An archive of primary source material relating to Joachim Murat, Marshal of France and King of Naples
(Source: http://www.autographes-manuscripta.com/murat-autographe/) Letter from Joachim Murat to Maria-Letizia Bonaparte (mother of Napoleon; commonly referred to by the Emperor as "Madame Mère), Naples, 29 Feb 1812. At the time that Murat wrote this, his wife Caroline was in Paris, working once more as a go-between to salvage the increasingly fractured relationship between Murat and Napoleon. The …
Continue reading “Your son who loves you like his own true mother”
Murat wrote the following letter to his eleven year-old daughter Letitia in the aftermath of the Battle of Borodino on 7 September, 1812. (I've left my translation of it in all-lowercase, as is the original letter.) The signature initials are for Joachim Napoleon, the name Murat adopted as King of Naples. my beautiful and good …
The following letter was written by Eugène de Beauharnais, adopted son of Napoleon (and therefore Murat’s nephew by marriage) to Murat in the days following Murat’s treaty with the Allies, as Murat continued to stall at, and agonize over, the prospect of taking up arms against his own countrymen at the Allies’ behest. Source: The Romance …
Continue reading “These conflicts which arise in your heart do not astonish me…”
The following correspondence was conducted in the wake of Murat’s defection to the Allies in 1814, as Napoleon attempted to bring his errant brother-in-law back into the fold before it was too late. It is worth noting that Joseph Bonaparte declines, in his letter to Murat, to “point out to him the iniquity of his …
-Josephine Bonaparte to Caroline Murat, undated. Source: Memoirs of the Empress Josephine: With Anecdotes of the Courts of Navarre and Malmaison, Volume 1, by Georgette Ducrest. London (H. Colburn), 1828, pgs 231-232.
A letter from Murat to Pauline Bonaparte, 15 February 1814.
Project Murat 