Subject to Change
I talk to the world's best historians and let them tell the stories. And the stories are wonderful! (And occasionally I change the subject and talk about films, philosophy or whatever!).
Subject to Change
Napoleon III Part 2: The Power of Lust
As promised in part 1 we started the podcast by talking about some of Napoleon III’s many mistresses. Women like Harriet Howard, the Brighton bootmaker’s daughter, Virginia de Castiglione, sent by the Italians to seduce and spy on him (and welcomed with open arms!), Marguerite Bellanger and Louise de Mercy-Argenteau. His wife hated his infidelities but at least in the case of Louise she took comfort that she was a proper aristocrat!
Moving on from the scandalous we talked about Napoleon III’s solid achievements. Not least his success in the Crimean War which led to an alliance with the British and bringing France in from the diplomatic cold. And domestically the economy thrived and Paris was rebuilt.
The great tragedy of Napoleon III’s reign was that he was up against Bismark. Suffering from various illnesses (bladder stones in particular) his judgement was possibly affected. And Bismark tricks him into declaring war - with predictable results.
His son survived him and oddly ended up fighting with the British Army in South Africa. If you don’t know the story this alone makes the podcast more than worth the time.
If you enjoy this podcast on France’s second Empire - its scandals, triumphs, and collapses - then please follow Subject to Change, share it with a friend who loves history, and leave a review telling me what struck you most.
Hello and welcome to Subject to Change with me, Russell Hogg. And this is part two of a two-part podcast with Edward Chaucross about Napoleon III. So welcome back, Ed, to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00:Delighted to be here again.
SPEAKER_01:So as I said at the end of part one, it seems to me that you can't really discuss the life of Napoleon III without talking about his mistresses. And actually, I think it would be a brilliant podcast series to talk about the lives of each of these, well, some of them quite remarkable women. And obviously we don't have time to do them justice, but can you just talk a bit about? I mean, I don't quite know how to describe this, but talk about Napoleon's Napoleon III's love life.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. Well, you're right. I mean, it needs a podcast series in itself. It's a great idea. And I mean, so the 1850s, 1860s, Paris, it's sort of the great era of, I suppose, the kind of the courtesan with these figures who for uh incredible sums um will put themselves on the arms of of rich and powerful men. So you have that, and and and these are women like Cora Pearl, who's not actually a mistress of Napoleon III, but a mistress of his cousin, um, who become incredibly wealthy and famous in Paris. But let's let's let's go back a little bit and focus on Napoleon III. So if you were listening to the previous episode, you would have heard me make reference to the fact that his partner couldn't be the First Lady of France because she was entirely disrespectful for such an elevated position. And so I think let's start with Harriet Howard, a remarkable woman. She was born in 1823, uh, a real name, Elizabeth Ann Harriet, I believe, but came to be known as Harriet Howard. She was born the daughter of a Brighton bootmaker in the sort of back streets of Brighton. She had ambitions beyond that. She wanted to become an actor, uh, which her parents found shocking and even worse than sex worker in the 19th century for some. So she ran away. Um she she um sort of worked her way up, she became um the um the mistress of a jockey and then a very wealthy uh English army officer who she had an illegitimate sum with, and that took her into sort of high society, um, Sir John's Wood, which was a place of sort of sex and scandal back in the day. I don't think it is anymore. Uh, she eventually meets Louis Napoleon, and she's meant to be astonishingly beauty. She's sort of compared to kind of sort of Olympian ideals of beauty from the classical age, and Louis Napoleon becomes hooked. Now he's um he is a consummate charmer uh and uh womanizer, for want of a better word, but remarkably um long-lasting relationship, Harriet Howard. And they but they that he gets a lodgings quite close to his in London. And to show, which sort of shows the seriousness of the relationship, uh, when he becomes president, he insists that she comes to France with him. And in fact, I very um excitingly uh for me, probably for no one else, stumbled across a copy, uh, well, not the copy, the pass, her passport uh in the archives that's signed by none other than Palmerston as foreign foreign secretary. So there you go. If you've got you've got friends in high places, you can get your mistress across to France as president. Now, the the problem with Harriet Howard um from the French point of view is one that her name is absolutely unpronounceable if you're French, uh, because you've got too many H's. But also she's she's it's she's a she's you know she's British, right? So you can't have the first first lady of France um uh being a sort of a British daughter of a bootmaker. Uh so it's absolutely scandalous. Um and she she comes around with Louis Napoleon on his provincial toys. Uh he's a trailblazer in many ways, and and not least because he sets her up in um accommodation very close to the Elise, so he can go to go to see her in the evenings and hang out with her. She doesn't speak much French. They they go for rides together in in the park, though. And uh he has a real uh affection for her, although not exclusively for her, it should be said. But as he as he as he's launched his coup d'etat, and as we'll get into, he's um going to become emperor. Now it's one thing to have a mistress as president, um, it's quite another to have one who you're going for rides with in the park or appears in the opera as emperor, and so it's decided that he has to found a dynasty and has to marry, and he marries Eugenie in 1853. Uh, Harriet Howard is bought off at an astronomical price. So the he has he hasn't told her he's getting married, Harriet Howard, poor Harriet Howard. Oops. He's told her, he's told her that um that there's a scandal breaking in England where love letters from a previous lover have been discovered. She needs to go to England and buy up those letters and destroy them, um, you know, for this for to stop the scandal going into the press. Now, unfortunately for Louis Napoleon, this brilliant plan is ruined by the fact that the steamer, which is meant to depart on the evening of January 22nd, is delayed by a storm. Uh, the next day, Harriet Harold comes down, she opens Le Monitor Universelle government newspaper, and sees that her lover and long-term boyfriend is getting married. She's understandably annoyed by this. Um, she refuses to go to England uh and she immediately um driven back to Paris, where she goes to her apartment to find it has been ransacked. Uh, and um the the president, as he's as the emperor as he is then, um, has sent his secret police to um to confiscate and then destroy his love letters to her. And all of my archival research, I only managed to find one very brief note. She's just sealed this afternoon for a drive um in the park, um, which is very adodine and and not and the people are looking for sex scandals. That that's not quite it, is it? Um, but this is so this she uh but she is not a woman to fade away quietly. So she positions herself ostentatiously on the route between which Eugenie and Louis Napoleon drive into Paris from from Saint-Cloud, the summer palace, and salutes the Emperor every time they go past. Now, if you're newly you can imagine you're newly married, and Eugenie is very, I mean, well, we can discuss them all later, but um, she's traditional conservative, let us say, in her politics and her private life. And so having your incredibly glamorous uh mistress, daughter of a Brighton bootmaker, salute you every time you go past in the carriage is not something Louis Napoleon wants. Um so he buys her off. Um he gets her uh aristocratic title, he gets her chateau outside of Palace, uh outside of Paris, conveniently located quite close to some of his own summer palaces, but also money. And she ends up with the millions of francs, which in to in in English money today, if you put it into the you know inflation calculator, we're talking something like 30 million pounds. That's not a bad buy-off, is it? So she she's she's some of the first of, I suppose, the big names, although there have been others. They're often involved in his coup d'etat, actually. He he's he likes to use he likes he's um he likes to use a mistress uh in his plots and conspiracies before he comes to power. So after he's married to Eugene Cheney, he tells Matildra, in fact, his one-time fiance, that he was faithful to her for six months, which is not as long as he was faithful to the constitution he had sworn to uphold as president. Um it's just very terrible at master in my head. I think he lasts me three three years faithful to the constitution, six