drown were subjected to the fury of the republican soldiery. Over two decades later, Buonaparte recalled the revulsion he had felt at the sight, and according to some sources he managed to save a number of lives.19 (#litres_trial_promo)

Barras, Saliceti, Ricord, Robespierre and Fréron carried out a purge of the population of Toulon. ‘The national vengeance has been unfurled,’ they proclaimed, listing those categories which had been ‘exterminated’. Barras suggested it would be simpler if they removed all those who were proven ‘patriots’, that is to say revolutionaries, and killed all the rest. The population of the city, which would be renamed Port-de-la-Montagne, fell from 30,000 to 7,000.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

On 22 December 1793 Buonaparte was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He was only twenty-four years old, but this did not make him an exception. Over 6,000 officers of all arms had emigrated since 1791, and another 10,000 would have done so by the summer of 1794. Generals and higher-ranking officers were guillotined by the hundred as suspected traitors. In consequence, the Republic had been obliged to nominate no fewer than 962 new generals between 1791 and 1793. But in the case of Buonaparte, the promotion was merited, and he knew it.21 (#litres_trial_promo)

‘I told you we would be brilliantly successful, and, you see, I keep my word,’ he wrote banteringly from Ollioules to the deputy minister of war in Paris on 24 December, using the familiar ‘tu’ form, no doubt to stress his revolutionary attitude. He had already noted that in the current climate the story that was told first was the one that stuck in the mind, and he informed the minister that thanks to his action, the British had been prevented from burning any of the French ships or naval stores, which was a blatant lie.22 (#litres_trial_promo)

He had proved not only that he was a capable and resourceful officer, but also that he was a leader of men. He had won the admiration of all the real soldiers present, starting with Dugommier. More than that, he had revealed a charisma that many of his young comrades found hard to resist.23 (#litres_trial_promo)

‘He was small in stature, but well proportioned, thin and puny in appearance but taut and strong,’ noted Claude Victor (another who had distinguished himself at Toulon and had also been made a general), noting that ‘his features had an unusual nobility’ and his eyes seemed to send out shafts of fire. His gravity and sense of purpose impressed those around him. ‘There was mystery in the man,’ Victor felt.24 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte was exhausted. Three months of intense activity, poor diet, frequent nights spent sleeping on the ground wrapped only in his cloak, and that during the winter months, must have placed a heavy strain on his constitution. He had a deep flesh wound and had also caught scabies, which was then endemic in the army. That may be why, at a moment when he could have obtained a posting to one of the armies actively engaged against the enemy, he was content to accept that of inspector of the coastal defences along the stretch between Toulon and Marseille. Another reason may have been a desire to lie low. He had seen how easily people could lose their commands, and he had probably made a number of enemies.25 (#litres_trial_promo)

It may just have been that he wished to be close to his family, which had moved further away from Toulon, first to Beausset, then Brignoles and finally Marseille, where he joined them on 2 January 1794. His general’s pay of 12,000 livres plus expenses would have been welcome, as the cost of living had risen dramatically in the course of 1793. The family had lived through lean times, with Letizia taking in washing, and the daughters, as gossip had it, resorting to prostitution. Maria Paolina, now Paulette, who had grown into a rare beauty, had been caught stealing figs from a neighbour’s garden.26 (#litres_trial_promo)

8

Adolescent Loves (#ulink_f72ef989-c869-5f0b-8195-a64cc3a3cc07)

Buonaparte spent the first weeks of 1794 travelling up and down the coast inspecting the defences and issuing quantities of crisp instructions. These go into minute detail on the exact quantities of powder and shot required, which spare parts should be assembled, and even the manner in which horses should be harnessed for specific tasks.

At the beginning of February he was appointed to command the artillery of the Army of Italy, operating against the forces of the King of Sardinia. They had invaded southern France in 1792 but were driven back, following which Savoy and Nice had been incorporated into the French Republic, but they still held the Alpine passes, from which they threatened to recover the lost provinces. The port of Oneglia, a Sardinian enclave in the territory of the neutral Republic of Genoa and the chief link between the king’s island and mainland provinces, was also considered a threat, since it resupplied British warships and harboured corsairs who preyed on French shipping.

