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Eugenie: The Empress and Her Empire

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I've always been interested in the lives of royal women, especially when I discover that they were more than just royal spouses or fashion plates. While such women as Elizabeth I of England, Mary of Scotland, and Catherine the Great of Russia have gotten plenty written about them, all too often, women with lesser notoriety tend to be forgotten or passed over by historians.

One such woman was Eugenie, the Empress of Napoleon III of France. Author Desmond Seward, a long-time biographer of royalty, takes what at first appears to be a woman of little notice and turns her into someone to be reckoned with. At first I was rather skeptical, remembering that most of what I had read of Eugenie was that she was Spanish, a fashion setter who was known to have never worn the same evening gown twice and who was a patron of Worth, and that most of history regarded her as a conniving, bad woman who frittered life away. To say that I was in for a surprise was an understatement.

Born Maria Eugenia Ignacia Augusta de Montijo , Eugenie grew up in an Europe that was going through revolutionary changes. Her father had fought with Napoleon's armies, and Eugenie soon developed a fascination with all things having to do with the Bonapartes . Clever, beautiful, and with the ability of being able to say the right thing in the right situation, Eugenie should have been wed quickly, but even after a tour of Europe with her wealthy mother didn't manage a good catch, and at twenty-three she was facing the prospect of spinsterhood. But it seems that Eugenie already had someone in mind -- the nephew of the formidable Napoleon, who had just managed to create himself Emperor of the French, by a coup-de-stat.

Napoleon III, as he was known, was also charming, but also short, rather ugly, and inscrutable. An able politician, that side of his personality has been mostly overlooked for historians, focusing instead on his insatiable need for women, and his lack of military leadership. He was also an innate showman, knowing how to catch people's imagination, and able to push through schemes and ideas that most would never take seriously.

Together, Napoleon and Eugenie formed a partnership that managed to survive for more than seventeen years, recreating Paris from an aging medieval slum to the magnificent City of Lights that we know today. Eugenie gave European fashion a chic flair with her patronage of the coutiere Worth, the artist Winterhalter, and her own innate sense of design.

But there were also serious flaws to the couple as well -- Eugenie had a vicious temper, and one that got worse as it got older; Napoleon's infidelities drove her to jealous rages, especially after the difficult birth of her only child. For his own part, Napoleon backed the feeble attempt to turn Mexico into a monarchy, found himself embroiled in a war with Prussia and dwindled into history as a laughing stock. As for Eugenie, besides losing her throne, she would face a long, lonely exile from Paris that stretched to nearly fifty years, and was emotionally devastated by the loss of her only child at a young age.

It's an intriguing look at a woman who was both villified and worshipped during her lifetime and afterwards, much as Marie Antoinette had been in an earlier generation. Indeed, Eugenie was fascinated by her predecessor, and would avidly collect any sort of memorabilia and objects that were associated with that unfortunate queen. In fact, Eugenie's life would eeriely echo that of Marie Antoinette in many ways, and she always lived in fear of the Parisian mob seeking to overthrow her.

Despite the book being a bit light in treatment -- gossip is constantly recounted, and Seward often repeats himself -- this was an engaging, enlightening read. I had known very little about the Second Empire, and discovered that most of my preconceptions of this period were wrong. Seward draws on the memoirs, newspaper accounts and Eugenie's own letters and recollections for his source material. At just under three hundred pages, it's a quick read, and a good start to exploring this period of French history. A selection of engravings and photographs are included in a black-and-white insert, and there are copious notes and bibliography.

Desmond Stewart's biography does an excellent job of rehabilitating Eugenie's reputation. In earlier accounts, she has been portrayed as a vicious airhead, a bigoted zealot, or a clueless encumbrance on the Second Empire. Stewart's elegantly written, well-organized book shows Eugenie's strengths--her intuitive grasp of French politics, her social liberalism, and her dignified life in exile after the deaths of her husband and her only child. Stewart's research is impressive, and he provides a helpful Bonaparte genealogy as an appendix. I came away from this book with heightened respect for Eugenie and a much clearer sense of the historical importance of France's Second Empire and its legacies: the Suez Canal, the music of Waldteufel and Offenbach, the literary splendor of Flaubert and the Goncourts, as well as France's disastrous defeat by Prussia in 1870 and Eugenie and Napoleon III's ill-fated Mexican adventure. This book is an excellent introduction to Eugenie the woman and to the world of international diplomacy in the Victorian era.

