In later years, when she was the glamorous and soignée Empress of the French, Joséphine would enjoy telling the much embellished story of how she once as a young girl visited a Créole wise woman who predicted that she would one day be ‘greater than a Queen’. To the young Joséphine, the eldest daughter of impoverished plantation owners, this prediction must have seemed almost laughable but as the flattered and celebrated wife of Napoléon I, it was just another part of the Bonaparte mythology that reinforced the idea that their rise to power had been down to more than just talent and luck but had instead been their destiny.
Empress Joséphine, painted in around 1808 by Andrea Appiani. Private collection.
Born on 23 June 1763 in the town of Les Trois-Îlets on Martinique, Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie and her two younger sisters ought to have enjoyed a pampered, halcyon existence attending balls, wearing pretty dresses and looking forward to comfortable lives as wives to wealthy plantation owners. However, thanks to a series of bad business decisions and natural disasters, the Tascher de la Pagerie family were constantly on the brink of financial ruination and in permanent danger of losing what little social standing they still retained on the island. The situation was further complicated by the fact that Joséphine’s maternal aunt Désirée had absconded to Paris several years earlier and was known to be the mistress of the Marquis de la Ferté-Beauharnais, which caused more problems for the family. In the event, this turned out to be a stroke of luck for the Tascher de la Pagerie clan back home in Martinique, for when Désirée’s lover started looking around for a wife for his youngest son, Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais, she was able to point him in the direction of her three nieces.
At first, it was the middle daughter, Catherine, who was the designated bride to be but after she died of tuberculosis shortly before leaving for France, her elder sister Marie Josèphe, who was known as Rose, was hastily substituted and found herself on her way to a new life in Paris in autumn 1779. Although Alexandre de Beauharnais was rather less than impressed by the unsophisticated appearance of his sixteen-year-old bride, he was in no position to disobey his father’s wishes and the young couple were duly married shortly after Rose’s arrival in Paris. Despite its inauspicious beginnings and her new husband’s clear disdain for her, Rose still tried her best to make the marriage work, motivated partially by her own good nature but also by the fact that she had fallen head over heels in love with the handsome Alexandre. And for a while, it seemed like he might be making the best of the situation too, by taking Rose on as a project and doing his best to improve her by instructing her how to dress and behave, feeding her his opinions and recommending books for her to read. However, this wasn’t enough to keep his interest and when the new Vicomtesse de Beauharnais still failed to live up to the sophisticated, worldly and much older society ladies that her husband preferred to dally with, he quickly returned to his old ways as a carefree man about town, taking unsuitable mistresses and even appearing at the balls at Versailles, where he once danced with Marie Antoinette and was complimented for his light footwork.
Effectively abandoned by her husband and excluded from his giddy, dissolute lifestyle, Rose struggled to fit into her new life in Paris, although she managed to find some contentment when her son Eugène was born in September 1781, followed by his sister Hortense in April 1783. As many other unhappily married women have found over the centuries, her children were a great source of comfort and gave meaning to a life that might otherwise have seemed rather empty and devoid of purpose. However, the birth of Hortense, who arrived a few weeks earlier than expected, caused even more problems for Rose when her husband’s mistress used the baby’s premature arrival to convince Alexandre that she couldn’t possibly be his daughter because she was clearly conceived at a time when he wasn’t with his wife. A trip to Martinique, during which Alexandre encouraged his wife’s old servants and friends to heavily embroider and embellish certain old rumours about her past, only served to seal the rupture between husband and wife, and they separated shortly after his return to France.
Although it was obviously a deeply unpleasant process as Alexandre threatened to steal away her son, loudly and hypocritically claimed that she had been unfaithful to him and did his best to make her life as difficult as possible, the separation turned out to be the making of Rose as she settled into her new life in the Pénthemont convent, which was a well known retreat for aristocratic ladies who had fallen upon hard times, as well as the most expensive and fashionable boarding school in Paris. Although she was initially daunted by the situation that she had found herself in, Rose was quickly taken under the wing of several other ladies in the same position and with their gentle encouragement she was finally transformed into the elegant, soignée and sophisticated Parisian lady of fashion that her husband had always hoped that she would prove to be. During her time at Pénthemont, Rose learned how to dress, walk, talk and behave like a cosmopolitan, cultivated and graceful Parisienne of the type that she had always admired and the fact that she was of Créole background only worked to her advantage as it gave her newly found refinement an extremely alluring languor that made her irresistible to men. The fact that Créoles were all assumed to be extremely wealthy plantation owners also worked to her advantage as she did her best to hide the fact that she was essentially penniless.
