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Genealogical Tables

This webpage reproduces a chapter of
Empress Josephine

by
Ernest John Knapton

published by
Harvard University Press,
New York, 1963

The text is in the public domain.

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and I believe it to be free of errors.
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 p351  Bibliographical Essay

The enormous literature on the Empress Josephine includes more than fifty biographies in several languages. In writing seriously about her a major difficulty is posed by the unreliable memoirs, the anecdotal trivia, and the garbled or manufactured letters that crowd the post-Napoleonic period. It is almost a rule that the better the story about Josephine the more unreliable its source will be. Within a year of her death a dozen pamphlets about her had appeared in Paris; one, for example, purported to contain her last will and testament. Spurious memoirs and letters, supposedly by Josephine, were printed in 1820, provoking a quick protest from her son, Eugène de Beauharnais. In 1828, nevertheless, the publishers outdid themselves by issuing an equally spurious three-volume set of her so‑called memoirs. The memoirs of Madame Ducrest, a lady-in‑waiting to Josephine, which appeared in 1828, and those of Mademoiselle Avrillon, her première femme de chambre, which appeared in 1833, are typical examples of another sort of half-imaginative literature, as much the creation of the publishers as of their reputed authors. Josephine, it is clear, did not have the least interest during her retirement at Malmaison in writing her own memoirs. Though fluent and sympathetic in conversation, she had no part in that age of the Restoration in Europe when memoir-writing seemed to become a compulsive necessity and was without question a most lucrative source of funds. Not until 1857, when the biography by Joseph Aubenas appeared, could her life begin to be placed on some kind of respectable documentary foundation.

Substantial difficulties have existed, too, with the published correspondence. Scholars can now tabulate more than two hundred and fifty letters written by Napoleon to Josephine. While over two hundred of her personal letters (apart from the recommendations with which she tirelessly bombarded the ministries) are known, most of them are letters to her children. Not a single letter from Josephine to her first husband, Alexander de Beauharnais, has survived; and those extant written by her to Napoleon can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The task of collecting the evidence has been made harder by editors, among them Josephine's daughter, Queen Hortense, and Josephine's grandson, Napoleon III, who amended or scissored out from Napoleon's letters passages that might cast a shadow upon past glories or offend against mid‑nineteenth-century propriety.

 p352  If Josephine has remained silent, her biographers have not. The first important documents appeared unexpectedly in 1824. A young Englishman, Charles Tennant, having made the Grand Tour, published his impressions in a two‑volume work which bore the remarkable title, A Tour Through Parts of the Netherlands, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Savoy and France, in the Year 1821, Including a Description of the Rhine Voyage in the Middle of Autumn, and the Stupendous Scenery of the Alps in the Depth of Winter, by Charles Tennant, Esq. Also Containing, in an Appendix, Fac Simile Copies of Eight Letters in the Hand Writing of Napoleon Bonaparte to his Wife Josephine. These eight Napoleonic letters mark a new biographical beginning. Tennant explained that he had bought them from 'a Polish nobleman who attached himself and all his fortunes to Bonaparte, whose confidence he enjoyed in several diplomatic negotiations'. The mysterious nobleman told Tennant that a servant had found the letters in a cupboard at Malmaison a few days after Josephine's death, and had sold them to him. Tennant's published facsimiles were so skilfully done, both as to calligraphy and paper, that they have been known to be offered for sale as genuine Napoleonic autographs. Although Tennant's letters showed Bonaparte in an extraordinarily human and vivid light, at the time they attracted little attention.

Eight further letters from Bonaparte to Josephine were included in a multi-volume potpourri, Mémoires d'une contemporaine, published in 1827, 'La Contemporaine' being the pseudonym of Ezelina van Aylde-Jonghe. These had a derivation curiously like that of the Tennant letters. They had been stolen by a valet de chambre at Malmaison, sold to the Duchess of Courland, lent by her to Madame Genlis, and copied by her for the editor, Ladvocat, who published them. Both these groups of letters gave dramatic evidence of the young Bonaparte's ardent infatuation for Josephine and suggested that her life might be written as one of the great romances of history.

