“Nothing … could be further from his [Louis Napoléon’s]
thoughts, than to seize any territory from Germany.” 1
—PRINCE REGENT WILHELM VON HOHENZOLLERN, BADEN, JUNE 1860
Louis Napoléon had been simply flummoxed by the outburst of universal, even hysterical, anti-French denunciations following the War of Italian Independence in July 1859, concluding with the Treaty of Zurich that September and the pending transfer of Savoy and Nice to France.2 In particular he was hurt and dismayed by Palmerston’s leading role in this criticism. Several months later, however, the British were partially assuaged by Prime Minister Cavour’s revelation of the actual terms of the Franco-Sardinian agreements officially offering France these two territories after the war in gratitude for help in liberating the country. And the subsequent plebiscites held in Savoy and Nice overwhelmingly approved their attachment to France, further softening this trenchant indignation. Clearly French bayonets were in no way involved.
Meanwhile, despite the verbal fireworks and histrionics of the English press and at Westminster throughout the autumn of 1859—“Savoy … poisons everything.… we may soon be fighting France single-handed!”—in the Far East, strong Anglo-French naval forces were working closely together as they advanced up river to Peking to oblige the Chinese government to open its ports to their commerce. British hostility over the acquisition of Nice and Savoy had somehow conveniently overlooked the coordinated military cooperation of the Royal Navy and the French Imperial Navy in their invasion and siege of that foreign capital. Lord John Russell did finally relent halfheartedly in 1859–1860 regarding the distribution of Sardinian real estate. As usual, there was no shortage of hypocrisy in the foreign chancelleries of Europe.3
But what was also beginning to dawn slowly on the French emperor during the last half of 1859 was that he had gradually become isolated, not just by England—even Queen Victoria, through loyalty to, and under great pressure from, a highly mercurial Albert, distanced herself, at least in public—but by the whole of Europe. Prussia had refused to fight the tsar in the Crimea, though it took part later in the peace talks in Paris. A defeated, humiliated Austria was now an angry foe, following the French army’s successful intervention in 1859, shortly to result in the new independent state of Italy. As for “German” animosity toward Louis Napoléon, it was now being more and more carefully orchestrated by Prussia’s prince regent Wilhelm, who had been ruling Prussia since his brother’s incapacitating stroke in 1857.
* * *
When Napoléon I had dismantled the sprawling, loosely organized Holy Roman Empire in 1806, he had suppressed well over three hundred governments, three hundred independent kingdoms, principalities, duchies, and cities, reorganizing them eventually into a few dozen larger German states to constitute his new Confederation of the Rhine. All member states were now occupied by French bayonets and administered by pro-French officials and Bonaparte Diktat, their economies, trade, and military embondaged to Paris. With the fall of Napoléon in 1814–1815, the Congress of Vienna had disbanded what remained of the original French Confederation of the Rhine, including its four kingdoms, eighteen duchies, and seventeen principalities, which became free and independent of all foreign rule whatsoever.4
Now Emperor Napoléon III in 1860 found himself facing thirty-nine reconstituted free independent German states and governments. Under the circumstances it was hardly surprising, then, that he felt the full weight of those glowering “new” German states so disapproving of this French Louis Napoléon’s recent actions and foreign acquisitions. What was next, they asked, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Rhineland provinces? Only a collective “meeting of the minds” could dispel this toxic atmosphere, and it was agreed that in the interests of clearing the air that a conference would be held by the interested parties at Louis Napoléon’s late cousin Stéphanie’s Grand Duchy of Baden.
