Alexandre François Marie, Viscount of Beauharnais (; 28 May 1760 – 23 July 1794) was a French politician and general of the French Revolution. He was the first husband of Joséphine Tascher de La Pagerie, who later married Napoleon Bonaparte and became empress of France. Beauharnais was executed by guillotine during the Reign of Terror.
Family
Beauharnais was born to the noble Beauharnais family in Fort-Royal (now Fort-de-France), Martinique, in the French West Indies. He was the son of Governor François de Beauharnais, Marquis de La Ferté-Beauharnais, and Marie Anne Henriette Françoise Pyvart de Chastullé. On 13 December 1779 in Paris, he married Joséphine Tascher de la Pagerie, the future Empress of France. They had two children, Eugène (1781–1824) and Hortense (1783–1837), but, while he assumed legal paternity of Hortense, when his wife announced him the birth he wrote her that he knew for certain that the baby was the result of adultery.
Career
thumb|upright|Alexandre-Francois-Marie, Vicomte de Beauharnais by [[Georges Rouget (1834)|left]]
Beauharnais began his military career in an infantry regiment at Martinique. He served in the American Revolutionary War under the Count of Rochambeau, and became acquainted with the court of King Louis XVI upon his return to France.