Towards four o’clock all the servants left, the National Guard having previously taken possession of the Palace.
These facts are recorded in his register[103] by M. J. Maillard, chef du service de l’argenterie, who records that the troops did not give him time to “put things in their places.” He did not fail to observe that the National Guard had “written everywhere” the simple words, “Death to the thieves.” It was the parting shot of the gallant “Nationals,” whose commander was that modern Bayard, General Trochu.
Palais des Tuileries,
Septembre 4, 1870.
Départ de S.M. l’Impératrice à une heure et demie par le Palais du Louvre.
Départ de tout le personnel du service vers quatre heures de l’après-midi, après l’occupation du Palais des Tuileries par la garde nationale. Ils ont écrit partout, Mort aux voleurs. Je ne pas pu faire remettre le matériel en place—l’on ne m’en a pas donné le temps.
J. Maillard.
[Extract from the register kept by M. Maillard, who had charge of the silver.]
Baron Imbert de Saint-Amand holds that the Empress would have had less prestige if the Empire had not been overthrown. “The world is most interested, not in the châtelaine of the Tuileries, not the Juno reigning over an Olympus of Emperors and Kings at the Exhibition of 1867, but in the mother who weeps and prays in Zululand on the spot where her son had fallen after fighting like a young lion. What posterity will prefer to contemplate on the brow of the Empress Eugénie is not a crown of Empire, but a crown of thorns.”
“The Empress’s conduct after Sedan,” said an ex-Minister of the Empire, “was heroic. It is impossible to conceive a nobler courage than she showed on September 4, 1870. When she speaks of the Empire or the Emperor it is always with regret that the aims of Imperial institutions had been misrepresented and that the Emperor was misunderstood. On one occasion she observed that ‘English journalists would not understand the democratic basis of the Empire. The Empire wanted to give a direct voice in the government to all Frenchmen, whereas other régimes would give a monopoly of power to the bourgeoisie, and make the people pay the taxes and remain voiceless. If turbulent Frenchmen had only the calm in political matters of the English public!’”
Immediately after the overthrow of the Empire an amazing plot was concocted to defraud the Empress. It was alleged that Her Majesty had abstracted French Crown jewels valued at 6,650,000 francs (£266,000), and had sent them by one Manuel Perez to her mother at Madrid.