NOTRE DAME, PARIS (WEST FRONT).
re-establishment of the hereditary sovereign power in the Bonaparte family;” and on the 4th of November the Prince-President announced that he had in view the restoration of the Empire, and ordered the French people to be consulted on the matter. The French people, when consulted, were for the restoration—7,839,552 voting “Yes,” and 254,501 “No.” The vote was cast on the 21st of November, three days after Wellington was laid in the grave. As Cobden said, one might almost picture the third Napoleon rising from the yet open tomb of the vanquisher of the first.[78] On the 2nd of December Charles Louis Napoleon was declared Emperor of the French under the title of Napoleon III. The Constitution of January was confirmed with some slight modifications. A Royal title was given to Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon’s uncle. St. Arnaud, Magnan, and Castillane were created Marshals of France; and then there arose the first of the Imperial difficulties—that of obtaining recognition from the European Courts.
COMTE DE MONTALEMBERT.
The Queen took a thoroughly sensible view of the situation. The atrocities of December and the confiscation of the Orleans property had not prepossessed her Majesty in favour of the French Emperor. But in her opinion there was no essential difference between such a Republic as had been established by the coup d’état strengthened by the Constitution of January, and a military Empire without glory or genius. If the vast majority of Frenchmen were desirous of transforming their Prince-President into an Emperor, that was their affair, and Foreign Courts had no concern in the matter. The Queen was, therefore, strongly in favour of recognising the title of the Emperor of the French, and of according to him the customary courtesy of addressing him in ceremonial communications as mon frère.[79] The Northern Courts, however, could not bring themselves to treat as an equal, an adventurer who, to use his own expression in announcing his marriage in the Chamber on the 22nd of January, 1853, “had frankly taken up before Europe the position de parvenu.” Ultimately they all yielded to facts, and with the exception of Russia, agreed to address Charles Louis Bonaparte as their “brother.” The haughty autocrat of Muscovy, who had smiled on him approvingly when he strangled Liberty in France, frowned on the attempt to raise on its ruins a fabric of Empire, claiming parity with the ancient dominion of the Romanoffs. The Czar, therefore, persisted in addressing the French Emperor, not as “my brother,” but “my cousin.” This trivial slight is mentioned here, because it had subsequently a potent influence on the fortunes of England.
“England,” writes Sir Theodore Martin, “conceded the phrase mon frère without a grudge.”[80] That is a somewhat misleading statement. It was certainly decided in England that the Emperor should be recognised some little time before the Empire was proclaimed, because everybody knew that its proclamation was inevitable. Having determined that the Prince-President was to be recognised in some fashion as Emperor, a question as to style was raised by the pedants of diplomacy, which showed where the “grudge” lay. It gave rise to that most grotesque of diplomatic struggles—the once famous but now forgotten Battle of the Numeral. Charles Louis Bonaparte, through his envoys, let it be known at the Court of the Queen that he meant to call himself Napoleon III. “Why Napoleon the Third?” asked alarmed Diplomacy. “Clearly he means to filch from us a recognition of the ephemeral title of the Duc de Reichstadt, the son and heir of Napoleon I., who was proclaimed when the First Empire crashed into ruins.” It was a crafty device to avenge Waterloo with the blast of a herald’s trumpet, and to wipe out fifty years of French history, just as the Parliament of the Restoration tried to efface the Commonwealth by dating the statutes of 1660, as of the twelfth year of the Merry Monarch’s reign. The usurper might be recognised by England as Napoleon II., perhaps, but never, argued Lord Malmesbury, as Napoleon III., for that would have countenanced more than our recognition of the Second Empire was actually meant to convey. It would have implied a recognition of the Emperor’s hereditary, as distinguished from his elective, title to the Throne. Most wearisome were the disputes and most tiresome the conferences between Lord Malmesbury, then Foreign Secretary, and the French Ambassador on this subject. At last it was agreed that we should accept the disagreeable numeral, after the French Government admitted in writing that it was not to imply our recognition of the Emperor’s hereditary right to the Imperial Crown of France. From first to last, however, Lord Malmesbury and the other diplomatists were mistaken. Very little reflection