Eugenie, the last empress of France

Eugenie de Montijo was the last sovereign of the French. The widow of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who disappeared a hundred years ago, was adulated by her subjects before being hated for her political choices. In this new episode of "At the heart of history", produced by Europe 1 Studio, Jean des Cars tells you the story of the Empress Eugenie. 

We are at the Château de Compiègne, on a Sunday in the summer of 1910. It is very hot. A little apart from the visitors, four people, slowly advance in the palace, towards a guide who awaits the group for the visit. Two gentlemen, wearing a boater, accompany two women in black. One of them, her face hidden by a long black veil, walks painfully, leaning on the other's arm. She hesitates before continuing ... 

In front of the interior shutter of a window, it stops. She seems to fix an inscription: "Louis, March 10, 1866" ... Suddenly, she bursts into sobs, seems on the verge of uneasiness. We ask for a chair. A guard brings one, a lady from the locker room arrives with a glass of water. The visitor sits down. This woman is surely a victim of heat stroke. She raises her veil to drink. Her face is free. The couple of employees back off a little and, amazed, murmurs this incredible word: "The Empress! It's the Empress!"

A small group scrutinizes her. Yes, it was Empress Eugenie, the forgotten survivor of the Second Empire. She had never returned to Compiègne since the spring of 1870, this Compiègne where she was the mistress of the house who received during the famous "series", in the fall. It was before the catastrophe, the war against Prussia, Sedan, the capitulation of the Emperor, his captivity, the fall, the flight and the exile in England thanks to Queen Victoria. 

But on this summer Sunday, the Empress does not suffer from the heat. She suffers from her memories, in particular from her son, Louis, nicknamed Loulou, her only child, who died in southern Africa. He was killed by Zulu warriors after enlisting, against his mother's advice, in the British army which was then waging a colonial war. And this date on the shutter, March 10, 1866, was the day of his ten years, when his mother had measured his height with a height rod. Instead of the shutter, there was then a door: it was that of the room of Louis, who liked to go out easily in the park. Louis, who was called the Prince Imperial, the hope of the Bonaparte dynasty. 

The chief curator of the museum is warned of the coming of Eugenie this summer Sunday. The event will remain very little known. So, forty years later, Eugenie, the Spaniard returned. We didn't talk about her, she didn't get noticed. The Republicans had recognized his courage and his discretion. Many people thought she was dead. No. She was the ghost of Compiègne, the heroine of a romantic, painful and courageous existence. A lived novel of ninety four years.

An Andalusian born during an earthquake

Eugénie de Guzmàn y Palafox was born in Andalusia, in Granada, on May 5, 1826. The French called her Eugénie de Montijo, confusing her surname and the title of her father's brother. Precisely, his father, what a character! Don Cipriano is, in the years 1805-1815, one of the few Spaniards favorable to Napoleon. He had fought at Trafalgar, alongside the French. There was lost an eye and normal use of the left arm. In 1814, in Paris, he participated in the defense of the capital, but the Cossacks of Tsar Alexander I took over the capital. 

Eugenie's mother Manuela is the daughter of a wealthy Scottish wine merchant. She has a solid common sense, a little fortune and she is very cultured. She already has a daughter, Paca. For Eugenie, childbirth takes place in the middle of a garden in the middle of an earthquake, as there is often in this region. From this birth in spectacular conditions, Eugenie will claim that she remained traumatized by the angers of nature. She will say: "I cannot express the terror caused by lightning and thunder". It's strange because all her life, this woman will be very courageous, including during cholera epidemics. 

His mother flees the dynastic war which ravages Spain. With her daughters, she travels around Europe and often comes to Paris. She has two friends, whom she invites to a chocolate shop on rue du Bac. One of them, fat, with a beard collar, tells of the imperial epic and the battle of Waterloo. He witnessed it. His name is Henry Beyle but he is known by the pseudonym of Stendhal. The other man, very thin, is Prosper Mérimée, passionate about Spain where he traveled.

Eugenie listens to them with passion. She has a whimsical, impetuous, stubborn character. She is pious but also superstitious. Although her education is quite superficial, she speaks several languages. Tall, she looks great. Her intriguing mother seeks to marry her daughters. Eugenie, very courted, leaves her sister, Paca, to marry the Duke of Alba, bearer of the most prestigious title of the Spanish aristocracy. Manuela takes care of marrying her second daughter. She is looking for a glorious party. 

