The year is 1855 and a procession of luxury carriages crosses Paris. An enthusiastic crowd lining the boulevards greets Queen Victoria with her husband Prince Albert in the company of the French imperial couple, Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. It is the first visit of a British ruler since 1431 and it has been a tremendous success on several levels. Both monarchs have become firm allies in the Crimean War, the term “entente cordiale” has been coined between them, and lasting personal friendships have formed.
Albert is very impressed with Eugenie’s poise and elegance. “Altogether I’m delighted to see how much he likes her and admires her,” Victoria notes in her diary, “as it is so seldom that I see him do so with any woman.” Victoria herself is experiencing a pleasant electric current each time Napoleon III whispers endearments into her ear, compliments her on her dress, or tickles the back of her hand with his mustache. No man has ever dared to flirt with her, and it is all so very French!
If the ten-day visit made such a good impression on the parents, the two children Victoria and Albert brought along were smitten. When the visit approached its end, Vicky, the Princess Royal, broke down in tears and pleaded for more time in France. Her 13-year-old brother Bertie, the future King Edward VII, acted more directly. The day he found himself alone with the emperor, he said: “You have a nice country and I would like to be your son.” When his proposal failed, he tried again, this time with Eugenie.
“You parents cannot do without you,” she replied.
“Not do without us?” Bertie exclaimed. “Don’t fancy that, for there are six more of us, and they don’t want us.”
To his parents’ chagrin, the unloved Bertie became a playboy. The Prince des Galles, as he was known in France, returned many times, enthusiastically sampling all the vices Paris had to offer.
Revolutionaries ransacking the Tuileries Palace in 1848
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The recent unrest across France reminded me why this blog could not be called anything other than Victorian Paris. I remember one reader objecting to the title, asking what had Victoria to do with Paris? Well, the queen visited Paris with her husband and their oldest children, Vicky and Bertie. The family had a fantastic time and bonded quickly with Napoleon III and his wife, Eugenie. Bertie liked them so much that he begged to be adopted. Even though his wish was not granted, Paris became his lifelong playground.
Other than that, Victoria’s link to Paris is weak, indeed. But consider this: what else is on offer? Given Paris’ tumultuous 19th-century history, what could replace the Victorian period in readers’ minds? At any given time, there were various French monarchs and pretenders exiled in England. They were either taking tea with the queen, or plotting the overthrow of the current regime in France.
Here is a brief overview of Paris during Victoria’s long reign:
1837 (England) – On June 20th, Victoria, aged 18, becomes Queen of England, succeeding her uncle William IV.
1837 (France) After the brief July Revolution in 1830, Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, was proclaimed King. He was the reigning monarch during Victoria’s throne ascent.
1848 (England) Princess Louise Caroline Alberta is born – Queen Victoria’s sixth child.
1848 (France) The February Revolution. After two days’ fighting, Louis Philippe flees to England, and the Second Republic is proclaimed. Crossing the Channel in the opposite direction is Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He is the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland and the nephew of the brilliant Corsican, the emperor Napoleon. After a successful electoral campaign, financed by an English courtesan, he is elected President of the French Republic.
1852 (England) The queen is pregnant with Prince Leopold George Duncan, her eighth child.
1852 (France) In December, Louis Napoleon stages a coup d’état to be elected emperor by universal suffrage. He adopts the title Napoleon III. A regime known as the Second Empire is established.
1870 (England) The queen actively mourns her husband, Prince Albert, who died of typhoid fever in 1861, aged 42.
1870 (France) The Franco-Prussian war rages. The Second Empire falls after the decisive defeat of the French army in Sedan. The emperor surrenders to the enemy. His wife, Empress Eugenie, flees to England, where she is later joined by her husband and son. The Third Republic is proclaimed. The French feel humiliated as the victorious Prussians celebrate the birth of the German Empire in Versailles, the traditional seat of French royalty.
1871 (England) The queen still mourns her husband.
1871 (France) Paris is surrounded, shelled, and starved by the enemy army. Unlike France’s legitimate government, seated at Versailles, the city does not accept an armistice. The Commune erupts – the greatest revolution since 1789. In May, while the German army still surrounds Paris, the French government troops storm the city. This is followed by a massacre of thousands. The Commune is defeated.
1901 (England) Queen Victoria dies, aged 81.
1901 (France) The country enjoys a prosperity period known as the Belle Époque.
Paris destroyed by arson during the Commune in 1871. In the foreground is the Palace of Tuilleries
The pension reform that has been at the core of the violent protests in France has to be dealt with by other aging EU countries. Many governments fear the French scenario. They shouldn’t. There is no other nation that enjoys revolutions and stormy protests to this extent.
You Might Be Able to Swim in Paris’ Seine River by 2024
Paris is taking the plunge to make the Seine River squeaky clean, and if you believe in mermaids like I do, they’re about to get a real upgrade in real estate! But, more importantly, residents and tourists alike will be able to splash around and romanticize their life in the City of Love by 2024. The Seine River, a cherished and well-known natural landmark of Paris, has never been known as an ideal swimming spot, but significant progress has been made to fulfill Paris’s promise of clean water for the 2024 Summer Olympics. The city’s workers have made progress in improving the water quality of the 483-mile-long river, which is a huge undertaking in itself. So, how will the river be cleaned? Paris has developed the Swimming Plan for 2024, using an underground network of pipes, tanks, and pumps to prevent bacteria from entering the river. With over $1.53 billion from the Games, improved water quality could allow both Olympic swimmers and locals to enjoy the river, but they will have to wait until next year for safe swimming access to approximately 20 designated swimming areas along the Seine.
