No account of Napoleon Bonaparte can be completed without a reference to Josephine. Napoleon married her in 1796. At that time, she was six years older than Napoleon. Prior to this, she was a widow, whose husband had been guillotined a few days before the fall of Robespierre. She had two children from her first marriage and had practically no means. However, she did not loose heart.

She was very much impressed by the vehemence of Napoleon’s passion and the intensity of his glance. She at once agreed to marry him when the proposal came. She was very much impressed by the self-confidence of Napoleon, who continued to believe till the end that he was “The Man of Destiny”. Napoleon had addressed her in these words: “Do they (Directors) think that I need their protection in order to rise? They will be glad enough someday if I grant them mine. My Sword is at my side and with it I can go far.” Josephine has written thus about her inner feelings: “This preposterous assurance affects me to such a degree that I can believe everything may be possible to this man, and with his imagination, who can tell what he may be tempted to undertake?”

Napoleon had his happiest time with Josephine. As a matter of fact, she was the only woman for whom he really cared. Even Madame Walewska who gave him a son never took her place. It is rightly said that Napoleon conquered Europe and put it at the feet of Josephine. According to Napoleon, “Had there been no Josephine, there would have been no Napoleon.” It was she who inspired him. She could amuse him by her indignation and move him by her tears. She was his only refuge from his only family. She was the one person in the world to whom he could say what was really in his mind. He could be natural-self with her alone.

Unfortunately, all the members of Napoleon’s family were against her. Napoleon also foolishly thought of marrying a princess and having a son from her to succeed him. That created trouble and ultimately Josephine was divorced in 1809. Soon after that, she left the Tuileries and began to live alone at Malmaison. It is there that she died. After the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 when Napoleon left Paris for the last time, he went to see the last memoirs of Josephine.

Hardy put the following words into the mouth of Napoleon after his defeat at Waterloo:

“I came too late in time

To assume the prophet on the demi-god

Apart past playing now. My only course

To make good showance to posterity

Was to implant my line upon the throne.

And how shape that if now extinction nears?

Great men are meteors that consume themselves

To light the earth. This is my burnt-out hour.”

It has rightly been said that Napoleon Bonaparte committed a blunder of his life when he divorced his beloved Josephine. When he divorced her, he cut his life in half and threw away the better half of it.

------------- Birajini Samanta Ray