months faithful to his wife before he um embarks on what he calls um his little distractions. But they're quite big distractions, actually, uh often take him away from important affairs of state. And sometimes even they are they are literally affairs of state, because probably the second big name is um Virginia. She's an Italian Countess, Castiglione. Uh, she's a distant cousin of Cavour, the Prime Minister of Piedmont, Sardinia, who is a lifelong dream is to unite Italy under the auspices of Piedmore and the Italian monarchy, which he does indeed do. And so he sends his cousin, um Virginia, to Paris, and um he writes a fantastic letter where he says, I've enrolled her in the diplomatic corps, and her role, uh, her mission is to seduce the emperor if she gets the chance, uh, and report back his pillow talk to the Italian well, to Piedmore. Now it's uh I always think that's that that I like that letter because it says seduce him if she gets a chance. You don't have it's mission easy, this one. This is this is not mission difficult, or it's certainly not mission impossible. So she is an incredibly glamorous uh uh uh woman, and she uh uh the great fashion of the day is crinoline, these enormous luminous dresses uh that Ugeny is is in part responsible for um promoting and making um you know ubiquitous in London and Paris and then and across the sort of Western world. It's a terrible choice of dress for a number of reasons, not least because it's very dangerous to the wearer. Lots of wearers die. Um you stand too close to a fire, you don't know, the fabric goes up. Um, if there's a gust of wind, you get blown in front of a carriage and trampled, or you just trip over it going down the stairs. Um that's not a problem for Virginia because she doesn't wear criminaline dresses, she wears figure-hugging, tight dresses without corset, very shocking. Um, and let you know, levels of ankle on display that are um, you know, men and and women covering their eyes when she comes into a ballroom. And so, you know, it she catches Louis Napoleon's eye very quickly. Uh, and they the two become lovers. It's scandalous, um, not least because you know he's she's reporting state secrets back to Pierre More, but also she gets uh an apartment um conveniently located as they all do. Uh I mean it's a great real estate move to become the mistress of Louis Napoleon. Uh, and um this is again something the French president's um he's he's been a trailblazer in this. So secret assignations and he his bodyguard are always sort of furious that they have to sort of traipse across Paris in the dead of night because they're worried that he'll um people are trying to assassinate him, which they indeed they do on one of his visits to Virginia. He gets tired of her quite quickly. He doesn't um hide her affairs though from Eugenie and she's furious, so huge arguments and clothes being thrown out of the Tulouri Paris um palace in in Paris or wherever they're staying. But he, as I say, he does tire of her. He moves on to a woman called um Anna Veleska. Now, this is this is this is interesting for a number of reasons. Um, she's married to his foreign minister, who also happens to be an illegitimate son of Napoleon through his Polish mistress. Oh my goodness. Uh so this is very much, I mean, it it adds a whole new frison to discussing foreign affairs, doesn't it? If you know that your wife is sleeping with the emperor, uh, and we also know that you are, I suppose, a cousin. Yes, it's it's it's quite extraordinary. Um, he'd also shared a mistress with with another cousin, um, Plomplon, who will probably talk about more, who was the lover of the great French actress Rochelle, uh, but had initially been Louis Napoleon's mistress in London, and Louis Napoleon um accompanied her on a northern tour to Manchester with Plomplon, and Louis Napoleon fell asleep in the train carriage and woke up to find his cousin straddling his lover at the time. And I thought it reflects very well on um Louis Napoleon that he um just pretended to go back to sleep. And when they got to Manchester, got the next train back to London, but didn't didn't make it didn't make a fuss about it. Um but I suppose he he he he could hardly criticize such behaviour. Uh so you've got Anna Velesca, and this again, another embarrassing incident on train carriage. So you he you say he doesn't hide his affairs. Eugenie and Matilda, so his current um wife and former fiance are in the imperial train in one carriage. Uh the jolting of the train means that the door swings open, and um Eugenie sees um her husband struggling um the foreign minister's wife in the in the train carriage. So there's sort of sex scandals and train carriages, uh bit of a running theme. She Eugenie quite likes her uh because she is what I suppose we would say classy. She's an aristocrat. Gosh. Uh and by now she doesn't tolerate the affairs, but um has, I suppose, become slightly broken or beaten down or inured to them, um, whatever the word is, but not to the next one. Because the next one, um, Louis Napoleon makes a great, great thing of being a uh, you know, a Democrat um and a man of the people. Um, and she this is Marguerite Bellinger. She's uh uh from French peasant stock, changes the name, Moose Paris becomes as one of those courtesans, as I mentioned, and works her way up to the position of imperial mistress, which by now has become something of a of an official position, almost like a cabinet position, as it were. And so Eugenie thinks she is scum. Um that's her word, not mine, because of her humble origins. And she she'd uh been a circus um artist, she'd been a sort of a horse rider who could do sort of amazing things on a horse. She was said to be able to go from lying on her back to standing in a single spring. Um, talents to which um I'm sure she was able to make use of outside of the circus. So Eugenie is so shocked by this. Uh uh, and there are rumors that um Louis Napoleon has had an illegitimate child by her, that she actually goes to visit her and offers her a huge sum of money to disappear, uh, which of course is soon gossiped about in the salons of Paris that we mentioned earlier, and calls an outrageous scandal. She has to go into hiding. Louis Napoleon sends one of his uh secretaries to track her down. She finds her in a small village outside of Paris, waiting for the scandal to die down, surrounded by jugs of cider and wearing clogs. So she's gone back to her peasant uh peasant origins. Um and she calls him Dear Lord, is the name that she uses for him. And she writes him a very apologetic letter, apologizing for the rumors about the paternity of the child and saying that she had her doubts, but she hopes that she can find forgiveness from her dear lord and that she loves him. And she's incredibly grateful for everything that he's done for her. And she should be grateful because once again she is remunerated to astronomical sums. I mean, this is the extinction of pauperism in action. This is the social mobility that Bonapartism has at the heart of the project. Both Harriet Harrow and Margaret Bellinger have become enormously rich from um extremely poor backgrounds. So this is you can point to the policies working. Um obviously um he can't sleep with everyone in France, but it does seem that he tries. Um, there's a wonderful account of his seduction techniques, so uh a secret rendezvous is arranged earlier in the day with one of the women at court. So there's this spectacular court that he sets up, which largely seems to be a sort of 19th century equivalent of Tinder for him. And he um arranges the meeting at 1.30 in you know, upstairs in her room in one of the chateaus, and um he uh comes in in billowing imperial purple pyjamas, noticeable, she says, um, only by his distinctive wax moustache silhouetted against the light of the door that he's closed, stumbles over to the furniture uh and and seduces her. And she notes uh that it only took half an hour to make her an empress. Make that what you will. Um, which um which I suppose if you are a serial philanderer, then quantity uh and efficiency is more important than anything else, right? If you've got various um various um meetings to get through, as it were. Um so those are probably the biggest names. That the last mistress who is quite important, Mercy Argentur, she claims that it was platonic, but she also claims that they met up through a secret tunnel between Yalise and her house. Uh uh and I don't know, he doesn't strike me as as a platonic, a platonic man when it comes to women. But anyway, maybe she had to put that. Uh that was in her memoirs, which are hugely entertaining. So she and she's important, but she's she's she's important, and she's fully the last holder of the semi-official Imperial Mistress, but she actually gets involved in in shenanigans involving the Franco-Prussian War, which we're probably getting too far ahead of ourselves. So that's uh as I said, that's a kind of um introduction to the mistresses of Louis Napoleon. But as you say, it could be uh a series um um or indeed a volume of books, given um that how extraordinary some of these women were um and it and the situations that they got into.
