p26  Chapter 3
A Marriage is Arranged

The lengthy negotiations for the marriage of Josephine, still in Martinique, to an almost unknown suitor in far‑away France are a classic example of eighteenth-century French matrimonial procedures. The children of that period were trained to remain silent before their parents, who were wont to act both as man and God, first proposing and then disposing in the matter of their offspring's fates. The Alexander who had left Martinique late in 1765 to return to his family was somewhat less than six years old, and the Josephine whom he left behind was then a little more than two. This infant association, while no doubt richly stimulating to the imagination of a W. S. Gilbert or to the mental processes of a Freudian, establishes for the historian little more than that for a short time the two children shared a few common experiences.

What stands out most obviously is that the patterns of these two lives soon sharply diverged. While Josephine undertook her simple schooling with the Dames de la Providence at Fort-Royal, returning from them to the patriarchal life of the sugar plantation at Trois-Îlets, Alexander began to move in the sophisticated world of eighteenth-century France. In 1766, shortly after his arrival, he visited his mother, now definitely separated from her husband, in her château at Blois. When she died the following year, the seven‑year-old son returned to Paris. Here he came under the direct care of his devoted godmother, Madame Renaudin, who, well supplied with funds as a result of her separation from Monsieur Renaudin, lived openly with the Marquis de Beauharnais.

The education of this boy, who would be the first husband of Josephine and would powerfully influence her formative years, was typical of that given to aristocratic youth under the  p27 ancien régime. Alexander first joined his older brother, François, at the Collège de Plessis in Paris. Then at the age of ten he was put with his brother in the charge of a tutor with whom he was to remain for more than six years and whose influence was to last much longer. This tutor, Patricol, an old teacher of mathematics, was a devotee of Rousseau. His pedantic, crabbed, and smug letters to Madame Renaudin, stamping their writer as a character directly out of an eighteenth-century novel, illuminate the first phase of Alexander's career.

Patricol was responsible for taking the two boys to Heidelberg, so that they might learn German. Here Alexander seems to have developed a certain independence, if not precisely a maturity, of ideas. In 1775 Patricol was offered a post in the family of one of the most distinguished members of the French nobility, Louis-Alexandre, Duke de La Rochefoucauld. It was arranged that the younger Beauharnais should accompany his tutor to the château of La Roche-Guyon, •some fifty miles down the Seine from Paris, and later to the great hôtel Rochefoucauld in the capital. This same château of La Roche-Guyon would serve, nearly two hundred years later, as the headquarters of Field-Marshal Rommel during the Normandy invasion of 1944. Here Alexander absorbed most of the elegance of a great noble household and rubbed against the liberal ideas of the eighteenth century. The duke was a friend of Adam Smith and Voltaire, of Franklin, Lafayette, and Arthur Young. He had spoken before the Parlement of Paris, reminding the king of the rights of the French nation. He was a member of the Academy of Science and had served as president of the Royal Society of Medicine. His reputation was so widespread that four years before the outbreak of the French Revolution the city of New York admitted him to honorary citizen­ship. Alexander could hardly fail to be affected by these stimulating surroundings.

Other influences were at work. Patricol reported that in these years of adolescence Alexander was falling into dubious company who regaled him with stories of their 'garrison adventures'. 'What astonishes me most,' Patricol wrote, 'and greatly displeases me in the young man is the extreme care  p28 which he takes to hide, the ease with which he disguises, the sentiments of his heart . . . For the rest, his work does not go badly.'​1 The statement is prophetic. After he married Josephine Alexander would soon find ample opportunity to hide from his young wife his garrison adventures and to disguise with an outpouring of words the true sentiments of his heart.

Alexander was now sixteen. Through the duke, who was its commander, he won a commission as sous-lieutenant in the Sarre infantry regiment. A certain youthful gloating over his new station is easy to understand. By April 1777 he was with his regiment at Rouen, resplendent in his white uniform with silver-grey facings, his sword, and his black three-cornered hat. Army affairs did not occupy all his time. For instance, he wrote to his godmother, asking her to send him the documents connected with his member­ship in the Freemasonic lodge of Saint-Sophia in Paris, so that he might transfer his affiliation to the Sarre regiment's lodge at Rouen, the Lodge of Purity. While a Freemasonic lodge of the eighteenth century would offer its members a certain type of intellectual sophistication, Alexander was also in hot pursuit of sophistication of another sort. The bright eyes of the ladies of Rouen proved to be only less attractive to him than the bright eyes of the ladies of Dieppe, where his regiment soon went.

