The Bonaparte marriage, not quite explained by Ridley Scott’s new movie.
What viewers might want or expect from Ridley Scott’s Napoleon — epic scenes of war, sexily torn bodices, and a very short emperor — won’t be exactly what they get. The battle scenes drag on, the ruler is shown to be a truly appalling lover — neighing as foreplay and thrusting like a hammer — and Joaquin Phoenix is a perfectly reasonable 5-foot-8. What they will get, however, besides a difficult-to-place tone and the sight of a horse exploding from cannon fire, is a whole lot of Napoleon’s (Phoenix) relationship with Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), his wife of 14 years and the empress of France. The movie goes deep into their love story: his letters, her affairs, his affairs, and ultimately their very strange divorce ceremony, necessary because Josephine — six years older than Napoleon — couldn’t give the upstart emperor an heir.
In the film, the ceremony is attended by luminaries and family, and stresses the couple’s love for each other even through the dissolution of their union. “You have embellished my life for 15 years, the memories of which have been etched in my heart,” Napoleon reads during his speech. Josephine tries to get through her similarly loving speech and the insistence that they’re doing this for the good of France, but she struggles and Napoleon shakes and slaps her, telling her to do it for her country. Bizarre, to say the least. It leaves viewers wondering how much of this relationship — and its undoing — is fact and how much is fiction.
But before we dive into that divorce ceremony and whether it really went down like that — and why — a little background on the world’s favorite little man in a funny hat.
Napoleon didn’t start off as royalty, but rather as a French army officer from a minor Italian noble family from Corsica. But he was a voracious reader and brilliant military strategist, which caused him to rise further in the ranks. Louis Sarkozy, son of former French President Nicholas Sarkozy and author of the upcoming book Napoleon’s Library: The Emperor, His Books and Their Influence on the Napoleonic Era, says that Napoleon was “an amazing, multifaceted character.”
After the infamous French Revolution that deposed (to put it gently) King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, via guillotine, Napoleon’s power and influence grew with his military and political victories, eventually leading him to stage a coup and become first consul of the French Republic in 1799 — alongside two other consuls, Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès and Pierre-Roger Ducos, who were mere figureheads — before declaring himself Emperor of France in 1804. Legend (and the movie) says he snatched the crown from Pope Pius VII and crowned himself, an unheard-of act that demonstrated a lack of respect for the Church. (Perhaps this was the error he sought to correct by handling his divorce very — some might say too — respectfully.)
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120415/img4.jpg)
Columbia Pictures
As a member of the aristocracy that France had turned on — Josephine was once imprisoned in the Bastille, as the movie shows — Napoleon’s choice of wife was beneficial for him politically. Katherine Astbury, professor of French studies at the University of Warwick, tells Vox that “Josephine was an important part of Napoleon’s policy to reconcile those who had been on opposing sides during the Revolution. Her position in society enabled her to smooth over political differences. As wife of the first consul and then empress, her role was to enhance the glory of the regime.” Josephine was a dazzling host and diplomat, presenting France as a prosperous and sophisticated nation during a time when many were wondering if the recent executions meant it had turned barbaric. In fact, Astbury says, Josephine spent far more on clothing than Marie Antoinette, famously reviled for her extravagance.
And during his reign, Napoleon did a lot. “He invented the [Corps d’Armée] system, a way to move armies in the field, which was absolutely revolutionary,” Sarkozy tells Vox. “It’s why he won so many battles in the beginning. It was virtually copied by everybody. His Egyptian expedition pretty much created modern archeology, and his discovery of the Rosetta Stone led to the deciphering of the hieroglyphs.” Sarkozy goes so far as to call him a “sublime genius,” albeit one “full of faults.”
One of those faults, it is necessary to point out, is him reinstating slavery in Haiti after it had been abolished. This is one of the many reasons historians, like University of Virginia African Diaspora Studies professor Marlene L. Daut, caution us against making a hero of Napoleon. “Napoleon Bonaparte theoretically embraced this notion of revolution and breaking the chains of human beings everywhere. But he reinstated slavery in Haiti after it had been abolished in 1802, so he seemed to believe that actually that should only be the case for white people,” says Gillian Weiss, professor of history at Case Western University and author of Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean.
