The Empress Josephine : Napoleon's enchantress

Contents

VOL. I

CHAP. PAGE

I. JOSEPHINE'S FAMILY .... I

Chapter I Josephine's Family

WRITING in 1887, after a trip to Fort-de- France, formerly Fort-Royal, capital of the West Indian island of Martinique, the late Lafcadio Heam remarks that the town has little of outward interest apart from the Savane, the great green public square. But that, continues Hearn in his most enthusiastic strain, would be worth the visit alone, even were it not made romantic by the marble memory of Josephine :

" I went to look at the white dream of her there, a creation of master-sculptors. It seemed to me absolutely lovely. Sea-winds have bitten it ; tropical rains have streaked it ; some microscopic growth has darkened the exquisite

^ VOL. I I hollow of the throat. And yet such is the human charm of the figure that you almost fancy you are gazing at a living presence. Perhaps the profile is less artistically real — statuesque to the point of betraying the chisel ; but when you look straight up into the sweet Creole face, you can believe she lives : all the wonderful West Indian charm of the woman is there. She is standing just in front of the Savane, robed in the fashion of the First Empire, with gracious arms and shoulders bare : one hand leans upon a medallion bearing the eagle profile of Napoleon. Seven tall palms stand in a circle around her, lifting their comely heads into the blue glory of the tropic day. Within their enchanted circle you feel that you tread holy ground — the sacred soil of artist and poet. Here the recollections of memoir-writers vanish away ; the gossip of history is hushed for you ; you no longer care to know how rumour has it that she spoke or smiled or wept : only the bewitchment of her Uves under the thin, soft, swaying shadows of those feminine palms. Over the violet space of summer sea, through the vast splendour of azure Ught, she is looking back to the place of her birth, back to beautiful drowsy

Romance and History 3

Trois-Ilets — and always with the same halfdreaming, half-plaintive smile^ — -unutterably touching." '

It would surely be impossible to find any passage in literature outside these few lines from the early pen of Lafcadio Heam in which a better suggestion is conveyed to us of the Josephine of romance, as opposed to the Josephine of history. And the Josephine of romance may be said to bear to the actual Josephine as we find her in history the same relation that the statue so lovingly described above bore to the real woman, the wife of the First Consul and the Emperor, who never appeared without her rouge and thick coating of powder, who spent at least three hours in her dressing-room every morning, and who felt so keenly the necessity, if not of suffering, at any rate of labouring hard, to be beautiful. Yet it may be that, just as the living woman was able to exercise upon those with whom she came in contact a fascination which no statue of her could inspire, so there is more absorbing interest in the true Josephine, seen as she existed from

» Lafcadio Heam. "Two Years in the French West Indies," pp. 65-6.

day to day, with her frivohty and her faults so Uttle hidden, than in the merely lovely and benevolent Empress of legend. Whatever legend could do for the first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte, it could not invent for her a more curiously picturesque career than was hers in fact : on the contrary, in removing from its records so many of the actual incidents as not harmonising with the character which it was endeavouring to present, it removed also a great deal of the picturesqueness.

On June 23, 1763, there was bom at Trois- Ilets, Martinique, the eldest child of Joseph- Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie, retired heutenant of marine artillery, and of his wife, formerly Rose-Claire des Vergers de Sannois. To this child were given the names of Marie- Joseph-Rose ; Marie from her father's mother, Joseph from her father, and Rose from her mother. The name of Josephine was unknown until she met the young General Bonaparte in 1796. In her girlhood, up to the time when she first sailed for France, she was generally called by the pet-name of Yeyette, which sounds hke an infantile mispronunciation or a negro corruption.