The next important publication seemed to weaken this possibility. In 1833 appeared at Paris the two volumes, Lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine pendant la première campagne d'Italie, le Consulat et l'Empire : et lettres de Joséphine à Napoléon et à sa fille. Published under the sponsor­ship of Queen Hortense, the volumes contained over two hundred letters from Napoleon to Josephine, seventy letters from Josephine to Hortense, but only two from Josephine to her husband. The ardent letters that Tennant had published in 1824 were emphatically not included, and it is now clear that many  p353 in this 1833 collection had undergone rigorous pruning. Although three of Napoleon's early love letters to Josephine were printed by François Gilbert de Coston in his heavily documented Biographie des premières années de Napoléon Bonaparte (2 vols., Paris, 1840), in general little notice seems to have been taken of them.

Napoleonic studies were soon furthered by the march of events. In December 1848 Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, grandson of Josephine and at the same time nephew of Napoleon, was elected president of the Second French Republic. Soon emperor, he was eager to recapture the glories of his great predecessor. Hence, in 1854, the decision was made to set up a commission that would assemble and edit the correspondence of Napoleon I. By 1858 the first volume of what ultimately to be a sumptuous thirty‑two-volume official collection was published. It is here that Charles Tennant, silent since 1824, reappears.

In May 1858 one of the editorial commissioners, Prosper Mérimée, received the visit of a handsome English lady accompanied by her husband, a Mr Tennant, 'of a respectable age', a former M. P. He had in his possession eight letters of Bonaparte, seven of them to Josephine, and would, he said, be prepared to sell them for eight thousand francs. On investigating the letters, Mérimée had no doubts of their authenticity; yet he had other qualms. 'They are,' he reported to Marshal Vaillant, minister of war and president of the commission, 'very burning love letters, written during the first Italian campaign. It is a question of hardly anything but kisses, in places the names of which are not found in the Dictionary of the French Academy.'​*

What Vaillant replied to Mérimée, or how anxiously the nine members of the commission may have scrutinized these letters, or what was the fate of the originals, we do not know, but the policy of the commission had already been determined. Tennant's letters were not included and, as it turned out, all but two of the ninety-three letters from Napoleon to Josephine eventually printed in the official Correspondance were those previously available in the Hortense edition of 1833.

The industry of individual scholars was able to make good what governmental documentation failed to provide. Joseph Aubenas, who had lived for several years as an official in Martinique, made use of important island sources and also had access to papers in the Tascher de la Pagerie family, these including some early letters  p354 from Josephine to her parents that shed much light on the troubles of her first marriage. His two volumes, Histoire de l'impératrice Joséphine (Paris, 1857), stand out as the only substantial study of Josephine before we come to the last decade of the nineteenth century.

The name of Frédéric Masson first appears in 1895 when he published two articles on Josephine in the Revue de Paris. Masson was an extraordinary character. A republican by family tradition, he had held a state scholar­ship as a young student in the 1860s because of his father's death on the streets of Paris during the June days of the Revolution of 1848. Masson, nevertheless, became an ardent and almost mystically dedicated Bonapartist. Those who wish to savour fully the Bonapartism of this perpetual secretary of the French Academy should read his prefaces, most especially that to Napoléon et les femmes (1894), in which Masson tells of how as a boy he had listened to the stories of old Napoleonic veterans and had been allowed by them to touch the very scars of their ancient wounds. Masson saw no incongruity in comparing Napoleon to the Son of Man and in capitalizing, during moments of deep emotion, the pronouns with which he referred to him.