might have taught them that if the numeral were meant to efface Waterloo, and the Monarchies of the Bourbons and the Barricades, the usurper would have styled himself Napoleon V., and not Napoleon III., for his elder uncle Joseph and his father Louis both survived the young and ill-fated Duc de Reichstadt. A hereditary title, moreover, would not need to have been consecrated by a plebiscite, and the reign of its wearer would not have been dated from 1852, but from the date of Louis Bonaparte’s death. It is, therefore, natural to ask how Charles Louis Bonaparte came to style himself the Third and not the Second Emperor. The explanation illustrates the facility with which the tragicomedy of fussy English diplomacy is transformed into farce at the touch of fact. Lord Malmesbury, who is rendered supremely ridiculous by the story, tells it himself as follows in his Diary:—
“December 29 (1852). We went to Heron Court. Whole country under water. Lord Cowley[81] relates a curious anecdote as to the origin of the numeral III. in the Emperor’s title. The Prefect of Bourges, where he slept the first night of his progress, had given instructions that the people were to shout ‘Vive Napoléon!’ But he wrote ‘Vive Napoléon!!!’ The people took the three notes of interjection for a numeral. The President, on hearing it, sent the Duc de Mortemart to the Prefect to know what the cry meant. When the whole thing was explained, the President, tapping the Duke on the shoulder, said, ‘Je ne savais pas que j’avais un Préfet Machiavéliste.’”[82]
After the proclamation of the French Emperor, his matrimonial schemes touched the family connections of the Queen somewhat closely. The Emperor’s marriage, in truth, was the favourite topic for gossip and scandal in every high social circle in Europe. As a matter of fact, Charles Louis Napoleon was averse from marriage. Two women were already devoted to him; perhaps more zealously than any bride of exalted rank could ever be. One was Madame Favart de l’Anglade, a creole, who lived some time at Kensington Gate, and whose whist and dinner parties have, perhaps, not yet been quite forgotten in the old Court suburb. (Lord Malmesbury, it may be said in passing, was told by Kisseleff, the Russian Ambassador at Paris, that had the coup d’état failed, Charles Louis Bonaparte and De Morny were to have fled for concealment to this lady’s house.) The other woman who exercised so much influence on the Prince-President’s life was a Mrs. Howard. She was his mistress, and he created her Comtesse de Beauregard after he broke off his intimacy with her.[83] This event was virtually an intimation of his intention to marry. He was anxious to have an heir—for obviously none of the Bonapartes were fit to succeed him. To perpetuate a dynasty a Royal bride would be useful, and to enable him to obtain a Royal bride, Charles Louis Bonaparte persuaded France to proclaim him Emperor.
His first project was to seek in marriage the Princess Caroline Stephanie de Vasa, a grand-daughter of the Grand Duchess of Baden, and daughter of Prince Gustave de Vasa, son of the last King of Sweden of the old legitimate dynasty. The proposal was not accepted, and the lady afterwards married a German Prince. In December, however, Walewski was sent to the English Court to ask the hand of the Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe for his Imperial master, greatly to the disquietude of the Queen, who was her aunt. On the 28th of December, when the Tory Ministers went to Windsor to deliver up their seals of office, the Queen began at once to discuss this delicate affair with them. Lord Malmesbury says:—“The Prince (Albert) read a letter from Prince Hohenlohe on the subject, which amounted to this, that he was not sure of the settlement being satisfactory, and that there were objections of religion and morals. The Queen and Prince talked of the marriage reasonably, and weighed the pros and cons. Afraid the Princess should be dazzled if she heard of the offer. I said I knew an offer would be made to the father. Walewski would go himself. The Queen alluded to the fate of all the wives of the rulers of France since 1789, but did not object positively to the marriage.”[84] This project, however, fell to the ground, and the Emperor, tired of being rejected by Princesses, acted on the wise apophthegm of Ovid—Si qua vis apte nubere, nube pari. On the 22nd of January, 1853, he announced his intention of marrying Eugenia de Montijo, Countess of Théba, daughter of the Donna Maria Manuela Kirkpatrick, Dowager Countess de Montijo, by the Count de Montijo, an officer of rank in the Spanish army. The father of the Donna Maria Manuela Kirkpatrick was British Consul at Malaga, and supposed to be descended from the assassin of the Red Comyn, whose family motto, “I mak sickar” (“I make sure”), perpetuates grim