Josephine Bonaparte (23 June 1763 – 29 May 1814)
Josephine Bonaparte was born to a rich family that owned a sugar plantation in Martinique. They faced a financial crisis after a hurricane struck and completely wrecked the plantation in the year 1766, so her aunt decided to arrange a marriage for her Josephine’s younger sister, Catherine, to marry a viscount, who was also from Martinique, Alexander de Beauharnais. Unfortunately, her sister died before they had a chance to marry, so her aunt had to replace Catherine with Josephine. Despite an unhappy marriage, they had two children: Eugene and Hortense de Beauharnais. Alexander falsely accused her for behaving scandalously, and Josephine cleared her name by filing a divorce. She won a legal separation, financial support, and a guardianship of Hortense, in the year 1785.
On April 19th, 1794, The Committee Of Public Safety, led my Maximilien Robespierre arrested Josephine, because they saw that she was too close to the people against the revolution. She was freed on July 29th of that same year, due to the fall and the execution of Maximilien Robespierre. After visiting Martinique for two years, she finally returned to France, as a widow, where she was unstable because the people were fighting for equality amongst the three estates.
She went back to France, and became a mistress of quite a few people, including Paul François Jean Nicolas Barras. Then on March 9, 1796, Josephine decided to marry Napoleon Bonaparte, a decision some people say was for financial security, since she was such a spendthrift, a profuse spender. While Napoleon was in Italy, sending her passionate love notes to her, she was busy starting an affair with a charming captain, Hippolyte Charles, which was why she was so unresponsive and ignorant to those love notes. When Napoleon found out, he was outraged; he threatened to divorce her when he got back, so Josephine started taking her marital life seriously. Even when Josephine stopped...