Ringside Report Book Review: Desiree

By Karen Beishuizen

For my first book review on Ringside Report I have chosen a book which I found in a library back in the 1980s. I was a teenager back then and a history nut. I was intrigued by the book’s format: Diary style with names, places, dates and year. I read it and never looked back: It became one of my favorites and it still is.

Desiree by Annemarie Kalinko was published in 1953 and is the true story about a silk merchant’s daughter from Marseille who becomes Napoleon Bonaparte’s first love and later the Queen of Sweden and Norway.

The year is 1794 and the country is in the middle of the French Revolution. Desiree Clary is 14 years old and send to the government building to get her brother out of prison. She meets a young soldier called Napoleon Bonaparte and they become friends. He asks her to marry him and she says yes. What she doesn’t realize is that Napoleon is very ambitious and wants to go high up no matter what. He meets the socialite Josephine de Beauharnais, dumps Desiree and proposes to her. Desiree is witness to this and gets so upset that she throws a glass of red wine on Josephine’s white gown and runs out of the room. Approaching one of the many bridges in Paris she decides to jump off only to be rescued by a man who sees it all from his horse drawn carriage.

His name is Jean Baptiste Bernadotte.

It doesn’t take long or Desiree realizes he is the love of her life and marries him. Meanwhile Napoleon is married to Josephine and has taken France by storm and crowns himself Emperor on 2 December 1804. His marriage will be annulled in 1810 because Josephine is not able to bare him children so he marries Marie-Louise of Austria who gives him a son and therefore a heir to the throne. Desiree and Jean Baptiste welcome a son Oscar in 1799 and in 1810 her husband is unexpectedly chosen by King Charles XIII of Sweden to be his successor. On 11 May 1818 Jean Baptiste Bernadotte becomes Charles XIV John, King of Sweden and Norway. Desiree, a one-time fiancée of Napoleon and daughter of a silk merchant, becomes Queen Consort Desideria of Sweden and Norway.

A lovely book in diary form with all the dates and years mentioned. Anyone who is interested in world history will love this book. In 1954 it was made into a movie starring Marlon Brando as Napoleon and Jean Simmons as Desiree.