The Taschcfs 5

At the time of Yeyette's birth her father and mother were both under thirty years of age and had been married a year and a half. Joseph- Gaspard Tascher de la Pagerie was one of the five children of a Frenchman who had emigrated to the West Indies in 1726. The Taschers were a family of provincial nobility in the Orleanais district of France. Although claiming to trace themselves back in history to the twelfth century, they had achieved nothing to raise them from a modest station in life. The estate of La Pagerie was in the neighbourhood of Blois, and the eldest branch of the family took the name of Tascher de la Pagerie (or Lapagerie, as it was often written) after establishing itself there. Gaspard- Joseph, though the eldest son of his father, went to the West Indies with little in his pocket and without official rank, from which it has been suggested that he was a ne'erdo-well. Those whose political views made them hostile|to the Empress Josephine's family pictured its founder as picking up a bare living in the service of various Martinique households. All that is certain is that his emigration to the New World did not make his fortune. His best stroke was his marriage, eight years after he reached Martinique, to a Mile, de la Chevalerie, with whom he received as dowry some property at Carbet, near Saint-Pierre, and some also in the island of Saint-Lucia. His debts accumulated, however, and he left his Carbet estate, where his son Joseph-Gaspard was born, and went to live at Fort-Royal. At the age of seventeen Joseph-Gaspard was sent to France as a rather elderly page in the household of the Dauphine, returning to Martinique three years later with the brevet rank of sub-lieutenant of marine artillery. This was the year in which warfare broke out between France and England in American waters ; and French needs in the West Indies brought about an appointment which had momentous consequences for the family of Tascher de la Pagerie.

In the spring of 1757 the home of the Taschers at Fort-Royal was inhabited by the father and mother, with their son Joseph-Gaspard and their three daughters, Marie-Euphemie-Desiree, Marie- Paule, and Marie-Frangoise-Rose, aged twenty-one, nineteen, and seventeen respectively. Another son, Robert-Marguerite, was in France. None of the children were married, and thefamily

Fran9ois de Beauharnais, 7

was in poor circumstances, although the father had succeeded in persuading the Martinique authorities to register his letters of nobility, which entitled him to certain reliefs and privileges. The advent of the specially appointed Governor and Lieutenant-General of the Antilles was doubtless looked forward to with hope ; and Gaspard- Joseph Tascher was successful in getting for his eldest daughter an appointment as companion of some sort to the Governor's wife.

Messire Frangois de Beauharnais, haul et puissant seigneur, as he was styled in the Royal appointment under which he came out to the French West Indian possessions, was a wealthy man of forty-two years of age when he arrived at Martinique with his young wife and his oneyear-old child, named, like himself, Francois. His family, like that of the Taschers, came from the Orleanais (which may account for Marie-Euphemie-Desiree obtaining her post at Government House), but it had prospered better than the Taschers, owing to the military achievements of several past Beauharnais. His conduct while Governor shows him to have been a weak and unprincipled man ; but he was possessed of considerable influence at Court, as is proved by the manner in which he managed to escape much of the punishment due to his misdeeds, and even to secure a pension for his supposed services.

1 Before the arrival of Beauharnais, Joseph- Gaspard Tascher had gained the substantive rank of lieutenant for the share which he had taken in protecting Fort-Royal against English attacks. It was not, however, the military abilities of Josephine's future father, but the talents of his sister that were to bring about the close connection between the Taschers and Beauharnais. Marie-Euphemie-Desiree Tascher was a remarkable woman, as will clearly appear from her subsequent history, and as strong a character as Fran9ois de Beauharnais was weak. Her entry into Government House at Fort- Royal decided the future lives of many persons. She rapidly gained a complete ascendancy over the Governor, while impressing his wife so favourably that she remained on terms of friendship with her for at least four years, in spite of the talk to which the intimacy of Beauharnais and the Creole girl inevitably gave rise. Perhaps it was with a desire to disarm suspicion

Mme. de Renaudin 9

that the Governor endeavoured to arrange a marriage for Marie-Euphemie-Desiree with a young man on his personal staff, Alexis Renaudin, who belonged to one of the best Martinique families. Renaudin's parents, however, objected to the match, both on account of the Taschers' poor position and because the lady, they said, abused her influence with M. and Mme. de Beauharnais. Consequently it was not until the father of Alexis died that the Governor was able to bring about the marriage. The widow yielded to pressure, and the wedding was celebrated on April 22, 1759.