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This blog has quietly passed the 10-year anniversary. We met many remarkable personalities along the way, and I want to recall some of them in this post. Not all were paragons of virtue, but they were bursting with enthusiasm, perseverance, and unlimited energy. The combination of all three is what leads to high achievement. Here then is a collection of five exceptional go-getters:
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Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, later Napoleon III
(1808-1873)
His megalomaniac uncle ravaged Europe, wasted a whole generation of Frenchmen on battlefields, and caused untold suffering to people across the continent, from Spain to Russia. Napoleon III, on the contrary, ruled for eighteen prosperous years with modernization and progress as his goals. For some strange reason, Napoleon the Great found his historical place among the admired personalities instead of being sent to hell along with Hitler. His industrious nephew, on the other hand, is called Napoleon le Petit (Napoleon the Small) by the ungrateful French. And yet! Where are the glorious conquests of Napoleon I now? Gone, long gone. Only the legend remains. The legacy of Napoleon III, far less glorious, but far more useful, is still with us. It’s time to do this remarkable man justice. His life story is just as colorful as his uncle’s. ReadThe English Courtesan Who Made a French Emperor…
Georges-Eugène Haussmann, the man who transformed Paris
(1809-1891)
Better known as Baron Haussmann, this man was chosen by Emperor Napoleon III to carry out a massive urban renewal of Paris. Never before had a city been transformed so fast and so completely. Never again will we see such a ruthless urban upheaval for greater good. What was possible then, under the imperial absolutism, is no longer doable in a democratic state. Nevertheless, whichever way we look at it today, we cannot deny Baron Haussmann’s genius. Read more…
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Countess of Castiglione, professional beauty, secret agent, and pioneer of photography
(1837-1899)
Virginia Elisabetta Luisa Carlotta Antonietta Teresa Maria Oldoïni, the Countess of Castiglione by virtue of her marriage, and the most notorious narcissist of the century, led a busy life. Still in her teens, she became the mistress to a king who then sent her to conquer an emperor. After bedroom diplomacy in her youth, she spent the rest of her life posing for portraits of her gorgeous self. While doing so, she rewrote the rules of photography. Read La Castiglione: The Too Much Countess
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Charles F. Worth, father of the haute-couture and fashion dictator
(1825-1895)
When Charles Worth died, queens and other wealthy women around the world wept. In his egalitarian establishment, Rue de la Paix, royalty met with high-ranking prostitutes and the common language was money. This former printer’s apprentice, ended with 1,200 employees and a huge fortune. How did it all happen? Read it here…
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Sarah Bernhardt, the drama queen who conquered the world
(1844-1923)
The Divine Sarah as she was known worldwide, was a woman of many talents, and even more eccentricities. She possessed the energy of a power plant and an extraordinary courage to fight adversity. When she stood in the US Congress, pleading for America to join the WW1, no one had to ask who was this small, one-legged, old Frenchwoman. If you lived in a civilized country you would have heard her name. She’d made sure of that. Read The Inescapable Sarah Bernhardt here…
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After twenty years apart, the Three Musketeers reunite to right a wrong.
Madelon-la-Belle left Paris twenty years ago to escape her damaged reputation. She abandoned her infant daughter, Louise, in the care of her sister. Now she is back, a wealthy widow, and she plans to be a caring mother. Her idea of caring motherhood is to make Louise a high-born heiress. It only needs a little deception.
This does not sit well with Louise’s father, Captain d’Artagnan of the Royal Musketeers, who finds Madelon’s plan unsound. He wants to see Louise married as soon as possible, before she becomes a slut like her mother, and has already found a good husband for her. Unfortunately, the formidable Madelon does not agree with d’Artagnan’s choice. A battle of wills ensues, involving d’Artagnan’s long-lost friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis.
A screenplay inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel.
In 1845, the French social reformer Victor Considerant wrote: “Paris is an immense workshop of putrefaction, where misery, pestilence and sickness work in concert, where sunlight and air rarely penetrate. Paris is a terrible place where plants shrivel and perish, and where, of seven small infants, four die during the course of the year.”
Paris before Haussman
Indeed, urban reform was long overdue in Paris. Neglected by the kings, who preferred Versailles, the city was overcrowded and dirty. In the narrow crooked streets, diseases spread quickly as did social unrest. Napoleon I made a few attempts at beautifying and sanitizing the capital but, being too busy with disseminating misery across the European continent, he never really got down to it on a large scale. After the Waterloo defeat, plans for a better capital were shelved and it took his nephew, Napoleon III, to begin the greatest urban project ever achieved. Napoleon III might not have been the greatest warrior–the French still prefer his (in)glorious uncle–but he was a mover and shaker of the practical sort. Paris still benefits from his industry while Napoleon I’s conquests are long gone.
Having spent part of his exile in London (see The English Courtesan who Made a French Emperor published here) he brought to France the idea of English urbanism. He found a man with a similar vision and with boundless energy in Haussmann, the Prefect of the Seine. Together, in seventeen years, they made Paris what it is today.
Piercing a new boulevard during the Haussmannian transformation
Announcing his motto Paris embellished, Paris enlarged, Paris cleaned up, Haussmann didn’t take prisoners in his war against the old. All that was ugly, dirty and disease-ridden became history. He pierced wide avenues and established rules for standardized buildings. He created a square in each district and envisioned dozens of parks, gardens, and woods. He built new churches, bridges, theaters, and railway stations. He enlarged the city from 12 to 20 arrondissements. Underground, Paris got a sophisticated water and sewage system that – to this day – is one of the tourist’s sights of the city.
Paris after Haussmann (Place de l’Etoile)
The titanic work has always been controversial in view of the methods used to achieve this incredible result. To modify Paris in this way, Haussmann did not hesitate to destroy nearly 18,000 houses that hampered his vision of straight and wide boulevards. He excluded the working classes for whom the new dwellings were unaffordable. Haussmann was finally deposed in 1870, a few months before the fall of Napoleon III and the Second Empire.
Notre Dame in 1852
Notre Dame after Haussmann’s intervention
Thanks to Napoleon III’s vision and Haussmann’s ruthlessness, Paris is the city we know today. Such a colossal project cannot be achieved without a totalitarian approach and would be impossible to realize in a democracy with its many rules and laws.
The Avenue de l’Opéra, one of the new boulevards created by Napoleon III and Haussmann. The new buildings on the boulevards were required to be all of the same height and same basic façade design, and all faced with pale-ochre stone, giving the city a unified look.
“I equal the highest-born ladies with my birth, I surpass them with my beauty, and I judge them with my mind.” Thus spoke Virginia Oldoïni, Countess of Castiglione, who was convinced that she was the most beautiful woman since God had created Earth. With this attitude, she managed to lead not one, but several lives. Conspirator, a diplomat in petticoats, an emancipated courtesan, a pioneer of photography, an art director, and a producer, La Castiglione was, above all, a professional beauty. Aged only 18, married for a year, and mother of a male child, Virginia—Nicchia to family and friends—already managed to add several lovers to her stable of admirers in her native land. One of them was Victor Emmanuel II, King of Sardinia, who dreamt of a united Italy.
A part of Northern Italy (in yellow) was then a territory of the Austrian Empire, and the Austrians were unwilling to part with it. An armed conflict could not be won without strong allies. One of the most desirable allies for this project was Napoleon III. Knowing the French monarch’s penchant for women, Victor Emmanuel and his minister Cavour (Virginia’s cousin) thought of the Pearl of Italy as Virginia was then known. They charged her with the mission of convincing the French emperor to lend a helping hand for the unification of the country. Impressed with the importance of the plot, she accepted eagerly. The king and his minister profited from their visit to France by spreading the rumor of her beauty so that when she finally appeared in Paris, in January 1856, she was the object of widespread curiosity at Court.