The profound devotion which Masson had to the name of Napoleon left little room for any corresponding affection for the name of Beauharnais, and so along with his studies of the Bonaparte family he felt impelled to re‑examine the career of Josephine in order to determine whether she was worthy of the place which tradition and family piety had come to assign to her. After a quarter of a century of labour and the publication of four searching volumes of biography — Joséphine de Beauharnais (1898); Madame Bonaparte (1920); Joséphine impératrice et reine (1899); Joséphine répudiée (1900) — he found, in the simplest possible summary, that she was not. A lifetime devoted to the history of the Bonaparte family, a lifetime which resulted in the writing of some thirty-five volumes, made it possible for Masson to accumulate an extraordinary collection of manuscript materials and a staggeringly encyclopedic knowledge of the printed sources. It is, parenthetically, another curiosity of Masson that in all his volumes he invariably refused to cite these sources which, one must concede, were impressive enough. The Fonds Masson in the Bibliothèque Thiers at Paris — the old home of Thiers in the Place Saint-Georges — consists of 586 cartons, portfolios, registers, and bundles of material assembled by Masson, much of it bearing directly upon Josephine and for the most part incorporated in his various studies. No student can possibly ignore  p355 Masson's scholar­ly work; yet few today would accept the entire validity of his approach or of his conclusions.

Contemporaneously with Masson's writing the Martinique historian, René Pichevin, published his Impératrice Joséphine at Paris in 1909. Like Aubenas, he had access to a good many family papers, some of them unknown to Masson, and he used these to make a strong defence of Josephine. His title is misleading, for the work goes only to the time of Josephine's return to France from Martinique in 1790. Hector Fleischmann's Joséphine infidèle (Paris, 1910) must be listed, if only because it qualifies as being easily the most savage of all the attacks directed against her. Joseph Turquan's La Générale Bonaparte (Paris, 1895) and his Impératrice Joséphine (Paris, 1896) are only somewhat less hostile.

Since Masson's death in 1923 scholars have continued their labours. Edouard Driault's biography (Paris, 1928) is the sympathetic work of a good Napoleonic scholar. The elaborate biography of the Marquis de Sainte-Croix de la Roncière, Joséphine impératrice des français (Paris, 1934), though showing a wide local knowledge of Martinique and having splendid illustrations, reproduces with astonishing lack of critical judgement some of the most flagrant forgeries of the 1820s. In contrast to this, the two volumes of Jean Hanoteau on the Beauharnais family, Joséphine avant Bonaparte : le Ménage Beauharnais (Paris, 1935), and Les Beauharnais et l'Empereur (Paris, 1936), are models of accurate scholar­ship and permit us to question in many respects the very hostile interpretations of Masson. In his first volume Hanoteau used the highly revealing letters of Alexander de Beauharnais preserved in the Tascher de la Pagerie archives at the château of Petit-Fresnoy and in the Bibliothèque Thiers to demonstrate, as Masson had not been able to do, the heavy burdens that Alexander imposed upon his wife. In the second volume he printed seventy-three letters from Joséphine to Eugène preserved in the Leuchtenberg Archives at Munich, adding very substantially to the seventy‑two letters of Josephine in the 1833 collection authorized by Hortense. These significantly enlarge our knowledge of Josephine's later years and particularly of the period of Napoleon's downfall. André Gavoty's Les Amoureux de l'impératrice Joséphine (Paris, 1961), on the other hand, though embellished with the outward appearance of scholar­ship, seems to proceed on the assumption that if a story of scandal about Josephine has once appeared in print it must be true. The most workmanlike biography of Josephine in English, devoid of any attempt at fine writing, still remains Philip W. Sergeant's The  p356 Empress Josephine, Napoleon's Enchantress first appearing in Hutchinson's Library of Standard Lives (New York, 1909). The recent biography of Hubert Cole, Joséphine (New York, 1962), appeared after the manuscript of this volume had been called.

With three exceptions, no attempt is made here to include any of the enormous literature dealing directly with Napoleon. Arthur Lévy's Napoleon intime (Paris, 1898) brings one very close to the great Emperor. Louis Garros's Itinéraire de Napoléon Bonaparte (Paris, 1947) is an invaluable day-by‑day record of Napoleon's movements, almost as useful for a study of Josephine as it is for a study of the Emperor. And the first of the seven volumes of Friedrich Kircheisen's monumental Napoleon I, sein Leben und seine Zeit (Munich, 1911) contains in chapter XVIII a sensible, sympathetic, and balanced judgement upon Josephine by one of the very greatest Napoleonic scholars.

