Maria Walewski – “Queen Esther of Poland”

In January 1807, Napoleon is in Poland. On his way to Warsaw, his carriage stops in a small town called Bromie. Among the peasants who have gathered to see the emperor, a young woman, delicate and fragile, dressed simply, almost like a child, is squeezed in. The black tulle covering her face hides blue eyes and fresh skin.

She comes to Napoleon and, flushed with embarrassment and shyness, she says: “Welcome, sir. A thousand congratulations on your arrival in Poland. Nothing can express the delight that we Poles feel at your arrival in this land that yearns for salvation.” Before Napoleon can find out who the speaker is, she leaves as quickly as she came.

Her name: Laczinska Maria. She comes from a good but poor family and in order to support her family she marries a wealthy and well-to-do Polish nobleman, a widower of seventy years, who was more than three times her age and whose children were older than her, Count Anastase Colonna de Walewska. She will find solace in religion and a strong patriotic feeling.

The love story between Maria Laveska and Napoleon

I saw, I was enchanted and I only wanted you tonight.

Napoleon will continue to Warsaw where Prince Joseph Poniatowski will host a grand reception ball at the Blacha Palace. A ball, to which all the who's who of the Polish nobility are invited, including, of course, Count Anastas Właśkowski and his wife Maria. Maria has not told her husband about the earlier meeting she had with Napoleon at Bromie, and now that they are standing in the line of guests waiting to greet the Emperor it is too late to tell him.

To the sound of the drums, the door opens and Napoleon strolls in, with his springy gait, his hands behind his back and a half-smile on his face. He approaches the line of guests and passes them, making blatantly tactless remarks towards women. He asks a young woman how many children she has, asks an older, lanky woman if her husband is jealous of her beauty, asks a particularly fat woman if she likes to dance, and then arrives in front of Count Lebowski and his wife.

He stares at Maria and recognizes her. She lowers her eyes. He glances at the Count and nods. He understands. Then he says: “Madame, white with white doesn’t go,” referring to her white dress. Napoleon hated dresses in black and white. These were dead colors to him. He preferred colorful colors.

Maria continues to lower her eyes, and then he brings his mouth close to her ear and says: “This is not the welcome I expected from you.” She won’t say a word. He will continue to survey the guests, but his mood changes. He becomes serious and will soon leave the hall.

After the ball, a maid hands Maria a note: “I saw, I was enchanted and I only desired you tonight. Only your answer can calm the passion that is erupting in me.” Maria is shocked. Her holy innocence cannot contain this. She tears the note into pieces and tells the maid to say that there is no answer.

Maria Walewska “sacrifices herself” for Poland

But in the meantime, word spreads about Napoleon's interest in Maria and reaches Prince Poniatowski and his advisors. Maria becomes a strategic asset for Poland. The advisors believe that through the emperor's bedchamber it will be possible to achieve what they have not been able to achieve through diplomatic means - the liberation of Poland from the Russian yoke and its independence.

A huge pressure campaign begins on Maria, joined by the prince's French mistress, Madame Vauban, and Maria's companion, Madame Abramowicz. However, Maria stands her ground. Then she receives a letter from the Polish government:

Madam, sometimes simple actions have led to fateful consequences, and women have always influenced world politics. In the ancient world as well as in the modern world there is evidence of this and it will be so as long as men are ruled by the passion that only a woman can arouse in them. If you were a man you would willingly sacrifice yourself for the homeland.

Although as a woman you cannot fight, there are other sacrifices you can make, however painful they may be. Do you think it was out of love that Esther gave herself to Ahasuerus?…Remember, Madam, the words of a great man, a saint and a Christian devout, Fenelon, who wrote: People to whom the public mission has been given, cannot achieve real results unless women help them to fulfill it.

A crack opens in the fortified wall of resistance and Maria agrees to attend a gala dinner in honor of the Emperor. Then she receives a letter:

Mary, Mary, my sweet. My first thought is of you. My first desire is to return and see you. You will come again, will you not? You promised to come, or else the eagle will fly to you. I will see you at supper. So our friend told me. I desire that you should accept this bouquet.

My desire is that it will serve as a secret bond that will allow us to have a private understanding among the crowd that surrounds us. May we be able to share our thoughts, even though I am not the whole world. May they be subject to us. When you press my hand on the tablet of my heart, you will know that I think of nothing but you. You will send me your answer by pressing your stranger. Love me tenderly and embrace the stranger with great strength.

The plot gets complicated

But then Napoleon receives a letter from his wife Josephine informing him that she intends to come to Poland. As if bitten by a snake, he writes her a reply:

I received your letter of the fifteenth of January. I will not under any circumstances allow a woman to attempt the journey here. The roads are extremely bad, unsafe and mired in deep mud. Go back to Paris. Be happy and cheerful and I will return there at once. Your remark that you married a man in order to live with him brings nothing but a smile to my lips.

As I thought in my ignorance, that a woman was created for her husband and a husband for his homeland, his family, and his fame. Forgive me for my ignorance. A man can always learn something from the beautiful women of today. Hello, my dear. Remember how hard it is for me to forbid you from traveling here. Tell yourself: This proves how much he cares for me.

Love is not always painful.

And Maria? Maria will embrace the stranger to her heart and then discover that the sacrifice is not so painful. On the contrary, she will fall in love with Napoleon. She will divorce her husband and move to Paris, at 48 Rue de la Victoire. On May 4, 1810, she will bear Napoleon a son: Alexandre Joseph Florian Colonna Valévski.

Alexandre is a very successful son who will later become Foreign Minister and then Prime Minister in the government of Napoleon's nephew, Napoleon III (son of his brother Louis and his wife Hortense, daughter of Josephine). He will also inherit Napoleon's writing talent and write a play with the author Alexandre Dumas.

He would also inherit Napoleon's love of the theater and his lust for actresses, and would have an affair with the great actresses of Paris At that time, the Jewish actress Rachel, Rachel Felix, would have a child with him – Alexandre Antoine Colonna Waleasky, the Jewish (albeit illegitimate) grandson of Napoleon (her second son, Gabriel Victor Felix, would have an affair with Arthur, who was born on the island of Saint-Helena, the son of General Bertrand, who accompanied Napoleon to his exile on Saint-Helena).

And speaking of Rishel, her character may have inspired the writer Honore de Balzac when he created, in his book: “The Rise and Fall of a Top Prostitute,” which was translated into Hebrew in 2001 by Ido Bassock, the character of a Jewish actress named Esther who leads a tragic love affair during the reign of Louis Philippe. Recommended for lovers of Balzac and the genre of French literature in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Maria Wołewski would marry a relative of Napoleon's, a second cousin, named Philip Antoni D'Ornano. A brave cavalry officer, who in 1813 was appointed commander of the cavalry of the Imperial Guard in place of Marshal Bessieres, who had been killed in battle. Maria would die young, in 1817, during a complicated childbirth.

Recommended film about Maria Walewska

Before we end the article, we recommend that readers watch the Hollywood version of this love story, in the award-winning 1937 film by director Clarence Brown, starring the Frenchman Charles Boyer, who brilliantly portrays Napoleon, and the Swedish Greta Garbo, who plays Maria Valescure, and as usual, in a “divine” manner.

Here is one of the highlights of the film: