Joséphine, MARIE ROSE, empress of the French, was born 23d June 1763, in the island of Martinique, where her father, Tascher de la Pagerie, was captain of the port at St Pierre. She had only an indifferent colonial education; but her qualities of mind and heart, even more than her beauty, won universal regard. When about fifteen years of age she came to France, and in 1779 married Viscount Alexandre Beauharnais (q.v.). A daughter of this marriage, Hortense, queen of Holland, was the mother of the Emperor Napoleon III. Joséphine's husband was executed during the Reign of Terror, she herself just escaping. On 9th March 1796 she was married to Napoleon Bonaparte. She accompanied him in his Italian campaign, and exercised a great influence in restraining him from measures of violence and severity. At Malmaison, and afterwards at the Luxembourg and the Tuilleries, she attracted round her the most brilliant society of France, and contributed not a little to the establishment of her husband's power. But her marriage with Napoleon proving unfruitful, it was dissolved by law on 16th December 1809. Joséphine retained the title of empress, corresponded with Bonaparte, and, if the allied sovereigns had permitted it, would have rejoined him after his fall. She died at Malmaison, 29th May 1814.
See Aubenas, Histoire de Joséphine (1859); Mémoires de Madame de Rémusat (2 vols. Paris, 1879-80; Eng. trans. 1880); and two sumptuous French works on Joséphine by F. Masson (1898-99).