For nearly a century the only edition of Napoleon's letters to Josephine was that authorized by Queen Hortense in 1833. Léon Cerf, Lettres de Napoleon à Joséphine (Paris, 1929), brought this material into up‑to‑date form by including the letters previously omitted or garbled. This work is now superseded by Jacques Bourgeat, Napoléon: lettres à Joséphine (Paris, 1941) which gives 254 letters, in many cases establishing the full text of documents previously printed. Bourgeat is the most convenient edition to use, though unfortunately a few of the later letters are wrongly dated. Jean Savant, Napoléon et Joséphine. Première édition intégrale, avec de nombreux inédits, des lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine (Paris, 1955), raises the total of Napoleon's letters to 265. He includes many facsimiles and corrects Bourgeat's mistakes in dating. Savant, unfortunately, does not limit himself to his editorial duties but carries on a ceaseless attack upon the character and morals of Josephine as he also does in his Napoléon et Josephine, leur roman (Paris, 1960). Incomplete English translations of the letters, made from earlier editions and of mediocre quality, have been published by J. S. C. Abbott (New York, 1856), H. F. Hall (London, 1901), and H. W. Bunn (New York, 1931).

Scholarship has steadily enlarged our knowledge of the circle within which Josephine moved and thus has enriched the picture we have of her. Constance Wright's Daughter to Napoleon (New York, 1961) gives a graceful account of Hortense de Beauharnais. Research of another sort has evaluated Josephine's association with the arts, particularly as seen in the galleries, the furnishings, and the gardens of Malmaison. References to these materials will be  p357 included in subsequent appropriate paragraphs. Such works, in contrast to the imitative and repetitive biographies of which seemingly there is no end, give stature and respectability to the field of Josephine studies.

For the background at Martinique the following, in addition to the biographies of Aubenas and Pichevin, are useful: Cabuzel A. Banbuck, Histoire politique, économique et sociale de la Martinique sous l'ancien régime (Paris, 1935); S. Daney, Histoire de la Martinique (4 vols., Fort-Royal, 1846‑7), especially vol. IV; and Gabriel Hanotaux and Alfred Martineau, Histoire des colonies françaises (6 vols., Paris, 1929‑33), vol. I. Jean Baptiste Thibault de Chanvallon, Voyage à la Martinique (Paris, 1763), has a most valuable contemporary appreciation of creole life. J. Gabriel, Essai biographique sur Madame Tascher de la Pagerie (Paris, 1856), describes Josephine's mother. Anecdotes about Josephine's girlhood will be found in: Louise Cochelet, Mémoires (4 vols., Paris, 1836‑8); Marie Anne Lenormand, Mémoires historiques et secrètes (2 vols., Paris, 1818‑22); Jean Gabriel de Montgaillard, Souvenirs (Paris, 1895); and Claude Augustin de Tercier, Mémoires politiques et militaires (Paris, 1891). An account of Aimée du Buc de Rivery, as fantastic as the author's title, is given in Lesley Blanch, The Wilder Shores of Love (New York, 1954).

The most important source for Josephine's life to the time of the Revolution, is the correspondence of Alexander de Beauharnais printed in Jean Hanoteau's Le Ménage Beauharnais (Paris, 1935). Theodore Iung, Bonaparte et son temps, 1769‑1799, d'après des documents inédits (2 vols., Paris, 1881), prints in vol. I Josephine's marriage certificate and the baptismal certificates of Eugène and Hortense. The original documents concerning the separation are in AN, Y, 13,795, printed in Caroline d'Arjuzon, Joséphine contre Beauharnais (Paris, 1906). For the social circle of Fanny de Beauharnais see: F. K. Turgeon, 'Fanny de Beauharnais. Biographical Notes and a Bibliography', Modern Philology, August, 1932; Alfred Marquiset, Les bas‑bleus du premier Empire (Paris, 1913); M. Foucaux [Mary Summer], Quelques salons de Paris au dix-huitième siècle (Paris, n. d.). See also: Louis Joseph de Bouillé, Souvenirs et fragments (3 vols., Paris, 1906‑11), vol. I; and H. Lémery, La Révolution française à la Martinique (Paris, 1936).

