Josephine and Napoleon. The Emperor Under the Empress's Thumb

“Army. France. Josephine,” Napoleon said at the point of death. Though he was forced to divorce his first wife because she had no children, the Emperor loved the Empress until the very end and died with her name on his lips. They say that even in youth this short creole woman couldn’t be called a beauty—but men would lose their heads at the sight of her bewitched eyes with impossibly long lashes, and at the sound of her alluring, low voice. They say she was “immoral to the bone”—but Josephine was simply in a hurry to live, forgetting the hardships of the past. Before meeting Napoleon, she had to go through all the circles of the female hell: an unsuccessful marriage, the cold contempt of her first husband, poverty, even imprisonment… They say she married General Bonaparte, who was six years younger than her—by calculation: he paid off her huge debts; she introduced him to high society. But once his passion cooled even slightly, Josephine’s hot blood took its toll: jealousy scenes—what she threw at the Emperor—were discussed all over France, and his family scandals became just as famous as his loud victories. Even Napoleon once remarked that he never knew how to deal with women. Well, then Russia is also of a feminine kind…

Read the new novel from a bestselling author—“The Grand Duchess Olga,” “Nefertiti,” and “Cleopatra”—an astonishing story of the first French Empress, who held even Bonaparte himself “under her thumb”!