Eugénie of France, the Rebel Empress (with Nancy Goldstone)

Vulgar History Podcast

Eugénie of France, the Rebel Empress (with Nancy Goldstone) 

March 19, 2025

Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, the feminist women’s history comedy podcast. My name is Ann Foster, and joining me is my cat Hepburn who, some of you, depending on your audio setup, might hear purring directly next to the microphone right now. She and I are both here to celebrate Women’s History Month. 

March is Women’s History Month. I mean, frankly, I am always celebrating Women’s History, 12 months out of the year. Women’s History Month, though, is a special time. It’s kind of like if you run a chocolate factory, you probably are especially busy around Halloween, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, you know, chocolate-giving holidays. And for me, Women’s History Month is my version of that, where it’s just, like, a few more people might come and listen to the podcast for the first time because, well, people are looking for maybe more women’s history stuff to do, and also because some places are featuring this podcast, like Amazon Music, who are featuring Vulgar History this month for Women’s History Month, along with other women-hosted podcasts about women’s history. So, I just want to say thank you to Amazon Music. And if you found us through there, awesome! Welcome. I swear a lot on this podcast, and I also say “like” a normal amount. But anyway, to everybody else, more of you listening to this podcast, I appreciate you and check out Vulgar History on Amazon Music and all the other lists they are doing on Amazon Music to promote women’s history, because… [laughs] I mean, because that’s the whole reason why I do this podcast. 

Well, frankly, the whole reason why I do this podcast is because I really like researching stories, and I like sharing them with people, and I needed someone to share them with and so I started a podcast, and that’s what I did. But frankly, because men’s history has been so much of the history that people are taught in schools, that you see documentaries are being made about, the biopics are being made about, like, did we really need that new Napoleon movie, Ridley Scott? Did we? Did we? Women’s history just feels like it’s always kind of, like, scrambling and scraping and trying to get attention. 

One of the people who’s been doing that work for a really long time is today’s guest, Nancy Goldstone, who is a writer of narrative nonfiction books about women from history. And if the name sounds familiar to you, perhaps you’ve read some of her books, or perhaps you’ve heard me mention her name as a source for some of my previous podcasts. Like, a while ago, I did an episode about Joanna of Naples. She’s one of the people who scored very highly on this podcast’s Scandaliciousness Scale. My main source for that was Nancy Goldstone’s book, The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily. Also, she’s written a book called The Rival Queens: Catherine de’ Medici, Her Daughter Marguerite de Valois, and The Betrayal that Ignited a Kingdom. That was my main source for my episode about Catherine de’ Medici and for my episode about Marguerite de Valois, AKA Queen Margot. That was the book where I really first learned both of their stories, so I appreciate Nancy Goldstone for that as well. She’s also written a book that I will be talking about a lot later this year when we get to the Marie Antoinette of it all. One of her other books is called In the Shadow of the Empress: The Defiant Lives of Maria Theresa, Mother of Marie Antoinette and Her Daughters. Nancy Goldstone, I mean, she’s written other books, but those are the ones I’ve mentioned on the show before. 

Today, we’re here to talk about her latest book, which is called The Rebel Empresses, Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe. Elisabeth of Austria, you all know, because that’s Empress Sisi, who we did three episodes of this podcast talking about her before with special guest at that point, Lana Wood Johnson, Sisi enthusiast. But also, Empress Sisi, I think is, like, fairly well-known among people who are even casual fans of women’s history. She had really, really long hair, she liked to exercise, and there are currently two series about her on Netflix, one in German, one in English. There’s those movies from the 1950s about her that people watch every year at Christmas. She’s fairly well-known. Eugénie of France, I had never really heard of, like, I think I’d come across her name in the context of her husband, Napoleon III, but I didn’t know anything about her so I found it really interesting, and I was intrigued why Nancy would combine these two people together in one book and I do ask her about that in this interview. 

I’ve said enough, we’re going to, we’ll get right into this chat because it’s a good one. It’s such an interesting story. And because we’ve already talked on this podcast before about Sisi, we’re focusing mostly on Eugénie of France. Sisi does make some appearances because the book is about both of them, but I think you’ll find this really interesting. And Eugénie of France may be a new fave for you like she is for me. So, here you go! Enjoy this interview between myself and author, Nancy Goldstone. 

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Ann: So, I’m joined today by Nancy Goldstone, author of many historical biographies that I have used on this podcast for research before. Her most recent book is The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe. Welcome, Nancy. 

Nancy: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I’m thrilled to talk about Eugénie. [laughs] 

Ann: I’m really excited to talk about her, but first I have… So, we’ve talked on this podcast before about Empress Sisi, and I’m curious to know how you landed on the idea of doing a dual biography of the two of them together. 

