Bonaparte Marries Joséphine: A Strategic Union for Power

Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais in a civil ceremony in Paris on March 9, 1796, two days before departing for his Italian campaign. He was 26 and obsessed with her. She was 32, a widow with two children, a pile of debts, and a list of former lovers that included several members of the revolutionary government. The marriage was a strategic calculation for both parties, but Napoleon's passion for Josephine was genuine and consuming — at least until he discovered she didn't feel the same way. Josephine, born Marie Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie on the island of Martinique, had survived the Terror through a combination of luck and useful connections. Her first husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, was guillotined in 1794. Josephine herself was imprisoned in Les Carmes and expected to die before Robespierre's fall released her. She emerged from prison and became the mistress of Paul Barras, the most powerful member of the Directory, who introduced her to the young General Bonaparte. The wedding took place at the town hall of the 2nd arrondissement on the evening of March 9. Napoleon arrived two hours late. Josephine lied about her age on the marriage certificate, subtracting four years, while Napoleon added eighteen months to his own. The ceremony was brief and the marriage certificate contained so many errors that legal scholars later questioned its validity. Napoleon wrote Josephine feverish love letters from the Italian front, sometimes multiple times a day. "I awake full of you," he wrote from the field. "Your image and the memory of last night's intoxicating pleasures has left no rest to my senses." Josephine's replies were infrequent and cool. She began an affair with a cavalry officer named Hippolyte Charles while Napoleon was fighting the Austrians. Napoleon discovered the affair during his Egyptian campaign in 1798 and was devastated. The marriage survived but changed character: Napoleon took his own mistresses, and the relationship became a political partnership. He divorced Josephine in 1809 because she could not produce an heir, though he reportedly wept during the ceremony. He married Marie Louise of Austria three months later. Napoleon's last words, spoken on his deathbed at St. Helena in 1821, are reported to have been "France, the Army, Josephine."