Buonaparte’s new salary allowed him to install his family in the comfortable if modest Château-Sallé outside Antibes, not far from his headquarters in Nice. Joseph, whose job as commissary had awakened an interest in trade and speculation, was currently in Nice too, exploring business opportunities. Lucien was at Saint-Maximin, where as head of its Jacobin club he had changed the town’s name to ‘Marathon’, in homage as much to the ‘martyr of the Revolution’ Jean-Paul Marat, who had been assassinated in his bath by the royalist Charlotte Corday, as to the heroic ancient Greek defenders of their homeland. He had also changed his own name, to ‘Brutus’, and had married Christine Boyer, the sister of the keeper of the inn at which he lodged.1 (#litres_trial_promo)

The commander of the Army of Italy was General Pierre Dumerbion, a sixty-year-old professional. He was supervised by the political commissioners Saliceti, Augustin Robespierre and Ricord, who commissioned Buonaparte to prepare a campaign plan. As the Sardinian positions in the mountains were almost unassailable, he suggested ignoring them and striking at their bases: their left wing on the lower ground nearer the sea was vulnerable, and if the French could break through there, they would be able to sweep into the enemy rear. His plan was accepted, and operations began on 7 April, spearheaded by General André Masséna, who captured Oneglia two days later, and by the end of the month the French were in Saorgio, strategic gateway into Piedmont.

Buonaparte’s role consisted of ensuring the artillery was in position and adequately supplied. To assist him he had selected two old comrades from the regiment of La Fère, Nicolas-Marie Songis and Gassendi, his new companions Marmont and Muiron, and as aides-de-camp Junot and his own younger brother Louis. By 1 May he was back in Nice, drawing up further plans which would have taken the French into the plain of Mondovi, but the operations were halted by the war minister Lazare Carnot, who was against involving French forces any deeper in Italy. The Midi was still politically unstable, and there might be unrest if the army moved off. Carnot also needed all available troops to roll back the Spanish invasion.

Buonaparte composed a memorandum for the Committee of Public Safety giving a strategic overview of France’s military position. He argued that invading Spain would yield no tangible benefits, while invading Piedmont would result in the overthrow of a throne that would always be inimical to the French Republic. More important, it would make it possible to defeat Austria, which would only make peace if Vienna were threatened by a two-pronged attack, through Germany in the north and Italy in the south. Austria, he argued, was the cornerstone of the coalition against France, and if it were knocked out that would fall apart.2 (#litres_trial_promo)

Robespierre suggested that Buonaparte accompany him to Paris. The two men had grown close over the past four months, drawn together by the zeal with which they approached their respective tasks and by the shared conviction of the need for strong central authority. Under the dominant influence of Robespierre’s elder brother Maximilien, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris was exercising just such authority, through a reign of Terror which sent thousands to the guillotine. But Robespierre’s grip on power was weakening, and Augustin’s suggestion that Buonaparte come to Paris might have had something to do with that: he allegedly suggested placing him in command of the Paris National Guard.3 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte briefly considered the proposal, and according to Lucien discussed it with his brothers before deciding against it. To Ricord he admitted a reluctance to get involved in revolutionary politics, and his instinct was to stay at his post with the army. Whether the fact that he was also having an affair with Ricord’s wife Marguerite had any bearing on his decision is unclear.4 (#litres_trial_promo)

At the beginning of July he was sent by Saliceti to Genoa to assess the intentions of the city’s government, which was neutral but under pressure from the anti-French coalition, and to inspect its defences for future reference. He left on 11 July, accompanied by Junot, Marmont and Louis, as well as Ricord, but was back at Nice by the end of the month. Yet he was too busy to attend the wedding of his brother Joseph on 1 August.5 (#litres_trial_promo)

Joseph’s bride, Marie-Julie Clary, was twenty-two years old, not pretty, but pious, honest, generous, dutiful, family-minded, intelligent and rich. She came from a family of Marseille merchants with extensive interests in the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, and she brought him a considerable dowry. With this under his belt, Joseph’s bearing changed, and he now assumed a gravitas he felt appropriate as head of the family.6 (#litres_trial_promo)

Buonaparte was still at headquarters when, on 4 August, news reached him of the coup in Paris which had toppled Robespierre on 27 July – 9 Thermidor in the revolutionary calendar. He was deeply affected by the misfortune of his friend, who was guillotined along with his brother the following day. And he did not have to wait long to be arrested himself.7 (#litres_trial_promo)

As soon as he heard of the fall of Robespierre, Saliceti wrote to the Committee of Public Safety accusing Augustin Robespierre, Ricord and ‘their man’ Buonaparte of having sabotaged the operations of the Army of Italy and conspired against the Republic with the allies and with Genoa, whose authorities had bribed Buonaparte with ‘a million’ (the currency was not specified). He ordered the arrest of Buonaparte and the seizure of his papers prior to his being sent to Paris to answer charges of treason.8 (#litres_trial_promo)

It is not clear whether Buonaparte was actually put in gaol or merely under house arrest. Junot managed to pass a note to him offering to arrange his escape, but Buonaparte refused. ‘I recognise your friendship in your proposal, my dear Junot; and you well know that which I have vowed you and on which you know you may count,’ he wrote back. But he was confident his innocence would be recognised and urged Junot to do nothing, as this could only compromise him. Innocence was no guarantor of safety under revolutionary conditions, but Buonaparte was lucky. Saliceti’s accusation had been no more than a reflex of self-preservation, and as soon as he felt he was in the clear he sent another letter to Paris stating that examination of the general’s papers had yielded no evidence of treason, and, bearing in mind his usefulness for the Army of Italy, he and his colleagues had ordered his provisional release. Nobody apart from Junot seems to have taken the charges against Buonaparte seriously. His landlord Joseph Laurenti, with whose daughter Buonaparte was carrying on a flirtation, had stood bail, and as a result he spent most of the eleven days of his detention in his own lodgings.9 (#litres_trial_promo)

