Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire (14 page)

Throughout the reign republicanism grew among intellectuals and the urban working class under some extremely capable leaders – Ledru-Rollin, Jules Favre, Jules Ferry and, in the final years, Gambetta. The noisiest republican was Victor Hugo (well described by the late Professor Richard Cobb as ‘France’s national bore’), ex-Legitimist, ex-Orleanist and ex-Bonapartist, who ranted from his refuge in the Channel Islands. He denounced the emperor in
Napoleon le petit
as a bloodstained tyrant who had massacred the Parisians during his coup, ‘cheered on from the money-market by Fould the Jew, from the Church by Montalembert the Catholic; cherished by women eager to become whores, by men hoping to be made
prefets
.’

The emperor tried hard to win over as many Legitimists as possible, presenting Bonapartism as an alternative to royalism. He joked that the empress was really a Legitimist – had she married a Frenchman from the old nobility, she might easily have become a passionate supporter of ‘Henri V’. As a good Catholic, she managed to persuade at least some of her co-religionists to vote for her husband.

Politicians rather than idealists, a fair number of Orleanists came over to Napoleon. He also succeeded in converting several leading republicans, men such as Victor Duruy, whom he appointed inspector of schools and later minister for education. Another convert from republicanism was Emile Ollivier, once a savage critic of the régime, who ended up as its first minister.

Since Eugénie did not have a son until 1856, strictly speaking the emperor’s heir was the aged ex-King Jerome, a deplorable old rake who by now was on his last legs. An unmitigated disaster as ruler of Westphalia during the First Empire, his one moment of glory had been at Waterloo where he advised his brother to die on the battlefield, offering to die with him. Between Waterloo and the Second Empire he had lived off women. Created a marshal of France, President of the Senate and Governor of the Invalides, Jerome was given a huge pension and the Palais Royal, the former home of the Orleans family, with twenty-four drawing-rooms.

The obvious heir, however, was Jerome’s son Prince Napoleon –
Plon-Plon. Born in 1822, physically he was the image of his glorious uncle but like him in no other way. Intelligent, often charming, the friend of Georges Sand and Flaubert, he was crippled by a lack of realism and an insane temper. He had developed a curious republican Bonapartism of his own, hoping to succeed his cousin as First Consul like the Bonaparte of 1799, not as emperor, but his radical policies and extreme anticlericalism would have torn the Bonapartist party in half. ‘If ever he comes to the throne, which God forbid, then France will have a bad time of it’, observed Viel Castel in July 1854.

Hübner called Plon-Plon ‘the scourge of the Imperial family’ and he certainly had a very odd relationship with his cousin. Anna Bicknell, a governess at the Tuileries, tells us, ‘He was jealous of the emperor’s pre-eminent position, as of something stolen from himself; but, though in a state of chronic rebellion, he never hesitated to accept all the worldly advantages which the title of “cousin” could obtain for him.’ She adds that ‘his temper was violent and brutal; his tastes were cynically gross, his language coarse beyond what could be imagined….’ More than a few contemporaries confirm her description. ‘He hated the emperor’, Eugénie said of Plon-Plon. ‘He never forgave him for embodying the Napoleonic legend and restoring the Empire.’ He loathed the empress too, because, according to his secretary, he lusted after her and knew he could never get her. Returning his hatred, and probably sensing the reason for it, she invariably treated him with a cold, maddening politeness.

Yet Napoleon forgave Plon-Plon again and again, because he had declined an offer by a group of Bonapartists to make him leader in 1848. Anna Bicknell said he ‘felt a sort of indulgent affection for Prince Napoleon’.

Although Plon-Plon had never seen a shot fired in anger (and had even run away from his military academy as a boy), when the Crimean War broke out he demanded to be made commander-in-chief of the allied forces. The emperor declined, but let him accompany the reserves as a general. As soon as he landed, he wrote telling his father to have a steamer waiting. ‘Should the emperor be assassinated, it would be essential for me to return as quickly as possible.’ The emperor was furious when he heard. The prince speedily earned a reputation for cowardice, his name ‘Plon-Plon’ being changed by the troops to ‘Craint-Plomb’ (frightened of
bullets). ‘The miserable creature may be a prince but he certainly isn’t a Frenchman’, commented Viel Castel.

