37. “Were You at Sedan, Henri?”

0.     Steward, op. cit., p. 257. Louis Napoléon to Henri Conneau, Jan. 9, 1873.

0.     Steward, Ibid., p. 159. Eugénie to her mother, Doña Maria Manuela, Mar. 1876.

0.     Steward, Ibid., pp. 230–231; and Augustin Filon, Souvenirs de l’Impératrice Eugénie (Paris: Plon, 1920); see also Jasper Ridley, Napoléon III and Eugénie (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983).

0.     Steward, op. cit., p. 233

0.     Steward, Ibid., p. 235. Eugénie’s life was indeed at risk, as the list of the Communards’ summary executions in the Champs-Élysées, the Champs de Mars, and behind the Senate in the Luxembourg Gardens, attested.

0.     Steward, Ibid., pp. 236–237.

0.     Steward, Ibid., pp. 240–241.

0.     Steward, Ibid., p. 243.

0.     Steward, Ibid., pp. 223, 225.

0.   Louis Girard, op. cit., p. 488.

0.   Girard, Ibid., p. 489. Eugénie’s first letter, Sept. 1870.

0.   Milza, op. cit., pp. 715–716; Roger Price’s excellent work, Napoleon III (Oxford University Press, 2006); Anceau, op. cit., p. 548. E.g., La Conduite de l’Empereur depuis le Commencement de la Guerre; Les Causes de la Capitulation de Sedan; and La France et la Campagne de 1870.

0.   Anceau, op. cit., p. 549; and Girard, op. cit., pp. 492–493.

0.   Steinberg, Bismarck, op. cit., p. 308.

0.   French troops killed, 138,871, wounded 143,000; the Germans, 28,208 killed, 88,488 wounded. Steinberg, p. 293, quotes Moltke’s contradictory figures of 50,000 Prussian dead. Steinberg provides no casualty figures. With the defeat of the Commune, Thiers’s government arrested at least 30,000 “Parisians,” of whom 10,137 were then convicted—including 23 executions, 251 assigned to forced labor, and 4,586 transported to penal colonies, chiefly to New Caledonia. For theaters burned down by the Communards, see Jean Claude Yon’s Offenbach, op. cit., p. 434.

0.   Jerrold, op. cit., vol. IV, pp. 520–521. Camden Place, May 12, 1872.

0.   Jerrold, Ibid., vol. IV, p. 522.

0.   Political Testament of 24 avril 1865, advice to his son: AN 4000 AP54; Anceau, op. cit., p. 556.

0.   Steward, op. cit., pp. 247 and 248.

0.   Quoting Bismarck’s famous maiden address before the Landesrat, March 17, 1847, denouncing the French rape of Prussia by Napoléon I, Steinberg, op. cit., p. 77.

0.   See Girard, op. cit., p. 496. Arenenberg had been put on the market years before, and his mother’s Roman palazzo would bring another 600,000 francs. Literally everything Louis Napoléon owned, down to his family papers, archives, a magnificent library, and galleries of hundreds of works of art now lay smoldering in the ruins of the Tuileries and St. Cloud. It was almost as if he had never existed. Eugénie’s cousin, the Duchess of Malakoff (the wife of Marshal Pélissier), had braved the mob before the Tuileries and seized Eugénie’s fabled jewelry collection, along with a few paintings, which she then entrusted to Pauline von Metternich, who would dispatch them by “diplomatic pouch” to London. Later Eugénie sold most of her jewels to the Baron de Rothschild for £150,000 ($14.9 million today). In addition, the empress went to Spain at the end of 1871 to sell some real estate that she had inherited. She had also transferred “millions” of her own money just before she fled the country. Her mother was a very wealthy lady in her own right. Cf. Eugénie’s biographer, Desmond Steward, op. cit., p. 251.

0.   Girard, op. cit., p. 497.

0.   Victoria’s visit, Nov. 30, 1871. Steward, op. cit., p. 249. Paléologue, op. cit., p. 237. The Prince Imperial was known as Louis, his full first name being Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph. He was about to put on a big growth spurt, including a severe thinning.

0.   Steward, op. cit., pp. 249–252.

0.   Steward, Ibid., pp. 251–252.

0.   Steward mentions this, Ibid., p. 244.

0.   Steward, Ibid., p. 253. Plon-Plon continued his visits because Prince Louis was now the direct heir to the Bonaparte throne, in turn followed by the good Plon-Plon. When he reached his majority, however, Louis got his revenge and had Plon-Plon’s name removed from the line of succession.

0.   For the proposed January 1873 coup d’état, see Profs. Anceau, op. cit., p. 552 and Girard, op. cit., pp. 500–501. The pro-Bonapartist newspapers at this time included Le Pays, L’Ordre, La Patrie, and L’Expérience Nationale. See also Steward, op. cit., p. 261, regarding the taking possession of Camden Place.

0.   Girard, op. cit., p. 501; Anceau, op. cit., p. 555.

0.   Jerrold, op. cit., vol. IV, p. 531. All the conversations quoted above and throughout this book have been taken from eyewitness accounts, letters, or memoirs.