Joséphine de Beauharnais

Biography

Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie was born in 1763 into a planter family of minor French nobility in the Caribbean; she is usually said to have been born on Martinique, though Saint Lucia also claims her. In 1779 she married Alexandre de Beauharnais, with whom she had two children, Eugène and Hortense. During the Reign of Terror her husband was guillotined and she was imprisoned in the Carmes prison until shortly after his execution.

In 1796 she married the rising general Napoleon Bonaparte, who called her Joséphine and wrote her many surviving love letters. She was crowned empress at Notre-Dame in December 1804 and became queen of Italy in 1805. Because she bore Napoleon no children, he had the marriage annulled in January 1810 and married Marie Louise of Austria.

Joséphine kept her title and lived at the Château de Malmaison, where she was a major art collector and patron of the Consular and Empire styles and cultivated a celebrated rose garden. She died at Malmaison in May 1814. Through her children she was the grandmother of Napoleon III, and several of Europe's present royal houses descend from her.