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Empress Josephine
by
Ernest John Knapton

9

Prologue

11

Bird of the Islands

14

A Marriage is Arranged

26

Storm and Stress

40

Parting

54

Freedom

70

Revolution and Terror

81

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness

100

Bonaparte

117

'Parting is such Sweet Sorrow'

135

Wife of a Hero

147

Joséphine Infidèle

159

Mistress of the Tuileries

182

The Consulate

198

Steps to a Throne

147

Coronation

234

War Once More

250

On Being an Empress

270

'Malmaison, c'est Joséphine'

285

Divorce

299

Seclusion

316

Finale

333
347
351

Technical Details

Edition Used

The edition transcribed here was the Penguin paperback, 1969, reprodu­cing the first edition published by, and ©, Harvard University Press 1963. It was the last year for which the copyright had to be renewed — which was not done, however, in the appropriate year (1990 or 1991) so the book is now in the public domain: details here on the copyright law involved.

Notes

The print edition gathers the notes together in a separate section, pp363‑372. For this Web transcription I've moved them, turning the endnotes into footnotes on the appropriate pages; the original page numbers can be found in my sourcecode.

The endnotes are preceded by this text:

 p363  The following abbreviations are used for works frequently cited:

AN:

Archives Nationales, Paris.

Abrantès:

Abrantès, Duchess of, Autobiography and Recollections (4 vols., Eng. trans., New York, 1893).

Aubenas:

Aubenas, J., Histoire de l'impératrice Joséphine (2 vols., Paris, 1857).

BN, Nouv. acq. fr.:

Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. Nouvelles acquisitions françaises.

Bourgeat:

Bourgeat, J., Napoléon, lettres à Joséphine (Paris, 1941).

Bourrienne:

Bourrienne, L. A. F. de, Memoirs of Napoleon (4 vols., Eng. trans., London, 1885).

Corr.:

Correspondance de Napoléon Ier publiée par ordre de l'empereur Napoleon III (32 vols., Paris, 1853‑69).

Hanoteau, Ménage:

Hanoteau, J., Le Ménage Beauharnais : Joséphine avant Napoléon (Paris, 1935).

Hanoteau, Empereur:

Hanoteau, J., Les Beauharnais et l'empereur : lettres de l'impératrice Joséphine et de la reine Hortense au prince Eugène (Paris, 1936).

LNJ:

Lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine . . . et lettres de Joséphine à Napoléon et à sa fille (2 vols., Paris, 1833).

Masson, JB:

Masson, F., Joséphine de Beauharnais, 1763‑1796 (Paris, 1898).

Masson, MB:

Masson, F., Madame Bonaparte, 1796‑1804 (Paris, 1920).

Masson, JIR:

Masson, F., Joséphine, impératrice et reine, 1804‑1809 (Paris, 1899).

Masson, JR:

Masson, F., Joséphine répudiée, 1809‑1814 (Paris, 1900).

Masson, NSF:

Masson, F., Napoléon et sa famille (13 vols., Paris, 1897‑1914).

Pichevin:

Pichevin, R., L'Impératrice Joséphine (Paris, 1909).

 p364  Savant:

Savant, J., ed., Napoléon et Joséphine. Première édition intégrale . . . des lettres de Napoléon à Joséphine (Paris, 1955).

Pagination and Local Links

For citation and indexing purposes, the pagination is shown in the right margin of the text at the page turns (like at the end of this line); p57  these are also local anchors. Sticklers for total accuracy will of course find the anchor at its exact place in the sourcecode.

In addition, I've inserted a number of other local anchors: whatever links might be required to accommodate the author's own cross-references, as well as a few others for my own purposes. If in turn you have a website and would like to target a link to some specific passage of the text, please let me know: I'll be glad to insert a local anchor there as well.

Proofreading

As almost always, I retyped the text by hand rather than scanning it — not only to minimize errors prior to proofreading, but as an opportunity for me to become intimately familiar with the work, an exercise I heartily recommend: Qui scribit, bis legit. (Well-meaning attempts to get me to scan text, if success­ful, would merely turn me into some kind of machine: gambit declined.)

My transcription has been minutely proofread. In the table of contents above, the sections are shown on blue backgrounds, indicating that I believe the text of them to be completely errorfree. As elsewhere onsite, the header bar at the top of each chapter's webpage will remind you with the same color scheme.

The printed book was indifferently proofread; the typographical errors — often in French words and proper nouns — are marked, when important (or unavoidable because inside a link), with a bullet like this;º and when trivial, with a dotted underscore like this: as elsewhere on my site, glide your cursor over the bullet or the underscored words to read what was actually printed. Similarly, bullets before measurements provide conversions to metric, e.g., 10 miles.

A number of odd spellings, curious turns of phrase, etc. have been marked <!‑‑ sic  in the sourcecode, just to confirm that they were checked.

Any over­looked mistakes, please drop me a line, of course: especially if you have a copy of the printed book in front of you.



[The head-and‑shoulders detail of an oil painting, a woman of about 35, with a triangular face and a few curls peeking out from under a diadem. It is a portrait of 19c French socialite Josephine de Beauharnais, who became Empress of France; the image serves as the icon on this site for the biography of her by Ernest John Knapton.]

The icon I use to indicate this subsite is a detail of the portrait of Josephine painted in about 1805 by Joseph Lefèvre, formally titled L'Impératrice Joséphine en robe de cour à chérusques, and now in the château of Malmaison.


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