It was owing to his fatherly exertions on behalf of his wife's companion that Beauharnais lost his post in the West Indies. The English fleet had attacked the island of Guadeloupe in January, and Beauharnais had received sufficient reinforcements to go to the aid of the French garrison early in March. Delaying six weeks in order to assist at the Renaudin marriage, he arrived at Guadeloupe in time to learn that Nadau du Treil, who was in command on the island, had surrendered a day previously. The rumour was spread about that the delay had been caused by the wedding lo The Empress Josephine

at Saint-Pierre of the Governor's son. In reality, of course, this son was only three years old, and the wedding which lost Guadeloupe was that of Renaudin and Mile. Tascher. Beauharnais, however, paid for his neglect of duty. Although he was able to put the blame for the surrender of Guadeloupe upon Nadau du Treil and his fellow officers, who were courtmartialled, degraded, and sent home to prison, information as to the Governor's share in the island's loss, if not as to its actual cause, reached Paris, and in spite of his influence at Court he was reheved of his command in the West Indies.

Beauharnais did not return home at once. His wife was expecting her second child, which furnished a reasonable pretext for delay. On May 26, 1760, she gave birth to her son Alexandre-Fran9ois-Marie, afterwards first husband of Josephine. The infant's ondoiement, though not his full baptism, took place on June 10 at Saint-Pierre, his godmother being Mme. Renaudin. On the same day the latter sailed for France, according to the local tradition accepted by Aubenas, whom we may call the official biographer of Josephine. M. Masson,

Beauharnais's Disgrace

II who is less concerned^than Aubenas to demonstrate the virtuous character of Mme. Renaudin, points out the lack of evidence of her presence in Paris before 1761. In the April of that year Beauhamais, with his wife and elder child, sailed from Martinique on the frigate Hebe. It is not a matter of very much importance whether Mme. Renaudin went with them. It is certain that since her marriage she had wielded more influence than ever over the Beauharnais, and her relations with her husband were strained to breakingpoint. She never lived with Renaudin again after leaving Martinique, although there does not appear to have been any legal separation.

When the Beauharnais set sail for France, they left the infant Alexandre with his grandmother at Fort-Royal. Seven months later, on November 9, 1761, the marriage took place at Trois-Ilets of the parents of Alexandre's future wife. The Beauharnais influence was seemingly advantageous to Joseph-Gaspard Tascher as well as to his sister ; for his bride belonged to the des Vergers de Sannois, one of the best island families, and brought him some much-needed relief, the dowry including an estate at Trois-Ilets, where he made his home with his wife and her father and mother, and where he was living at the time of his eldest daughter's birth.

French writers, whether friendly or not to the Empress Josephine, have been careful to insist on the fact that she was a Frenchwoman by birth, although narrowly escaping being born when Martinique was in the possession of England. The island had been surrendered by Beauharnais's successor, Levassor de la Touche, among those captured with the new Governor being Joseph-Gaspard Tascher, who was said to have distinguished himself by holding out for nine hours against the English attack on the battery under his command. But in March 1763, news of the Treaty of Paris reached the West Indies, and early in June the French fleet commissioned to take back the lost possessions reached the islands. Martinique was therefore once again French property when Madame Joseph-Gaspard Tascher gave birth to her daughter, baptised five weeks later under the names of Marie-Joseph-Rose.

It may be noted here that the doubt which

Josephine's Birth 13

was at one time thrown on the date of Josephine's birth arose chiefly from the fact that she herself made a false declaration at the time of her marriage with Napoleon Bonaparte^ when she stated her birthday to be June 23, 1767. In the " Memorial de Sainte- H61ene " the statement that Josephine " deceived her husband by five or six years at least and produced the baptismal certificate of a younger sister, long since dead," is incorrect. Josephine's " deceit " was to the extent of four years only, and Napoleon connived at it, adding eighteen months to his own age, so as to make Josephine and himself almost the same in years. Further, the date of June 23, 1767, was not the birthday of either of the two younger Tascher sisters. They were born at Trois-Ilets in the course of the three following years — Catherine-Desiree on December 11, 1764, and Marie-Frangoise on September 3, 1766.

