Gardens of Empress Josephine

The Empress Joséphine did not mince her words. “The only thing that ever came between us was my debts, certainly not his manhood,” she said of husband Napoléon. And some debts those were. Early in the landscaping of her Château de Malmaison, she had run up a £2,600 bill with London nurserymen Lee and Kennedy. In less than a decade, she had risen from the shadow of the guillotine to femme du monde, perhaps the most influential woman in France. Born Marie Joséphe Rose Tascher de La Pagerie on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia on 23 June 1763, at the age of 17 she accompanied her father to France. There she quickly married a fellow islander, Alexandre de Beauharnais, a political figure and general during French Revolution. She bore him two children, a son and daughter, before the impact of Grande Peur, the ‘Great Fear’ engulfed them. Thrown into the same prison was her husband on 21 April 1794, three months later they both went their own ways, he as an accused aristo to the guillotine, she released but as a widow with two young children.

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