* * *
On June 16, 1860, Louis Napoléon and Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, the sixty-three-year-old prince regent and heir to the Prussian throne, duly met secretly at Baden, joined by a bevy of distinguished German royal princes, to discuss and clarify German anxiety over the perceived threat of French foreign expansion once again. Given the death of his cousin Stéphanie in Nice back in January of that year, Louis Napoléon found having to return to her Baden summer residence, now for the last time, extremely disconcerting. Stéphanie, who had been so close to him and his late mother, Hortense, to whom she bore a remarkable resemblance, physically and in character, had been the last of the Beauharnais of that generation, after the earlier premature demise of Uncle Eugène. Today, Louis Napoléon was the nominal guest of the Grand Duke of Baden, the handsome, bearded thirty-four-year-old Friedrich I. In addition to Prince Wilhelm, they were joined in the grand duke’s apartments by the kings of Württemberg, Bavaria, Saxony, and Hanover, along with the Grand Dukes of Hesse-Darmstadt and of Saxe-Weimar, as well as the dukes of Saxe-Nassau and of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. It was an extraordinary congregation of German royalty, a dramatic setting worthy of the great Richard Wagner himself … and for the French emperor, a most intimidating gathering of peers coming here, in effect, to pass judgment on him.
Louis Napoléon agreed to appear at this extraordinary “inquisition” to explain more fully his treaty with Victor Emmanuel and its secret clauses and under what circumstances he had annexed minuscule Savoy and Nice, and why this action was not the prologue to further French expansion either along the Rhineland or anywhere else.
What Louis Napoléon did not know, however, was that at the instigation of Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, the Prince Regent, destined to accede to the Prussian throne in the New Year, along with the Austrian emperor Franz Josef, had privately agreed to transmit all communications they received from Louis Napoléon to Prince Albert. Louis Napoléon’s intuitive paranoia was indeed well founded.
This conspiracy was unprecedented, and based on their fears that Louis Napoléon sought all-out war to avenge the allied defeat of France at Waterloo. “What had happened to Nice and Savoy,” Wilhelm reported to London, “he [Louis Napoléon] said, was quite exceptional and due to special circumstances,” an explanation that Wilhelm said he personally had found “most satisfactory.” As for the accusations now leveled at Louis Napoléon of preparing to invade the German Rhineland, Wilhelm explained they simply astonished the French emperor. “Nothing … could be further from his thoughts, than to seize any territory from Germany and incorporate it with France,” the future king of Prussia now assured Prince Albert. “So clamorous, however, was the outcry of the German press, that something had to be done by him to convince Germany of his sincerity.” Left in this humiliating position, Louis Napoléon then insisted before the assembled German sovereigns that “his desire [was] to leave Germany undisturbed” and that this message should be made known “throughout the country.” The uncontrolled press throughout the German states was largely responsible for this warmongering, he further asserted. “The current fears about a French invasion of Belgium were equally incomprehensible and absurd,” he stated. As for his peaceful intentions, Louis Napoléon could point proudly to the new Free-Trade Commercial Treaty just signed with England in January of that year (1860).5
In any event, at this meeting in Baden on the sixteenth of June, it was felt necessary to publish a “disclaimer of any aggressive intention” by the French. Although he met no open animosity—Bismarck was still serving as the Prussian ambassador in faraway St. Petersburg—and despite the apparently friendly atmosphere here among so many crowned German rulers, the tone of this day-long inquisition had hardly been sympathetic. Louis Napoléon was “in the dock” surrounded by his “judges” demanding justification of his actions, like a truant schoolboy before his teachers. Thanks to Napoléon I’s sweeping invasions, German suspicion of Louis Napoléon’s intentions was deep-seated, and prodded invisibly by Prince Albert. Nor did the French emperor yet know that this handsome Prince Wilhelm had—with generals von Roon and von Moltke—earlier, on the twelfth of January, introduced legislation to greatly enlarge and completely reorganize the Prussian army, reforms that soon, under the supreme leadership of Bismarck, were ultimately to make possible the German invasion of France ten years later.
When Wilhelm’s special courier hand-delivered a long report to Prince Albert of all that had transpired at Baden, Albert in turn wrote to his daughter, Victoria—the wife of Wilhelm’s son Friedrich—that he hoped the conclusions of the gathering would result in the thirty-nine German states closing ranks and “thereby contribute toward the unity of Germany.”6 Albert’s destructive role in secretly encouraging the ensuing encircling and isolation of France was deliberately kept secret from Queen Victoria and the English government. The significance of this convocation at Baden has been ignored by historians, along with an appreciation of the great anxiety it caused Louis Napoléon in subsequent months and years. But if Prince Albert served as an effective agent provocateur in preparing Europe for a new period of international anti-French agitation and even rearmament, it was another man, a Prussian, who made such intentions a reality.
