#junot monday

[miffy-junot]

Conflict between Napoleon and Junot over republicanism

-From the book "La Generale Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès, d'après ses lettres, ses papiers et son 'journal intime' inédits" by Joseph Turquan, a biography of Laure Junot featuring previously unpublished information given to the author by Georges Aubert, Junot's grandson.

The book is from 1901, and therefore is a little dated in some regards, but overall creates a good portrait of Laure and Jean-Andoche Junot.

General Junot was a republican, sincerely a republican. Despite all his joy at seeing Bonaparte, to whom he was fanatically attached, appointed Consul for life, he guessed that this was a path to monarchy and absolute power. If his political convictions were deeply affected, he was even more saddened when he saw that the man seemed to want to confiscate the Republic for his own benefit and, of all things, to do his own thing. Had this man, who until then had no equal in the world, showered him with benefits only to reduce him, as a convict of recognition, to becoming his accomplice in the attacks he carried out against freedom and against the Republic? Was the favor with which he showered the other generals only to ensure devoted praetorians who would take charge, when the time came, of marching the army against the country? So Junot was sad and dreamer. Dining in Saint-Cloud with the First Consul, he let some of his concerns show, which earned him a sharp rebuke from his general.

It was not the first time that he had to endure Bonaparte's bad mood. Often he had received harsh warnings either for a fault on duty or for thoughtlessness outside of duty. Lively as he was, inconsiderate most of the time, Junot had not had time to acquire a bit of that seriousness which his age did not entail much, his temperament even less; he had not known how, in the words of the Consul, “to age himself by ten years.”

[...]

[Junot] was deeply hurt. His wife, who saw him sombre and taciturn and who read him with an open heart, guessed that there had been something between him and Bonaparte. Junot admitted to her that in fact he was very angry about the measures which restricted public freedoms; he added that there was already a court, that one could not say a word of truth without displeasing…

Mme Junot understood that her husband had been displeased by his republican frankness and that he was painfully ulcerated by some words from the First Consul; she saw that the soul was affected and she knew from experience that the wound made by a loved one is poisoned and much longer to heal than any other. More than once already, she had had to console her husband for the sorrows he brought upon himself by provoking jokes in Bonaparte which bruised his heart; more than once she had to heal these wounds of the heart. With his hot temper which left no time for cold reason to intervene, Junot felt very keenly, and his poor young wife had, on certain days, to ask Bonaparte to himself put a balm on the wound that he had done.

This time she didn't ask anything. But, as she was having lunch one morning with Madame Bonaparte, the First Consul arrived, took her aside and asked her, in rather cavalier terms, why he no longer saw his aide-de-camp. The young woman did not hide it from him. that Junot was sick, sick of the harsh words he had said to him and she made him feel, in a few words full of moderation and dignity, how much he had lacked tact in speaking to her husband.

That same evening, the First Consul came to visit his aide-de-camp, and everything was forgotten.

[miffy-junot]

A letter from Junot to his daughter Constance, 1812

Constance as a little girl

Ghjat, September 5, 1812 “It’s not long since I wrote to you, my dear Constance, my letter was for your sister and for you. I have just received two letters from you, dear friend, one dated July 24th but both of them are my pleasure, none better than the other. You are now with your mother. How happy you are, my dear children! Your father misses this happiness. While waiting for her, comfort your mother well, be very wise and good; When he returns, your Papa will be very happy if he hears from Maman, from everyone: 'Your charming daughters, Monsieur le Duc, are well brought up, very friendly, well educated'. With what pleasure he will then kiss them, and how much he will tell them that he loves them with all his heart! Kiss Maman and your brothers for your good Papa, who loves you all with all his heart. -The Duke d'Abrantès p.s. Say many kind things on my behalf to Mlle Poitevin and to Clotilde*

*Clotilde Chodron was Junot's niece.

Although he would not live to see it, Junot's daughters did accomplish his wishes. Both Josephine and Constance were known to be very lovely, kind, and intelligent young women.

[miffy-junot]

A note from Napoleon to Junot, 1794

-In the form of a postscript added to a letter sent to another general. The letter is from Nice and dated '27 Brumaire An III', or 17th November 1794...

"P. S. (for Junot). I am flattered, my friend, by the interest that you take in me; be sure that no one more than I desire all the good you deserve to happen to you. We would be delighted if your employment could bring you to us."

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[miffy-junot]

French print of General Jean-Andoche Junot

[miffy-junot]

Napoleon is socially awkward, Junot and Marmont remedy the situation with whimsy.

