A privileged childhood immersed in the cult of Napoleon
Eugenie was born on 5 May 1826 in Granada. Despite a rather eventful birth (as an earthquake was shaking Andalusia, her mother had to give birth in a tent in the garden), Eugenie’s childhood was an easy one. Her father, Don Cipriano, who had been removed from power by Ferdinand VII, had been a supporter of the reign of Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and of the Empire more generally – he had even lost an eye at the arsenal of Seville when serving as Joseph’s Colonel and had participated in the defence of Paris in 1814. He did not renounce his beliefs and went on to be part of the movement hostile to Ferdinand VII which demanded a constitutional monarchy. In 1817, he married the mother of Eugenie, Maria Manuela, herself the daughter of a liberal, wealthy Scottish merchant. Don Cipriano came back into Ferdinand’s favour in 1832 after the Spanish king, who had no male heir, had to conciliate the Liberals in order to fend off his own his brother Carlos from the throne. After the death of Don Cipriano’s elder brother, Eugenie’s father inherited the title of Count of Montijo. At last the family began to go up in the world, and indeed the inheritance would allow it to have enough resources to leave Spain for France in 1835, just at the moment of a large cholera outbreak in Spain.
An adolescence between worldliness and introspection
Eugenie was sent to the Paris Couvent du Sacré-Coeur (convent of the Sacred Heart), registered under the name of “Palafox”. She was neither a diligent nor disciplined student. Her mother entertained at home in Paris at 37 rue de la Ville-l’Eveque; indeed the young Eugenie would have seen a number of artists of the time paying visits to her parents, some of whom were even occasionally her tutors: the writer Mérimée, a family friend ever since his visit to Spain, began a real friendship with this youngster who was much too lively for the other children of her own age. Stendhal, who was introduced to the family by Mérimée, would also pay homage to Eugenie and to her older sister, Paca, in a cryptic footnote placed during his account of Waterloo in “The Charterhouse of Parma”.
When her father, Don Cipriano, died in Madrid on 15 March 1839, Eugénie was 13, and the following years, back in Spain, were devoted to consolidating her education as best as could be hoped in the circumstances. Her introverted but excessive character came violently to the fore during the engagement of her older sister to the Duc d’Albe for whom Eugenie also had amorous feelings. This impossible passion culminated in a distraught love letter to her cousin the Duke, and the wedding was postponed twice over two years… there was even rumour of a suicide attempt.
Eugenie became a pretty young woman who loved theatre, dances, although she did not think much of music and definitely was not planning to get married. In 1847, she was able to take the first title of her father, becoming Countess of Teba, and became lady in waiting to the Queen of Spain. She refused to marry the Duc d’Ossuna, first Duke of Spain. In the autumn of 1848, when she returned to France at the instigation of her mother after rumours of further suicide attempts, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte had been elected President.
First meeting with Louis-Napoleon and then marriage with … Napoleon III
Eugenie was a regular at the salon of Princess Mathilde from her return in 1849. She made the acquaintance of Mathilde’s cousin Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte on one occasion in Paris and then saw him again at Saint-Cloud, on his invitation. During this second meeting, she put the President at a distance, handing his arm to her mother and instead taking that of Felix Bacciochi, the king’s cousin and future grand chamberlain under the Second Empire. To escape cholera, her mother took her to Brussels, Madrid and then London. When she returned in the autumn of 1851 Louis-Napoleon was about to make his coup d’état of 2 December. They saw each other again only the following year, on an unspecified date, and it would appear from the comments of Princess Mathilde (who had herself formerly been engaged to her cousin) that Eugenie was less unfriendly than in previous meetings: “back from Spain, Mademoiselle Eugenie was in a calmer disposition, she became closer to the Elysée; she stopped frequenting the friends who were not those of the Prince… This year she appeared considerably more attractive and was very attentive to me. I entertained every evening; I gave balls and concerts to which the Prince came very often. None of their goings-on escaped me, on either side. I saw their quarrels, reconciliations, the little notes passed back and forth.”
