This was written in Napoleon’s nearly indecipherable handwriting.
As some of you know, I took on the challenge on translating Eugene’s (Napoleon’s stepson’s) memoirs. As I was kindly informed by a reader of the Napoleon Bonaparte Facebook group - that project was about to meet a swift end.
Eugene, to my understanding, suffered from head trauma involving a carriage accident and a related complication resulted in an early death in 1824.
This death brought the memoirs to a conclusion and the many volumes there are filled with military and political correspondence which I’m not feeling compelled to also translate.
My project is largely about what I perceive to be the mysterious relationship between Napoleon and his stepdaughter Hortense. I genuinely want to know the truth and I thought who better to show me than Hortense’s brother/Napoleon’s stepson.
Eugene showed me nothing!
He didn’t even barely bring up that he had a sister. Now I’m going to start digging into de Beauharnais personal correspondence to see if I can find what Eugene could or would not show.
This is the first letter written to Hortense by Napoleon. She was sulky and accusatory in her letter to which he is responding here. She accused him of hating women and called him a hypocrite for marrying one.
Let’s see what we’ll learn:
A representation of the letter.
