Doña Maria Manuela watched what was happening in France with the keenest interest. When she and her daughter had met the Prince President in 1849 he had been elected for a mere three years and all the ‘informed’ political observers assured everyone that he would definitely not enjoy a second term. They underestimated him. For on 2 December 1851 he brought off a brilliant coup d’état, making himself president for a further ten years. Obviously it was only a matter of time before he would be proclaimed Emperor of the French. An hereditary emperor was clearly a much greater prize as a husband than a president who might easily be voted out of office. Admittedly, ever since 1789, the French had been addicted to revolutions – no régime had lasted for as long as twenty years – but that did not lessen the glamour of a throne.
Doña Maria Manuela always thought on the grand scale, and while she may not have known much history she knew from Donizetti’s opera Anna Bolena how a strong-minded lady without royal blood had captured King Henry VIII by refusing to sleep with him. At that horrible little dinner party near Saint-Cloud three years earlier, Louis-Napoleon had shown unambiguously that he had fallen under the spell of her daughter’s beauty, and as a natural matchmaker and social mountaineer, Maria Manuela began to see glittering possibilities.
Plenty of basic information about the Prince President was, of course, easily available. He had been born in 1808, the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland and of Hortense de Beauharnais, the Empress Josephine’s daughter by her first marriage. Brought up as an exile in Switzerland by Queen Hortense, he had launched two badly planned and under-supported coups against Louis-Philippe which had both ended in abject disaster. In restoring the Napoleonic Empire, however, he was revealing that he possessed considerable political ability.
Prosper Mérimée supplied intimate details of the all but emperor Louis-Napoleon, which were not easy to obtain. We do not know exactly what Mérimée said in his letters at this time, because Eugenia destroyed the important ones, but we can make a fairly accurate guess. He must have warned them frankly that the man was an almost pathological lecher, with a semi-official mistress living at Saint-Cloud – a rich English courtesan called Miss Howard, who had helped to finance his coup d’état. If Prince Bacciochi was his chef-de-protocol at the Elysée, he also acted as his procurer.
In common with most French intellectuals, not to mention most French politicians, Mérimée could not believe that this exotic new Bonapartist régime run by adventurers and opportunists was likely to last very long – whether in the form of a republic or an empire. In any case he thought the priapic Prince Louis-Napoleon would make Eugenia a bad husband and lead her a miserable life.
But his letters to Madrid failed to deter Doña Maria Manuela. Nor did they deter her daughter. From the very beginning the prospect of marrying the future emperor had attractions for Doña Eugenia, which may seem surprising in so fastidious a young woman. One would have thought there was a good deal about him which repelled her. Not only was he eighteen years older, but he was far from handsome, with a puny physique. A small, dumpy man, his legs were too short for his body, which gave him an odd, crab-like walk. His head was too big, with a huge hook nose and fishlike pale blue eyes, while his heavy, expressionless face was hidden by a goatee beard and a thick moustache whose long, waxed antennae he twirled constantly when nervous. He dressed badly, in sombre, clumsily cut clothes, and because he chain-smoked cigarettes his pockets were always full of tobacco ash. Slow, almost dull in manner, he spoke very little, only after careful thought and then with a sing-song, slightly German accent that was due to his Swiss upbringing.
On the other hand the Prince President possessed extraordinary charm, a charm on whose impact contemporaries remark again and again. Much of it came from the impression made by his calmness, gentleness and obvious kindliness – he was seldom known to lose his temper, and never with inferiors or servants – while he had beautiful manners. His lack of good looks was redeemed by an oddly fascinating expression, sphinx-like yet benign, and a remarkable smile which would suddenly light up his dark features. He seems to have been one of those rare human beings to whom, without knowing why, most people take an instinctive liking.