After becoming Emperor of the French, Napoleon III became quite impatient to conclude his plans to marry Eugenie, despite the hostility of his family and his ministers. His cousin Walewski, French ambassador in London, encouraged him to marry the Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, niece of Queen Victoria. Faced with the reluctance of the German family to accept this marriage, Napoleon hesitated no longer and, on 15 January 1853, asked Eugenie’s mother for her daughter’s hand in marriage. On 22 January, before all the organs of government, he officially announced his wedding plans. In that speech, Napoleon III declared in no uncertain terms that he was breaking with the habits of previous kingdoms in which the heirs to the crown had sought in vain “for several years the alliance of a sovereign house and managed, it is true, to obtain an accomplished princess, but only one of secondary rank and another religion”. In this way Napoleon III implicitly distanced himself from the Bourbons, whose crown prince had, in 1837, married Duchess Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a Protestant princess of lesser rank; by taking this stance – that is, not trying at all costs to achieve a union of this sort – he claimed to be more “revolutionary”. But, he also put forward the importance of his and his wife’s shared Catholic faith, a faith that would ultimately become the source of criticism against Eugenie, since she was later often accused of espousing the Ultramontane Catholic party and of exhibiting extreme bigotry. The Civil marriage was celebrated on 29 January 1853 at the Tuileries Palace; and the religious ceremony the next day at Notre Dame, without pulling in the crowds. The marriage even attracting sardonic jokes surrounding the virginity of the bride: then again, the people of Paris had always loved to criticise their queens…
Eugenie’s role as Empress: “the ornament of the throne”
In Napoleon III’s statement to the organs of government Eugenie was described as “the ornament of the throne”; her main tasks were to be “Catholic and pious” and “graceful and good [thereby restoring] the virtues of the Empress Josephine.” Napoleon III himself put forward again the importance of his wife’s pious character. Why? Besides the fact that the population over which he ruled was predominantly Catholic and hoped a sovereign would bring stability to the kingdom including in the area of religion, Napoleon III was probably also thinking of the social role that he wanted Eugenie to play.
He needed a wife who would give the impression of being close to the people, and Eugenie really did get involved in social issues, some of which becoming her favourite charities. These include her impeccable management of the Société Maternelle (Maternal Society), a charitable institution created by Marie-Antoinette that had since fallen into disuse; her visits to cholera patients during the epidemics of 1865 and 1866; and her interest in improving the lot of the young inmates of the Petite Roquette prison. Her social actions sometimes even veered on the feminist, including her patronage of the sculptor Camille Claudel, and her nomination of the Republican George Sand to the Académie française [the prestigious French Academy] or her defence of Charles Baudelaire’s collection of poems “Les Fleurs du mal” (“Flowers of Evil”, which was eventually censored). Her support for Julie Victoire Daubié, the first woman teacher to take the French Baccalauréat exam is further evidence of these concerns. Eugenie took advantage of one of her three Regencies to award the Légion d’Honneur to artist Rosa Bonheur in 1865. Beyond these isolated gestures, her support of the reforms of Victor Duruy in favour of education for girls was a true legacy to French society to this day.
The reference to “Josephine” in the attributes of the Empress was obviously more revealing of the high society role that was expected of her. She showed skill and intelligence in the art of conversation and entertaining at the Palace of Compiegne, as is testified by Émile Ollivier, whose compliment was nevertheless tinged with criticism: according to him, the Empress possessed the spirit of “a heroine of Cervantes”: spontaneous, carried away, and sometimes … irrelevant. Eugenie herself even regretted often opening her mouth too fast. But her ease in court management essentially contributed to the “Fête Imperiale” (“Imperial Feast”). Everyone noted her taste and talent for fashion, even though some critics like Maxime Du Camp called her the “Fée chiffon” (“Chintzy Fairy”). Indeed, Eugenie was a worthy successor to Josephine in her ability to “set the tone” during the reign of Napoleon III.
A wife of influence or her husband’s puppet?
Outside these areas, the role of the Empress was very limited: her first task – accomplished not without difficulty – was to produce an heir to the throne. After a first miscarriage, she gave birth to the Prince Imperial, on 16 March 1856.
According to the historian William Smith, the wife of Napoleon III was possibly a messenger of the Emperor in her exchange of letters, but had no direct influence on the decisions that he took alone. Thus, Queen Victoria writing to the King of the Belgians, in May 1859 suggested that Eugenie had not sought to aggravate conflict between Austria and France over Italy: “It is not true that the Empress was so warlike; Lord Cowley [Wellington’s nephew and British ambassador to France from 1852 to 1867] says, on the contrary, she is very unhappy about it”.
Émile Ollivier confirmed in 1910 that “the Empress was very Catholic, but not fanatical and not at all dominated by the Jesuits or Ultramontanes. With respect to the Pope and the Papacy, her policy was the same as that of Thiers and of all Catholics”. Likewise, her role in the Mexican expedition was non-existent according to William Smith. Eugenie was certainly surrounded by a small Mexican entourage which would have lobbied for intervention in Mexico. With her Catholicism and Spanish origins the Empress had an incentive to put pressure on Napoleon III to create a new Catholic state which would help bring the Pope onto his side regarding the Italian campaign. But, Napoleon III turned a deaf ear to this suggestion, until the British government of its own accord found an interest in jointly mounting this expedition with France.
Her role in the outbreak of war in July 1870 was no more decisive even though the Empress did make a speech in favour of the war. A rumour nevertheless would exaggerate the importance and the violence of her speech. La Volonté Nationale, a newspaper favourable to the Prince Napoleon, claimed that she had exclaimed: “This is my war!” which Eugenie denied. Of her three regencies, the last was perhaps the most fatal to her reputation because of the way it ended. The Empire weakened by military defeats, had already caused the downfall of long-time Minister Ollivier. The mixed bag of opposition was united on one thing: to demand the departure of the reigning dynasty after the imprisonment of Napoleon III in Germany on 2 September. Eugenie complied by leaving the Tuileries on 4 September. This action would later contribute to her “black legend”, whether on the part of the Orleanists, the liberals or even the Bonapartists … who accused her of treason.
