Exhibition labels & didactics - National Gallery of Victoria

NAPOLEON AND JOSEPHINE
Napoleone Buonaparte (1769–1821) was something of an outsider
in France, having been born into a noble family of Italian ancestry
on the French-ruled island of Corsica. French was not his native
language and he spoke it with a strong Corsican accent, although
he later Gallicised his name to Napoléon Bonaparte in order to
better assimilate into his adopted country. Trained within the ranks
of the French Royal and subsequently French Revolutionary Army,
Napoleon rose to power on the back of civil unrest that broke out
in Paris following the Reign of Terror (1793–94).
His future wife Josephine (1763–1814), whom he married in 1796,
was also an outsider, being of Creole background, a member
of a French plantation dynasty based in Martinique. As Marie-
Josèphe-Rose de Tascher de la Pagerie, she was first married to a
Martinique-born nobleman – Alexandre, Vicomte de Beauharnais,
with whom she had two children, Eugène and Hortense.
Both she and Alexandre were imprisoned during the Reign of Terror.
Alexandre, then General-in-Chief of the French Revolutionary Army
of the Rhine, was guillotined in 1794. Narrowly escaping execution
herself, Josephine re-entered Parisian society as a survivor,
determined to find security for herself and her children.
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