For life in Paris under the Terror see: Jean Robiquet, La Vie quotidienne au temps de la Révolution (Paris, 1938). For details concerning Josephine see: A. Reh, Deux lettres inédites d'Eugène de  p358 Beauharnais et de Jérôme Bonaparte, collégiens (Strasbourg, 1937); Arthur Chuquet, 'Deux signalements de Joséphine', Feuilles d'Histoire, année 1909, I.245‑6; II.62‑3; Louis Bigard, 'Joséphine de Beauharnais à Croissy', Revue des études napoléoniennes, March-April 1926; Eugène de Beauharnais, Mémoires et correspondance (10 vols., Paris, 1858‑60), vol. I; Queen Hortense, Mémoires (3 vols., Paris, 1927), vol. I.

Documents concerning the imprisonment of Josephine and Alexander are in AN, F74591; AN, F II, 294; AN, W429. For the imprisonment see: Almanach des prisons, ou anecdotes sur laº régime intérieureº de la Conciergerie, du Luxembourg, etc., et sur différens prisonniers . . . (Paris [1794]); Charles A. Dauban, Les Prisons de Paris sous la Révolution (Paris, 1870); Paul Pisani, La Maison des Carmes (1610‑1875) (Paris, 1891); Alexandre Sorel, Le Couvent des Carmes et le Séminaire de Saint-Sulpice pendant la Terreur (Paris, 1864).

Life in Paris under the Directory is described in: Alphonse Aulard, Paris pendant la réaction thermidorienne (5 vols., Paris, 1898‑1902), documents; Meade Minnigerode, The Magnificent Comedy (New York, 1931); and Henri d'Alméras, Barras et son temps (Paris, 1930). A good deal of information can be derived from: Joseph Bonaparte, Mémoires et correspondance (10 vols., Paris, 1854‑8), vol. I; Jean Nicolas Bouilly, Mes Récapitulations (2 vols., Paris, 1836‑7), vol. II; and from the memoirs of Hortense and Eugène where the story of Alexander de Beauharnais's sword gets strong confirmation. The so‑called Mémoires de Barras (4 vols., Paris, 1895‑6), though vivid, are a savagely hostile compilation concocted by Barras and others at a much later date. Some interesting details of Paris by an English visitor are given in Helen Maria Williams, A Tour in Switzerland (London, 1898). Copies of a few letters from Josephine to her mother in this period are in BN, Nouv. acq. fr., 9324. A copy of the marriage contract and of the marriage register is in the Bibliothèque Thiers, Fonds Masson, 28, also printed in the Revue des études napoléoniennes for April 1936.

For further details, chiefly concerning the marriage and Josephine's home on the rue Chantereine see: Gustave Bord and Louis Bigard, La Maison du 'dix‑huit brumaire' (Paris, 1930; G. Lenôtre [pseud. of Louis Gosselin], Paris révolutionnaire: vieilles maisons, vieux papiers. 1ère série (Paris, 1905); Henri Clouzot, 'Un soir de ventôse an IV à l'hôtel de Mondragon,' Revue des études napoléoniennes, July 1935; Georges Mauguin, L'Impératrice Joséphine : anecdotes et curiosités (Paris, 1954).