SPEAKER_01:I read somewhere that they had these these great hunting parties out at somewhere called Compire or somewhere like that. Yeah. And I read somewhere that that at Compire they have this sort of private theatre for the guests, and that Napoleon III tried to arrange the seating plan so he could ogle all the beauties of the amongst the guests, and his wife was desperately trying to rearrange the seating plan so that the dowdy ones were kind of lined up in front of him. Is this is this true?
SPEAKER_00:Well, there yeah, there's a lot of these shenanigans, and of course, it as with any uh uh you know regime, the there are scandalous rumors and scarless uh propaganda, and a lot of it misogynistic um and you know semi-pornographic semi-pornographic. What what but he is absolutely um a uh as I say, um a man with an eye for the ladies, and um how far I mean he is for Victor, for example, is endlessly talking about orgies that have been organized and so on and so forth. Um I think I think it's more it's well innocence, probably not the right word. Um, it's less debauched, it's probably it's more it's more targeted. But yes, yeah, absolutely. I mean, if he sees that if he sees it an in an attractive woman, whether he's rearranging a seating plan, he probably doesn't need to, um, then he, you know, he will he he will pursue them. But he's a very affable, charming uh individual, uh, and he's and he's emperor. So I suppose he, you know, he's he's not short on opportunity. The the the Eugenie is she's the opposite, she's incredibly conservative, very chaste. She gives birth to a son, the Prince Imperial, as he becomes known in 1856, and it's an incredibly difficult, agonizing labour uh that lasts for hours and is rescued, uh Louis Napoleon's own words, by the doctor finally intervening with forceps. So it's a hugely traumatic experience. Um, it's she's worried that if she has another pregnancy she will die. It's very likely that she stops having sex with Louis Napoleon after 1856. Whether that I mean, he had, I mean it didn't he was um a serial philanderer before that, but um, I suppose that might provide at least some rationale for his continued um uh extramarital exploits, as it were, but uh uh that perhaps intensifies it um rather than causes it because he's he's engaged in these activities um you know while they're married, while she's pregnant, um, and while and while they have have a son.
SPEAKER_01:So I guess moving away from what we might call domestic affairs, I mean, I mean, you say that he's sort of, oh gosh, it's all very distracting, all these women that he's chasing around Paris like some sort of a like a Franco Benny Hill show. But he does get quite a lot done, doesn't he? I mean, he's there's there's the war in Italy, which I thought was quite interesting because as I understand it, he goes there himself. There's um there's the Crimean War, there's all sorts of uh things being done in and around Paris and in well in France generally. So so what's what what's happening in terms of his getting stuff done uh program?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, we've we've not done much for his historical reputation because we've there's the famous Marx quote about the coup d'etat of 2nd December 1851, which is the first time is tragedy, the second time is farce. And we've we've lent heavily into the farce uh uh and and and the mistresses. And in fact, the accusation that he spent too much time on affairs was something that Eugenie herself would tell ambassadors, you know, and and and the ambassadors' wives when in conversation, because she was so upset by it, she would say that's outrageous, you know, he's seeing this such and such woman, he should be concentrating on politics. He does get a lot done, especially in the first decade uh in the 1850s. So there's we should start with foreign policy perhaps and then move to domestic. In terms of foreign policy, um, he they hasn uh an astonishing success. So the first few years of the regime, uh, there's nothing farcible about them at all. As I say, millions of people have endorsed him as president and then in the plebiscite. And the Crimean War is is a tremendous diplomatic and military success for France because uh what it allows him to do is end France's isolation after 1815 and the Treaties of Vienna, which had been designed to contain France, to some extent humiliate France, take a lot of French territory here, but also isolate it diplomatically. In the Crimean War, the Napoleon III is able to ally with Britain, you know, the great enemy of Napoleon. So this is an extraordinary um kind of changing shift in the geo geopolitics of the continent. Defeat Russia, uh, which of course Napoleon um had less than stellar record with, right? There's a French army that goes to Crimea, takes Sevastopol after a long siege, there's a Battle of the Alme. I mean, all of these battles would be familiar because they're the same battles, of course, that the British are involved in. Uh, and it's not only does it end French isolation, so there's a fantastic peace conference in Paris in 1856 with a wonderful bit of diplomatic trolling, is there's a portrait of Napoleon I looking down on all of the powers that, of course, had sort of fought so hard to end and end him. It must have been like a recurring nightmare for Austria and Prussia and Russia and the likes to see this. Um, but it it also showed the French army to be one of the leading military forces in the world. So if you if people know about the Crimean War, they tend to know about the charge of the light brigade and just enormous British incompetence. And if it weren't for the French, uh, it would have been a disaster. It's the French army compared to the British and indeed the Russian. Now it should be said these are low bars, it perhaps gives the French overconfidence, right? But the French army, compared to those two, is a well-trained, well-supplied, well-led force. The officers tend to go to officer school, unlike the British, who buy their commissions, hence why you have Lord Raglan and the infamous vague order to just charge um you know suicidally towards the Russian guns. That has the wonderful French general who says, you know, say magnifique is in a balaguer, you know, it's magnificent, but it's not war. Having said that, then we'll get into some pretty futile cavalry charges that the French don't take later. And so it shows France to be uh a you know the military superpower, if you will, that defeats Russia, that bails out Britain, the diplomatic power as well. And then, as you say, in 1859, again, and people if we've managed to retain any listeners, they'll remember that um Louis Napoleon was obsessed with Italian nationalism, right? He was in a he was he had taken part in a revolt that aimed at some kind of unified Italian state. And it never left him. And I think partially because it's so tied up with the death of his brother, who he absolutely adored and loved. So in 1859, he very cynically, in Machiavellian style, engineers a war with Austria to drive Austria out of Lombardy, Venetia, the two provinces that Austria controls in Italy. He's doing this in alliance with Pierre Mont Sardinia, who will take over these provinces. And he leads the army himself. So in 1859, he leads the French army along with its uh Italian allies to fight the Austrians. And of course, this is as all of this is just the you know, the weight of history weighs heavily upon everyone's shoulders. This is a famous battlegrounds that Napoleon made his name. And his proclamation to the army, he says, you know, the art to today's army of Italy will recall the glories of the former army of Italy and so on and so forth. And he wins two battles. Uh, he wins the Battle of Magenta, uh, after which the colour is named. The colour, I think, has been more enduring than the battle, and then Solferino, which is the largest battle in Europe since the Battle of Nations outside Leipzig in 1813. Uh, so it's big scale. He's the commander, Franz Joseph is the commander-in-chief of the opposing army at Solferino. So he's defeated the Austrians, he's defeated the Russians, he's organized the peace in 1856, again in 1859. It very quickly unravels. But if we leave, if we stay in 1859 and don't go too far ahead, that you know, you can make a case that he in foreign policy he has made good on his promise to make France great again, right? One of the great criticisms of the July monarchy was that it was weak, it was peace at any price, it was surrendering French honor. And of course, you know, this is 19th century, the time when when national honor is something that motivates people and perhaps much more than it does today. So he's that he seems to have made good on that promise. We switched to domestic policy. Again, it's a tremendous success. He has a really radical innovative approach to economic policy, which is that economic growth should be at the heart of government. And so he what he what he does is