* * *
Louis Napoléon returned directly to Paris, having at least established a truce of sorts at Baden, while gradually realizing that he was well and truly being isolated from and hemmed in by the European powers, including all the German states, Austria, and perhaps Russia as well. Good natured at heart and well meaning, this left Louis Napoléon perplexed by such intense, deep-seated hostility. He little suspected the significant role played by “his friend” Albert. No sooner had he returned to the French capital than he found himself on the fourth of July heading the funeral cortège of the cantankerous long-ailing Uncle Jérôme to join his illustrious brother in the Invalides. Despite the large crowds of the curious, there was no cheering for Jérôme, indisputably the most unpopular of all the Bonapartes, apart from his bumptious son, Sans-Plomb. The gloom of the Baden inquisition blended in seamlessly with the stormy skies over Paris.
In six months’ time, the Prince Regent, the bald if handsome Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, would assume the throne as King Wilhelm I of Prussia, and select a Prussian-styled Talleyrand of his own, a decision that was to change the history of both Germany and France and undermine the peace of Europe for decades to come.
* * *
After leaving Baden that June 1860, nothing would ever again quite be the same for Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, and he sensed it deeply. There were continuing rumors of a 200,000-man Prussian army driving down the Rhine to seize everything as far as south as Lake Constance, but in the end these proved to be totally unfounded. Indeed, far away at the war ministry in Berlin, General von Roon was just beginning to draft the first basic legislation that would completely modernize the Prussian army and nearly double its strength. At the same time his colleague army chief of staff von Moltke was ordering new weapons and preparing new tactics and strategy that would one day render just such an invasion possible. With Bismarck’s appointment in September 1862 as minister-president of Prussia, the unique troika—Bismarck, Roon, and Moltke—would then be in place over the next eight years as they meticulously prepared for a unification of Germany cemented by the invasion of France and the destruction of the Second Empire.
* * *
It was a brooding, deeply depressed Louis Napoléon who returned to Paris from Baden in 1860. Nor was there any letup in the bad news greeting him in Paris, including a new crisis in the Near East. Back in April and May there had been bloody clashes between the French-backed Maronite Christians of Beirut and the English-supported Druze, leading to “massacres” as far as Damascus. Both France and England had dispatched warships to the Lebanese coast to rescue thousands of fleeing refugees, although, of course, with Lebanon being a province of the Ottoman Empire, theoretically the Turkish government should have been doing the policing. Such was the situation when the latest news reached Paris on the sixteenth of July of 1860.
Louis Napoléon ordered his new foreign minister, Édouard Thouvenel, to convene the powers in Paris on the third of August. Meeting at the Quai d’Orsay, the representatives of France, England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia agreed to dispatch a 6,000-man peacekeeping expeditionary force under French general Beaufort d’Hautpoul, with a limited six-month mandate. This military force quickly restored peace, while obliging the Ottoman authorities to step in and maintain order thereafter, which they duly did. But London was fearful of the French remaining in Lebanon and Syria—they were already well established in Algeria, and now excavating the new proposed Suez Canal. “We do not wish … to give France another pretext for an indefinite occupation of this land as well,” as Lord John Russell put it. Sultan Abdülmecid gave in to the West and provided Lebanon with a Maronite Christian governor of the province, and all the European troops and ships left the country, including the French. And thus another diplomatic clash between England and France was narrowly resolved.7
Louis Napoléon, however, had a veritable gift for embroiling himself in totally unnecessary controversies and difficulties, and thus continued his ill-concealed assignations with the lovely Countess Virginia Castiglione, which did nothing to improve the tranquility of the palace or the painful scenes with Eugénie.