If Josephine herself was responsible for one confusion about the date of her birth, she was in no way to blame for other doubts cast upon it. Had these doubts been justified, she would have been actuaUy little more than a year older than she represented herself to be in

March 1796. Researchers discovered in Martinique two documents which appeared to make the Empress Josephine none other than Marie-Frangoise, youngest daughter of Joseph- Gaspard Tascher and his wife. A registration was found of the death of Catherine-Ddsiree on October 16, 1777, and also a certificate of the burial of " Marie-Joseph-Rose " on November 5, 1791. The death of the second daughter was never in dispute. But why was the daughter who died in 1791 buried in her sister's name, if she was not actually the girl born in 1763 ? M. Masson hazards an ingenious conjecture, which may be true, though there is no evidence to support it. He mentions a document, of doubtful authenticity, which recorded the birth of a female child to a Demoiselle de Tascher on March 17, 1786 (when Josephine was in France), and suggests that Marie-Fran9oise, to shield herself, may have given her married sister's names instead of her own in the baptismal certificate, and that these names were retained in her burial certificate five years later.

In connection with this illegitimate child of a Demoiselle de Tascher, it is rather strange that

Questions of Date if

the enemies of Josephine did not seize on the fact that Decres, writing by Napoleon's order in 1807, spoke of " the demoiselle of eighteen years, whom Madame de la Pagerie has taken in and adopted." Had this girl, Marie-Benaquette Tascher de la Pagerie, been really only eighteen years of age, she must have been born about 1789, that is to say, when Josephine was at Trois-Ilets during a two years' stay with her family, after her rupture with Alexandre de Beauharnais. Therefore on the ground of date alone there would have been no reason why Josephine, and not Marie-Frangoise, should not have been the mother.

T

Chapter II Early Years In Martinique

HE early part of Josephine's life has no place in history, for the reason that it was never chronicled ; and this was the case because there was nothing in it which seemed worth chronicling until thirty years later. She herself kept no records of her childish days, and those writers who claimed to give any description of them drew entirely on their imagination. Aubenas alone had access to the archives of the Tascher de la Pagerie famUy, and on his selection from the letters and documents which he was allowed to see depends what knowledge we have of the first fifteen years of our heroine's existence. And hardly before she is fourteen do we begin to get any personal details even from the biography of Aubenas.

Not long after the birth of his eldest daughter, Joseph-Gaspard Tascher was fortunate enough

i6

The Tascher Estate 17

to receive from the French Government, as a reward for his services in the defence of Martinique against the Enghsh, a pension of four hundred and fifty livres a year. Doubtless the Beauharnais influence at Court helped to secure this grant, which was small in comparison with the pension of twelve thousand livres and the title of marquis which Frangois de Beauharnais obtained for himself in spite of his achievement at Guadeloupe. The yearly four hundred and fifty saved Tascher from complete ruin ; for in August 1766 a great tempest, combined with earthquake, devastated Martinique, throwing down houses all over the island and wrecking plantations, while the sea overflowed the coasts and completed the damage. On the Taschers' estate nothing was left standing except the sugar-refinery, to which the owner with his wife and two infant children fled for shelter on August 13. In this building, altered so as to make it habitable, the family continued to live for the next twenty-five years ; and it was here that Josephine spent her life between the ages of three and ten.

The small town of Trois-Ilets lies on the opposite side to Fort-Royal of the bay now

VOL. I 2 known as that of Fort-de-France, and takes its name from three little islands rising out of the sea in front of it. Aubenas visited the place in the middle of last century, when it was not very much changed since the days of Josephine's childhood. The town of Trois- Ilets then contained about fifty wooden houses and a modest church, in which was the family vault of the Taschers. The Three Islets had only a few fishermen's huts upon them, about which spread the nets drying in the sun. To reach the estate it was necessary to keep the town on one's left hand, and it took about a quarter of an hour's walk to reach a high point on the road whence the old buildings could be seen. The detailed description of Aubenas is worth quotation :

" Situated on a small eminence surrounded by larger hills, once covered by rich plantations and now for the most part given up to parasitic weeds, the Sannois-La Pagerie homestead looks the very abode of peace and forgetfulness. A few steps only from the sea, although it is out of sight and even out of hearing; separated from the town of Trois-Ilets by the Morne Gantheaume, which cuts off the view, one can