Victorine de Chastenay, a fine girl and whom the old regime had trained her manners, as polite as they were skilful, used music in order to evade embarrassment. With her firm, chubby little hand, white, she opened the harpsichord, placed her fingers on the keys; and as Marmont, a loquacious boy, had just explained to the listeners that his companion was of Corsican origin, the young girl, in order to make herself better understood, began to sing in Italian in a very pure voice; then coquettishly, but with modesty, turning to her host, the canoness asked him, smiling, if her pronunciation was correct. The general, always severe, contented himself with replying that she was not, and then he relapsed into his silence; and all would have ended there in this encounter, if Junot, Bonaparte's aide-de-camp, had arrived at that moment.

He was "very noisy in his joy," says Madame de Chastenay, and as he was as turbulent, as gay as Bonaparte was gloomy and reserved, he threw himself through all this, breaking the ice. And it was he and Marmont who arranged impromptu for the next day, at the house of Chatelot, Marmont's parents' house, the feast which was to follow, and, for another day, the concert mixed with a ball and a walk.

At Châtelot, when the time came, everything was very close to going as well as Junot had expected. But throughout the meal, despite the excellence of the dishes, the spiciness of the local wines, further enhanced by the outbursts of his officers, General Bonaparte remained frozen. He does not say a kind word to anyone; only as he had placed in front of him Louis, his younger brother, future king of Holland, barely sixteen years old and whose education he supervised, he was content to pose problems to him, to teach him about algebra and logarithms. Without the good humour of Marmont, the bold, even Gallic verve of Junot, both of whom were absolutely devoted to Bonaparte and subject as slaves to his ascendancy, this meal, from which the guests promised themselves so much pleasure, would have remained insipid, the gloomiest and saddest one has ever seen. For her part, Victorine, in the various environments into which events had thrown her for ten years, had never witnessed anything like this. This coldness, this disdain left her humiliated, offended; so much haughtiness hurt her.

Then, suddenly, the idea came to her to solve this enigma, to know who this man was. Under this sober and dark uniform of a soldier who had fought in the war, was there a heart beating, similar to other hearts? This Bonaparte, with his muteness, his taciturnity, this kind of poorly concealed contempt with which he shrouded everyone who was neither scholar nor warrior in his eyes, who was he? They just got up from the table. With great skill, she approached him, managed to isolate him, then suddenly began to talk to him about Corsica. At first, he didn't break his silence. However, it seemed that this name, Corsica, had had a great effect on his soul. For a brief moment, and as if he had been particularly moved, he remained thoughtful; Madame de Chastenay, who observed him with attention, saw him turn pale and blush in turn; and all the impressions on this singular face, thin and hard, seemed brought to paroxysm. What Madame de Chastenay later remembered was that, in the Marmonts' living room, at the Chatelot, between the two windows overlooking the large garden, there was a marble console table. The general leaned against it, and suddenly, he who had not said a word for two days, spoke. He spoke for four hours, and it was like a torrent of fire!

[...]

In a hammered, brassy, ​​but vibrant voice, the general spoke; and the poorly contained Italian accent gave this voice a strange strength. Without Junot, who was tired of so much grandeur, so much heroism, and who came to play the fool, dance in the middle of the living room, finally give everyone a laugh, the little canoness of Epinal and the future general in chief of the army of Italy would have spent the whole night at the Châtelot philosophizing, and in a sparkling dialogue, pursued a hundred chimeras, stirred up and remade the world! Ultimately the success was very great for Victorine. “Everywhere,” she said, “people marveled at the fact that I had made the general speak.”

But the next day it was even better. With the officers, and a few young girls who had joined the Marmonts and the Chastenays, they danced in circles. Junot, like the day before, played the fool, accompanied by grand gestures, very comical as always, he sang his song: Mon berger ri est-il drole? They even played little games in which those who lost gave pledges. The general, who seemed completely tame, willingly indulged in this madness.

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[miffy-junot]

Junot's celebrations (and poetry!) for Laure's name day

-From the book "La Generale Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès, d'après ses lettres, ses papiers et son 'journal intime' inédits" by Joseph Turquan, a biography of Laure Junot featuring previously unpublished information given to the author by Georges Aubert, Junot's grandson.

The book is from 1901, and therefore is a little dated in some regards, but overall creates a good portrait of Laure and Jean-Andoche Junot.

Junot celebrated Saint Laure, or rather Saint Laurent, the name day of his wife*. As it was the height of summer, on 10th of August, the party took place in the countryside, at Petit-Bièvre. There was a table of seventy place settings, around a gigantic plane tree which wonderfully shaded all the guests; flowers were everywhere; birds, in hidden cages, amused everyone with their sad prisoner songs; mottos and banners gave an air of celebration to every nook and cranny… In the evening, people danced on the lawns and Ruggieri set off a superb fireworks display. Junot pushed his kindness so far as to have this gallant quatrain reproduced in fiery letters on a pavilion where his wife raised doves:

"Quand ma Laure vient visiter Ses amoureuses tourterelles, C'est pour leur apprendre d'aimer L'art charmant qu'elle sail mieux qu'elles."

