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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2024
Abstract
When Empress Joséphine accepted the dissolution of her marriage to Emperor Napoléon in December 1809, she became the first and only divorced Empress of France. Napoléon married the eighteen-year-old Marie-Louise, Marie-Antoinette's grandniece, on April 1, 1810. From 1810 to 1814, Napoléon continued to support Joséphine's garden patronage at Malmaison while installing Marie-Louise at the Petit Trianon. The emperor thus sustained a competitive garden culture between his spouses while pursuing his own agenda at imperial sites. For all three patrons, recalling Marie-Antoinette's legacy at the Petit Trianon was an entangled memory, both personal and political, that conditioned the dissemination of the picturesque garden style.
Keywords: Napoléon, Malmaison, Navarre, Marie-Louise, Joséphine, Petit Trianon
rom 1799 until 1809, Joséphine successfully positioned herself as a benevolent amateur botanist, an ambassador dedicated to Bonapartist colonial policies, and a celebrity fashionista, but she could not provide a male heir for the emperor. In a report dated 1807, Napoléon's master spy and head policeman, Joseph Fouche, recounted gossip about Joséphine's capacity to remain empress despite the sterility of their marriage:
At court, among princes, in all circles, there is talk of the dissolution of the Empress's marriage. At court, there is a division of opinion on this subject. People who in the Empress's circle seem convinced that the Emperor will never resolve to this dissolution; they say that the Empress is adored in France; that her popularity is useful to the Emperor and the Empire; that the happiness of both is attached to the duration of this union; that the Empress is the Emperor's talisman … The other side of the court, which regards dissolution as something which the establishment of the dynasty must necessarily bring about, seeks to prepare the Empress for this event, giving her the advice which it deems suitable for this situation. In the imperial family, there is only one opinion: it is unanimous for the divorce. In the circles of Paris, there are not two opinions among the people attached to the dynasty: they seem quite convinced that there are only children of the Emperor who can ensure the duration of the empire.
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