A costume ball saw La Castiglione in her famous Queen of Hearts outfit. She wears it without a corset and the transparent gauze reveals her bosom. Empress Eugenie remarked with open sarcasm that the heart was seated too low
The diplomatic task was not as easy as Virginia expected. Napoleon III, usually easily seducible, resisted for four agonizing months. During that time, the countess spent heavily on extravagant outfits with very low-cut necklines. One wit observed that the deeper Virginia’s décolletages became, the less room there remained in men’s pants. She began to specialize in spectacular entrances, usually toward the end of social gatherings. On one such occasion, she entered the ballroom as Napoleon III was leaving. “You are too late,” he said to her. “No, Sire. You are leaving too early,” she retorted.
This marked a break in her bad luck. The emperor, who had considered her a dull doll, took notice. Her appearance at a masked ball as a Decadent Roman Woman finally brought result. With her abundant hair loose and her skirt split to show a nude leg, a ring on each toe, she caused a sensation. A crowd gathered around her to gape; some women even climbed onto the furniture to get a better view. Within a week, she became the emperor’s mistress, and her letters describing successful pillow talk reached the Sardinian embassy to be dispatched by diplomatic mail.
While Virginia enjoyed the status of the emperor’s mistress, her impoverished husband returned home to sell the family silver. His wife’s extravagance had ruined him and the pair separated for good. Virginia made no friends at the French court either. She was heartily hated by all for her stupid arrogance. They called her the Too Much Countess and when she kept bragging about her lover’s gifts, the emperor cut her off without mercy. Napoleon III would not tolerate indiscreet mistresses.
The Too Much Countess
After two years basking in the imperial favor, La Castiglione returned home to Turin, defeated, and soon sank into boredom. She brightened up when Victor Emmanuel granted her a pension for her diplomatic merits. She began to travel to the courts of Europe as her scandalous reputation led to invitations from people who wanted to satisfy their curiosity. During her stay at the court of the King of Prussia, she made the acquaintance of Chancellor Bismarck. Her second chance at diplomacy came much later (in 1871) when Napoleon III, ill, defeated, and with his empire in ruins, asked her to intervene with Bismarck to cancel his plan for the Prussian army to occupy Paris. Paris was spared the Prussian occupation.
During her first stay in Paris, Virginia posed for many photographs. She returned in 1861 with her son Giorgio to have more pictures taken. This was a hobby, and a passion, that was to last for the next forty years. She spent her fortune on elaborate costumes and props
In 1863, she was invited to a costume ball in the imperial palace. She appeared disguised as Queen of Etruria. Virginia rushed the next day to the photography studio to immortalize her outfit. Convinced of her success and her return to the upper echelons, she took lascivious and suave poses, miming innocence. However, the costume was judged scandalous. The press was unleashed and she was accused of appearing naked at the party.
Her husband, still in Italy, threatened to take Giorgio back. She responded with a photograph called “The Vengeance”. In this picture, she is dressed in the same costume of Queen of Etruria but with a cape covering her shoulders. Another addition is a dagger she holds in her hand. After this, her husband ceased to protest.
The volcanic countess continued to produce dramatic photographs of herself for many years. The Metropolitan Museum in New York has a collection of some 400 of them. Virginia appears as a tragic victim, a pursued virgin, a nun, an Odalisque, and many other incarnations. She was the first to invent dramatic poses. By choosing the costumes, the angles, and the shots, she wrote a new chapter in the history of photography.
La Castiglione in 1875. As the years passed, the mirror returned a less satisfactory image.
Women, who build their life on their beauty alone, suffer when old age hits. A few of the lucky ones accept their fate and do not fight the wrinkles. Others hang on, using artificial means to preserve beauty until they become the caricatures of their former selves. Some go into hiding. No longer able to admire herself in the mirror, Virginia banned all mirrors from her house. With her husband and son deceased, she ended her days alone, immured in a modest Parisian apartment with the walls covered in black and the shutters closed. She died in 1899, aged 62. The Italian embassy immediately dispatched an agent to burn all possibly compromising correspondence.
A previous post, The Spectacle of Paris Streets, described random free spectacles. The largest and most ostentatious free show had a steady schedule. Every day, between 2:00 and 4:00 PM, the wealthy shamelessly expotsed their luxury to each other, and to the unwashed masses, in the Bois de Boulogne parade.
Going to the Bois de Boulogne on a workday
Before becoming the favorite place of the Parisian society in the 19th century, the Bois de Boulogne had a history. Originally, the forest extended on the plains and hillsides of the right bank of the Seine. A landmark of brigands and vagabonds, the ancient forest was also the favorite place of royal hunts. At the end of Napoleon I’s regime, it was devastated by the occupying troops who encamped there. Although in poor condition and crossed by narrow roads of dismal quality, it became nevertheless, around 1830, the rendezvous of all Paris society.
In 1852, the State yielded the wood to the city of Paris with the charge of its development and maintenance. Emperor Napoleon III had envisioned the creation of a large landscaped park similar to Hyde Park. The project was entrusted to the engineer J.J. Alphand who created two lakes, the largest of which measures 19 hectares. Various amenities – large alleys, the racecourse of Longchamp (opened in 1858), the Garden of Acclimatization, and several restaurants – completed the whole landscape.
Riding in the Daumont Style
During the Second Empire (1852-1870), the equestrian rendezvous at the Bois de Boulogne was rated as a meeting of the supreme social chic. The chroniclers of the time tell us of its splendor:
“At the height of luxury was the attelage à la Grand Daumont, with its postilions in livery— of sober or bright colors according to the tastes of the masters—the footmen behind the hood, arms crossed, the two men in a row on horses of the same dress as the four draft horses. Then there came the eighth-spring, the queen of the passenger carriages. There was also the elegant half-Daumont of a duke with horses very close and absolutely under the whip of the gentleman-coachman who drove almost standing. The tandem cabriolet was another fantasy designed to bring out the talent of the gentleman-coachman. Then came a cute cart dragged by two pretty ponies under the hand of the elegant lady who also wanted to show that she could hold the reins. All aristocratic, luxurious and worldly Paris was there, struggling with elegance and sumptuousness … “
Romance, or the carnal desire, also played its part. The poet Beaudelaire best describes the mood:
“Sometimes a horseman gallops gracefully beside an open carriage, and his horse appears, by his bows, to salute in his own way. The carriage carries away, in an alley streaked with light and shade, the beauties lying as in a boat, indolent, vaguely listening to the gallantries fall into their ears and indulging themselves lazily in the wind of the promenade. The fur and muslin rise to their chins and overflow like a wave over the door. The servants are stiff, perpendicular, inert, and all alike; it is always the monotonous and featureless effigy of punctual, disciplined servility … “
Cora Pearl
On the part of the great courtesans, luxury was no less brilliant. The famous Madame Musard had a half-Daumont, whose postilions were dressed in violet livery and mounted black horses of admirable beauty. Cora Pearl had set up her stable and led it with such authority that gossip spread on how she must have been raised by a groom. Adele Courtois, Caroline Letessier, and La Barucci, famous for the Baccarat Scandal, involving the Prince of Wales, all had their car driven in the Daumont style, and their livery could compete with those of the oldest houses of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.
