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Updated: June 7, 2025
On December fifteenth, 1809, before the grand council held in the Tuileries, the divorce was pronounced, and the next day it was confirmed by decree of the senate. Josephine withdrew to Malmaison to drag out her remaining years in empty state, for the support of which she had a grant of two million francs a year.
Seeing her firm resolution, I promised to no longer oppose her wishes, which I could not disapprove, but I told her I could only maintain silence and neutrality in these little debates, and she seemed satisfied. When we were at Malmaison those intrigues continued.
I borrow this curious anecdote from the "Memoirs of Josephine," the author of which, who saw and described the Court of Navarre and Malmaison with so much truth and good judgment, is said to be a woman, and must be in truth a most intellectual one, and in a better position than any other person to know the private affairs of her Majesty, the Empress.
Napoleon sought a delusive diversion at Trianon after Josephine had taken up her abode at Malmaison. His sympathetic and affectionate attentions from there could not have been more earnestly shown. Nothing that would appease her grief and add to her comfort was overlooked by him or allowed to be overlooked by others.
As aide-de-camp of the First Consul, general of division, and governor of the Tuileries, he lived long in familiar intimacy at Malmaison, and in the home life of the Emperor, and during necessary absences on duty, corresponded with Mademoiselle Hortense; and yet the indifference with which he allowed the marriage of the latter with Louis to proceed, proves that he reciprocated but feebly the affection which he had inspired.
Count d'Artois, as above said, had come to Malmaison to view this celebrated place of sojourn of Josephine, and, while being conducted through the greenhouses, he exclaimed, as though he recognized his old flowers of 1789: "Ah, here are our plants of Trianon!" And, like their masters the Bourbons, the emigrants had also returned to France with the same ideas with which they had fled the country.
The next day he made a brave resolution, and donning his best clothes, presented himself at Malmaison, requesting to speak to the First Consul, to thank him, he said, for the fine present he had given him the day before. I notified the First Consul of this visit, and he ordered me to bring the laborer in.
The Sunday following was hardly less melancholy, for it was then Josephine learned that Malmaison had been endowed with an income of two millions for its upkeep, and that her personal belongings and the furnishings of her favourite apartments were already on the way thither from the Tuileries.
An abdication forced on by idéalogues was hateful; to be succeeded by Fouché seemed an unforgivable insult; but he touched the lowest depth of humiliation on the 25th, when he received from that despicable schemer an order to leave Paris. He obeyed on that first Sunday after Waterloo, driving off quietly to Malmaison, there to be joined by Hortense Beauharnais and a few faithful friends.
Leu, which Louis Bonaparte had owned, and which he had transferred to his wife, was erected into a duchy for her advantage, and the right of inheritance was vested in her children. The ex-Queen of Holland now took the title of the Duchess of St. Leu. On the 10th of May the Emperor Alexander dined with Josephine at Malmaison.
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