For an officer of seventeen, well-born and heir to a substantial fortune, the question of marriage could not long be deferred. During a visit that Alexander made to his father and godmother at Paris in October 1777, such discussion of marriage apparently had taken place and a decision been reached. At all events the old marquis wrote to Josephine's father at Martinique, requesting that Alexander be given the hand of Catherine-Désirée, Joseph-Gaspard's second daughter. While the words of the letter were those of the marquis, the driving force behind them was almost certainly the strong-minded Madame Renaudin. She had good reasons for her plans. A marriage of this sort would unquestionably strengthen her position with the marquis. She had maintained a close correspondence  p29 with her relatives in Martinique and had long pestered her brother to send Yeyette (Josephine) to France for an education. Now that it was a question of marriage, the second daughter, rather than the eldest, seemed the most suitable. In view of Joseph-Gaspard's straitened circumstances, a dowry would not be stipulated, for Alexander was well provided.

The marquis explained that Alexander could anticipate on marriage an income of forty thousand livres a year, wealth that must have impressed deeply the impoverished planter. The value of eighteenth-century currency as compared with modern money, or what money will buy, suggests that the purchasing power of a livre would then have been well above that of the dollar today. Thus Alexander de Beauharnais could look forward on his marriage to becoming a really rich man. This prospect of financial independence goes far to explain his willingness to accept, sight unseen, a bride from five thousand miles away whom he had known only in his earliest infancy.

The Marquis de Beauharnais further insisted that his son's high regard for Madame Renaudin had increased Alexander's desire to marry one of her nieces. Josephine was mentioned politely, but only to be put aside. 'I would have much desired,' wrote Beauharnais, 'that your eldest daughter [Josephine] were several years younger. She would certainly have had the preference, since I have been given an equally favourable picture of her, but I must declare to you that my son, who is only seventeen and a half, finds that a young lady of fifteen is of an age too close to his own. There are occasions when sympathetic parents must yield to circumstances.'2

To strengthen his request, the marquis also wrote to Josephine's mother and to Josephine's uncle, Robert. Madame Renaudin added her voice. Promising to take full charge of the niece, she gave a glowing picture of the unseen swain: 'A pleasant face, a charming bearing, wit, intelligence, and — which is of inestimable price — all the qualities of heart and soul united in him; he is beloved by all who surround him.'​3 No dowry was needed, she reiterated, but, if Joseph-Gaspard wished to do something, he might promise a small annual income, keeping in his own hands control of the capital involved.

 p30  The slow-moving negotiations back and forth across the Atlantic were not to succeed. A week before the marquis had sent his request, and of course unknown to him, young Catherine-Désirée had died of a malignant fever. When Joseph-Gaspard wrote the sad news, knowing the loss it would be to the young suitor, he now proposed that Alexander marry instead his youngest daughter, Marie-Françoise. To be sure, she was only eleven and a half, but she was one, he explained, in whom 'health and gaiety of character are combined with a figure that will soon be interesting'.​4 Alexander, now in Brittany with his regiment, blandly agreed. This alternative solution, he told Madame Renaudin, 'appears to me quite natural'. And with this casual and chilling acceptance he turned to other matters, going on to discuss as a young soldier the contemporary hazards at sea arising from the war in the New World.5

Clearly Madame Renaudin, even more than the Marquis de Beauharnais, was pushing the marriage arrangements. When poor Joseph-Gaspard had announced his readiness to make the risky voyage across the Atlantic with his daughter, she wrote to him as follows: 'Arrive with one of your daughters or with two. Whatever you do will be agreeable to us. Consider it good that we should leave you to be guided by the Providence which knows better than ourselves what is good for us.'6

