She received her education at the school of Madame Jeanne Campan in St-Germain-en-Laye together with Napoléon's youngest sister Caroline Bonaparte, who later married Joachim Murat.

[3] Hortense was an accomplished amateur musical composer and supplied the army of her stepfather with rousing marches, including Partant pour la Syrie.

She attended official celebrations and ceremonies, visited the marketplaces where she made large purchases, and was much liked by the public, which annoyed her husband.

[4] She remained in France, again pleased by her status as a queen at the French court, until 1810, when Napoléon remarried to Marie Louise of Austria.

She considered this the end of her marriage and left for France shortly before her husband abdicated the throne to their oldest living son, Napoleon-Louis Bonaparte, making him Louis II of Holland.

In 1811, at an unspecified inn in Switzerland, close to Lake Geneva, Hortense gave birth to a son by Comte de Flahaut secretly, Charles Auguste Louis Joseph ( 21 October 1811 - 10 March 1865), created Duke of Morny by his half-brother, Napoléon III, in 1862.

[6] In October that year she went on a pilgrimage to the Benedictine shrine of Our Lady of the Hermits at Einsiedeln Abbey in the Swiss canton of Schwyz.

After renouncing her claims on Charles, she presented a bouquet of diamond hydrangeas to the Virgin and a ring for the abbot, having been blessed, she wrote, with "so many consolations, such happiness at Einsiedeln not to wish that my memory remain there after I had left.

"[7] Hortense de Beauharnais found love for music during her time in boarding school and she became a self-acclaimed amateur composer there (Beaucour, 2007).

Famous contemporary artists like Franz Liszt, Alexandre Dumas, and Lord Byron came to visit and listen to her piano performances.

Hortense’s most famous composition ‘Partant pour la Syrie’ became the national hymn of France after her son Emperor Napoleon III instated it as such.

French composer Camille Saint-Saens quotes “Partant pour la Syrie” in “Fossils” from his Carnival of the Animals.

[2] She states in her memoirs, “Going to one of the mulatto houseservants I announced, ‘John, look at all this money granny gave me for the poor black people.

[11] During her banishment, Hortense began to focus on writing her memoirs, composing and publishing her musical works, drawing, and painting.

[13] They reached Paris later that month, where Hortense discreetly contacted the new King of the French Louis-Philippe asking for passports so that she and her son could travel on to England.

"[13] According to Maxime du Camp, who had access to official dossiers, during his mothers' interview with the king, Louis-Napoleon was observed by authorities meeting with a group of conspirators who were planning to stage a coup to overthrow Louis-Philippe and bring Napoleon II to power.

To further complicate the situation, rumor of Hortense's presence in Paris began to spread, and on 5 May a crowd of Bonapartists came to demonstrate outside her hotel on Place Vendôme, shouting "Vive l'Empereur".