Information about Josephine's first married years comes indirectly  p359 from Napoleon's letters to her. The following memoirs are useful: Laura, Duchess d'Abrantès, Autobiography and Recollections (4 vols., Eng. trans., New York, 1893); Antoine V. Arnault, Souvenirs d'un sexagénaire (4 vols., Paris, 1833); François Y. Besnard, Souvenirs d'un nonagénaire (2 vols., Paris, 1880); Louis Antoine de Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleon (4 vols., Eng. trans., London, 1885), vol. I; Stanislas de Girardin, Mémoires, journal, et souvenirs (2 vols., Paris, 1829); Louis‑Jérôme Gohier, Mémoires (2 vols., Paris, 1824), vol. I; Antoine R. Hamelin, 'Douze ans de ma vie', Revue de Paris, Nov. 1, 15, 1926; Auguste-Frédéric de Marmont, Mémoires du duc de Raguse (9 vols., Paris, 1857), vol. I; Andre François de Miot de Melito, Mémoires (3 vols., Paris, 1858), vols. III. The unpublished diary of Carrion de Nisas is in the Bibliothèque Thiers, Fonds Masson, 223. For Hippolyte Charles see Louis Hastier, 'Joséphine et le capitaine Charles,' Revue des deux-mondes, January 1949, and the same author's Le Grand amour de Joséphine (Paris, 1955). Berthier's reports to Josephine on Bonaparte are given by Arthur Chuquet in his Episodes et portraits, deuxième série (Paris, 1910), and by Paul Bonnefonsº in the publication, Souvenirs et mémoires, I (1898), 61‑71. For other details of these years see: A. Philippe, 'La Citoyenne Bonaparte à Epinal', La Révolution dans les Vosges, 2e année (1908‑9); P. J. Verhaegen, 'Le Comte de Mérode et Joséphine Bonaparte', Revue générale, April 1899; André Gavoty, 'Le Beau-frère de couleur de l'impératrice Joséphine', Revue des deux-mondes, January 1956; E. Giannini, Giuseppina Buonaparte a Lucca nel 1796, narrazione d'un contemporaneo (Lucca, 1890). Bonaparte's affair in Egypt with Marguerite Fourès is described by Frédéric Masson in his Napoléon et les femmes (Paris, 1904). Seven letters from Josephine to Barras running from September 1796 to April 1799 were first published by Alberto Lumbroso in his Miscellanea Napoleonica, série V (Rome, 1898). The most complete account of the coup of Brumaire is in Albert Vandal's classic Avènement de Bonaparte (2 vols., Paris, 1907‑8).

The general pattern of life under the Consulate is described in Henri d'Alméras, La Vie Parisienne sous le Consulat et l'Empire (Paris [1909]); Gilbert Stenger, La Société française pendant le Consulat (6 vols., Paris, 1903‑8); G. Lenôtre [pseud. of Louis Gosselin], Les Tuileries (Paris, 1933). The vivid Mémoires de Constant, premier valet de chambre de l'empereur (10 vols., Paris, 1830), with various subsequent editions and translations, was put together by several hacks for the booksellers, Lavocat, from the notes of Louis Constant Wairy, and has much information beginning in 1799. In  p360 addition to the diaries of Paul and Eyre, mentioned in Chapter XIV, see Alexander M. Broadley, ed., The Journal of a British Chaplain in Paris . . . the Revd. Dawson Warren, M. A. (London, 1913), and Johann F. Reichardt, Un Hiver à Paris sous le Consulat, 1802‑1803 (Paris, 1896). Additional memoirs of some use are: Claude François Méneval, Mémoires (3 vols., Paris, 1849), and Henriette, Marquise de la Tour du Pin Gouvernet, Journal d'une femme de cinquante ans (Paris, 1913).

The ceremonial of the coronation and the establishment of an imperial court can be studied in: Procès-verbal de la cérémonie du sacre et du couronnement de Ll. MM. L'empereur Napoléon et l'impératrice Joséphine (Paris, 1805); Livre du sacre de l'empereur Napoléon, edited by Frédéric Masson (Paris, 1908); Etiquette du palais impérial (Paris, Imprimerie impériale, 1808); Liste des dames de la maison de S. M. l'impératrice et reine et celles des princesses (Paris, 1807); Arthur L. Imbert de Saint-Amand, La Cour de l'impératrice Joséphine (Paris, n. d.); Frédéric Masson, Napoleon and his Coronation (eng. trans., London, 1911).

