Everyone has found themselves in a toxic relationship at least once in their life.
While these hot and heavy romances certainly aren’t sustainable, they teach us an extraordinary amount about how not to love.
In this regard, they can be a blessing.
When we eventually do find the person we’re meant to live out our days with, the earned perspective prevents us from shitting the bed.
But, in some cases, we remain in the toxic relationship far too long. Thus was the case with Napoleon Bonaparte and Joséphine de Beauharnais.
They are a reminder that not all love is like the love John Steinbeck described in the letter he wrote to his son, Thom.
13 slightly hot, surely toxic lines from Napoleon’s letters to Joséphine.
During the fifteen years they spent together, their relationship was terribly tumultuous—rife with infidelity, maddening jealousy and enough emotional warfare to force a shrink into retirement.
Fortunately, for nosy writers like myself, he left behind a series of sultry sexts.
1. Napoleon on the morning after…
“I awake filled with thoughts of you. Your portrait and the memory of last night’s intoxicating evening have given my senses no rest.”
2. Napoleon on going down…
“A kiss upon your heart, and one much lower down. Much lower…”
3. Napoleon on long-distance relationships…
“I hope before long to clasp you in my arms and cover you with a million kisses burning as though beneath the equator.”
4. Napoleon on sending mixed signals…
“I don’t love you at all anymore; on the contrary, I detest you. You are horrid, terribly awkward, terribly foolish—a real Cinderella.”
5. Napoleon on being left on read…
“I write you, my beloved one, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked and naughty, very naughty, as much as you are fickle. It is treacherous to deceive a poor husband and tender lover this way!”
6. Napoleon on caressing a breast…
“How happy I would be if I could assist you at your undressing, the little firm white breast, the adorable face, the hair tied up in a scarf à la créole.”
7. Napoleon on longing for a nooner…
“You start at midday: in three hours I shall see you again. Till then, a thousand kisses… but give me none back for they set my blood on fire.”
8. Napoleon on being a stage-five clinger…
“Ever since I left you, I have been sad. I am only happy when by your side. Ceaselessly I recall your kisses, your tears, your tender concern; and the charms of the incomparable Joséphine keep constantly alight a bright and burning flame in my heart and senses. When, free from every worry, from all business, I shall spend all my moments by your side, to have nothing to do but to love you.”
9. Napoleon on Joséphine’s black forest…
“You know very well that I have not forgotten the little visits—you know, the little black forest. I kiss it a thousand times and await impatiently the moment when I shall be inside it.”
10. Napoleon on making Joséphine his entire personality…
“Without his Joséphine, without the assurance of her love, what is left him upon earth? What can he do?”
11. Napoleon on wanting to live inside Joséphine…
““To live within Joséphine is to live in the Elysian Fields. Kisses on your mouth, your eyes, your shoulder, your breast—everywhere, everywhere!”
12. Napoleon on burning desire…
“I breathe upon your lips, upon your heart, a flame that consumes me.”
13. Napoleon on being freaky…
“Home in three days. Don’t wash.”
It’s important to note this last line is mostly hearsay. While it’s endlessly attributed to Bonaparte, there is no sound documentary evidence that it was actually written by France’s horny emperor.
Alright, let’s shut the diary.
In addition to conquering most of mainland Europe and pursuing Joséphine with reckless abandon, Bonaparte also tried his hand at a romance novel.
One does not have to squint to find the inspiration for the novel.
Clisson et Eugénie follows the life of an exhausted revolutionary French soldier named Clisson. He meets a woman named Eugénie at a public bath. They fall in love, get married and have children. War beckons Clisson back. Eugénie is seduced by one of Clisson’s comrades. She stops writing him back.
Heartbroken, Clisson seeks his death on the battlefield.