After the divorce of December 1809, Napoleon gave Joséphine the duchy of Navarre, near Évreux. She moved there in the spring of 1810, during the Austrian wedding festivities — the distance was part of the protocol.

Historical context

The divorce was pronounced on 15 December 1809 in the great study of the Tuileries, before the assembled family. Joséphine kept the title of Empress, a considerable settlement, and Malmaison. By a decree of February 1810 Napoleon added the estate of Navarre and the title of duchess — a way of giving her a rank of her own, independent of his.

The château, built in the seventeenth century on lands once belonging to Joan of Navarre, is an odd square pavilion under a dome the locals called the Stewpot. It was damp, badly heated, barely furnished. Joséphine arrived at the end of March 1810, precisely as Marie Louise entered France: the coincidence was no accident — she was wanted far from Paris and the ceremonies.

She began works there, kept a small court of about a hundred, planted, laid out gardens, received her children. But she was bored and pressed repeatedly to return to Malmaison, which Napoleon eventually allowed. The duchy's revenues mostly went to settling debts that even an imperial settlement could not cover.

The estate passed to Eugène and then to his heirs; the château was sold and demolished in 1834, its materials dispersed. Only the park, some outbuildings and a canal remain. Navarre is the place that shows the reverse of the Austrian marriage: to marry a Habsburg, an empress had to be made to disappear — without dishonour, but out of sight.