When at the end of August 1779
Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher
-
future wife of Napoleon Bonaparte
and next empress of France - left her native Martinique, she did not choose to move.
It was her father, a Frenchman of the lower nobility who had moved to the French colony in the Caribbean Sea in search of riches, who decided for her: she would marry Alexander Beauharnais, a viscount, military man and politician.
The young Creole, barely 16 years old, prepared for a long trip, not knowing if one day she would return to her home in the sugarcane fields, to its exuberant vegetation, to hear the nostalgic songs that the slaves whispered at dusk.
The French aristocrats who arrived in the Caribbean colony came thirsty for fortune and land, but they always wanted
to belong to the elite
, and this had its epicenter in Versailles.
Once in France, things went as planned:
Rose and Alexandre were married
on December 13, 1779 in the church of Noisy-le-Grand and she, in the blink of an eye, became Viscountess.
Soon
her children, Hortense and Eugène, were born
.
Almost at the same time, on an island, under the deep blue sky of the Mediterranean, a devoted and loving mother says goodbye to her barely 9-year-old son.
The little boy leaves his childhood in Corsica behind to enter under the iron discipline of the Brienne Military Academy.
His name was
Napoleon Bonaparte
.
A few centuries ago, Napoleon's Italian ancestors inhabited Corsica, an island that belonged to Genoa until 1768, when it was sold to France.
Napoleon and Marie Rose, the least expected love
The year 1795 passed in turbulent Paris.
Napoleon and Marie Rose, without planning it, were about to meet.
Portrait of Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher, known as Josephine, wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress of France, by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon.
On July 14, 1789, the revolution that embodied the ideals of the Enlightenment - freedom, equality, representative government - broke out, the same one that sanctioned the first French constitution and that executed the last absolute monarchs, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
Napoleon was not there when the people took the Bastille: he was barely 20 years old and had graduated from the Military School.
However, he was in Paris in 1795, when two events would change his life.
The first,
to quell a royalist insurrection in a bloody confrontation on the steps of St. Roch
.
The young general's enormous career had just taken off;
the revolution had called him.
Bewitched
The second great event for Napoleon was
the day he met Rose
.
Two months after the St. Roch episode, Rose and Napoleon met, most likely at Thérésia Tallien's house.
This fleeting encounter meant nothing to her, the young soldier had gone unnoticed by her.
Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby as Napoleon and Josephine in the Ridley Scott film.
Marie had been released from prison when the
Jacobin Terror
period ended , a dark period in which the Law of Suspects imprisoned and executed counterrevolutionaries.
Her ex-husband had been executed for her ties to Robespierre's enemies.
Once freed, Rose managed to stabilize the family economy thanks to her skills in financial speculation and the money her mother sent her from Martinique.
She was 32 years old, she lived in her house on Rùe de Chantereine, and she had managed to give her children a good education.
Influential and wealthy, she enjoyed her independence.
But one morning in
December 1795 Marie-Rose received a message from the young general
, who, almost as if spellbound, openly told her: “I woke up full of you.
Your portrait and the memory of yesterday's intoxicating afternoon left my senses no rest.
Tender and incomparable Josefina, what strange effects you provoke in my heart.”
Josephine?
Yes, at the whim of the young general, Marie-Josèphe-Rose would go down in history as Josephine.
Napoleon went to see Josephine almost every night at her house on the Rue de Chantereine.
As soon as he met her,
Napoleon went to see Josephine almost every night
at her house on the Rue de Chantereine.
Josefina's children remembered coming home and finding her mother and the young general talking animatedly;
he became an everyday presence in the family.
According to historian Pierre Branda in his book
Joséphine
, the key word in the relationship was
complicity
:
“Her interpersonal skills made up for his clumsiness in society.
The elegance and refinement of the widow of Beauharnais also softened the soldier's martial appearance.
But if his temperaments were polar opposites, his true characters were very similar.
Jealous, suspicious and possessive
as hell, they had nothing to envy of each other on those levels... Tenacious, determined and
convinced of his superiority, both aspired to the summits
.
Wedding without celebrations
Although the young general was convinced that he would be happy with his beloved, he also knew that
with her at his side he would find a faster way to integrate into French elitist circles
, dispelling any shadow of his Corsican origin.
This union gave him the
French touch of grace
that he needed, especially since his career was just beginning.
Portrait of the Empress Josephine by François Gérard.
As for Josefina,
her daughter Hortense said that she asked her mother not to marry
a man whose position would distance her from the family.