The Homestead 19

only see around one an amphitheatre of verdure, roofed by a sky whose exquisite transparency is the wonder and despair of the painter. From the extent of the buildings — the erections still standing and the ruins which the eye can make out under the grass — it is possible to judge the former importance of the estate, one of the largest in this once flourishing quarter of the island. On arrival we come first on the dwelling-house, originally constructed on a large scale, as is proved by what remains of its outbuildings ; but it has become since the storm of 1766, and in anticipation of future disasters of the same kind, a simple wooden house. In front of this was a large court planted with tamarinds and sand-box trees, of which a few survive.

" Next comes the sugar-mill with its circle of heavy pillars and its huge roof of red tiles of native manufacture. About it were the sheds containing the cane-refuse destined to heat the refinery furnaces ; the flour-hut where the negroes came to prepare their manioc ; the hospital for the care of the slaves j and the prison, rarely tenanted on the La Pagerie estate.

■ " Coming down a few paces from the mill, we reach the refinery, a huge building forty metres long by twenty broad, and divided into several sections for the production of cane-sugar. Alongside the refinery runs a second garden, built up on a terrace. On looking at the monumental soUdity of the refinery it is possible to understand how it withstood the terrible storm. During the years which followed, the building was adapted to shelter the La Pagerie family. A low gallery was added on the southern side and rooms were fitted up in the upper part until a new dwelling-house should be erected. A little stream, a mere brook without a name, though its waters were always pure, flowed below the refinery after running through a rockhewn basin where, according to the Creole custom, M. de Tascher's daughters took their daily bath in the shade of the great mango-trees which protected them from the heat of the sun and from indiscreet eyes. Between this tank and the refinery were the negroes' huts, built in stages on the slope of the hill and surrounded by banana, orange, and bread-fruit trees."

In this home, although her father's circum-

The First Ten Years 21

stances did not allow him to keep it up in any great style, and although the hundred and fifty negro slaves which his daughter's more enthusiastic biographers gave to him probably existed only in their imaginations,^ Josephine doubtless spent an early childhood of great ease and freedom. The chief charge of her was in the hands of a mulatto woman. This was the demoiselle Marion, muldtresse libra de Martinique, who in an Imperial decree of 1807 received an annual pension of twelve hundred francs from the Emperor in recognition of the care which she had bestowed upon " our weU-loved spouse, the Empress of the French, Queen of Italy, during her tenderest infancy." Under the control of Marion it is easy to imagine that Yeyette foimd Ufe not only easy but idle. Aubenas, as the historian chosen by the family, pictures her learning her early lessons at her mother's side. But she knew little enough when she left school, and her knowledge must have been indeed scanty when she went thither at the age of ten. It may be granted, however, that on one point she had an excellent education

• M. Masson, " Josephine de Beauharnais," p. 35, suggests fifteen or twenty negroes as the more probable figure.

at Trois-Ilets — in the love of nature which was so marked a characteristic throughout her Ufe. Amid the lovely surroundings of her home, in its setting of evergreen wooded hills and West Indian sky and sea, she did not fail to find an influence which continued to her death, even though it might appear to find outward expression principally in the extravagances of the Malmaison garden.

It was in 1773 that Josephine was sent to school at the convent of the Dames de la Providence, Fort-Royal. Her grandmother Tascher was still living at Fort-Royal, in company with her daughter Marie-Frangoise-Rose, Josephine's " Aunt Rosette." Six years previously Madame Tascher had become a widow. At the end of 1769 she had surrendered charge of the little Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was sent at last to his father in France. When, therefore, Josephine came to Fort-Royal her grandmother and aunt were living alone, and it seems probable that she spent the greater part of her next four years with them, out of school hours.

The institution of the Dames de la Providence was not the best school in Martinique, and

A Scanty Education 23

Josephine did not acquire much wisdom there. This was perhaps not altogether the fault of her teachers, for she never showed any of the aptitude for learning which afterwards made her children Hortense and Eugene the pride of the schools to which they were put at Saint- Germain. It was to the accomplishments of music and dancing that Josephine devoted herself with the greatest pleasure at the convent. " A surprising taste for music ... a very pretty voice," were the points on which her father felt justified in dwelling when writing about his eldest daughter to the Marquis de Beauharnais in January 1778.

