Read Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire Online
Authors: Desmond Seward
Orsini behaved so impressively during his trial that the empress tried, unsuccessfully, to save him from the guillotine, knowing he would be less of a threat in prison than as a martyr. She was no less realistic when it was learned that the plotters had been living in England and had had their bombs made in Birmingham, and she refused to join in the furious outcry in Paris that jeopardised Anglo-French relations. Nor did she lose her head when a jury in London acquitted a Frenchman called Bernard, the brains behind the conspiracy. Britain declined to take further action, even if Palmerston was apologetic. She wrote privately to Lord Cowley, saying that it was not ‘the daily fear of seeing my husband and son struck down in my arms’ which upset her so much as that Bernard’s acquittal gave the impression ‘these men have your moral support’.
In February Napoleon announced that in the event of his death the empress would be Regent. ‘A beautiful woman, a baby in her arms, saving France with the aid of an heroic army, conjures up so moving a picture for Frenchmen that the emperor’s elimination by bomb at any moment has become an almost negligible factor’, laughed the cynical Hübner.
During the plotters’ trial their counsel had read out a letter from Orsini to Napoleon III. ‘Remember, if Italy is not free, then European peace and your Majesty’s own peace of mind are no more than empty dreams.’ Ironically, the emperor agreed – he coveted the role of champion of ‘oppressed nations’. Only Austria, the still mighty central European power that dominated Germany, had a stake in a disunited Italy, occupying Lombardy-Venetia and keeping garrisons in the ‘duchies’ (Tuscany, Parma and Modena) and part of the Papal States. In March 1858, three weeks after Orsini had been guillotined, Eugénie hinted to the Piedmontese ambassador what was in her husband’s mind. Casually, she told him that the Italian peninsula ought to be three kingdoms – north, central and southern. ‘The emperor is warming up for Italy again’, Cowley warned during the same month. ‘Orsini’s letter and the dread of Italian stilettos would some day drag him into action if he knew how to begin.’
Allying with Piedmont was how to begin. There was no doubt that its king, Victor-Emmanuel II, was a joke. ‘I’ve discovered something wonderful’, he had told a lady during a state visit to France in 1855. ‘Parisiennes don’t wear-drawers – heaven has opened before my eyes.’ Clarendon told Cowley that when he read out his dispatch at 10 Downing Street, ‘the roars of laughter in the Cabinet might have been heard at Westminster Bridge’. But behind Victor-Emmanuel was a ruthless minister, Count Cavour.
Napoleon and Cavour met secretly at Plombières in July 1858. Here they agreed that after driving Austria north of the Alps, Piedmont would take Lombardy-Venetia, while the duchies and most of the Papal States would form a new ‘Kingdom of Central Italy’ with Plon-Plon as king. The pope would keep Rome, however, and the king of Naples would be left in peace. France’s reward was to be French-speaking Savoy and Nice – although ‘
Nizza la Dolce
’ was the birthplace of Garibaldi.
The Franco-Piedmontese alliance was cemented by a marriage in January 1859 between Plon-Plon and Victor-Emmanuel’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Princess Clothilde. Few people liked seeing the frail, plain girl sacrificed to such a man. However, Clothilde – very soon a member of Eugénie’s inner circle – was tougher than she looked, a fiercely devout Catholic obsessed with the next world, who treated courtiers with chilling haughtiness.
The emperor then began to see the disadvantages of an Italian war. Cavour had already made Piedmont the most anticlerical state in Europe, dissolving its monasteries, and France’s Catholics were going to be increasingly angered by the alliance, as well as outraged at the seizure of papal territory. The Austrian army, which had
routed the Piedmontese army ten years earlier, knew every inch of the ground – it could defend the wide Lombard rivers or fall back into the fortresses of the Venetian ‘Quadrilateral’.
Although at first Eugénie had welcomed the prospect of liberating Italians from Austrian rule, when the war’s implications sank in, she started to oppose it. She realised that instead of three or four client states it might create a strong, united Italian kingdom capable of allying with France’s enemies, besides threatening the papacy.