he reforms the French banking um industry to allow cheap credit to pump through the economy, railway expansion triples under the Second Empire, the all of the knock-on effects of that in iron and steel and production, luxury industries as well, which you associate with France, champagne, silk, etc. These are it's booming. I mean, not least silk because of the extravagant courts and parties and so on and so forth. Exports are on the up, and he's borrowing what they're doing is they're borrowing money to invest. And the centerpiece is Paris, which he transformed from people it was it knew London for its for the for the fog and the smog. People knew Paris for the smell, open sewers, human excrement running through the streets. And I don't want any unkind listeners to to say that that hasn't been 100% solved. Louis Change. I knew yeah, it's too it's too no, that is a gift. But um, so it's it you know, demolishing medieval Paris, which is a warren of of of you know of shores of uh hovels and shacks straight out of a Victor Hugo novel, um, and to try into the wide boulevards, the apartments, you know, the parks. The the Paris we know today that is beloved at tourists is created in the 1850s and 1860s. And it's a it's a radical project, they say, because they borrow eye watering sums with no democratic oversight to pay for it. But it is um provides employment and and is lauded, largely lauded today. I mean it's very controversial at the time, but largely lauded today is a fairly successful attempt at urban regeneration and redesign. And of course, um his political system itself, which is designed, which is authoritarian, there is little freedom of the press, there are elections, but there's opposition, what they can do is limited. And that the elections have resulted in resounding successes for government, officially government-backed candidates. So the government tells you who to vote for. You don't have to vote for them, but they recommend very strongly that you do. And that all seems to be a roaring success in the 1850s. So, in terms of of the economy, to politics, foreign policy, the 1850s have been tremendously successful for France.
SPEAKER_01:I do quite a lot of podcasts on the history of Japan, uh, mainly with the excellent Jonathan Clements, who always has interesting angles on these things. And famously, Major Japan sends expeditions around the world trying to find things to copy, you know, and they want the best of everything. So, you know, the the British Navy and uh, you know, bits from America and from France, I think, I think they get the law uh inexplicably, and and they also they they copy the French army. And what Jonathan Clements told me was that quite soon after, quite soon after they've made the decision to copy the the French army, because it's considered to be the best in the world, they change their mind and they start copying the Prussian one. So do you just want to explain why the uh why the Japanese changed from the French to the Prussians?
SPEAKER_00:Right, yes. Well, um, I think it was a good change. So Prussia, uh, we haven't mentioned, um, and if you remember your Napoleonic history, um, we like in Britain to say that we won the Battle of Waterloo, but um, Prussia plays um a significant role. Um, Prussia is going to be a thorn in the side of of the of the of the third Napoleon as well. So with the 1850s, there was lots of success domestically and and abroad. The 1860s, things begin to unravel. So Italy turns into something of a disaster because the settlement that the Napoleon III wants, which is a very kind of moderate monarchist form of nationalism, gives way to a much more radical vision, particularly Garibaldi. He ends up creating, helping create a unified Italian state. And that unified Italian state is not necessarily in France's interest, right? Because now you've got a major power to deal with on your border. Much worse, of course, is Prussia and a certain character called Otto von Bismarck, who is determined to do essentially what Piedmont Sardinia has done in Italy, but in a much more aggressive militaristic fashion, and forge a German nation state behind the king of Prussia, King Wilhelm, will become Kaiser, um, Emperor of Germany. And in order to do that, he needs to have wars. Now, he initially France is not on the horizon, so he goes to war against Denmark, which allows him to in 1864, that allows him to engineer a rupture with Austria, who he goes to war with 1866, and in astonishingly um in seven weeks is able to defeat Austria, which perhaps puts Louis Napoleon's own victories against Austria in the light that it deserves to be. What this means is you get the North German Confederation, so a group of North German states that join with Prussia, alliances with the southern German states, suddenly on France's border, you have what is going to become a European superpower, right? Just in terms of population. France, which was always um in Western and Central Europe, the dominant power just in pure terms of manpower, right, has been eclipsed. And the French army, which has proved very successful, is a relatively small force, about 400,000. Prussia could, um, when it calls up its reserves, it can get about 700,000 people into the field, and that's not even including its German allies. So there was a huge debate in 1866. What should France do? Should it be neutral? Should it back Austria? Should it back Prussia? And a lot of people argue that you and that Prussia, with a united Germany behind it, is an existential threat to France, and you have to stop it now. But Louis Napoleon, partially perhaps because of affairs, also because of failing health, is beginning to wane in his ability to command the you know Europe in a way that it seemed like he did in the 1850s. And of course, Bismarck is an operator who is perhaps working at you know several levels above Louis Napoleon. Louis Napoleon sees himself as the great sort of conspirator and um you know opportunist and practitioner of what becomes known as Realpolitik, but he isn't. He meets Bismarck before 1866 and goes to war with Austria at Bieritz, which is this wonderful resort that becomes born under the Second Empire. And all Bismarck wants is French neutrality. But what Louis Napoleon really wants is to get Venetia, which he hadn't won in 1859. He wants to get some territory, maybe Belgium, maybe Luxembourg. Bismarck plays in perfectly and says, of course, if Prussia were to win against Austria, anything might be possible. Um, without saying that anything would actually happen. Once Bismarck defeats Austria, um he laughs in the face of Louis Napoleon, who's constantly demanding some kind of compensation. So foreign policy, it's been a disaster in terms of Prussia's rise. But at the same time, things are going badly elsewhere. There's the invasion of Mexico, which of course is a magnificent book about which you can uh which should absolutely should be bought, uh, or indeed a podcast that you could listen to if you want to find more about that. But suffice to say, it does not go well. Well, it ends with the execution of Franz Joseph's younger brother, Maximilian, who was propped up by French bayonets. And of course, with Prussia rising, alienating even further Austria is not a good idea because you would need allies. Now, Ludwig Pony is not an idiot. He's often presented as a buffoon. He's not an idiot. He knows that Prussia now presents an existential threat. And he says we have to reform the French army. So the French conscription is very inefficient. You've basically got a one-in-two chance of getting out of it. France is not a militarized country, and certainly not in the same way as Prussia is. For all the bombast of Bonapartism and Imperial Eagles and the Crimean War, Italy, Mexico, etc., it's a relatively small army now compared to Prussia. Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III, he wants to reform it so that he can call up a million men, create a reserve for Prussia. I mean, in Prussia, every adult male goes through conscription, right? So you've got an enormous reserve to call up, as they say in France, about one in two, um, could avoid it. And you can, the middle class can buy their sons out and to reform it'd be very expensive. He's also made political reforms at home, which have liberalized the empire. Interestingly, he's a sort of populist authoritarian figure who comes to power uh rather than um rather than um you know going down a more dictatorial route. And his army reform is massively unpopular because the middle classes say they can buy their way out of it. They've got a one in two chance of getting out. They don't want a you know a universal conscription where there's no way. So they've got a chance. The army don't want it reformed because they they hate change and they believe the French army has won every battle that they fought in. And if they lost in Mexico, that was a political or not a military defeat. Uh, and so he's unable to push it through.
