The truth behind the turbulent love story of Napoleon and Joséphine

Revered in equal parts as hero or villain, Emperor Napoleon I led France from the rubble of the Revolution to peace and political stability. At the same time, he undertook a military expansion that at its height saw him control most of Europe between 1809 and 1811. For fourteen years, from his ascension through the army ranks, via his appointment to First Consul and finally to emperor, Joséphine was by his side. Creating a legend more than the sum of their parts, their relationship has long been held up as the epitome of romance, based in a large part on the emperor’s letters to his wife.

While some recent historians have debunked the myth of their romance, however, Ridley Scott, director of the film Napoleon calls Joséphine the emperor’s “one true love”. “[Napoleon] came out of nowhere to rule everything—but all the while he was waging a romantic war with his adulterous wife Joséphine. He conquered the world to try to win her love, and when he couldn’t, he conquered it to destroy her, and destroyed himself in the process” the director tells Deadline.

How true is it that Joséphine was Napoleon’s one true love, that she alone was adulterous, or that his militaristic ambitions were driven by their relationship? The truth is as complex as the two characters involved.

From the islands to Paris

The woman who would become Joséphine Bonaparte was born Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie in 1763. Known to her family as Rose, the future empress was from a plantation-owning family in French-controlled Martinique whose fortunes were in decline. A financially motivated marriage brought her to Paris, and after her husband abandoned her, Rose polished her provincial approach and developed the diplomatic skills for which she would later be lauded. She found her way into the high-maintenance periphery of the French court, and by the time she met Napoleon in 1795, Rose was the most expensive courtesan in France.

At 32, she was 6 years older than Napoleon, a noblewoman and widowed mother of two who was jailed during the Reign of Terror and narrowly escaped the guillotine. The future empress was set free after the Terror ended—but not without consequence. Historians have written about the extreme mental anguish she suffered while imprisoned, and how it manifested in her later behavior via frivolous spending, romantic affairs, and need for security. 

With a certain symmetry, Napoleon’s origins were also with a family of declining fortune, on an island under French control, albeit much closer to France than Martinique. Born into minor Corsican nobility in 1769, Napoleon was intelligent and determined to better his lot. From a young age he wrestled with innate insecurities around class, money, intelligence, and later, sex. The interplay of these, coupled with his persistent sensitivity to criticism, drove his ambitions.

His father decided on Napoleon’s military training, and he worked his way up through military school and the army. By the time he met Joséphine, he was a promising army general, although physically unattractive, still plagued with myriad inferiority complexes, and far from the emperor he would become less than ten years later.

A union of mutual needs

Napoleon met Rose at a society dinner in late 1795. To an insecure Napoleon, what Rose lacked in youth she made up for in sexual experience, social sophistication, and aristocratic ties; her praise flattered his vanity. Rose was initially uninterested in marriage, but as Napoleon’s military standing grew, her resistance thawed. To Rose, Napoleon represented financial security and stability after the horrors of her imprisonment. He modified her middle name and from then on called her Joséphine.

They married in a civil ceremony in March 1796. Two days later, Napoleon left to lead the French army into Italy—the start of a decisive campaign that would reshape Europe’s political landscape, catapulting him to prominence. It was their first of many military-induced separations.

Napoleon’s ardor for Joséphine is obvious in the many letters he penned to her while away, sometimes more than once per day. His words fluctuate between longing, lust, possessiveness, insults, and accusations. Historian Adam Zamoyski describes Napoleon’s letters from Italy as expressing a “teenage frenzy” that Joséphine found “ridiculous and embarrassing.”

Dream lovers and divorce

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It’s questionable whether the woman he fell in love with ever existed. Historian Kate Williams describes how Joséphine, using the limited power available to her in a paternalistic world, fashioned herself into his dream lover by playing up her feminine attributes while suppressing her intellect and ambition.

The infrequency of Joséphine’s replies irritated Napoleon; she was busy, having taken a lover soon after his departure. The general too embarked upon numerous liaisons, prompting Joséphine to finally return the longing he had shown her. When Napoleon remained lukewarm, she responded with lavish spending and emotional blackmail; he gradually withdrew, contemplating divorce.

Napoleon did not follow through with divorce but instead forgave Joséphine, albeit not without self-interest: Having a family bolstered his political power, and his wife’s diplomatic skills were invaluable. She was popular and provided the grace and etiquette he lacked. She embodied his power with her dress sense, behavior, art collection, and jewellery that rivalled Marie Antoinette’s. As Napoleon declared, “I win battles, but Joséphine wins hearts.”

Consequences of the affairs

Whether Napoleon was winning on the battlefield or not, however, by 1800 Joséphine knew the balance of power in their relationship had shifted. Her unpopularity with Napoleon’s family and civil (versus religious) marriage made her position additionally precarious. She changed her ways, working to further his cause, but his attitude had changed. Napoleon placed Joséphine under suffocating controls, curbing her social freedom, shouting at her in public, and tormenting her with details of his affairs.

But despite the couple’s stormy and manipulative relationship, it was neither this nor his frustration with Joséphine and her affairs that drove Napoleon’s expansionist foreign policies. As Zamoyski tells National Geographic, “Napoleon’s ambitions were not primarily militaristic…He was more interested in good governance than winning battles.... [He] believed in doing things well, and as he was thrust into a world at war he was determined to win—but never just for the sake of winning.”

Coronation and separation

As a prerequisite for the couple’s coronation as emperor and empress in 1804, they underwent an additional, religious marriage ceremony, but any security Joséphine felt was temporary. In 1809, they divorced due to her failure to produce an heir. Napoleon stoically declared it “in the best interests of France”; as Zamoyski says, “there is no mistaking the authenticity of his pain at, as he saw it, having to leave her.” Joséphine, too, was distraught.

Afterwards, Napoleon ensured Joséphine retained her title, accommodation, and allowance. Despite his subsequent marriage to Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria and the birth of an heir, Napoleon maintained a dedication to—and cordial correspondence with—his ex-wife. She supported him up to his exile to Elba in April 1814, the news of which left her heartbroken. When Joséphine died just a few weeks later (likely of pneumonia, but many have suggested a broken heart), her last words were “Bonaparte…Elba…King of Rome.” They have a certain poignant resemblance to Napoleon’s last words 7 years later, while in exile on St Helena: “France…the army…head of the army… Joséphine.”

Napoleon and Joséphine’s story is that of two emotionally dysfunctional individuals, born into a revolutionary climate, thrust from obscurity to the world stage. Although Napoleon’s drive to conquer arose not from their tempestuous marriage but his own personal desire to win, it’s certain Joséphine’s presence greatly bolstered his political appeal. And while their relationship was unquestionably rocked by adultery from both sides, they found in each other what was lacking in themselves, allowing it to evolve into a mutual respect. “[Napoleon] also never quite lost his admiration for Joséphine’s style and intelligence, and he trusted her judgment,” Zamoyski observes, “Once she felt he had truly committed to her…and that he could provide her with the security she craved, she became a devotedly loyal companion and a source of strength to him.”