The ablest Bonaparte was King Jerome’s daughter, Princesse Mathilde, charming, insincere and tough, who lived unhappily with her Dutch lover, ‘Handsome Emilien’, the self-styled Comte de Nieuwerkerker, ignoring his chronic infidelity. A failed sculptor (despite a fine portrait medallion of Eugénie), Nieuwerkerker was made director of the Louvre and superintendent of museums, becoming an important figure in artistic circles. Mathilde’s salon, in the rue de Berry or at her château of Saint-Gratien near Enghien, was genuinely distinguished, including Rossini, Flaubert, Sainte-Beuve, Pasteur and the Goncourts among its regular guests, impressing even Mérimée. Because of her literary friendships she has been portrayed far too sympathetically. ‘You can’t imagine how beautiful she was in the early days of the Empire’, Eugénie is supposed (by Paléologue) to have said of her. ‘She had the profile of a medallion, eyes that really sparkled and shoulders that looked like sculptured marble.’ But photographs of the 1860s show a heavy-jowled, thickset little woman, resembling Plon-Plon in skirts. Mathilde was jealous of Eugénie for taking the position that might have been hers. Despite some fierce arguments she concealed her hatred, while tirelessly slandering and abusing the empress behind her back. Some of her more venomous remarks were recorded with relish by the Goncourt brothers, who were royalists.

There were dozens of imperial relations living in France, each one paid a handsome civil list pension: Bonapartes, Murats, Bacciochis and Primolis. A few were respectable, such as Cardinal Bonaparte, the philologist Prince Lucien Bonaparte (an expert on Basque) or the blue-stocking Comtesse Primoli. Most were worthless, however. After numerous scandals the bullying, duelling and womanising Prince Pierre Bonaparte, popularly known as the ‘Corsican Wild Boar’ was commissioned as a colonel in the Foreign Legion to keep him out of the country, yet somehow he managed to get himself spectacularly cashiered despite his name, and returned to Paris where he married a prostitute.

Several others were almost as embarrassing as Pierre, especially the grandchildren of Caroline Murat and Elisa Bacciochi. Ten Murats were receiving pensions, having rushed back from North America where they had established themselves during the lean years, the biggest nuisance among them being the head of the family, Prince Lucien Murat. More than one diplomatic row was caused by his publicly insisting that he was rightful king of Naples and, untruthfully, that the imperial government supported him – when crippled by gout, the grotesquely fat Lucien had himself carried in a chair to the Folies-Bergère every night. Count Camerata, Elisa’s grandson, lost a fortune gambling on the stock exchange and asked Jerome to help him – the avaricious old king refused, so Camerata shot himself.

Relations like these did serious harm to Napoleon III’s image, and emphasised that the Second Empire depended on his survival. There was an attempt on his life practically every year, although the royalist pretenders had forbidden their supporters to kill him, while few republicans cared to risk ending under the guillotine. The would-be assassins were nearly always Italian ‘patriots’, enraged by his sending troops to defend the Papal States. Hübner saw him in 1855 just after Pianori had shot at him when he was riding down the Champs Elysées. ‘They need a knife if they’re going to hit their mark’, laughed the emperor, but Eugénie was sobbing hysterically.

By February 1855 Napoleon was in despair over the Crimea. Plon-Plon was spreading rumours that Sevastopol was impregnable and that the Anglo-French expedition had failed, while Morny and Fould were urging him to make peace. He was also growing nervous about Austria’s attitude. By March he was seriously thinking of taking command in the Crimea, hoping to win some sort of victory and then ship his army back to France to deal with any crisis that might threaten – he would rely on a naval blockade to bring Sevastopol to its knees.

Eugénie was horrified. What if he should be defeated in the Crimea? She was delighted when, to dissuade him, the British government invited the emperor and empress to visit England in April as guests of Queen Victoria.

T
HE
V
ISIT TO
E
NGLAND

The Victorians remembered Napoleon I rather as we do Hitler and regarded France as a land of frog-eating maniacs. They were astonished to learn that ‘Boney’s’ nephew was coming to England, Prince Albert commenting privately that George III’s ghost must be turning in its grave. (The dear old king had been in the habit of
asking the boys at Eton, ‘I hope you hate the French?’) France was no less astounded by the prospect of her emperor being welcomed by her ancient enemies. If the prime minister, Lord Palmerston, deserved credit for so imaginative an invitation, so did Napoleon III for accepting it.

Queen Victoria was less than enthusiastic. One of her aunts, the late Queen Louise of Belgium, had been a daughter of Louis-Philippe, a king whom Victoria had always respected. ‘The emperor’s reception here ought to be a boon to him and not a boon to us’, she wrote tartly to her foreign minister.