Nancy: Oh, I’ve done so many books, as you said, and I understand how important it is to have context surrounding a biography about history. I’m a historian, I’m a narrative historian. I’m not specifically a biographer. It’s a different approach; I’m telling the story of history through these women, not necessarily every single thing that happened to them in their day or through their lives. I usually see what happens to a woman and do the rest of her family, if she has daughters or has sisters or whatever, that can kind of provide that context. 

But with Sisi and Eugénie, it was just, they came into office within a year of each other; they were married and began their reigns within a year of each other; they went through everything, but from opposite sides, and it shows so much better what was actually going on in the period to do it from both of them. And then, they start out on opposite sides, and at the end, they come together because they are so, they are the only two people probably in the world that they knew, shared so many experiences, but from a different angle. So, I mean, they were just… I knew I wanted to do France— I knew you couldn’t do Austria without France, and I knew you couldn’t do France without Austria, and it just worked out perfectly. I’ll say they’re both glamour pusses, which I love. [laughs]

Ann: That, absolutely too. I love, yeah, they both have these beautiful, I think they were both painted by, what’s his name? Xaver…? 

Nancy: Winterhalter, yes. 

Ann: Yeah, who just did the most beautiful portraits of everybody. 

Nancy: Right. That was Eugénie, he was her painter. Everybody emulated Eugénie. 

Ann: Okay, so we’ll get into who she was and what the situation is. And I just wanted to say, as well, what I appreciate about this book, like, I knew Empress Sisi’s story pretty well going into it but that whole time period, I find so convoluted with the kingdoms and the emperors and the borders changing and everything. So, if you could kind of hold our hands [chuckles] and explain Eugénie and where was she born and what country would we call that now? 

Nancy: [laughs] So, Eugénie was Spanish, all right. She was born on May 5th, 1826 in Granada. Spain, which is in southern Spain. I don’t know if you’ve been there, it’s where the beautiful, magnificent Alhambra Palace is. She had a very unusual parentage for an empress. Her father was a member of one of the oldest and most prestigious families in Spain. In Spain, they call these people who are very well connected politically, very wealthy, and have been around for a long time, they call them grandees. So, her father was a grandee. 

Her mother’s side had a significantly less impressive lineage. [laughs] Her mother was the daughter of a penniless Scotsman who emigrated to southern Spain as a young man to make his fortune, got a job in a wine shop and then used that enterprising age-old technique of marrying the boss’s daughter and taking over the business. So, she’s really from the merchant class on her mother’s side, although she has a sister that marries into a very aristocratic family in France, because those two, her mother and her mother’s sister, her aunt, they were very beautiful, intelligent women, talented. And so, they kind of made it that way. 

Ann: And her childhood, I mean, speaking myself, I don’t know how much you can see in this video, but as a person with kind of red-gold hair, I was like, “Oh! Okay, okay. This is another redhead in history,” but it reminded me of, like, Anne of Green Gables or something where she had the red hair, but that was not what was considered beautiful. So, it was really, she stood out in a bad way as a child. She’s not like Sisi, it’s not like, “Oh, the most beautiful child, the most lovely little girl.” Like Eugénie was more kind of like, in Spain, you’d think, I would imagine it’s a more Mediterranean look is what was more desired at that time, like, a dark hair sort of look. And she looked like, honestly, me. And that’s kind of not what anyone wanted to look like in that era. 

Nancy: I’m sure that most of us want to look— Today, it would be, you know, she had the most gorgeous red-gold hair, Eugénie. She had an older sister named Paca, that was the nickname but that was what we’re going to call her, who was only 15 months older, and she was the traditional dark-haired, dark-eyed, little feet — for some reason, they all wanted little feet, beautiful little feet — the idea of Spanish beauty. So, Eugénie grows up completely in Paca’s shadow, she didn’t really, I guess, come into her beauty until later in her teens. So, she was considered, her own family basically said, “She’s ugly,” which is amazing when you look at her, you know, it’s just a question of taste. She had that growing up, that she was not beautiful and that she was different. 

Ann: And I think that that really explains for anybody, if you were raised like that, and that’s how you see yourself, you develop your personality in a certain way. You know, if you were treated as like, oh, the most beautiful, favourite daughter, you would maybe develop certain traits, but because she wasn’t, she became maybe a more interesting person. 

Nancy: Right, right. And also, like, the family kind of split. Her mother was, like, a society hostess and Paca was much more her type of person. Paca was older, was the responsible older sister, obedient. And Eugénie was her father from top to toe, even though she had the Scottish hair, that’s where she gets the red in her hair is from her Scottish side, from her mother’s side, Eugénie’s father was a genuine, was such a romantic figure, just a genuine, bona fide international war hero, complete with that dashing black eye patch. [laughs]

Ann: Oh my gosh! Yes, yes, yes, yes. I forgot about that. That’s crucial. Please talk about that. 