Josephine was born to a noble family in Martinique, a Caribbean country and French colony. The movie shows Josephine having a Caribbean multiracial maid but doesn’t explore her family’s connection to slavery: They owned a sugar plantation. In 2020, antiracism protesters in Martinique tore down a statue of the former empress that had been commissioned by Bonaparte’s nephew Napoléon III in 1859. The statue of Josephine had also been decapitated in 1991, so safe to say Black Caribbeans are no big fans of the Bonapartes. Josephine is a complicated character in the film as well, although not for her family’s economic interest in oppressing people: She’s shown — accurately — to have had affairs that became the talk of France and a feature of the newspapers. Surprisingly, this wasn’t what led to the divorce, which Astbury points out was actually an annulment.
Like any conqueror, Napoleon needed an heir. However, because Napoleon was self-crowned and self-made, having children was arguably even more crucial to his reign. Sarkozy tells Vox that Napoleon’s urge to secure his reign was the primary reason for the divorce. “He used to always say that the Bourbons, the French kings who were before him, that they had a thousand years to build their legitimacy. He did not have a thousand years. He barely had 10. He wanted to cement his dynasty. So, how do you do that? You have a son. And unfortunately, Josephine was unable to produce a son.”
As much as he loved Josephine, being six years older than him, she was unable to have any more children — she had two with her first husband, the Vicomte de Beauharnais, but none with Napoleon. In the movie, Napoleon’s overbearing mother forces him to have sex with an 18-year-old girl to see if he can get her pregnant, determining if the lack of pregnancy was Jospehine’s or Napoleon’s fault. In real life, cheating on Josephine wasn’t as unpleasant or forced a task. “I think we count throughout his life about 22 to 24 mistresses, including two or three illegitimate children,” says Sarkozy.
But children born outside of marriage can’t inherit the throne. The movie even shows Napoleon considering pawning off one of his other kids as Josephine’s child. But ultimately, the political mastermind knows he must have an heir from his marriage to protect his legacy. So he pushes on with the annulment and the ceremony: public display, speeches, and all. He then went on to marry the sister of the Austrian archduke, Marie Louise, duchess of Parma, making her the new empress of France.
“Legislation was introduced in 1806 to strengthen the idea of a hereditary empire, and one of the clauses said that members of the imperial family could not divorce,” says Astbury. “It took a lot of maneuvering for Napoleon to get out of his marriage to Josephine in order to have an heir.” She points to an 1807 police report that gives an indication of how people felt at the time, with some at court saying that the empress is an asset to the empire, while others feel that the need for an heir overrides other concerns.
It was out of this mixture of his love for Josephine and the importance of making sure he didn’t appear to discard her that the divorce ceremony was conceived. Astbury says the ceremony was “politically useful … Josephine shows that she is doing this of her own free will. The speech she gives has been carefully prepared in conjunction with Napoleon so that Josephine is not humiliated by her inability to bear him an heir.” In real life, Josephine’s speech read: “I know how much this act, called for by politics and greater interests, has pained [Napoleon’s] heart; but glorious is the sacrifice that he and I make for the good of our nation.” To prevent her from even more humiliation, Josephine had the title of empress dowager after the divorce, got to keep their residence Malmaison, and received a hefty allowance. In real life and in the movie, Josephine seems to accept this halfway position she has in Napoleon’s life — not a wife but not quite an ex either. “One day you will know what I have sacrificed for you,” she whispers to Napoleon’s son, Napoleon François Charles Joseph, when he introduces her to him.
But divorcing Josephine was arguably useless, mostly because the alliance with Austria was a failure. “It was a mistake because Austria’s conflicts with France were irreconcilable,” says Sarkozy. “The two areas where Austria wanted to extend its influence were the same areas France wanted to extend its influence, northern Italy and Germany. So even though he married the daughter of the archduke, a couple years later, he was already back at war with them.”