Empress Eugenie
Lady Harriet, the courtesan who financed the emperor while he was waiting for his crown, used colors similar to the imperial livery. Madame Lejeune had the audacity to do better. She took the imperial colors outright. One day, her Daumont went out, preceded by scouts in green and gold, with a hunter on horseback at the left door and two carriage boys following also on horseback. As she had a certain resemblance to the Empress, all the sergeants of the town who saw the arrivael of this crew on the Place de la Concorde, rushed forward, made room for them, and finally raised the chains of the Arc de Triomphe, so that the sovereign could pass. She went in this style to the entrance of the Bois. This adventure made a big noise in the newspapers as well as at the Court. As a consequence, it was expressly forbidden to employ a livery which, even approximately, recalled that of the Emperor.
This luxury only grew from year to year. It was at its peak in 1867 at the time of the World Exposition. With the fall of the Empire, the splendor would gradually fade: the walks in the Bois and participation in the various events took a different, more bourgeois, look.
During the siege of Paris, part of the food supply of fish and game came from the Bois. More destructive authorization was given to the trade of timber dealers to exploit the Bois de Boulogne. The devastation increased during the battles between Versailles and the Communards. After the war, the southern part, the most devastated, was transformed into the racecourse of Auteuil. From 1872, social life resumed and one could see again the parades of carriages crossing the Bois for the Grand Prix de Longchamp.
After the Great War ended in 1918, this activity declined. The prodigal nobility of the nineteenth and early twentieth century no longer existed. Only the profiteers of war, the new rich, held the high ground and the automobile took over. An époque had ended.
It takes a lot of effort to become an emperor. First, you have to believe in yourself and your star, which is easy when you are a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and the heir to his fallen throne. But you also need an endless persistence: the strength to overcome failure, to dust yourself off after a hard fall, and to pursue your goal with renewed energy. Next, you need a lack of moral scruples, the ability to handle people and, finally, a serious heap of money. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte checked off every item on this list except the last one.
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte
When we meet Louis-Napoleon in London, he is an errant prince with a busy past. He had staged two attempts at seizing power in France, was exiled to America for the first one, and imprisoned for life for the second attempt. He has recently escaped from a fortress, where he was supposed to rot, and now he is in London with only his name for a capital. He is thirty-eight years old.
What would you do at this stage of your life had you had these experiences? You and I would be glad to be alive and free, and we would be cured of our mad ambitions. Louis-Napoleon, on the contrary, was incurable and more than able to function in dire circumstances.
Although many unsavory rumors were later fabricated by his enemies, there is sufficient evidence that the prince behaved extremely badly during his American exile where he was sent with the provision of fifteen thousand gold francs. Indeed, King Louis-Philippe, who then reigned in France, chose to reduce Louis-Napoleon’s first attempt at a coup d’état to a childish prank and he put some hush money into the youth’s pocket. After all, the Bonapartist feeling in France was still strong, and a political trial could rock the boat.
Louis-Napoleon, still in his twenties, managed to squander the money on New York’s whores. After being thrown out of three brothels for misbehaving and out of his hotel for “forgetting” to pay, he lodged with a prostitute and proceeded to live off her earnings. If the woman’s clients complained about the price, Loulou was there to change their opinion with his fists. He thus ended in detention for assault and robbery. A good lawyer managed to set him free. The same lawyer, after Louis-Napoleon’s ascension to the throne, complained in a newspaper interview that he had never been paid for his effort.
Despite all that, one must not form an image of a lazy and brutal sex-addict. Louis-Napoleon had many intellectual qualities that later helped him in governing France. He was attentive and curious, pragmatic, and always willing to learn. During his imprisonment in the fortress of Ham, after the second botched coup d’état, he kept busy producing socio-economic pamphlets filled with progressive ideas that he realized later in life. He also managed to father two male children with the local washerwoman.
Women were not only his strongest interest, they were also the vehicles of his political ideas. Whether they fell in love with his legendary name and title, his romantic charisma, or with the man himself, is difficult to say, but Louis-Napoleon never lacked a sweetheart willing to sacrifice herself for his political success. In London, after his escape from prison, that post was filled by Miss Harriet Howard.
Miss Harriet Howard
The daughter of a Brighton shoemaker, Harriet, then aged twenty-three, was a beautiful and refined courtesan. She had amassed a fortune which she laid at Louis-Napoleon’s feet. Being supported by a woman was nothing new for the prince. Harriet dumped her current rich keeper for him and begun to earn a fat income from attracting clients to a gambling club. For good measure, she also took in Louis-Napoleon’s two small sons whom he had to leave behind in France.
Thanks to Harriet’s industry, Louis-Napoleon lead a comfortable life. Again, he kept busy writing. This time, he was correcting his manuscript, The History and the Future of Artillery and producing a study on an economically profitable canal in Nicaragua. He also kept current on the news from France. On February 26, 1848, he learned of a revolution in Paris.
The 1848 revolution painted by Alphonse de Lamartine
There had been nothing drastically wrong with King Louis-Philippe’s government but, since the First Revolution, the French people became accustomed to uprising for real or imagined wrongs. This time, some clumsy government actions and a couple of moral scandals resulted in a riot which accidentally turned into a revolution. Not knowing what was wrong, and therefore unable to do something about it, Louis-Philippe gave up and, while the revolutionary mob was ransacking the royal palace of Tuileries, he bought a boat ticket for England.
Crossing the Channel in the opposite direction was Prince Louis-Napoleon with Harriet’s fortune. He would need it to finance his candidacy in the first electoral campaign in French history. This time, everything went well for the prince. His name worked magic, and his innovative social and economic ideas spoke for him. He was elected to be the first president of the Second Republic. He would also be the last one. At the end of his four-year mandate, he would stage his third and successful coup d’état to put the imperial crown on his head under the name of Napoleon III. The Second Empire would last for eighteen prosperous years. Until the next revolution . . .
