‘Towards noon on 6 August news of a great victory won by MacMahon spread like a train of gunpowder and central Paris gave itself up to an orgy of joy,’ Filon recalled. It was said that 120,000 Prussians had been routed by 70,000 Frenchmen, who had taken 25,000 prisoners including the crown prince. Before the report was found to be a cruel trick by speculators to hoax the Bourse, the mobs sang the ‘Marseillaise’. Even so, the crowd was in an ugly mood. ‘We’re in for a warm time tonight,’ Pietri, the chief of police, told Filon.
If a little imprecise with dates, Filon’s recollections are invaluable about what happened during the next four weeks, since he was at the empress’s side the entire time. As soon as he returned to Saint-Cloud at 9.30 that evening, her equerry General Lepic brought a message from Ollivier that a revolution appeared to be imminent. ‘Yes,’ observed Eugénie. ‘A conspiracy like Malet’s’ – referring to a republican plot to overthrow Napoleon I when he was away on campaign in 1810.
Lepic asked her to sign a decree drawn up by Ollivier, placing the capital under martial law. In addition, Ollivier implored her to ‘return to Paris immediately with all the troops at her disposal’. Although Lepic warned her that the only men available were 160 men at the Guards Light Infantry Depot, she signed the decree and sent word to Ollivier that she would move back into the Tuileries next day. Then she went to bed.
Filon had hardly sat down when an urgent telegram that had just arrived from General Headquarters was brought in for him to decipher. ‘Our troops are in full retreat,’ he read, ‘We must concentrate on defending the capital.’ Almost as soon as he had deciphered it, another telegram arrived, announcing the defeats at Froeschwiller and Spicheren. It ended, ‘All may yet be regained.’ By now it was 11.30 p.m. The Marquis de Piennes agreed to tell the empress. ‘Do you know what she said?’ Piennes told Filon when he returned, looking pale. ‘The dynasty is lost. We must think only of France.’
Within a quarter of an hour, fully dressed but without make-up, Eugénie came down to the drawing-room, where her ladies and gentlemen joined her. The Princess d’Essling burst into tears and cried, ‘Oh, Madame!’ The empress stopped her. ‘No emotion, please. I’m going to need all my courage.’ Jurien de La Gravière was more reassuring, saying, ‘Well, after all, it might have been much worse.’
She left immediately for the Tuileries where she summoned a Council for 3.30 a.m., presiding as in the old days. Among those present were Ollivier, Eugène Schneider (president of the Corps Législatif) and the ‘Mameluke’ Rouher (president of the Senate). She told them of the two defeats, of the invasion of Alsace and Lorraine, of the threat to the capital.
Panic-stricken, Ollivier proposed a coup, arresting all left-wing deputies and banning every opposition newspaper. The empress refused. She also refused his demand that the emperor should return to Paris – in her view a commander-in-chief could not come home ‘with the shadow of defeat hanging over him’. She refused, too, his request for General Trochu to be made minister of war, after hearing the hastily summoned general declare he would publicly attack the handling of the campaign. Nothing could be done until she had got rid of Ollivier. But she had asserted her authority as regent.
‘When I reached the Tuileries at about one o’clock in the morning I was a completely different woman, no longer agonised, no longer weak,’ Eugénie remembered. ‘I felt calm and strong. I was lucid and resolved. And I was straining every nerve throughout that tragic night to revive confidence and courage in those around me.’
Filon lay down to sleep on a sofa. The palace furniture was covered with dust-sheets, which the regent would not let her staff remove. ‘For the next month we led a totally Bohemian life,’ he said. ‘We ate and slept wherever, whenever and however we could, working on any table that happened to be free. In other words, we were camping in the Tuileries.’ Mme Lebreton-Bourbaki, the empress’s reader (and sister of the general commanding the Imperial Guard) made up a bed for herself next to Eugénie’s dressing-room so that she could be called at once in case of an emergency.