Meanwhile, the Austrians had sent an army to reinforce the Sardinian forces, and General Dumerbion felt he had to do something. ‘My child,’ he wrote to Buonaparte, ‘draw me up a campaign plan as only you know how.’ On 26 August the child handed him one, and on 5 September he was at Oneglia to implement it. The French forces advanced on the point at which the two enemy armies met, aiming to split them apart. On 21 September Buonaparte witnessed his first pitched battle, an attack on Dego in which General Masséna distinguished himself. But further operations were called off by Carnot in Paris, and Buonaparte was left with nothing to do. This should have been welcome to him.10 (#litres_trial_promo)

Shortly after his release from arrest he had gone to Marseille to see Joseph, who was enjoying his new-found wealth and having himself addressed by the title of count by his in-laws. On meeting the family, Buonaparte had been struck by Marie-Julie’s much prettier younger sister, Bernardine Eugénie Désirée, and declared himself to be in love. Désirée, or Eugénie as he would call her, was sixteen or seventeen, modest and innocent, with just enough education for a deferential companion and obedient wife. ‘A stranger to tender passions’, Buonaparte wrote to her on 10 September, he had succumbed to ‘the pleasure’ of her company. ‘The charms of your person, of your character, imperceptibly conquered the heart of your love.’ His letters to her are stilted, rushes of passionate prose alternating with suggestions that she buy a piano and take a good teacher, as ‘music is the soul of love, the sweetness of life, the consolation of sorrows and the companion of innocence’. They lack conviction, which is not surprising.11 (#litres_trial_promo)

A new envoy from the Convention, Louis Turreau, had arrived at headquarters in Loano. As he had only just married, he brought his twenty-three-year-old wife with him, but it turned out to be not much of a honeymoon, as she took a fancy to Buonaparte and wasted no time in having an affair with him. ‘I was very young then, happy and proud of my success,’ he later recalled, and admitted that his exhilaration had led him to act irresponsibly: he had taken her on an excursion to see the front line, and to impress her he ordered a battery to open fire on an enemy position. The ensuing cannonade had cost the lives of several men. He later reproached himself bitterly for his childish action.12 (#litres_trial_promo)

Operations on the Italian front had come to a standstill, and at the beginning of November the Committee of Public Safety switched its priority to Corsica. The British had responded to Paoli’s appeal by occupying the island as a colony, with George III as monarch, Sir Gilbert Elliot as viceroy and Pozzo di Borgo as chief administrator. Paoli was bundled off to a second exile in London. As General Dumerbion had paid generous tribute to Buonaparte’s talents, he was given the task of preparing the artillery of the expeditionary force intended to recapture the island.13 (#litres_trial_promo)

He spent most of the last month of 1794 and the first two of 1795 in Toulon where it was assembling. The city was scarred by the siege and subject to riots by mobs seeking ‘aristos’ to lynch. One day a captured Spanish ship with some émigré French noble families aboard was brought into harbour, and a mob gathered in expectation. The city authorities tried to protect the émigrés, only to be accused of being royalist stooges and threatened with lynching. Buonaparte managed to calm the crowd, which contained some gunners who had served under him at the siege, and then smuggle the émigrés out of town in his artillery caissons.14 (#litres_trial_promo)

The Corsican expedition sailed from Toulon on 11 March, but soon ran into an Anglo-Neapolitan fleet, and after a brief encounter in which it lost two ships, sailed back into port. Disheartened by the prospect of inaction, Buonaparte asked to be transferred to the Army of the Rhine. His request remained without response, and he spent the next weeks mainly in Marseille, where on 21 April he became engaged to Désirée.15 (#litres_trial_promo)

He had been seeing her intermittently over the past months and corresponding with her regularly. Most of his letters are couched in the tone of a schoolmaster, as he tells her which books to read and which not, frets about whether her music teacher is good enough, arranges for a publisher in Paris to send her the latest tunes, reminds her to sing her scales regularly, going into tedious detail about the effects of striking a wrong note. He was a great music-lover, with a passion for the Italian composers of the day, and enjoyed lecturing those French ones he found wanting, sometimes entering into arguments of a technical nature with them.16 (#litres_trial_promo)

The engagement had probably been precipitated by the fact that at the end of March he had received a transfer to the Army of the West, operating against insurgents in the Vendée region of western France. The order to take up this posting reached him on 7 May, and to his chagrin he learned that he had been struck off the list of artillery generals, as their quota had been exceeded and he was the youngest, so he was relegated to what he regarded as the inferior status of infantry general.

