Eugénie’s first regency lasted from Napoleon’s departure for the front on 10 May 1859 until his return on 17 July. She then possessed absolute power, chairing the Council of Ministers once a week – Mérimée mentions a meeting that went on for five hours – besides receiving copies of all reports on internal and external affairs. There was no trouble from Plon-Plon, who had been sent to Italy in command of an army corps occupying Tuscany. She enjoyed her duties so much that she said she was afraid of being bored when they came to an end.
‘Since the absence of the Emperor the Councils of Ministers at the Tuileries have not been less frequent than when his Majesty was at Paris’, reported the clearly astonished correspondent of the Illustrated London News on 11 June. ‘Each of these Ministerial meetings, which are held in the Salle des Conseils, is presided over by the Empress Regent, who displays the same grace and intelligence in her new position that she has hitherto shown in all those to which her high station has called her.’ The paper published a full-page engraving that showed the extraordinary spectacle of a mid-nineteenth-century woman ruler surrounded by her ministers. ‘All documents hitherto signed by the emperor now bear the sign-manual of the empress Eugénie’, it added. ‘The numerous State occupations of the empress Regent since the departure of her august husband for the seat of war in Italy have not prevented her from pursuing her favourite charitable projects. In a recent visit to the Orphan Asylum, in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, the whole of the industrial population turned out to give her Majesty a hearty welcome.’
After addressing the Senate and the Corps Législatif at the end of May – receiving an ovation – she spent most of the time at Saint-Cloud, however, only driving into the capital for the meetings of the council or for ‘poor peopling’. She wrote to Paca in Madrid that ‘Paris is absolutely quiet and the mood of France has seldom been more reassuring.’ There was tremendous interest in the war, with an insatiable demand for newspapers and maps, and rumours of victories aroused wild enthusiasm. Yet she remained very uneasy, worried that Austria might at any moment find formidable allies.
It was a letter from Eugénie that alerted the emperor to danger from the Germanic Confederation (the kingdoms, duchies and free cities comprising Germany, whose senior member was Austria) and, above all, to danger from Prussia. ‘The Germans regard the river Mincio [the Venetian frontier] as crucial for their country’s security’, she explained. ‘That frontier has now been crossed and German public opinion is anxious that something should be done to help Austria.’
Describing how Prussia was exploiting Austria’s difficulties in order to strengthen her own position within the Confederation, she said that Berlin had already demanded the mobilisation of all Federal troops and was insisting they must be placed under Prussian command, despite protests from Vienna. Whatever happened, if the French advanced any further beyond the Mincio a Prussian attack from the Rhineland was certainly on the cards. ‘Feeling is running very high in Germany’, she warned. ‘The old 1813 mentality has re-emerged and no amount of assurances of peaceful intent on your part is going to satisfy Prussia.’ Her assessment was confirmed by reports in the British press that the Confederation would soon assemble 350,000 troops and that Prussia was starting to look like an armed camp.
She also quoted Lord Palmerston – who had recently become prime minister again – as enquiring, ‘Does France really want to establish another Prussia on her south-eastern frontier?’ She commented, ‘Very well put, in my opinion’, and in the same letter she asked her husband bluntly, ‘Will you be able to put a stop to this unity movement?’
Eugénie made the most of any good news from the front. As soon as she received a cable from Napoleon announcing his victory at Magenta, the massed cannon of the Invalides fired salutes while copies of the telegram were distributed to be read out in the Paris streets – ‘A great victory: 5,000 prisoners, 15,000 of the enemy killed or wounded.’ That evening she and Princess Clothilde drove in an open carriage along the boulevards, and were cheered rapturously the whole way. ‘The entire Saint-Germain quarter was illuminated by bonfires and fireworks’, wrote the patriotic Viel Castel. She had a Te Deum sung by the archbishop of Paris at Notre Dame, and asked for one to be sung in every parish church in France. When the captured Austrian colours arrived from Solferino, Eugénie had another Te Deum sung at Notre Dame on 3 July, attending it with the three-year-old Prince Imperial. On the way from the Tuileries to the cathedral, their carriage was completely filled with flowers thrown by the crowds.
She kept a watchful eye on the French press, giving a personal warning – delivered one morning by an official from the Ministry of the Interior – to the republican journal Le Siècle. Its violently anticlerical editor, who had welcomed the news of risings in the Papal States, received a stern reminder that the Second Empire had every intention of protecting the papacy. As he knew, three such warnings to a paper meant compulsory closure.
The prefects of all departments sent weekly political reports to Paris, which Eugénie read carefully, together with the reports from the police. Apparently, only the most fanatical Legitimists disapproved of the war while the republicans were delighted by it. What shocked her, however, was learning for the first time the sheer intensity of republican hatred for her husband’s régime. Royalists might be won over to an alternative form of monarchy, but clearly republicans would never accept Napoleon III, who during his coup on 2 December 1853, after arresting their leaders in their beds, had ordered his troops to shoot them down in the streets and had then transported thousands to the penal settlements in Algeria or Guyana. ‘You wear the memory of 2 December as if it were a shirt of Nessus’ (the poisoned shirt which nearly killed Hercules), she told the emperor later. ‘Yes, I think of it every day’, was his reply.
While in favour of wooing individual republicans, the empress now became convinced that it would be dangerous – probably suicidal – for Napoleon to try to liberalise the Second Empire, as he was already planning. In her view he was seen as having shed too much blood.
Ferdinand Loliée, at his most insidious, attributes Eugénie’s interest in politics to vanity. ‘To be a decorative sovereign, unfaded by the passing years, still gave her pleasure whenever she looked in the mirror, but it did not flatter her self-importance quite enough’, he sneered. ‘She had to show the world that she had more serious gifts, those of a politician…. How could she hold back so much that was in her – character, imagination, pride at being able to make her fancies take wing?’ He adds, ‘people were going to experience them and, more than once, regret them’.
In reality, the catalyst had been reports from the prefects and the police revealing to Eugénie the extent of republican hostility, convincing her that the emperor’s plans for a new constitution were flawed. Only by involving herself in politics could she hope to modify them and save the Second Empire for her son. If liberalisation was inevitable, it must wait until the reign of Napoleon IV.