Josephine was fourteen years of age ^ when she returned from Fort-Royal and the convent of the Dames de la Providence to her father's home. Into the two following years of her life the more romantic — and unscrupulous — writers who have interested themselves in her career have endeavoured to introduce a love-story or two, feeling no doubt the want of something to

' It is usually said in the biographies of Josephine that she remained at school until she was fifteen. But her father's letter of January 9, 1778, to Madame Renaudin, speaks of his eldest daughter " who has left the convent some time." Her fifteenth birthday was not until the following June 23.

give an interest to the very few and bare outlines of the Empress's early life. The efforts of these romancers hardly deserve notice. There is only one piece of first-hand evidence, which is to be found in the memoirs of General Tercier. Now Tercier, although he claims that " Truth was always his idol," scarcely inspires much confidence when he describes his relations with Josephine. Nor does he say very much. He is speaking of the year 1778, when he was twenty-six :

" Young, lively and ardent, I was present at every fete and gathering of pleasant society. Among those whom I met was Mademoiselle Tascher de la Pagerie, the celebrated Empress Josephine. I was on intimate terms with all her family. I often spent several days in her mother's house. She was young then, so was I. ..." '

Subsequent writers appear to have paid particular attention to the dots with which the passage closes.

A few pages later Tercier records :

" About this time [September 1779] the vessel Le Fier, 50 guns, Commander Turpin, left for France, carrying on board her who was

» Tercier, "M^moires," pp. 14, 15,

Alleged Love Affairs 25

one day to be the Empress of the French. She was eighteen years of age, although the ' Almanach Imperial ' always made her out nine or ten years less than she actually was. I accompanied her from Fort-Royal with her family on board the ship. I was, as I have said, very intimate with the family, which escorted her in full force and put her into the captain's hands, with one mulatto woman to wait on her during the voyage."

Now Josephine was not eighteen, but sixteen, when she left Martinique (though she was admittedly well grown for her age), and she did not sail on the Fier, but on the He de France. Moreover, her father and her aunt Rosette accompanied her to France. Tercier's intimacy with the Taschers, therefore, does not seem to have made him a very observant witness of their doings. It is surely unsafe to buUd too much on the evidence of this idolater of Truth, even when he has recourse to modest dots. The editor of the General's memoirs, M. C. de la Chanoine, states that when Tercier was imprisoned in the Temple as a Royalist conspirator in 1798-g, Josephine used her influence to have him released and so, " by a delicate intervention, not recorded in the memoirs, repaid the debt owed by the heart of Mile, de la Pagerie." One would not expect Tercier to omit such an incident as Josephine's intervention had it ever occurred, and M. de la Chanoine's assumption appears gratuitous.

A wider celebrity has been gained by the story of the early loves of Josephine and " l' Anglais," although the latter, unlike General Tercier, wrote nothing to perpetuate the legend. The tradition, however, persisted that there was a young Englishman in Martinique during Josephine's girlhood, between whom and her there was a strong attachment, and that in the year 1814, when the Allies were in possession of Paris, this Englishman, who had now risen to the rank of General, wrote to the ex-Empress reminding her of their early acquaintance. Josephine invited him to dinner at Malmaison ; but on the appointed day she was in her last illness, and she died without ever having seen him again. In the pretended memoirs of Josephine by Mme. Lenormand the name of the Englishman, or rather Scotsman, is given as

Williams de K , presumably in order to give

more semblance of reality to the tale !

Other Tales 27

There is one story of Josephine's Martinique days which stands on a different footing from the boastings of General Tercier or the fairytales of Mme. Lenormand. This story appears in many versions, and no doubt she herself told it many times and added to its details as she grew older. But that there was a foundation of truth for it appears from a passage in the memoirs of General Lamarque, whose good faith there seems no reason to doubt. It will suffice to quote Lamarque's words :