Nancy: I mean, he was just, you look at him and you go, “Okay!” Eugénie was his favourite child, and she adored him and she loses him at an early age so she’s kind of always going to be incompetent with her mother. She’s never has a really good relationship with her mother. But with her father, he basically trained her in all of her beliefs so it’s not surprising that she ended up with Napoleon III, the emperor of the French. 

Ann: Okay. I mean, can we, we’re going to, this is Eugénie, she’s growing up, she’s this Anne of Green Gables of Southern Spain. And then, I don’t know, semi-colon, in Europe… [laughs] 

Nancy: Right. Right. 

Ann: Napoleon… 

Nancy: What I’m going to do is I think discuss the Napoleonic legend, or how Napoleon was viewed in many places in Europe — the first Napoleon, we’re talking about the first Napoleon, the world conqueror Napoleon, right? 

Ann: The main Napoleon. 

Nancy: So, because the irony is that Eugénie’s father, although Spanish, and although Napoleon took over Spain and put his brother in there, Eugénie’s father fought for Napoleon all his life, believed totally in Napoleon. The reason for this was that it’s a very complex legacy because Napoleon, whenever he went anywhere and took it over, he gave everyone a constitution. There were two reasons for this. First, honest to god, I think he really believed in the principles of the French Revolution, you know, liberty, equality, fraternity. Liberty to him, though, was getting rid of all the old, corrupt, ineffective monarchies, like, which Spain had one of the worst, all right? 

Also, equality in his idea was that you should be judged, you should have opportunity based on your talent and skill and not on your birth. And that’s what got so many groups over to him from the lower classes, from the people who were out of power; they idolized him. This is a form of government called government by the hero, right? Napoleon was viewed as government by the hero. A supremely talented individual is going to come in, take over, get rid of the people that corrupt people who are keeping you down, and make your lives better. Just trust in him. He’s going to make your lives better. We have a little of that going on here in America right now. [chuckles] It’s not going… it depends on how talented your hero is, and our hero is not talented at all, but okay. But that was what they believed. And Eugénie’s father honestly believed that it was better for Spain to have Napoleon and a constitution because Napoleon gave a constitution. He jumpstarted this whole idea of a constitution all over Europe. Every place that had… You know, even Sisi, Bavaria got a constitution because of Napoleon. Italy got a constitution because of Napoleon. It took a long time for them to understand what a constitution was and what rights were, but eventually, over time, they did. 

So, Eugénie’s father taught her to revere, I mean, you can’t understand how much Napoleon was revered by the people who followed him, really, and the soldiers. Even though he’s Spanish, Eugénie’s father joins the French army and even when Napoleon fell, he’s one of the last people in Paris defending the city against the allies coming in, the Prussians coming in. So, you can see where she was basically trained to love Napoleon. 

Ann: And then as I recall, and we’ve been looking at sort of the French Revolution era on this show, but we’ve looked a bit into the future as well. So, Napoleon, eventually he’s sent into exile, he comes back, he’s sent into exile again, he dies, and the monarchy is restored in France. But then everyone’s kind of like, “We miss Napoleon. Let’s actually celebrate him. You know, he’s been dead for a while and actually, he wasn’t so bad, was he?” Like, it just kept flip-flopping, right? It’s like, the Republic, a Napoleon relative, the Repub— It just keeps going back and forth. So, we get into Eugénie’s eventual husband is a descendant or… a relative. 

Nancy: He’s the nephew of the great Napoleon. So, I think what happened was after the French Revolution, the Terror came, right? And the Terror was associated with the Republic. Even today, we still have liberals and republics; they allow crime, they allow that kind of thing. 

But when France overturned their, when they beheaded their king and queen, it wasn’t that they had any experience with a republic, they were still a monarchy. You know, you can see how quickly where they turned to Napoleon, to a strong man, and they still… Most of France, Paris, even today, is different than the rest of France and they’re much more liberal, they were ahead of time with government. So, all these places had only understood monarchy and that’s why monarchy was able to come back. Well, in France, it came back because the Prussians, they put Louis XVI’s younger brother, Louis XVIII in power, but he only managed to stay there because they had Prussian troops holding up his regime and he was very moderate. He didn’t try and do anything. He kept the constitution, he kept the Napoleonic constitution. But when he died, his younger brother came in, Charles X, and he wanted to take everything back to an absolute monarchy and they chased him out and put in this guy called the Citizen King, Louis Philippe. 

