OH, LOVE: even emperors prefer blondes
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THE NEPHEW
T
he personal life of the great Napoleon I was anything but simple, as mentioned earlier in the already published article about the fate of his marshal Bernadotte. But that was mere trifles; someday I’ll tell more. The personal life of Napoleon III, the «little nephew of the great uncle», was, perhaps, even more amusing — and that’s where we shall begin.
Napoleon the Great loved his brothers dearly and found each of them a modest position as king, except Lucien, who refused to abandon his non-aristocratic wife for the sake of the title. His elder brother Louis was appointed King of Holland and married him off to his own stepdaughter, Hortense de Beauharnais, making her at once his stepdaughter and daughter-in-law. The marriage turned out far from solid, and whose son Louis-Napoléon actually was — the Dutch admiral Verhuell, the Queen’s equerry de Bilan, or the French general de Flahaut — people were exhausted from guessing. And perhaps the Dutch king himself was his true father — who knows, given such lightness of morals…
Hortense’s child turned out extremely lively and enterprising. At just 23, he rushed into the Italian carbonari skirmish, attempting to take the Pope’s realm from him — he escaped by miracle. Five years later, he incited a regiment in Strasbourg to revolt and tried to claim his uncle’s place — the French throne. When he was grabbed by the scruff of his neck, he repented so pitifully that he was merely sent into exile in America.
Very soon, the rebellious nephew returned and landed in Boulogne with a group of Bonapartists, demanding they place him on the throne — but the first military unit he met put him somewhere entirely different: behind solid bars. His trial was terribly harsh — a life sentence — and at the same time fantastically lenient — without any restriction of civil rights. Nobody fully understood what that meant, and Louis-Napoléon was told to live in the fortress of Ham, from which he soon slipped away to England.
THE ADVENTURER
Such reckless fellows are usually excessively sexual, and our hero was no exception. Having parted with his innocence at 13 thanks to his mother’s maid, he began building his Don Juan list first with local village girls, then, while studying in Switzerland, with bourgeois women and titled travellers, and in Italy, he decided to move on to aristocrats.
Disguised as a flower girl, he appeared before the Florentine beauty Countess Baraldini, fell to his knees, and began doing things I dare not describe… The countess somehow guessed what was happening, rang the bell in horror, and servants, along with her husband, rushed in and gave the flower girl a proper beating. Napoleon challenged the count to a duel and received not the slightest scratch — because he never showed up. And in Strasbourg, he began an affair with the mistress of Colonel Vaudrey, who commanded the very regiment that took part in his escapade…
Even while imprisoned in Ham, he managed to seduce a 22-year-old prison laundress, Éléonore Vergeot, and during his six-year confinement became the father of her two children. And in England, he became notorious in brothels — their workers began to fear the visits of this overly passionate and pathologically inventive prince. Later, he met a certain Mrs. Howard, a wealthy retired courtesan, and reached not only behind her corset but also into her purse.
The former camellia, deeply in love, offered no resistance, and when Louis-Philippe fell and France became a republic, Louis-Napoléon launched such a PR campaign with her money that he was elected to Parliament from four departments at once. But Mrs. Howard tried in vain to legitimise their affair — she was a brunette, and her suitor had met a blonde…
THE STUDENT OF STENDHAL
She was not entirely Spanish — her lineage begins with the brave Genoese Egidio Bocanegra, who set out for Spain to fight the Moors and, after victory, settled there. Her name was María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina Palafox de Guzmán Portocarrero y Kirkpatrick de Platanasa de Teba — not at all long by the standards of a noble Spanish lady. But let us call her Eugénie, as is customary here — space is precious.
By the way, her Scottish mother was no ordinary woman — she was friends with Prosper Mérimée, and rumors say their friendship may have been more than just platonic… Eugénie respected Mérimée; some write that she «treated him like a father», but that is no hint — the timeline makes such assumptions impossible. Our heroine received an excellent education, and her French tutor was none other than Stendhal himself. One can only silently envy that.
THE EMPEROR
Meanwhile, Napoleon was elected President of the French Republic — but that was not enough for him, and on 2 December 1851, he staged a bloody military coup, as a result of which he became Emperor Napoleon III. As for why «the third», there is an amusing story claiming that the typesetters of his proclamation — which ended with the phrase «Long live Napoleon!!!» — mistook the three exclamation marks for the Roman numeral III. But there is no proof of this, and the son of Napoleon I was considered the head of France from 22 June to 7 July 1815. Though, really, what difference does it make?
His temperament certainly did not diminish with his imperial title — during the stress of the coup, he required up to three women a day, and each time a different one! Mrs. Howard hadn’t gone anywhere yet, though all her opportunities to appear at the Élysée Palace were cut off by the emperor’s cousin and former fiancée, Princess Mathilde. Actresses soon appeared in a steady stream — Alice Ozy, Madeleine Brohan, even the great Rachel — but Napoleon decided that aristocrats suited him better: the Marquise de Belbeuf, Lady Douglas… there are too many to remember. Yet a legitimate heir was needed…
THE BLONDE
Now to the most important point — the colour of her hair. The French are a nation of brunettes; they don’t really understand blondes. There are plenty of her portraits — and in almost all of them she is light auburn, at most a light brown, most likely the shade politely called Venetian or dark fair. A red-haired empress? Unthinkable. Queens have no legs, queens don’t poop, and red-haired queens most certainly do not exist in nature. Let her be a blonde — for the French, that will do. Besides, being blonde is not a hair colour but a state of mind.
