Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire (26 page)

Empress Eugénie in 1853, in robes of state. Franz Xaver Winterhalter’s official portrait. (
Museo Napoleonico, Rome
)

Eugénie with her ladies-in-waiting in 1855, by Winterhalter: ‘not a man in it’, sniffed her husband. (
Museo Napoleonico, Rome
)

Napoleon III in 1857, by Winterhalter. This is a flattering portrait of an ugly little man, who despite his appearance possessed considerable charm. (
Musée national du château, Compiègne: AKG London/Erich Lessing
)

Eugénie and Napoleon in 1853, examining plans for completion of the Louvre, by Ange Tissier (
Musée du château, Versailles: AKG London/Visioars
)

Eugénie and Napoleon in Londonin 1855, at the Opera with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. (
V&A Museum: Bridgeman Art Library
)

Eugénie and Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany in the uniform of the imperial hunt, at Compiègne in October 1856. Photograph by Comte Aguado. (
Chateau de Compiègne: RMN/Frank Raux
)

Eugénie, Napoleon and ‘Lou-Lou’, the Prince Imperial, in 1859. Doctors warned that trying to bear a second child would kill the empress. Photograph by Disdéri. (
Author’s collection
)

The Prince Imperial in 1861, as a haughty Grenadier of the Imperial Guard. The prince’s name was already on the regiment’s muster-roll. Photograph by Disdéri. (
Author’s collection
)

The astonishing spectacle of
a woman
presiding over a nineteenth-century cabinet meeting: the Empress Regent with her ministers in June 1859. (
Illustrated London News
)

Eugénie and Napoleon as a happy married couple in 1862. In reality the emperor was a wildly unfaithful husband and Eugénie a wife tormented by jealousy. Photograph by Disdéri. (
Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin: AKG London
)

Eugénie’s private
salon
at the Tuileries, by Castiglione. Her favourite room, hung in Indian silk, was always full of flowers. (
Liria Palace, Madrid: Institut Amatller d’Art Hispànic-Arxiu Mas
)

Prince and Princess Metternich. Pauline (the ‘Cocoa Monkey’) was Eugénie’s closest, if ultimately faithless, friend. She is wearing a dress designed by Mr Worth. Photograph by Disdéri. (
Archiv für Kunst und Geschichte, Berlin: AKG London
)

Otto von Bismarck (
Gothaischer genealogischer Hofkalender, 1870
)