C. Pfister, 'Les Passages de Napoléon I et de Joséphine dans le département de la Meurthe', Mémoires de l'Académie Stanislas, X (1913), 8‑94, gives vivid details about the various imperial journeys through Lorraine from 1798 to 1809. Further details of this period are given in: Passage à Lyon de leurs majestés Napoléon Ier empereur des français et roi d'Italie et de l'impératrice Joséphine en 1805 (Lyons, 1806); C. dell' Acqua, L'Imperatore dei Francesi Napoleone I e l'augusta sua consorte Giuseppina nel Maggio 1805 in Pavia (Milan, 1905); Frédéric Masson, Napoléon chez lui : la journée de l'empereur aux Tuileries (Paris, 1894); Emile Marco de Saint Hilaire, Mémoires d'un page de la cour impériale (1804‑1815) (Paris, 1848). Further memoirs for the imperial period are: Claire Elisabeth de Rémusat, Mémoires, 1802‑1808 (3 vols., Paris, 1879‑80); Mlle Avrillon [pseudonym de Catharinet de Villemarest],a Mémoires de Mlle Avrillon, première femme de chambre de l'impératrice, sur la vie privée de Joséphine, sa famille et sa cour (2 vols., Paris, 1835); Louis-François de Bausset, Mémoires anecdotiques sur l'intérieur du palais et sur quelques événements de l'Empire depuis 1805 jusqu'au 1er mai 1814 pour servir à l'histoire de Napoléon (2 vols., Paris, 1827).

Descriptions of Malmaison and its life are contained in the following: Joseph Bilkiet, Malmaison. Les appartements de Joséphine (Paris, 1951); Jean Bourguignon, Malmaison, Compiègne, Fontainebleau (Paris, 1946); Adolphe M. de Lescure, Le Château de Malmaison,  p361 histoire, description, catalogue des objets exposés sous les auspices de S. M. l'impératrice (Paris, 1867). For the gardens see: Charles Léger, Redouté et son temps (Paris, 1945); R. Bouvier and E. Maynial, Aimé Bonpland (Paris, 1950); André Leroy, Les Roses de Redouté et de l'impératrice Joséphine (Sceaux, 1950); Paul Maynard, L'Impératrice Joséphine, bienfaitrice de l'horticulture et de l'agriculture . . . (n. p., 1952); Georges Mauguin, 'Une Impératrice botaniste', Revue des études napoléoniennes, October 1933; Aimé Bonpland, Description des plantes rares cultivées à Malmaison et à Navarre (Paris, 1813).

On Josephine as a collector, and her expenses see: Catalogue des tableaux de Sa Majesté l'impératrice Joséphine dans la galerie et appartements de son palais de Malmaison (Paris, de l'imprimerie de Didot jeune, 1811); Pierre Schommer, 'L'Impératrice Joséphine et ses tableaux', Revue de l'Institut Napoléon, October 1962; Ibid., 'Musée de Malmaison : Quatre acquisitions', Revue des Arts, Musées de France, 1957, No. 5; Ibid., 'Malmaison, hier, aujourd'hui, demain', Revue de l'Institut Napoléon, October 1958; G. Ledoux-Lebard, 'Les Canots de Joséphine à Malmaison,' Revue de l'Institut Napoléon, January 1957; Id., 'La Liquidation des objets d'art provenant de la succession de l'impératrice Joséphine à Malmaison', Archives de l'art français, Nouv. Pér. tome XXII (1959); Serge Grandjean, 'Les Collections de l'impératrice Joséphine à Malmaison et leur dispersion', Revue des Arts, Musées de France, 1959, Nos. 4‑5; Id., 'Un Meuble précieux de Joséphine', Revue de l'Institut Napoléon, January 1956; Camille Roehard, Dans les coulisses de l'histoire : Les livres de comptes des impératrices Joséphine et Marie-Louise conservés à la bibliothèque publique de Gray (Gray, 1927); Alphonse Maze-Sencier, Les Fournisseurs de Napoléon et des deux impératrices (Paris, 1893); A. P. de Mirimonde, 'Les Dépenses d'art des impératrices Joséphine et Marie-Louise', Gazette des Beaux Arts (1958), pp89‑108, 137‑54; André Gavoty, 'Mésaventures d'un fonctionnaire impérial', Revue des deux-mondes, 1 February 1958.

