DID YOU KNOW ? Alsace-Lorraine might not be French without the Empress Eugenie

By listening to the story dedicated to the Empress Eugenie, you may have wanted to know more about her life after 1870. In this bonus episode of "At the heart of history", Jean des Cars tells you how Eugenie intervened so that Alsace-Lorraine is returned to France. 

In 1918, the widow of Napoleon III, 92 years old and almost blind, intervened so that Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France. The Americans did not realize the importance of this restitution. The negotiations were not progressing. But Eugenie remembers what the old king Guillaume de Prusse had written to him in September 1870. He specified to him that he did not consider Alsace-Lorraine like pieces of Germanic ground but like strategic positions. He still became the first German Emperor in 1871, at a ceremony in Versailles, in the Hall of Mirrors. Eugenie, whose French patriotism was concealed, had suffered personally. 

The Empress therefore seeks this letter, helped by her chambermaid and a lady-in-waiting, she searches all her drawers, empties the dressers, the Emperor's office, the cupboards. It was almost fifty years ago. She searches for and has warned Clemenceau, who was at Versailles.

The "Tiger", an atheist republican, is the staunch enemy of monarchies. And the Bonapartes, their family, their allies, did not escape his hatred. Eugenie insists with her cabinet: she remembers this letter that no one except her knows. She absolutely must find it! Clemenceau does not believe it. But what is this old good woman, this bigoted Catholic still saying? She invents, to be forgiven the war and the fall of the Empire. She lies or she is mad, the Tiger is sure of it.

A key document

However, Eugenie continues to search mountains of papers. Finally, on November 30, 1918, she found the precious letter and had it carried to Clemenceau, after having made a copy.

It is a crucial document. The Tiger agrees to submit it to the Americans. The return of Alsace-Lorraine to France is accelerated. Better - and it's incredible -, the Tiger thanks the Empress by a letter from his hand! 

It is a correspondence that nothing could have predicted because everything separates these two beings. When the Empress receives the letter from Clemenceau that is read to her, she only says: "If my poor child were there, he would be happy ..."

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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).