His meeting with Louis-Napoléon

In 1849, during a military review, the young Eugenie was skillfully placed by her mother to attract the attention of Prince Louis-Napoleon, who had become, the year before, the first President of the French Republic. A Bonaparte at the Élysée, an incredible adventure! Eugenie is fascinated. She is 23 years old, he is 52. He speaks with a Swiss German accent. This conspirator lived in prison, escaped, was exiled and, returning to France, won the presidential election by a large majority. Nephew of Napoleon, he embodies a nostalgia, imperial continuity. 

Like many men, the President is under the spell of Eugenie. He admires the oval shape of his face, his transparent complexion, his reddish hair and the shape of his shoulders. Very quickly, the President with multiple female adventures seeks to review the beautiful Eugenie. He invites him, with his mother, to the Elysée celebrations. He traps her to be alone with her. Eugenie does not yield to him: at 13 years old, a gypsy had predicted to him: "You will go very high!". The President ends up asking him how he can get to his room. She replied: "By the chapel". In other words, through marriage. 

However, in the Bonaparte family, of Princess Mathilde, cousin of the President whom she almost married, to Prince Napoleon, all opposed this union. The government too.

Eugenie feels humiliated. She announces her departure from Paris. When the Empire was restored on December 2, 1852 and approved by plebiscite, the new Emperor finally decided to request the hand of Eugenia from his mother, on January 12, 1853. On the 29th, the civil marriage was celebrated in the Tuileries, the ceremony nun takes place the next day, at Notre-Dame. On the forecourt, the crowd cheers Eugenie. She makes a superb reverence to the people. The popular fervor is real while the old aristocracy and the bourgeoisie laugh at this union. After Josephine, after Marie-Louise, the French have a new empress, already nicknamed the Spanish, as we had nicknamed Marie-Antoinette the Austrian. In this early 1853, the prediction of the gypsy is carried out. Europe is amazed. 

Very popular in its early days

During the first years of the reign, despite the disparaging caricatures in the newspapers, the Empress was highly respected by the population. The Emperor asserts himself as the renovator of France and Eugenie, by her beauty, her generosity and her charity, is very popular. The Imperial Festival now takes place at the Tuileries. Eugenie says she feels "caged" there but she is a remarkable hostess. With a frozen obstinacy, the empress takes care that the ceremonial and the customs are respected to impose some on the proponents of the old monarchy. 

A social columnist will write: "The Label, we wanted it all the more strict as it was of recent date. The Empress watched over it more jealously than the Emperor. Napoleon III, with his usual air of indifference, would have turned a blind eye to a breach of the formula, or perhaps he would not have only seen it. Eugenie did not admit omission, in a chapter which was close to her heart for the triple reason that she was a woman, Spanish and princess of fortune. "

If women, especially the wives of diplomats compete in elegance, it is because the Empress, supported by Napoleon III, launched an activity that combines fashion and trade: it is Haute Couture. An Englishman, Mr. Worth, who worked for silks in Lyon, supplies the Imperial Court. The province and soon all of Europe wants to dress "like in Paris". And for more modest budgets, here are the Department Stores, like the Bon Marché. You enter it without having to buy. And we can exchange an article! A revolution ! Parisian life becomes a reality.

The capital itself is in the midst of a transformation with the gigantic works that Napoleon III instructed the Prefect Haussmann to carry out. Paris must be a modern, clean city, well lit at night. The imperial couple passed Paris from the time of Balzac and Eugène Sue to that of Offenbach and Zola. 

Eugenie is very attentive to these spectacular transformations but also to the feminine condition. Through a discreet door leading to the Seine quay, she leaves the Tuileries in an anonymous cab, only accompanied by a lady-in-waiting. She visits orphanages and helps so-called "bad life" women at Saint-Lazare prison. The City of Paris having offered her a sumptuous necklace, she sold it to endow a foundation in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine which allows young girls to learn a trade.  

For the most disadvantaged families, the imperial couple creates the "Fourneaux Economiques", forgotten ancestors of our Restos du Coeur. In 1865, the empress herself awarded the Legion of Honor for the first time to a woman, the animal painter Rosa Bonheur, who lives and works in Seine and Marne. When Gustave Flaubert is prosecuted for his book "Madame Bovary", Eugénie invites the author to Compiègne, which he will forget ...

The Empress has esteem and affection for her husband. Although flirtatious, she is faithful to him. The Emperor, however, will not prevent himself from having mistresses. Eugenie, jealous, accommodates less and less of this situation, sometimes with anger, sometimes with humor. Thus, discovering the portrait of a new conquest on the desk of Napoleon III, she breaks it and launches: "From now on, you will have to be satisfied with the original!"