SPEAKER_01:I think we're agreed that Napoleon III, he's not an idiot, and he must be aware that you know, he's seen what Prussia can do to other nations. And it's not Prussia that attacks France, it's it's France that attacks Prussia. It it just seems an extraordinary misjudgment.
SPEAKER_00:It is, yeah, and not least because um we should say at this point he's very ill. Uh, so he's got a sort of smogger's board of really unpleasant um ailments from gout to hemorrhoids. Um, but the worst is bladder stones, uh, which means which um without going into too much detail makes it incredibly hard to urinate because you literally have stones in your bladder. Uh so he's in he's in sort of agony, and the nature of disease is there's flare-ups where he's where he's almost incapacitated. So that's affecting his judgment. Politically, there's been drift uh as well. So the opposition is rising. Uh and in the elections in 1869, the opposition gets three million votes. So just remember, it's it it's that just which goes to show how um well the word I so let's use the word liberal the regime is you can vote against the regime, and the the opposition candidates do incredibly well by 1869. So Louis Napoleon, in a typical coup de theatre, sort of regains he's goes through the health crisis, it looks like revolution is going to break out in Paris, there are protests, and he creates something called the Liberal Empire, which is a series of reforms that makes the empire much more democratic. In fact, the British ambassador says he's created a system more democratic than Britain. Ministers are responsible to parliament, and freedom of the press is not entirely restored, but is relaxed, so on and so forth. He puts it to a plebiscite in 1870, May 1870, to the French people do you agree with these liberal reforms? Over seven million people vote, yes, we do. And and this this time there is plenty of avenues for the opposition to voice their concerns, right? So this is not like in 1851. It seems like a master stroke. The empire is back. And the first minister, uh, he's not tech we would call him prime minister, Emile Olivier. He stands up in the Corps Legislative and he says, Never at any time in human history has European affairs been more peaceful. Uh, and he talks about the plebiscit victory as being the equivalent of the Prussian victory over the Austrians, i.e., crushing. And the uh it is so he in 1870, he is at the apotheosis almost, the apogee of his power, Napoleon III. Nothing could go wrong. Unfortunately, um, we now move into one of the most spectacular self-immolations in history. So this is an arcane crisis that's been bubbling away in Spain. They um in 1868, the Queen of Spain had been run off the throne in another revolution, and it's been vacant for nearly two years. None of the candidates are acceptable to the Spanish, to the French, to other European powers. But Bismarck somehow strong arms King Wilhelm, the Prussian king, uh, as well as the Spanish Parliament and politicians, to accept a Hohenzollern. The Hohenzollens are the ruling family of Prussia, a junior branch, who are Catholic branch, in fact, put them on the on the the as King of Spain. This breaks um uh in in France as a you know a national emergency because, of course, if you've got a Prussian king on the Spanish throne and in the coming war with Prussia, which everyone thinks will become hot at some point, if not in 1870, then the French army, already outnumbered, is going to have to leave significant reserves on the Pyrenees to defend the border. So this is seen as a you know as a as a as a catastrophe. France cannot allow it to happen. So, ultimatums are sent, protests are made, the streets of Paris are washed with people singing the Marseillaise, which, by the way, is a is a seditious revolutionary song banned under the Empire, but the government let it be sung because they want to whip up this anti-Prussian sentiment. Protests are made to the king, um, and it looks like it's going to be at war in one of these sort of typical German spa towns that where the king goes. He's 73-year-old, he wants to relax away from the Kaiser state and being bullied by Bismarck, which is what most of his political life is, and he is desperate to avoid war. So there is a monumental climb down. He gets his family to renounce the project. France has sort of an astonishing diplomatic triumph from Francois Guizot, who was foreign minister in the 1840s under July Monarchy, says it was the most spectacular diplomatic triumph you'd ever seen. And he said that you know that these rascals have damn good luck because he's, you know, kind of annoyed because he's not a fan of the empire. So everything has been resolved. He, the diplomatic highwire act, uh, the second empire, has made Prussia climb down, humiliatingly. When Bismarck finds out, he's furious because he'd been engineering this conflict. He wanted this war because the southern German states, places like Bavaria, um, are still not part of Germany. And what you need to unite Germany is, of course, hatred of the French. No, everyone can get behind that. So he's distraught, he he's he's he's decides to resign in in protest. And he's von Moltke the elder, the you know, commander of the Prussian army, you know, he'd been looking forward to war with France his whole life. I mean, this is like his copy, like your summer holidays have been cancelled. Then France does something extraordinarily stupid. Um, and the emperor, remember, he's not well, his judgment is impaired, but although they've got a climb down, they have no guarantees for the future. How are we to know that this same thing won't happen next year or the year afterwards? Louis Napoleon knows he's not well, he's worried about his son, who by now is sort of 13, 14, and he thinks maybe we need to deal with this before he comes of age, right? Um we don't want to leave and leave his son in this this Prussian threat. So they they make demands to the Prussian king. They say, you must not only renounce the project as you have done, but you must promise that no Prussian member of the royal family will ever take it up again. And the king is really insulted by this because he's given them what they want. So he's like, why on earth are you doing this? So, with the sort of um the annoyance of a man whose holiday has been thoroughly ruined by work, he dashes off a telegram to Bismarck and says, Ah, the French are hassling me again. And Bismarck, who's having dinner with von Molke and various other Prussian war enthusiasts, is absolutely delighted because he gets a telegram, does a few edits, puts it in the paper, and this is the famous Em's telegram, where it makes it look as though the king, the Prussian king, insulted the French ambassador, which he didn't do. He was just like, Look, I don't want to talk about this. I can't give you any guarantees. Um, but very politely, you know, he's a very polite man. Uh, but this looks like he's insulted the French ambassador. It goes into the German papers, translated into the French, uproar in Paris. The ambassador's honour has been insulted. And so Louis Napoleon, Napoleon III, rather, uh Emile Olivier, both of who have been quite reticent to go to war. Napoleon III, because he knows he's one of the few people in the high up in the French um establishment, and certainly in the army, who think that war with Prussia will be difficult. He's Minister of War, famously says the army is ready, everything down to the last button. And the sooner we start the war, the better, right? Because you've got to mobilize, get to the front, and the side that does that first will win, according to the French. So there's a there's a rush to mobilize to declare war once the guarantees are not given. France, as you say, declares war. Retrospectively, it seems absurd. At the time, even so it's um Victoria's uh grand uh Victoria's daughter, Victoria, who is married to the Prussian Crown Prince. She's absolutely absolutely distraught because she thinks that France is going to win. Neutral opinion in Britain gives France a fairly good chance. So if you know what's going to happen, it seems absurd. But at the time, although it is a terrible decision to go to war, as we'll discuss, it's not as absurd as it seems in retrospect.