Like many historians and Napoleon’s advisers of the day, Sarkozy thinks Russia would have been the superior choice of ally; he should have married the Tsar’s sister instead, as he is shown in the film requesting. “Had Russia been chosen and seduced by France and had the continental blockade not been imposed, I think it would’ve worked out a lot better,” Sarkozy says. “Although I’m speaking with the benefit of hindsight. Who knows what decisions I would’ve made were I present in 1810?”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120417/img3.jpg)
Columbia Pictures
As for preserving his dynasty, well, it’s complicated. While he had a son with Marie Louise, Napoleon’s reign ended after he lost in Russia and went into exile on the island of Elba, then reclaimed his power and lost again at Waterloo, going into exile for good this time on St. Helena, a small island in the middle of the Atlantic, 1,200 miles from the coast of southwestern Africa — France really wanted him out of there. His son, Napoleon François Charles Joseph, had a short and disputed reign as Napoleon II for only 20 days , eventually being succeeded — with a king in between — by his cousin Napoleon III. (Napoleon III was, ironically, the son of Josephine’s only daughter, Hortense, and Bonaparte’s brother Louis.) After the third and final Napoleon, France went back to being a Republic with a proper president, and the short but memorable Bonaparte dynasty was effectively over.
Who do we blame for the fall of the empire and Napoleon? Could it be that maybe the “greatest general of all time” wasn’t really all that? Were they unavoidable military and political miscalculations? Or did the empire die the day of that divorce ceremony?
The movie plays with the idea that Napoleon’s fall was due to him divorcing Josephine. When the then-general first hears of the affair Josephine carried on while he was in Egypt, he comes to her and tells her to say she is nothing without him. Tearfully, she agrees, but later that same night, turns it back on him. “You want to be great. You are nothing without me. Say it. You are just a brute that is nothing without me,” Kirby’s Josephine tells Phoenix’s Napoleon, and he says it back. After she dies and he is in exile, he hears her voice from the dead saying, “I let you loose and let you come to ruin, next time I will be emperor and you will do as I say.”
However, Sarkozy refutes the idea that the divorce led to Napoleon’s ruin.
“That’s absolutely bogus,” Sarkozy says. “I know Ridley Scott focuses a lot on their love relationship, and there’s a good reason because, listen, it’s an awesome story. I mean, his letters to her are amazing. But the idea that the fault of the empire is reducible to him divorcing Josephine is complete nonsense. The empire fell because of crucial military and political decisions. It did not fall because of his personal life.” Astbury also says that Josephine didn’t have much influence over Napoleon politically.
However, Astbury says that the desire for a son and the fulfillment of that desire may have made Napoleon more autocratic and imperialist, which ultimately did lead the empire to fall. “Most historians agree that the Empire was at its height in 1807 and things deteriorated after that as Napoleon became more and more autocratic. The desire to leave France in safe hands became a growing concern (he didn’t feel his brother Joseph was the right man for the job) and intensified after his son was born in 1811,” says Astbury.
Hyperfocusing on his legacy made Napoleon reach further and further across Europe to expand his empire, which Astbury says made Britain, Austria, Prussia [now called Germany], and Russia “finally unified in their desire to do something to keep him in check. Each of the other monarchs would benefit from France being pushed back. Russia wanted to regain control of Poland, Prussia was keen to expand its borders, Austria wanted to reassert its power, and Britain was keen to expand its colonies. Forcing France back to its natural borders (that is to say up to the Rhine) or even further back to the borders of 1790 would rebalance the geopolitics of the continent.”
Astbury’s conclusion is this: “The birth of an heir accelerated the fall of the Empire, but I think the Allies would have decided to act sooner rather than later anyway.”
The moral of the story, then, seems to be that unchecked ambition and rampant imperialism, all fueled by the desire to leave behind a legacy and a male heir, is what led to the fall of the French Empire. This might be where the idea that the divorce led to Napoleon’s fall comes from, even if historians agree that’s not quite accurate — or at least not the whole story.
