Eugénie de Montijo

Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Agustina de Palafox y Kirkpatrick, 19th Countess of Teba, 16th Marquise of Ardales (5 May 1826 – 11 July 1920), known as Eugénie de Montijo (French: [øʒeni də mɔ̃tiʁo]), was Empress of the French from her marriage to Napoleon III on 30 January 1853 until the Emperor was overthrown on 4 September 1870.

From 28 July to 4 September 1870, she was the de facto head of state of France.

Born to prominent Spanish nobility, Eugénie was educated in France, Spain, and England. As Empress, she used her influence to champion "authoritarian and clerical policies"; her involvement in politics earned her much criticism from contemporaries. Napoléon and Eugénie had one child together, Louis-Napoléon, Prince Imperial (1856–1879). After the fall of the Empire, the three lived in exile in England; Eugénie outlived both her husband and son and spent the remainder of her life working to commemorate their memories and the memory of the Second Empire.

Youth

María Eugenia Ignacia Agustina was born on 5 May 1826 in Granada, Spain. She was the youngest child and daughter of Don Cipriano de Palafox y Portocarrero, three times Grandee of Spain, whose titles included 13th Duke of Peñaranda de Duero, 9th Count of Montijo, 15th Count of Teba, 8th Count of Ablitas, 8th Count of Fuentidueña, 14th Marquis of Ardales, 17th Marquis of Moya and 13th Marquis of la Algaba, and María Manuela Enriqueta Kirkpatrick y Grivegnée. María de Grivegnée was the daughter of the Scots-born William Kirkpatrick of Closeburn (1764–1837), who became United States consul to Málaga, and later was a wholesale wine merchant, and his wife, Marie Françoise de Grivegnée (born 1769), daughter of Liège-born Henri, Baron de Grivegnée and Spanish wife, Doña Francisca Antonia de Gallegos y Delgado (1751–1853).

Eugenia's elder sister, Maria Francisca de Sales Palafox Portocarrero y Kirkpatrick, nicknamed "Paca", who inherited most of the family honours and was 14th Duchess of Peñaranda, Grandee of Spain and 9th Countess of Montijo, a title later ceded to Eugenia, married the 15th Duke of Alba in 1849. Until her marriage in 1853, Eugenia variously used the titles Countess of Teba or Countess of Montijo. However, some family titles were inherited by her elder sister, through which they passed to the House of Alba. After the death of her father, Eugenia became the 9th Countess of Teba and is named as such in the Almanach de Gotha (1901 edition). After Eugenia's demise, all titles of the Montijo family came to the Fitz-Jameses (the Dukes of Alba and Berwick).

On 18 July 1834, María Manuela and her daughters left Madrid for Paris, fleeing a cholera outbreak and the dangers of the First Carlist War. The previous day, Eugenia had witnessed a riot and murder in the square outside their residence, Casa Ariza.

Eugénie de Montijo, as she became known in France, was formally educated mostly in Paris, beginning at the fashionable, traditionalist Convent of the Sacré Cœur from 1835 to 1836. A more compatible school was the progressive Gymnase Normal, Civil et Orthosomatique, from 1836 to 1837, which appealed to her athletic side (a school report praised her strong liking for athletic exercise, and although an indifferent student, that her character was "good, generous, active and firm"). 

In 1837, Eugénie and Paca briefly attended a boarding school for girls on Royal York Crescent in Clifton, Bristol, to learn English. Eugénie was teased as "Carrots" for her red hair and tried to run away to India, making it as far as climbing on board a ship at Bristol docks. In August 1837, they returned to school in Paris. However, much of the girls' education took place at home, under the tutelage of English governesses Miss Cole and Miss Flowers, and family friends such as Prosper Mérimée and Henri Beyle.

In March 1839, on the death of their father in Madrid, the girls left Paris to rejoin their mother there. In Spain, Eugénie grew up into a headstrong and physically daring young woman, devoted to horseriding and a range of other sports. She was rescued from drowning and twice attempted suicide after romantic disappointments. She was very interested in politics and became devoted to the Bonapartist cause, under the influence of Eleanore Gordon, a former mistress of Louis Napoléon. Due to her mother's role as a lavish society hostess, Eugénie became acquainted with Queen Isabella II of Spain and the prime minister Ramón Narváez. María Manuela was increasingly anxious to find a husband for her daughter and took her on trips to Paris again in 1849 and England in 1851.

Marriage

She first met Prince Louis Napoléon after he had become president of the Second Republic with her mother at a reception given by the "prince-president" at the Élysée Palace on 12 April 1849. "What is the road to your heart?" Napoleon demanded to know. "Through the chapel, Sire", she answered.

In a speech on 22 January 1853, Napoleon III, after becoming emperor, formally announced his engagement, saying, "I have preferred a woman whom I love and respect to a woman unknown to me, with whom an alliance would have had advantages mixed with sacrifices". They were wed on 29 January 1853 in a civil ceremony at the Tuileries, and on the 30th, there was a grander religious ceremony at Notre Dame.

