Since there’s so much disinformation out there about Napoleon, I’ve been attempting to take a disciplined attempt at conveying this story by limiting it to the people who actually knew him first hand.
First of all, according to the memoirs, (please listen to them and see if you agree with my analysis - link at the bottom), Napoleon deeply venerated his mother. We never see Napoleon show anything but the utmost respect for his mother. He also said he regarded older women well because they reminded him of his mother.
So that’s woman number 1. Next the memoirs mention (in general) that Napoleon treated his wife Josephine with affection and did mostly what he could to make her happy but eventually he divorced her to beget an heir to bring peace to France through an alliance.
Napoleon’s deeply passionate heart left his first marriage early on according to the memoirs. We can speculate about why but no one actually says, “I personally saw Josephine cheat on Napoleon” in the memoirs (so far).
The third book broadcast of the memoirs series is by Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense. She says in her memoirs that Napoleon was a very good man and she shows in a thousand little ways that he was madly in love with her. She lived out her days raising her son to vindicate her stepfather and brother-in-law Napoleon, which her son did accomplish by becoming Napoleon III.
Despite this passion for his stepdaughter, Napoleon did become seriously infatuated with Madame Duchatel and Madame Walewska.
Both of these women were at Napoleon’s feet while he was being unjustly torn from French soil and they were at that time under the roof of Napoleon’s stepdaughter Hortense so he couldn’t have been too rotten to any of them.
Form your own judgement here:
https://www.thetanster.com/blog/2019/2/11/napoleon-memoirs-links