Louis Philippe stayed for a long time but he didn’t do that much. Louis Philippe, he dressed like a banker, I mean, there was no calling attention to yourself; you’re trying to keep a low profile and not do too much. And, and France was actually kind of falling behind. You have the Industrial Revolution, all this stuff is coming and they’re not really prepared for it. And so, they start to, of course, after 18 years or something, they get sick of Louis Philippe and the economy isn’t going that great, they chase him out, they try to put in a republic again, and they’re still not ready for a republic. And that’s why Napoleon III is able to come in, nephew, was able to come in and take over and restate the French Second Empire. 

Ann: Right. Because he comes in and it’s something like, and you can correct me and explain what actually happened, but as I recall, it was something he came in and he’s like, “I’ll be the president, don’t worry about it.” And then he’s like, “What if I’m just president for life? What if you call me Emperor?” 

Nancy: You see, the thing is though, they elected him by a margin of 7 million to 100,000 to be president. They decided to copy the American model for one small little period. But you only got one term, one four-year term. He got to, like, the middle of his one four-year term and felt strongly that he deserved another term. We had this here, [laughs] okay. He tried to do it legally and they wouldn’t let him do it and so he took over in a military coup. 

But he did something that we did not have here in America now, after he took over in the military coup, within three weeks, he said, ”I will put it to a vote. Tell me if you don’t want me to be emperor, then you just vote me out of office.” And by the same 7 million to 100,000, they voted him in because they wanted government by the hero, they wanted a strong man. He read the temperature of the kingdom better than the Republicans did. They did not want a republic. A republic was still associated with chaos and violence to them because the Republicans had taken over from Louis Philippe in a violent way. They had chased away a legitimate ruler by rising up in the streets. And so, it was one coup followed by another coup basically. They wanted a strong man and they were extremely lucky to get Napoleon III because domestically he was fantastic. Internationally, not so much. [laughs] 

Ann: French history of the 19th century, honestly, I have a cheat sheet that I refer to sometimes. It just explains… because it just keeps… there’s so many revolutions, they keep changing who’s in charge. 

Nancy: Teenagers are not as volatile as French politics was during this period. 

Ann: Well, and I think part of it, to me, as somebody who, you know, learning this for the first time, it just really feels like no one was in charge. They just wanted someone to be in charge. They just wanted, like you were saying, the strong man, the hero, where it’s just like, “Okay, we’re going to get rid of this king.” But then there’s so much infighting, it’s like, “Well, who’s going to take over?” And they can’t decide. So, you need someone with that, like, cult of personality, for lack of a better term, you need somebody who’s going to step in. 

Nancy: Remember these people for centuries had monarchy. Centuries! 

Ann: Absolute monarchy too, yeah. 

Nancy: Absolute monarchy. Being a republic requires understanding of what your rights are, what is going on, that takes a long time to learn. In Spain, where Eugénie was, they fought about that republic and a constitution, you know, into the Second World War. It went back and forth because people, you have to be educated to understand democracy. You have to understand what a participatory government is like, and they had no experience with it. 

Ann: Can I ask you, this is sort of related, but just because you’re American and you’re a historian: Why did the American Revolution succeed where these other ones weren’t? Was it because they were starting a new nation and so there wasn’t a history of an absolute king being in charge? Was it just, like, George Washington and people were just so good at explaining what they were doing? Like, why did that work? 

Nancy: I need to put my husband on, he’s a constitutional scholar. [both laugh] I’ve listened to him and he would tell… Well, you have that big ocean, right, between Europe and America. This was actually… What is the difference between a rebellion and a revolution? A rebellion is put down, a revolution succeeds, all right? And they knew what they wanted; they didn’t want a king. These were all these new ideas and it took them a long time to write the Constitution and to figure… It doesn’t seem like a long time, but they negotiated a lot. You should have a con— That will tell you why. 

But France actually made that possible because they helped us win the war and France only did it to get back in England for taking, you know, Canada and they wanted to protect what they called their sugar islands, which was Haiti and some of their properties there. So, it worked because it was in isolation, and they didn’t care enough… I mean, Britain, they cared, but they didn’t care enough to send another, they couldn’t keep sending an army across the ocean. It was too hard to, I think… They tried again in 1812, but they had to let them go because they lost the war. But, you know, we were lucky. We were able to do this experiment in kind of a test tube and it works. 

Ann: Right. The distance, you’re right, that’s such a huge part of it. If the king is not physically close then you have to send the army over in a ship, then it’s harder to quash that. No, thank you. That was something that I was kind of wondering about. 

