Joséphine de Beauharnais was able to catch the fancy of Napoleon Bonaparte, then a rising young army officer. She agreed to marry him after he had been appointed commander of the Italian expedition. Married in a civil ceremony on March 9, 1796, Joséphine was an indifferent wife, declining to answer the future emperor’s passionate love letters and, while he was campaigning in Egypt in 1798-99, flirting with another army officer in a most compromising manner. Bonaparte threatened to divorce her, but her children dissuaded him, and he eventually forgave her, even agreeing to pay the enormous debts she had accumulated. During the Consulate (1799-1804) she was careful to cause no more scandals and used her social position to advance her husband’s political fortunes. After Napoleon became emperor of the French in May 1804, she persuaded him to marry her anew with religious rites; the ceremony, which the Emperor arranged most reluctantly, took place on Dec. 1, 1804. The following day she attended Napoleon’s coronation by the Pope in Notre-Dame as empress.
Joséphine’s place in the world now seemed secure. The marriages of her children Hortense (to Napoleon’s brother Louis) and Eugène (to the daughter of the King of Bavaria) seemed to establish her position; but her extravagance and, above all, her inability to give Napoleon a son put a strain on their marriage. Hoping to make a politically convenient marriage with Marie-Louise, daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, Napoleon in January 1810 arranged for the nullification of his 1804 marriage on the grounds that a parish priest had not been present at the ceremony. This slight technical irregularity, which seems to have been premeditated, enabled him to dispose of Joséphine without having to resort to a divorce, which would have displeased both the church and the Austrian emperor.
Joséphine retreated to her private residence at Malmaison.
9 сен 2024
