Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire (34 page)

That evening the sultan’s barge, manned by forty oarsmen, returned to bring Eugénie (in yellow silk) across the Bosphorus to a banquet in the Palace at Dolma Bagchtie. It was estimated that half a million people were watching, either from the shore or from a fleet of warships, steamers, yachts and innumerable caiques, all flying the flags of France and Turkey. Dr Evans, who was among the spectators, wrote:

In the barge, a graceful construction of polished cedar, and ornamented with gold, and massive silver and velvet, and richest fabrics – a dais or canopy of crimson silk had been erected, beneath the folds of which I saw the empress, as the barge drew near me, sitting alone in evening dress, a light mantilla over her head, wearing a diadem and many rich jewels, radiant and beautiful…

Eugénie found time to receive a deputation from the substantial French community at Constantinople, merchants and religious leaders. ‘Their spokesman made a speech to which I had to reply, trembling like a leaf’, she told Napoleon in a letter. (Even now, she had still not conquered her nervousness when speaking in public.)

There was a moment of unpleasantness when Sultan Abdul Aziz showed her round his harem. Seeing her son strolling arm-in-arm with an unveiled and unknown ‘Frankish woman’, the outraged Sultana Valida gave the empress a fierce punch in the stomach that
almost knocked her down. A furious quarrel then erupted between mother and son. Fortunately, everyone burst out laughing.

After a week, the
Aigle
sailed on to Egypt, reaching Alexandria on 5 November. The khedive had tried to ensure a harmonious stay by rounding up ninety-seven of the city’s most violent criminals, who had promptly been taken out to sea and thrown overboard in sacks weighted with stones. The canal was not to be opened for nearly a fortnight so Eugénie and her party took the train down to Cairo, which on the first evening was illuminated in her honour – a garish triumphal arch stood in front of the French consulate with the words, ‘To the empress Eugénie from the French colony’. However, she insisted on remaining incognito, the khedive making sure that she was left in peace. She even attended an Egyptian wedding in Arab dress – a velvet waistcoat embroidered with mother-of-pearl and a burnous of gold and silver thread. The occasion reminded her a little of Spain, even the belly dancers, ‘if perhaps more indecent’. She was genuinely fascinated by Egyptian antiquities and contemplated creating an Egyptian drawing-room when she returned to France, on the lines of her Salon Chinois.

After four days exploring the capital, she spent a fortnight sailing up the Nile on a dahabeeyah and visited the pyramids, a trip which had been organised by the great French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette. It was probably the most relaxing holiday she had had since her marriage, full of interest but, above all, restful. Even so, unable to sleep one night, she went into Mme des Garet’s cabin where they had a curious conversation about death. She did not blame the Egyptians for embalming their dead. ‘I have never been able to accept the idea of total decay, which revolts me, especially since my sister’s death’, she told her young lady-in-waiting. ‘But I don’t suppose you’ve understood the Egyptian concept of death – at your age one doesn’t think too deeply about the end of everything.’ She added that in her opinion, ‘the idea of survival which haunted the Egyptian mind for so many centuries gave them real grandeur as a people’.

Once again on board the
Aigle
, Eugénie reached Port Said very early on the morning of 16 November, the day of the canal’s inauguration. Here she was warmly greeted by her cousin Ferdinand de Lesseps, whom she had been actively encouraging since 1865, often in the face of the most bitter opposition – he called her ‘the canal’s guardian angel’.

The actual opening of the canal, when a fleet of ships would pass through the new waterway, was to take place the following day. That evening, the empress gave a splendid dinner on the
Aigle
in preparation. During the night, however, the canal was blocked when an Egyptian corvette ran aground. The khedive threatened to have the officers impaled, but the efforts of 300 fellahin succeeded in refloating the boat.