“But
the general already had more influence than me
.
She loved him,” she concluded.
Certainly her marriage to the young 26-year-old general was not the promise of a bed of roses: Napoleon had just been appointed general-in-chief of the army of Italy, so it was likely that she would become a widow or, perhaps, experience deception again. a husband who would be frequently absent.
On March 9, 1796, shortly after meeting each other and under a freezing Parisian night,
Napoleon and Josephine were married
.
There were no celebrations, no wedding dinner.
An anecdote tells that on the wedding night Josefina's dog - a pug named Fortuné -, jealous of having to leave his bed, bit the groom on the calf.
This everyday scene, almost like a caricature, stripped the general, at least for an instant, of his air of greatness.
The new husband soon
began his campaign towards Italy
.
From there he wrote one and another love letter, while his wife hardly responded to him.
The general has no one to write to him
“Every moment takes me away from you, adorable friend, and every moment I find less strength to be away from you.
You are the perpetual object of my thoughts
;
My imagination is exhausted in searching for what you are doing: if I see you sad, my heart tears and my pain increases.
If you are cheerful and playful with your friends, I reproach you for having quickly forgotten the separation of three days;
then you are light.”
A love letter written by Napoleon Bonaparte to Josephine which sold at auction in London on Tuesday 3 July 2007 for £276,000.
Photo: AP/Christies.
"I'm delirious.
Let me sleep.
It's been several days since I held you in my arms, I thought happily, but it's not you."
Letters like these, of
tormented love
, Napoleon wrote to his brand new wife.
With Bonaparte's successes in Italy - which also swelled the treasury of the Directory government - the general's wife perceived that she was the center of attention in the elitist salons of Paris.
She enjoyed this state of grace, although she was not so attached to Napoleon.
Another day the general wrote: “No letter from you;
I only receive them every four days, whereas, if you loved me, you would write to me twice a day.”
He was so obsessed;
she, so independent.
Under the Italian sun
When possible - given that military wives cannot visit them without government permission -
Josephine traveled to meet Bonaparte again
.
Whether happy or not to remain on the peninsula, she accompanied him until his return to the French Republic in 1797.
Video
Ridley Scott's film with Joaquin Phoenix.
During his stay in Italy “things happened.”
Shortly before embarking on the trip to the peninsula,
Ella Josephine met Hippolyte Charles
, a very young and seductive lieutenant.
When the conqueror's wife left France in the middle of summer with her entourage, Hippolyte was part of the entourage.
Why did Josefina stoke such a provocative fire in the sunlight?
Did she not fear Othello's sword?
As expected, the rumors did not take long to arrive.
However, no evidence certifies romance for those days, only for those days.
In Italy Josefina felt very
ill
, she spent weeks with fever, she constantly complained of a sharp pain in her side.
It is very likely that she suffered from salpingitis, this would explain her inability to get pregnant again.
Josefina's betrayal
In May 1797, the conqueror undertook his
campaign to Egypt
with the aim of stifling the trade of his arch-enemy England with India.
Napoleon, jealous, passionate, full of doubts and suspicions, although he was far from home, kept a close eye on his wife.
One day the messenger arrived, bringing the dreaded news:
Josefina had a lover
.
It was a public scandal that spread through the portals of the press like wildfire.
Eugène, who was with his stepfather, heard everything and told his mother: “This conversation affected him more than he thought.
All the words I heard refer to the fact that Charles (Hippolyte) came in your car to three stations in Paris, that you saw him in Paris, that he gave you your little dog, that he is even close to you right now.”
On another occasion Eugène heard Napoleon, as if struck by lightning, shouting over and over again: “Josephine!
Having deceived me!
She!
Divorce!
Yes, divorce!
“A public and dazzling divorce!” narrates the book
Joséphine
.
They met coldly in Paris.
A repentant, tearful, dismayed Josefina knew how to wait for the storm to go away, and the storm passed.
The story of the Duchess of Abrantès tells that Napoleon justified himself to his friend: “But what do you want me to do, Collot?
While she was crying down the stairs, I saw that Eugène and Hortense were following her sobbing.
No one made my heart so hard to see tears flow with impunity
.”
The union in the palace of sadness
They reestablished the link
.
From this moment she began to be more attached to her husband, she pleased him in almost everything, she adapted to the new political and military circumstances.
Bonaparte was already the First Consul of France
, Josephine smiled and hid her fatigue from the heavy tasks of protocol, she seemed tailor-made for this new role.
