Bonaparte Marries Joséphine: A Strategic Union for Power

Napoleon Bonaparte married Josephine de Beauharnais in a civil ceremony in Paris on March 9, 1796, just two days before departing for his Italian campaign. Josephine, a 32-year-old widow with two children whose first husband had been guillotined during the Terror, was six years older than the 26-year-old general. The marriage was one of history's most complicated love affairs. Napoleon was passionately devoted to Josephine, writing her anguished letters from the battlefield while she conducted affairs in Paris. She brought him social connections to the old aristocracy that his Corsican origins could not provide, smoothing his path through Parisian high society. The marriage survived infidelities on both sides and Napoleon's rise to Emperor, but it could not survive childlessness. Napoleon divorced Josephine in 1809 to marry Marie Louise of Austria, who gave him an heir. Josephine reportedly said, 'I will never know a greater sorrow.' Napoleon kept a portrait of her by his bed at Elba and died with her name on his lips.