The following day he set off for Paris, accompanied by his brother Louis, to whose education he was continuing to attend, drilling him mercilessly with mathematical tests even as they travelled up the valley of the Rhône and through Burgundy. He also took with him his devoted Junot and Marmont, who had come to hero-worship him. ‘I found him so superior to everything I had encountered in my life, his intimate conversation was so deep and so captivating, his mind was so full of future promise,’ wrote Marmont, ‘that I could not bear the idea of his impending departure.’ When Buonaparte suggested he accompany him he did not hesitate, even though he had no authorisation to do so.17 (#litres_trial_promo)

Marmont insisted they break their journey at Châtillon-sur-Seine, where his parents lived. His mother found Buonaparte taciturn to the point of being impossible to communicate with, and took the ‘little general’ off to visit her friends the Chastenay family who lived nearby. ‘On this first visit, in order to pass the time I was asked to play the piano,’ recalled the daughter of the house, Victorine. ‘The general seemed to appreciate it but his compliments were curt. I was then asked to sing, so I sang one in Italian which I had just learnt the music for. I asked him if I was pronouncing right, to which he just said no.’18 (#litres_trial_promo)

The following day the Chastenays dined at the Marmonts’, and afterwards Victorine asked Buonaparte about Corsica. He unwound, and in the course of the conversation, which lasted a full four hours, he spoke of his love for the epic poems supposedly written by the thirteenth-century Gaelic poet Ossian and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s novel Paul et Virginie. He spoke earnestly about politics, about happiness and self-fulfilment. On the third day he helped her make a posy of cornflowers and they played games, flirting and dancing. She was dismayed when, the day after that, he continued his journey.19 (#litres_trial_promo)

On reaching Paris in the last days of May, Buonaparte called on François Aubry, Carnot’s successor at the war ministry, but any hopes of reversing the decision striking him off the list of artillery generals were quickly dispelled. Aubry, a former artillery officer embittered by career disappointments, was not to be swayed. Buonaparte began to look around for someone who might help him.

One of the most prominent among those known as the ‘jeunesse dorée’, a faction persecuting the fallen Jacobins, was Stanislas Fréron, who was in love with Buonaparte’s fifteen-year-old sister Paulette, whom he had met in Marseille and whom he wished to marry. Buonaparte was not averse to the match if it could help his own cause.20 (#litres_trial_promo)

A potentially more useful acquaintance was Paul Barras, who had also been at Toulon. His chequered past included fighting the British in India, voting for the death of Louis XVI in the Convention, a minor role in the downfall of Robespierre, and the defeat of a royalist attempt to overthrow the Republic. A spell as commissary to the army had provided the opportunities for graft which enabled him to acquire considerable wealth, with which he indulged his love of luxury and women. He had turned his Jacobin coat inside out, surrounding himself with a court of roués and courtesans, and would have welcomed another ex-Jacobin with a realist’s ability to change his tune, but Barras trusted nobody. There had been Jacobin riots a few days before Buonaparte’s arrival, and the political situation remained unstable, with people representing every shade of revolution and counter-revolution manoeuvring in a kaleidoscopic succession of alliances and realignments. Barras would see no point in helping Buonaparte until he needed him. But he did take him under his wing to keep in reserve.

On 13 June Buonaparte received his posting to the Army of the West under General Lazare Hoche, operating against royalist rebels in the Vendée. He had no intention of going and obtained sick leave until 31 August, which gave him time to consider his options.

The fall of Robespierre had put an end to the Terror, and the resulting release from fear produced an eruption of hedonism. Buonaparte was astonished at the extent to which the people of Paris threw themselves into a life of pleasure. ‘To dance, to go to the theatre, to parties out in the country and to pay court to women, who are here the most beautiful in the world, is the main occupation and the most important thing,’ he wrote to Joseph. ‘People look back on the Terror as on a bad dream.’21 (#litres_trial_promo)

Antoine Lavalette, a contemporary of Buonaparte, was horrified at what had happened to his native city, where ‘the dissolution of society had plumbed new depths’. He noted disapprovingly that ‘it was the newly rich who sought to set the tone, combining all the errors of a bad upbringing with all the ridicule of an inborn absence of dignity’. He was shocked at the ‘barely believable level of licentiousness’ on display, at the ‘lovely, well-bred women of high birth’ who ‘wore flesh-coloured pantaloons and buskins on their feet, barely covered by dresses of transparent gauze, with their breasts uncovered and their arms naked to the shoulder’. As another explained, ‘The aim of these ladies and the ne plus ultra of their art was to show as much nudity as possible without being naked’. Some moistened their dresses with oil to make them cling to the body.22 (#litres_trial_promo)