The empress was to represent France at the official opening of the Suez Canal in November 1869. The idea for a canal through the isthmus of Suez, first conceived by General Bonaparte in the 1790s, had been revived in 1854 by the dynamic Ferdinand de Lesseps, whose success in raising the money to dig it owed a lot to the imperial couple. (Lesseps was Eugénie’s cousin, his Grivégnée mother being Doña Maria Manuela’s aunt.)
Eugénie badly needed a holiday. She knew that she was increasingly unpopular. What she did not know, however, was just how much she was hated by someone close to her, who pretended to be among her dearest friends. Princesse Mathilde told the Goncourts in August:
The last time that I went to Saint-Cloud, she showed me her dresses for the trip to Suez. The whole journey means nothing more to her than a chance to make eyes at some Oriental potentate from her steamer – she has to have men round her the entire time, paying court … the heartless trollop. As you know, Spanish women have no idea of modesty. When she was ill with skin trouble – she’s been of no use to the emperor for years because of her trouble, yes, she’s got it there – the way she was prepared to show people, lifting up her skirts in front of everybody, was quite amazing. She’s never been able to inspire affection in anybody, never shows the least sign of warmth, never even kisses her son…. You should hear what her ladies-in-waiting say about her … The woman just isn’t French and doesn’t like France or the French. The only time I’ve known her to be polite is when she’s with foreign sovereigns. You ought to have seen her with the emperor of Austria!
Mathilde sneered at Eugénie’s cult of Marie-Antoinette. ‘Have you ever heard of anything so inane or so ridiculous or in such bad taste?’ she asked the brothers. ‘Do you know what she has in her bedroom? First, a portrait of her sister whom she hated and to whom she used to send insulting telegrams, so the emperor tells me. Then a portrait of Mérimée, one of Mme Metternich, a Sèvres bust of Marie-Antoinette, and a portrait of the little Dauphin. On her bedside table there’s a copy of some book about Marie-Antoinette which she’s never read because she never reads. She’s not interested in anything.’
All too many of the French were prepared to believe lies of the sort spread by Princesse Mathilde. They help one understand why the ‘Spaniard’ was so much looking forward to her Eastern adventure.
In 1901 the empress told Maurice Paléologue of the ‘frightful nightmare which I took with me from Paris’, in a way that reveals her sense of near despair in 1869. (This is another instance where Paléologue’s account carries conviction.) It was a gloomy but realistic assessment:
Abroad, a menacing Prussia and an ungrateful Italy, with all the other great powers resentful or ill-disposed towards us. At home, discontent and disaffection – a contemptible Press, thoroughly insolent and dishonest, unending strikes and violent demonstrations, the régime’s foundations being undermined everywhere. Even the people who had the biggest stake in the dynasty’s survival gleefully read Rochefort’s La Lanterne each week, because a wind of insanity was blowing throughout France. What made matters even worse was that the emperor himself was ill, depressed and discouraged, and unable to see anything good in the future – there were only bad omens.
Eugénie set out for Venice from Saint-Cloud on 30 September, accompanied by forty ladies, gentlemen and servants, among whom were Paca’s daughters, the dentist Dr Evans and the Abbé Bauer. She took her state papers with her, arranging to be kept informed daily, by special messenger and telegram, of what the Council had discussed. En route she visited Magenta, praying by moonlight on the battlefield for all those killed there in 1859.
Venice gave her a dazzling welcome, its palaces brilliantly illuminated, its canals lit by fireworks and gondolas with coloured lanterns. She was serenaded by waterborne orchestras, and cheered by a huge crowd in Piazza San Marco. Unfortunately, Cavaliere Nigra had warned Victor-Emmanuel that she was likely to raise important issues in casual conversation, even at dinner, so whenever she tried to discuss Rome the king changed the subject, going into ecstasies about her beauty. This added insult to injury since Eugénie was well aware that she was losing her figure and growing fatter in the face.
Then she boarded the imperial yacht, L’Aigle,* to sail for Athens, where King George I proclaimed a public holiday and took her on a tour. Afterwards she told her entourage that she did not care for what she knew of the ancient Greeks: ‘windbags living in a permanent state of civil war, revolution and intrigue, an impossible people to govern’. She may also have had in mind the modern Greeks, who had recently deposed King Otto.
Off Constantinople, after L’Aigle had failed to rendezvous in Besika Bay with the Turkish warship that carried the Grand Vizier and the French ambassador sailing past her in a dark night, next morning an entire fleet decked with bunting came out to welcome the empress. Enormous crowds thronged both sides of the Bosphorus. When the L’Aigle dropped anchor in front of the Beyler-Bey Palace on the Asiatic shore, which had been placed at her disposal, a magnificent barge rowed out to meet her. On the barge, seated on a red velvet dais, was the Sultan Abdul Aziz himself.
He had reason to be pleased to see her. Not only was she the wife of the man whom he saw as his most powerful ally, but she was Napoleon’s special envoy. He knew that the Russians were furious at her visit – later, she commented, ‘Now I’ve seen the Bosphorus I can see why the Russians want it so much.’ Merely by coming to Constantinople before going on to Cairo he asserted his authority over the sultan’s viceroy the khedive. He tried to kiss Eugénie’s hand, but she refused – clearly, he was an alarming host, a man of many moods. (One day he would kill himself with a pair of scissors.)
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’.