The marriage had come after considerable activity concerning who would make a suitable match, often toward titled royals and with an eye to foreign policy. The final choice was opposed in many quarters. Eugénie was considered of too little social standing by some. In the United Kingdom, The Times made light of the latter concern, emphasizing that the parvenu Bonapartes were marrying into Grandees and one of the most important established houses in the peerage of Spain: "We learn with some amusement that this romantic event in the annals of the French Empire has called forth the strongest opposition and provoked the utmost irritation. The Imperial family, the Council of Ministers, and even the lower coteries of the palace or its purlieus, all affect to regard this marriage as an amazing humiliation..."

Eugénie found childbearing extraordinarily difficult. An initial miscarriage in 1853, after a three-month pregnancy, frightened and soured her. On 16 March 1856, after two-day labor that endangered mother and child and from which Eugénie made a prolonged recovery, the empress gave birth to an only son, Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, styled Prince Impérial.

After marriage, it did not take long for her husband to stray as Eugénie found sex with him "disgusting". It is doubtful that she allowed further approaches by her husband once she had given him an heir. He subsequently resumed his "petites distractions" with other women.

Empress

Eugénie faithfully performed the duties of an empress, entertaining guests and accompanying the emperor to balls, opera, and theater. After her marriage, her ladies-in-waiting consisted of six (later twelve) dames du palais, most of whom were chosen from among the acquaintances to the empress before her marriage, headed by the Grand-Maitresse Anne Debelle, Princesse d'Essling, and the dame d'honneur, Pauline de Bassano. 

In 1855 Franz Xaver Winterhalter painted The Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting, where it depicted Eugénie, sitting beside the Grand-Maitresse in a countryside setting, with eight of her ladies-in-waiting.

She traveled to Egypt to open the Suez Canal and officially represented her husband whenever he traveled outside France. In 1860, she visited Algiers with Napoleon. She strongly advocated equality for women; she pressured the Ministry of National Education to give the first baccalaureate diploma to a woman and tried unsuccessfully to induce the Académie Française to elect the writer George Sand as its first female member.

Her husband often consulted her on important questions. She acted as regent during his absences in 1859, 1865 and 1870, as he often accompanied his soldiers on the battlefield to motivate them during the wars. In the 1860s, she often attended meetings of the Council of Ministers, even leading the meetings for a brief space of time in 1866 when her husband was away from Paris. A Catholic and a conservative, her influence countered any liberal tendencies in the emperor's policies. Her strong preference was for hereditary monarchy and she made repeated displays of support for members of European royalty who were in crisis, like supporting a restoration of the Bourbons in Spain or trying to help the deposed monarchs of Parma and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. According to Nancy Nichols Barker, "her ideas on the principles of government were ill formed and included a jumble of Bonapartism and Legitimism, whose incompatibility she seemed not to even recognize."

She was a staunch defender of papal temporal powers in Italy and of ultramontanism. Because of this she ardently tried to dissuade her husband from recognizing the new Kingdom of Italy, which was formed after Sardinia's 1861 annexation of the Bourbon-ruled Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and all of the pope's territory outside Rome. She also supported keeping a French garrison in Rome to protect the papacy's continued hold on the city. Her opposition to Italian unification earned her the enmity of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, who stated that "the emperor is weakening visibly and the empress is our enemy and works with the priests. If I had her in my hands I would teach her well what women are good for and with what she should meddle." 

She also clashed with the French foreign minister Édouard Thouvenel over the question of the French garrison in Rome. Much to Eugénie's chagrin, Thouvenel negotiated an agreement to wind down the French military presence in exchange for a guarantee of papal sovereignty from the new Italian kingdom. The Duke of Persigny blamed her influence when Thouvenel was dismissed by the emperor, declaring to Louis-Napoléon that, "You allow yourself to be ruled by your wife just as I do. But I only compromise my future...whereas you sacrifice your own interests and those of your son and the country at large."

She was blamed for the fiasco of the French intervention in Mexico and the eventual death of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. However, the assertion of her clericalism and influence on the side of conservatism is often countered by other authors.

In 1868, Empress Eugénie visited the Dolmabahçe Palace in Constantinople, the home to Pertevniyal Sultan, mother of Abdulaziz, 32nd sultan of the Ottoman Empire. Pertevniyal became outraged by the forwardness of Eugénie taking the arm of one of her sons while he gave a tour of the palace garden, and she slapped the empress on the stomach as a reminder that they were not in France. According to another account, Pertevniyal perceived the presence of a foreign woman within her quarters of the seraglio as an insult. She reportedly slapped Eugénie across the face, almost resulting in an international incident.

Film portrayals

• In Suez (1938), Loretta Young plays her as the love interest of Ferdinand de Lesseps.
• In Juarez (1939), she was played by Gale Sondergaard, portrayed as a ruthless consort who joins her husband in setting Austrian Archduke Maximilian on the throne of Mexico, and then abandons him.
• In Violetas Imperiales (1932, 1952): Set in 19th-century Granada, Eugénie de Montijo (played by Simone Valère) asks a gypsy girl, Violetta (played by Carmen Sevilla), to read her fortune in her hand. Emboldened by Violetta's prediction that she will become a queen, Eugénie heads for Paris.
• In The Song of Bernadette (1943), she is played by Patricia Morison; she credits the waters of Lourdes with curing the prince imperial.
• In The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), Emma de Caunes plays her during a fantasy sequence.
• In the miniseries Sisi (2009), she is portrayed by Hungarian actress Andrea Osvart.