Josefina Bonaparte (Marie-Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie, called Josefina de Beauharnais or Josefina Bonaparte; Trois-Îlets, Martinique, 1763-Malmaison, France, 1814) Empress of France (1804-1809).Wife in second nuptials of Napoleon, Josefina Bonaparte lived linked in the first instance to the aristocracy to, after the revolutionary period, access the highest dignity of the French state as empress consort. Josefina Bonaparte (detail of a portrait of François Gérard, 1801) Marie-Josèphe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie was born in Trois-Îlets, on the island of Martinique, on June 23, 1763.Daughter of a navy lieutenant, she married Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais in 1779, then moving her residence to Paris.However, the union between them was not a happy one, and after the birth of their two children, the marriage broke up because of Josefina's "provincial ways" in her eyes.During the French Revolution the Viscount de Beauharnais was guillotined (1794), and Josephine