SPEAKER_01:So right. So how does it go?
SPEAKER_00:It goes very, very badly. So, as I say, the decision to go to war is not absurd. What is absurd is the French plan, or rather, lack thereof. There is a vague assumption that because Prussia is so hated, remember, they went to war with Denmark and Austria, Italy's upset about something that happened in 1866, which no need to go into. Um, you should be able to get an a you know, a coalition of the willing, if you will, to nip, you know, to strangle the German baby at birth. That's not too horrific a uh uh uh a metaphor. But this is all assumption. Louis Napoleon has not done anything to bring about these alliances. He has goodwill from these countries, but largely that goodwill has been used up um because France is seen as the aggressor. Bismarck is a genius, um, so he actually leaks documents where Napoleon III earlier had said had had um had asked to have Belgium in return for Prussian aggrandizement. And of course, in Britain, as you know, from the First World War, the cause of Belgian neutrality is one that um looms large in the imagination. So the British are horrified about these secret deals, and France goes into the war with no allies. That's bad enough. What's worse is that the war plan is to invade Germany, but the war plan requires Austria to make a hostile demonstration on the German border to just to draw German troops away, and Austria is going to do no such thing. And so the plan immediately is no longer relevant. So there's an extraordinary meeting. Napoleon III, again, he says, I'm going to have to command the army, but he knows he's in no state to do, he can't ride a horse, he's in agony. His cousin Matilda comes to see him and says that you know, you absolutely cannot do this. You you can you can't, you know, you can't get on a horse, you can't lead men. And he just waves her away and says, I have to do it. He gets to Metz on the on the where the his HQ is on the border with Germany. Extraordinary meeting where he where he turns to his generals and says, What's the plan? And they look at him in you know in bewilderment. There's a silence. And one of them says, Well, where are we with Austria? And he says, Oh, we're negotiating with Austria. And the general explodes. He says, But we must attack in dates. And if we don't have Austria, we can't do it. And he says, then so the emperor says, Does anyone have any other suggestions? Right? So this is, I mean, it is just parcible levels. It's staggeringly incompetent. Not only that, but the mobilization itself has gone disastrously badly. Regiments are in the wrong place, ammunition has turned up without rifles, rifles without ammunition, no one knows what's going on. Whereas listeners won't be surprised to learn that the Prussian mobilization is done with all of the ruthless efficiency that one would expect of a German war machine that has been preparing for this moment for years. Um, so there's a brief incursion into Germany for want of something better. They think they need to do something and they they they attack a town on the border, but it's you know, it's it's a minor engagement. The French army then decide what they'll do is they'll remember the plan had been to invade the proclamation to the army is we're going to invade Germany, and it does say whatever road we take, we may be, you know, sure that we'll be following in the brave footsteps of our ancestors. And that's subjunctive of whatever road is not uh it's not rhetorical. It they don't know what road they're going to take. Soon they can't take any roads because the roads are packed with German troops invading France. The plan is is is simple, it's a defensive plan. And if you if you think about the First World War, you think this could this could work really well, right? Because if you can get strong positions and defend against the oncoming onslaught, um then you can fight the Germans down um to a standstill. The trouble is um the Prussians have developed artillery that is devastatingly effective. It can fire further and more accurately than anything the French have. So the French take up magnificent defensive positions, but those positions are overwhelmed first by artillery fire and then by larger German numbers. So you have 50,000, 60,000 uh French troops dug in. But in the face of this artillery, which they can't reply to the artillery fire because their artillery doesn't fire that far, and superior German numbers, they're overwhelmed. So they lose, they lose three battles in 48 hours, Germans pouring across uh the border, um, occupying parts of eastern France. And now what was already staggeringly incompetent goes into meltdown. So Napoleon III decides to resign his command, right? Because he's in he's in no way fit to do it. So there's extraordinary moments as he's trying to visit troops to rally them, where he has to get off his horse. Uh and he's found hugging a tree, digging his nails into it, sobbing in agony because of the from the bladder stones. Another time where he's chairing a meeting and he starts writhing and convulsing with pain and then just tears rolling down his face because he's in absolute agony. And he also knows that that a German, you know, well, two German armies, or possibly three, I forgot off the top of my head, have invaded France. He gives up the command, he gives it to a guy called Achille Bazin, who's meant to be the savior of France, and but he has been massively overpromoted. Um, and he what all military logic dictates what the French should do is retreat to Paris with what remains of their armies, extend German supply lines, pulling up reserves, recruiting, you know, literally anyone they can throw into a uniform, they will have more than enough men to meet the Germans and to match their numbers outside Paris, um uh at a place of their choosing. But this is seen as a political disaster. So back in Paris, Eugenie is regent. Uh the Minister of War there uh is is is adamant that if there is a retreat, there will be revolution. Napoleon III falls back to an army camp to regroup and try and raise another army, and Bazain has been left in Metz to face the Germans. Napoleon III wants him to break out, but very soon he's surrounded. And so, long story short, France's only professional veteran army that is well supplied and well equipped is cut off from the rest of France. The army that's been scraped together at this military camp that could still fall back on Paris, as indeed all military logships says that it should. But Eugenie and the Minister of War say that they must go to the rescue of Besane for political reasons. And when Man Mokola's this, he writes a sort of typically Prussian understated in in his memoirs. He says, a strange and somewhat foolhardy move as this army um lurches towards the Belgian border on the off chance that Bazain, this other the other French army, may have broken out for Metz. They've lost communication with it, they don't know whether it has or if it hasn't. In fact, it hasn't. So this is awful march where Napoleon III, who's not in command, um, but is with the army, being dragged around, as the great novelist Emil Zola says, like a sort of luxury lurious baggage train. Or as Blancplan, his cousin says, uh, it's like going into battle with a plate of soup on one's head. They end up being chased and harried by the Germans, um, and they are chased into a small town in northeastern France called Sinon, which is where they give battle.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm guessing that the battle goes exactly as we would expect it to go.
