The Statue of Josephine is located in the Parc de la Savane in Fort-de-France in front of the Schoelcher Library. Joséphine de Beauharnais born Marie-Josèphe-Rose Tascher de La Pagerie June 23, 1763 in Trois-Îlets was the first wife of Emperor Napoleon I from 1796 to 1809. As such she became the Empress of the French and Queen of Italy.
Daughter of a wealthy settler, operator of a sugar cane plantation with over 300 slaves, she married Alexandre de Beauharnais, the son of a Baron and Marquis in 1779. They had two children Eugene Rose and Hortense Eugénie Cécile Rose. The couple has problems, Alexandre de Beauharnais squanders his fortune and multiply the gains. They split in 1785. Her husband will then guillotined in 1794.
Two years later, she married Napoleon Bonaparte's six years younger second wife. Their married life was tumultuous. Josephine openly frequent the captain of hussars, Hippolyte Charles and later her husband multiply the adultery facts under the eyes of his wife. The divorce was granted on December 16, 1809. Napoleon then gives him the Elysée and Malmaison castle. She retired until his death at Malmaison castle in Rueil-Malmaison. She died May 29, 1814.
The statue was inaugurated on August 29, 1856. It measures approximately 5 meters high. She throned well over a century in the middle of the Place de la Savane, before being relegated to a corner under the order of the mayor of Fort-de-France, Aimé Césaire in 1974. In September 1991, the statue was beheaded recalling the fate of the guillotine which she narrowly escaped. This especially emphasizes the feeling of the Martinican to Josephine de Beauharnais.
If some see her as a lustrous ancestor born in the island for others she represents who would have advised Napoleon Bonaparte to reinstate slavery in 1802 when the system was abolished by the French Revolution in 1794.