Eugenie de Montijo

Its family

The future one and last empress of the French was born with Grenade in Spain, girl of Cipriano Palafox de Guzmán there Portocarrero, count de Teba, later count de Montijo, and of his semi-Scottish, semi-Spanish wife Maria Manuela Kirkpatrick, one of the girls of the Scot William Kirkpatrick off Closeburn, who was consul of the the United States to Malaga. His/her sister, Maria Francisca Dirty, also known under the name of Paca (Francoise), inherited the Montijo title as well as other family titles. Marry Pile cluster, it died in 1860. According to certain sources, Don Cipriano was not the biological father of its daughters, and the rumor allots the paternity of Eugenie to the diplomatic British, George William Frederick Villiers (1800 - 1870), later 4th Count de Clarendon, famous because of its post of secretary to the British Foreign affairs.

Biography

The countess of Teba, Eugenie, mondainement known before her marriage, was educated with Paris with the famous convent of the Sacré Heart, where it accepted an indelible catholic teaching. When Louis Napoleon became president of the Second Republic it appeared with her mother with the balls given by the prince-president to the Elys3ee palace, and it is there that it met the future emperor Napoleon III, which married it the January 30th 1853, little time after being pushed back in her attempts to be made grant the princess Adelaide von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, niece teenager of the queen Victoria. In its speech from the throne the January 22nd it announced officially its engagement, informant “I would have preferred a woman whom I love and respect with a woman who is unknown for me, with which an alliance will have advantages mixed with sacrifices”. The day of the weddings, whereas Victor Hugo written: “the Eagle marries a casserole”, an anonymous epigram ran in Paris:

“Montijo, more beautiful than wise,
Of the emperor fill the wishes:
Ce evening if it finds a virginity,
C' is that the beautiful one had two of them…”.

In fact, though resulting from a blood britannico-Andalusian very aristocratic and high in the most strict Catholicism, it did not have less twenty-seven years at the time of its marriage in 1853 and had lived and travelled much… Of a bright beauty according to the guns of the time, it had acquired a great unconventional behavior, and tempting even provocante was impassioned, with reserve. Moreover, Maxime of the Camp, in his memories, wrote of it: … I would say readily: “it was a rider”. There was around her like a cloud of cold cream, of Patchouli; superstitious, surface, not being displeased with the grivoiseries, always concerned about the impression which it produced, testing of the effects of shoulders and chest, the dyed hair, the face bale, the eyes bordered of black, the rubbed lips of red, it missed it, to be in its true medium, the music of the Olympic circus, the hand gallop of the horse martingale, the hoop which one crosses of a jump and the kiss sent to the spectators on the pommel of the riding crop.

In environment slap-with-the eye and new-rich person of the time, (word then just put at the mode) Napoleon III had to like this “knack”. Itself, forty-five years old, with the turbid antecedents plustôt, and which had acquired the reputation to be the largest bedfellow of France could not claim to obtain a young virgin with the blue Sang of an big family reigning in Europe… The couple had to be assagir, the imperial prince Eugene-Louis was born in 1856. Eugenie had without any doubt an important influence on the policy followed by her husband as on the cultural life of the court and France.

On the political plan, catholic ultramontane, it wanted that France supported the Pope by the weapons (creation of the body of the pontifical zouaves), whereas Napoleon III was favorable to the liberalization of the other Italian States: it supported against the English the French project of opening of the Suez Canal, and it went to inaugurate it in person. It pushed with the invasion of Mexico, which showed a disaster; it took party for Austria, and against Prussia, which made the play of Bismarck. In addition, it was named Régente Empire in July 1870 after the capture of her husband by the Prussians and tried to manage of sound the rout best.

In the cultural life of the court and France, it took part of the style Napoleon III (twisted blackened pear tree and mother-of-pearl incrustations…) , support for Mérimée, Winterhalter, Waldteufel, Offenbach…

Its friendships in mobility saint-simonienne gave the opportunity to him to advance the cause of the women. It personally intervened in favor of Julie-Victoire Daubié for the signature of its diploma of the baccalaureat like for the handing-over of the Légion of Honor to the painter Rosa Bonheur.

After the fall of the Empire, and the death of Napoleon III in England (1873), it left the direction of the party Bonapartist to Rouher, and was devoted to the education of his/her son. Eugene-Louis was junior by the military academy of Woolwich, then versed in a body of cavalry bound for South Africa. He was killed by the Zulus at the time of a patrol in the bush.

Thereafter, Eugenie made a pilgrimage in Zoulouland, travelled under the name of countess of Pierrefonds, created the Cénotaphe her family with the Saint Michel Abbey of Farnborough, or it is buried meadows of her husband and his son. It died in Madrid in 1920, while having influenced last once on the French political life: it made public a letter of Kaiser which revealed the expansionist intentions in the long run of Germany (cf will infra ).

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