His lack of physical allure did not bother Eugenia since she was largely indifferent to male beauty. No one could have been uglier than her brother-in-law Alba, yet once she had loved Alba to distraction. (In middle age she once said, with obvious conviction, ‘After the first night it no longer matters much whether a man is handsome or ugly, and at the end of the first week it’s always the same thing.’) Nor is she likely to have succumbed to an arcane sexual chemistry. What Eugenia found attractive, long before she set eyes on him, was who Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was – the heir of his uncle and the Napoleonic legend incarnate. A convinced Bonapartist, she had always been ready to devote herself to the imperial cause. Despite that humiliating attempt to seduce her at Saint-Cloud, she had written to Felix Bacciochi, shortly before the coup of 1851, to offer the Prince President financial assistance should it fail. (The gesture shows how closely she and her mother were watching his progress.) She was convinced that the Bonapartist cause would triumph in the end.
There was another reason why this complex young woman should find him immensely interesting, even if she did not fully realise it until later. He and his legend embodied power, enormous power, and as a husband he could offer her influence on a vast scale, something which in those days was largely denied to her sex. Generally the very few women who possessed influence on such a scale did not use it – like the insanely irresponsible Queen Isabella of Spain. Even so, Eugenia undoubtedly believed that the marriage might give her at least some chance of making the world a better place. For although she had by now abandoned her Fourierism and her socialism, she remained an idealist.
Finally, one should not overlook the simplest of all reasons why the prospect of marrying the Prince President appealed to Eugenia. In May 1852 she had reached the ripe old age of twenty-six and was only too well aware that, according to the harsh conventions of her time, she was entering spinsterhood. This was a state of life that automatically condemned a woman to a condition of pity and contempt, since during the first half of the nineteenth century it was very difficult for any woman without a husband to find a proper, respected role in society, however rich she might be in her own right.
Both mother and daughter must have been fully aware that in pursuing the Prince President of France they risked losing touch with reality. Eugenia’s chance of succeeding was one in a hundred. But Doña Maria Manuela – from whom the real initiative surely came – was never a woman to be daunted by the odds being heavily against her.
By midsummer 1852 everyone in France, even at such quiet little watering places as Eaux-Bonnes, was saying that when Prince Louis-Napoleon became their emperor he would immediately set about founding a dynasty. He needed to find a bride who would be able to bear him children as quickly as possible, since he was already forty-four. Presumably he would choose a foreign princess from one of Europe’s great ruling families. In June the diarist Comte Henri de Viel Castel heard a well-founded rumour that the Prince President was going to marry Princess Carola of Vasa, a member of the former ruling house of Sweden who had the added advantage of possessing Beauharnais blood. Carola refused his proposal, however, marrying the king of Saxony instead. There were equally well-founded rumours that he was on the look-out for a German princess. Gossip of this sort was not exactly encouraging for Doña Eugenia’s hopes.
At the same time Louis-Napoleon’s long-standing mistress was pestering him to marry her. Everybody suspected, correctly, that he was still sleeping with Lizzie. Admittedly Viel Castel noted that at supper during a ball at the château of Saint-Cloud where his mistress was present, ‘his love for Miss Howard did not stop him from stroking the thighs of the lovely Marquise de Belboeuf, who appeared to be neither surprised nor flattered’. Viel Castel also tells us that at the end of October Lizzie went to a state performance at the Paris Opera in honour of the Prince President. ‘The more respectable element among the audience was horrified at seeing Miss Howard, the President’s mistress, sitting in a prominent box and covered with diamonds, which gave a most unfortunate impression.’
Eugenia and her mother were back in Paris by early October, occupying the apartment at 12 Place Vendôme with the big rooms that Maria Manuela had so much admired on a previous occasion, as being particularly suitable for giving receptions. She intended to give as many as possible, since she needed to make all the useful contacts she could, in order to further her matchmaking. The faithful Ferdinand Huddleston had rented an equally splendid flat nearby and from its windows they watched the Prince President’s triumphant return from a hugely successful tour of southern France, during which (in a widely quoted speech at Bordeaux) he had declared soothingly, ‘The Empire means peace.’
