FOUR
On 14 January 1858 the programme at the Paris Opéra, then in the rue Lepelletier, included among other items the ballet from Auber’s Gustave III. Although this ended with an assassination, Napoleon and Eugénie, who liked the composer, decided to attend. At 8.00 p.m., three-quarters of an hour before the performance, Colonel Pieri, a well-known Italian republican, was arrested outside, armed with a pistol, a knife and a grenade. No one bothered to tell the emperor but the equerry on duty had sent a troop of twenty-four lancers as escort, unaware that he preferred to be without one.
As they arrived at 8.30, three grenades packed with bullets were thrown at their carriage, exploding in succession under the wheels. The first grenade put out the street lighting, plunging the street into pitch darkness, and smashed both the opera house and carriage windows, a glass splinter cutting the emperor’s lip, another splinter grazing the empress’s eyelid. The carriage doors were forced open, the ‘most horrible faces she ever saw’ peering in; but they were policemen’s faces.
Getting out in the dark onto the broken glass, among the screaming men and horses, Eugénie’s white dress became spotted with blood. (Someone in the crowd seized the chance to kiss her bare shoulders.) ‘Stop worrying about us,’ she said. ‘This is our job. Help the wounded.’ Napoleon wanted to help the injured himself. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she muttered, pushing him into the opera house, where they received an ovation. His face was twitching, but Eugénie’s was totally composed. They were cheered all the way back to the Tuileries.
‘The poor little boy, of whom the emperor speaks so feelingly’, commented Lord Cowley, ‘would of course have no chance. By the way, talking of him, I am told that when everybody had left the Tuileries on the night of the attentat, the emperor and empress went to the poor child’s room where their firmness forsook them both and they burst into tears, the emperor crying most bitterly.’ On reaching the palace, they immediately went to the Prince Imperial’s bedroom – had they been killed, what would have happened to him?
Seventeen of the lancers were wounded, one fatally, the final casualty list (including spectators) being ten dead and one hundred and forty wounded. The attackers had meant to knife Napoleon and Eugénie amid the chaos, but were thwarted by the police’s quick reaction. Tracked down and arrested, they proved to be three more Italians, led by Felice Orsini, whose aim was to turn France into a revolutionary republic that would unite Italy under a similar régime. Orsini and Pieri were sentenced to death.
Orsini behaved so impressively during his trial that the empress tried, unsuccessfully, to save him from the guillotine, knowing he would be less of a threat in prison than as a martyr. She was no less realistic when it was learned that the plotters had been living in England and had had their bombs made in Birmingham, and she refused to join in the furious outcry in Paris that jeopardised Anglo-French relations. Nor did she lose her head when a jury in London acquitted a Frenchman called Bernard, the brains behind the conspiracy. Britain declined to take further action, even if Palmerston was apologetic. She wrote privately to Lord Cowley, saying that it was not ‘the daily fear of seeing my husband and son struck down in my arms’ which upset her so much as that Bernard’s acquittal gave the impression ‘these men have your moral support’.
In February Napoleon announced that in the event of his death the empress would be Regent. ‘A beautiful woman, a baby in her arms, saving France with the aid of an heroic army, conjures up so moving a picture for Frenchmen that the emperor’s elimination by bomb at any moment has become an almost negligible factor’, laughed the cynical Hübner.
During the plotters’ trial their counsel had read out a letter from Orsini to Napoleon III. ‘Remember, if Italy is not free, then European peace and your Majesty’s own peace of mind are no more than empty dreams.’ Ironically, the emperor agreed – he coveted the role of champion of ‘oppressed nations’. Only Austria, the still mighty central European power that dominated Germany, had a stake in a disunited Italy, occupying Lombardy-Venetia and keeping garrisons in the ‘duchies’ (Tuscany, Parma and Modena) and part of the Papal States. In March 1858, three weeks after Orsini had been guillotined, Eugénie hinted to the Piedmontese ambassador what was in her husband’s mind. Casually, she told him that the Italian peninsula ought to be three kingdoms – north, central and southern. ‘The emperor is warming up for Italy again’, Cowley warned during the same month. ‘Orsini’s letter and the dread of Italian stilettos would some day drag him into action if he knew how to begin.’