The most substantial treatment of the divorce is in Henri Welschinger, Le Divorce de Napoléon (Paris, 1889). An official Catholic account by the Abbé Louis Grégoire, Le 'Divorce' de Napoléon et de l'impératrice Joséphine, Étude du dossier canonique (Paris, 1957), disagrees with Welschinger on many points and claims that the officiality of the Paris diocese acted properly according to Gallican law in recognizing that the Senate had already annulled the civil marriage. René Pichevin has a brief pamphlet, Le Mariage de l'empereur (Paris, n. d.), arguing that the whole proceedings were illegal and improper. Frédéric Masson also describes the divorce  p362 at considerable length in his Quatre conférences sur Joséphine (Paris, 1924). In addition to vivid accounts of the crisis in the memoirs of Bausset, Constant, and Madame de Rémusat, previously cited, see also Antoine Marie de Lavalette, Mémoires et souvenirs (2 vols., Paris, 1831), vol. II. There is much concerning the Austrian marriage in Prince Metternich's Mémoires, documents et écrits divers (5 vols., Paris, 1880‑2), vols. III. Max Billiard, Le Fils de Napoléon Ier (Paris, 1909) gives an account of Léon Denuelle.

For Josephine's life in seclusion the following are useful: Georgette Ducrest, Mémoires sur l'impératrice Joséphine, la cour de Navarre et la Malmaison . . . (Paris, 1906); Auguste Charlotte de Kielmansegge, Mémoires de la comtesse de Kielmansegge sur Napoléon Ier (2 vols., Paris, 1928), vol. I; Nicholas Rogue, Souvenirs et journal d'un bourgeois d'Évreux (1740‑1830) (Évreux, 1850); Maurice de Tascher, Journal de campagne d'un cousin de l'impératrice (1806‑1813) (Paris, 1933); Prince Charles de Clary-et‑Aldringen, Souvenirs . . . Trois mois à Paris en 1810 (Paris, 1914); Jacques Hérissay, Joséphine à Navarre, 1810‑1814 (Évreux, 1955); S. Robert, Les séjours de l'impératrice Joséphine en Suisse, Genève, Neuchâtel, Berne, 1810 et 1812 (Neuchâtel, Paris, n. d.); Jean Bourguignon, ed., L'Album du voyage de l'impératrice Joséphine en 1810 à travers la Suisse et la Savoie. Avec les trente-trois sépias exécutés au cours du voyage par le comte de Turpin de Crissé, chambellan de l'impératrice (Paris, 1935); Maurice Collignon, Napoleon Ier dans l'Eure . . . Joséphine à Navarre, le voyage de Napoléon en 1810 (Louviers, 1910); André Gavoty, 'Joséphine et Lancelot-Théodore Turpin de Crissé', Revue des deux-mondes, October 1956. E. P. Brouwet, 'Malmaison et Navarre de 1809 à 1812 ; Journal de Piout', Revue des études napoléoniennes, May‑June 1926.

Josephine's acte de décès, wrongly giving the date of her birth as 24 June 1768 is printed in Revue des études napoléoniennes, May‑June 1924. The report of her autopsy is printed in Frédéric Masson, Joséphine répudiée (Paris, 1900), p361n. Jean Bourguignon, Les Adieux de Malmaison (Paris, 1930), has a brief account of Napoleon's visit to Malmaison after Waterloo. Guy Ledoux-Lebard's meticulous account of the funeral monument erected by Eugène and Hortense to Josephine's memory in 1825 in the church at Rueil, 'Le Tombeau de l'impératrice Joséphine à Rueil', is in Bulletin de la Société de l'Histoire de l'Art français (1956). The entire July 1964 issue of the Revue de l'Institut Napoléon is devoted to scholar­ly articles on Josephine.


The Author's Note:

* Prosper Mérimée, Correspondance générale, 2e série, t. II, 1856‑1858 (Paris, 1955), pp515‑16.


Thayer's Note:

a Not only is this not one of Josephine's maids, but, contrary to appearances, it's a man: properly Charles-Maxime Catharinet de Villemarest, who was also the author, under his own name, of a 4‑volume Life of Prince Talleyrand.


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