Alexandre de Beauharnais

Born in May 1760, Alexandre François Marie, Viscount of Beauharnais, rose through the ranks as both a military officer and a figure in Revolutionary politics. He married Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie, though the marriage would not last through the chaos that followed. As the French Revolution turned inward and the Reign of Terror consumed its own, Beauharnais was arrested and sent to the scaffold. He was executed by guillotine on 23 July 1794. Joséphine survived the Terror and later remarried — to Napoleon Bonaparte, becoming empress of an empire her first husband never knew.