She will be Empress of France.
Joséphine, Napoleon Bonaparte's great love.
Joséphine was one of the women people called the Celestials
during the Directory.
One of those women who was a hit with the men.
She's the "it girl" of revolutionary Paris.
There was dancing and drinking everywhere, and the more money you had,
the more lavish the parties were.
Napoleon Bonaparte sets out to conquer Europe.
At his side, the beautiful Joséphine.
Did she hold his stirrup
as he made his way to the French imperial throne?
She's born into a new life with him.
An epic, an adventure.
She becomes Joséphine.
The year is 1796,
seven years after the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Everyone in Parisian society knows the beautiful
and elegant Viscountess Rose de Beauharnais.
The rich and powerful of the time mingle in her salon,
but she's destined to become famous under a different name.
Napoleon was the one who started calling her Joséphine.
He was a romantic,
and he gave new names to the women he loved.
The revolutionaries' Reign of Terror has just ended.
Tens of thousands die on the scaffolding during this period.
She had barely escaped the guillotine,
and she met Napoleon when he was still a relatively unknown figure.
A general, six years her younger, at the beginning of his career.
Napoleon Bonaparte falls madly in love with her,
besieging her little palace in Rue Chantereine relentlessly,
day and night.
During this period, no one could've imagined
that the Corsican general would one day write world history.
The Parisians always have their own way of doing things.
When an outsider arrives who doesn't really know French,
he's automatically viewed as a half-moron.
Napoleon had a Corsican accent and made all of the related mistakes.
The odd couple marry on the 9th of March, 1796.
The cosmopolitan woman charming, elegant, and popular,
and the small, inconspicuous, awkward military man.
After all, she was a very wasteful woman who liked to spend her money on clothes,
jewelry, and other things.
She came from the lower nobility, but in the last phase of the Revolution,
she had very good relations
with the inner circles of the revolutionaries.
Some people from the nobility played a role in what happened,
and that fascinated him.
What is Joséphine up to?
She realizes that she's not all that young anymore.
That she has two children.
That she's in financial trouble.
She knows she needs more than just a protector.
She needs a husband.
All just cold calculation.
She's only known this man for a few months.
Is she simply taking advantage of his love and passion?
What is she thinking?
It's a lightning-fast wedding.
She always dreamed of having a devoted husband,
and she feels that with him.
He's completely in love, makes her laugh, and writes beautiful letters.
They're among the most beautiful in all of French love literature.
"Good God, how I long to be with you tonight,"
writes the new groom from the front.
What about Joséphine?
She was glad her husband was gone,
and she could devote herself to her luxury shopping and so on.
He enjoyed himself on the battlefield and devoured himself with passion for her.
Joséphine stays in Paris and devotes herself to what she does best:
luxury, men, and love.
Jubilé Impérial is the name of the French folk festival
being celebrated here in September 2017 at Château de Malmaison.
It's Joséphine's country palace at the gates of Paris.
Thousands of visitors come to honor Napoleon and Joséphine.
They're resurrecting a great era in French history,
one in which Napoleon's soldiers
carried the ideas of the revolution throughout Europe.
Participants in the Jubilé wear dresses of the Directory and the Empire.
Scenes from Napoleon and Joséphine's lives are reenacted.
I can feel that the people love her.
It's unbelievable.
Two hundred years on.
She has the same effect on people as Lady Dai.
She was very popular.
Today, Château de Malmaison is a French national museum.
Joséphine lives here whenever her schedule allows.
She personally selects and buys all of the treasures
in the halls and rooms of the Château.
She loved luxury and her pleasure.
She was smart.
It was prophesied to her in Martinique
that she would become more than just a queen.
Joséphine was born Marie Josèphe Rose de Tascher de La Pagerie
on the Caribbean island of Martinique on the 23rd of June, 1763.
Her parents are of lower nobility
and own a plantation on the Antilles island.
Joséphine's childhood was not like Scarlett O'Hara's
in Gone with the Wind.
At the age of three, everyone has to flee.
Her plantation is devastated by a hurricane,
and life is marked by brutal slavery.
Joséphine will never look back on her homeland with nostalgia.
She loves the colors, the clothes, and the costumes,
but she'll never talk about the island.
She won't find herself longing for it.
At the age of 16,
Joséphine sails from the Antilles to France.
She's promised to one Viscount de Beauharnais.
