By the last decades of the nineteenth century the Bonaparte family had gained legitimacy among Europe's rulers. No longer identified with opposition to the British oligarchy and its absolutist allies on the continent, they had become part of the established order, allies against Republican and working class movements which increasingly put fear into the heads of Europe's ruling classes.
The Bonapartes themselves exhibited a certain sense of entitlement, all the more curious since their claims derived entirely from the upstart Emperor, exiled on St Helena and insultingly referred to as "General Bonaparte" by his British gaolers. At least one of the family, Mathilde Bonaparte (1820-1904), daughter of Napoleon's brother Jerome, recognised this, apparently telling Marcel Proust that if it weren't for her famous uncle she would be "selling oranges in the streets of Ajaccio, " but there is no evidence that it made her feel any less entitled.
One of the Bonapartes, Prince Louis-Lucien(1813-1891) was apparently devoted to Queen Victoria. She always addressed him as Imperial Highness although he had no right to the title. According to his cousin Caroline Murat he lived so long in England and had "became almost an Englishman", and a rather conservative one at that. (1) Having met Gladstone at Eugenie's he commented "I didn't know a Liberal could be a true gentleman". (2) The closest relationship though was between Queen Victoria and Eugénie, Empress of the French (1826-1920).
The world in which Victoria and Eugenie became friends was very different from that of the first Napoleon. Britain was at the pinnacle of its global power, and the centuries old struggle with France had come to an end, although not everyone had noticed it.(3) The Enlightenment ideas with which Napoleon was identified, the rights of property, secularism and legal equality had for the most part become mainstream among the English ruling class, and most of England's rulers still shared Napoleon's distrust of democracy.
Victoria and Albert with Napoleon III and Eugénie, London 1855 Queen Victoria had been told in 1850 by Lord Aberdeen that the future Napoleon III had good manners and was " very quiet, not at all French " (4), which perhaps reconciled her to the fall of King Louis Philippe, "the one person fitted to govern such an unmanageable people. " (5).
Over a decade earlier, before Napoleon's body had been brought back from St Helena she had been sent a book by her uncle the Duke of Sussex, a well known Whig supporter of Napoleon. The book had suggested to her the almost treasonous thought that "Napoleon's wars were good " and disabused her of the belief that he had been a coward. (6)
Initially opposed to Louis Napoleon's coup, in October Victoria recorded that the Govt formed was of "people who are nobody". By December though she rejoiced at the big majority that Louis Napoleon had gained in the French elections, "as a sign of moderation" and "a stepping stone to something better". (7)
Napoleon III, Eugénie and the Prince ImperialHer soon to be friend, the Spanish Princess Eugénie de Montijo, had married Napoleon III in 1853, and their first meeting was in 1855 when she and her husband were guests in London during the Crimean War. Shortly after Victoria returned the visit and in Paris was taken to see the tomb of "the great Napoleon".
In her diary of December 24th, 1857 commenting on her Christmas presents Queen Victoria singled out a gift by "Dearest Albert" of "a copy of Winterhalter's picture of the Empress Eugénie in a straw hat, which I am so particularly fond of, and which is charming."
