Désirée Clary

Eugénie Bernhardine Désirée Clary Template:Lang-sv (8 November/9 November, 1777 – 17 December, 1860) was the wife of King Charles XIV John of Sweden and Norway, and almost fiancée of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Ancestry

Her paternal grandparents were Joseph Clary (Marseille, 22 November 1693 - Marseille, 30 August 1748), son of Jacques Clary and wife Catherine Barosse, paternal grandson of Antoine Clary and wife Marguerite Canolle, and maternal grandson of Angelin Barosse and wife Jeanne Pélissière, and wife (m. Marseille, 27 February 1724) Françoise-Agnès Ammoric (Marseille, 6 March 1705 - Marseille, 21 December 1776, daughter of François Ammoric and wife Jeanne Boisson.

Her maternal grandparents were Joseph Ignace Somis (c. 1710 - Marseille, 29 April 1750), son of Jean Louis Somis and wife Françoise Bouchard, and wife (m. Marseille, 27 May 1736) Catherine Rose Soucheiron (Marseille, 11 January 1696 - Marseille, 18 February 1776, daughter of François Soucheiron and wife Anne Cautier.

Early life and family

Désirée Clary was born in Marseille, France, the daughter of François Clary (Marseille, St. Ferreol, 24 February 1725 - Marseille, 20 January 1794), a wealthy silk manufacturer and merchant, and his second wife (m. 26 June, 1759) Françoise Rose Somis (Marseille, St. Ferreol, 30 August 1737 - Paris, 28 January 1815). He had been previously married at Marseille, 13 April 1751 to Gabrielle Fléchon (1732 - 3 May 1758), without issue. Her sister, Julie Clary, married Joseph Bonaparte, and later became Queen of Naples and Spain. Her brother Nicholas Joseph Clary was created 1st Count Clary and married Anne Jeanne Rouyer, by whom he had Zénaïde Françoise Clary (Paris, 25 November 1812 - Paris, 27 April 1884), wife of Napoléon Berthier de Wagram, 2nd Duc de Wagram (10 September 1810 - 10 February, 1887), son of Marshal Berthier, and had issue.

Desiree recieved the education usual to daugthers of the upper classes in pre-revolutionary France by nuns in a convent school as a child, but was taken from the school at the outbreak of the revolution in 1789 and taken home to her parents. The education was quite shallow, as was the custom for most girls. She was to be very devoted to her birth-family her entire life. In 1794, her father died. Her brother was arrested by the revolutionary government, and she was later to say, that he was released by Joseph Bonaparte on her intervention, after which Joseph was presented to her family and married her sister. Desiree was presented to Napoleon, and they exchanged letters and regarded themselwes as engaged during 1794-95.

Napoleon Bonaparte had a romance with her, but after proposing marriage to the Clary widow in 1795, she refused because his lack of fortune, and also because her other daughter was already married with Napoleon’s brother, Joseph. In 1795-97, Desiree lived with her mother in Genua in Italy. In 1797, she moved in with her sister Julie and her brother-in-law Joseph, who resided in Italy during this time. Her relationship with Julie was always to be very intense and deep. She was briefly expected to marry a French general Duphot, but he was killed in a riot.

Madame Bernadotte

After her return to France, she met her future husband, and on 16 August/17 August 1798, at Sceaux, Désirée Clary married the French General Marshal Jean Baptiste Jules Bernadotte. Upon their marriage, Desiree was given economic independence in the marriage contract. In 1799, they had their only child; a son, Oscar, but after this, they lived more or less separate lifes.

Her husband was a leading general in the French Napoleonic army, and normally absent from Paris. Desiree had a good relationship with the Bonaparte Imperial family, as well as with the Empress Josephine, and declined taking sides in the conflicts between Josephine and the Bonaparte sibblings. She had a place in the coronation ceremony in 1804, holding the empress train, and was later to say that she had supported Josephine, when the Bonparte sister's also holding the train, had tried to make the empress loose her balance. Desiree lived a comfortable social life in Paris during her husband's almost constant absence, though she preferred informal family life before the Emperial court. She was courted by the Italian Ange Chaippe, and they were pointed out as lovers, though it is unsure whether they had any phsyical relationship. In 1804-05, Bernadotte was made governor of Hannover, and Desiree and her son moved to Hamburg, but soon returned to Paris; she was not happy living anywhere else than Paris. When her husband was made Prince of Pontecorvo in 1806, Désirée worriedly asked if she would be forced to leave Paris, but was happy when she was assured that she would not. In 1807, she visited Bernadotte in Spandau. Desiree was not interested in politics, but her good connections made her a puppet in the hands of her husband and Napoleon, who both used her to influence the other and to communicate with each other with her as a messenger.

In 1810, her husband was elected heir to the throne of Sweden. Desiree initially thought this was to be similar to the position of Prince of Pontecorvo, and was depressed when she found out, that this time, she was expected to leave Paris.

Crown Princess

Desirée visited Sweden for the first time in 1810 but could not adapt to the demands of formal court etiquette. She was said to have been treated with a certain snobbery by the court and especially Queen Hedvig Elizabeth Charlotte, though the old dowager queen, Queen dowager Sophia Magdalena was kind to her. The climate was also a shock; she arrived during the winter, and hated the snow so much that she cried. She had never wished to be a queen and did not want to move so far away from her family. The queen found her spoilt and undignified, and Desiree's companions, especially Elise la Flotte, made her unpopular by encouraging her to complain about everything.

