Napoleon and Josephine

On the 5 May 1789, the States-General assembled at Versailles, and Alexandre de Beauharnais was one of the members. He had presented himself to the noblesse of Blois as a candidate for the place of one of the two deputies to be elected by that bailiwick, and was chosen almost unanimously through the influence of Lavoisier. This was the fermier-général Lavoisier, member of the Academy of Sciences. Established only twenty years at Blois, he had acquired by his liberality a great popularity. He was the real head of the electoral assembly, of which he was chosen secretary, and it was he who drafted the cahier des doléances.

This memorandum of grievances, which Alexandre was charged to support, was wholly inspired by the doctrines of Rousseau, and was the most revolutionary of any presented to the King.

Beauharnais was faithful to his mandate, and on his arrival at Versailles he ranged himself with the minority of the Noblesse—the Forty-seven—beside Aiguillon, La Fayette, Lally-Tollendal, La Rochefoucauld and the Duc d’Orléans.

On the night of the 4 August, when feudal rights were abolished, and “every man generously gave away what he did not own,” Alexandre took a leading part. In recognition of his attitude on this occasion, on the 23 November, after the Assembly had moved to Paris, Beauharnais was chosen one of the three secretaries, with Aiguillon as president.

While Alexandre was thus playing one of the principal rôles in the Constituent Assembly, the island of Martinique was in a state of turmoil. There was open war between the whites and the blacks. Tascher, the uncle of Joséphine, who was commandant of the port at Fort-Royal, was elected mayor; there was a collision at Saint-Pierre between the two parties, and fifteen blacks were killed. The garrison of Fort Bourbon revolted, and Tascher was made a prisoner by the rebels. The governor was compelled to evacuate, not only the capital, but also the forts which defended it. Complete anarchy reigned on the island.

Joséphine was advised by her friends to leave, and she sailed for France on the 4 September 1790 on the frigate Sensible. Her departure was so hasty that she sailed almost without any changes of clothing, and during the voyage was thrown upon the charity of the officers of the ship for toilet necessities for herself and Hortense. She landed in France early in November, and went directly to Paris, where she lodged at the Hôtel des Asturies, Rue d’Anjou.

At this time Joséphine seems to have made another effort to bring about a reconciliation with her husband, but without success. Alexandre continued to live at the hôtel of the Duc de La Rochefoucauld, and Joséphine took an apartment in the Rue Saint-Dominique.

The summer of 1791, Joséphine and her children were with the marquis and Madame Renaudin at Fontainebleau. Here she learned of the election of her husband as president of the Assembly, on the 18 June. Two days later occurred the flight of the royal family to Varennes. The announcement was made by Beauharnais, in opening the session of Tuesday the 21 June, and the Assembly remained in permanent session until the afternoon of the following Sunday. During this period Alexandre, by force of circumstances, was the personage the most en vue in France, the head of all authority. The King was suspended, and the President of the National Assembly, for the moment, was sovereign. When his son Eugène was seen in the streets of Fontainebleau, the people cried: “Voilà le Dauphin!”

It was a strange turn of the wheel of fortune which thus brought face to face the Marquis de Bouillé, the distinguished soldier of the Antilles, the last royal governor, who arranged the flight to Varennes, and this Beauharnais, who a few years before had vainly solicited the favor of being his aide de camp. One had been a valiant soldier, whose life had been devoted to his king and country: the other had never seen any active service, and his brief existence, up to the present time, had been a mixture of scandal and futility. In this encounter, by the irony of fate, it was the veteran who lost, and the carpet-knight who won.

The last of September the Constituent Assembly came to an end. As the retiring deputies, by an act of rare and imbecile disinterestedness, had declared themselves ineligible for election to the new Legislative Assembly, they were all forced to retire to private life. Alexandre set out at once for Loir-et-Cher, where he was named member of the administration of the department. At this time he bought some national property in the vicinity of Ferté-Beauharnais, of which he seemed to consider himself the sole owner since the emigration of his brother. But the exercise of his new civil duties was brief. Since the 25 August he had been on the rolls of the general staff, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, and early in December he received an order to join the 21st division to which he was attached.

The former president of the Assembly certainly took his time about entering upon his military duties, for he remained in the country until the last of January, and then came to Paris, where he devoted another month to arranging his affairs. At this time he was successful in securing a pension of 10,000 livres for his aged father. Finally he set out for the headquarters at Valenciennes.

When hostilities began in April he was attached to the Third Corps, commanded by Maréchal de Rochambeau in person. He took part in the first operations, and personally sent to the Military Committee of the Assembly an account of the rout at Mons.

For such distinguished services, Alexandre was promoted the last of May and assigned to the Army of the North under Maréchal Lückner. He continued to correspond with the Assembly, to describe the smallest skirmishes, and to give his impressions of events. He was one of the first to accept the revolution of the 10 August, and was rewarded on the 7 September by being promoted to major-general and named chief of staff of the new army in course of formation at Strasbourg.

The year 1792 came to an end without the Army of the Rhine making any forward movement. During the first months of the following year, Beauharnais was still in Strasbourg, or that vicinity: his name occurs in no reports. The 8 March he was promoted to be lieutenant-general; and on the 13 May, when Custine was made commander of the Army of the North, Beauharnais succeeded him as general-in-chief of the Army of the Rhine.

In June, after the fall of the Girondins, Alexandre was summoned to Paris, to succeed Bouchotte as Minister of War. This nomination displeased the all-powerful Commune of Paris, which denounced Beauharnais as an aristocrat, and he wisely declined the appointment.