Napoleon III (same man, improved wardrobe)
And where was Miss Harriet Howard in all this? After having financed an enormous electoral campaign, Harriet was often seen in the Prince-President’s company, but she was never invited to the Elysée Palace where the official business took place. The post of the First Lady was occupied by Louis-Napoleon’s cousin, Princess Mathilde. Still, Harriet kept hoping that a day would come when her lover would carry the imperial crown. Four years later, when no invitation came from the Tuileries Palace, the seat of the newly-formed imperial court, Harriet decided that she would wait no longer. She went there uninvited. It was the first, and the last time she appeared publicly in the emperor’s presence.
What happened next would have happened anyway but Harriet’s initiative did speed up the process. The next day, her dear Loulou came to visit her, which was not unusual as they maintained a warm relationship, but this time he offered her an official mission to England. He provided her with a list of persons to visit to establish a good relationship between England and France. Thrilled to be named a goodwill ambassador, Harriet agreed to leave at once. When she and her escort reached the seashore, bad weather prevented them from boarding their ship. While waiting for the weather to clear, Harriet purchased a newspaper where she read the announcement of the emperor’s engagement to Eugenie de Montijo. She returned to Paris at once.
Back home, she found her apartment in disorder, with the upholstery slashed open and her desk taken apart. All compromising correspondence was missing. In the end, Harriet fared better than the unpaid New York lawyer. She received a hereditary title, becoming the Countess de Beauregard, and retired to her country chateau of the same name. At her request, she continued to care for the washerwoman’s little boys.
Napoleon the Fourth? Was there ever such an emperor? Strangely enough, the Zulus in South Africa can tell you more about this personage than an average Frenchman. The Zulus know him as Prince Imperial and, each year, they celebrate his anniversary with the local version of pomp and circumstance. And why wouldn’t they if there is good tourist money in it?
Follow the road sign and you can visit the Prince Imperial’s museum, his memorial financed by Queen Victoria, and the battlefields of the Zulu War. You’ll be retracing Empress Eugenie’s pilgrimage the year after her son’s death. If you happen to be on this road on the first Sunday in June, you can participate in a mass for his soul celebrated in French, English, and Latin.
Except for a few die-hard Bonapartists, Napoleon the Fourth may be forgotten in his homeland. For most of his short life, he was known as Prince Imperial, the heir to the French throne. In his childhood, he was the darling of the nation and, as he grew into a handsome young man, he became the treasured secret of many a young girl’s heart. He was to the French what John Kennedy Jr. was to the Americans, and it is easy to understand that his premature death at the age of twenty-three caused consternation and grief for the whole nation.
Marie Bashkirtsheff, a Russian art student in Paris, tells us about this somber day in her diary:
As I was about to leave the studio at noon yesterday, Julian called to the servant through the speaking tube; she put her ear to the tube, and she said to us with some emotion:
“Ladies, M. Julian desires me to tell you that the Prince Imperial is dead.”
I gave a cry and sat down on the coal-box. Then, as everyone began to talk at once, Rosalie said:
“A moment of silence, if you please, ladies. The news is official; a telegram has just been received. He has been killed by the Zulus; this is was M. Julian says.”
The news had already begun to spread; so that when they brought me the Estafette with the words in capital letters, “Death Of Prince Imperial,” I cannot express how much I was shocked.
And then, no matter to what party one may belong, whether one be a Frenchman or a foreigner, it is impossible to avoid sharing in the feeling o consternation with which the news has been everywhere received.
One thing I will say, however, which none of the papers has said, and that is that the English are cowards and assassins. There is something mysterious about this death: there must be both treachery and crime at the bottom of it. Was it natural that a prince on whom all the hopes of his party were fixed should be thus exposed to danger, an only son?
I think there is no one devoid of feeling as not to be moved at the thought of his mother’s anguish. The most dire misfortune, the crudest of losses, may still leave some gleam of hope in the future, some possibility of consolation. This leaves none. One may say with truth that this is a grief like no other. It was because of her [Empress Eugenie] that he went; she gave him no peace; she tormented him; she allowed him no more than five hundred francs a month, a sum upon which he could hardly contrive to live. The mother and son parted on bad terms with each other. Do you perceive the horror of the thing? Can you understand how his mother must feel?
England has treated the Bonapartes shamefully on every occasion when they were so blind as to ask the help of that ignoble country, and it fills me with rage and hatred when I think of it.”
Thus spoke Marie in her youthful grief. That she seemed well-informed of the tensions between mother and son, tells us that she was an avid reader of the gossipy newspapers which began to bloom in that era. As for England’s bad treatment of the exiled Bonapartes, she could not be more wrong. There was a solid friendship between the British royalty and the Bonapartes that was born during Victoria and Albert’s visit to France in 1855. You can read about it in The Prince of Wales in Paris: Please Adopt Me! published here. Queen Victoria figured in Prince Imperial’s life on many occasions. To begin with, when Eugenie complained about the difficulty of getting pregnant, it was her good friend Victoria, mother of a large family, who gave her a valid advice which resulted in the prince’s birth.
Several sources reveal that Victoria reserved for him her youngest daughter Beatrice as a spouse regardless of the fact that after the Second Empire’s collapse in 1870 he became an heir without a throne. Like the Bonapartes, Victoria believed that her dear Loulou would reconquer his lost empire. So did the still strong Bonapartist party in the now Republican France. Upon his father’s death in 1873, the young prince became Emperor Napoleon IV by the Bonapartists’ acclamation. It was—they hoped—only a question of time for the rightful ruler to claim his throne.
Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, or Loulou to his family, was born March 16, 1856, and spent his early days in this splendid crib donated by the City of Paris. His godparents were Queen Victoria and Pope Pius IX. As the only child, he had no one to play with and his main entertainment was watching the guard maneuvering in front of the palace windows. His love for the military was born there. Sometimes, he would also play at governing. Sitting at his father’s desk, he would seize important documents and fold them into animal forms. His adoring father would not dare to protest. As an aside, had he lived and cultivated his talent for sculpture, Loulou could have become a brilliant artist. There were many promises in the boy’s life, all of them unfulfilled.
The following six-minute video records the young man’s life from birth to death. We see the delightful child growing into a Prince Charming, we follow him to exile in England, and from there to South Africa, and witness his heroic death at the hand of the Zulu warriors. We assist at his funeral in England and see his mother’s grief. The old empress then remembers happier times.
Marie was also wrong about the conspiracy regarding the prince’s death in South Africa. On the contrary, the British Army and the government freaked out at the idea of taking responsibility for the young man’s life. They wanted nothing to do with him and it took the joibt effort of Eugenie and Victoria, with the special order from the latter, for him to be enlisted for the war in Zululand. Even at that, he was scrupulously kept away from the real action. Both women believed that the prince needed to cover himself with glory in order to succeed in his conquest of the crown. As for the man himself, he did not need any encouragement. Eager to become a worthy heir of his famous great-uncle, Napoleon I, he studiously sought danger to the chagrin of his British “baby-sitters”. He found his death in a seemingly deserted kraal where he decided it was time for a coffee break during a reconnaissance ride. In the video that follows, the event is reconstructed based on the statements given the following day by the members of the patrol.