She left Sweden in 1811 under the name of "Countess of Gotland", officially because of her health, and returned to Paris. There she stayed for twelve years, leaving her husband and her son behind. She herself said that the Swedish nobility had treated her as if they were made of ice: "Do not talk with me of Sweden, I get a cold as soon as I hear the word.". In Paris, she resided officially incognito and anonimous and thereby avoided politics during the difficult period when Sweden was at war with France. Her house at rue d'Anjou was, however, watched by the secret police, and her letters was read by them. When Napoleon was defeated in 1814, her house was a refuge for her sister Julie. Bernadotte met her in Paris, but returned without her. She was ridiculed by the court of Louis XVIII of France as an upstart, but she had her own little court, where she held receptions when she had to. Désirée's husband had employed a count de Montrichard at her household in 1817 as his spy to report to him if she did anything which could effect him.

Queen

In 1818, her husband became king, but she remained in Paris, still officially because of her health, which was discussed in the papers in Paris and by her visitors. In Sweden, her husband took a mistress, the noblewoman Mariana Koskull. Desiree held receptions in Paris as the queen of Sweden on Thursdays and Sundays, though she still used the title countess. Desiree fell in love with the French minister, the Duke de Richelieu, and followed him on his travels until his death in 1822. In 1822, she met her son in Aachen.

In 1823, Desiree returned to Sweden together with her son's bride, Josephine of Leuchtenberg; the visit was initally to be but a short one. In 21 August 1829, she was crowned queen at her own request. She also talked about a coronation in Norway, but the Norwegians found it impossible because of her religion. She was in fact not religious, but was forced to mass and confession by her daughter-in-law. She was the first commoner to be a queen since Karin Månsdotter in 1568. The 1830s were a period when she did her best to be active as a queen, a role she had never wanted to play. The decade is described as a time of balls and parties, more than had been seen at the Swedish court since the days of King Gustav III of Sweden, but Desiree soon grew tired of her royal status and wanted to return to France; her husband wouldn't allow it. She never became very popular at the roayl court and never learned to speak Swedish, and there are a lot of anecdotes of her attempts to speak the language. She kept her personal staff French. She spent her summers on Drottningholm Palace, (a residence her husband disliked) or Rosersberg Palace, and often visited Swedish spa's, such as Ramlösa spa. She visited Norway a couple of times, the first time in 1825. The court was astonished about her informal way of acting. She visited her husband every morning in her nightgown to talk a moment, but otherwise, they met only on formal occasions; in 1826, he grew tired about the fact that she was always late, and stopped eating with her. She went to bed late, and woke up late.

Widowhood

In 1844, she was widowed. In 1853, she wished to return to Paris, but her fear of sea travels had made this impossible. After she was widowed, she grew more and more eccentric. She went to bed in the morning, she got up in the evening, she ate breakfast at night, and she drove around in a carriage through the streets, in the courtyard, or wandered around the corridors of the sleeping castle with a light. Alredy as a queen she was known for her unusual sleeping habbits. There is an old story which illustrates this: in 1843, a palace guard saw the queen fully dressed on the palace balcony in the middle of the night. When he came home to his wife, he told her, that she was lazy in comparision to the queen, who went up hours before the sunrise: he though queen Desiree had went up earlier than anyone else in town, but in fact, she had not yet went to bed - she was eventually to rise from bed in three of four in the after noon.

There are old stories about people having been awakened by her carriage when she drove through the streets at night; the carriage somtimes stopped. She would slept for a bit, and then she woke and the carriage continued on its way. Sometimes she drove in circles around the royal palace: this habbit was called Kring Kring, one of the few Swedish words she learned, which means around and around. On the last day of her life, she entered her box at the opera just as the performance had ended. Désirée died in Stockholm in 1860.

Ancestry

16. Antoine Clary

8. Jacques Clary

17. Marguerite Canolle

4. Joseph Clary

18. Angelin Barosse

9. Catherine Barosse

19. Jeanne Pélissière

2. François Clary

20.

10. François Ammoric

21.

5. Françoise-Agnès Ammoric

22.

11. Jeanne Boisson

23.

1. Désirée Clary

24.

12. Jean Louis Somis

25.

6. Joseph Ignace Somis

26.

13. Françoise Bouchard

27.

3. Françoise Rose Somis

28.

14. François Soucheiron

29.

7. Catherine Rose Soucheiron

30.

15. Anne Cautier

31.

Notes

• Désirée Clary is the subject of a popular novel, a mock autobiography by Annemarie Selinko, Désirée, 1951.

and of two films:

• Le Destin fabuleux de Désirée Clary (1942) a French film made by Sacha Guitry
• Désirée (1954), an American film with Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando

References

• Désirée Clary d'après sa correspondance inédite avec Bonaparte, Bernadotte et sa famille, Gabriel Girod de l'Ain, Paris: Hachette (1959).
• Herman Lindvist, "Historien om alla Sveriges drottningar" ("The Histories of the queens of Sweden"), (In Swedish)
• Lars O. Lagerqvist (1979). Bernadotternas drottningar (in Swedish). Albert Bonniers Förlag AB. ISBN 91-0-042916-3.

External links

• Royal House of Sweden and Royal House of Norway
• Désirée Clary
• The story of Desiree (ger.)
• Désirée at IMDb