One of Joséphine's aunts has arranged the marriage.
It's a great match for the Taschers.
The Beauharnais are a rich family.
Her father immediately gives his blessing to the marriage.
She's looking forward to getting to know Paris and the nobles,
whom she has heard such wonderful stories about.
She's happy to leave the remote island on the very edge of the French territory.
She's now entering the heart of the ancien régime.
Alexandre de Beauharnais is a young viscount
who comes from an old and highly respected family.
Joséphine dreams of a life of luxury and splendor,
but her marriage to the Viscount will be a disappointment.
Alexandre was a beautiful man.
He loved women and was incredibly intelligent,
but he never really loved Joséphine.
Beauharnais was the typical representative of his class.
He was a scoundrel and a playboy, as we would say these days.
He cheated on Joséphine from the start.
He gave her two children but otherwise didn't take care of her.
He always had girlfriends and affairs with other people's wives,
but that was considered normal among the nobility.
He leaves beautiful Joséphine alone much of the time.
Her son Eugène is born in 1781.
When their daughter Hortense is born two years later,
Alexandre is far away in the French overseas colonies.
There he meets one of his former lovers, who wants him back.
She slanders Joséphine
and convinces him that Hortense is not his daughter.
The couple doesn't see each other much.
How could he have two children?
This is not how Joséphine had imagined her life.
She lives in her in-laws palace in Paris.
Alexandre is mostly traveling, wasting his money,
but is she unfaithful to him?
Alexandre, at least,
is convinced that she is.
When Alexandre returns to France, he throws Joséphine out.
She has to leave the house. That's how the laws worked at that time.
However, she defends herself, demonstrating her true character.
She hires a lawyer, fights against Alexandre, uses the law,
and manages to prove that she was slandered.
She wins the case.
Joséphine receives alimony, is allowed to keep her title,
continues to live in the palace in Paris,
and decides to take care of herself from now on.
She won a fight, and she managed to do a lot,
but social life is difficult for her.
Nevertheless, she can't return to the limelight as the Viscount's wife.
Even though she still is a Viscountess,
she's excluded from the company of the ancien régime
and is never received in Versailles.
Joséphine is 27 years old, a beautiful woman,
the mother of two children, and all alone.
She doesn't stay down for long.
One event changes everything.
Their lives, France, Europe, the world.
The French Revolution.
With the storm on the Bastille in 1789, a hurricane begins sweeping across France.
The rule of feudal society is coming to an end,
and the monarchy is doomed.
The revolutionaries had no blueprint.
No idea what they actually wanted to achieve.
They all started out as monarchists.
They didn't intend to cut the king's head off.
Nobody was dreaming of doing that.
Not even a character like Robespierre
or any other of the bloodthirsty fellows who then arose had dreamed of regicide.
That was ultimately the result of further developments
because King Louis XVI was such an idiot.
After all, a very important part of the revolution
was undertaken by people who belonged to the upper classes.
One of those people is Alexandre de Beauharnais,
Joséphine's husband.
He's an intelligent man, this womanizer, and he quickly adapts to the new era.
On the night of the 4th of August 1789,
he votes for the abolition of the privileges of the nobility,
and Joséphine benefits from her husband's new rule,
even though he isn't her husband anymore.
Joséphine begins to bask in the glory associated with the name Beauharnais.
Joséphine is not a politician with a program.
She's a networker.
She wants influence.
One could say that she lives through the gaze of others.
Her influence on others.
She tries to expand that influence in all directions,
but the problem is that the revolution is progressing.
During the Reign of Terror,
it was not advisable to have moved in all social circles.
That will be her downfall and will even land her in prison.
Gradually, the radicals are gaining ground.
Ludwig and Marie Antoinette will die on the guillotine.
France's bloodiest months are beginning.
Seventeen thousand people will be executed in the course of a year and a half.
The Reign of Terror was such that everyone who was suspected
of anything at all was sent to the guillotine.
Among them was Beauharnais,
who had sat on his country estate and hadn't budged.
His service to the revolution no longer matters.
Her husband Alexandre is arrested for outrageously petty reasons.
They want to make an example of him.
He's arrested soon after the beginning of the Reign of Terror.
She tries to help him, but she also comes under suspicion.
People know that she has friends who are royalists.
Ultimately, she's also arrested and sent to the same prison.