‘She was wonderful,’ Ollivier commented after the regent had presided over the early morning Council. ‘We were all deeply impressed.’ It was an odd tribute from a man once so keen to ban her from meetings. That evening he sent a telegram to Napoleon, telling him France was loyal to the Second Empire: ‘One or two wretches who shouted “Vive la République!” have been arrested by the people themselves.’ Curiously, he did not mention the impending revolution of which he had warned Eugénie only the day before. ‘We are all united and discuss policy in the Council in complete agreement,’ he continued. ‘The empress is in excellent health. She shows us a magnificent example of strength, courage and nobility of soul.’ He may have been toadying, however, in order to save his government.
Pierre de La Gorce was not present during the dramatic scenes at Saint-Cloud and the Tuileries, and his asssessment of Eugénie’s motives is more brutal, even if he uses polite phrases when referring to her, such as ‘l’auguste infortunée’: ‘Thoughts were running through the empress’s head, which she did not altogether admit to herself,’ he suggested:
She blamed the emperor for three failings in particular; he had grown old, he had turned into a liberal and he had been defeated. Since his position at home had been gravely weakened by his concessions, since he had been humiliated on the battlefield by his defeats, and since he was at the same time broken by the premature collapse of his health, what else should he do but disappear? In contrast, she was young, she was ambitious and she was a mother. She was also legally the regent. Thus was born her secret plan for France’s future, for the empire’s and for her son’s, which had no place for the emperor who largely as a result of his own faults would be obliged to sacrifice himself.
This is no more than saying that Eugénie believed it might soon be time for Napoleon to abdicate in favour of the Prince Imperial – we know she had been thinking on these lines since 1866. What is intriguing is La Gorce’s conviction that by now she was definitely planning to rule France herself, and in her own way.
On the evening of the day after her return to the Tuileries, she was sufficiently relaxed to write a confident letter to Paca’s two daughters, whom she had sent home to Madrid as soon as bad news began to arrive from the front:
Everything remains quiet here although we can’t be sure it’s going to continue. A state of siege has been declared, all the dispatches have been published and the chambers have been recalled. Stay calm! For the time being that really is the most important thing we must do. The news from the troops is that we are still fighting. If we win a battle, then everything will be transformed. Be brave and don’t worry about us. I’m in no way downcast despite the unpleasant moments I’ve been through since last night.
Ignoring Ollivier’s angry protests and exceeding her constitutional powers, the regent insisted on recalling the two chambers. Quite apart from her own distrust of the man, she realised he had lost the chambers’ confidence and that they would vote for a new government when they met on 9 August. She then asked a distinguished soldier and member of the Senate to form an administration, General Cousin de Montauban, Comte de Palikao, a scarred but vigorous septuagenarian who had led the expedition to China in 1860.
Palikao took over the now crucial portfolio of minister of war while the unlamented Gramont followed Ollivier into oblivion, replaced as foreign minister by the Prince de la Tour d’Auvergne. The new interior minister was an old acquaintance of the regent, Henri Chevreau, who had once helped her with emergency measures for the poor in Lyons. It was a cabinet chosen by Eugénie rather than by Palikao – ‘I have to’, she replied when Filon dared to point out that she had been acting in a revolutionary manner.
She issued a rousing proclamation. ‘People of France,’ announced the regent, ‘the war has begun unfavourably for us. We have met with a reverse. But remain steadfast and let us repair the damage as soon as possible. There must be only one party among us, France, and only one criterion, the honour of our nation. I am here in the midst of you. Faithful to my mission and to my duty you will see me foremost in my post as leader in defending the flag of France.’
Palikao immediately set about making Paris ready to resist a siege, calling up every man between eighteen and twenty-five, together with all bachelors and widowers aged less than thirty-six. The already substantial war loan was doubled and banknotes replaced gold coins. Within three weeks Chevreau had succeeded in arming and equipping eighty new battalions of the National Guard, while 1,800 cannon were mounted on the fortifications, many borrowed from the navy. Bridges were broken down, railway tunnels blocked. No less than 35,000 cattle and 280,000 sheep were pastured in the Bois de Boulogne and in the gardens of the Luxembourg. A large number of the city’s greatest art treasures were moved to Brest. Arrangements were put in hand for installing a provisional government at Tours in the event of Paris being cut off from the rest of the country. Much of the preparation was the result of suggestions made by the regent. Eugénie did her best to keep up morale, inspecting all Paris’s military hospitals every day, besides establishing two more at the Tuileries – one inside the palace and another on the terrace.