So, we’ve got… Okay. This is a quite chaotic political situation happening in France. We’ve got Eugénie, this little red-haired girl in Spain. So, how on earth does she make her way to the attention of Napoleon III? 

Nancy: So, they had a lot of unrest in Spain when she was about eight years old, plus they had a cholera epidemic. Her mother loved France; her mother had been educated in France, and she had her sister there and she loves all French culture. So, she picked up the two little girls, Eugénie and her sister Paca, and she took them to Paris. They were wealthy, very wealthy by that time. Although, Eugénie’s father was still alive and he didn’t like them to spend any money on the girls. He wanted them to feel like they could lose anything. He wanted them to be strong and he wanted them to— He used to put those poor little girls, he was a soldier, right? He used to put those poor little girls, at the elementary school age, on a cannon and sitting on the top of the cannon, and then he’d fire the cannon and if they cried, he’d make them do it again. [laughs] And I mean, he really didn’t let them… They dressed poorly because he didn’t want them to get used to, he didn’t want them to become spoiled and wealthy people. He was a very unusual guy. Totally committed to bringing his Spain into modernity, having rights and all those kinds of things. 

So, she goes with her sister and her mother to Paris where she is educated at the best schools and her mother is friends with all these wonderful writers like Stendhal and Mérimée, Prosper Mérimée who wrote Carmen. In fact, he wrote Carmen because he knew Eugénie’s mother, and she told him the story. That was based on a real story in Granada of a gypsy girl who killed her lover, or got killed, I forget, killed her lover. And so, when she was little, Stendhal, that was his pen name, he was Monsieur Beyle to them, he would come over, he’d put the— And you know how novelists try out their material on people sometimes. So, he would put these little girls on his knee, and he would tell them the most wonderful stories about Napoleon because he was writing a book about Napoleon and the battles and how brave he was. And so, there’s reinforcement again with this wonderful hero, Napoleon. She always had that in her. 

So, Eugénie, her mother takes her to England. Eugénie can speak Spanish. In fact, her first language is French because her father loved Napoleon so much that even though they’re living in Spain and he’s a grandee, the whole family only converses in French to each other their whole lives, writes to each other in French their whole lives, and that’s the first language that Eugénie learned. So, she is almost as French as she is Spanish. Although she’s born in Spain, she really understands the French and she loves the French, she loves Paris, she loves the French. She could also speak English because she is, she is very educated in that sense, not in politics, just in literature kind of thing, and culture and art, those are the things. 

Also, one French philosopher by the name of Charles Fourier, this is the time when there are new theories of government coming out, they’re called utopian, utopian social. These people are trying to rethink about remaking society. And so, when Eugénie is a teenager, she falls under… You know how kids are, they fall under different theory. When they read something, they, especially as a teenager, they adopt that thing. 

Ann: Yeah, it becomes your whole personality. 

Nancy: Yeah, you’re invested in it. This was the 19th century and, you know, he did have a lot of crackpot theories about how everybody was going to live together in small communes and they were going to get up at four o’clock in the morning to work because they were so excited to work and they were going to eat nine times a day because he was starving and he wanted to eat. I mean, it was all this kind of thing. So, then one of his crackpot theories was that women should have the same rights as men, that women should be equal to men, that in fact, society doesn’t work unless… Societies who give equal rights and equal opportunities to women succeed and those that don’t, don’t. And Eugénie reads this and it really, of course, this resonates, as it would with any of us. So, for all of her life, 50 years before it became fashionable to be a feminist, Eugénie is a strong proponent for women’s rights and opportunities, and she does it all throughout her reign. 

Ann: It’s really impressive to me, or just unusual maybe, to see a young woman of this social class who is so well educated, to be able to come up with her own interests and to come up with her own political interests and philosophy and everything. The opportunities that she was given, that’s wonderful and she seems like just the right sort of person to have been given those opportunities because she was a real intellectual in that way. 

Nancy: And not just she was an intellectual, you know, she had no outlet for what she wanted. Today, Eugénie could have, you know, run a law firm or she could have been the head of a charity. But because she was a high grandee’s daughter aristocrat, all she could do is get married. I mean, there was nothing for her and that is why… All she wanted to do was help; she wanted to help the lower classes, she wanted to help women, she wanted all this stuff. She wanted to be in a position to do something and she couldn’t, and that is another reason why she falls for Napoleon III.

Ann: This also, though, and, you know, because this is a dual biography of her and also Empress Sisi, that reminds me so much of her, and you talk about this in your book, but Sisi, her interest in helping people with mental problems, like opening hospitals. She also really wanted to help. She had so many interests and her role as the wife of the emperor, it’s just kind of like, how much can you really do? That’s a similarity. Yeah. 