Napoleon hoped for a congress of the great European powers that could find a peaceful solution, but in April 1859 Austria sent an ultimatum to Turin and before the end of the month France and Austria were at war. When the emperor rode through Paris at the head of the Cent Gardes to take the train to the front he was cheered, even by workers from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Republicans were delighted, Catholics suspicious. After a tearful farewell, he left Eugénie to govern France as Regent. Without any experience of warfare, he was taking a huge gamble by personally commanding his army in the field. The empress was so worried that as soon as he had left, she drove to five churches in succession to pray for him.
Her prayers were answered, since the Austrians were commanded by the spectacularly inept Count Gyulai. The campaign was over in two months, the French defeating their opponents in two fiercely fought battles, Magenta and Solferino – losses on both sides at Solferino amounted to 6,000 killed and 30,000 wounded or missing. When the casualty reports reached Paris Eugénie was horrified. After driving the Austrians out of Lombardy, however, the French did not fancy attacking the great Quadrilateral which barred their way in Venetia. They also knew that Prussia was mobilising and might enter the war on Austria’s side at any moment. In July Napoleon made peace with Emperor Franz-Joseph at Villafranca. Piedmont received Lombardy, Savoy and Nice going to France, but Austria kept Venetia. Soon, just as Eugénie feared, Piedmont – now the ‘Kingdom of Italy’ – had occupied central Italy including most of the Papal States, and within little more than a year the entire peninsula.
Napoleon led his victorious troops through a cheering Paris, showered with flowers, but although he did not realise it he had won a pyrrhic victory. Far from being grateful, the new ‘Italy’ blamed him for leaving Venice in Austrian hands while the great powers were angry with him for starting a war that might have sengulfed Europe. ‘May God destroy the wicked French’ was Prince Albert’s prayer. The emperor’s dream of a lasting Anglo-French alliance vanished in smoke.
Even so, for the moment Napoleon III appeared to be stronger than ever. This was the zenith of the Second Empire.
Eugénie’s first regency lasted from Napoleon’s departure for the front on 10 May 1859 until his return on 17 July. She then possessed absolute power, chairing the Council of Ministers once a week – Mérimée mentions a meeting that went on for five hours – besides receiving copies of all reports on internal and external affairs. There was no trouble from Plon-Plon, who had been sent to Italy in command of an army corps occupying Tuscany. She enjoyed her duties so much that she said she was afraid of being bored when they came to an end.
‘Since the absence of the Emperor the Councils of Ministers at the Tuileries have not been less frequent than when his Majesty was at Paris’, reported the clearly astonished correspondent of the
Illustrated London News
on 11 June. ‘Each of these Ministerial meetings, which are held in the Salle des Conseils, is presided over by the Empress Regent, who displays the same grace and intelligence in her new position that she has hitherto shown in all those to which her high station has called her.’ The paper published a full-page engraving that showed the extraordinary spectacle of a mid-nineteenth-century woman ruler surrounded by her ministers. ‘All documents hitherto signed by the emperor now bear the sign-manual of the empress Eugénie’, it added. ‘The numerous State occupations of the empress Regent since the departure of her august husband for the seat of war in Italy have not prevented her from pursuing her favourite charitable projects. In a recent visit to the Orphan Asylum, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the whole of the industrial population turned out to give her Majesty a hearty welcome.’
After addressing the Senate and the Corps Législatif at the end of May – receiving an ovation – she spent most of the time at Saint-Cloud, however, only driving into the capital for the meetings of the council or for ‘poor peopling’. She wrote to Paca in Madrid that ‘Paris is absolutely quiet and the mood of France has seldom been
more reassuring.’ There was tremendous interest in the war, with an insatiable demand for newspapers and maps, and rumours of victories aroused wild enthusiasm. Yet she remained very uneasy, worried that Austria might at any moment find formidable allies.
It was a letter from Eugénie that alerted the emperor to danger from the Germanic Confederation (the kingdoms, duchies and free cities comprising Germany, whose senior member was Austria) and, above all, to danger from Prussia. ‘The Germans regard the river Mincio [the Venetian frontier] as crucial for their country’s security’, she explained. ‘That frontier has now been crossed and German public opinion is anxious that something should be done to help Austria.’