By this time the public was beginning to realize that General Beauharnais was more fond of writing than of acting. Mayence was besieged, and the commander of the Army of the Rhine had something more important to do than to compose addresses. The last of June he finally set his 60,000 men in motion, and advanced on the enemy. As usual, he reported in the greatest detail the slightest skirmishes, but did nothing to effect the relief of Mayence, which after a brave defence was forced to capitulate on the 23 July. He then insulted the heroic defenders of the city by a proclamation to his army, in which he said: “No one could expect a surrender so long as the Republicans had any ammunition or bread.” At the same time he wrote the Jacobins of Strasbourg that the club ought to demand of the Convention the heads of the traitors of Mayence and send them to the King of Prussia!

He then ordered his army to retreat to the lines of Wissembourg, and sent in his resignation, on the ground that, as a member of a proscribed caste, it was his duty to remove any subject of disquietude from the minds of his fellow-citizens. Without any authorization, he left his army and went to Strasbourg. It was a grave error thus to abandon his post in the face of the enemy, at a moment when Custine was on trial, Dillon under arrest, and all the generals of noble birth subject to suspicion.

On the 21 August, his resignation was accepted, in terms which for all time must cover his name with opprobrium. He was ordered to retire at once to a distance of fifty miles from the frontier, to a place of residence of which he would inform the Convention. So ended the inglorious military career of Alexandre de Beauharnais.

From October 1791 to September 1793, except for visits to her aunt at Fontainebleau, Joséphine passed all her time in her Paris apartment. Then, on account of the new law regarding “suspects,” she found it desirable to have a domicile outside the city, in order to obtain a certificate of civisme (good citizenship). For some unknown reason, instead of using Fontainebleau, she decided upon Croissy, a village on the Seine about ten miles from Versailles. Here she sub-leased a house from Madame Hosten, a Creole friend from Sainte-Lucie, who lived at Paris in the same hôtel, Rue Saint-Dominique. She had a daughter of about the same age as Hortense, and the mothers had become intimate friends. The 26 September 1793, the Citoyenne Beauharnais presented herself at the municipality of Croissy to make her declaration, and two days later she was joined by her son Eugène, who came from his school at Strasbourg. In her declaration there is no mention of Hortense, but this was probably only an oversight. Mlle. de Vergennes, who passed this summer of 1793 at Croissy, states that it was then that she made the acquaintance of Hortense, who was three or four years younger than herself. At this time, Joséphine, to prove her civisme, placed Hortense with her old nurse Marie Lanoy at Paris, as an apprentice to learn dress-making, and Eugène was articled to one Cochard, a carpenter, who was the national agent of the commune of Croissy.

This attack of civic fever, however, did not prevent Joséphine from seeking society, and extending her acquaintance among the residents of Croissy. Among the friends she made at this time were: Chanorier, through whom she afterwards bought Malmaison; Mlle. de Vergennes, who as Madame de Rémusat was to be her dame du palais; and Réal, who was to become Councillor of State, commandant of the Légion d’honneur, comte of the Empire.

During the month of January 1794, armed with her certificate of civisme, Joséphine returned to her apartment in Paris.

Leaving Strasbourg so precipitately that he had not time to take with him his carriages and horses, Alexandre proceeded directly to his home at Ferté. From there he made haste to write the Jacobin Club of Blois to announce his early visit. On his first appearance, however, he was greeted with insults. He made a spirited reply, and thought that he had saved the situation. Reassured, he leased a small house in the city, and endeavored to gain the good will of his neighbors. At the same time he opened correspondence with his wife: in the face of their common peril, a kind of intimacy was established between them. In the meanwhile he was elected mayor of the little commune of Ferté.

But Alexandre was not to enjoy very long his quiet life in the country. On the 2 March 1794, by order of the Committee of General Security, he was arrested, and conducted to Paris, where, on the 14 March, he was confined in the Carmes. On the 19 April, by order of the same Committee, Joséphine was also arrested, at Croissy, taken to Paris, and placed in the same prison. The old convent of the church of Saint-Joseph des Carmes, its walls still stained with the blood of the September Massacres, is standing to-day in the Rue Vaugirard close by the Luxembourg and the Odéon. At that time, it was one of the most insanitary prisons of Paris. It was cold, damp, dirty; infested with vermin; poorly ventilated, and badly lighted.

However, the society was excellent, although rather mixed. Grands seigneurs and grandes dames were mingled promiscuously with domestics and artisans.

There Joséphine was thrown again with her husband, and there seems to have been a good understanding between them, but nothing more. Alexandre conceived a great passion for Delphine de Custine, while Joséphine engaged in a violent flirtation with General Hoche, who entered the Carmes at about the same time.

Every possible effort was made by Alexandre and Joséphine to secure their liberty. Through Eugène and Hortense, who were allowed to visit their mother, communication was kept up with the outside world. Joséphine’s surly pug dog, Fortuné, which was not noticed in the crowd, carried letters placed under her collar.

The case against Alexandre, however, was too strong for him to hope for acquittal: his military career, his neglect to relieve Mayence, his desertion of his post, made a record hard to defend. On the 22 July, he was taken to the Conciergerie. Realizing that it was the end, as he passed Madame de Custine, he handed her as a farewell present an Arab talisman mounted in a ring which he always wore on his finger.

Alexandre faced death bravely. In those days, if few knew how to live, all knew how to die. Without trial, without testimony, without pleadings, without verdict, he was hurried to the guillotine in a batch of fifty-five victims.

It was the 5 Thermidor. Four days more!