Nancy: Sisi gets credit for it. Eugénie, because the Second Empire fell, you know, was so unsuccessful, they paint her as horrible. She did it more… Eugénie actually, they used to put boys who had stolen or whatever, had committed some crime as young, they used to put boys as young as seven in prison and keep them in solitary. She changed the prison system for children in France. She would go out with just her lady-in-waiting, just like Sisi, one lady-in-waiting dressed in black, to charities, to provide charity, to visit hospitals, all the stuff. She really promoted women’s equality also by saying that women artists should be in the salon, they should be able to get a prize. So, she was a really good-hearted person who kind of fell under the spell of a crazy person. [laughs]

Ann: Okay. So, let’s talk about how she and Napoleon III meet each other and wind up married to each other. 

Nancy: So, I will tell you one thing about Eugénie. Eugénie is that girlfriend that we all have who has the worst taste ever in men. I mean, you can’t stop her, one cat after another. She always thinks that this time it’s going to be different, that he really loves her, that he’s going to change his ways. And that’s how she winds up, one of the ways she winds up with Napoleon III, who is the nephew, I said, of the first Napoleon. So, she already thinks he’s a hero, already. 

Ann: Right, right, right. Because of the whole, the Napoleon. Like, she grew up… 

Nancy: Because one thing she didn’t have was any political training and to her, he looks like a genius, he looks like a hero. He’s going to do all this stuff. 

Ann: So, she’s in Paris… Just to set the scene, she’s this upper-class person, even though she’s being raised, you know, to dress more plain and stuff, but she would still be… 

Nancy: By that time, she was dressing. [laughs] But now she’s older, she’s in her twenties. So, yeah. 

Ann: Yeah. So, she’s circulating, like she’s going to the high society events and stuff and that’s where her circle would overlap with his, I presume. 

Nancy: Right. Well, because she’d had such terrible taste in men, she was unmarried into her twenties. This is a big problem. Her mother has dragged her, it’s like some horrible Jane Austen tale, you know, where her mother has dragged her to every watering spot, fashionable watering spot all over Europe, trying to get her married off. And she comes to France, comes back to Paris, just when Napoleon III has become president. This is before he takes over as emperor, he’s president for his first term. 

She should have seen right off the bat because of the first thing he does… Because, okay, the first Napoleon was a great warrior, right? Napoleon III, he’s not a great warrior, but he’s an olympiad at adultery. I mean, this is all he does. I don’t know how he even found time to remake Paris and do every, and get into all the trouble he did because all he does is chase… And he has a mistress right there with him all the time and still, he’s going after everyone else. So, the first time she meets him, her mother gets her into this society party where the president is and he sees her and he invites her to a dinner. Because she’s an unmarried woman, he has to bring her mother, invite her mother too. They get all dressed up, they think they’re going to want a great ball or whatever, a great society ball, they get there. No! He’s got, it’s a little place outside of Saint-Cloud, which is where they had their summer palace. It’s a little place, not the big palace, he’s going to a little house on the side that he has for assignations. It’s just her, her mother, him, and the guy who arranges all these little affairs for Napoleon III. 

It’s very clear that they’re only there so that he can proposition her. At the end of the evening, a very uncomfortable dinner, he asks her, does she want to walk in the garden with him alone? Which is tantamount to saying, “Let’s just go to the bedroom now. I’m leaving her mother with the other guy.” And she very gracefully sidesteps it and says, “No, my mother’s here. She takes priority. You walk in the garden with her, and we’ll follow you.” But it was, it was so demeaning, it was a terribly demeaning thing to be propositioned that way. So, after that, she leaves town for a while. That was her first experience with him. If that didn’t tell her, I mean, you can see that she’s your girlfriend who just can’t… [laughs] because the next time he treats her with much more dignity and then that’s when she decides to marry him. 

Ann: Well, he’s in a situation where he needs to marry, right? The same way that people in America who are running for political office tend to, if they have a long-term partner, they marry them. It’s just kind of like, it’s just… Or you know what? If someone’s running, trying to get the Academy award, they often, it’s like, “Here’s my stable partner.” 

Nancy: It went beyond that; he needs an heir.

Ann: Oh yeah, yeah. 

Nancy: Once you’re an expert, you need an heir. You need a male heir, and he was already in his forties, Eugénie was in her twenties, and he wasn’t going to… Usually, this is how you can tell the women were really beautiful because Eugénie brings nothing to the party, Sisi too, brought nothing to— There’s no way an emperor is supposed to marry either of those women because they can’t bring you an alliance, they’re not royal, they don’t bring you prestige, they don’t bring you soldiers, they bring you nothing. That’s how you know they are really gorgeous because all the guys want us to marry them. And now, Napoleon III was trying, when he first becomes emperor, was trying to get somebody like a relative of Queen Victoria, you know, or a relative of the Habsburgs and they’re having none of it. One Napoleon was enough for them, okay? 