The tragicomedy was not yet over, for Joseph-Gaspard had still further confusions and unhappiness to report. Since the daughter whom he had so freely offered was not yet twelve, there was protest within the family. Neither her mother nor her grandmother had any heart to part with so young a child. Manette herself was greatly upset at the prospect and had for three months suffered a fever in consequence. Hence the father had no alternative but to propose Yeyette, twice passed over in favour of her younger sisters but apparently still worthy of consideration. He now described her as 'well formed for her age, and sufficiently matured in the last six months to pass for eighteen'. She had a sweet character, he explained, played the guitar a little, sang, and had a fortunate disposition for music.7

Even before this third offer arrived, Madame Renaudin,  p31 fearing trouble, had decided to delay no longer. She got the Marquis de Beauharnais to send to Martinique an official authorization to have the wedding banns published. A blank was left in this document for the name of the future wife to be inserted, whoever it should turn out to be. 'The one whom you judge most suitable for my son,' he amiably explained to Joseph-Gaspard, 'will be the one whom we desire.'8

The intended husband, on hearing of these changes, might justifiably have entered a demurrer. Instead, he took refuge in a philosophical acquiescence which may have owed something to the teachings of Patricol. 'I can see the difficulties,' Alexander told his father, 'which these ladies raise about sending their daughter to France.' Concerning Josephine he made some slight reservation: 'Surely it is not your intention to have me marry this young lady if she and I should have a mutual repugnance for each other.' He was, however, writing to his father and diplomatically put the best face upon the situation. 'I do not doubt,' he assured the marquis, 'after the description which has been given, that she will please me. I hope to be fortunate enough to inspire in her the same feelings that I shall have towards her.'​9 And so it was arranged. The marquis wrote to reassure Joseph-Gaspard, and Madame Renaudin added her own voice. She stressed the need, despite all risks of war, for a speedy departure. She feared, so she wrote in November of 1778, the manoeuvres of members of the Beauharnais family who had other candidates to propose, and she was also concerned about 'the ardour of the young man which might cool were he to be forced to wait too long'.10

In a letter which Joseph-Gaspard had written to Madame Renaudin somewhat earlier in the negotiations we can see with some vividness the young Josephine on the eve of her marriage. After leaving the convent school, her father said, she had asked him on several occasions to take her to France. This brief observation shows that Josephine, in this respect hardly the typical creole lady, was someone with a touch of the adventurous and the independent. But her father sought rather to gild the lily with more obvious charms. 'She has a very good skin,' he went on to say, 'good eyes, good arms, and  p32 a surprising taste for music. I gave her a teacher for the guitar while she was at the convent, and she made full use of this and has a very pretty voice. It is a pity that she has not the advantage of an education in France.'11

Josephine's opinion and feelings appear nowhere in these negotiations, so fateful for her happiness. Nor is there any record of her comment later in life upon what was done now. She accepted, in characteristic eighteenth-century fashion, a conventional marriage arrangement that took little note of the desires of the prospective bride. As her father's letter suggests, she may well have looked forward with genuine anticipation and excitement to the glamour of married life in France. She was proceeding to a household where her father's sister would hold out a welcoming hand. When, years later, she found himself compelled to bring suit for separation against Alexander and in so doing to review the course of their married life, she made no complaint whatever about the way in which her marriage had been arranged. This was one of the 'silent' crises of Josephine's life, 'silent' because there is no clear evidence of what she said or thought then on which to base judgement or interpretation today.

What Alexander de Beauharnais said and thought we do know. Seven years later the other partner in the arrangements told a brother officer, the Marquis de Bouillé, that he had married Josephine because he had been forced to by his father, and that he separated from her as much as a result of this same pressure as of any doubts concerning her fidelity.

