Eugénie: The Empress & her Empire (37 page)

Yet when Prince Metternich had seen the emperor on the day of Gramont’s speech three days earlier, he had found him relaxed and optimistic. ‘I must say that all this Spanish-Prussian affair seems to have been seized upon as an opportunity to score a diplomatic success and humiliate Prussia,’ he reported, adding that the French thought they could bring it off without endangering the peace. Ignoring both Eugénie and his ministers, Napoleon sent a secret envoy to Prince Leopold’s father, imploring him to stop his son from accepting the Spanish throne. He also wrote to King Leopold II of Belgium, asking him to intervene with the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen family. In addition, he told the French ambassador in London to ask the English foreign secretary Lord Granville to use his influence in Berlin and Madrid.

The emperor’s diplomacy very nearly succeeded in avoiding a war. Horrified at the thought of starting one, and shaken by a stern letter from Queen Victoria, on 12 July Prince Leopold’s father sent telegrams to Berlin, Madrid and Paris, announcing that his son had decided to decline the offer of the Spanish crown. When Napoleon read his telegram, he exclaimed delightedly, ‘This is peace!’

Eugénie’s reaction to the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen telegram was very different, however. ‘
Qué verguenza!
’ she cried in disgust – ‘How shameful!’ ‘This renunciation just isn’t good enough,’ she continued furiously. ‘The King of Prussia must guarantee that the candidature is never going to be repeated.’

This was also the reaction of the Corps Législatif. When Prince Leopold’s withdrawal was announced, the deputies, especially those on the right, dismissed it angrily as a private message with absolutely no guarantee from Prussia that he might not change his mind. In a panic, Gramont informed the Prussian ambassador Baron von Werther that King William must write a formal letter ‘of explanation’ to the emperor, providing the necessary guarantee.

At this crucial moment Napoleon collapsed with an agonising attack from the stone in his bladder. The only possible relief from the pain was laudanum, which deprived him of the ability to concentrate.

Nevertheless, the duke insisted on seeing the emperor at Saint-Cloud, at 5.00 p.m. on 12 July. The only other person present was the empress. Since Ollivier had excluded her from Council meetings, she excluded him from the meeting that would decide whether there would be peace or war – a decision to be taken by herself and Gramont. The one account of the meeting is that given by Eugénie to Paléologue in 1906 and, despite Paléologue’s unreliability, it is extremely convincing. First, she stressed how all the Second Empire’s leading generals had promised her that in the event of war, despite some fierce fighting to begin with, the French would easily beat the Prussians:

Leboeuf, Canrobert, Ducrot, Vaillant, Frossard, Bourbaki, Lebrun, Gallifet – they all vouched for our victory … and what a victory. I think I can still hear them telling me, at Saint-Cloud: ‘Never has our army been in better condition, better equipped, in better fighting mettle. Nineteen chances out of every twenty are in our favour. Our offensive in Germany will be so shattering that it will cut Prussia in two, and we shall swallow Prussia at one gulp … We’ll soon find the way back to Jena.’

‘Withdraw? Temporise? We could not possibly. We should have had the whole country rising against us … They were already taunting us with our weakness; a terrible remark had reached even our ears. “The Hohenzollern candidature is a second Königgrätz in the making.” For years our ruthless enemies,
Orleanists, Legitimists and republicans, had never wearied of flinging it in our faces.’

Eugénie explained to Paléologue that French national pride would not have tolerated further humiliation, and that she had fully agreed with Gramont’s assessment of the situation, recalling how he put it:

Our differences with Prussia cannot be solved merely by the Hohenzollern candidate withdrawing. That is no sort of solution and it is never going to satisfy French public opinion – we should be blamed, and quite rightly so, for having been duped by Bismarck … I have just learned that the right wing in the Corps Législatif intends to question us closely about the guarantees we have demanded from King William – the guarantees to ensure that we shall never again be in danger of seeing a German prince reigning at Madrid. If we don’t secure these vital guarantees, then France will have been humiliated and insulted in the eyes of all Europe. Every Frenchman will be infuriated, heart and soul, by the emperor’s behaviour, and that would mean the end of the Empire.