Allying with Piedmont was how to begin. There was no doubt that its king, Victor-Emmanuel II, was a joke. ‘I’ve discovered something wonderful’, he had told a lady during a state visit to France in 1855. ‘Parisiennes don’t wear-drawers – heaven has opened before my eyes.’ Clarendon told Cowley that when he read out his dispatch at 10 Downing Street, ‘the roars of laughter in the Cabinet might have been heard at Westminster Bridge’. But behind Victor-Emmanuel was a ruthless minister, Count Cavour.
Napoleon and Cavour met secretly at Plombières in July 1858. Here they agreed that after driving Austria north of the Alps, Piedmont would take Lombardy-Venetia, while the duchies and most of the Papal States would form a new ‘Kingdom of Central Italy’ with Plon-Plon as king. The pope would keep Rome, however, and the king of Naples would be left in peace. France’s reward was to be French-speaking Savoy and Nice – although ‘Nizza la Dolce’ was the birthplace of Garibaldi.
The Franco-Piedmontese alliance was cemented by a marriage in January 1859 between Plon-Plon and Victor-Emmanuel’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Princess Clothilde. Few people liked seeing the frail, plain girl sacrificed to such a man. However, Clothilde – very soon a member of Eugénie’s inner circle – was tougher than she looked, a fiercely devout Catholic obsessed with the next world, who treated courtiers with chilling haughtiness.
The emperor then began to see the disadvantages of an Italian war. Cavour had already made Piedmont the most anticlerical state in Europe, dissolving its monasteries, and France’s Catholics were going to be increasingly angered by the alliance, as well as outraged at the seizure of papal territory. The Austrian army, which had routed the Piedmontese army ten years earlier, knew every inch of the ground – it could defend the wide Lombard rivers or fall back into the fortresses of the Venetian ‘Quadrilateral’.
Although at first Eugénie had welcomed the prospect of liberating Italians from Austrian rule, when the war’s implications sank in, she started to oppose it. She realised that instead of three or four client states it might create a strong, united Italian kingdom capable of allying with France’s enemies, besides threatening the papacy.
Napoleon hoped for a congress of the great European powers that could find a peaceful solution, but in April 1859 Austria sent an ultimatum to Turin and before the end of the month France and Austria were at war. When the emperor rode through Paris at the head of the Cent Gardes to take the train to the front he was cheered, even by workers from the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. Republicans were delighted, Catholics suspicious. After a tearful farewell, he left Eugénie to govern France as Regent. Without any experience of warfare, he was taking a huge gamble by personally commanding his army in the field. The empress was so worried that as soon as he had left, she drove to five churches in succession to pray for him.
Her prayers were answered, since the Austrians were commanded by the spectacularly inept Count Gyulai. The campaign was over in two months, the French defeating their opponents in two fiercely fought battles, Magenta and Solferino – losses on both sides at Solferino amounted to 6,000 killed and 30,000 wounded or missing. When the casualty reports reached Paris Eugénie was horrified. After driving the Austrians out of Lombardy, however, the French did not fancy attacking the great Quadrilateral which barred their way in Venetia. They also knew that Prussia was mobilising and might enter the war on Austria’s side at any moment. In July Napoleon made peace with Emperor Franz-Joseph at Villafranca. Piedmont received Lombardy, Savoy and Nice going to France, but Austria kept Venetia. Soon, just as Eugénie feared, Piedmont – now the ‘Kingdom of Italy’ – had occupied central Italy including most of the Papal States, and within little more than a year the entire peninsula.
Napoleon led his victorious troops through a cheering Paris, showered with flowers, but although he did not realise it he had won a pyrrhic victory. Far from being grateful, the new ‘Italy’ blamed him for leaving Venice in Austrian hands while the great powers were angry with him for starting a war that might have sengulfed Europe. ‘May God destroy the wicked French’ was Prince Albert’s prayer. The emperor’s dream of a lasting Anglo-French alliance vanished in smoke.
Even so, for the moment Napoleon III appeared to be stronger than ever. This was the zenith of the Second Empire.