Soon afterward, Alexandre is beheaded.
By the end of July 1794, Joséphine's life hangs by a thread.
One morning, there's a roll call in the prison.
It's usually the sign to get on the cart that's headed to the guillotine.
When she hears her name, she faints,
but on that day, thank God the call was for her to be released.
The Reign of Terror had ended.
Robespierre had been overthrown.
Joséphine's contacts are paying off.
She was very lucky in two senses.
Not only did she survive it, but she was freed by Madame Tallien.
Many who were still languishing in prison were freed by Madame Tallien.
She was married to Jean-Lambert Tallien,
an influential man in the government after Robespierre.
He had the power to release people.
He could just say, "Let them out," and so on,
They made sure that de Beauharnais got out as well.
Joséphine then became a good friend of Monsieur and Madame Tallien.
She was in their salon
and was then immediately in the company of the French Directory.
It is the time of the Directory.
Balls and fireworks have replaced prisons and welfare committees.
At the middle of these festive events stand Joséphine and her new girlfriend.
That time came after the period of virtuous modesty
that had been shaped by Robespierre.
It was, so to speak, the counter swing of the pendulum.
The time had come for debauchery.
There was dancing and drinking everywhere, and the more money you had,
the more lavish the parties were.
The Talliens threw some of the most lavish parties,
and Joséphine was always there.
Joséphine is already over 30,
but she is still beautiful, charming, and exciting.
She becomes what is nowadays known as an "it girl."
Joséphine loved fashion.
She was one of the women people called the Celestials
during the Directory.
One of those lightly-dressed women who was a hit with the men.
That was all the more important for her, as she was already relatively old,
and she had to make herself up very well to please them.
The men love Joséphine,
and Joséphine loves and listens to the men.
Military officers and politicians become her friends
and have affairs with her.
Joséphine was a success because of these friendships.
She's a very intelligent woman
and benefits from the many opportunities that exist after the Reign of Terror,
especially for beautiful women who know how to deal with powerful men.
I'm thinking of Barras, one of the directors.
Paul Barras is the most powerful man in the French Directory.
He helps Joséphine get her husband's fortune back.
For a long time, people thought Barras was Joséphine's lover.
Thanks to him, she could return to high society.
It's the same old story.
It wouldn't have been possible without a man.
Barras was most likely gay.
Many testimonies point to that.
In truth, it was a friendship.
A kind of noble alliance established within the circles of power.
Nothing else.
The high society of Paris thinks they are a couple.
Of course, Joséphine uses Barras.
She has influence over him and expects something in return,
just as he expects something from her for his services.
It was a give-and-take.
It is a life of luxury.
People know Joséphine far beyond her own social circles.
She has advanced quite quickly in the circles of power,
gaining influence.
Her salon is "in."
She quickly becomes a public figure in the press.
Many political attacks are beginning to be launched against her.
The Celestial Beauharnais and her salon are now famous and infamous.
Attacks are being levied against their morals
and are aimed at discrediting the regime.
They are decreed as debaucherous, people who regularly engage in orgies.
Joséphine doesn't care.
Her life of luxury costs a lot of money, and she is always short on cash.
Joséphine did not come from a rich family.
She had become accustomed to high society and didn't want to fall back
into the anonymity of the low nobility of Martinique.
She was determined to maintain a certain status.
She had this need for possessions
and wanted to surround herself with beautiful things.
It was also the need to create a world
in which she could find protection from the dangers
of the political circumstances she had experienced.
It's a politically troubled time in Paris.
Leftist Jacobins want to take down the ruling Directory,
and royalists are regaining power.
In order to safeguard their rule,
the directors rely on a young man who had become a general at the age of 24,
Napoleon Bonaparte.
In Paris, I suspect nobody saw anything in him
other than a competent military man,
and as such, they actually only wanted to use him.
They didn't want to use him as a politician
but as a capable man who strikes decisively
when he is ordered to strike.
In the bloody years of the Revolution,
the young Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte is called to Paris.
Napoleon was 26 years old.
In October 1795,
Barras and his colleagues instruct him to put down a right-wing uprising.
In gratitude for his success,
Bonaparte is appointed domestic commander-in-chief.
After the royalist uprising, all weapons were confiscated in Paris,
even Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais's saber.
His son Eugène asks Bonaparte to return the saber,
and Napoleon, already the head of the state army,
gives it back, and Joséphine comes to thank him.