...of a remarkble woman. Desmond Seward definitely succeeds in recounting the life of the spanish born empress and wife to Napoleon III. It was the first biography I read about her and it initiated my passion for french history. Seward balances delicately between her as a private person leading the french court & the political background of 19th century Europe with one of it's climax - the franco-prussian war, which lead to the revolution and Napoeon's abdication.
The only thing I missed slightly was a deeper rendering of her political abilities. She had the reputation of a briliiant politician, being "the only man in Paris". The few times where she was regent, in the absence of her husband, Seward doesn't really delve into her active political doings apart from reflecting her opinion which, by no doubt, had large political impact. On the other hand he implies very successful how difficult it was for a woman and wife of the poilitcal leader in 19th century France to have a politcal role after all. Eugenie was brilliant in pursuing her personal and political goals within her boundaries set by society and court.
Altogether a great book and I recommend it with full belief.

What a wonderful read this book is! The story of the beautiful spanish aristocrat who rose to become (literally) the most powerful woman in the world, "Eugenie: The Empress and her Empire" is truly fascinating. I enjoyed every single page of it.

I had very little knowledge on Eugenie other then she was Empress of France and lost her only child. I've never been interested much in Napoleon III's reign or his consort but decided to give this book a try. I was pleasently surprised by what I read. Like the Eugenie was Spanish or that she was probably a better politican then her husband. Eugenie went from being bascially a no body to Empress of France and only to end up in exile after her husband was defeated. It must have been heartbreaking to lose her only child. A wonderful bio.

It's almost never a French historian who has anything nice to say about the much maligned Empress Eugénie, France's last living monarch. The French insist on resenting and misunderstanding the valuable contributions that the empress's equally maligned husband Napoleon III made to French and European history. In many ways ahead of their time, their reign seems at a glance to be another romantic 19th century adventure from an era of collapsing kingdoms and fallen dynasties. Yet closer inspection reveals that what they accomplished and what they got horribly wrong have more practical relevance to modern Europe than all the legendary conquests of that great French leader upon whose glory their own empire was founded, Napoleon I. The British have always had a soft spot for "the tragic empress" as the long-lived Eugénie came to be known, and Desmond Seward is no exception. Having just read and enjoyed his history of the Hundred Years' War, I turned with great anticipation to his biography of Eugénie as her story and the story of "her empire" has always interested me very much. I was not disappointed.

The Second Empire is one of the great "what if" periods of history. It is entirely possible that the 20th century's world wars may never have occurred if certain key events had happened differently or been averted entirely during the 18-year period that Louis-Napoléon and Eugénie ruled France. This is what I have always found so compelling about their era and what Seward seems to find compelling as well. Eugénie, The Empress and Her Empire is a succinct retelling of that fascinating time very much from the point of view of what happened in Europe in the aftermath of the crushing disaster of Sedan, the fall of Napoléon III and Eugénie and the rise of a united imperial Germany. It nearly makes one ache to consider how Prussia's rise might have been checked had Napoléon III not been too exhausted by dissipation to rise to the challenge of coming to Austria's aide in 1866. More importantly, how different would Europe's fate have been when, four years later, he had not been too ill with gall stone to follow his own better judgment and avert the Franco-Prussian war?

As his wife, empress and the mother of his beloved heir, Eugénie was at the forefront of these events, sometimes sharing her husband's point of view, sometimes not. In addition, she had her own causes and her own ideas. Conservative and Catholic when it came to her own person and conduct, she was remarkably free of judgement and prejudice when it came to the lives and choices of others and was an important early champion of women's rights. She took her métier very seriously and created an ideal of gracious leadership we still value today. Her remarkable personality combined an elegance, a naturalness, an easy dignity, a sense of style and fashion and a democratic openness so impressive as to create the standard to which all queens, princesses, prime ministers and first ladies are still held.

