What was Josephine’s famed ‘zigzag’ sex technique that had Napoleon hooked? The question has baffled historians – but now TRACEY COX solves an age old mystery
- British sex expert Tracey Cox has offered insight into the intriguing technique
- READ MORE: How accurate IS Ridley Scott’s Napoleon? Experts reveal film’s made-up scenes after it riled French critics
They had the love affair of the 18th century – and the erotic sex life to go with it.
Marie-Josephe-Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie, best remembered as Josephine, and Napoleon Bonaparte had a famously explosive relationship – and their adventures in the bedroom enthralled France – and historians still to this day.
Now, fans of Ridley Scott’s blockbuster reimagining the marriage of Napoleon (Joaquin Phoenix) to Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), has fuelled intrigue.
But there’s one element history buffs have yet to crack: Josephine’s famous ‘zigzag’ technique. The method left the French military commander transfixed, and pining for his wife in the bedroom after their divorce, but what it involves remains a complete mystery.
FEMAIL put British sex expert Tracey Cox to the test, and she has seemingly cracked the age-old question of how the ‘zigzag’ technique got the revolutionary leader hot under the collar.
Josephine’s famous ‘zigzag’ technique in the bedroom has let historians baffled. FEMAIL put Tracye Cox to the test. Pictured above is Ridley Scott’s new rendition with Vanessa Kirby as Josephine and Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon
Napoleon was naïve and inexperienced with the opposite sex, and Josephine, six years his senior changed that.
Never had he met a woman like her: most of his previous encounters had been clumsy fumblings with ladies of the night. He lost his virginity in a Paris brothel, apparently on the fourth attempt.
Josephine introduced him to a world of sensual pleasure, including a sexual technique reportedly called ‘the zigzag’.
Historians have scrambled to understand what the technique might entail, but sex expert Tracey Cox has finally delivered answers.
‘It has to be to do with oral sex,’ Tracey told FEMAIL.
Tracey argues that it would make more sense if Napoleon employed the method on Josephine, because ‘zigzagging a tongue means you are making sure you stimulate all areas of the clitoris, rather than focusing on just one spot and staying there.’
However, the method could be employed conversely.
Tracey added: ‘Maybe she did that while giving him oral sex, zigzagging her tongue over the glans, the most sensitive part of the penis, which would make sure she targeted the frenulum, which is the most sensitive part of the glans.’
The ‘zigzag’ technique had Napoleon transfixed, but the French commander never disclosed details of the technique, sparking intrigue among history buffs
Napoleon, depicted above on his Imperial throne in 1804, was six years junior to his wife Josephine
Ridley Scott’s blockbuster of the love affair is set to grip audiences, plastering the couple on billboards up and down the country – a haunting reminder of what might have been, had the Duke of Wellington lost to the vainglorious Corsican at Waterloo in 1815.
Director Sir Ridley, whose credits include Gladiator and Alien, points out that 10,400 books have been published about Napoleon’s life: ‘one every week since he died’. But far less has been written about the only woman he ever truly loved, and whose name would fill Napoleon’s final breath.
Josephine – known to her family as Yeyette – was born on the tiny Caribbean island of Martinique in 1763. Her once-prosperous family was in decline, living in a crumbling mansion in the middle of their plantation, from where Josephine’s father, drunkard gambler Gaspard, could see his 300 enslaved men, women and children toiling in the sugar-cane fields, watched over by brutal overseers.
In fact, Yeyette spent her infancy more in the company of slaves than friends or family, and she would regularly witness the terrible sight of Africans hauled off ships and taken to market, then branded, shackled and forced into work.
As a 16-year-old, Yeyette married wealthy Vicomte Alexandre de Beauharnais, three years her senior, though there was no pretence of affection or attraction from either side.
Josephine, depicted above in 1805, was born on the tiny Caribbean island of Martinique in 1763
Perhaps unsurprisingly, after moving to France and having two children, the couple separated when Yeyette was just 22.
Yet it would be another decade before her historic match with Napoleon could begin.
In 1794, Yeyette, then in her early 30s, was in prison and facing execution. This was what would later be called the ‘Reign of Terror’ – a period in the French Revolution in which aristocrats and landowners faced violent persecution.