Thus begins the odd couple's affair.
Napoleon is small, inconspicuous, and socially inexperienced.
Joséphine is the queen of high society that he has been looking for.
For a long time, it has been claimed that Joséphine didn't want to marry him,
but that's not true.
She organized everything,
chose the notary, and drew up the prenuptial agreement.
She was the driving force.
To the surprise of their social circles,
Joséphine and Napoleon marry in March 1796,
only five months after their first meeting.
It's a short civil ceremony, but why the rush?
That remains unclear for a long time.
There are various hypotheses.
First of all, her affection for him was surely growing.
The war also leads them to decide to marry quickly.
Then there's something else.
She thinks she's pregnant.
Feels the symptoms.
Maybe there will be a baby, she says.
They have to marry quickly before he goes to war in Italy.
"What is your strange power, my incomparable Joséphine?"
Napoleon writes her before the wedding.
"I know that if we would fight,"
"I would be denying my heart my conscience."
"You have seduced them. They are yours always."
Bonaparte is head-over-heels in love.
Joséphine, on the other hand, is looking for security.
She probably also suspects that the general,
six years her younger, will rise even further.
When Napoleon marries Joséphine, he did so without talking to his family,
but they were very close.
He'd always discussed everything with them.
The clan was very devoted.
Napoleon's mother, his four brothers, and three sisters.
His whole family is financially dependent on him.
They hope to advance socially by riding on his coattails.
Napoleon's family was poor.
One might say, peasants.
The father was a lawyer,
but basically, they were social nobodies in Corsica.
They were poor devils.
He does not tell his mother or his older brother Joseph,
presenting them with a fait accompli.
They think it's Joséphine's fault.
They will never accept it.
Shortly before the wedding,
Napoleon Bonaparte is appointed as supreme commander
for a campaign against Austria in northern Italy.
Joséphine remains in Paris.
It soon becomes apparent that she's not pregnant.
As Napoleon did not yet have a child,
for a long time, they did not know which of the two was infertile.
Only two days after their marriage at the registry office,
Napoleon must say adieu to his beloved Joséphine.
The Austrians are waiting for him in northern Italy.
The Habsburgs had first declared war
on revolutionary France four years earlier, in 1792.
Napoleon is now tasked with helping the troubled Directory.
It will be a triumph.
The Italian campaign was a singular succession of victories,
undertaken with a defeated army that was inferior in every respect.
Ill-equipped, unpaid, ragged, and poorly armed.
Napoleon bested the Austrians at every turn.
Northern Italy belonged to Austria at the time.
Even with an inferior army,
his strategic and tactical genius was simply too much for them.
At home in Paris,
Joséphine apparently continues her old life.
Rumors soon arise of men receiving the new bride.
Word gets around to Napoleon's camp.
People claim that she had affairs in Paris
because she didn't go to Italy immediately after the wedding.
We are mainly talking about the notorious Hippolyte Charles,
but people believe all kinds of stories about her.
The young officer, Hippolyte Charles, is seen in Joséphine's company.
In Italy, Napoleon is very jealous.
He puts Joséphine under surveillance,
orders her letters to be opened, and has her followed.
"If only I could, I would throw you into prison in my heart"
"and lock you in there forever,"
Napoleon writes to her.
She receives imploring letters nearly every day.
"No letter from you."
"How that worries me."
"I expect a courier with news every day."
"The happiness of my life depends on you, dearest Joséphine."
Napoleon.
Joséphine does not withhold her response.
She writes that she must recover, but she hopes for a pregnancy,
and, and, and...
She stays in Paris.
Too long for Napoleon.
A bad reputation haunts her to this day.
We mustn't forget that Joséphine is the successor of Marie Antoinette.
She follows her in history,
but she was also her successor in our imaginations.
That image hasn't always served Joséphine well.
The debaucheries in Versailles during the ancien régime are legendary,
but is Joséphine as reckless as Marie Antoinette?
I'm personally convinced of at least one thing.
She was not an idiot.
She wouldn't have jeopardized her marriage to Bonaparte for a stupid fling.
Joséphine at least manages to convince her dear Napoleon of her innocence.
The relationship has changed.
Napoleon was almost submissive at first.
Now, he dominates.
It doesn't just balance out.
He's the boss now.
