DANCE ME TO THE END OF LOVE Napoleon and Marie Walewska

1786-1818, Napoleon’s Polish mistress

The beautiful Marie Walewska (née Laczynska) was born in Warsaw on 7 December, 1786, into a family that had been ennobled in 1574. Her father, Mathieu Laczynski, who had fought heroically during the struggle for Polish independence, died prematurely, leaving his wife Eva to bring up their six young children on her own. The Laczynski family owned a small holding and they lived in a dignified poverty for many years (though some recent historians – notably Krzysztof Żaboklicki – have maintained their relative wealth). Marie was the eldest and, as her four brothers had contracted small debts, it was up to her to secure the future of her family. At the beginning of 1804 at the age of eighteen and encouraged by her mother, she was married to the sixty-eight-year-old Athanasius Walewski (b. 1736), assuring her family’s security. This was to be his third union, having been twice widowed already. The Walewskis were one of the greatest houses in Poland and of ancient nobility. Marie bore her aged husband a son, Antoni Rudolf Bazyli Colonna-Walewski, born on 14 June, 1805, but he was immediately seized by Marie’s sister-in-law and nieces (by marriage), who were a lot older than the young countess. Haunted by an obsession for the freedom of her country, the distraught and lonely Marie turned her attention to the future of her country.

It is said that Napoleon and Marie met at the beginning of 1807. The political context at this time was complicated. Warsaw was waiting impatiently for the Emperor’s arrival in the aftermath of the inconclusive Battle of Pultusk. Since Poland had been wiped off the map at the end of the previous century, Polish nationalists were placing all their hope in Napoleon as someone who might bring the country back into existence.

There exists a very popular and romantic account of the meeting (present even in Marie’s curious memoirs) which recounts how on 1 January, 1807, in spite of the bitter cold, Marie Walewska went to a coaching inn in Blonie (to the west of Warsaw) where the Emperor was to change horses one last time on his way into the city of Warsaw. Marie, it is said, pushed her way through the crowd, asked Duroc to be led up to Napoleon’s carriage, where she stuttered: “welcome, a thousand times welcome to our land…” Despite the huge mass pressed around him, the Emperor noticed (and was to remember) the young countess. Once settled in Warsaw, Napoleon asked her whereabouts. Prince Poniatowski then apparently found her and set out to use her as a political pawn in the fight for Polish freedom.

Napoleon, on hearing of the birth whilst on his honeymoon, sent Marie some lace from Brussels and 20,000 golden francs. In November 1810, Marie took up residence in Paris again, bored with her life in Walewice and financially secure thanks to Napoleon; but the affair appeared to be over. Napoleon saw to it that her every wish was granted, although he only visited occasionally to see his son. In 1812, Napoleon provided Alexandre with 69 farms in the Kingdom of Naples which brought in a revenue of 170,000 francs and the title of Count. Despite the gossip, Marie still maintained her position in society. On 17 August, 1812, her marriage to the old Count was declared null, thanks to her brother’s confession which asserted that he had forced her into it. Marie returned to Paris early the following year.



On 18 January, 1815, Athanasius Walewski died at his country house in Walewice, near Warsaw. Eighteen month later, on 7 September, 1816, in Brussels, Marie married Philippe-Antoine d’Ornano, then General de brigade and future marshal of France (1861), whom she had met in 1807. His mother, née Isabelle Bonaparte, was Napoleon’s father’s first cousin. Marie died in Paris on 11 December, 1817, at thirty-one years old, having failed to recover from the birth of her third son, Rodolphe d’Ornano, after a kidney infection. A few weeks after her death, her brother asked that her body be brought back to Poland. Whilst her heart remains in the d’Ornano crypt in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery, Marie now lies in the church at Kiernozia.