The Beauharnais couple were still separated when the French Revolution began in July 1789 but this did not prevent Rose from enjoying the benefits and protection of her estranged husband’s position as a deputy in the new National Assembly, where he had reinvented himself as a member of the liberal nobility and eventually rose to the position of President in early 1791. When Alexandre, who had distinguished himself as a soldier in the American War of Independence, was made a General and then appointed General in Chief of the Army of the Rhine, it looked like the family’s always precarious fortunes were assured but instead it all ended in disaster when Alexandre, whose aristocratic background had never been totally forgotten and had become highly suspect to the newly powerful and more extremist Jacobin politicians, was accused of treason following his loss of the city of Mainz in early 1794. He was duly imprisoned upon his return to Paris, and after Rose pleaded unsuccessfully for his release, thus drawing unwelcome attention to her own background and association with numerous well-known royalists, she swiftly followed him into prison.
The Beauharnais couple were relatively fortunate in that they were held in the Carmes prison, one of the more salubrious Parisian places of detention during the Terror, where the mostly aristocratic inmates kept up a lively and sociable atmosphere and did their best to ignore their perilous situation. They spent their days flirting, playing cards, gossiping, putting on plays and, a little bizarrely, performing pretend executions with a fake judge and jury who sentenced them to ‘death’. For most this was a harmless if macabre diversion but for some of the Carmes inmates it would prove to be a rehearsal for the real thing as Rose was to discover when her husband Alexandre was taken away to the more fearsome Conciergerie prison in July 1794 and then summarily put on trial and guillotined a few days later. As it seemed to be usual during the Terror for married couples to be tried and executed together, Rose spent the next few days in a state of abject dread, convinced that she too was about to be summoned before the Tribunal before following her husband to the guillotine and it is likely that this might well have happened had not Robespierre and his followers been overthrown just five days after Alexandre de Beauharnais’ execution, and the Terror brought to a sudden halt.
Rose was quickly released from Carmes thanks to the intervention of her closest friend, the notorious aristocratic beauty Thérésa Cabarrus, whom she had met in prison and who would soon marry Jean Lambert Tallien, one of the instigators of the Thermidor insurrection that had toppled Robespierre. However, if she had expected to immediately pick up the reins of her old life she was to be sorely disappointed as the Paris that she had known before the Terror had vanished and been replaced by a whole new world where the old nobility had been replaced by a new rising bourgeoisie class and politics rather than court gossip was the main topic of conversation around fashionable dining tables. Fashion had changed too, with the towering hair styles and ornately decorated panniered gowns that had been sported before the revolution being replaced by simple, diaphanous muslin gowns and artfully disordered cropped hairstyles that were intended to mimic the shorn locks of the guillotine’s victims. Although virtually everyone had lost someone to the horrors of the Terror, the mood in Paris was far from sombre and the pace of life was instead hectic, frivolous and exciting, with everyone keen to spend money, have fun and celebrate being alive.
As best friend of the beautiful and popular Madame Tallien, who was the uncrowned queen of Parisian high society, Rose found herself in demand for all the most fashionable social gatherings, while her position as the the widow, albeit estranged, of the handsome, tragic Vicomte de Beauharnais gave her a glamorous aura and opened aristocratic doors that had ironically been closed to her during his lifetime. A brief liaison with the gifted young General Lazare Hoche also did much to boost Rose’s status, although if she harboured dreams of becoming his wife, they were destined to be thwarted as he was already married. Rose was in her early thirties now, and although she was adroit at looking every inch the frivolous, beautifully dressed woman about town, it was a strain keeping up appearances with her limited means. She also had two young children to provide for as well as a whole host of charitable interests - all of which were a drain upon her very small income. Although she doubtless enjoyed her independence, it was becoming increasingly imperative that she find another husband who could keep her in the manner to which she had become accustomed and also look after her children. In the meantime, she moved on from Hoche to Paul Barras, leader of the post-Thermidorian Directory government, another powerful and influential man who could boost her status and pay for her jewels and dresses.
On a sultry autumn evening in 1795, Barras took his latest protegé, an ambitious young Corsican army officer called Napoléon Bonaparte, to a party at Rose’s house on the Rue Chantereine. Afterwards, Barras would claim that he had always intended to do a little matchmaking between his mistress and Bonaparte, believing that they would find an association mutually beneficial - the gauche and unpolished Napoléon needed a way into the influential high society set of Thérésa Tallien while Rose was in desperate need of a husband and father for her two children. Napoléon may have been sallow, short and socially awkward, but he was talented enough to have been made Commander of the Interior. The fact that Bonaparte was six years younger than Madame de Beauharnais and engaged to someone else could have caused some problems, but no sooner did he set eyes on his graceful, flirtatious hostess than he was completely smitten by her, and all thoughts of his poor little fiancée vanished from his mind. For Napoléon, who was shy and inexperienced around women, the smiling, charming Rose de Beauharnais was the very epitome of femininity and the fact that she paid him attention while all the other society ladies of her type completely ignored him only served to increase his passion for her.