After all, he becomes the person we know.
The general who accumulates victories.
The politician who makes decisions. The diplomat.
He's becoming Napoleon.
The campaign in Italy lasts 13 months.
Still under 30 years of age, Napoleon returns a rich man.
These victories enabled Napoleon to impose tributes on the conquered lands,
which flooded the coffers in Paris, but of course, it wasn't only money.
He also plundered the areas that his army overtook.
Joséphine now nurtures a new dream, owning her own castle.
Château de Malmaison is Joséphine through and through.
It was love at first sight.
Joséphine discovers Malmaison in 1799.
Although it is expensive, she desperately wants it.
For Joséphine, it was love at first sight, and they make an offer.
Then Bonaparte leaves for Egypt
and lets Joséphine conduct the negotiations by herself.
He does, however, give her a financial limit.
Joséphine buys Malmaison and starts spending money.
Starts spending a lot of money.
Over the next 15 years,
she will invest many millions of francs in her Château
for furniture, paintings, lamps, and precious vases.
Money is no object.
Napoleon was often angry
and threatened to chase away the deliverymen
because she had run up such high debts.
Until her death,
Napoleon will admonish Joséphine in his letters
to not always spend so much.
In these early years of her marriage, however,
she employs other means
to obtain the money that she so urgently needs.
She was indeed very clumsy.
She consorted with peculiar people in her husband's absence.
With businessmen.
They were high-level investors
who were especially interested in providing the army with supplies.
Joséphine benefited from that.
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Napoleon is fighting in Egypt and constantly needs new weapons.
The investors can supply them, but at a very high price,
and Joséphine greases the wheels for a cut of the profits.
Napoleon finds out.
He hears about new lovers.
He writes to his brother Joseph.
"All feelings are withered."
"The glory tastes bland."
"I just want to be alone."
It is true that at that time,
Bonaparte believed the rumors that Joséphine had betrayed him.
He was on his campaign in Egypt,
but there was also a lot of malice behind those rumors.
They benefited the members of the Bonaparte family
who disliked Joséphine,
and they also benefited General Bonaparte's opponents,
who knew that this kind of information was bound to destabilize him.
Napoleon makes a surprise return to Paris.
Joséphine knows about the accusations being levied against her.
They had a house on what was later known as the Rue de la Victoire.
Napoleon hid himself inside,
and she came and noticed that the door was locked.
Then she stood there the whole day and half the night
in front of the locked door with her children from her first marriage
and screamed with sorrow and lamentations
until Napoleon's heart softened, and he pulled her into the house.
Then the next day, the two lay together peacefully united in bed,
when Napoleon's brother Joseph appeared and thought,
"Now I can see everything."
"How everything has fallen apart."
Napoleon had wanted to send Joséphine packing,
and there they lay, peacefully united in bed.
He saw that things had fundamentally gone wrong.
"I love you as I did on the day we met," he will write to her later.
Napoleon needs Joséphine
because he wants to be more than just a general.
His wife was a great help to him due to her social relationships.
Napoleon was a general but still a Corsican yokel.
She knew the people that he needed to connect with.
She had social skills and knew how to set it up.
It gave him a polish that he didn't have yet.
At the end of 1799,
he successfully seizes power in France with a coup d'etat.
He put an end to the form of government that was in place, the Directory.
He abolished the directors and established himself as First Consul.
That is to say, he appointed himself dictator,
and the rest is Napoleonic history.
A mere three and a half years after their wedding,
the little Corsican general is in charge,
and Joséphine is now First Lady.
There's a problem.
The lack of offspring,
and it's fairly certain that there won't be any.
How can you create a dynasty without heirs?
A different solution must be found.
Another attack is launched by the Bonaparte clan,
calling for him to divorce the Empress, who cannot bear him children.
That sends Napoleon into a rage.
He doesn't want to hear about it.
Pills, tinctures, juices, and cures proved fruitless.
Joséphine cannot give Napoleon his heart's desire: a son.
She looks for a solution
and persuades her daughter, Hortense, to marry Napoleon's brother, Louis.
She and Napoleon are hoping the couple will have children.
A son that Napoleon could adopt.
Joséphine's daughter Hortense and Louis Bonaparte reluctantly obey.
They marry in 1802 and have three sons.
Thus, there's a second Bonaparte-Beauharnais wedding.
