Joséphine de Beauharnais]; 23 June 1763 – 29 May 1814) was the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte, and thus the first Empress of the French. Her first husband Alexandre de Beauharnais had been guillotined during the Reign of Terror, and she had been imprisoned in the Carmes prison until her release five days after Alexandre’s execution.
Through her daughter, Hortense, she was the maternal grandmother of Napoléon III. Through her son, Eugène, she was the great-grandmother of later Swedish and Danish kings and queens, as well as the last Queen of Greece. The current reigning houses of Belgium, Norway and Luxembourg also descend from her.
Hortense’s son became Napoléon III, Emperor of the French. Eugène’s daughter Joséphine, married King Oscar I of Sweden, the son of Napoléon’s one-time fiancée, Désirée Clary. Through her, Joséphine is a direct ancestor of the present heads of the royal houses of Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway and Sweden. Another of Eugène’s daughters, Amélie de Beauharnais von Leuchtenberg, married Emperor Pedro I of Brazil (also former king Pedro IV of Portugal) in Rio de Janeiro, and became Empress of Brazil, but they did not have issue.
She did not bear Napoleon any children; as a result, he divorced her in 1810 to marry Marie Louise of Austria. After the divorce, Joséphine lived at the Château de Malmaison, near Paris. She remained on good terms with Napoléon, who once said that the only thing to come between them was her debts.
Joséphine died of pneumonia in Rueil-Malmaison, four days after catching cold during a walk with Tsar Alexander in the gardens of Malmaison. She was buried in the nearby church of Saint Pierre-Saint Paul in Rueil. Her daughter Hortense is interred near her.
Napoléon claimed to a friend, while in exile on Saint Helena, that “I truly loved my Joséphine, but I did not respect her.”Despite his numerous affairs, eventual divorce, and remarriage, the Emperor’s last words on his death bed at St. Helena were: “France, the Army, the Head of the Army, Joséphine.”
Joséphine was the recipient of numerous love letters written by Napoleon, many of which still exist. Her chateau of Malmaison was noted for its magnificent rose garden, over which she supervised closely, due to her passionate interest in roses that she collected from all over the world.
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