The black legend of Eugenie? Real enmity originating from the Bonaparte family
Eugenie was not a politician. She claimed, in a letter to the Prince Napoleon, that she would never allow herself to be, “I have never been – and probably will never be – a political woman. I have no sympathy for such a creature, but if duty obliged me to be one, my influence (which the Emperor could not stand in any case) would be non-existent”. The person to whom this letter is addressed is revealing: ever since the marriage of Napoleon III and Eugenie, Prince Napoleon and the Bonaparte family believed Napoleon had married beneath him, and so they contributed to the reputation of Eugenie as a frivolous fool. Throughout the reign of Napoleon III, there had been continual incidents of opposition and harassment. The very night of the birth of the Prince Imperial, Prince Napoleon wrote: “I’m going home, I kiss my father [Jerome Bonaparte, brother of Napoleon], still very sick, who is making an effort to hide his pain and kisses me warmly and with agitation. What we both think and feel does not need to be expressed and we are not going to talk about it”. This remark was an eloquent summary of the low esteem in which he held the progenitor of the dynasty; indeed it put the Prince Napoleon even more at a distance from any possible succession to the throne.
Another episode was to illustrate the friction between Eugenie and the opposition leader of the Bonaparte clan. While Napoleon III was in Algeria, in 1865, the Prince Napoleon took advantage of the inauguration in Ajaccio of a monument (in memory of Napoleon I and his four brothers) to deliver a speech about libertarian values and against the temporal power of the Pope. Eugénie who was acting as Regent prohibited the publication of his speech in the official newspaper Le Moniteur, and Napoleon III went on to publish in that newspaper a letter addressed to his cousin, severely reprimanding him for his speech. This stormy episode provoked the resignation of Prince Napoleon from the vice-presidency of the Privy Council and from the Presidency of the “Commission Impériale de l’Exposition Universelle” of 1867. It was not without significance that the Prince Napoleon had sought to challenge Napoleon III in his absence and during the Regency of the Empress who was, as he knew well, a devout Catholic. “Plon-Plon” (as he was known) was surely trying to “test” Eugenie, who reacted cautiously by freezing the publication of the Prince’s speech and leaving Napoleon to bring the sanctions he wanted. This episode demonstrates particularly well the difficult relations that prevailed between the three of them which contributed to the bad reputation of Eugenie, even after her death, within the Bonaparte family, which held her responsible not only for a bad marriage, but indeed the fall of the Empire and even the death of the Prince Imperial.
Exile, the death of the Prince Imperial and then shattered silence
From the beginning of her exile, Eugenie settled in Camden Place in Chislehurst in Britain, at the suggestion of the deposed Emperor. She resisted the temptation to respond to the insults directed at the former Imperial couple, whether from France or elsewhere in Europe. “A monarch, or an Emperor moreover, would only demean himself by seeking to exculpate himself because, by doing so, he would be pleading his cause against his own people.” After the death of Napoleon III in 1873, Eugenie’s sole purpose became to support and defend the Prince Imperial, the sole heir of the dynasty, and she communicated with as many Bonapartists as possible to this end. After the Prince Imperial finished his education, Eugenie sent the youngest representative of the lineage on a tour of Europe in order to defend his birthright … The Prince Imperial on the other hand, believed his claim to the throne of France had to be won through military glory. His involvement with British troops in South Africa in 1879, against the pleas of his mother, would prove fatal.
From this tragic moment on, Eugénie’s ardent Catholic faith evolved into a form of pious and silent dolorism or exaltation of suffering. The pilgrimage to Zululand in the footsteps of her only son in March 1880; the move to the Farnborough estate which provided land suitable to build an abbey as a shrine to her husband and her child (which would also be used as a hospital between 1914 and 1918); and, most of all, her wish to be left in peace, are evidence of the profound change in her almost penitential lifestyle. The beauty of the house she had built at the Cap Saint-Martin – with the authorisation of the French government who no longer saw her as a threat – and the many trips she continued to make to Europe in the early twentieth century did not change her existence essentially. One of her last – and perhaps most important? – political interventions was to forward to French President Georges Clemenceau a letter from the German Emperor, William I, written on 25 October 1870. In it, the German sovereign recognised that the only grounds for the invasion of Alsace-Lorraine had been military and not the attachment of an ethnically-German region with its confederation. The letter crucially allowed Clemenceau to present to the allies an argument for the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France after the First World War. Eugenie was to die less than two years later, in Madrid on 11 July 1920, at the home of her nephew the Duke of Alba. She was 94 years old.
Marie de Bruchard, August 2015
(Translation: R. Young)