The children come from both families
and through adoption, they would become heirs to the throne.
The heirs of a dynasty because Napoleon wants to become emperor.
He plans a great ceremony in Notre Dame on the 2nd of December, 1804,
to legitimize his regime.
Napoleon arranges everything.
He even orders the Pope to come to Paris.
Joséphine?
The Bonapartes are trying to prevent her from becoming an empress.
At 41, they claim she's simply too old.
Joséphine almost wasn't crowned.
Shortly beforehand,
Napoleon had once again considered divorce.
His brothers and sisters were already cheering.
Napoleon's doubts only last for a moment.
"There is nothing that compares to my love for little Joséphine," he writes.
Her influence is unbroken.
Then she had a cunning idea
to force Napoleon to marry her in the church.
He wanted to be crowned and anointed by the Pope,
as would be fit and emperor,
but he and Joséphine had only been married in a registry office,
so Joséphine went to the Pope for confession
and told him that she lived, so to speak,
as a concubine with Napoleon in the eyes of the church.
That she wasn't married because the church did not recognize civil marriage.
She confessed that to him,
and that was a glorious piece of information for the Pope
because he could then take it and use it to blackmail Napoleon and say,
"Friend, you will not be anointed emperor by me if you don't marry in the church."
Joséphine hopes to use the church's blessing
to make an impending divorce due to childlessness more difficult.
During the ceremony,
Napoleon himself crowns his Joséphine as Empress.
He stands by her and turns against his family.
Worse still, he orders his sisters to carry the mantle
as they enter Notre Dame.
For the sisters, who hate Joséphine even more than the brothers do,
it's completely humiliating.
Joséphine barely escaped the guillotine, has an often difficult marriage,
is already 41 years old, and yet she's the Empress of France.
The 2nd of December, 1804, is the day of glory for Joséphine.
She's at the very top.
It is reported that she beamed that day.
It was probably the happiest day of her life.
It is in Paris, not in the old coronation city of Reims,
that Napoleon places the crown on Joséphine's head.
It is her city,
the one that she had dreamed of since she was a child,
and which she will always love.
Joséphine only shops at the finest establishments in town,
the most exclusive jewelers.
For her, the best is just good enough,
especially now that she can call herself Empress.
She sets the tone.
Joséphine is a French personality through and through.
She's the epitome of a highest-level Parisian,
a fashion icon, fashion victim, role model, and source of inspiration.
This woman has enriched art,
and she has brought great craftsmanship back to life.
She shapes a century.
Napoleon wanted his court to be as dazzling as possible
so that marshals and ministers
would have a lifestyle worthy of their rank.
The Empress remains the best customer of courtiers and jewelers.
She makes them rich and spends 3.2 million francs on jewels.
At the end of her imperial rule,
she has more than 900 dresses and 500 lace tops.
Many historians agree
it wasn't so much about loving possessions.
It was about buying them.
Joséphine loves to buy new things.
She's constantly renewing her wardrobe.
The Emperor pays, albeit often reluctantly.
First of all, let's not forget that Napoleon was a household tyrant.
It wasn't always easy being Napoleon Bonaparte's wife.
Certainly not, but she accepted all of that.
It was all about the project.
About serving the Emperor.
Not for what he represented but for who he really was.
She knew it from the beginning.
Napoleon is a military genius.
He strides from victory to victory and now rules over almost all of Europe.
He writes to his wife in 1805,
"The Battle of Austerlitz was the most beautiful of all battles."
"I wish I could keep you in my heart forever."
Napoleon takes care of the country and fights wars continuously.
He only ever stays a few hours at the court.
She does the full-time job.
She is the sovereign.
Napoleon fights wars.
Joséphine wants to be the center of attention.
She wants splendor,
not power.
She stayed out of it.
Politically, she didn't tell him fight this or that battle,
release him or her, or throw this or that person in prison.
She didn't do that.
Joséphine's power comes from this ruler's love for her.
Napoleon wouldn't let anyone tell him what to do.
She was the only one who could talk to him at eye level.
She managed to ease tense situations.
The court was aware of her influence and power.
He turned to her and trusted her.
People tried to tell her what he should do.
They knew that she was the only person who could do anything.
She was the only one in Napoleon's life
who was capable of affecting him like that.
Napoleon reaches the zenith of his power in 1807.