Ann: Was this…? Okay. So, like, expand on that a bit. What I’m guessing is people are just looking like people in other countries are looking at France and they’re just like, “No, I’m not sending my young daughter to that, like, cesspool of constant rebellions, revolutions to marry a man named Napoleon. No! Like, that just seems not like a secure place.” 

Nancy: But more than that, they just don’t want… One Napoleon was enough. They have no idea that he’s not going to try to be world conqueror again and they’re not going to give him the legitimacy, they’re trying to make him as illegitimate as possible. 

So, he’s got to get an heir. And by this time Eugénie is just gorgeous, she’s clearly just gorgeous. She’s the star of the… She dresses beautifully now. She’s been all over Europe now. When she was a child, she didn’t get to dress, but now she really has everything and he wants to sleep with her and she understands him now, she won’t sleep with him. He says to her, “What then is the way to your heart?” And she says, “By way of the altar sire.” And Napoleon III was not used to having women say no to him. 

Ann: Right. So, this is like, an Anne Boleyn-type scenario. 

Nancy: Yeah. He says, “Okay, I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you.” And so, that’s how she gets to become Empress. You know, when Sisi gets married, she’s a child, right? She’s 16, she’s not prepared. Eugénie’s in her twenties, she’s ready to go. She wants to help. She wants something to do. Franz Joseph does not make Sisi a partner; he’s in partnership with his mother, Sisi is just there to have the children and have sex with. 

But Eugénie, Napoleon III needs her; he wants her because he has a vision for France. This is where they actually do owe Napoleon III and Eugénie for what they did domestically for France because whereas people like Franz Joseph were looking backwards, they were trying to hold back the tide of progressivism, they were trying to hold back, they wanted to return to absolute monarchy again. Napoleon III wants… There’s a great technological revolution going on and I have to say, because of all this chaos that happened in the 50 or so years after the Revolution, that France has fallen behind. He wants to harness that, all of that, to make France and Paris, the centre of Europe, politically, militarily, but also culturally, and most importantly, economically. 

Ann: So, it’s sort of… Not a Renaissance but just, sort of, trying to restore France to how it was before. 

Nancy: Take it into the future.

Ann: Yeah, it’s not make France great again. It’s like, let’s move France forward. Like, let’s make France the contemporary modern. 

Nancy: Let’s make France great again, that’s more for international… What he wants to do, you know, you’ve got the railroads, you’ve got the Industrial Revolution, you’ve got the telegraph, France has to come in, he’s got to make those changes for France, they don’t have it. On top of that, he wants to make France… What France has is the culture and the arts and what it used to have, it used to be just fabulous. But after the Revolution— And people say, “Oh, Paris was always fabulous. Come on, Paris was always the centre of culture and fashion and everything.” No! No, no, no. Right after the Revolution and for the next 50 years, there was a distinct fall off in fabulousness in France, because something about all those high aristocrats and the king and queen getting their heads chopped off, really put a damper on conspicuous consumption and they did not have a social, they did not really— The Citizen King who I talked about, Louis Philippe, who dressed like the banker, no social season, they didn’t have any of that. 

But the French economy was based on a lot of that stuff. Okay? The textile industry was a huge industry for France. So, when Eugénie comes on, Eugénie will come on the scene, she hits the ground running here, she will be the fashion and style icon for Europe for the next two decades and nobody touches her. And what she does is she introduces this big, it’s called a cage crinoline, it was the hoop skirt, right? Those big hoops. And she liked them. She was channelling Marie Antoinette who had the panniers that went sideways, the hoop skirts go all the way around. Well, what is it about those huge skirts? Yards and yards of material, right? So, all over Europe, that took off like you could not believe. Sisi was copying Eugénie in her good fairy princess. Eugénie starts haute couture. She’s wearing the clothes that are coming from France. Everyone’s wearing the clothes. Scarlett O’Hara wears the clothes. Mary Todd Lincoln, when she became First Lady, she copied Eugénie’s clothes. And those big textiles, that’s when the market, they are selling French goods, they are selling French culture. 

Ann: That’s so clever! That’s so clever. Like, let’s find a reason for everyone to buy ten times as much fabric to make one dress. It’s like, well, let’s just make huge skirts. 

Nancy: Yeah. And you can see that it worked because boy! The textile industry boomed, the economy boomed at the beginning of the Second Empire. 

Ann: You mentioned also just that similar to Marie Antoinette, can you talk about Eugénie’s affection for Marie Antoinette? 

