Marie-Joseph-Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie, better known as Joséphine de Beauharnais, (June 23, 1763, Trois-Îlets, Martinique - May 29, 1814, Rueil-Malmaison) was Empress of the French (1804-1809) , and wife of the Emperor Napoleon I.
Daughter of Joseph Gaspard de Tascher (1735-1791), knight and lord of Pagerie, and of Rose Claire des Vergers de Sannois (1736-1807).
She married on December 13, 1779 in Noisy -le-Grand Viscount Alexandre François Marie de Beauharnais (1760-1794), a French army officer. This was first promised to Catherine Désirée, Josephine's sister. But when Catherine died, Alexander consented to marry Josephine instead. The couple gave birth to two children:
* Eugène Rose de Beauharnais (1781-1824), at the origin of the Dukes of Leuchtenberg, and whose several descendants married European monarchs.
* Hortense Eugénie Cécile de Beauharnais (1783-1837), who married Louis Bonaparte, a brother of Napoleon and who was the mother of Napoleon III.
The Beauharnais had been separated for many years when Viscount Alexandre was guillotined in 1794:they had always had financial problems and during the Revolution, Joséphine placed her children in apprenticeship.
She became one of the queens of the Directory and the mistress of Barras. She married civilly on March 9, 1796 in Paris Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821), six years her junior. Napoleon feminized his middle name to Josephine. It was largely thanks to his wife that he was appointed General-in-Chief of the Army of Italy. Their life as a couple was stormy under the Directory, because of the chronic infidelities of Josephine, who refused to follow Napoleon in his campaigns; subsequently, because of her jealousy, the situation was reversed. Napoleon, lacking in delicacy, was not reluctant to take mistresses from his wife's entourage and Joséphine, who was not unaware of this, had to endure the presence of her rivals.
It was in Joséphine's house, rue Chantereine, that the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire was prepared, which led to the Consulate.
On May 18, 1804, the Senate voted unanimously to establish an imperial government, proclaiming Napoleon hereditary emperor of the French. On December 2, 1804, after having married Josephine religiously on October 30 at the Tuileries Palace (Josephine, believing thus to avoid divorce or repudiation, had skilfully taken advantage of the presence of the Pope to slip that they were not married religiously), the one who is now called Napoleon I is crowned emperor by Pope Pius VII at Notre-Dame de Paris. It was he himself who placed the imperial crown on the head of his wife Josephine and who proclaimed her Empress. Napoleon thought he was sterile, Josephine already having two children, until the day when a servant of his wife gave him a son, Charles Léon. He then decided to repudiate his wife to found a dynasty. The divorce was pronounced in 1809, and the religious marriage was annulled in 1810. Napoleon nevertheless retained Josephine's title of empress. The latter retired to the Château de Malmaison which she had bought in 1799 and where all the crowned heads paraded in the spring of 1814. Passionate about botany, she contributed to introducing many floral species in France and made Malmaison a superb vegetal setting. A spendthrift, always in debt, extremely flirtatious (she owned hundreds of dresses), she continued after her divorce to benefit from Napoleon's largesse and Louis XVIII, who returned to the throne, even agreed on Josephine's death to settle the last debts.
It was for wanting to show her garden to Tsar Alexander I, dressed in a simple summer dress, that she caught cold and contracted the pneumonia that was to kill her.
Among his grandchildren, there are illustrious sovereigns. Indeed, through her daughter Hortense, she is the grandmother of Emperor Napoleon III. But - and we know it less - through her son Eugene, who was able to marry off her children well, she is the grandmother of a Queen of Sweden (Queen Josephine), a Prince Consort of Portugal (Prince Auguste ), an Empress of Brazil (Empress Amélie), a Grand Duke of Russia (Grand Duke Maximilian) and the ancestor of many current European crowned heads.