Josephine: The Empress and her children

She was born Marie-Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, daughter of a colonial planter. She grew up in the tropics, acquiring an easy indolence, a belief in fortune-telling, and an ease with slave subordinates. She became the Empress Joseph, Napoleon's consort, mistress to others, and doting mother. She arrived in France, dimly educated, unpolished, and the unwanted wife of a viscount. She bore him two children, and was banished to a convent, where she acquired the polish and manners that let her natural charm and wit rise to the surface. During he Revolution, her husband was guillotined and she was imprisoned, but when the Terror ended, her life became on of salons, love affairs, and relative ease. It was then that she met a gawky, prudish, young military man who fell instantly in love. Napoleon was kind to her and to her children and his star was in the ascendant; she married him. She followed him on his triumphant Italian campaign, and acquired a country chateau and a new lover. When Napoleon declared himself Emperor, she became the first lady of Europe. Even after he divorced her, her star remained bright, and after he fell, she lived on as a queen. She died, so they say, of pneumonia caught while wearing too filmy a gown while entertaining the Czar on a chilly night. Josephine's story is that of a witty, loving woman living in a turbulent time at the highest level of society and politics. The glamour of the era was no more than a match for her own.