The marquis and Madame Renaudin had some reason to desire that this marriage be effected as quickly as possible. During the months of correspondence and negotiation Alexander de Beauharnais had been engaged in amorous adventures about which he was anything but silent. He had rejoined his regiment in Brittany, ultimately finding himself stationed at Conquet, a small village •fifteen miles from Brest, over­looking the bleak waters of the Atlantic. 'I am,' he wrote unhappily to his great confidante, Madame Renaudin, 'in the most miserable place possible.'​12 From Brittany he sent his  p33 lukewarm yet acquiescent comments upon the progress of the arrangements for his betrothal. The letters of this seventeen‑year‑old youth to Madame Renaudin, meanwhile, contain some striking reports upon his feminine conquests. Towards the end of August he wrote to his godmother saying that he was planning to visit a near‑by country house, his hostess a charming woman whose favours he hoped to win. Her name was Madame de Longpré. A week later came the triumphant news:

How concentrated Alexander's affections were we may well doubt. Explaining his delay in revisiting Madame Renaudin, he wrote that he was overwhelmed by 'the twin sentiments of love and friendship.' To depart had become difficult. 'Pardon your godson if he finishes this letter so soon, but two pretty faces are in the corner of the room, reproaching him for concerning himself with anything but them, and are playing a thousand tricks upon him. Forgive me, dear godmother, but their lovely eyes are my excuse.'14

By the close of October Alexander was ready to return to his family, but not without one last, almost clinical, evaluation of his vie amoureuse. He wrote again to Madame Renaudin, telling her that never before had he experienced true love, and that he was in despair at having to leave. 'Up till now,' he said, 'I have always misunderstood my feelings, whether because my emotions were not developed, or because I was attached to people incapable of inspiring a violent passion.' That morning a lackey had delivered a letter from Madame de Longpré, which this incredible youth now forwarded to his godmother. Alexander's last sentence implies the prospective birth of a child to the pair of lovers:

This letter, surely, is a perfect example of the eighteenth-century fondness for the 'outpouring of the ego'. That an eighteen-year‑old army officer of the ancien régime should have pursued affairs of the heart is not surprising. That he should have displayed his emotions on paper in this age of Rousseau is perhaps to be expected. What is startling, one must admit, is to find him parading the history of his conquests to none other than his godmother, supposedly responsible for his spiritual well-being. And the young Lothario wrote at the very moment, as he well knew, when she was the arch-mover of negotiations that were to result in the marriage of her precious and precocious godson to her niece.

So unusual indeed are Alexander's letters to his godmother that they cannot altogether be explained in terms of their youthful author's sophistication and cynicism. The boy was, after all, writing to a woman who was his father's mistress, and Madame Renaudin, still legally married to another man, was in no position to lecture her godson about the proprieties. She may have reproved Alexander and urged him to cease and desist. On the other hand, fashionable marriage in the eighteenth century put few impediments in the way of a husband's continuing adventures. Whatever the warmth of Madame Renaudin's feelings towards Josephine, the mistress of the Beauharnais household was about to introduce an inexperienced adolescent girl to a life that she would find dangerously unfamiliar.

If Alexander's letters to Madame Renaudin concerning his amour had illustrated merely the passing fancies of a bachelor on the eve of matrimony, they would merit very little attention. The romantic figure, however, for whom Alexander professed first to have experienced true love, was no passing fancy. She reappeared later in his life, haunted him, and ultimately brought his marriage to disaster.

 p35  Marie-Françoise de Longpré, who was born in Martinique eleven years before Alexander, came from a family distantly akin to the Taschers. Josephine, indeed, was accustomed to refer to Madame de Longpré's father as her 'uncle'. Madame de Longpré was married to a naval officer and had two children, the second of whom, Alexandre, born in the summer of 1779, may have been the son of Alexander de Beauharnais. She was one of the many transient and elusive figures whose fortunes were to be intermingled with Josephine's. Her behaviour was unquestionably scandalous, yet her stepdaughter, the Marquise de la Tour du Pin, no doubt wishing to make the best of her relative, pictured her as a good, easy-going woman, although weak in character and indolent in the typical creole fashion. She is also said to have had one most curious habit, always carrying with her a candle, the end of which she nibbled incessantly.