And our blonde meanwhile grew up and blossomed, and at one of Princess Mathilde’s receptions she met Napoleon, who immediately began extending his limbs where he shouldn’t — and at once received a sharp tap on the fingers with a fan, accompanied by the words: «I cannot be ordered like a dessert!» A clever strategy — the farther you send a man, the sooner he returns. Napoleon began writing her long letters, and her replies were so brilliant that he simply melted — no wonder, since they were written by Prosper Mérimée!
And on 30 January 1853, citizen Bonaparte and citizeness Montijo simply went to the town hall and registered a civil marriage (they could not escape a grand wedding in Notre-Dame de Paris anyway). A marriage between an emperor and a mere countess would normally be morganatic, but the love-struck Napoleon immediately declared that their son would reign. True, one still had to live long enough for that…
THE MARRIAGE
The couple’s intimate life hung by a thread from the very beginning — Napoleon discovered that in bed, his wife was «no more sexual than a coffeepot». The emperor remained faithful to his wife for about half a year, and then fell off the hook — yet another blonde appeared, Madame de La Bédoyère, who quickly persuaded Napoleon to make her husband a senator. He rented a mansion on Rue de Bac for their meetings — a place where he later invited quite a few others…
But the matter of an heir was suddenly resolved after a visit to England, where Queen Victoria — who had given birth to and raised nine children — reportedly advised Eugénie to place a pillow under her lower back. As a result, in 1856, Paris welcomed the birth of Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, heir to the empire, their only child.
The empress, as befits a blonde, also took herself a few dear friends, though unlike her husband, not among her own subjects — she looked to the diplomatic corps. After all, such warm relations with ambassadors strengthen ties between countries and bring a spirit of love and trust into international affairs — do they not? Only with the Russian ambassador, Count Pavel Dmitrievich Kiselev, would things not develop, given his advanced age. Was it not for this reason that France, in alliance with its recent bitter enemy England, began the Crimean War against Russia and gave her a rather painful lesson?
POLITICS
The empress developed a taste for politics — she began attending Cabinet meetings and actively voicing her opinions, which had to be taken into account. For a while, France’s wars were successful — and Eugénie came to believe in her political calling. She conceived the idea of exploiting the instability in Mexico.
To justify the intervention somehow, Napoleon even invented a special term — «Latin America» (yes, that was his idea!). It all ended in a disgraceful defeat and the execution of Emperor Maximilian, brother of Franz Joseph, placed on the Mexican throne. But blondes do not learn from such trifles — they are certain they already know everything.
Life in France was good; Napoleon knew how to care for the economy — he gave the name Camembert to the cheese in honor of the village that produced it, and the cognac «Napoleon» was named not after his great uncle at all. But changes in his psyche began — the palace women-servants were terrified of him for the pinching and groping in dark corners (given his age, that was usually as far as things went).
Eugénie saw everything, created theatrical scandals whenever her husband was brought home half-conscious from another camellia, but she had already realized this was how she would have to live out her days — and plunged headlong into politics. She was convinced that Prussia had no chance — there is even a term today: «the blonde’s mistake».
THE DEFEAT
The results of the Franco-Prussian War were a true catastrophe for France: the army crushed at Sedan, the emperor taken prisoner, Paris — which resisted heroically — forced to capitulate, fertile Alsace and iron-rich Lorraine ceded to Prussia. Could things get any worse? The empire collapsed, but the now former Empress Eugénie did not abandon the unfortunate man; together with their son, she moved to England to join him. Where else could they go now? They got themselves into this together — they would live through it together.
Napoleon and Eugénie settled in the modest estate of Camden Place, where they lived quietly — the once boisterous adventurer at least learned to appreciate peace and predictability in old age. But his health had been damaged by years of family quarrels; within a year kidney stones forced him into a dangerous operation, and a week later a sudden complication arose — and the Bonaparte dynasty came to an end. Or did it? Eugénie believed not.
Their son, Prince Lulu, initially lived splendidly. He was handsome, healthy, intelligent, studied at a renowned military college, and plans even arose for his marriage to Queen Victoria’s daughter — was everything still ahead of him? Graduating 17th out of hundreds, he joined a military expedition against the Zulus. His mother bought him military equipment, and could not resist saving money by choosing the cheapest second-hand items from a junk dealer.
THE END OF THE DYNASTY
He was assigned to carry out reconnaissance in a Zulu kraal — and ran into an ambush of 40 Zulu warriors with assegais. Escaping on horseback would have been easy — but the cheap second-hand saddle girth snapped, and escaping on foot was impossible. His body was found with 31 assegai wounds, though only one — piercing the eye — was fatal. But really, is it more necessary? And so the French Empire was finished!
Empress Eugénie outlived her son by more than 40 years and died in Madrid in 1920, uttering a shocking piece of nonsense before her death — that now she could die with her head held high, after the victory over Germany in the First World War, and that France no longer had anything to reproach her for (!!!). The fact that she had contributed significantly to the Franco-Prussian War was, of course, not mentioned — but what could one expect from a blonde in her tenth decade of life? At that age, all women are blondes — even if shimmering with silver…
But something useful remained in the world even after Empress Eugénie. Her court hairdresser, Hugo, invented a method to turn any woman into a blonde, and the demand for his services was enormous — and remains so even today. The recipe was simple — hydrogen peroxide, and who could tell whether a blonde was natural or dyed? So do not trust blondes — they may not be real. Moreover, with all the dyes now available, a blonde can easily turn herself into a brunette. So don’t look at hair color at all; there are more important things — for instance, the fact that even such a wonderful thing as sex must have its limits.
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