Elisa Bonaparte

Maria Anna Bonaparte was born at Ajaccio on 3 January 1777. She later took the first name Élisa — tradition credits Lucien Bonaparte, who loved stage names. Eldest daughter of Charles Bonaparte and Letizia, she was neither Pauline Bonaparte's insolent beauty nor Caroline Bonaparte's energetic intriguer: she was the clan's female brain, the one sent in 1784 to the royal house of Saint-Cyr through Governor Marbeuf. Grammar, history, mythology, music: Enlightenment schooling in an Ancien Régime frame. The school's closure in 1792 threw her into the whirlwind: Napoleon had to bring her back to Corsica; faction war pushed the family to the mainland. At Toulon and Marseille, Élisa tasted precarity — a salutary counterpoint to the arrogance power would later bring.

Admiral Truguet courted her; marriage was slow, hope faded. Letizia, who wanted daughters married, wed her on 1 May 1797 to Pascal-Félix Baciocchi, a Corsican captain with a slow career. Napoleon would have blocked the plan if consulted in time; he forgave poorly, but the couple held: Baciocchi would remain a devoted husband, in the background when Élisa mounted the throne. At Mombello, near Milan, she moved in the circle of the conqueror of Arcole; in Paris, under the Consulate, she became Mme Baciocchi of the salons.

Her townhouse on the rue de la Chaise — the former Hôtel Maurepas — drew Mme Récamier, men of letters, politicians. Through Louis de Fontanes, whom she raised to head the Legislative Body then the University, she had Atala read to the First Consul and removed Chateaubriand from the émigré list. "Élisa is quite taken with scholars, her house is a tribunal where authors come to be judged," Lucien noted. Roederer called her the most mobile and expressive of the Bonapartes — tragedy, laughter, tears: theatrical sensibility in a body already rehearsing authority.

The Empire changed the scale. In March 1805 Élisa became hereditary Princess of Piombino; in 1806 she entered Lucca to the sound of salvos — 14 July, cathedral, Te Deum. That was only a step: she wanted all Tuscany, Florence, the title that counted in Europe's courts. Napoleon finally gave way. In 1808 the Kingdom of Etruria vanished in annexations; the senatus consultum of 2 March 1809 named her Grand Duchess. The Pitti Palace became her residence; Baciocchi, made prince and divisional general, lived apart from government — Élisa alone signed, received, decided.

She was not content with display. Napoleonic Academy, restoration of the Teatro della Pergola, royal printing press, hospitals, schools: she wanted a modern state on the French model, with Italian tact. At Carrara she refounded the quarries, created the Banca Elisiana, made marble a fiscal and diplomatic tool — the Empire's statuary came partly from her mountains. Mines, saltworks, forests, silks: she spoke economics as much as festivals. Her bilingual French-Italian ordinances spared Tuscan notables without renouncing obedience to Paris.

Stendhal, who met her, held her the most cultivated of the sisters. Pasquier, later, would grant a favourable memory in Tuscany, despite disorders in her private life where appearances were not sufficiently preserved — the phrase sums up the Élisa paradox: administrative rationality and rumours of morals, like so many "enlightened" sovereigns judged in bed as much as in council.

The grand duchy was no toy kingdom, but a watched annex. In 1809 Napoleon reminded her of the hierarchy: "You are a subject, and like all French people, you are obliged to obey the ministers' orders." The words stung the woman who signed decrees as Grand Duchess. When Pius VII was abducted and crossed Tuscany, Élisa held back: minimise the Sovereign Pontiff's stay, avoid the moral picture of a princess welcoming the captive pope — compromise between scruple and orders.

In 1811 a new police director watched Florence for the Empire: her brother suspected her of encroaching on his prerogatives, of cultivating too personal a clientele. The cry "Long live Élisa! Long live the Emperor!" at Livorno, at a brig launch, cost her part of her subsidies: Napoleon would not share the glow of the name, even in filigree. Tension rose while, beyond the Apennines, Caroline Bonaparte and Joachim Murat dreamed of Italy for themselves alone.

On Saint Helena, however, the fallen Emperor was to praise a masterful woman who knew her cabinet affairs as well as the most skilful diplomat could have. Posthumous praise does not erase past rebukes: Élisa was the cleverest instrument of Bonapartist policy in central Italy, and the favourite target of cabinet humiliations when the brother-king meant to show who held the strings.

In May 1813 Élisa still had Lützen celebrated; she took baths at Livorno, returned to Florence with a heavy mind. Napoleon ordered her not to move: "The Grand Duchess must remain in Florence." She wrote to Fouché, exchanged with Joachim Murat — whose betrayal was nearing. When the coalition landed, the game became impossible: in January 1814 Neapolitan troops entered Florence; Élisa fell back to Lucca amid jeers, then had to flee again.

Pregnant, she wandered between Genoa, Languedoc, news of Paris's fall. "All is lost. I have decided to leave for Naples. I shall never reside on Elba." She chose Bologna; Austria sequestrated her estates. In Vienna she hoped for an audience; Emperor Francis I sent her to Graz, where she met Jérôme Bonaparte — another piece of the routed family puzzle. On the road, at Passariano, she gave birth to a son in pain and absurdity: at the moment when she ceased to need an heir to her power, a household observer would note.

In March 1815, Napoleon's escape made her suspect in the victors' eyes: she was exiled to Brünn. "What have I done to be treated as a state criminal?" she protested. Klemens von Metternich, in March 1816, offered Trieste in exchange for renouncing titles: she became Countess of Compignano — a Tuscan land name, mask of the fallen Grand Duchess.

At Trieste, Élisa bought a palace and the Villa Vicentina. Jérôme Bonaparte, his wife Catherine of Württemberg, disgraced Fouché: the salon of the defeated re-formed around a table where Italian, French, and nostalgia were spoken. Élisa's health, worn by five pregnancies and three children's deaths, faltered. Napoleone — future Camerata — and Frédéric-Napoléon survived.

In July 1820 a visit to the excavations at Aquileia, near unhealthy marshes, brought pernicious fever. Fouché warned Jerome; he hurried to her side. She died on 7 August 1820, aged forty-three. Her last words for her brother, in family memory: "All my affairs are in order, but the poor prince will lose his head. Take good care of him." — the prince was Baciocchi, the eclipsed husband who would survive the eclipse.

Less spectacular than Pauline Bonaparte as Venus, less cynical than Caroline Bonaparte Queen of Naples, Élisa embodied enlightened despotism in feminine form: laws, arts, manufactories, and a stubbornness to govern where her brother wished to see only a complementary figure. In the history of the Bonaparte sisters, she was the one who held a cabinet — and paid the price of believing blood was enough for independence.