Ciao Chiara✨💕
I was wondering, do you know anything about the alleged love relationship between Hoche and Joséphine?
It's something that I've read here and there, but never really looked into it and, considering all the unsource claims concerning Joséphine's many lovers, I'm reluctant to believe it.
Ciao Aurora!
Uuuuuuh yes, of course I have tea to spill about it🤭
It's the only one of Josephine's alleged lovers that I'm inclined to think that he was more than alleged, but of course it's based on other reliable opinions, such as Pierre Branda, as always.
So, both of them were imprisoned at Les Carmes during the same time. I don't remember why Hoche was there in detail, but I remember it was due to him failing in his duty in a way that could be seen as sus if you wanted to attack him, similar to Alexandre de Beauharnais.
Everyone likes to think that Josephine and Hoche has become lovers in prison, but it's unlikely, given how strict life in prison was. Not to mention that she went to Le Carmes on April 21st, while he got out if it on May 6th, which makes even a flirt highly unprobable. But sooner or later they may have bonded about that common experience; once out of prison, Josephine was heavily relying on networking and after prison he had become a very popular general.
She even sent Eugene as an apprentice aide-de-camp to him and the two have bonded much. Probably they were even closer than Eugene and Napoleon (you may also like to ask @josefavomjaaga about it, Eugène is her area of expertise after all🩷).
During Thermidor, whoever wanted to feel relevant went in circles which were very indulgent and inclined to have mindless fun, especially after the intense years prior where everything was about political commitment. People were traumatised as well, everyone had at least lost someone or something, so they wanted to soothe themselves. I think a comparison with the Roaring Twenties wouldn't be so absurd.
Also as we know it was normal to have lovers back then. Josephine was now a widow, but Hoche was married to a young woman called Adelaïde and much in love with her anyway.
In Joséphine - Le paradoxe du cygne, Branda writes:
"However, one letter from the general [Hoche] seem to confirm an affair with Marie-Rose. In May 1795, he confessed to his friend, the architect Champein, that his heart has been suffering as he never received "no more answer from a woman he loved, a widow, whose son he had been now used to consider as his"*. The picture coincides with Marie-Rose: she was a widow, didn't like to write and had sent him her son.
*the quote is from Frédéric Masson, Joséphine de Beauharnais, Paris, Albin Michel, 1925.
Hope I helped you✨️
