From Spain she was sent to Toulouse, and afterwards to Bristol, to pursue her education; and when she left school, beautiful and accomplished, easy in manners and fluent in conversation,—which she could carry on with apparently equal ease in Spanish, English, or in French,—possessing more than average information, and displaying a readiness and aptness of repartee approaching the brilliancy of wit, with a beauty striking and exceptional, a form slender and perfectly moulded, a complexion brilliantly fair, and black eyes, large and expressive, it is not surprising that she became successively the belle of the season in London, Paris, and Madrid.
While in London she was introduced to Louis Napoleon, then an exile from France, and distinguished chiefly for the disastrous failure of his first attempt to overthrow the government of Louis Philippe. In 1851 she met him again. He was then called Napoleon III., and she was regarded as one of the leaders of fashion in Paris. His attentions to her gradually became marked and suggestive, and finally he offered to share with her his throne. On the 22d of January, 1853, the approaching nuptials were announced publicly to the Senate. In this communication, Napoleon thus expressed himself:—
“I come, then, gentlemen,” he said, “to announce that I have preferred the woman whom I love and whom I respect, to one who is unknown, and whose alliance would have had advantages mingled with sacrifices. She who has been the object of my preference is of princely descent. French in heart, by education, and the recollection of the blood shed by her father in the cause of the Empire, she has, as a Spaniard, the advantage of not having in France a family to whom it might be necessary to give honors and fortune. Endowed with all the qualities of mind, she will be the ornament of the throne. In the day of danger she will be one of its courageous supporters. A Catholic, she will address to Heaven the same prayers with me for the happiness of France. In fine, by her grace and her goodness, she will, I firmly hope, endeavor to revive in the same position the virtues of the Empress Josephine.”
On the 29th of January, the civil marriage of Louis Napoleon with Mademoiselle de Montijo took place at the Tuileries, and on the following day the religious ceremonies were celebrated at the cathedral of Nôtre Dame. Never had the arches of that venerable pile looked down upon a more brilliant assemblage. The imperial couple sat on two thrones erected in front of the high altar, and the representatives of the army, of the Senate, of the municipal authorities, and of the diplomatic corps surrounded them. All the pomp and splendor of the Catholic service, all the opulence of France’s great capital, all the beauty and brilliancy of the court, all the grim majesty of the military; science, art, and lavish luxury,—all were united and exhausted on the incidents and displays of this momentous occasion.
At last all was over, and to the echoing shouts of “Vive l’Impératrice!” Eugénie de Montijo returned with her imperial consort to the palace of the Tuileries.
The career of the great Napoleonic dynasty is without a parallel either in ancient or modern times. Long since, the universal judgment of mankind has decided that its founder, Napoleon I., was in every respect as great a hero, and probably a greater, than Alexander, Cæsar, or Charlemagne, the three most renowned representatives of ambitious daring in the world’s history. The variety and extent of Napoleon’s abilities, both as a commander, a legislator, and a ruler, place him above all his rivals; while the splendor of his victories, the extent of his conquests, and the grandeur of his elevation, exceeds theirs in an eminent degree.
“But in addition to all these elements of superior greatness, the family of Napoleon I. add an unequal attraction to his career. None of his illustrious rivals could boast of a wife as graceful and bewitching as Josephine, or as high-born and nobly descended as Maria Louisa. None could claim brothers as sagacious as Joseph, as gallant as Murat, as capable as Lucien, as romantic as Jerome. None could point to as many relatives who were sovereign princes and princesses, and who owed their lofty elevations to his own powerful arm. And none had a successor equal in talent and in desperate, successful daring, to Napoleon III.”
Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Louis Napoleon, king of Holland, and Hortense, daughter of the Empress Josephine and of her first husband, the Viscomte de Beauharnais, was born at Paris, on the 20th of April, 1808. Along the whole line of the grande armée, and throughout the entire extent of the Empire, from Hamburg to Genoa, and from the Danube to the Atlantic, salvos of artillery announced the happy event. This was an honor which fell to the lot of only two members of the imperial family, Louis Napoleon and the king of Rome, for they only were born under the imperial régime. It is not our purpose, in this short sketch of the life of the Empress Eugénie, to trace the career of Napoleon III., except in so much only as it bears upon her own.
The Revolution of 1848 was over, and France needed a monarch skilled to rule in a reign of peace. Three very poor specimens of that article had been tried, in the persons of Louis XVIII., Charles X., and Louis Philippe, and had proved miserable failures. They did no great harm, because they did nothing at all.
“Providence wrested the useless sceptre from the last, and bestowed it upon Napoleon III.”