By her own admission, Eugénie unhesitatingly agreed with the duke’s policy, convinced that extracting public guarantees from Prussia was the sole means of saving the Second Empire. She claims that Napoleon ‘raised no objection’, although historians suspect he was too ill to say anything. ‘All we discussed was the need to put an end to Bismarck’s machinations,’ she insisted. ‘We had no desire for war. Even so, we weren’t frightened of one either because, as I repeat again and again, our army appeared to be invincible, while we also counted on finding powerful allies.’ Presumably by ‘powerful allies’ she meant Austria and Italy. No doubt, if the French army had done what its generals promised, Franz-Joseph and Victor-Emmanuel might have joined in on the emperor’s side. But they would only march to the aid of a victorious France.

As a recently promoted career diplomat, a politician for just nine weeks, Gramont had no parliamentary skills and was unnerved by the fury in the Corps Législatif. The emperor or a veteran minister such as Rouher or La Valette might have defused the situation. But the duke could see no way out other than to humiliate Prussia.

‘Yes, I fully approved Gramont’s policy, and even gave him the full weight of my support when he came to see us,’ was Eugénie’s recollection, according to Paléologue. ‘I was wrong to behave chivalrously (
d’être homme galant
) to the empress when I should have behaved chivalrously to France,’ is Gramont’s version – a far from chivalrous attempt to shift most of the blame on to Eugénie.

She explained her decision:

I had long been convinced that we were going along a doomed road, that the Liberal Empire was dragging us down into the worst sort of revolution, a revolution of mistrust. You may say I was thinking only of the Empire and not of France, but God is my witness that I never distinguished between France and the Empire. I simply could not conceive of French grandeur or French prosperity except under the Empire. And when my husband’s health was becoming such a worry, I had to concentrate on handing over power to our son intact…. That is why I gave Gramont’s policy such whole-hearted support.

Doubts have been cast on Paléologue’s account of what Eugénie told him, especially by her admirers, and admittedly he is sometimes unreliable. Yet in this case he seems to be borne out by Emile Ollivier, who said, ‘The war was wanted by the empress and [General] Leboeuf, forced on us by Bismarck.’ General du Barail also claimed that she wanted war, because she thought it would be easy to win and wished the reign of ‘Napoleon IV’ to open in an atmosphere of military glory.

Within two hours of Gramont’s discussion with Eugénie, Benedetti received a further cable. ‘To make the renunciation certain,’ instructed the duke, ‘the King of Prussia must endorse it, guaranteeing that he is not going to renew the candidature. Please see the King at once and ask for a confirmation, which he cannot refuse unless he really does have some sort of reservation. Although the repudiation has become widely known, public opinion is so violent that we are not sure we will be able to control it.’

That day debates in the Corps Législatif and the Senate had been interrupted by yells of ‘We’ve got to finish it!’ In the evening crowds marched along the boulevards, singing the ‘Marseillaise’ and
bellowing, ‘
A Berlin! A Berlin!
’ Eugénie was far from being out of step with her people.

On 13 July Count Benedetti waylaid King William in the public gardens at Ems. An official sent a telegram for Bismarck to send, stating that the king had told Benedetti that Prince Leopold had promised to withdraw his candidature, and that there was nothing more to say. It was phrased with such moderation and courtesy that the Prussian chancellor and General von Moltke, hoping for war, were in despair. Bismarck shortened the telegram, however, distorting its message so as to seem insulting – Moltke commented approvingly, ‘You make it sound like a trumpet call answering a challenge.’ The doctored ‘Ems Telegram’ was then sent to Paris and released to the press.

Ironically, on 13 July the Council of Ministers’ meeting at Saint-Cloud had second thoughts, voting against a proposal for immediate mobilisation. They were ready to water down Gramont’s demand for guarantees.

The Ems telegram reached Paris the next day. ‘Here is a man who has been slapped in the face,’ Gramont told Ollivier hysterically. The crowds in the streets were screaming, ‘
Au Rhin!
’ – ‘To the Rhine!’ At 4.40 p.m. the Council of Ministers agreed to a general mobilisation, yet delayed it again to discuss the possibility of a peace congress.