Wearing full-dress uniform, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince President of France, rode a mettlesome chestnut charger through the streets of Paris on his way to the Elysée, dramatically keeping several paces ahead of his glittering staff. Looking much better on horseback than he did on foot, he made a fine, soldierly impression, which was what the people expected from someone who was the great Napoleon’s nephew – few of them can have realised that his experience of military life had been limited to a short spell with the Swiss army, as a humble captain in the Berne militia. There were big wooden arches over every street along the route, decorated with flags and bunting which bore the unequivocal words, ‘Vive Louis Napoleon Empéreur!’ while medals bearing the legend ‘Napoleon III Empéreur’, were on sale at every street corner.
The normally cynical Parisian crowd cheered him wildly. Older citizens commented with astonishment that it looked extraordinarily like the ‘Joyeuse Entrée’ of the old kings of France and Navarre when taking possession of their capital of Paris on succeeding to the throne – just as Charles X had done less than thirty years before – which was precisely what they were meant to think.
Doña Maria Manuela immediately set about obtaining invitations to the Prince President’s official receptions at the Elysée and Saint-Cloud, and found no difficulty in doing so. Félix Bacciochi, the chef-de-protocol (recently promoted to chamberlain), whom they had met in 1849, was only too ready to oblige. No doubt he fancied he could still see possibilities in Doña Eugenia; he retrieved from his files her letter of November 1851, offering financial aid for the Bonaparte cause – which so far he had not bothered to show to Louis-Napoleon – and now gave it to him. When she and her mother attended the receptions, however, everything was very decorous, the Prince President behaving impeccably.
Louis-Napoleon had already revived the imperial hunt, installing a vast pack of hounds at Fontainebleau, where Eugenia was invited to a meet on 13 November. More than a firm seat and ability to take fences were required because there was so little jumping, the field being expected to show a command of dressage as well as skill at finding their way through the forest. Lent a big English thoroughbred, she impressed everyone by her horsemanship and was the first up with the hounds when they caught their stag. Next day, Louis-Napoleon sent her the horse as a present, the start of a whirlwind courtship. ‘You can’t imagine what people are saying about me since I was given that beastly horse’, an embarrassed Eugenia told a friend at the Spanish embassy. Soon she would have good reason for feeling self-conscious. Everyone in Paris was beginning to watch her with fascination, especially if they saw her talking to the Prince President.
On 21 November a small ball was given at Saint-Cloud, to mark the first day of a long-awaited referendum in which every adult French citizen (women excepted) would be asked to approve the restoration of the Napoleonic Empire. The ball’s guest list was largely restricted to the future emperor’s leading supporters, many of whom looked more like adventurers than politicians. The Austrian ambassador, Baron Hübner, observed disdainfully that the list included ‘a few Bonapartes together with a mob of obscurecreatures who were equally inelegant’. He agreed with a haughty old French lady that the atmosphere was definitely ‘a little too democratic’, adding that ‘this sort of thing and, still more, democratic manners, is certainly not to Louis-Napoleon’s taste. But as a creation of universal suffrage, he can scarcely deny his own roots, and at such a time he would certainly be most unwise not to stress them. However, he’s going to find it rather expensive.’ The ambassador’s assessment did not do justice to the shrewd Prince President, who knew the value of moving with the times.
Professionally sharp-eyed, the Austrian also noticed with interest that ‘the young and beautiful Mlle de Montijo was being paid a great deal of attention by the President’. What Baron Hübner is unlikely to have known is that Doña Eugenia, as a committed Bonapartist of very long standing, was geninely delighted by the prospect of a Napoleonic restoration, which had been her dream since childhood. Needless to say, nothing could have endeared her more to Louis-Napoleon.
