"Incessantly I live over in my memory your caresses, your tears, your affectionate solitude.  The charms of the incomparable Josephine kindle continually a burning and glowing flame in my heart."
                                                                         --Napoleon Bonaparte I

Life after the Revolution was difficult for Marie-Josephe-Rose Tascher and her two children. To survive, she became the mistress of men who were in a position to help support her. It was during this time that she met Napoleon.  Napoleon was a Major-General in the French Army — a man with lofty ambition. To achieve his goals, though, he needed a rich wife. Josephine in turn saw him as a possible patron, and cultivated his friendship. They became lovers in 1795.

He proposed in January 1796, and they wed on March 9, 1796, just prior to his taking command of the army in Italy. She was hesistant at first to marry him, because he was "silent and awkward with women, was passionate and lively, though altogether strange in all his person."

Napoleon had great dreams for their future, and his wedding present to Rose — whom he had renamed Josephine — was a gold medallion inscribed with the words "To Destiny."  Days after Napoleon and Josephine were married, Napoleon left to command the French army near Italy. Throughout the following months, he begged her to join him in Milan for their honeymoon:

    April 1796:

    I have your letters of the 16^th and 21^st. There are many days when you don’t write. What do you do, then? No, my darling, I am not jealous, but sometimes worried. Come soon; I warn you, if you     delay, you will find me ill. Fatigue and your absence are too much.

    Your letters are the joy of my days, and my days of happiness are not many. Junot is bringing twenty-two flags to Paris.

   
    Verona, July 17, 1796

    I write you, me beloved one, very often, and you write very little. You are wicked and naughty, very naughty, as much as you are fickle. It is unfaithful so to deceive a poor husband, a tender lover! Ought he to lose all his enjoyments because he is so far away, borne down with toil, fatigue, and hardship? Without his Josephine, without the assurance of her love, what is left him upon earth? What can he do?

    We had yesterday a very bloody affair; the enemy has lost many men, and has been completely beaten. We have taken the whole country around Mantua.

    Adieu, adorable Josephine; one of these nights your door will open with a great noise; as a jealous person, and you will find me on your arms.

    A thousand loving kisses.

    BONAPARTE 

During the First Italian Campaign Napoleon began to hear the rumors that Josephine was being unfaithful to him in his absence. He denied these rumors, even to himself, and his letters became even more passionate in response.  Six days later he returned to her apartment in Milan, only to find it empty. Josephine had left for Genoa — most probably with army officer Hippolyte Charles, with whom she was suspected of having an affair. He waited nine days for her return, but the wait began to arouse his suspicions. 

    November 1796:

    I don’t love you anymore; on the contrary, I detest you. You are a vile, mean, beastly slut. You don’t write to me at all; you don’t love your husband; you know how happy your letters make him, and you don’t write him six lines of nonsense…

    Soon, I hope, I will be holding you in my arms; then I will cover you with a million hot kisses, burning like the equator.

In mid-March 1798 Joseph's brother finally tells Napoleon outright of the rumors surrounding Josephine. Yet when he confronts her she denies everything, angrily suggesting that if he believes such lies he should divorce her. Privately she fumes against the Bonaparte family, who she believes are in league against her:

Following this "day of the catastrophe," as she referred to it, Josephine must have contemplated what life would be like if Napoleon did divorce her. Her behavior from this point forward was much more amiable and loving towards Napoleon, and she appeared more willing to accompany him on his campaigns despite an overwhelming fear of carriage travel.  Just the opposite could be said of Napoleon, however. Following this confrontation he realized Josephine could no longer be trusted, and his love began to turn to resentment.  He took a mistress in retaliation: Pauline Bellisle Foures, wife of a junior officer. She became known among his troops as "Napoleon's Cleopatra."

Napoleon finally returned to France in October 1799, after a year away. Josephine tried to intercept him on his return journey, but they missed each other in travel and when he arrived at her house she was not there. He ordered servants to take her possessions away. When she finally arrived she was at first refused entry, but she pushed past the servants and ran to Napoleon’s room, where she collapsed outside his locked door, weeping. The accusations, pleas and shouting lasted for hours, but by dawn they were in each other’s arms again. Josephine would never take another lover, but from that point on Napoleon felt free to do as he pleased with other women.

In February 1800 Napoleon became First Consul, and the couple moved into the Tuileries Palace.  They were crowned Emperor and Empress in 1804, and lived peacefully for two years.

They were married by proxy in a civil ceremony on March 11, 1810, and Marie Louise began her journey to France. Napoleon met her at Compeigne, and immediately rushed her into bed — even before the religious ceremony. Later, Napoleon claimed that his new empress had just one thing to say: "Do it again."

Despite their inauspicious engagement and rushed marriage, the couple seemed happy. After their wedding she wrote her father: "He loves me very much. I respond to his love sincerely. There is something very fetching and very eager about him that is impossible to resist."

"The Emperor is much taken with his wife," Austrian ambassador Clemens Fürst Von Metternich noted. "He is so evidently in love with her that all his habits are subordinated to her wishes."  In March 1811 Marie Louise delivered a long-awaited heir, to whom Napoleon gave the title "King of Rome." Two years later Napoleon arranged for Josephine to meet the young prince "who had cost her so many tears."

In 1814 the Allies invaded France, and Napoleon left for war on January 25. Defeated in the Spring, Napoleon abdicated his throne and was forced into exile on the island of Elba. He would never see his wife or son again.