Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader has missed two weeks worth of Friday Villainy peices. So he hopes to make up for it today. As the Llamas reminded your Maximum Leader that this week marked the 200th anniversary of Napoleon crowing himself Emperor; your Maximum Leader thought it was altogether fitting that the little Corsican Corporal be the subject of this Friday Villainy.

It is often said that you can get the measure of a man by learning about how he interacts personally with others in private situations. One suspects that a man’s interactions with animals would also shed some light on what type of man someone is.

This brings your Maximum Leader to the story of Napoleon, Josephine, and Fortunato (or sometimes just Fortune). Who was Fortunato you ask?

Ah minions… That is the story.

Around the time that a young general named Napoleon Bonaparte was wooing a young Josephine Beauharnais, the aforementioned Madame Beauharnais* had a little pet mongrel dog named Fortunato.

Every day Josephine would write a little bit in her journal about what Fortunato did that day. They went something like “Fortunato and I took a walk in the Tuilleries.” Or, “Fortunato chased the cats around the garden.” Or, “Fortunato peed are the carpet in the foyer.” Every day Fortunato would get some mention in Joesphine’s diary.

Until the Josephine’s wedding night. That would be the night of her wedding to Napoleon Bonaparte. After the night of Joesphine and Napoleon’s wedding, Fortunato is never mentioned again.

An industrious Napoleon scholar was reviewing Josephine’s diaries and noticed this unusual disappearance. No mention of why Fortunato suddenly disappeared from Josephine’s diary - and presumably her life.

Upon doing further research, the scholar discovered that Fortunato didn’t care much for Napoleon. He yipped, snapped at, and was otherwise aggressive towards the soon to be Emperor of the French.

As it turns out, after all of the wedding celebrations Napoleon went up to Josephine’s bedchamber to “consumate” the marriage. Perhaps unbeknownst to Napoleon, Fortunato was also in the bedchamber. Fortunato it seemed regularly slept with Josephine.

Now if any of you minions have a dog that sleeps in bed with you, you know that dogs don’t appreciate being cast out by some other person. Fortunato was no different than any other dog in this respect.

As the Corsican approached his wife with amour on his mind, Fortunato sensed trouble. The dog leapt up from out of the covers and bit Napoleon Bonaparte on the arse.

Bonaparte, who didn’t like the dog as much as the dog didn’t like him, was injured and enraged. The general and soon-to-be-Emperor ran out of the room and returned with a bayonet or sword from another room and ran through Fortunato. Poor, dead Fortunato was then thrown out the window and became the late-night feast for the large hounds kept for gaurding the house.

And such was the end of poor Fortunato.

Your Maximum Leader will allow you to decide what you think of Napoleon after reading this. In the course of writing this peice your Maximum Leader tried to find some resource on the web that could be linked to. He didn’t find too much. He did find an interesting time-line on this site that mentions the incident. (Although it doesn’t mention Fortunato’s death; and places the bite on Napoleon’s calf.)

Carry on.

*- Josephine was Madame Beauharnais because she had previously been married to Alexandre de Beauharnais - who was guillotined during The Terror.