There remain many what-if questions. What would have happened had the uncrowned Napoleon IV not lost his life that day? Would he have recovered his throne and brought back the Empire? How would that have changed France’s and, to some degree, Europe’s destiny? Queen Victoria might have hoped to establish her youngest daughter as the Empress of France, but would the French have gone for it? That remains doubtful. Would they have unanimously accepted an emperor who had been schooled in England, served in the British army and married a British Protestant princess? Questions, questions…
When you take a guided tour in France—whether it is a Loire château, or any other building erected before 1789—inevitably, there comes the time when the guide says: “Unfortunately, during the Revolution…,” and there follows a list of damaged or destroyed artifacts. The French were fond of revolutions – when they were happening. Afterward, seeing what they had done in moments of passion, they wept.
The 1789 revolution, the very first one, is well known. The guillotine, the years of terror, king Louis XVI and queen Marie-Antoinette executed. Having acquired the taste of it, the French people became serial revolutionaries. March 18 marks the anniversary of the Commune of Paris, one of the three revolutions that shook the city in the 19th century and was the bloodiest of all. The sixty-two days of its duration caused up to thirty thousand deaths (the number varies according to different sources).
What led to this bloodbath? Why did the prosperous France of the Second Empire wake up as an impoverished Third Republic? Why was Paris in ruins?
In July 1870, the French declare war on Prussia, or, rather, are tricked into doing it. The crafty Chancellor Bismarck needs the conflict to unify a collection of small German-speaking countries into one powerful nation. Ill-prepared, the French army is defeated by the Prussians in the battle of Sedan and the emperor Napoleon III made prisoner. Riots in Paris follow the bad news and the next day, September 4th, the empire is overthrown. A Republican government moves into the City Hall, while the Prussians close in on Paris.
During the siege, dogs, cats, and rats were sold at high prices. The rich dined on exotic meat provided by the zoo animals
Paris is besieged during the winter months. The weather is cruel and the city suffers from a severe famine. Hunger and typhoid fever ravage Paris from within, while the Prussians shell it from the outside. Starved and ill, the Parisians learn that a new humiliation has visited the country: the German Empire has been proclaimed at Versailles Palace and an armistice has been signed.
The Empire of Germany, a new European power, is proclaimed in the Versailles palace
This does not sit well with the Parisians, who do not consider themselves defeated. The German boots desecrating the exquisite beauty of the Hall of Mirrors? Ce n’est pas acceptable! Anger rises when they learn the terms of peace. Germans demand a two-day entry to Paris, the surrender of two provinces (Alsace and Lorraine) and war reparations amounting to one billion gold coins. Their army would occupy the country until the debt was paid off.
The German victory parade in the streets of Paris
Aware that a revolt is brewing, the government moves its headquarters from Paris to Versailles. The spark ignites when the government tries to disarm Paris by confiscating 248 cannons from Montmartre and other working-class neighborhoods on the periphery. The cannons belong to the city; they were paid for by war subscription. The people rise to defend their property and the soldiers’ loyalty shifts. Two generals are seized and shot. There is no way back. The insurgents erect barricades and the Commune of Paris is proclaimed.
800 barricades went up in the city
Elected on March 26th, the Commune is in direct opposition to the conservative national government. The core, as in all revolutions, are intellectuals, students, writers, artists, and artisans with egalitarian ideas and the vision of justice for all. Outraged by the government’s betrayal, many Parisians of the middle class join in the insurrection. The main muscle of the revolution is the impressionable working class which, when excited, easily turns into a mob.
Women were heavily engaged in the insurrection, both as nurses and combatants. The 1789 revolution had its tricoteuses (women who took their knitting to the guillotine to keep their hands busy during the executions). The Commune of Paris gave birth to the pétroleuses. “The women behaved like tigresses, throwing petroleum everywhere and distinguishing themselves by the fury with which they fought”. (Edwin Child, a young Londoner working in Paris.)
The basic ideas of the revolution are modern and positive: reform of the working conditions, good children education, separation of the church and the state, women’s equality. Their application is awkward, to say the least. “Property is theft,” the revolutionaries declare as they seize the Bank of France. All religious institutions are invaded, their material goods confiscated, the churches turned into social clubs for the people. On April 23, George Sand, the famous novelist and herself a Republican, writes to Gustav Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary: “The horrible adventure continues. They ransom, they threaten, they arrest, they judge. They have taken over all the city halls, all the public establishments, they’re pillaging the munitions and the food supplies.”
Churches became social clubs for the people
Without a clear program and with no political experience, the feeling of brotherhood, with which the Commune started, changes into quarrel and resentment. Valuable time is lost in endless debates and little is achieved. Like George Sand, Parisians become tired of this bizarre social experiment. They long for peace and quiet; the poorer ones want to return to their familiar misery with its own reassuring habits. Others, the ardent supporters, are determined to fight. “The Commune or death!” they chant.
The Versailles troops approach the walls of Paris
Meanwhile, in Versailles, the government has reconstituted the army with war prisoners released by the Germans. The Germans hold their position northwest of the city while the Versailles troops approach from the southeast. Paris is surrounded again. The insurgents attempt several attacks outside the city walls, each time with no success. They send emissaries to Versailles, who are killed. The Commune, in turn, captures hostages, chiefly among the clergy. On May 21st, the Versailles troops break in and the infamous Bloody Week begins.
Barricades are reinforced and new ones added as the combat rages street by street. The soldiers break into houses and pierce passages through walls to avoid confrontation with the barricades
The army takes no prisoners. Every adversary is shot dead. Unarmed civilians caught with gunpowder traces on their hands are executed as well. The Communards take revenge by killing the hostages. The Archbishop of Paris is among the victims.
The massacre of hostages
The execution of the Archbishop of Paris
Paris burning. In the foreground is the imperial palace
Paris is shelled again, this time by the French army. The Ministry of Finance is destroyed in the process. Fires break out in many prestigious locations. These are later explained by the partisans of the Commune as the result of the shelling. (However, most of the gutted buildings bore no traces of shelling. They were deliberately set on fire.) The legend of the pétroleuses, if it is a legend, starts here. As a result, working-class women caught carrying a suspicious container are summarily executed.
The City Hall on fire
The imperial palace after the fire
Government and police offices are consumed by the fire, their archives destroyed. The air, already unbreathable, is filled with whirling charred paper remains that settle on the roofs and sidewalks. The Tuileries palace is a total loss. The stones will be sold, piece by piece, as construction material. A wing of the Louvre also suffers fire damage.
