
Hortense de Beauharnais (10 April 1783-5 October 1837) was Queen consort of Holland from 5 June 1806 to 1 July 1810 as the wife of King Louis Bonaparte.
Biography[]
Hortense de Beauharnais was born in Paris, France in 1783, the daughter of Alexandre de Beauharnais and Marie Josephe Rose Tascher de la Pagerie. She was raised in Martinique from the ages of five to ten, and her father was executed and her mother imprisoned in 1794 during the Reign of Terror. In 1796, her mother married Napoleon Bonaparte, and Hortense went to school with Napoleon's youngest sister Caroline Bonaparte, the future wife of Joachim Murat. She became an accomplished amateur musical composer, composing "Leaving for Syria" in 1807 to commemorate Napoleon's Syrian campaign. She married Napoleon's brother Louis Bonaparte, five years her senior, in 1802. She became Queen of Holland in 1806, although she did not get along with her husband and regretted leaving her life as a celebrated member of Parisian society. However, the Dutch public welcomed her warmly, and she came to like the country. She still regarded herself as a prisoner during her life with Louis, staying in a different part of the paris. After her son's death in 1807, she was allowed to stay in France due to the better climate, and she raised her other son Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, a future Emperor. In 1810, she returned to the Netherlands and reconciled with her husband, but she found that the Dutch did not welcome her, and she left for France shortly before her husband abdicated the Dutch throne in favor of his son Louis II of Holland. She proceeded to become the lover of Charles de Talleyrand's illegitimate son Charles de Flahaut, and their son Charles would later be created Duke of Morny by his half-brother Napoleon III in 1862. She also became a well-known philanthropist, donating to the Black poor. After the Bourbon Restoration, she was made duchess of Saint-Leu, but her support for Napoleon during the Hundred Days led King Louis XVIII of France to banish Hortense after his second return in July 1815. Hortense lived in Switzerland and dedicated the rest of her life to the arts, and she later returned to France in 1831. She was expelled after her son attempted to seize power in a coup, and she lived in a Swiss chateau until her death in 1837.