And when she admires the painting by Winterhalter, the painter of the courts of Europe, entitled "The Empress Eugenie and her ladies in waiting", she says: "I wonder which one did not sleep with the Emperor ... "

Eugenie falls into political traps

The big question that agitates public opinion, in particular the republican and sarcastic opposition, is this: what next? What will be the succession? Eugenie achieves an exploit: at the time when is held in Paris the Congress of Peace which balances the Crimean War which is a victory for France, the empress gives birth to a boy, March 16, 1856. It is the Prince Imperial. The popularity of Eugenie goes up again since the future of the dynasty is assured. Reinforced in her status, the Empress took an interest in politics. Napoleon III sees no objection. Better still: he trusted her and entrusted her with the regency, with all the constitutional powers, on several occasions, especially when he left for Italy in 1859 and then when he left for Algeria in 1865.  

But Eugenie will make a serious mistake. It will push the French intervention in Mexico. Napoleon III supports François-Joseph's younger brother, Maximilien, who became emperor of Mexico. It will be a tragic fiasco. The Mexican failure pits opinion against it. Now she becomes "L'Espagnole" again. In addition, she brought the Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI style back into fashion in part of the Tuileries. It is obviously a fault that opinion cannot forgive.

However, it was popular again when, in 1869, it was it that inaugurated the Suez Canal built, after years of effort, by Ferdinand de Lesseps, one of his distant cousins. This work, worthy of Pharaonic times, brings exceptional prestige to France. Egyptology, a French passion thanks to Bonaparte, is growing from a revolution in the world maritime trade.

When the Franco-Prussian War broke out in the summer of 1870, Eugenie was once again regent. Contrary to what one will peddle after the disaster of Sedan and the fall of the Second Empire, it was not "his war". It had not pushed France into the conflict with Prussia. But it did not prevent it and did not take into account the very degraded health of Napoleon III. The emperor suffered from stones in the bladder and could not hold his horse. In fact, he wanted to die on the battlefield. Unfortunately, he was taken prisoner by the Prussians after the defeat of Sedan on September 1, 1870.

The survivor

On September 4, Eugenie left Paris secretly, thanks to her dentist, Doctor Evans. She reaches Deauville then arrives in England where her son finds her. Liberated, Napoleon III joined them at Chislehurst. Queen Victoria, who has a great affection for Eugenie, ensures that the exiled trio live as well as possible. The death of the Emperor on January 8, 1873 and the tragic end of the Prince Imperial on June 1, 1879 (a Bonaparte killed in British uniform!) Gave Eugenie the halo of doom. She is plunged in deep despair. In September 1880, she moved to Farnborough which became a veritable imperial mausoleum. A church is built in the park and Eugenie will have the ashes of her husband and her son transferred there in 1887. The old lady in black receives many visitors, of all ranks and travels a lot. 

In 1882, the Republic allowing her to return to French territory, she had a villa built at Cap Martin, to which she gave the name of "Cyrnos": it was, in Greek, the word which designated Corsica, this cradle of the Bonaparte epic she sees on the horizon.

In 1914, when the World War broke out, she pointed out that she had nothing to do with it ... In Farnborough, she set up an infirmary and organized ambulances for the wounded allies. She gives her yacht, the Thistle, to the British Admiralty. After 1918, she went to Spain for a cataract operation. This succeeds, but in Madrid, at the Palace of the Dukes of Alba, on Sunday July 11, 1920, the old lady in shivering black, her face blushes. It is a crisis of uremia, like Napoleon III. Serene, she whispers: "It's time to go…"

Clemenceau's France refuses him official funerals and military honors. Shocked, King George V, who made the former French Empress a knight of the British Empire, organized the funeral of Eugenie. He attended with his wife Queen Mary and the King of Spain Alphonse XIII. British military honors are returned to Eugenie, as Victoria demanded for the Prince Imperial. Eugenie survived fifty years after the collapse of her dream. Now, she rests with her husband and their son in the Farnborough crypt. Eugenie did not have all the gifts but she was never cowardly or mediocre.

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"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast

Author and presentation: Jean des Cars 

Project manager: Adèle Ponticelli

Realization: Laurent Sirguy and Guillaume Vasseau

Diffusion and edition: Clémence Olivier

Graphics: Europe 1 Studio

Bibliography: Jean des Cars, Eugénie, the last Empress, (Perrin, 2000) Grand Prix of the Fondation Napoléon.

Maurice Paléologue, of the French Academy, The interviews of the Empress Eugenie (Plon, 1928).