(or, translated into English, equally sweet but lacking the rhythm and rhyme) -

"When my Laure comes to visit Her loving turtledoves, It is to teach them to love -- The charming art that she knows better than them."

*In Catholic countries many families will celebrate the feast day of the saint that somebody is named after, similar to a birthday party. Laure is the feminine version of Laurent, a saint commemorated on 10th of August.

[miffy-junot]

a British perspective on Junot

"One of Bonaparte's relations had formed an attachment to Junot, who was one of the handsomest men in France; Junot was immediately after sent to Portugal; and upon his defeats there he was disgraced publicly by Bonaparte, and killed himself, it is believed, in a fit of despair."

source: Archibald Alison, 1816

What's interesting about this summary of Junot's downfall is that it is the first publication I could find that explicitly mentions suicide - the French publications of the time are ambiguous about what happened to him. But this article was written based on gossip picked up in France in 1814-15, and so it was certainly known to the public that Junot had committed suicide.

[miffy-junot]

Laure Junot on Napoleon's denouncement of Junot

From a letter written by Laure to Louis-Alexandre Berthier - there is no date given, but it must have been between Junot's death and Berthier's, so 1813-15.

"[Napoleon] completely exonerates the Duke of Abrantes in the two Bulletins of the Russian campaign. When the Emperor received the subsequent letters, he said these coldly barbaric words when it came to the honour of the man who, for twenty-five years, gave him his blood and all the dedication of the most tender friend. He said: "Ah! It's unfortunate, the Bulletins are sent out." These Bulletins advanced the life of the unfortunate duke… He talked about them constantly in his delirium."

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Letter from Junot to Napoleon, 3rd December 1812

"Sire, This memorable campaign ends. I began it honored with a command made to give glory and I end it with a command too far above my rank and in which I can only end up dishonoring myself… Two Bulletins have overwhelmed me ! The Bulletin which speaks of the army's march on Smolensk says that I got lost and made a wrong move. [...] I hoped by dint of marching to repair [General Tharreau's] wrongs and, in order not to lose this man, I bore the punishment of his fault, the entire 8th corps was witness to the fact, but it is only important that your majesty knows the truth."

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[miffy-junot]

Details on Junot's older brother

I've managed to find a little bit of information on Junot's older brother, Guy-Claude. As he was a more private individual and not very well known, there's not much at all, but at least it's something.

He was born on 11th September 1766 in Bussy-le-Grand, making him 5 years older than Junot.

At some point he became a parish priest, but lost this position during the French Revolution (dates are unspecified).

He then joined the army, but in finance rather than seeing any action. He became paymaster to the Army of the Rhine, then to the Army of Egypt - Junot's friend Hamelin tells us this:

The paymaster Junot (brother of the aide-de-camp) who accompanied him was injured at the same time as him and decided to leave immediately for France.

How exactly this injury was acquired and what happened next is, once again, unknown. But in 1801 Guy-Claude became receiver-general of Lot-et-Garonne, then of Haute-Saone from 1802 to 1815.

In 1795 Guy-Claude had married Angelique Magdaleine Henry (1773-1832), a fellow Burgundian, and the couple had two children: Angelique Junot (b.1803) and Jules-Andoche Junot (b.1805)

Guy-Claude Junot died on 3rd March 1821, at the age of 55.

source 1+ source 2

[miffy-junot]

Laure's pregnancy longings and Junot's efforts to fulfil them

This is an article from an 1897 volume of the British Medical Journal, in which a man peruses the "strange phenomenon" of women's pregnancy longings - by looking at the writings of Laure Junot on the subject, which was relevant as Junot had recently been re-buried beneath a grand monument erected in his honour in Montbard.

The author of the article is a man with clearly outdated knowledge of women's health, but the story itself is entertaining and the writing style rather funny:

"The Duchess [d'Abrantes] declares that when she found herself pregnant for the first time she was very happy and exceedingly uncomfortable for several months, but had no longings, and had never heard of such things. Suddenly her mother one day exclaimed "Mon Dieu! I have quite forgotten to ask what your 'longing' is!" The lady declared that she had no time to think of taking up an envie or autojo, as she spent most of her time in being sick. Her lady relatives grew sincerely alarmed; they said that she was in danger, and that if her longing was concealed her offspring would be marked with its symbol. Her sister had longed for cherries at Christmas, and the child she bore was marked with a cherry, which, judging from the Duchess's account, would be called a naevus in our clinical columns. The Duchess racked her wits to find out what she longed for, and at last concluded that she wanted a pineapple.

