Andre Castelot

Josephine Andre Castelot

This is the biography of one of the most remarkable and amazing women in history. Joséphine de Beauharnais was born on 23 June 1763, in the West Indies on the Island of Martinique. She is said to have been a Creole, a term that often but not always implies a person of mixed race. Yet, from this humble origin, Josephine became the first Empress of the French. Through her daughter, Hortense, she was the maternal grandmother of Napoléon III. Through her son, Eugène, she was the great-grandmother of later Swedish and Danish kings and queens, as well as the last Queen of Greece. The current reigning houses of Belgium, Norway and Luxembourg descend from her. All of these things happened because Josephine met a lowly and seemingly unimportant corporal named Napoléon.