After the overthrow of the Second Empire Victoria visited the Empress and her son in Kent where Eugénie "very thin & pale, but still very handsome", with "deep sadness in her face" and frequent tears in her eyes, spoke of her dreadful last hours in Paris as the populace stormed the Tuileries. (8)
After Napoleon III's death the Empress gave Victoria a photograph of him and his travelling clock which had accompanied him everywhere and was beside his bed when he died. Victoria showed it to Eugénie when the latter visited, and wrote in her diary: "Now it stands in my sitting room, & I shall always take it about with me, & leave it as an Heirloom to Windsor!!!" (9)
Most devastating of all was the tragic death of Eugenie's only child, the Prince Imperial, while serving with British troops in South Africa. Victoria heard the news before Eugénie, and may have felt some responsibility for it. She recorded that it haunted her all night "seeing those horrid Zulus constantly before me", and "thinking of the poor Empress who did not yet know it." (10) Her diary gives a very detailed account of the Prince Imperial's funeral where she met all the assorted Bonapartes, most of whom she seemed to have some knowledge of,
The Princes & Psse Matilde came in here, & the different Princes were presented by Pce Napoleon, who has very civil, & very subdued & embarassed. Psse Matilde, I found very little altered At the door, we were met by Ld Sydney Psse Matilde (whom I had not seen since 55, in Paris) Pce Napoleon, with his 2 sons Victor & Louis, Pce Lucien Bonaparte (the savant, who always resides in England) Pce Charles Napolén Bonaparte (his, nephew) Pce Murat, his daughter Psse Eugénie, & his brother Pce Louis, the Duc de Bassano & others. Pce Napoleon is aged, & grown balder, & more like to Napoleon I than ever. His eldest son Victor, is tall & nice & intelligent looking, very like the Italian family, but with the fine Bonaparte brow, & complexion. The 2nd, is much shorter & darker, & has quite the Bonaparte features. Pce Lucien, is grey & old looking, very pleasing, & gentlemanlike. He loved the dear young Prince dearly & feels his death acutely. He is the son of Napoleon I's eldest brother. He was present at the painful identification & said "Mais, je l'ai reconnu!" His nephew, Pce Charles, I had never seen before, a good looking elderly man, whose mother, was the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain. Besides these, there was Pce Murat's handsome daughter Eugénie & his younger brother Pce Louis. — (11)
In her widowhood the Empress Eugénie, often referred to by Victoria as "dear Empress Eugénie" and sometime "poor Empress Eugénie ", was a frequent visitor to Osborne House, Balmoral and Windsor. Occasionally Victoria visited her, including a couple of visits to Eugénie's villa, "Cyrnos" in the South of France. Victoria sometimes lent Eugénie a cottage at Osborne house, and also another one in Abergele in the Scottish highlands. In Osborne House gardens were some violets brought back from St Helena in 1880. (12) Sometimes other members of the Bonaparte family accompanied Eugénie on her visits.
On one occasion the two friends visited the Demidoff villa in Italy, former home of Anatoly Demidoff (1813-1870), and his wife Mathilde Bonaparte. Victoria noted that
there were busts of the Empr Napoleon & Empress Eugénie, also a bust of myself, which I cannot understand how he got. Took tea, which we had brought with us, in one of the small rooms, & afterwards went up into a magnificent drawing room, which was full of fine & interesting things, amongst others the clock, which had stood in the room at St. Helena, in which Napoleon I died. There was also death mask of him. (13)
Bonapartism as a political force effectively ended with the death of the Prince Imperial in 1879. Thereafter the Orleanists became the better bet for the enemies of Republicanism. (14) Nevertheless Victoria's relationship with the Bonapartes remained unbroken. In 1886 she saw the "monstrous" proposal by the French Govt to expel the Orléans & Bonaparte Princes as directed at Prince Napoleon and his son Prince Victor. In the final months of her life she was visited by Prince Napoleon and his brother Princce Louis, who she noted had been serving for some time in the Russian army, which happened to be governed by another Emperor and another relative of hers. (15)
Eugénie lived to see Victoria's son and then grandson on the throne, and then through the First World War, which destroyed much of the old European order. She died in 1920 on a final visit to Spain, the nation of her birth. Like Napoleon I she had two funerals, one in Madrid, and then her body was returned for burial in England. Her English funeral was attended not only by assorted Bonapartes, but by the King and Queen of England and the Queen of Spain.
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1. My Memoirs The Princess Caroline Murat (New York 1910) p. 80
2. Murat p 24
3. There was a war scare in Britain after Napoleon III came to power.
4. Victoria Diary, 6th Feb 1850.
5. Victoria Diary 14 August 1839
6. Victoria Diary, 14 Aug 1839
7. Victoria Diary, 31st Oct & 14 Dec 1848.
8. Victoria Diary 30th November 1870
9. Victoria Diary Osborne House 26th January 1873.
10. Victoria Diary, Balmoral Castle, Friday June 20th 1879)
11. Victoria Diary, Windsor 12th July 1879
12. Victoria Diary, 22 December 1881.
13 Victoria Diary, Florence (Villa Palieri). 19th April 1888
14. "Courts in exile: Bourbons, Bonapartes and Orléans in London, from George III to Edward VII" Philip Mansel in A history of the French in London, ed Debra Kelly & Martyn Cornick, p 118. Institute of Historical Research (London 2013)
15. Victoria Diary 4th June 1886 & 22 November 1900.
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