After a holiday at Noisy-le‑Grand and at Paris, Beauharnais fils rejoined his regiment in July. He was now on the staff of his old mentor, the Duke de La Rochefoucauld, stayed with him in the château at Verteuil, and by August was back once more at Brest. 'I plan to follow exactly the salutary advice which you and my papa have had the goodness to give me,' he wrote in his ineffably complacent fashion to Madame Renaudin, 'even that which requires me to have the least possible acquaintance with the Breton females. What will astonish you is that this last advice will probably be followed with the greatest exactness.'​16 A subsequent letter hardly bears out his pledge. Alexander seems to have hit upon the notion that love-making goes best in the presence of a brass band. Hence he had arranged to have the regimental band provide music for the ladies of the town, so that they could dance with the officers in the moonlight on the parade-ground.

 p36  Whatever the cause, military duty or dancing by moonlight, Alexander fell ill. After an agreeable recuperation at a near‑by château, in October he returned to his family in Paris. At this very time Josephine with her ailing father was making the stormy crossing of the Atlantic for the rendezvous with her intended husband.

Despite all Madame Renaudin's urgings, Joseph-Gaspard had not been able to leave Martinique until August 1779. He was ill of a liver complaint, and unquestionably money was scarce. Eventually he found passage for himself and Josephine, together with a mulatto servant named Euphemia. More than a suspicion existed at Martinique that this servant could look to easy-going Joseph-Gaspard as her father. Their ship, Île-de‑France, was escorted because of war conditions by a frigate, the Pomona. The crossing was exceptionally long and must have been miserably uncomfortable. Years later in Paris, when Madame Renaudin submitted some of her brother's papers to the authorities in support of his request for a pension, she explained their poor condition by describing how, though kept in a trunk during the passage, they had been flooded by water pouring in upon them. Joseph-Gaspard, moreover, had been desperately ill, so ill that the news sent to the Beauharnais family on the party's arrival at Brest on 12 October gravely alarmed them.

Madame Renaudin and Alexander de Beauharnais set out at once from Paris. They reached Brest on the 28th. Alexander's letter to his father conveys the whole tone of the first rendezvous. To begin with, he reported that Joseph-Gaspard was not so seriously ill as they had feared. Alexander had bought a cabriolet for the trip costing forty louis, paying fifteen in cash and drawing a sight draft on the family banker for the balance. He went on to say that they would leave in a few days but could not be sure of the time required for the trip or the date of their arrival in Paris. At long last, after all this humdrum, came the news of the young lady to whom Alexander had been officially betrothed since the publishing of the banns in April, a fiancée whom he had just seen for the first time. 'Mademoiselle  p37 de la Pagerie,' Alexander wrote with deadly politeness, 'will perhaps seem less pretty to you than you expect, but I believe I can assure you that the honesty and sweetness of her character will surpass whatever people have been able to tell you about her.'​18 One is almost tempted, with the biographer Masson, to believe that Alexander was persuading the old marquis to marry Josephine in his place.

Since Joseph-Gaspard's health quickly improved, the party set off in a few days, being warned by the doctor to travel by very easy stages. Before leaving Brest the father took the precaution of granting his sister power of attorney to act for him in the wedding if any illness should overcome him. En route, Madame Renaudin sent the marquis reassuring news. 'Our invalid', as she called him, was very tired, but seemed better. Josephine would be a dear and tender daughter to the marquis. She 'has all the feelings that you could wish her to have toward your son, and I have observed with the greatest satisfaction that she suits him . . . He is busy, yes, very busy, with your [prospective] daughter-in‑law.'​19 Three days later another happy missive flew from Madame Renaudin: 'You will have received a letter from your chevalier which confirms what I clearly observed: things are constantly going better and better.'​20 One further touch comes in a memorandum of a much later date, signed by Madame Renaudin and entitled: 'Money which I have disbursed for my brother from his arrival in Paris until 25 June 1782.' She, apparently, was underwriting all expenses.

