Marie-Josephe-Rose de Taschenr de La Pagerie, best remembered as Josephine, and Napoleon Bonaparte had a famously explosive relationship – and their bedroom adventures fascinated France – and historians to this day.
Now fans of Ridley Scott’s blockbuster, which reimagines Napoleon’s (Joaquin Phoenix) wedding to Josephine (Vanessa Kirby), have turned up the intrigue.
But there’s one element history buffs have yet to crack: Josephine’s famous “zigzag” technique. The method left the French military commander paralyzed and pining for his wife in the bedroom after their divorce, but what was behind it remains a complete mystery.
FEMAIL put British sex expert Tracey Cox to the test and she appears to have settled the age-old question of how the ‘zigzag’ technique got the revolutionary leader under the collar.
Josephine’s famous “zigzag” technique in the bedroom has baffled historians. FEMAIL put Tracye Cox to the test. Pictured above is Ridley Scott’s new interpretation, starring Vanessa Kirby as Josephine and Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon
Napoleon was naive and inexperienced with the opposite sex and reportedly lost his virginity in a Parisian brothel, although it took four attempts.
When he met Josephine, who was six years his senior, she introduced him to a world of sensual pleasure, including a sexual technique said to be called “zigzag.”
Historians have struggled to understand what this technique might entail, but sex expert Tracey Cox has finally provided answers.
“It must have to do with oral sex,” Tracey told FEMAIL.
Tracey argues that it would make more sense if Napoleon used this method on Josephine because “the zigzag movement of the tongue means you are making sure you stimulate all areas of the clitoris, rather than just focusing on one spot and staying there. “
However, the method could also be used in reverse.
Tracey added: “Perhaps she did this while giving him oral sex, moving her tongue in zigzags over the glans, the most sensitive part of the penis, making sure she was targeting the frenulum, which is the most sensitive part of the glans represents.”
The “zigzag” technique fascinated Napoleon, but the French commander never revealed details of the technique, which caused excitement among history buffs
Napoleon, pictured at the top of his imperial throne in 1804, was six years younger than his wife Josephine
Josephine, pictured above in 1805, was born in 1763 on the tiny Caribbean island of Martinique
Ridley Scott’s blockbuster film, which documents their romance, will once again put the spotlight on their passionate relationship.
Born in Martinique, Josephine was previously married to Viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais and they shared two children, although it was certainly not a love marriage.
The couple separated after she moved to France when Josephine was 22, a decade before she met Napoleon during the “Reign of Terror” while she was in prison awaiting his execution – a period of the French Revolution in which aristocrats and Landowners were subjected to violent persecution.
Alexandre, her estranged husband, was executed, but Josephine was saved when Robespierre, the architect of the revolution, was deposed.
Joaquin Phoenix in the title role delivers an enigmatic, murmuring performance that leaves you wondering, even after two and a half hours, what Napoleon is all about
However, their survival brought benefits, pushing them back into the social scene while the aristocrats enjoyed the fruits of their freedom.
She met an older man, Paul Barras, commander of the Interior Army, who was grooming a protégé for power, Napoleon Bonaparte.
When Barras introduced Josephine to Napoleon, she assured the younger man that she deeply admired him, and he completely believed her and fell deeply in love with her.
When they first made love in 1795, he wrote to her, dating the note at “seven o’clock in the morning” and revealing: “I woke up full of you.” The memory of yesterday’s intoxicating evening leaves my senses no rest.
“Sweet and incomparable Josephine… I draw from your lips and your heart a flame that burns me.” I will see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amore [my sweet love]Thousands of kisses, but don’t kiss me, for your kisses set my soul on fire.’
They married in a low-key ceremony two days before Napoleon set out to conquer Italy in March 1796, making her Empress Joséphine, the first empress of France.
Their relationship was stormy and in 1810 he divorced her in favor of Marie Louise, 18, daughter of Emperor Francis I of Austria, after she failed to produce an heir.