The emperor and empress set sail from Calais on 16 April 1855 on board the
Pélican
, a fast mail-steamer, accompanied by the
Pétrel
which carried Eugénie’s hairdresser M. Félix together with her wardrobe and jewel boxes. Thick fog descended during the crossing, and Eugénie was sick. Met at Dover by Prince Albert, who accompanied them for the rest of the journey, they went on by royal train to London, where they alighted at a long-forgotten station (Bricklayers’ Arms, in the Old Kent Road) and then, in an open carriage with an escort from the Household Cavalry, drove across London to Paddington, to board another royal train for Windsor. The empress’s tact in wearing a tartan dress was much appreciated, as was the friendly way she waved back; the cheering crowds grew so out of hand that the party was held up for two hours.

Queen Victoria and her children greeted them at Windsor Castle. She may have been a dumpy little woman, but her dignity was overwhelming. The exhausted Eugénie was then horrified to learn that the
Pétrel
had been delayed – not only was Félix unavailable, but she would have to go down to dinner without her jewels. She borrowed a plain blue silk dress from one of her ladies, who did their best with her hair, a bunch of forget-me-nots replacing the jewels. Such simplicity charmed her hosts, however, and the queen began to refer to ‘the dear sweet Empress’ in her diary. Noticing how nervous she was, Victoria explained to Napoleon that Eugénie did not find her position easy, ‘from not having been brought up to it’.

Next morning the emperor was made a Knight of the Garter in St George’s Chapel. ‘At last I am a gentleman,’ he joked. An accomplished flatterer, he soon captivated the very human Victoria, with his quiet manner and good humour – ‘his voice is low and soft’, she observed. He told her, ‘I feel bound to Your Majesty for ever’, adding that no one could spend a few days with herself and
Albert without succumbing to the charm of ‘the happiest of families’. In the fascinated queen’s view, he possessed ‘indomitable courage, unflinching firmness of purpose, self-reliance, perseverance, and great secrecy; to this should be added great reliance on what he calls his
Star
.’ Her analysis was not far from the truth.

In the evening there was a state banquet, and then a ball in the Waterloo Gallery – tactfully renamed for the evening. Victoria danced happily with ‘the nephew of our great enemy, the emperor, now my most firm ally …’. She grew enchanted by the empress, ‘so gentle, graceful and kind, and so modest and retiring’. She had already endeared herself by playing with the royal children and ‘talked away to me with Spanish liveliness.’ Victoria noted that Albert liked and admired Eugénie in a way he did very few women.

Next day the royal family took their guests to London, where they stayed at Buckingham Palace. Driving through wildly cheering crowds, the emperor and empress lunched at the Guildhall with the Lord Mayor, and went to the opera in the evening, the imperial anthem ‘Partant pour la Syrie’, being played with real enthusiasm on both occasions. Everybody raved about Eugénie except for Benjamin Disraeli, who disliked both her looks (‘Chinese eyes’) and her manner (‘too natural for a sovereign’). Victoria and Albert saw them off at the station when they left for France on 21 April. The fourteen-year-old Princess Royal, who had become devoted to the empress, wept when they said goodbye; the queen herself had moist eyes. After the carriage door had been shut, Napoleon reopened it and jumped out in tears, flinging his arms around Victoria and kissing her on both cheeks.

The French were delighted by the visit’s success. ‘The emperor and empress returned from London today’, Hübner noted sourly. ‘People say they are intoxicated by the tremendous welcome they received from John Bull.’ Napoleon was convinced the Anglo-French alliance would continue and that he had overthrown the anti-French peace settlement of 1815.

Pianori’s attempt at assassination in May brought home to the emperor that the Second Empire depended entirely on his survival and he abandoned any thought of visiting the Crimea. It meant leaving Plon-Plon in charge and the Prince was unreliable. The war dragged on.

V
ICTORIA AND
A
LBERT IN
P
ARIS

On 18 August – the feast day of St Helena, Comte Horace de Viel Castel observed – Queen Victoria and Prince Albert sailed into Boulogne, with the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal. They were met by the emperor who rode with them to the station where they boarded a train for Paris. Arriving when it was nearly dark at the Gare de Strasbourg (now Gare de l’Est), the royal party drove in six carriages (the sovereigns with the Princess Royal in the first, the fourteen-year-old Prince of Wales with Plon-Plon in the second), along the boulevards and the Champs Elysée, across the Bois de Boulogne, to the lovely château of Saint-Cloud in the countryside. Troops lined the entire route. A crowd 800,000 strong, some standing on the rooftops, cheered them in the dusk, waving banners with greetings in English. The empress was waiting for them at Saint-Cloud, where their rooms were hung with Gobelins tapestries and Lyons silks, furnished with the finest Louis XV or Louis XVI cabinets, with Flemish or Venetian old masters.