However, as far as Rose was concerned, Napoléon was just an amusing distraction and not at all the sort of man that she was attracted to. He was too gauche, abrupt and scruffy to really appeal to her, but his graceless behaviour and brusque manner made her laugh, and his obvious adoration was extremely flattering, so she encouraged his attentions even if she didn’t exactly share his ardour. It’s not known when precisely Rose first invited her latest suitor to her bed but it probably happened shortly after their first meeting and prompted the couple’s first exchange of letters in which Rose assured her lover that she was ‘tenderly attached’ to him and chided him for not visiting often enough, to which he responded with the assurance that ‘no one desires your friendship as much as I do’. It was also at this time that Napoléon, who already had a habit of changing his girlfriend’s names, decided to start addressing Rose as Joséphine, a protraction of her middle name Josèphe and Rose, who probably found this delightfully amusing, went along with it and was known by no other name from this point on.
As the months went by, Napoléon became increasingly enamoured with Joséphine, and the tone of his letters started to reflect this. ‘I awake all filled with you. Your image and the intoxicating pleasures of last night, allow my senses no rest. Sweet and matchless Joséphine, how strangely you work upon my heart… My soul is broken with grief and my love for you forbids repose… in three hours I shall see you again. Till then, a thousand kisses, bio dolce amor! But give me none back for they set my blood on fire.’ Unsurprisingly, it wasn’t long before his thoughts began to turn to marriage - after all, Joséphine was not just his perfect woman both in appearance and behaviour, but she was also his way into influential and aristocratic circles that he would otherwise have no hope of entering. He was also self-aware enough to see that Josephine’s languid sophistication, beautiful manners and exquisite appearance would go a long way towards softening the effect of his own brusque and often rude manner.
Predictably, however, Joséphine was rather less keen to permanently commit to her suitor and Barras and Thérésa had to persuade her as to the benefits of the match, which would provide her with the security that she needed. They may also have tactfully pointed out that at thirty two she was rapidly losing her bloom by the standards of the day and needed to seize this opportunity before she lost Bonaparte to a younger woman. There was also her children to consider - Eugène and Hortense were adolescents now, and the costs of educating them and preparing them for the future were beginning to spiral out of control. Eugène was keen to follow his father into the army, which Bonaparte could obviously help with, while Hortense was destined to make a good marriage, which would necessitate a careful education and a handsome dowry. If her children had disliked Napoléon, then that might well have swayed Joséphine, but they both liked him and appreciated the interest that he took in their welfare.
The couple became engaged in January 1796, with the thrilled and buoyantly excited Bonaparte presenting his lady love with a beautiful diamond and sapphire engagement ring. Their friends were delighted but the newly engaged Joséphine was rather less than ecstatic and made it clear to Thérésa and Barras that she viewed the forthcoming marriage as a business arrangement and nothing more and it’s even possible that she was still quietly sleeping with the latter until the wedding day itself, seeing no reason to change her lifestyle quite yet for a man that she wasn’t in love with. This lack of sentimental attachment to her betrothed is perhaps reflected by the simple plans made for their wedding in March of the same year, which would be an entirely civil affair, which in some eyes meant that it was less legally binding than a religious ceremony and might therefore prove to be useful should she wish to unburden herself of him at some point in the future.
On the evening of 9 March, Joséphine went to the city hall on the Rue d’Antin accompanied by her ex-lover Barras, the Tallien couple and her notary Calmelet. She was dressed with typical elegance and simplicity in a plain white muslin gown, pulled in at the waist with a tricolour sash and with her wedding present from Napoléon, a gold medallion inscribed with the words ‘To Destiny’. Neither of their families was present at the ceremony, and for three hours, nor was the groom, as he was so caught up with the preparations for his imminent departure to Italy that he completely forgot to keep track of the time. As Joséphine was about to discover, this self-absorption and disregard for the time and comfort of others were all hallmarks of her new husband’s character. While the fact that Joséphine, claiming that she couldn’t find her birth certificate, used her younger sister’s birthdate and shaved four years off her age, probably revealed much of her own personality, although her betrothed, perhaps gallantly, used his brother’s birthdate, which added eighteen months to his, thus narrowing the gap between them.
Less than fifteen minutes later, they were married by the Mayor’s deputy, the Mayor himself having long since departed home to bed, and were on their way back to Joséphine’s house on the Rue de Chantereine, where her beloved pet pug Fortuné objected to this new male interloper in her bedchamber. The couple enjoyed a brief honeymoon before Napoléon departed for Italy. Thanks to Barras pulling some strings, he had been promoted to Commander of the Army of Italy just a few days before their wedding and although this was almost certainly down to his own merit, it was still whispered that the command had effectively been Barras’ attempt to bribe Napoléon to take Joséphine off his hands - a claim that was not exactly flattering to either of them.