SPEAKER_00:It goes as all the other ones do. It's a defensive battle, which they don't want to fight because, as I said, of the artillery. They're also outnumbered two to one. This is not the cream of the French army. There's some marines, there's some elite units, and lots of reserves, and people scrape together just over 100,000. And one of the French generals who's taken who's taking part in the battle, he famously says, But we're in a chamber pot about to be shut on, which is exactly what's happened. Von Molke has moved his armies to encircle and envelop the town. It's got a medieval fortress that was rebuilt in the 17th or 18th century, but useless against these German artillery. And the bombardment is relentless. Uh, the heroism of the French army is extraordinary. Um, and Louis Napoleon is he's out there, he's he's mounting a horse, which in of itself was a feat of enormous physical endurance for him because it's he's an absolute agony. And he's very likely at this point because he knows that the battle will be lost, uh, looking for death on the battlefield. Although, you know, as his detractors say, not that hard because he doesn't he doesn't actually die. Um, but he does end up surrendering, you know, by the afternoon. It's clear that this is going to be a massacre. Now, this is this is, I think, a heroic moment because the first Napoleon, uh, whenever faced with defeat, he flees, runs away. Uh, he does it in Egypt, he does it in Russia, and of course he does it at Waterloo. Get back to Paris, control the narrative. But Napoleon III says that if they carry on fighting, you know, then you know thousands of men will die. So he surrenders to the king of Prussia. Um, there's there's some hilarious squabbling amongst his generals because they refuse to be the ones who surrender because it would be such dishonour. But eventually, they invader think they're worse at surrendering than fighting, but they do eventually manage to get uh to have a ceasefire. And the emperor of the French, Napoleon III, the illustrious Bonaparte name, has led his army to disaster, to capitulation, and to capture. So he's taken prisoner by the Prussians.
SPEAKER_01:So what happens to the French after that? Do they have to surrender the whole country? Because as I understood it, there was some sort of a siege of Paris.
SPEAKER_00:There is, yes. So the war doesn't end there. So Bismarck's very annoyed by this because he thinks, oh, well, I've defeated the, you know, I've taken Napoleon III um Emperor uh uh prisoner. The war should end, and the empire should stay in place as suitably chastised and weakened, which would be great for Germany, right? Problem is, in when Paris, when they hear news that the Emperor's been captured and the army's been humiliated at Sedan, there's a revolution. The Corleus Vetiv is invaded by uh you know the ubiquitous Parisian mob who've been fairly quiet for 20 years but enjoy another invasion of the of France's parliament, and a republic is proclaimed. Now, the republicans, um, in in when they come to power are, as everyone is, obsessed by history. And if you know your revolutionary history of the first revolution, of course, the the Prussians and the Austrians are defeated by the Levi en masse, by Republican spirit, by people singing the Marseille's. So they think they can continue the war, that the reason why they've lost is because of the incompetence of the emperor and his generals, and that a people's war against the Prussians will be victorious. They are no more equipped to defeat the Prussian onslaught than the Empire was. So the war lingers on. Napoleon III in captivity, Paris under siege, and it's not till January when they start the bombardment of Paris, and people are starving at a rate of, I think, about two, three thousand a week, um, that the French Republic finally surrenders. And so the war doesn't end until January 1871. But by that point, the Empire has been overthrown.
SPEAKER_01:So what happens to Napoleon III after the war? I mean, he's in German captivity, presumably the French are not too happy with him. What's his what's his future?
SPEAKER_00:They're not. No, he's um he he's as the and when they get then they have an assembly elected in in February, that assembly decides that one man is responsible for the ruin, the dismemberment, and accumiliation of France. And of course, that one man is Napoleon III. So he is known as the Man of Sedan, uh, vilified, hated for the catastrophe. Uh in again, um this would be quite familiar history because this is where France loses Alsace and Lorraine, the two provinces that are um part of eastern France today, uh and were under the in 1870, but are under German occupation and control until the First World War. Uh so he's he's vilified and hated. He's while the war is ongoing, he's quite a useful pawn for Bismarck. So he's kept in a luxurious German palace, and various times Bismarck sort of threatens to send him back and to restore the empire. But once the war is over, he's no more use for him. He's released, and he goes in exile to live out his days in Chiselhurst in Kent, a odd place for a former emperor and one of the most powerful men in Europe, if not the world, to live out their final days. But uh, he goes to a place called Camden House, which is today a lovely golf course. Um, there are various he hasn't given up, right? Remember, he's he's he's ever ever the optimist and still believes in his destiny, still believes in the empire, and there are various uh various um various sort of um conspiracies or alleged conspiracies. Amusingly, I think, from more a British perspective, he goes on holiday to Torquay, and in French press is this is reported as preparations of for the descent from Torquay, which probably sounds more terrifying in in French than it does than it does in English. Um that comes to nothing. But he had he issues a manifesto, he's interviewed by various journalists and papers in the and in the Times, you know, he says the French government is illegitimate. The Bonaparte's plan is for uh uh there should be another plebiscite. He thinks he's still the legitimate sovereign, he was never voted out of office. There should be a plebiscite about the form of government and who should govern France, and he would accept that. But until then, for all intents and purposes, he's still the emperor. Um, and the rumour is he's still got terrible um physical ailments and the bladder stones. And the word on you know that sort of does the rounds is that the reason he finally agrees to surgery, which is the reason why he didn't want surgery, is because it's incredibly unpleasant, uh, which involves essentially inserting a uh metal rod into the penis to go into the bladder with a claw on it that will crush the stone inside the bladder. Uh so you can see why he might have objected to that. Um, he does eventually agree to undergo it um by the sort of foremost um physicians of the day and surgeons. The Prince of Wales doctor is consulted. Uh this man called Sir Henry Thompson, who had actually performed the procedure on Leopold I of the Belgians, crucially successfully. Um, and so he's brought in because obviously you can't um do another Light of the Eagle. This would have been his third in his mid-60s, and present yourself before the troops. But by the way, it's the 1836 plan again. Well, well, um, if you are being driven in a carriage, right? You have to be able to ride a horse and he he can't so much agony, so he agrees to surgery, or at least that's the rumour. But it's not the surgery that kills him, the stone is enormous. His doctor strides out after the exploratory examination and says, What? This man rode a horse for five hours at Sodon. It must have been in agony, which he was. But the stone is so big they need to do what turns out to be three operations, and he is kind of kind of going in and out of consciousness, weakening, and by they they think he's okay for the third operation on the 9th of January 1873, and they're ready to perform it, but his condition rapidly deteriorates uh and he dies. I think it's 10 45 a.m. on the 9th of January 1873 in Camden Place, Chiselhurst. It's not I mean the operations hastened to death, but it's actually kidney disease complete which killed him. He had a organ failure because his kidneys had stopped working. Uh, and he had had chronic kidney disease for a long time, but undiagnosed.
SPEAKER_01:So we don't reckon it was incompetent surgery that killed him.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's all as you it's a good 19th-century scandal. All kinds of rumours and counter-rumours go about about the incompetence of British surgeons. Of course, lots of people in France are uh not that bothered if they have kills here. It's um it's although at Bonaparte, there's a sort there is a renaissance, there was a renaissance and the 1870s. It's a serious electoral force. Um uh and you know, who knows, maybe there there could have been a restoration. Um, but you know, he would have died, he would have died not long after he he died. Um the operation, it's it's just the stress that that put on on his body. Accelerate something that would have happened weeks, weeks later, by according to the uh the the the doctors.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. So I feel we've kind of said enough to say that Napoleon III, an extraordinary man and a chancer, and uh in some ways a fantasist, but nonetheless a serious man, seriously intelligent man and man who gets a lot done. But but he he I don't know, maybe it's just because I'm British. I'm very unfamiliar with him until until recently. And I get the sense that the French, presumably, they don't want to talk about him except in in harsh terms because of the humiliation of 1870. But has that sort of poisoned his reputation because the French won't support their own man?