The novelist Emile Zola was one of the first reporters to enter the city during the Bloody Week. He wrote: “Never in civilized times has such a terrible crime ravaged a great city […] The men of the Hotel de Ville could not be other than assassins and arsonists. They were beaten and fled like robbers from the regular army, and took vengeance upon the monuments and houses […] The fires of Paris have pushed over the limit the exasperation of the army. […] Those who burn and who massacre merit no other justice than the gunshot of a soldier.”
The end of the Commune
The revenge is atrocious and out of proportion. The Commune killed 64 hostages yet the insurgents are now butchered by the thousands. Nobody is spared, even the injured patients in an ambulance along with the doctors and nurses. Women are shot with children in their arms.
Many innocents were shot along with the rebels
Four days after the battle is over, Emile Zola reports in a softened tone: “The court martials are still meeting and the summary executions continue, less numerous, it’s true. The sound of firing squads, which one still hears in the mournful city, atrociously prolongs the nightmare […] Paris is sick of executions. It seems to Paris that they’re shooting everyone. Paris is not complaining about the shooting of the members of the Commune, but of innocent people. It believes that, among the pile, there are innocent people, and that it’s time that each execution is preceded by at least an attempt at a serious inquiry […] When the echoes of the last shots have ceased, it will take a great deal of gentleness to heal the million people suffering nightmares, those who have emerged, shivering from the fire and massacre.”
G. Sand
Emerging, shivering from the fire, is also George Sand. She writes:” I come from Paris, and I do not know whom to speak to. I am suffocated. I am quite upset, or rather out of heart. The sight of the ruins is nothing compared to the great Parisian insanity. With very rare exceptions, everybody seemed to me only fit for the strait-jacket. One-half of the population longs to hang the other half, which returns the compliment. That is clearly to be read in the eyes of the passers-by.”
Prisoners being taken to Versailles
The surviving rebels are marched twenty miles to Versailles. They suffer insults along the way. One of the gossipy Goncourt brothers later recalled that he saw society ladies, who had never raised their voice, vomit their hatred using invectives that would make a sailor blush.
Female prisoners awaiting interrogations
The trials were of short duration, with the executions soon after
The prisoners, who were not condemned to death, were shipped to New Caledonia, an island in the Pacific Ocean. Forty-three thousand were sent there in crowded conditions and with little food. A handful came back after the amnesty twenty years later.
In all, with tens of thousands dead, countless injured, and another forty thousand deported, it took over ten years to restore the Paris working force. Those people were not only the manual laborers. They were also highly skilled workers and artisans of superior training. Even today, 146 years after the event, there are fresh flowers laid at the wall where the last Communards were executed. The working class keeps paying respect to the victims of this Parisian calamity.
Ever since she became an empress, Eugenie de Montijo feared Queen Marie-Antoinette’s fate. She was right to feel uneasy. Eighteen years into the reign and some eighty years after Marie-Antoinette’s head was severed under the guillotine, Eugenie ran in terror through the streets of Paris with a mob at her heels. The year was 1870 and the only friend the French empress found in her distress was her American dentist.
Eugenie doesn’t deserve her lack of fame. Who doesn’t know Marie-Antoinette and her horrible end? Who has never heard of Empress Josephine, the wife of Napoleon I? Both are legendary figures of French history. One was executed; the other had to agree to a divorce. That the French had two more empresses, Marie-Louise and Eugenie, is a lesser known fact. Marie-Louise’s contribution to the French history was reduced to giving Napoleon his only legitimate heir, an heir that Josephine was unable to provide. After the fall of the First Empire, Marie-Louise and her little son (who might have ruled as Napoleon II had he not died in exile) went to live in her native Austria and neither saw France again.
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Marie-Louise and her son
Napoleon III
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With the Bonaparte family banished from the country, France went through two Bourbon kings and two revolutions to become, again, a republic. After 34 years in exile, the Bonapartes were back, this time headed by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon I. His four-year stint as an elected French president ended in 1852 with a coup d’état when he took what he considered rightfully his: the imperial crown. Henceforth, he was known as Napoleon III.
Generally, the French don’t like Napoleon III. They call him Napoleon le Petit and they say that he did nothing for the glory of France. They seem not to notice that their glorious Napoleon I turned Europe into a battlefield where he sacrificed an entire generation of Frenchmen and caused untold misery to people all over the continent from Spain to Russia. His nephew, on the contrary, was an achiever of another sort. Under his 18-year rule, France conquered the world with her culture and industry. He was the builder of Paris as we know it today, with the wide avenues and sanitary underbelly. He was a modern man in every sense and he truly cared for his people’s well-being.
Fortunately, the new emperor was a bachelor and he could hope to find a bride of royal blood to solidify his lofty position. Unfortunately, he was also the slave of his hormones. While his emissaries were shopping for a suitable bride among the reluctant royal families of Europe—they all still smarted from the consequences of his uncle’s conquests—Napoleon III met the woman of his life and she was not a royal.
Even though Eugenie de Montijo was a stunning beauty, she would never have made the history books had she been only one of Louis Napoleon’s easy conquests. Let’s say it right here: the man had a long list of bedroom adventures, although he wasn’t averse to having sex in any other room, in any stationary or moving vehicle, or even a haystack – standing, sitting or lying down. His sexual appetite was legendary and sometimes embarrassingly noticeable. His Majesty the Empereur was renamed by his sneering courtiers His Majesty the Ampleur.
In Eugenie he found a fortress to be conquered. The rules were laid down very early after the two met. He was still the Prince-President of the French Republic, she the 26-year-old daughter of a widowed Spanish countess. He invited the two women for a weekend in a country château. As he was returning from a horse ride, he spotted Eugenie at one of the numerous windows. Not knowing the exact layout of the building, he called: “How do I get to you?” “Through the chapel, Sire,” she answered.
The siege of Eugenie lasted eleven months before her would-be-conqueror declared defeat. By that time France had, once again, become an empire with Louis Napoleon on the throne. Everyone, especially his family, expected him to do his duty by marrying a virginal princess. Instead, he presented them with a Spanish adventuress of dubious virtue. They were furious. “But I love her,” he said simply.
Eugenie’s extraordinary resistance to seduction was explained during the wedding night. She had no appetite for physical love. “Sex? Quelle saleté!” (Sex? What filth!) she was heard saying the next morning. Despite his wife’s attitude, the emperor remained faithful to her for a period of six months before he returned to his old habits. That did not sit well with the empress. She was very particular about her possessions and she would make an issue of a displaced pillow let alone a displaced husband. The household was soon aware of her displeasure, most of all the emperor who was forbidden access to the marital bed. But the pair had to produce an heir. A truce followed during which the task was accomplished. A lovely baby boy was born and given the title Prince Impérial. There were no other children. For the rest of Napoleon III’s reign, the frigid Eugenie presided over one of the most debauched courts in history, a court where adultery was the norm and a one-night stand with the emperor a badge of honor.