In old age the empress recalled:

The ceremonial opening of the canal took place at eight o’clock in the morning on 17 November, in the sea off Ismailia … There was a true Egyptian sky, that enchanting sunlight that has an almost hallucinating clarity. Fifty vessels, all flying their flags, were waiting for me at the entrance to Lake Timsa. My yacht,
L’Aigle
, took the head of this flotilla, and the yachts of the khedive, the Emperor Franz-Joseph, the Crown Prince of Prussia and Prince Henry of the Netherlands followed at barely a cable’s length behind. The sight was one of such magnificence and proclaimed the grandeur of the French Empire so eloquently that I could scarcely control myself – I rejoiced, triumphantly. The frightful nightmare I had brought with me from Paris suddenly vanished, as if at the touch of some magic ring. For the last time I was convinced that a wonderful future lay in store for my son, and I prayed to God that He would help me with the crushing burden which I might soon have to shoulder if the emperor’s health showed no improvement.

Eugénie represented France worthily. ‘I can never forget her radiant figure as she stood on the bridge of the
Aigle
, while the imperial yacht slowly passed by the immense throng that had assembled on the banks of the canal’, Evans remembers in his memoirs.

On 18 November the Khedive Ismail gave a great dinner and ball in a Palace at Ismailia which had been built for the opening. Before the dinner there was a display by dervishes holding burning coals between their teeth or swallowing scorpions. A keen westerniser, the khedive had imported row upon row of gilt chairs and marble-topped tables from Paris, while the meal, cooked by 500 chefs, was served by 1,000 footmen in red liveries and powdered hair. But
since 6,000 guests had been invited, glittering with orders or in oriental robes, the palace was so crowded that they could not lift their arms to eat or drink, let alone dance. Accompanied by the Emperor Franz-Joseph and the khedive, Eugénie arrived at midnight in a spectacular diamond tiara and diamond-studded gown. The three drank a toast to the canal.

After the ball, Eugénie explored the Red Sea in the
Aigle
. Later, during an expedition on horses into the desert around Ismailia, her party was nearly overwhelmed by a howling sandstorm that blotted out the stars by which they were navigating. They were saved by the homing instincts of their horses who brought them safely back to Ismailia. She also made another short trip up the Nile, visiting Sakkarah and the Serapeum.

Then the
Aigle
left Egypt, taking her back to her ‘nightmare’.

T
HE
L
IBERAL
E
MPIRE

Although Eugénie was alarmed at the prospect of the Second Empire being transformed into a constitutional monarchy, she decided during her Suez trip that nothing could stop Napoleon III from doing so. In a letter to the emperor, written on 27 October on her way along the Nile to Aswân, she explained her position to him. ‘The only way forward is to go on with the concessions you have granted … it is essential to show the country that we are following ideas, not expedients.’ She added, ‘I don’t believe in violence and I am convinced that we cannot mount a
coup d’état
twice in a reign.’

The ‘Liberal Empire’ was not forced upon Napoleon. He had been slowly feeling his way towards it for many years. At the very beginning of his reign, in 1851, he had promised that one day he would grant a constitution, and he had been making concessions since 1860 when, encouraged by Morny, he had issued a decree allowing free discussion in the Senate and Corps Législatif, giving the press permission to publish full reports of the debates. Nor did he surrender his powers in 1869 purely because of pressure from the opposition, and as the only means of saving his throne. Even if he was sorry to part with such faithful ministers as Rouher, as Theodore Zeldin observed, the liberal empire ‘was not the victory of the opposition, but of a new party composed of both opponents and supporters of the old régime’. Nevertheless, the changeover to a constitutional monarchy was going to be a nerve-racking leap in the dark.

Recognising that there had been a complete regrouping of political forces in France, the emperor had waited for the emergence of a liberal majority that would accept his dynasty. He dared not try out a new system until this happened, which explains why the extremists thought they had him on the run and organised so many riots. Yet, far from being a defeat for him as so many observers thought, the 1869 elections had been a relief since they meant a viable solution.

Out of 300 deputies only about thirty red republicans of the Left wanted to overthrow the Second Empire. Most of the other republican deputies, many of whom were in any case conservatives, were prepared to keep Napoleon III as their sovereign. So were a majority of the Orleanist deputies, who in an ideal world might have preferred the Comte de Paris (‘Philippe VII’). Not even Legitimists were ready to bring down the régime if it meant another revolution. Understandably, however, it was going to take months of negotiation between the various groupings before achieving a majority that could form a government.

