Josèphine

Marie Josephe Tascher de la Pagerie
Empress of France
(Trois-Ilets (Martinique) 1763, Malmaison 1814)

Author: Jean-Louis Enjolras - Cercle Histoire et Figurines

Daughter of a marine infantry lieutenant. She came to France in 1779 and was married st the age of sixteen to Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais, by whom she had two children, Eugene and Hortense. Her husband was sent to the scaffold in 1794 and she herself was imprisoned, but freed on 9 thermidor.

Having become one of the most visible women in the salons of the time, connected to Tallien and Barras, leading a rather free life, she met, in October of 1795, General Bonaparte, six years younger than she was. He married her in a civil ceremony on March 9, 1796. Bonaparte dedicated to her a passionate and jealous love, made her join him during the First Italian Campaign and, during the Egyptian Campaign, suffered greatly because of her infidelity when she stayed behind in Paris.

Threatened at that period with divorce, Josephine knew how to rapidly regain the affection of her husband and exercised great social and even political influence during the time of the consulate. She shared in the prodigeous ascent of Bonaparte and was crowned empress after the hasty religios celebration of their marriage.

But Napoleon, to whom she had been unable to give an heir, began in 1807 to think about repudiating her. Josephine, cruelly tested, ended by consenting to a divorce, and it was concluded on December 16, 1809.

Well provided for and retaining her title of empress, from then on she lived either in the Chateau de Navarre (Eure) or at Malmaison, near Paris, and she continued to correspond with the emperor (Lettres authentiques, 1895).

In 1814 she captured the interest of Czar Alexander. She died two and one half months after the first abdication of Napoleon.