A great figure in her day if almost entirely forgotten in ours, it's a clever idea to tell the story of her times by telling the story of her life as the modern reader will not come to it with the same prejudices with which he might pick up a biography of better remembered figures such as Eugénie's good friend Queen Victoria or the man ultimately responsible for her undoing, Otto von Bismarck. There is one great difficulty it would seem when it comes to telling the fascinating story of the rise, rule, fall and lengthy exile of Spanish-born Eugenia de Montijo and that is the mountain of calumny under which the real woman is buried. Like her hero Marie-Antoinette the Empress Eugénie excited more venomous envy, jealousy and hatred than seemingly any of her contemporaries. Oceans of ink were spilled in an attempt to ruin her reputation and to a large degree the effort succeeded. It is greatly to his credit that in 278 neat pages, Desmond Seward rehabilitates the empress. I've read other histories of Eugénie and Napoleon III wherein the biographer either gleefully joins in the mud-slinging or spends too many pages protesting too much. Eugénie was the most human of women and Seward is quite straightforward about her many faults but ultimately he proves her to be as noble and humane a figure as the sad-eyed beauty who peers out at us from so many Winterhalter canvases would seem to want us to believe.

This book about Eugenie is the most positive and readable of recent books and helped launch me on my research that led to my book, Imperial Wedding. The author is sympathetic toward Eugenie and makes her three-dimensional. She was the most overlooked woman in history, and there are many Americans who have never heard of her in spite of her degree of power and her role in sending troops to Mexico. In most respects, she was a woman who seemed very contemporary, and her anguish for the Duke of Sesto made her continue to create new dramatic episodes like a kaleidoscope. She must have been despised since her ultra-dramatic life has never been made into a movie. My book deals a good deal more explicitly with her motivations, but this earlier book introduced me to Eugenie and it is a good overview of a fascinating woman. The only missing component was her intense passion for the Duke of Sesto during the years she was Empress of the French. Nancy Becker, author, Imperial Wedding of Old Paris Napoleon III, Empress Eugenie and Her Secret Duke of Sesto: Imperial Wedding of Old Paris- Personal History of Second Empire France Entwined with ... Compiegne, Fontainebleau and Versailles

When I purchased this book by Mr. Seward, I wanted to know about Empress Eugenie as a person, not just the political and social events surrounding her. Although politics played a major part in Eugenie's life, in Seward's book, you never get a real sense of how the empress was as a person, and the details of her relationships with her husband Napoleon III, son, family,friends etc., are skimmed over, and poltitics stay in the forefront. The chapters read as a textbook, with nothing to really grasp the reader's attentions. At the end, I found myself still unsure of the beautiful and fervent woman who was underneath the guise of the Empress of France and therefore, I could not feel any emotions for her.

Seward's book is good as a start if you would like to know about the last Empress of France and her world through a political and social viewpoint, but If you really like to know a little bit more of Eugenie as a woman and as a empress, I would suggest to read The Empress Eugenie 1826-1920 by Harold Kurtz.

From the professional reviews, I had expected a well-written, scholarly book. This is neither. The writing is sometimes poor, and never eloquent or outstanding.

The real problem, however, is the material. The portraits of Eugenie & Napoleon III are favorably one-sided. I don't feel as thought I could tell you the character of either after reading this book. Eugenie is impetuous is stated again & again but very few examples are given. Napoloen III is "pathologically secreative" but again no examples are given to support this statement. A very light-weight book.

capturing napoleon iii heart and becoming empress of france would lead you to think her life would be happy ever after.but eugenie had a difficult birth of her only child made made it dangerous for another child ending her sex life with husband who carry on affairs that cause her great angry and pain.she became a fashion plate ,but also put reforms to help the poor and disavantage of france.after fall of empire she lived in england for 50 years losting her husband and son.