He writes to Joséphine from Tilsit,
"If you are reading these lines,"
"peace has been established with Prussia and Russia."
However, the frequent separations are a burden on their marriage.
Empress Joséphine's life is no cakewalk.
She and Napoleon don't see each other much.
He has his chambers, and she has hers.
Napoleon has affairs.
She knows about it and suffers from it.
At the same time,
political attacks are being launched because of the lack of an heir,
and in 1807, Hortense and Louis's first son dies.
Their hope for a dynasty dissolves into nothing.
One of Napoleon's many mistresses is a Polish countess, Marie Walewska.
When Marie Walewska bears the Emperor's child in 1809,
it becomes clear he is not infertile.
He knows his political interests require a direct heir.
One of his own children, not an adopted one.
"God knows that this decision has been difficult."
"I have only found the courage to make it"
"because I'm convinced that it serves France's best interests."
Napoleon announces publicly he still loves Joséphine,
but he wants a divorce.
Napoleon has a weakness.
He cannot attack a beloved, weak person,
especially when she bursts into tears and is on her knees begging him.
Then he doesn't dare.
Joséphine is a fighter who won't give up her position.
Joséphine's fight for her marriage eventually comes to an end.
Napoleon will not be deterred
and decides to establish a dynasty without her.
The Empress ultimately has to sign the divorce papers in December 1809.
She doesn't have to worry about anything material.
Her situation and her position are secure,
but her purpose in life is gone, and she falls into a deep depression.
Napoleon, for his part, has lost his closest confidant.
Three months after his divorce,
Napoleon marries the Hapsburg princess Marie Louise.
She will give him the son he has been longing for.
Joséphine retires to her beloved Malmaison.
Marie Louise will never meet Joséphine,
but her contact with Napoleon does not come to an end.
"Never doubt the sincerity of my feelings for you,"
writes Napoleon.
"They will last as long as I live."
Napoleon visits Joséphine without Marie Louise.
Their relationship is good.
They don't fight.
The tone remains tender,
but she's on the sidelines, which is hard for her to bear.
She can go anywhere but to Paris,
the city that had always been at the heart of her dreams.
Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812 ends in a military catastrophe.
The Grande Armée is crushed.
Around 1809 and 1810,
Napoleon's star begins to fade and finally burns out.
She gets very worried about the Russian campaign
and then Germany.
Until then, Napoleon had impressed the world
and destroyed everyone.
Now, these difficulties in Spain, Russia, and Germany.
Napoleon's defeat in the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813
is followed by his exile to Elba in April 1814.
Like any good Corsican, Napoleon was incredibly superstitious,
and he believed in his lucky star,
which he once saw at Malmaison before he was emperor.
At Malmaison, he saw his star shining through the branches of a tree,
and he thought, "My star, my lucky star that shone upon me,"
"has departed from me with Joséphine."
Napoleon writes loving letters to his Joséphine until the very end,
inquiring about her health, admonishing her not to despair,
and to believe in the future.
Joséphine's story is a fascinating one.
She picks herself up after every failure.
She did that often.
That was also true at the end of her life when the Empire collapsed
when the Tsar came to Paris.
The Tsar and the Prussian king
pay their respects to the former empress in Malmaison.
Joséphine doesn't really have to worry.
An apanage from the victors allows her to maintain her lifestyle.
Her children are also provided for.
The Tsar was a gallant man,
and she not only received the Tsar but also received the Prussian king.
Stories of her beauty had reached as far as Saint Petersburg and Berlin,
and they wanted to have a look at this magical creature.
She was an attraction.
Her new life doesn't last long.
On May 29th, 1814, Joséphine dies at the age of 51.
An end befitting her rank.
She catches a cold at a feast held for Tsar Alexander.
In exile in Elba, Napoleon learns of her death.
He only hears the news much later.
He experiences the deepest sorrow he has felt in his life.
He suffers from her absence until the end.
One cannot emphasize it enough.
Their bond was one of the reasons for their extraordinary fate.
[French spoken audio]
They set off on this adventure together,
and in some sense, they also exited the stage together.
Joséphine's grandson becomes Napoleon III Emperor of France.
Her granddaughter and namesake, Joséphine, becomes Queen of Sweden.
Another granddaughter is Empress of Brazil.
Today, Joséphine's name can be found in the family tree
of almost all European families.
The girl from Martinique
would've loved that.