Meanwhile, the Anglo-French military expedition in China battling its way upriver had finally entered Peking on October 13, 1860, thereby securing peace and open ports of commerce for the future, news that would not reach Louis Napoléon until November, as he was caught up once again in the daily affairs of state. These now largely centered around the introduction of the first elements of the new Saint-Simon liberal empire he had been discussing and planning ever since his days as a prisoner in Ham. Against the advice of his conservative minister, Eugène Rouher, but with the full support of half brother Auguste de Morny presiding over the assembly, Louis Napoléon took the initial step on November 24, 1860, by issuing a decree for the first time allowing the Legislative Body and Senate the right to debate freely about the emperor’s annual throne speech before the opening of the parliamentary year. This decree was warmly welcomed by the majority, if rejected by the “imperial clientele,” with Hippolyte Carnot calling it “the death knell of the Empire,” which would open the floodgates to further relaxation of imperial authoritarian rule.
Louis Napoléon explained that he wished to give Parliament “a more direct participation in the general policy of my Government.” The Senate and Legislative Body could now reply to the emperor’s speech, introduce amendments to bills and new legislation (with some exceptions), and for the first time allow the full public parliamentary debate to be published in the daily newspapers. This decree also suppressed the short-lived Ministry of Algeria, that country reverting to the Ministry of the Marine and Colonies.8
* * *
Back in September of 1860, Louis Napoléon and Eugénie had escaped the mournful claustrophobia of the Tuileries, taking a special train first for a brief tour of the newly acquired Savoy, continuing via the recently completed railway to Marseille and then to Nice, where they were again warmly received by thousands of new French citizens. They next sailed from Toulon in the imperial steam yacht the Aigle for Corsica to pay their respects to Napoléon’s birthplace in Ajaccio, before continuing on the final leg of their journey, complete with a screening frigate escort to Algeria, a colony Louis Napoléon had long wished to visit.
Arriving at the port of Algiers on Monday, the seventeenth of September in 1860, Governor Prosper de Chasseloup-Laubat had an intensive schedule prepared for his imperial guests. Louis Napoléon was dramatically struck by this exotic setting. Governor de Chasseloup-Laubat, the able former minister of the marine and colonies, had prepared a vast banquet in honor of the emperor and empress, offering dozens of dishes, including a galantine of gazelle, camel, and ostrich. This was followed by a spectacular equestrian “fantasia,” as some 10,000 “Arab” tribesmen in traditional costume galloped past the grandstand, shouting and firing their guns wildly into the air. The usually phlegmatic Louis Napoléon smiled with delight, carried away by the excitement of the moment, spellbound by his first glimpse of “the Orient,” and falling passionately in love with the country and its people. His ADCs and companions, even Eugénie, were as startled by this extraordinary transformation as everyone else who knew him. “Our conquest of this country obliges us to concern ourselves with the welfare of these three million Arabs [Berbers],” he later commented, “and to raise them to the level and dignity of free men!”9
On the second day of their tour, the festivities came to an abrupt halt, however, when Louis Napoléon was informed of the death of Eugénie’s forty-five-year-old sister, and closest friend, Paca, the Duchess of Alba, on the sixteenth of September. He now had to break the news to her. The Duchess of Alba had been suffering from “an undiagnosed disease of the spine” for months, but this news shattered Eugénie. Abruptly cutting short the festivities, they sailed for France the next day.
On the fourteenth of November, an extremely distraught, grieving forty-four-year-old Eugénie left Paris abruptly without warning for London with a retinue of fourteen retainers, where she registered at Claridge’s under the name of the Comtesse de Pierrefonds, before going on a bizarre shopping spree. Her unannounced arrival in the English capital took even Foreign Secretary Malmesbury by surprise. After a flying visit to Scotland to see her husband’s cousin, the Duchess of Hamilton, on her return journey to France she spent two days with a bewildered Queen Victoria—“She gave me a melancholy impression.” An equally bewildered Louis Napoléon met her at Boulogne that December.10
Meanwhile, this brief introduction to Algeria was to have a profound and lasting impact on Napoléon III and his reign. He would return again, he said, and next time he would stay not days, but weeks, in order to travel extensively and study the country and its people. France would never be the same again as Louis Napoléon focused his energies on the hitherto largely overlooked Islamic world.