The ink is hardly dry on the peace treaty, yet British tourists are all but trampling each other in the rush to visit Paris. The war between Britain and France, which had dragged on for nine years and almost crippled the British economy, is over at last. The Treaty of Amiens, signed on 25 March 1802, has opened the floodgates to English men and women – invariably of the moneyed classes – curious to see what republican France looks like. The ‘Grand Tour’ of the continent, suspended since the outbreak of hostilities in 1793, is de rigueur once more. A popular British cartoon titled The First Kiss This Ten Years, depicts Monsieur François stooping to kiss Britannia, saying, ‘Madame, permit me to pay my profound esteem to your engaging person and to seal on your divine lips my everlasting attachment.’ Britannia replies, ‘Monsieur, you are truly a well-bred gentleman, and though you make me blush, yet you kiss so delicately that I could not refuse you, though I was sure that you would deceive me again.’1
A ticket from Dover to Calais costs a reasonable £4,13s for the eight-hour crossing, and the ten- to 15-hour crossing from Brighton to Dieppe is cheaper still. Passengers on both routes are advised that refreshments are not provided.
In Paris, the Champs Elysées is crowded with promenading tourists. Likewise the Bois de Boulogne – restored to its former glory after being vandalised during the revolution – and the Tuileries Palace.
At the Louvre, visitors jostle to view the art treasures Napoleon stole from Italy, but anyone hoping to see the Mona Lisa will be disappointed. Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting had been in the possession of the kings of France for 200 years, and all the monarchs gave it pride of place in the Louvre Palace until Louis XV, whose taste in art tended to the banal and erotic. He had the portrait removed to a minor official’s office, where it stayed gathering dust until the revolution, when it was discovered and declared the property of the French people. The National Assembly decreed that the Mona Lisa was to be displayed at the Louvre, now converted into a museum, along with other masterpieces looted by the conquering French army, to the greater glory of the new regime.
The painting never got there, however. Napoleon took it to hang in his bedroom at the Tuileries Palace, where for the next four years he had the pleasure of that enigmatic smile all to himself. It’s not known what Josephine thought of the voluptuous voyeur on her husband’s wall, but it’s telling that in 1804 Napoleon ordered the painting removed to the Louvre, where it would remain.
Tourists taking the air along the banks of the Seine might be lucky enough to spot American inventor Robert Fulton tinkering with his newfangled steam-powered boat. Fulton came to France hoping to interest Napoleon in his design for a devastating new weapon of war. What Fulton called a ‘plunging boat’ he named the Nautilus – a precursor of the submarine – would approach an enemy vessel underwater and place an explosive charge on its hull. Later improvements would show that Fulton’s submersible boat had potential, but Napoleon, on watching a prototype put through its paces, rejected the idea. He noted that the Nautilus, powered by a hand-turned propeller, was too slow to outpace a warship, leaked like a sieve, and even if effective was a dishonourable way to fight.
Having failed to revolutionise naval warfare, Fulton turned his mind to revolutionising sea travel, and has built a steamboat. It is not a new idea but the technology is yet to be perfected, and the race is on to build the first commercially viable steamship. Fulton, who hopes to win this reputation, will achieve his dream, not in France but later in America, on the Hudson River. On the Seine, at its trial run, his steamboat chugs a short distance upriver at less than five kilometres an hour, its light hull groaning under the weight of its massive steam engine, then breaks in half and sinks to the bottom.
For many visitors, the ultimate treat is an invitation to be presented at Napoleon’s court. He is not yet the great bogey of British propaganda, and the first tour guide for English visitors, the tortuously titled Practical Guide during a Journey from London to Paris with a Correct Description of All the Objects Deserving of Notice in the French Metropolis, expresses the public mood as ‘our wish that the great man who has done so much for France and mankind may moderate his ambitions and make the illustrious Washington his political model’.2
London’s The Times reports that the court of Josephine is almost indistinguishable from the court of Marie Antoinette. ‘The ladies of the old court are in great request in the circle of Madame Bonaparte’, including ‘several of the most pronounced royalists among the emigrants,’ says The Times, adding that the extravagant fashions of pre-revolutionary Paris have been restored.3
One visitor notes that the cafes of Paris, once the incubators of political and philosophical discourse, are all but empty, while the theatres are crowded. Another, after a visit to the theatre, writes to The Times that ‘The Bishop of Durham would expire at seeing the dresses of the performers. The ladies are almost quite naked, and really not covered enough to give the least idea of modesty. There cannot be anything so profligate, so debauched or so immoral as the ideas or manners of all ranks of people, particularly the higher class, and poor virtue and decency are entirely banished from their calendars.
‘The daughter of Madame Bonaparte sits every night in a crimson and gold box at the opera; [Napoleon] in one directly below, with a gilded grating towards the audience, who see very little of him. He leaves the house before the dropping of the curtain and, escorted by a strong guard of cavalry and torches, sets off at full gallop for Malmaison, where he sleeps.’4
Throughout the year and into the next, The Times keeps thumping the tub. Paris is a cesspit of ‘gambling, debauchery, intemperance and the insatiable desire after public spectacles,’ the newspaper thunders.5 Enticed rather than deterred, the British keep coming in droves.
Far from the madding crowd, at the extremity of the British world, the people of New South Wales are bemused to learn that the debauched French have somehow managed to export decadence to England. In the first edition of the Sydney Gazette, on 5 March 1803, an intriguing story on the back page informs colonial readers that ‘a practice equally disgraceful and immoral had been prevalent in the town of Manchester since the ratification of the Treaty of Peace.
‘Wives had been publicly exhibited for sale. Good ones, being scarce, brought a great price, but the market being overstocked with those of a contrary description, they sold for little or nothing. Much to the credit of the magistrates, they suppressed the growing evil and restored the fair sex to their original value.’6
Britons’ fears of descent into moral turpitude, Continental-style, will be allayed on 18 May 1803, when the British government restores what to many is the natural order of things – war with France.
Insulted by Napoleon warning them that European affairs are none of their business, concerned by the possibility of losing valuable markets and political influence, and suspecting that Bonaparte is merely biding time until ready to invade England and attack Britain’s colonies, the British opt for a pre-emptive strike.
On 17 May, the day before war is declared, the Royal Navy captures all French and allied Dutch merchant ships in British ports and off the coast. The crews are taken prisoner and millions of pounds worth of cargo is seized.
Napoleon, outraged by the surprise attack, orders the arrest of all British males aged from 18 to 60 in France and Italy. Women and children are permitted to return to Britain, but for more than 1000 British men, who will be detained in France for up to a decade, the Grand Tour has turned into a holiday in hell.