Poetically, though, Napoleon expressed feeling as though the loss of Josephine impacted him politically. “Napoleon used to always talk about his star, his star meaning his luck that allowed him to rise,” Sarkozy says. “And toward the end of his life, in exile, he does make a comment that his star began to fade when he divorced Josephine. But I don’t think he would have agreed that it was the reason why the empire fell.” Still, it makes for a heartwarming last line in a movie that otherwise offers little insight into the notorious ruler. As Scott’s vision of Josephine intones from beyond the grave, “Come to me, Napoleon, and let us try this again.”
Ukraine is staring down a massive humanitarian challenge — now and into the future.
ukraThe sign is red, marked with a skull and crossbones and a warning: “Danger mines!” In parts of Ukraine that were contested or controlled by Russian forces, these are reminders that even in territory Ukraine has defended or retaken, the land itself is not fully liberated from war.
Russia’s full-scale invasion has made Ukraine one of the most mined countries in the world. In less than two years, the conflict has potentially created one of the largest demining challenges since World War II.
This includes anti-tank mines, which target vehicles — though if triggered, they do not distinguish between a battle tank and a school bus. There are also anti-personnel mines, which are intended to kill or hurt people, and more makeshift explosives, like booby traps, that serve similar aims. Unexploded artillery and cluster munitions also litter the landscape. Both sides have been firing off tens of thousands of rounds of artillery each day. Even if only a small percentage of those are duds, they can still detonate, maim, and kill, sometimes long after the fighting.
About 174,000 square kilometers of Ukraine is suspected to be contaminated with mines and unexploded ordnance, called UXOs. It is an area about the size of Florida, about 30 percent of Ukraine’s territory. This estimate accounts for land occupied by Russia since its full-scale invasion, along with recaptured areas, everywhere from the Kharkiv region in the east to areas around Kyiv, like Bucha. According to Human Rights Watch, mines have been documented in 11 of Ukraine’s 27 regions.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25118044/Screenshot_2023_11_28_at_1.24.59_PM.png)
Source: State Emergency Service of Ukraine, https://mine.dsns.gov.ua/
Still, the 174,000 square kilometer figure is likely an overestimate, experts and international deminers say. Russia would not have the time, ability, or need to mine every inch of contested land. But until deminers or officials can confirm areas suspected of contamination free from it, the outcomes look the same. That land is off-limits.
“For every football pitch that is contaminated, there’s probably 100 football pitches that are not,” said Paul Heslop, chief technical adviser and program manager for mine action at the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine. “The humanitarian impact comes from the land that is contaminated because obviously you don’t get hurt if you walk through a minefield that isn’t a minefield,” Heslop added. “But the economic impact, and perhaps the social impact, and the impact on the global economy, on global food security, is coming from the 100 minefields that are not minefields.”
What is known — that Ukraine is heavily mined and polluted by unexploded remnants of war — and what is not — where, exactly, these dangers exist — are twin problems Ukraine faces. It takes resources, people, and time to declare places largely free from hazards.
And, right now, a lot of Ukrainian land is still inaccessible, under Russian control or too close to the front lines. That makes it unsafe for humanitarian deminers and vulnerable to recontamination. In the areas deminers can access, it takes even more resources and time to map those locations and then undertake the meticulous and perilous process of clearing mines and returning the land, fully, back to Ukraine.
But until either happens, it deepens and compounds the crisis for Ukrainian civilians in wartime. If a power station is suspected of being mined, technicians might not be able to quickly restore electricity if it goes out. An ambulance might have to take a longer route to the hospital to avoid particular roads.
The scale of the problem is so vast in Ukraine and the resources so finite — even with increasing international assistance and support — that authorities must prioritize. What can’t be investigated or cleared immediately may get cordoned off and marked with a warning sign.