Joséphine was never far from Napoléon’s thoughts while he was in Italy and he sent a constant stream of passionate letters back to her in Paris, telling her in no uncertain terms what he would like to do to her, begging for reassurance that she loved him back and dropping increasingly heavy hints that he would like her to join him. They are amongst the most ardent, frank and intense royal love letters ever, and Napoléon’s obvious passionate love, which borders almost on obsession, for Joséphine still rings true centuries later. However, his frequent pleas for his wife to reply more often and with more than a few perfunctory lines fell on deaf ears. Joséphine had never been a particularly great letter writer, and although she happily read Napoléon’s love letters out loud to her friends, she found his passion for her more disconcerting than flattering. Besides which, she had fallen in love with someone else, a handsome young Hussar officer called Hippolyte Charles, and it was he, not her husband, who was the recipient of her own erotic billets doux.
Utterly in love with Charles and enjoying the social benefits of being the wife of the conqueror of Italy, which involved being applauded whenever she appeared in public and getting apparently unlimited credit at her favourite dressmakers, Joséphine ignored her husband’s increasingly desperate requests that she should join him in Italy. It was only when he threatened to either kill himself or abandon his post and return to Paris that the higher powers prevailed upon her to leave for the sake of the nation, and in June, she found herself in a carriage bound for Italy - accompanied by Charles. According to an eyewitness, ‘she wept as though she were going to a torture chamber, instead of to Italy to reign as a sovereign.’ They made the journey by very slow stages, giving the lovers plenty of time to secretly canoodle away from the suspicious eyes of Napoléon’s brother Joseph, who had accompanied them, and eventually reached Milan eighteen days after their departure from Paris. Charles immediately left for his headquarters in Brescia, and Joséphine was alone at last with her husband.
The affair with Charles continued throughout Joséphine’s sojourn in Italy, with the couple taking every possible opportunity to be together while Napoléon was away with his army. Although she had been deeply unwilling to go there, her time in Italy turned out to be a time of great personal happiness for Joséphine as she enjoyed the adulation and flattery of the Italian people during the day and romantic trysts with her lover in beautiful palaces at night. The aristocratic self assurance and beautiful manners that had drawn Napoléon to her would now come into their own as she entertained local dignitaries and attended fetes and balls held in her honour, showing him just what an asset she actually was as he himself was generally more inclined to cause offence than charm people at such occasions. The only fly in the ointment was the arrival of most of Bonaparte’s family, who were openly disapproving of his marriage and made no attempt to hide their dislike of Joséphine, which was prompted almost entirely by envy of her aristocratic credentials and bearing. With her usual calm good nature, Joséphine did her best to ignore their hostility and treated them all with nothing less than perfect courtesy, but it must have been difficult to deal with.
The untenable situation finally reached a head in November 1796 when Napoléon, desperate to see his wife, arrived without warning in Milan and found her rooms empty. She had gone to Genoa, probably with Hippolyte Charles, without telling him and would not return for over a week, during which time Napoléon sent her several furious letters, informing her that he had ‘left everything to see you, to hold you in my arms… the pain that I feel is incalculable’. Although he had no proof that she was with a lover, it’s clear from his increasingly despairing letters, which remained characteristically unanswered, that the scales were beginning to fall from his eyes where Joséphine was concerned and from that time onwards, he would never again quite trust or worship her as the epitome of perfect womanhood as he had once done.
The marriage of Napoléon and Joséphine lasted for almost fourteen years before he felt compelled to divorce her in January 1810 in order to make a dynastic marriage with a suitably blue-blooded princess who would be able to provide him with the male heir that he craved. Although her affair with Hippolyte Charles marked a turning point in their relationship and greatly tarnished Napoléon’s respect and admiration for his wife, he nonetheless never ceased to love her, even after their marriage had come to an end. As for Joséphine, this would also mark a turning point of a rather different nature as she began to appreciate that perhaps her peculiar little husband wasn’t quite so ridiculous after all and even started to fall in love with him. Although it had started off as a rather unequal union and would continue to have its ups and downs along the way, mainly provoked by Napoléon’s infidelity, the Bonaparte marriage was ultimately a surprising success and remains to this day one of the most iconic royal marriages in history.
Further Reading
Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage - Evangeline Bruce
Josephine: Desire, Ambition, Napoleon - Kate Williams
Josephine: The Rose of Martinique - Andrea Stuart
Napoleon: His Wives and Women - Christopher Hibbert