Her estranged husband, Alexandre, had been guillotined. She survived in her cell on scraps while her little pug, Fortuné, was trained to carry messages to and from her children on the outside.
Shortly before she would have faced her own appointment at the guillotine, Yeyette was saved when Robespierre, the architect of the Revolution, was deposed.
She had been badly marked by her imprisonment: her youthful beauty had been despoiled, her teeth were further damaged and she was unable to bear any more children.
Joaquin Phoenix in the title role gives an enigmatic, mumbling performance that leaves you wondering, even after two and a half hours, just what makes Napoleon tick
However, having suffered during the Terror brought her a certain social cachet.
As one observer opined, it was ‘the height of good manners to be ruined — suspected, persecuted and above all imprisoned’.
The end of the Terror saw a flourish of wild abandon among the Parisian elite. Women far outnumbered men and Yeyette went from outcast to socialite almost overnight. She was quickly taken up by an older man, Paul Barras, commander of the Army of the Interior.
Though they were lovers, this was an intensely pragmatic relationship. Both knew the political winds could change again quickly, and Barras was grooming a protégé for power, a young man who could be his protector.
His name was Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was making a spectacular rise through the ranks. Two years earlier, he had commanded an artillery detachment that drove the British Army out of Toulon. Barras introduced this ambitious soldier to his lover at a party, urging her to charm the younger man.
READ MORE: French critics slam Ridley Scott’s Napoleon biopic as they round on ‘petulant manchild’ Joaquin Phoenix and take aim at ‘boring’ movie with ‘deeply clumsy’ and historically inaccurate scenes
Naive and inexperienced with the opposite sex, Napoleon didn’t imagine for a moment that this impossibly glamorous woman, six years his senior, was playing a game. She declared that she admired him, and he believed it without question.
Never had he met a woman like her: most of his previous encounters had been clumsy fumblings with ladies of the night. He lost his virginity in a Paris brothel, apparently on the fourth attempt.
It wasn’t long after meeting Josephine that the 26-year-old Napoleon had fallen hopelessly for the widow with two children. So began the volcanic romance that would spur Napoleon through Europe, throw him into fits of unbridled rage and entwine him in a marriage of unquenchable lust – until political realities took over.
The first time they made love in 1795, he wrote to her, dating the note ‘seven in the morning’ and revealing: ‘I have woken up full of you. The memory of yesterday’s intoxicating evening has given my senses no rest.
‘Sweet and incomparable Josephine… I draw from your lips and heart a flame that burns me. In three hours I shall see you. Until then, mio dolce amore [my sweet love], thousands of kisses, but don’t kiss me, for your kisses set my soul on fire.’
They made love, they fought and argued, then they made love again. Napoleon renamed her Josephine – a contraction of her full name Marie-Josephe-Rose – and wrote to her: ‘What is your strange power, incomparable Josephine? I give you three kisses, one on your heart, one on your lips, one on your eyes.’
Despite her misgivings – she told Barras that she thought she could do better than Bonaparte – they were married in a low-key ceremony, two days before Napoleon departed to conquer Italy in March 1796.
He wrote constant, graphic love letters while away that are so achingly hot, they smoulder: ‘I am going to bed with my heart full of your adorable image. I would be so happy if I could help undress you, small shoulder, small white breast, supple, very firm. You know that I always remember the little visits… The little black forest. Kisses everywhere!’
The ‘little black forest’ is certainly a euphemism, as is Napoleon’s habit of referring to her genitals by the bizarre name ‘Baron de Kepen’.
There is also the infamous suggestion that Napoleon preferred his wife to be ‘unwashed’ before making love. While this has been widely reported, it is probably a slur invented by the British as propaganda. If it were true, it would be more likely that he wanted to make sure she was not having affairs behind his back.
He was also entranced by a sexual technique Josephine employed which he called ‘the zigzags’, though quite what that entailed is unclear.
Such is the fascination with Napoleon’s love life that it was even claimed that the doctor who performed his autopsy removed his penis, and sold it to the priest who had conducted the last rites.
This was later apparently sold on to an American collector, although the provenance has never been confirmed. The shrivelled relic can now be found at the home of a New Jersey woman, Evan Lattimer, whose urologist father, an eclectic collector, bought it in 1977.
Source: Read Full Article