Although it was widely suspected that Eugénie had deep reservations about a liberal empire, practically nobody except her husband understood what they were. At the same time, most politicians – and certainly the French public at large – overestimated her influence on the emperor. When the left demanded that the chambers should be summoned at the end of October, under the impression they were about to form a government, and Napoleon refused to do so until the end of the following month, many people blamed the empress. They were convinced that the date had been put back so that she could return in time to block the appointment of a liberal administration – perhaps, even, to urge her husband to launch another
coup d’état
.

In fact, Eugénie did not return until 5 December. Despite fears that there would be a revolution on 26 October and the left’s threat to occupy the Corps Législatif, nothing happened. This was largely because the emperor made carefully judged public appearances to show that he was in control. The opening of the new legislature took place in the Salle des États at the Louvre on 29 November, when Napoleon received an ovation. Yet the atmosphere at the opening was not entirely pleasant. ‘When our big carriage started back along the rue de Rivoli, it was surrounded by a vicious mob, bursting with hate, who hurled jeers and insults at us,’ said Pauline in her memoirs. Obviously the crowd had recognised the Metternichs’ black and yellow carriage as that of the empress’s best friend. Pauline muttered to her husband, ‘the Empire is over’.

On her return to France, Eugénie immediately fell under suspicion of being the leader of the ‘Mamelukes’ (so-called after the first Napoleon’s faithful Egyptian bodyguard), authoritarian Bonapartists like Rouher, who were convinced that the only hope of salvation lay in a return to the 1851 régime – and, by implication, in a coup. Although they still fielded nearly ninety deputies out of the 300, and while she sympathised with their views, she realised that the Mamelukes’ ideas would no longer work in the new political climate. By now, however, the ‘Spanish woman’ was generally considered to be a reactionary of the blackest dye.

There was an interregnum before the Liberals could take power, with the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat as minister-president of the Council, and although he drafted a constitution a ministry still had to be formed. There was also the question of who would lead it since there was a dearth of politicians with any experience of constitutional monarchy – many of the veterans from Orleanist days had been defeated in the recent elections.

The septuagenarian Adolphe Thiers, once Louis-Philippe’s prime minister, was the obvious choice, but although his exclusion would make a dangerously spiteful enemy Napoleon still resented the way in which Thiers had sought to manipulate him in 1849–51, besides despising the old man as ‘a mental, moral and physical coward’.
^*
Certainly, no one in their right mind would have trusted this brilliant, treacherous little intriguer, a mini-Talleyrand. Nominally an Orleanist if by now really a conservative republican, he had only one abiding principle, his own prosperity. (The Musée du Louvre still displays the Collection Thiers, that monument to petit-bourgeois greed.) In any case, he would have tried to reduce the emperor to a cypher.

Emile Ollivier was the man of the moment, a bespectacled lawyer from Marseilles in his forties, conceited, ambitious and glib to the
point of oiliness, but who possessed an outstanding intellect and, very unlike Thiers, genuine integrity where money was concerned. He liked to think of himself as a new Mirabeau – the great tragic hero of 1789–90, who had hoped and failed to transform the
ancien régime
into a modern monarchy. Originally a hard-line republican ‘irreconcilable’, since 1860 he had believed firmly in the viability of a constitutional empire.

After discreet exploratory talks during the summer of 1869, Ollivier was informed by Napoleon that he was going to be the new government’s leader when in October, wearing a false beard and without his spectacles, he paid a secret visit to Compiègne after dark. The Mamelukes laughed at this melodramatic meeting, which they wryly compared to Annas visiting the high priest Caiaphas by night, but the two men quickly established an excellent working relationship. The emperor began sending Ollivier state papers on a regular basis.

On 2 January 1870 it was officially announced that Emile Ollivier was to be the head of the empire’s first elected government. He would scarcely be a prime minister, however, since the emperor would continue to preside over the Council of Ministers. Four of the new administration’s ministers were former Bonapartist deputies, if definitely not Mamelukes, such as the Marquis de Talhouët-Roy, minister for public works, while the other four had been Orleanists, notably Comte Daru, who became foreign minister.