Makers of History

Josephine

By JOHN S. C. ABBOTT

WITH ENGRAVINGS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

1904

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand
eight hundred and fifty-one, by

Harper & Brothers,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District
of New York.

Copyright, 1879, by Susan Abbott Mead.

JOSEPHINE.

PREFACE.

Maria Antoinette, Madame Roland, and Josephine are the three most prominent heroines of the French Revolution. The history of their lives necessarily records all the most interesting events of that most fearful tragedy which man has ever enacted. Maria Antoinette beheld the morning dawn of the Revolution; its lurid mid-day sun glared upon Madame Roland; and Josephine beheld the portentous phenomenon fade away. Each of these heroines displayed traits of character worthy of all imitation. No one can read the history of their lives without being ennobled by the contemplation of the fortitude and grandeur of spirit they evinced. To the young ladies of our land we especially commend the Heroines of the French Revolution.

CONTENTS.

ENGRAVINGS.

JOSEPHINE.

Chapter I.

Life in Martinique.

A.D. 1760-A.D. 1775

The island of Martinique emerges in tropical luxuriance from the bosom of the Caribbean Sea. A meridian sun causes the whole land to smile in perennial verdure, and all the gorgeous flowers and luscious fruits of the torrid zone adorn upland and prairie in boundless profusion. Mountains, densely wooded, rear their summits sublimely to the skies, and valleys charm the eye with pictures more beautiful than imagination can create. Ocean breezes ever sweep these hills and vales, and temper the heat of a vertical sun. Slaves, whose dusky limbs are scarcely veiled by the lightest clothing, till the soil, while the white inhabitants,