The Secret History of the Pink Carnation

Historical Note

At the end of any historical novel, I’m always plagued with wondering which bits really happened. Richard and Amy’s exploits, along with the whole host of flower-named spies, are, alas, purely fictional. Napoleon’s plans for an invasion of England were not. As early as 1797, he had his eye on the neighboring coastline. “Our government must destroy the British monarchy . . . That done, Europe is at our feet,” Napoleon schemed. Even during the short-lived Peace of Amiens (the truce that enabled Amy to join her brother in France), Napoleon continued to amass flat-bottomed boats to convey his troops to England. In April 1803, on the eve of the collapse of the peace, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States to raise money for the invasion—a more reliable method of fund-raising than bullying Swiss bankers.

As for the Bonapartes and their hangers-on, while caricatured a bit (something of which Amy’s beloved news sheets would no doubt approve), they have been drawn largely from life; Napoleon’s court boasts a rich collection of contemporary memoirs and a mind-boggling assortment of modern biographies. Josephine’s extravagances, Napoleon’s abrupt entrances to his wife’s salons, Pauline’s incessant affairs—all were commonplaces of Napoleonic Paris. Georges Marston’s drinking buddy, Joachim Murat, suffered a tumultuous marriage to Napoleon’s sister Caroline; Josephine’s daughter Hortense took English lessons at the Tuilleries until her tutor was dismissed on suspicion of being an English spy; and Beau Brummel really was that interested in fashion.

In the interest of the story, some rather large liberties were taken with the historical record. Napoleon inconsiderately sacked Joseph Fouché and abolished the Ministry of Police in 1802. Both were reinstated in 1804—a year too late for the purposes of this novel. But no novel about espionage in Napoleonic Paris could possibly be complete without Fouché, the man who created Napoleon’s spy network and cast terror into the hearts of a whole generation of Frenchmen and English spies. In addition to rehiring Fouché a year too early, I also made him the gift of an impressive new Ministry of Police on the Ile de la Cité. No existing building possessed an extra-special interrogation chamber ghastly enough for Gaston Delaroche.

I also rearranged England’s secret service a bit. During the Napoleonic Wars, espionage was coordinated through a subdepartment of the Home Office called the Alien Office—not the War Office. Given the strong fictional tradition of ascribing dashing spies to the War Office, I just couldn’t bring myself to have Richard and Miles reporting to the Alien Office. I could picture the wrinkled brows, the raised eyebrows, and the confused “Shouldn’t he be going to the War Office? Where do aliens come into it? I didn’t know this was that kind of book!” As a compromise solution, while I call it the War Office, any actual personnel, buildings, or practices described in conjunction with Richard’s and Miles’s work really belong to the Alien Office. For the little-known story of the Alien Office and much more, I am deeply in debt to Elizabeth Sparrow’s wonderful book, Secret Service: British Agents in France 1792–1815, which is, essentially, Eloise’s dissertation. Eloise, however, is not jealous, since she a) has that fabulous scoop about the Pink Carnation, and b) is fictional.