The risks remain. As of this summer, the HALO Trust, an international demining NGO, recorded at least 700 civilian casualties because of land mines, likely an undercount. In 2022 alone, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines recorded more than 600 casualties from mines in Ukraine, a tenfold increase from 2021. The Ukrainian government said in November that mines and explosives have killed 260 civilians in 20 months of war. These mines and other unexploded devices will continue to complicate any rebuilding efforts and will injure and kill civilians now and potentially long after the hostilities end.
Even when the guns have stopped firing, said Erik Tollefsen, head of the Weapon Contamination Unit at the International Committee of the Red Cross, “the land mines remain active.”
This is a long-term challenge. Deminers are still clearing mines and cluster munitions from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia used by Americans in the Vietnam War. Farmers in Belgium and France, even now, find unexploded World War I shells buried in fields.
Ukraine already had demining operations ongoing before Russia’s full-scale invasion, to find ordnance from World War II and from Russia’s 2014 incursion. Deminers in Ukraine are still finding munitions from the WWII era now, as they begin, bit by bit, to rescue territory from the ongoing war.
Why Ukraine may be one of the biggest clearance challenges since World War II
The front line in the Ukraine war may be the the most heavily mined terrain on the planet. Russian troops built a formidable defensive belt, laid and relaid, that stymied Ukraine’s counteroffensive.
Ukraine, too, has laid anti-tank mines to slow Russian advances, and Western partners — including the US — have transferred anti-tank mines to Ukraine. Human Rights Watch has also alleged that Ukrainian troops fired anti-personnel mines near the town of Izium, in the Kharkiv region, which it recaptured from Russia last year. Ukraine is party to the 1997 convention that bans the use of anti-personnel mines (Russia is not), and Ukrainian authorities have said they will investigate.
The Ukrainian front line extends hundreds of miles, a daunting minefield. But the boundaries are clear and have been largely static, especially in the past year. Deminers know mines will be found here when the war ends.
The challenge exists when mines are not placed in patterns or appropriately mapped (as militaries are supposed to do), and instead are laid haphazardly or in a rush — or with the intention of terrorizing, as Russia has done in its withdrawal from parts of Ukraine. Ukrainian authorities have reportedly found mines in refrigerators or in toys. Russian troops have planted booby traps or grenades rigged with tripwires, making them even trickier to remove. Retreating Russian forces have booby trapped the bodies of dead soldiers. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Russia of mining the bodies of people killed.
“The Russians are incredibly crafty when it comes to placing booby traps, and they do it to catch out the unwary,” said Col. Bob Seddon, former head of bomb disposal in the British Army. “It’s not always to catch out the military that we’ve seen. In some of the villages and towns that the Russians have abandoned, they have left booby traps in civilian dwellings to catch out civilians returning.”
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25118720/1701277315.jpg)
Sergey Bobok/AFP via Getty Images
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25118710/1485205647.jpg)
Scott Peterson/Getty Images
Mines are only one slice of the larger problem of UXO contamination. “It’s the artillery shells, and then it’s everything that is used in the course of the battle and is potentially hazardous because it’s explosive, and it hasn’t already exploded,” said Suzanne Fiederlein, director of the Center for International Stabilization and Recovery at James Madison University. Cluster munitions, which the US started sending to Ukraine this summer, release dozens of bomblets when fired, which scatter about and don’t always immediately explode as they should. But these cluster bombs, along with other kinds of artillery, can still be triggered later, detonating if they’re just slightly disturbed or picked up or moved.
“Just everywhere you can imagine, these things are just lying in wait,” said Col. Matt Dimmick (Ret.), Europe Regional Program Manager for Spirit of America, describing the aftermath of combat.
How to demine Ukraine
Military deminers and combat engineers must clear mines quickly, often under fire, so troops can advance. It is not about removing every single explosive, but instead creating a safe path to breach defensive lines.
[In the video above, the Ukrainian band Океан Ельзи has made a music video for its song “I’m going home” that follows the training and journey of a deminer.]
Humanitarian demining and clearance operate under a different set of rules. The standard is clear everything, with as much confidence as possible. Ukraine also has its own national mine action standards, developed from its robust experience of clearing ordnance from World War II and the 2014 conflict in the Donbas.
