"The Statue of Joséphine 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 of Tascher de La Pagerie on June 23, 1763 in Trois-Îlets was the first wife of the Emperor Napoleon I from 1796 to 1809. In this capacity she became the Empress of the French And the Queen of Italy.
She was the daughter of a wealthy colonist who exploited a sugarcane plantation with more than 300 slaves and married Alexander de Beauharnais, the son of a baron and marquis in 1779. They had two children Eugène Rose and Hortense Eugénie Cécile . The couple encountered problems, Alexander de Beauharnais squandered his fortune and multiplied the conquests. They separated in 1785. Her husband was then guillotined in 1794.
Two years later, she married Napoleon Bonaparte of six years her second cadet in second wedding. Their life as a couple will be tumultuous. Josephine frequents openly the captain of hussars, Hippolyte Charles and then her husband will multiply the conquests under the eyes of his wife.
The divorce was pronounced on December 16, 1809. Napoleon then yielded to him the Elysee and the castle of Malmaison. She retired until her death at the Chateau de Malmaison at Rueil-Malmaison. She died on 29 May 1814.
This statue was inaugurated on August 29, 1856. It is approximately 5 meters high. It was thus enthroned more than a century in the center of the park of the Savane, before being relegated in one of its recesses on the order of the mayor of Fort-de-France, Aimé Césaire in 1974.
In September 1991, the statue was decapitated recalling the fate of the guillotine to which it narrowly escaped. This particularly emphasizes the feeling of the Martininians for Josephine de Beauharnais.
If some see it as an illustrious ancestor born on the island for others it represents that which would have advised Napoleon Bonaparte to restore the slavery in 1802 when this system had been abolished by the French Revolution in 1794."