Describing how Prussia was exploiting Austria’s difficulties in order to strengthen her own position within the Confederation, she said that Berlin had already demanded the mobilisation of all Federal troops and was insisting they must be placed under Prussian command, despite protests from Vienna. Whatever happened, if the French advanced any further beyond the Mincio a Prussian attack from the Rhineland was certainly on the cards. ‘Feeling is running very high in Germany’, she warned. ‘The old 1813 mentality has re-emerged and no amount of assurances of peaceful intent on your part is going to satisfy Prussia.’ Her assessment was confirmed by reports in the British press that the Confederation would soon assemble 350,000 troops and that Prussia was starting to look like an armed camp.
She also quoted Lord Palmerston – who had recently become prime minister again – as enquiring, ‘Does France really want to establish another Prussia on her south-eastern frontier?’ She commented, ‘Very well put, in my opinion’, and in the same letter she asked her husband bluntly, ‘Will you be able to put a stop to this unity movement?’
Eugénie made the most of any good news from the front. As soon as she received a cable from Napoleon announcing his victory at Magenta, the massed cannon of the Invalides fired salutes while copies of the telegram were distributed to be read out in the Paris streets – ‘A great victory: 5,000 prisoners, 15,000 of the enemy killed or wounded.’ That evening she and Princess Clothilde drove in an open carriage along the boulevards, and were cheered rapturously the whole way. ‘The entire Saint-Germain quarter was illuminated by bonfires and fireworks’, wrote the patriotic Viel
Castel. She had a
Te Deum
sung by the archbishop of Paris at Notre Dame, and asked for one to be sung in every parish church in France. When the captured Austrian colours arrived from Solferino, Eugénie had another
Te Deum
sung at Notre Dame on 3 July, attending it with the three-year-old Prince Imperial. On the way from the Tuileries to the cathedral, their carriage was completely filled with flowers thrown by the crowds.
She kept a watchful eye on the French press, giving a personal warning – delivered one morning by an official from the Ministry of the Interior – to the republican journal
Le Siècle
. Its violently anticlerical editor, who had welcomed the news of risings in the Papal States, received a stern reminder that the Second Empire had every intention of protecting the papacy. As he knew, three such warnings to a paper meant compulsory closure.
The prefects of all departments sent weekly political reports to Paris, which Eugénie read carefully, together with the reports from the police. Apparently, only the most fanatical Legitimists disapproved of the war while the republicans were delighted by it. What shocked her, however, was learning for the first time the sheer intensity of republican hatred for her husband’s régime. Royalists might be won over to an alternative form of monarchy, but clearly republicans would never accept Napoleon III, who during his coup on 2 December 1853, after arresting their leaders in their beds, had ordered his troops to shoot them down in the streets and had then transported thousands to the penal settlements in Algeria or Guyana. ‘You wear the memory of 2 December as if it were a shirt of Nessus’ (the poisoned shirt which nearly killed Hercules), she told the emperor later. ‘Yes, I think of it every day’, was his reply.
While in favour of wooing individual republicans, the empress now became convinced that it would be dangerous – probably suicidal – for Napoleon to try to liberalise the Second Empire, as he was already planning. In her view he was seen as having shed too much blood.
Ferdinand Loliée, at his most insidious, attributes Eugénie’s interest in politics to vanity. ‘To be a decorative sovereign, unfaded by the passing years, still gave her pleasure whenever she looked in the mirror, but it did not flatter her self-importance quite enough’, he sneered. ‘She had to show the world that she had more serious gifts, those of a politician…. How could she hold back so much that was in her – character, imagination, pride at being able to
make her fancies take wing?’ He adds, ‘people were going to experience them and, more than once, regret them’.
In reality, the catalyst had been reports from the prefects and the police revealing to Eugénie the extent of republican hostility, convincing her that the emperor’s plans for a new constitution were flawed. Only by involving herself in politics could she hope to modify them and save the Second Empire for her son. If liberalisation was inevitable, it must wait until the reign of Napoleon IV.
T
HE
S
ECOND
E
MPIRE
M
EANS
P
ROSPERITY
‘The Napoleonic idea is not an idea of war, but a social, industrial, commercial and humanitarian idea’, Napoleon III had argued passionately, even before he achieved power, and he meant every word. He succeeded in ruling France for twenty-one years, longer than has any other man in the country’s modern history.