The Second Empire court at its zenith. A soiree at the Tuileries, 1867
By now the reader has reached the opinion that Eugenie was a gold-digger with a block of ice where her heart ought to have been. That is incorrect. Most of her life was spent in serious charitable endeavors. An early feminist, she pushed for female education and was advocating the recognition of women’s achievements in literature, arts, and education. That her efforts were largely unsuccessful was the fault of the society she lived in. The reforms she championed came too early.
As an empress, Eugenie was without reproach. Always courteous and elegant, she represented her country admirably, whether at home or abroad. Queen Victoria, favorably impressed, quickly became Eugenie’s intimate friend. Politically, Eugenie certainly had an influence on the emperor, especially when he was weakened by a disease in the last years of his reign. The Bonapartes had many enemies; the most influential among them was the ultra-Republican Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables. Acting from his exile, he bombarded the imperial pair with insulting pamphlets. The mud stuck, and Eugenie was blamed for everything that went wrong. Like Marie Antoinette, she was foreign, and foreign queens were suspected of spying for their homeland and generally wishing ill to the French people.
The declaration of war on Prussia and the consequent debacle were entirely laid at her feet. Her husband, suffering from a debilitating pain, eagerly sought honorable death on the battlefield before surrendering to Bismarck. Eugenie refused to shoot into an angry mob that surrounded the imperial palace. She chose to flee. Alone, she tried several addresses before help was offered. Her savior was Dr. Evans, her American dentist. The pair sneaked off to the coast where the empress, in strict incognito, boarded a ship for England. As for Dr. Evans, he dined on the story for the rest of his life.
The widowed Eugenie and her son in a Tissot’s painting, 1878
Napoléon, Prince Imperial
After the emperor’s comfortable imprisonment in the newly formed German Empire, the family is reunited in Camden Place, Chislehurst, southeast of London, to begin a life in exile. A plan for regaining his throne is certainly in the making when the emperor dies. From then on, Eugenie lives entirely for her son’s future. Not long after, tragedy strikes again: the prince, engaged in the war with the Zulus in South Africa, is slain by the natives.
The news makes the round of the planet. That his mother is devastated is understandable, but the prince’s death crushed the hopes of numerous Bonapartists. It was generally understood that should the handsome prince claim the imperial crown it would be his for the taking. The grief in France could be compared to the one felt by the British when Princess Diana succumbed after the car accident. Husbandless and childless, Eugenie drags her sorrow through the rest of her long life. She dies in 1920 at the age of ninety-four.
Update: Dear reader, for some reason I cannot phantom, this article has had ten times the success rate compared to others posted here, although — in my opinion — there are posts of the same, if not greater, interest such as The Inescapable Sarah Bernhardt or The Bloodbath of the Paris Commune. I would appreciate your feedback regarding where you found the link to The Tragic Empress post and why you decided to read it. Thank you in advance.
The Boarding House transports you back to Paris during the enchanting Belle Époque period with a diverse ensemble of players: young and old, servants and socialites, French and foreign, polite and ill-mannered. It’s delicious, devious, and delightful. Iva Polansky writes with a style and authenticity you might wonder if she was there in another life.
NEW!
One for All
Madelon-la-Belle left Paris twenty years ago to escape her damaged reputation. She abandoned her infant daughter, Louise, in the care of her sister. Now she is back, a wealthy widow, and she plans to be a caring mother. Her idea of caring motherhood is to make Louise a high-born heiress. It only needs a little deception.This does not sit well with Louise’s father, Captain d’Artagnan of the Royal Musketeers, who finds Madelon’s plan unsound. He wants to see Louise married as soon as possible, before she becomes a slut like her mother, and has already found a good husband for her. Unfortunately, the formidable Madelon does not agree with d’Artagnan’s choice. A battle of wills ensues, involving d’Artagnan’s long-lost friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. A comedy based on Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel The Three Musketeers.
Fame and Infamy / Adventures of an American Maid in Paris
Otto von Bismarck, German secret police, celebrated French artists and Miss Nelly McKay of Butte, Montana, come together in this lively mystery set in 1870’s Paris.
Print or ebook, 410 pages
He was right. She was right. Together they were wrong
THE WAR OF THE TOLSTOYS
Leo Tolstoy’s last days: In 1910, newspapers around the world reported the tribulations of Russia’s most famous writer. The War of the Tolstoys tells it all.
Screenplay, 110 pages
Passion and Wit and Ménage à Trois ( a true story)
Our Divine Emilie
Two of the brightest minds of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire and Emilie du Châtelet, meet the poet Saint-Lambert in a dangerous liaison. Court intrigue, conspiracy, and betrayal are in abundance in this comedy/drama. (A Screenplay)
Follow the road sign and you can visit the Prince Imperial’s museum, his memorial financed by Queen Victoria, and the battlefields of the Zulu War. You’ll be retracing Empress Eugenie’s pilgrimage the year after her son’s death. If you happen to be on this road on the first Sunday in June, you can participate in a mass for his soul celebrated in French, English, and Latin.
Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, or Loulou to his family, was born March 16, 1856, and spent his early days in this splendid crib donated by the City of Paris. His godparents were Queen Victoria and Pope Pius IX. As the only child, he had no one to play with and his main entertainment was watching the guard maneuvering in front of the palace windows. His love for the military was born there. Sometimes, he would also play at governing. Sitting at his father’s desk, he would seize important documents and fold them into animal forms. His adoring father would not dare to protest. As an aside, had he lived and cultivated his talent for sculpture, Loulou could have become a brilliant artist. There were many promises in the boy’s life, all of them unfulfilled.
There remain many what-if questions. What would have happened had the uncrowned Napoleon IV not lost his life that day? Would he have recovered his throne and brought back the Empire? How would that have changed France’s and, to some degree, Europe’s destiny? Queen Victoria might have hoped to establish her youngest daughter as the Empress of France, but would the French have gone for it? That remains doubtful. Would they have unanimously accepted an emperor who had been schooled in England, served in the British army and married a British Protestant princess? Questions, questions…
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but the prince’s death crushed the hopes of numerous Bonapartists. It was generally understood that should the handsome prince claim the imperial crown it would be his for the taking. The grief in France could be compared to the one felt by the British when Princess Diana succumbed after the car accident. Husbandless and childless, Eugenie drags her sorrow through the rest of her long life. She dies in 1920 at the age of ninety-four.
Victorian Paris 