When the group arrived in Paris, the preparations for the wedding moved forward remarkably fast. A trousseau was quickly purchased with funds provided by Madame Renaudin, and the banns were read on 5 December. They were read but once: a special dispensation for the archbishop of Paris had obviated the need for second and third readings. On 10 December a marriage contract, which throws significant light on the position and interests of the various participants, was sealed 'in the apartment which M. de la Pagerie occupies in the home of the Dame de Renaudin'.​21 Alexander brought to the marriage the incomes he had inherited from his mother  p38 and his grandmother, the very substantial annual sum of 40,000 livres derived largely from lands in Santo Domingo and from the family estates in France. Josephine brought the promise of a dowry of 120,000 livres from her father, an amount utterly beyond his ability to provide. The 20,000 livres that he agreed to give at once was actually advanced to him by Madame Renaudin and was used to buy Josephine's trousseau, in all but name a bride-price rather than a dowry. Since he had promised to pay interest at five per cent on the unpaid remainder, he had really committed himself to providing his daughter with a yearly income of 5,000 livres. Josephine brought, in addition, the sum of 15,000 livres representing her effects in Martinique and the gifts of various relatives there. Her aunt, Madame Renaudin, made the most substantial provisions of all by presenting the house at Noisy-le‑Grand, which she had bought in 1776 for 33,000 livres and which had furnishings valued at about the same sum. She also pledged to the bride the large sum of 121,149 livres constituting an indebtedness due to her from a nephew of her husband, M. Renaudin.

The marriage was celebrated on 13 December at the parish church of Noisy-le‑Grand, outside Paris. Significantly, it took place not in the city parish where the Marquis de Beauharnais resided but in the rural parish of Madame Renaudin's country house, now transferred to the newly-weds. Josephine's father being too ill to attend the wedding, he was represented by a distant cousin, a doctor of the Sorbonne and prior of Sainte-Gauburge, who had been given the legal powers to assent to the marriage in the name of both father and mother. On the occasion of the marriage Alexander assumed the title of vicomte (which had not yet legally been confirmed to him) instead of the title chevalier, which he had previously used. He was married in the presence of a substantial representation of the Beauharnais clan — his father, his uncle, his brother, and his cousin — as well as his old tutor and several of his regimental colleagues.

Josephine must have been very much alone on that bleak December day. Dominating the proceedings was the imposing  p39 presence of the sixty-four-year‑old Marquis de Beauharnais, former governor of the Antilles, chevalier of the Order of Saint Louis. Yeyette was marrying 'the high and puissant seigneur, Alexandre-François-Marie, Vicomte de Beauharnais, captain in the infantry regiment of the Sarre'. She had been in Paris less than a month. Though her father's representative, the prior, was distantly related to her, and though a very few other distant male relatives and former Martinique acquaintances were at hand, she could hardly have known them well. Even though Madame Renaudin and other ladies were no doubt present, the childlike inscription, 'M. J. R. Tascher de la Pagerie', is the only feminine signature among the fourteen on the marriage register.22

Josephine's mother, writing three months later to Madame Renaudin about the wedding, expressed her own feelings: 'The union is your work; their happiness must be your work also.'​23 The statement of fact cannot be questioned, for throughout all these proceedings is evident the dominant — indeed, the masterful — role of Madame Renaudin. She, much more than either the Marquis de Beauharnais or the nearly bankrupt Monsieur Tascher de la Pagerie, had organized, directed, and concluded every stage. The victory was hers.

---

The Author's Notes:

1 Hanoteau, Ménage, p28.

❦

2 Aubenas, I.92‑3.

❦

3 Masson, JB, p104.

❦

4 Ibid.

❦

5 Hanoteau, Ménage, p49.

❦

6 Ibid., p50.

❦

7 Ibid.

❦

8 Ibid., p52.

❦

9 Ibid., p51.

❦

10 Masson, JB, pp108‑9.

❦

11 Pichevin, pp97, 98.

❦

12 Hanoteau, Ménage, p46.

❦

13 Ibid., pp54‑5.

❦

14 Ibid., pp56‑7.

❦

15 Ibid., pp57‑9.

❦

16 Ibid., p66.

❦

17 Ibid., p67, n. 1.

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18 Ibid., pp75‑7.

❦

19 Ibid., p78.

❦

20 Ibid.

❦

21 BN, Nouv. acq. fr., 4689, fols. 8‑22. Summarized in Pichevin, pp112‑5.

❦

22 Act of marriage in A. Mentienne, "Les Registres paroissiaux de Noisy-le‑Grand", Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de Paris (1894), pp126‑7.

❦

23 The text of note 23 is missing in the edition transcribed. [W.P.T.]

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