The consular couple
moved to the Tuileries Palace
, place of residence of the last absolute monarchs, Josephine seemed to see poor Marie Antoinette everywhere, it was like living in the palace of sadness.
The couple seemed united, and spent their weekends in Malmaison, the house where they found tranquility.
Josefina, true to her extravagant style, had decorated it;
Exotic birds and lush vegetation abounded in her gardens, like the Martinique of her childhood.
Napoleon had become the most important man in France.
Napoleon had become the most important man in France
, he had defeated the Second Coalition and signed the Peace of Amiens.
He became the leader the French needed for pacification and prosperity.
The path to the title of emperor came almost naturally.
Thus, in 1804, by decree,
the Senate proclaimed him emperor of the French
, a measure that was ratified by a popular plebiscite.
Touch the sky with your hands
On the morning of December 2, a crowd was waiting in front of the Tuileries, a carriage drawn by 8 white horses began its
procession towards the Notre Dame Cathedral
;
Inside, the imperial couple was about to be crowned.
The coronation ceremony was loaded with symbolism: monarchies would no longer be of divine origin.
Photo: Napoleon, film by Ridley Scott.
After saying the ritual prayers, the Pope, who represents God, handed the crown, which represents power, to Napoleon, who with a solemn gesture adjusted it on his head.
This ceremony thus proposed was loaded with symbolism:
monarchies would no longer be of divine origin
.
The Pope's position indicated that now spiritual power only accompanies the power that is granted by the people to the emperor.
This was the message.
Napoleon then crowned Josephine, who remained kneeling before him with her hands clasped.
The two had reached the summit.
The majesty of the scene was immortalized by the painter Jacques Louis David.
The majesty of the scene immortalized by the painter Jacques Louis David.
An extremely arduous protocol awaited the Empress, and she adapted to her task: she took care of administrative and charitable tasks, organized invitations and was a perfect ambassador.
She could no longer shine in the salons of Paris as an independent woman.
In return, she received the same honors as the emperor, no one could question her legitimacy.
However, her throne was pure pomp, because
sovereignty began and ended with the emperor
.
Suspicions confirmed
Peace in Europe was short-lived.
England organized the Third Coalition against France, along with Austria, Russia and Prussia.
In the winter of 1806, the French army entered Poland to liberate the country from Prussian occupation.
In Warsaw the emperor met Maria Walewska.
On January 18 she wrote to him: “I have only seen you, I have only admired you, I only desire you.”
In Warsaw, Napoleon met Maria Walewska.
Photo: Joaquin Phoenix characterized as Napoleon for the Ridley Scott film.
The letters to María followed one another.
Soon news of Napoleon's
passionate affair
reached Paris.
Josefina suspected it before the public certainties.
She had written to her husband again and again, telling him that she was willing to go to see him in Warsaw, but he was evasive.
Knowing everything, she acted as if nothing had happened;
but the possibility that Napoleon would ask for a
divorce
from her was getting closer and closer to her.
For the emperor,
the dynastic question was a matter of state:
he was not immortal, he had enemies, he could die;
He needed an heir and his wife couldn't give him one
.
The story of his marriage could change, it was only a matter of time.
To give legitimacy to the dissolution of the imperial marriage, the Senate took care of voting on a constitutional provision.
It was the only institution with the power to do so, the provision was presented as a “Great public safety measure.”
Love is stronger?
On December 15, 1809, Josephine appeared for this momentous moment.
“The empress dressed as always;
but, despite her efforts to hide the pain she felt, one would have to be blind not to see, from the redness of her eyes, how much she had cried,” recalled Miss Avrillion (excerpt from the book
Joséphine
) .
The divorce of Napoleon Bonaparte and Josephine, by the artists Bosselman Chasselat.
The imperial couple, Cambacérès, the secretary of the Imperial House and the entire royal house met in the great cabinet.
Napoleon spoke first.
“The policy of my monarchy, the interest, the needs of my people, which have constantly guided all my actions, want me to leave the children, heirs of my love for the people, this throne where Providence has placed me.
However, for several years now
I have given up hope of having children with my beloved wife, the Empress Josephine
.
This is what leads me to sacrifice the sweetest affections of my heart, to listen only to the good of the State and to
want the dissolution of our marriage
” (document from the
Joséphine
book ).
When it was Josefina's turn to speak, she made an effort to deliver her speech but, drowned in tears, she could not continue.
The story of a historic marriage came to an end, cold reason was stronger than love.
Who said that love is stronger?