That fruit was out of season, but Marshal [sic] Junot found that Madame Bonaparte (afterwards the Empress Josephine) had some hot-house specimens, and that historic lady immediately supplied what was wanted. A remarkable incident followed. Junot hurried home with the pineapple, but Corvisart, who had heard of this interesting case, warned him not to let his wife eat any that evening. This advice was followed. Next morning, when the Duchess was frantic with joy at her longing being gratified, her lord cut up the fruit with great courtesy in her presence, and sugared the slices. Whilst this was being done her frenzy for pineapple suddenly changed to an intense aversion, which never throughout her life underwent further change.

The Duchess declares that the revulsion of feeling occurred instantaneously. What was especially remarkable was the fact that she could ever afterwards, as before, take sweets flavoured with pineapple, though she could not tolerate the raw fruit. The child which she bore was not, it would appear, marked with anything like a pineapple."

(...Josephine Junot was indeed born completely healthy with no pineapple-related marks or ailments.)

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Junot's signature as Duc d'Abrantès

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Some celebrations under the Consulate

-From the book "La Generale Junot, Duchesse d'Abrantès, d'après ses lettres, ses papiers et son 'journal intime' inédits" by Joseph Turquan, a biography of Laure Junot featuring previously unpublished information given to the author by Georges Aubert, Junot's grandson.

The book is from 1901, and therefore is a little dated in some regards, but overall creates a good portrait of Laure and Jean-Andoche Junot.

When Bonaparte was appointed Consul for life, Junot thought of throwing him a party. Independently of his desire to celebrate an event which filled those who were attached to him with joy, Junot wanted to show his gratitude for all the benefits with which had been showered on him, particularly on the occasion of the baptism of his daughter.

He therefore asked his wife, who longed for nothing better, to invite Mme Bonaparte to lunch; he himself would engage the Consul. After lunch, they took a drive in the Bois de Boulogne and, on returning, Mme Bonaparte told Mme Junot that the Consul had instructed her to announce to her, as well as to her husband, that he was making them gift of a sum of one hundred thousand francs to furnish their hôtel. This sum was ordered, they just had to go and collect it.

We can judge of Mme Junot's joy by seeing how much she and her husband were in the good graces of the extraordinary man who presided over the destiny of the French Republic. Also, when the hôtel was completely newly furnished, when the happy owners wanted to give a big party and have a housewarming, as they say, the First Consul came there: his wife, who had cast herself as a mythological character, shone there like a sunset, while his daughter Hortense, a new star rising over this world of fresh creation, danced heartily with young officers and Bonaparte visited the hôtel from the cellar to the attic.

[miffy-junot]

An anecdote about young Napoleon and Junot

This story is narrated by Fortunée Hamelin, one of the many 'merveilleuses' of the early Napoleonic era. Here, as a young woman at the salon of her friend Josephine Bonaparte, she overhears Napoleon and Junot discussing the Italian campaign:

"One evening, sitting embroidering near Madame Bonaparte, I heard the Little General say this to Colonel Junot, who was returning from Ancona: 'What! You were able to send 3000 men there? That's more than enough. I cannot make them understand that Ancona is Italy. Ah! if the sea were free! With the open sea and Ancona, a campaign of six weeks would be sufficient to take all of Italy, suffocating all their armies.' And Junot, laughing out loud: 'Yes, six weeks! That is why we have been fighting for eighteen months. - Was the sea free? You see that instead of so many battles, marches, and mountains, Ancona alone spared us all this, for it takes the Apennines and the Alps from the rear. The France behind all this, the open sea and Ancona! Yes, certainly, in six weeks.' "It is on honesty," adds Madame Hamelin, "that I certify these words to you. This good old memory has been retraced so fresh that I seemed to still hear the low and timbreous voice of Napoleon and the inconsiderate outbursts of Junot. I said to myself: the sea is free, France is behind, the Apennines and the Alps on the back, and revolutionary Italy."

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[miffy-junot]

"L'ambassade du général Junot a Lisbonne" by Charles de Moüy

available to read here

Sadly the article is too long for me to translate it, but for anyone who can read French and has access to JSTOR, I would highly recommend this article! It provides a very in depth and balanced analysis into Junot's diplomacy, and gives good insight into his actions in Lisbon.

The author, Charles de Moüy, was a diplomat himself and therefore had a good understanding of international relations, and as he was married to Junot's granddaughter Valentine Amet, he was able to access information that was previously unpublished.

[miffy-junot]

Junot's original death notice, 2nd August 1813

“Today we received the news of the death of His Excellency the Duke of Abrantes, who died in the bosom of his family, in the department of the Côte-d'Or.” 

source: Journal de l'Empire, 2nd August 1813