Noisy and unhelpful criticism came from the left-wing in both chambers. One deputy wanted to revive the Revolutionary Committee of Public Safety of 1792 – another proposed that the Corps Législatif should take over the Regent’s powers and replace Count Palikao by General Trochu. ‘Unfortunately M. de Bismarck has a fourth army, which is inside Paris,’ Prosper Mérimée observed bitterly. ‘You see nothing here but drunken or dispirited crowds.’ Yet there was also a new sense of resolution.
Although there was plenty of courage there was not much resolution in the French armies at the front. Having been advised to counter-attack from St Avold, the emperor was devastated when he learned on 7 August that the enemy had captured Forbach with its vital railway station and supplies for a French advance. Two days later, he received a telegram from Eugénie warning that he was about to be attacked by 300,000 Prussians and advising him to concentrate as many troops as possible on Metz. Although he managed to amass a respectable force, he had no idea of what to do next. In any case, he was in agony whenever he tried to mount a horse. He sent a cable to Eugénie, saying that he was handing over command and returning to Paris. ‘Have you thought of all that might happen if you came back humiliated by two defeats?’ she replied. He stayed with the army.
By now the regent was presiding twice a day over meetings of the Council. Never interrupting ministers, she always guided the discussion back to the point. ‘Misfortune had tempered her spirit, freeing her from any feminine weakness or vanity, even from her obsession with the dynasty which she now considered doomed,’ recalled an eyewitness. ‘She thought only of the country, her speeches and her entire energies being concentrated only on saving France and securing an end to the Empire worthy of the name “Napoleon”.’ This, however, is an overstatement.
The emperor himself was quite ready to die, but he had to think of his troops. Dazed by pain and laudanum, he knew that he was no longer capable of commanding them – his appearance demoralised the officers who saw him. Accordingly, on 12 August he handed over supreme command of the armies of France to Marshal Bazaine.
François-Achille Bazaine appealed to left-wing politicians as a former ranker of peasant origins. Sir Michael Howard describes him: ‘tiny malevolent eyes set in a suety, undistinguished face, the heavy bulldog jaw, the stout, flabby body sagging inelegantly on horseback’. The popular press had long been demanding his appointment. (One-third of French commissions were reserved for promotions from the ranks, unlike the Prussians whose senior officers were all noblemen.) And despite his appearance ‘Notre brave Bazaine’ was certainly courageous, a former Foreign Legionnaire, a veteran of North Africa, the Crimea and Mexico, and a legend for his calmness under fire.
The marshal’s trouble was that on the battlefield he was a little too calm, totally without imagination or aggression. Although a perfectly adequate commander up to brigade level, he was one of those officers who are born to obey orders, while during a military career of nearly forty years he had never once fought in a battle against an army that was as good as his own, let alone better, and when he did he would think in terms of defence and survival more than of winning a victory.
Bazaine’s priority when he took over was to retreat as fast as possible, bringing the army of Lorraine from Metz to Verdun, and to join forces with Marshal MacMahon’s army of Chalons. Moltke was determined to stop him. The Prussians attacked the French in a hard-fought action at Vionville-Mars-la-Tour on 19 August and, although a drawn battle, it made Bazaine more inclined to seek protection beneath the guns of Metz than to reach Verdun. He withdrew to a stronger defensive position on a line running from Gravelotte to Saint-Privat. When the enemy attacked two days later, they lost over 20,000 killed and wounded – 8,000 Prussian guardsmen being mown down by the chassepot rifles – while the French suffered less than 13,000 casualties.
The army of Lorraine had fought magnificently and deserved to win. If Bazaine had counter-attacked at the right moment, when the Prussians were very nearly defeated – some of the spike-helmeted regiments had been running for their lives – he might have won a great victory that would have won the war and changed the course of European history. But he did not issue the vital order, enabling the shocked German commanders to recover and regroup their troops.
