Rain has not kept the crowds away, nor has the delay. The parade winding through the streets of Paris today, 27 July 1798, was supposed to have been held on 14 July, Bastille Day, but the plunder from Napoleon’s conquest of Italy was late arriving. Consequently, today’s Fête de la Liberté (Festival of Liberty), the celebration of the downfall of Robespierre three years earlier, will be like no other.
Cavalry – splendid in blue coats, flashing armour and plumed helmets – lead the parade, followed by a military band playing not ‘La Marseillaise’ but an anthem written especially for the occasion. The lyrics reveal the theme of the festival:
The theme of Paris as the new Rome is a propaganda coup for Napoleon, although he’s not here to enjoy it, being away doing to Egypt what he has done to Italy. Evoking images of triumphant Roman generals returning with chariots filled with booty to impress the mob, cart after cart rolls through the streets of Paris bearing art treasures looted from Italy.
Napoleon has helped himself to the four bronze horses from St Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Treasures taken from the Vatican under the terms of surrender include the ancient Greek statue of Apollo Belvedere, the statue of Laocoön and His Sons, which depicts the Trojan priest Laocoön and his two sons being strangled by giant snakes, the Dying Gaul, the Capitoline Venus, paintings by great masters such as Raphael, Veronese and Titian, and much more.
Also rolling by are carts carrying plants and animals acquired from French military and scientific expeditions to exotic lands. There are lions, bears and one-humped camels to gawk at, but for some onlookers the main attraction is the display of living plant specimens brought back from Puerto Rico by the explorer and naturalist Nicolas Baudin – banana trees, palm trees, coconuts and papaya. Baudin, the man of the moment, has even bigger things in mind; plans that will take him to the ends of the Earth, and fire the imagination of Napoleon himself.
Man has discovered nature, and not a moment too soon. As Western expansion continues apace across the globe, the number of previously unknown species of plants and animals is rapidly increasing. With such wonders to behold, the study of nature – once dismissed as a quaint hobby of retired clergymen and country gentlemen – has become fashionable. Throughout Europe, the French Revolution has engendered cultural upheavals such as the so-called Romantic Revolt, inspiring poets such as Wordsworth, Shelly, Byron and Coleridge to abandon established literary constraints. Now it seems science, too, has embraced the quest for the new and, along with those of the romantic poets, the works of Linnaeus, Cuvier, Banks and other naturalists of note are de rigueur in the libraries of the nobility, gentry and upwardly mobile.
Natural history, the amateur pursuit du jour, is particularly popular with women. Having been largely ignored for so long by the scientific patriarchy, it is a branch of science women can study and contribute to without treading on male toes. Women are now among the most avid readers of science books, collectors of natural specimens, and active members of scientific societies springing up throughout Britain and in France, where the ranks of enthusiastic amateur naturalists include the nation’s first lady, Josephine Bonaparte.
In his memoir, Recollections of the Private Life of Napoleon, Napoleon’s valet, Louis ‘Constant’ Wairy, recalls that while her husband was away campaigning in Egypt, ‘Josephine devoted her attention to executing a wish General Bonaparte had expressed to her before leaving. He had remarked to her that he should like, on his return, to have a country seat, and he charged his brother to attend to this, which Joseph, however, failed to do. Madame Bonaparte, who, on the contrary, was always in search of what might please her husband, charged several persons to make excursions in the environs of Paris, in order to ascertain whether a suitable dwelling could be found.
‘After having vacillated long between Ris [23 kilometres south of Paris] and Malmaison [12 kilometres west of Paris] she decided on the latter, which she bought from Monsieur Lecoulteux-Dumoley for, I think, 400,000 francs.’2
The 60-hectare property, neglected after being seized by the government during the revolution, is in a sorry state, and its name literally means ‘bad house’. Still, Josephine falls in love with it. She buys it without consulting her husband, and borrows money to pay for repairs. Napoleon, at first annoyed to learn of his wife’s impetuosity, mellows when, on his return, he sees the estate and what Josephine has done to it. He, too, falls in love with Malmaison, and it soon becomes the family’s escape from the business of government and the glare of Parisian society. It is the Bonapartes’ retreat.
‘Nowhere, except on the field of battle, did I ever see Bonaparte happier than in the gardens of Malmaison,’ his old friend and private secretary Louis de Bourrienne later recalls. ‘We used to go there every Saturday evening, and stay the whole of Sunday and sometimes Monday. Bonaparte used to spend a considerable part of his time in walking and superintending the improvements he had ordered.
‘During the first four or five days that Bonaparte spent at Malmaison, he amused himself, after breakfast, with calculating the revenue of that property. According to his estimates it amounted to 8000 francs. “That’s not bad!” said he, “but to live here would require an income of 30,000 livres.” I could not help smiling to see him seriously engaged in such a calculation.’3
While her husband wrestles with the household budget, Josephine busies herself with turning a dream into reality. She wants Malmaison to be more than a haven for her family. Her vision is of a botanic garden with exotic flora growing not in manicured displays but like wildflowers, and a menagerie unlike any other. More than a century before the world’s first open-range zoo in Hamburg, in 1907, Josephine’s Malmaison will be a zoological garden without cages – a living natural history museum where animals can roam free, as nature intended.