‘Mlle de Montijo, a young Spanish blonde of the highest birth has been the object of the Prince’s attentions ever since her stay at Fontainebleau’, the Comte de Viel Castel carefully recorded in his diary for 25 November. He comments with considerable insight (especially remarkable since it was the first time that he had set eyes on Eugenia) that ‘The young lady certainly has a most prepossessing manner and does not lack a keen sense of humour, but she is much too strong minded ever to be ruled by her heart or her emotions.’
The Second Empire was proclaimed on 2 December, followed by a Te Deum at Notre Dame. In every city throughout France cannon roared out salutes, church bells pealed, bands played Napoleonic marches and there was a public holiday – all without a single hostile demonstration. The Prince President had become Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, moving from the Elysée into his uncle’s former Palace of the Tuileries, which was more suited to His Imperial Majesty. The transformation cannot have displeased Doña Eugenia. But she was blissfully ignorant of the fact that on 13 December the French ambassador in London was going to solicit Queen Victoria’s approval of the emperor’s formal request for the hand of Her Serene Highness Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, still only seventeen, but possessing the invaluable asset of being the daughter of Victoria’s half-sister.
‘Mlle de Montijo is at all the receptions’, M. de Viel Castel noted on 23 December. He added pruriently, ‘she enjoys very noticeable favour, but I don’t think that she has submitted to a conqueror’s yoke’ – meaning that so far she had not gone to bed with the Prince. ‘Her mother, who was formerly known as the Comtesse de Teba, used to be very easy-going and about 1825 she had my brother Louis for a lover.’
When Viel Castel wrote this, Eugenia and her mother had already been staying at the château of Compiègne for several days, invited to spend Christmas with Napoleon III, and a hundred other guests. His unfortunate foreign minister, Edouard Drouyn de Lhuys, had been frantic with worry at the prospect of a mésalliance ever since the hunting party at Fontainebleau the previous month and the present of the horse, even if Louis-Napoleon had told him not to worry. But at Compiègne Drouyn de Lhuys could see there was every reason for worrying. What would happen to that sensible marriage with Queen Victoria’s niece?
Another guest, Baron Hübner, was bowled over by Eugenia, despite believing her to be an advanced liberal and practically a revolutionary. In a lyrical dispatch the ambassador sent to Vienna a month later, he raves about ‘the noble and regular beauty of her features, the brilliance of her complexion, the elegance of her slight and supple figure’, writing of ‘an expression of gentle melancholy the result of a strange and almost tragic adventure’, of ‘the wild oddness and energy of her spirit’. It is clear from his dispatch that he also enjoyed Doña Eugenia’s conversation, ‘which recoiled at nothing’. In addition, he credited her with ‘a force of will and a physical courage which one rarely meets even among the women of the people’. Surprisingly, the man who wrote this paean of praise was a reactionary who loathed progressives.
Fascinated by the relationship between Eugenia and the emperor which, he claims, reminded him of a tale from The Arabian Nights, Hübner says there was a peculiarly nasty plot at Compiègne to persuade her to sleep with Louis-Napoleon. Despite having been Maria Manuela’s guest at Casa Ariza, the Marquise de Contades (a very unsavoury lady and the mistress of the emperor’s henchman, Colonel Fleury) was ‘the soul of the cabal who wished to prevent the emperor marrying by giving him a new mistress. She said to Mlle de Montijo that, after all, remorse was better than regret, to which the Spaniard answered, “Neither remorse nor regret!”’
The emperor’s aides-de-camp and the gentlemen of his household teased their unhappy master as much as they dared about his beautiful guest, placing bets on the date on which she was likely to give in and sending witty letters about the ‘siege’ to their friends. Their barely concealed amusement made him more frantic than ever. Horace de Viel Castel even has a story – probably unfounded but revealing about the atmosphere at Compiègne – that the emperor actually tried to break into her room.
