During the French Revolution Madame Campan’s sister, who was also a lady of the bedchamber for Marie-Antoinette, was terrified of being guillotined and threw herself out of a window. Madame Campan had to raise her sister’s three daughters. She set up a girls’ boarding school at Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Hortense became close friends with the youngest of Madame Campan’s nieces, who married one of Napoleon’s military commanders Marshal Ney and became a lady-in-waiting to both Josephine and Marie-Louise.
Napoleon had been impressed by what he had seen at the school. Normally girls were educated at convents but they had been closed by the French Revolution.
When Napoleon decided to set up schools for girls he appointed Madame Campan who became responsible for a boarding school for the daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters of men who had been awarded the Legion of Honour. It was the first of a number of schools for girls set up by Napoleon.