SPEAKER_00:I th it's a it's an interesting one because the the you know, when he dies, the British obituaries are broadly very positive because he was a great anglophile, he'd lived in in London, and he's he did, you know, the Crimean War. He also signed a commercial treaty with Britain, very famous at the time, 1860 called the Chevalier Treaty that brought lower towers between Britain and France, and free trade was one of the great kind of you know popular rallying cries of that period, right? So he's seen as uh as as a uh very affectionately in Britain. And they all say one of the great names, not because he's Napoleon, but because of his power, has passed from history and you know he'll be remembered. But um, he's not, as you say, he's forgotten. And I think you're right, it's partially because in France they tried very hard to forget him. Uh he's vilified um uh uh and then uh uh as a you know as a criminal uh whose regime began with an illegal act and ended in spectacular disaster as a tyrant. So he's vilified and then he's forgotten, and he's passed out of popular, popular memory in in French history, despite you know the fact that he was in power longer than any other 19th century ruler in France. And if you take his presidency, 1848, to the overthrow of the empire in 1870, you've got nearly 22 years, right? So that's that's more than his uncle, more than the French kings before him. Um, I think it's Louis XV is the last French ruler to ruled longer and in the mid-18th century. If he's remembered at all in France now, and and a lot of people don't know that there was a third Napoleon, as they don't know that here, it's as an insult. So occasionally uh French presidents are compared to Napoleon III. That is not meant to be a flattering comparison, although in the case of Hollande, it was because of the secret trists from the Elise, I think was that was the main was the main point of comparison. And the Third Republic, which replaces the Second Empire, um, we're in the Fifth Republic now, um, which has in uh in this week is sort of teetering on the brink. Uh so who knows? Perhaps there'll be a third empire. Um, but the third republic, which is currently France's longest lasting republic, still a few years on the fifth one, is set up as a prophylactic against Bonapartism, if you will. It's designed to stop a strong man coming to power. So the president of the Third Republic is not directly elected, is elected by the parliament, and has very weak powers. So his main legacy on French politics um in is for sort of 70 years of rather ineffectual weak government which is the which comes to kind of characterize the third republic because they don't want a directly elected president. Um, and of course, the fifth republic is sometimes is sometimes compared to the second empire, in that you have a president with almost monarchical powers, certainly in foreign policy, there are referendums, uh but I mean it's not it's that it's largely referred to that as again to as to insult it. It's Charles de Gaulle who's instrumental in setting it up, he's not reading, you know, um Louis Napoleon's pamphlets.
SPEAKER_01:And so we had a Napoleon I, we had a Napoleon II, who's like just you know flitted in and out, and Napoleon III who we've talked about, did they ever get around to having a Napoleon IV?
SPEAKER_00:Well, Napoleon IV is the Prince Imperial, um Napoleon III's son, uh who has um uh endings uh even more bizarre, um uh death place rather, even more bizarre than uh than his father, because Bonaparte continues, and he is the pretender, right, to to to the throne. And if you uh you know never give up is should be the Bonaparte monarchy motto, right? Um but he he hasn't done anything to kind of warrant his his position as leader of the party. So he thinks, you know, what better uh way to gain military renown than to take part in the Zulu War in 1879 as part of the British Army? So he'd been a he'd been a cadet in the Royal Artillery, um, another good Bonapartist tradition. And when the war breaks out in 1879, he's desperate to go and fight. And he's he Victoria, the Queen Victoria is is is he's against it, but um is he usually appeals to her and string support, and he goes out to fight in in the Zulu war, although crucially not to do any fighting because the last thing you want is is you know Napoleon IV being killed in British Army uniform, hugely embarrassing. But he talks his way into getting into these reconnaissance missions that are that are kind of um reconnoitering the the invasion route that the British war take through Zululand. And um it's it's it's because of his you know he's not the commanding officer of the group, but because of his name and because of his you know kind of reputation, or I suppose the Napoleon reputation, it's sort of unclear who's in charge. And they're they're out hard day riding, they stop to rest near a sort of small abandoned um Zulu village, and um they're sitting down and under the South African sun, having a wonderful time, and showing that he's very much his father's son, um, for two reasons. One, he's discussing Napoleon Bonaparte, the first um Italian campaign of 1796. Uh, the other reason is that he's shown remarkable um military ineptitude, and there have been no sentries posted, they are not ready to go should they be ambushed, which is exactly what happens. Um, out of the long grass comes the Zulu war party, about 30 or 40 um spears are thrown, rifles are um fired, they miss everything in the rush, but it panics the horses. So some of the British soldiers manage to remount and and and and flee. Napoleon IV uh I unfortunately is unable to get on his horse. The wonderfully named Percy. Percy is startled, runs off. He manages to grab onto the saddle and he's hanging on desperately, trying to either stop the horse. horse or mount the horse. But after 100 yards he can do neither. And he loses his grip on the saddle, tumbles to the earth, turns around and sees about 10 Zulu warriors approaching him. Reaches for his sword, it's come off as he's has fallen out. So it's yards away, he can't get it. Very sensibly, in my opinion, he decides to run. He hurt his arm in the fall as well. So he's probably got a broken arm, right arm, which is his better arm, and zigzagging to avoid the spears being thrown at him. But as he gets down in um into a sort of ravine he sees his comrades in arms are have uh fleeing into the distance. So there's no chance of catching them up and he decides that it's better to turn and fight. So he turns round, draws his revolver with his weaker arm, fires off a few shots which all miss wildly and as the Zulus close um a spear goes a spear goes into his leg, which he pulls out, uses that to defend himself but it's ten men against one and eventually a spear goes right through his eye into his brain and that's what kills him. And he's found the next day by a British search party who are understandably um disappointed with the British officer when he tells them that he's lost Napoleon IV in a fight with the Zulus and they find his body stripped naked except for um um a medallion which he had from his father and which has got a the seal of the Napoleon I part of it, a miniature portrait of Eugenie. And the rather touching um vignette that I that I learned reading accounts of his death is that they find uh one blue sock with M for Napoleon emblazoned uh on the side of it uh I mean and the bloody grass uh where he's discovered uh so that's Napoleon IV um that's his end he that dies in South Africa uh he's brought back obviously the body is brought back to to Britain but uh Eugenie who's in Camden Place in Chiselhurst she's so distraught by his death and the place has too many sad memories for her that she moves to a place called Farnborough Hill outside what is today Farnborough. If you've ever been to Farnborough you won't be surprised to learn that most of Farnborough didn't exist in when she moved and she built this wonderful um French sort of neo-gothic church as a as a as a mausoleum and as a crypt where the bodies of um Napoleon III and Napoleon IV should you wish to um if you're a Bonapartist and indeed Eugenie are now buried um on the sort of outskirts of this um well how should we say um architecturally uninspiring uh new town that has built up around it in the 1960s I don't want to um uh uh uh disparage Farnborough um but it's it's a silly it's a contrast to the Second Empire yes okay so I guess we should bring it to an end there that's the um that's the sad end of the of the Bonaparte dynasty and and the end of this podcast so um so Edward Schaucross uh thank you very much indeed no not at all thank you i i I didn't think we'd make it um so much to discuss and I'm glad that uh we we somehow managed to bring it to an end okay well thank you again