During this nightmarish visit, originally planned to last for only a few days but which at the host’s insistence dragged on for nearly a fortnight, Doña Eugenia had to put up with the sidelong glances and knowing smiles, the sniggers and whispers, of the rest of the party, aware that behind her back every sort of insinuation and calumny was circulating. The British ambassador, Lord Cowley, who was among the guests, went away completely convinced by opponents of the marriage that ‘Mlle de Montijo’ was just an adventuress. He reported, ‘The Emperor’s entourage is getting seriously alarmed at his admiration of a certain Spanish young lady, Mademoiselle Montijo by name. Her mother, an Englishwoman [sic] by birth, is, with the young lady, playing a bold game, and, I cannot doubt, hopes that her daughter may wear the Imperial Crown.’ Later, Cowley added, ‘The Emperor is going it finely with the young Montijo.’ He also said that Drouyn de Lhuys was wondering how he could continue as foreign minister if Napoleon married her.
Eugenia needed considerable courage to remain at Compiègne until the party ended and to cope with an increasingly amorous emperor. Hübner tells us that when with Napoleon she was ‘the image of virginal reserve’, but as soon as he was out of sight, ‘her highly excitable nature reasserted itself’. He also claims that when the emperor, by now ‘the victim of a frenzy of passion’, was galloping beside Eugenia through the forest of Compiègne and was under the illusion they were alone when in fact they were within earshot of the fascinated house party, he had begged her to go to bed with him. ‘Mlle de Montijo pulled her horse up short, and looking the Emperor steadily in the eye, said “Yes, when I am Empress!”’ That evening she did not come down to dinner and for the rest of the visit her manner was glacial when speaking to her host. From then on, says Hübner, Napoleon began to think seriously of marrying her. Clearly, something like the incident in the forest must have happened to make up his mind.
The Spanish envoy at Paris, the Marqués de Valdegamas, believed, however, that he had done so a month before the party at Compiègne. He reported to Madrid that in November, when Napoleon had been strolling with Eugenia through the park at Fontainebleau during a break from hunting, he discovered that both their watches had stopped at precisely the same moment. Now it so happened, according to the Spanish envoy’s dispatch, that the emperor had only just received news from the Jardin des Plantes at Paris that a mysterious, exotic plant, which had never been known to flower since the year when his uncle had married his grandmother Josephine, had suddenly blossomed spectacularly. No less superstitious than his Corsican forebears, Napoleon immediately decided that the two phenomena must definitely be linked and, by some unfathomable process peculiar to himself, that this meant that Eugenia was predestined to share his throne.
There is yet another story, told by Doña Eugenia’s great-nephew the seventeenth Duke of Alba. While admitting that the tale might not perhaps be accurate in every detail, the duke was nonetheless convinced that something like it must have happened at some point during Louis-Napoleon’s courtship. According to Alba, Eugenia and her mother had been watching a military parade by the newly restored Imperial Guard in the Place du Carrousel from a window somewhere in the Tuileries when, after the parade, the emperor rode his horse beneath their window, shouting, ‘How can I come up to you?’ Eugenia shouted back, ‘Only by way of the altar.’
What is certainly beyond dispute, even among historians, is that the Emperor Napoleon III had reached his decision about whom he ought to marry within three days of Doña Eugenia’s departure from the château of Compiègne on 28 December 1852. When the Comte Walewski, the French ambassador in London, came to the Tuileries on New Year’s Eve to discuss an irksome but surmountable difficulty that had arisen over the Hohenlohe-Langenburg marriage – the girl’s devoutly Protestant parents seemed unwilling to give their permission – the Emperor shook his hand warmly and, ignoring whatever he was trying to say about Princess Adelaide, told him, ‘My dear fellow, I’ve been captured.’ He then explained his intention of marrying Mlle de Montijo. Horrified, Walewski played for time, begging him to wait for just a bit longer and to reconsider his decision. Next day, however, the Hohenlohe-Langenburg Princess formally declined Louis-Napoleon’s proposal.
Yet there were still a number of extremely formidable obstacles for Doña Eugenia to overcome, together with some even more daunting enemies. At the worst, the emperor might manage to control his passion, listen to his advisers and say goodbye to her.