Joséphine de Beauharnais
Joséphine Bonaparte (French: [ʒozefin bɔnapaʁt], born Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie; 23 June 1763 – 29 May 1814) was Empress of the French as the first wife of Emperor Napoleon I from 18 May 1804 until their marriage was annulled on 10 January 1810. As Napoleon's consort, she was also Queen of Italy from 26 May 1805 until the 1810 annulment. She is widely known as Joséphine de Beauharnais (French: [ʒozefin də boaʁnɛ]).
For her granddaughter, the queen consort of Sweden and Norway, see Josephine of Leuchtenberg. For the racehorse, see Empress Josephine (horse).Joséphine de Beauharnais
18 May 1804 – 10 January 1810
2 December 1804
23 May 1805 – 10 January 1810
Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie
23 June 1763
Dauphin, Saint Lucia, Lesser Antilles
29 May 1814 (aged 50)
Rueil-Malmaison, Kingdom of France
Tascher de La Pagerie
Joseph Gaspard Tascher de La Pagerie
Rose Claire des Vergers de Sannois
Joséphine's marriage to Napoleon was her second. Her first husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, was guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she was imprisoned in the Carmes Prison until five days after his execution. Through her children by Beauharnais, she was the grandmother of Emperor Napoleon III of France and Empress Amélie of Brazil. Members of the current royal families of Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, and Norway and the grand ducal family of Luxembourg also descend from her. Because she did not bear Napoleon any children, he had their marriage annulled and married Marie Louise of Austria. Joséphine was the recipient of numerous love letters written by Napoleon, many of which still exist.
A patron of art, Joséphine worked closely with sculptors, painters and interior decorators to establish a unique Consular and Empire style at the Château de Malmaison. She became one of the leading collectors of different forms of art of her time, such as sculpture and painting.[1] The Château de Malmaison was noted for its rose garden, which she supervised closely.
Name[edit]
Although she is often referred to as "Joséphine de Beauharnais", it is not a name she herself used. "Beauharnais" is the name of her first husband, which she ceased to use upon her marriage to Napoleon, taking the last name "Bonaparte".[2] And she did not use the name "Joséphine" before meeting Napoleon, who was the first to call her such, perhaps from her middle name, Josèphe. Before she met Napoleon, she went by the name of Rose, or Marie-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, later de Beauharnais. She sometimes reverted to using her maiden name in later life. After her marriage to then-General Bonaparte, she adopted the name Joséphine Bonaparte. The misnomer "Joséphine de Beauharnais" emerged during the restoration of the Bourbons, who were hesitant to refer to her by either Napoleon's surname or her imperial title.
Family background[edit]
The Taschers were an ancient French family of country gentry, and Joséphine's grandfather, Gaspard-Joseph was the first to settle in Le Carbet on Martinique in 1726.[3] He seems to have lived in poverty there, but secured a position for his son, Joseph-Gaspard (1735–1790) as a page in the household of the Dauphine of France, Maria Josepha of Saxony.[3]
After spending three years from 1752 in France, Joseph-Gaspard returned to Martinique and married Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois (1735–1807), whose maternal grandfather, Anthony Brown, may have been Irish.[4] Rose-Claire was from one of the oldest European families on the island, and the Tascher family home near Les Trois-Îlets, a sugar plantation, which is now a museum, [5] was part of her dowry.
On Martinique, Joseph-Gaspard earned his living as a plantation owner and a lieutenant of the Troupes de marine, apart from a small pension for his previous work in the royal household. He was almost always close to bankruptcy and suffered from ill health.[3]
Disputed birthplace[edit]
Officially, Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie was born in Les Trois-Îlets on Martinique on 23 June 1763. However, this has been disputed by several sources. The church registry in Les Trois-Îlets states that Joséphine was baptised there by Emmanuel Capuchin but does not say she was born there.
Joséphine's father owned an estate in Soufrière District on Saint Lucia, called Malmaison, which later was also the name of her famous French residence. In 1802, Dom Daviot, parish priest in Gros Islet on Saint Lucia, wrote a letter to one of his friends, stating that "it is in the vicinity of [my] parish that the wife of the first consul was born". He asserted that he was well acquainted with Joséphine's cousin, his parishioner.[6]
In Henry H. Breen's 1844 The History of St. Lucia, he stated that he had met with "several well-informed persons" who were convinced that Empress Joséphine had been born there.[7] Breen presented some evidence for this, including a newspaper clipping from 1831 which said that it was "alleged" that the de Taschers were among the first settlers of Saint Lucia, and that the future empress was born on a small estate on a hill then called La Cauzette, and later known as Morne Paix Bouche.[7] According to this story, the family lived there until 1771, when the father went to serve as intendant of Martinique.[8] Some people even claimed to have been among Joséphine's playmates, and one of them said that he had been "graciously received" by the empress in Château de Malmaison outside Paris. Breen received further confirmation from Joséphine's enslaved nanny, Dede, who said that she nursed Joséphine at La Cauzette.[8]
According to those who believe that Joséphine was born on Saint Lucia, the de Tascher estate in Martinique was only a pied-à-terre, occasional lodging, for when they wanted to stay with his mother-in-law. Saint Lucia switched hands between Great Britain and France fourteen times, and there were no civil registers on the island when Joséphine was born.[9] Saint Lucia's frequent change of ownership between Britain and France could be seen as the reason her birthplace was left out of her birth record, as it would have affected her nationality.[9]
Regardless of where she was born, Joséphine was her parents' first child, and they had two more: Catherine-Désirée in 1764 and Marie-Françoise in 1766.[3] At the ages of ten and nine, Joséphine and Catherine-Désirée were sent to a boarding school in Fort-Royal, run by the Bénédictines de la Providence. There, they learned to read, write, sing, dance, and embroider for four years. After the death of Catherine-Désirée, Joséphine returned to her parents' plantation. Joséphine's nurse was an enslaved person called Marion, whose freedom she would secure in 1807.[3]
In popular culture[edit]
Statue[edit]
In 1859, French Emperor Napoleon III commissioned a statue of Joséphine, which was installed in the La Savane park in downtown Fort-de-France. In 1991, the statue was symbolically decapitated and spattered with red paint. The acts of vandalism were done on the belief that Joséphine had influenced her husband to issue the Law of 20 May 1802, which reinstated slavery in the French colonial empire (including Martinique).[38] The statue was never repaired by the city administration, and every year more red paint was added to it.[39] In July 2020, the statue was torn down and destroyed by rioters in the wake of the George Floyd protests.[40]