The first step is determining where the mine or ordnance contamination might be. Right now, Ukraine is working with that wide, wide net — basically, anywhere Russian troops entered or held — and needs to whittle away from there. The process begins with a nontechnical survey, which is a kind of fact-finding mission. Some places are easy to pinpoint: If active fighting occurred or a land mine or bomb goes off, it is a pretty sure sign the land is hazardous.
It can also mean scouring social media posts and local news reports. “This is people with binoculars, people going out with rudimentary search equipment to try and determine where the limits of explosive ordnance contamination exist,” Seddon said.
Teams will interview locals, the mayor, policemen, or even the military to try to gather more information. Satellite imagery helps, as do evolving technologies like drones and thermal imaging.
As the potential contaminated area narrows, the techniques become more precise: teams on the ground using metal detectors or dogs. (Patron is Ukraine’s official mine-sniffing mascot.) The goal of all of this is to reduce and reduce the area to what actually needs to be cleared to finally allow teams to go in and start to remove the mines.
Except, right now in Ukraine, not every mine and unexploded ordnance can be removed. It is an active conflict, and an overhead strike or heavy shelling can recontaminate the land almost instantly. Ukraine does not have the resources, equipment, or people to remove every land mine right now.
Ihor Bezkaravainyi, Ukraine’s Deputy Minister of Economy who oversees land mine clearance, said Ukraine is prioritizing “demining for civilian needs.” The aim is to make the land as usable and as safe as possible until everything can be cleared at a later time. “We can’t demine all dangerous parts of Ukraine at the same time,” he said.
Critical infrastructure is Ukraine’s top priority, such as roads, electricity lines, gas and water pipes, and power stations. So is civilian safety, making sure people can return to schools or hospitals safely. Then comes areas that intersect with Ukraine’s economy, specifically the grain fields that underpin the country’s agricultural sector.
This kind of mine clearance is what Heslop called “outcomes driven.” Full clearance — that is, removing every single mine — is not feasible with stretched resources and a fluid conflict. Instead, deminers may clear an area around a power station so workers can access it for necessary repairs and maintenance, but marking off the rest for future operations. Teams might remove mines so a farmer can plant at least some of his acreage, but not all of it. In a war, those are the trade-offs Ukraine has to make.
“We cleared this area and the power transformer was installed and 5,000 people got electricity. We cleared this area and a bridge was rebuilt, which took down the travel time to a hospital from four hours to 15 minutes,” Heslop said.
“Every task we do — because we’ve got so few people at the moment — has to have impact, has to have a positive outcome, has to be helping Ukraine in some way,” he added.
This is a long-term challenge for Ukraine, one that gets worse the longer the war goes on
Ryan Hendrickson, a retired Green Beret for the US Army Special Forces and founder of Tip of the Spear Landmine Removal, has been working with a team with on mine clearance in Ukraine. He said in early 2022, when Russia started leaving places like Bucha and Irpin to focus on the Donbas, people slowly started returning to their homes. It reminded him a bit of the aftermath of a hurricane or flood: people returning to see what’s left.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25118703/1745610947.jpg)
Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
As they returned, so did the risks of land mines and other munitions buried among the ruins. The fear is that people, lives already disrupted by war, cannot wait for demining operations. Residents want to restart and rebuild, so they will move and sort through the rubble themselves. Farmers want to plow their fields, and so they’ll rig up makeshift machines to try to pull mines up themselves.
“People just can’t wait for the scarce resource, the clearance resources, so they take matters into their own hands, and perhaps put themselves at risk, but they need to pay the bills and feed their families,” Alex van Roy, of the Fondation Suisse de Déminage (FSD), said.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120956/WAM34948.jpg)
Nova Dwade/We Animals Media
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120847/AP21299449866313.jpg)
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25120952/WAM31541.jpg)
Vince Penn/We Animals Media
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25121852/GettyImages_1135200151.jpg)
Spencer Platt/Getty Images