The next day, abandoning his plans to link up with MacMahon’s army, ‘nôtre glorieux Bazaine’, retreated into Metz with his army of over 170,000 men, where they stayed until surrendering at the end of October. Their telegraph lines were swiftly severed by the enemy. Bazaine’s cowardice meant that Moltke had cut the French armies in two.
Meanwhile, the bewildered Napoleon III and his son had reached the railway station at Verdun, from where they travelled on to Chalons, a journey that took them almost an entire day and night. The last part of the journey was in a ‘train’ consisting of a locomotive, one or two cattle wagons and a third-class carriage little better than a truck with wooden benches. It was not an ideal conveyance for a man tormented by a stone in his bladder ‘the size of a pigeon’s egg’.
At the great military camp of Chalons, normally so spick and span but now a muddy shambles, father and son saw trainload upon trainload of Marshal MacMahon’s defeated troops arriving after being evacuated from Froeschwiller. Once among the pick of the French army, many were without rifles or equipment, and all were exhausted, filthy dirty and starving, collapsing on the ground in inert heaps as soon as they detrained. Other trains were depositing conscripts by the thousand, country boys who did not know how to march or shoot. Eighteen battalions of drunken, mutinous Gardes Mobiles (a sort of home-guard) added to the chaos. Clerks and workers from Paris who had hitherto escaped the call-up, but who had finally been given rifles, they were mostly republicans and hooted their sovereign whenever they caught sight of him, yelling ‘Merde!’ instead of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ The officers of all these troops were too nervous to give them orders. Yet although MacMahon decided that the only thing to do with the Gardes Mobiles was send them back to Paris, within a few days he had turned his veterans and conscripts into a force with whom officers believed they could still win.
The emperor held a council of war with MacMahon, General Trochu and Plon-Plon. When he muttered ‘I seem to have abdicated,’ Plon-Plon told him, ‘At Paris you abdicated the government, at Metz you abdicated the command. You can’t possibly resume command. On the other hand, while resuming government will be hard and dangerous, what does it matter? If we’re going to go down, let’s do it like men.’ He insisted that Napoleon should return to his capital with MacMahon’s army and make Trochu military governor of Paris because he was so popular; ‘You’re the sovereign,’ Plon-Plon reminded him when he said that he ought to consult the regent. ‘And you must act at once.’
Trochu arrived at the Tuileries at midnight on 17 August, but Eugénie was unimpressed by the voluble Breton, whom she suspected of being an Orleanist, while Palikao pointed out the men and supplies would need to be re-routed on a railway system in chaos. Reluctantly confirming Trochu’s appointment as military governor, she strongly objected to Napoleon returning. ‘Imagine the emperor in this Palace, which has always been a trap,’ she told the general. ‘Either the army supports him, and there will be civil war between the army and the Parisians, or the troops abandon him and there will be revolution. Who benefits in either case? The Prussians.’
She cabled Napoleon, telling him to stay away from Paris – MacMahon must march to Bazaine’s rescue. A message followed the telegram. ‘If you return as a beaten man, you will be stoned,’ she warned. ‘Not just with stones but with dung.’ Filon objected to her harshness. ‘Don’t you realise, I’m the first to feel what an awful position he’s in?’ she explained. ‘The message you want to send wouldn’t work, and he’s doomed if we don’t stop him.’
After the war, a legend grew up that by making her husband remain with the army, Eugénie had deliberately sent him to his doom because she wanted to keep power; but this is nonsense. ‘The Council of Ministers and Privy Council were in complete agreement with her,’ explained the veteran republican Jules Simon, no friend to the Bonapartes. ‘They reached this decision for two reasons. First, what mattered above all to the empress was the personal danger that the emperor might run in Paris. Second, an inaccurate assessment of the risks run by MacMahon’s army in advancing northward.’
Some historians criticise Eugénie for refusing to let the emperor’s last army return to Paris, where it might have been more formidable under the city’s guns. But the Parisians would have taken to the streets if MacMahon had not gone to Bazaine’s aid. When the Council learned he was blockaded in Metz, it endorsed Eugénie’s decision, and MacMahon agreed when he received a message from Bazaine saying that he meant to break out in the direction of Ste Menehoud or Sedan. On 23 August, taking the emperor with it, the army of Chalons marched to Bazaine’s relief.