Afterwards, the duke claimed that Eugénie had put an end to the possibility by observing, ‘I doubt that it will suit the chambers and the country.’ Lord Malmesbury wrote: ‘Gramont told me that the empress, a high-spirited and impressionable woman, made a strong and most excited address, declaring that “war was inevitable if the honour of France was to be maintained”.’ Although Eugénie was not present at the Council, she may perhaps have said something like this elsewhere. But it was Ollivier who killed the idea of a peace congress, telling the emperor – who was beginning to recover from his attack – ‘If we laid the proposal before the chambers, they would pelt our carriages with mud and howl at us.’

That evening the Council decided there was no alternative to war. Next morning Ollivier addressed the Corps Législatif and the Senate, asking them to vote the money with which to fight. Some on the left denounced the war. “You have decided to shed torrents of blood over a mere form of words,’ said Thiers. ‘I accept the need for it with a light heart,’ answered Ollivier. Not only the right and the centre was with him, but the left too. ‘Thus by a tragic combination of ill-luck, stupidity and ignorance France blundered into war with the greatest military power that Europe had yet seen, in a bad cause, with her army unready and without allies,’ is the verdict of Sir Michael Howard in
The Franco-Prussian War
.

Eugénie may not have said, ‘It was I who wanted this war – it is my war’, as Thiers alleged. She herself denied it. ‘Never, do you hear me,’ she supposedly told Paléologue, ‘did that sacrilegious phrase, nor any like it, come from my lips.’ Yet, like the Mamelukes, she expected a triumphant victory that would bring back a return to direct rule and true Bonapartism.

T
HE
F
INAL
R
EGENCY

Most of the French did not take too seriously a war that was beginning in such gloriously sunny weather and with such catchy tunes. In any case, they believed their army was invincible. They thought they were only fighting Prussia, which, despite Königgrätz, they still insisted on seeing as a second-rate power, and that the minor German states would join in on their side: they did not foresee that, contrary to expectation, every German would be against them, just as in 1813.

Paris was in holiday mood – and when the troops marched past they were cheered to the echo by men in shirt sleeves whose wives carried picnic baskets and whose children blew tin trumpets. Despite being banned as revolutionary, the ‘Marseillaise’ was sung on every street corner, while all the musc halls and bars rang with the chorus of some new patriotic song.

One of these choruses from the back streets, to an anti-Prussian song which for a time became almost as popular as the ‘Marseillaise’, ran:

Oh Wilhelm, Oh you gross papa,

We’ll rub your nose in your own caca!

The Parisians were clearly in no doubt about who was going to win.

Yet it seems as if Eugénie very soon had second thoughts. Mrs Moulton had been asked to dine at Saint-Cloud on 17 July. When she and her husband arrived at the château, they were told by a chamberlain that the party had been cancelled but that all the same the empress would like them to stay for dinner. ‘And stay we did,’ says Lillie, ‘and I never regretted anything so much in my life.’

The two Americans were the only guests other than members of the household. Lillie had never seen Napoleon III look so ill and tired. ‘The emperor never uttered a word; the empress sat with her eyes fixed on the emperor, and did not speak to a single person. No one spoke. The emperor would receive telegram upon telegram; the gentleman sitting next to him opened the telegrams and put them before his Majesty. Every now and again the emperor would look across the table to the empress with such a distressed look it made me think that something terrible was happening.’

War with Prussia was officially declared on 19 July, although in reality France had been at war since the chambers had authorised the money for it four days earlier. When the Senate and Corps Législatif came out to Saint-Cloud to offer a loyal address on 18 July, in striking contrast to the euphoric optimism in the press and in the streets Napoleon emphasised in his speech of thanks that ‘We are entering upon a long and arduous war.’

Apparently the emperor’s misgivings frightened Eugénie. ‘
A
great country like France, so tranquil and prosperous, has embarked on a struggle which, even if it goes well, is bound to bring enormous destruction and misery,’ she confided to a courtier at Saint-Cloud. ‘France is fighting for her honour, but what a cataclysm there will be if the war goes against us. We have only a few cards to play. If we don’t win, France will not only be humiliated and plundered, but will suffer the worst revolution that the world has ever seen.’