Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie came from Martinique to France
to marry general Alexandre de Beauharnais in 1779. They had
a son and a daughter, Eugène and Hortense. In 1788 she visited
Martinique with Hortense. In 1790 she returned to France and
she would set foot on Martinique afterwards.
Her husband
was accused of cowardness and executed in 1794. She was imprisoned
at the former Carmelite Monastery and almost met the same fate,
but just before she was executed the terror came to an end and
she was released in August, 1794. She went to live at the rue
de l'Université and probably general Hoche became her lover.
In August 1795 she moved to the rue Chantereine.
In
1796 she married Napoleon Bonaparte, who adopted her children
and treated them as if they were his own. During their marriage
she had many affairs with other men, among them Joachim Murat
and Hippolyte Charles, an army officer. Charles followed her
to Milan in 1797 and visited her when Bonaparte was away. When
Napoleon wanted to take her to Egypt in 1798 she cried all the
way to Toulon and Napoleon finally decided to leave her behind.
Soon her lover Charles was with her again.
She became
empress of France at the side of her husband in 1804, but Napoleon
divorced her in 1810 because she couldn't bear him any children
and he needed an heir. After the divorce she lived at Malmaison
(near Paris). When she died in 1814 she was buried not far from
there, at the St. Pierre and St. Paul church in Rueil.
Family
• Daughter: Beauharnais, Hortense de
• Son: Beauharnais, Eugène Rose de, Duke of Leuchtenberg
• Husband: Napoleon I Bonaparte
Related persons
• was sculpted by Cartellier, Pierre
• was visited by Denon, Dominique Vivant, Baron de
• was the lover of Murat, Joachim, king of Naples
• was painted by Prud'hon, Pierre-Paul
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Sources
• Breton, Guy, Histoires d'Amour de L'Histoire de France 7, Presses Pocket, Paris, 1965
• Orlandi, Enzo en Mario Rivoire (ed.), Onsterfelijke Vrouwen (deel 1), Spaarnestad, Haarlem, 1969
• Knapton, Ernest John, Empress Josephine, Penguin books, Harmondsworth, 1974
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