Nancy: So, to many people like Eugénie, to many high aristocrats, Marie Antoinette was not the worst queen ever who deserved to get her head cut off and was a traitor and everything like that. She was just a lovely, lovely woman who got caught up in the Terror. And Eugénie identified with Marie Antoinette. She marries Napoleon III and on the very first day of their honeymoon, she insists he takes her to Versailles so she can go to the Petit Trianon and see everything about Marie Antoinette. She spends her entire life basically going around, trying to pick up as much of Marie Antoinette’s clothing, her possessions, whatever she had owned, everything basically that we have of Marie Antoinette’s was saved by Eugénie. She bought them, she made sure they were that they were really sorts, that that was really Marie Antoinette’s stuff, she put it together into a collection. That’s why we have so much of Marie Antoinette’s possessions still, is from Eugénie. 

The thing that was different between Marie Antoinette and Eugénie was that Marie Antoinette wanted to be a private citizen. This was her signature, that she was fashionable. Yes, France had to be fashionable, but she didn’t do it in service to the kingdom. She never went around in a black dress with one lady-in-waiting and tried to help the poor, Marie Antoinette, she just was a private woman and this is what she wanted to do with her life. Eugénie, everything she does is in service to France. They don’t recognize that, but she wore these clothes, she didn’t need to wear all these clothes. She enjoyed much more just being… She started Biarritz because it was close to Spain, she had a place there and they would just dress down, there was no fashionable stuff there. This was all to have people come to France, to have people emulate France and to have the economy because economic power was going to be the thing that was going to… It was the future. And that’s how they were going to help all the poor people by giving, there’s more jobs in the factories, the factories boom, there’s more jobs for seamstresses, there’s more jobs for jewellers, there’s more jobs for the people who made fine China, all this stuff, artists, all this stuff. This is what they were trying to do. 

Ann: This is… It’s so lucky, really, that Napoleon III noticed her, chose to marry her because she was so beautiful, because it turns out politically, like, she was, I don’t know, to make an American comparison, she’s like the Michelle Obama of First Ladies. Like she’s not just going to decorate the house for Christmas, she’s going to, like, do stuff too. She’s so capable. Another woman wouldn’t have done all this stuff. 

Nancy: That’s right. Because her mother was a society hostess, she knew how to— I will tell you, the Second Empire, when you saw, if you watched the Paris Olympics, that was the Second Empire. Okay? That over-the-top celebration of French culture, the glamour, the beauty of it, the spectacle of it, that was the French… You know, the gowns and jewels, the spectacle, it wasn’t just the parties. It was the arts, theatre, science. I mean, the French Second Empire makes the American Gilded Age look like the Real Housewives of Cleveland. [Ann laughs] That’s how much she just walked into it and made France what Napoleon III had wanted. 

Now, he’s doing all the… He’s putting in the railroads, he’s remaking Paris and that was his vision. He’s remaking Paris, he’s putting in sewers, he’s making parks, he’s making it beautiful; he turns it into the romantic city that we all adore today. That’s Napoleon III, he did that. Totally his vision, not the guy who, you know, Hoffmann, whatever his name is, I forget, the, the architect who did it, that was not his vision. It was Napoleon III’s vision, he was involved in it all. But Eugénie populated it. Eugénie, because she was so beautiful in the clothes, because she put gold in her hair, you know, gold dust in her hair, because she wore this, or Winterhalter was her painter, Charles Frederick Worth, the House of Worth, she starts haute couture, that was her designer. These people, French culture just bulls everyone over during this period. 

Ann: And how was she seen during that period? Like, was she beloved? 

Nancy: She was until the first, you know, I would say the first 10 years or so, it’s all working great, it’s all working great. And then comes the Civil War. 

Ann: Before that though, can we get to… He married her partially because he needed an heir and so she had one child, right? 

Nancy: Right. She almost died having that child and it was a son. They told her, I mean, it sounded horrible, the labour I think went on for two days. But she has a healthy son, she gives him a healthy son and they tell her she can never have any more children. He was already cheating on her, he cheated on her after six months. I mean, he was never going to be faithful, but she didn’t have any more children with him. And then they start to really have to become, find a way through their marriage without her being totally humiliated every time, which she is. I mean, my book is very… Okay, I got a very fat book here, like, it’s 500 pages or whatever. 300 or 400 pages of it are just Napoleon III and his affairs. I mean, I couldn’t get all the sex even in. [laughs] So, you know, this is part of it. This is part of what she’s also dealing with throughout it. 

Ann: It makes me, I keep thinking of Princess Diana, all the things you’re talking about, how she loved to be among the people, she wanted to help, she had this level of glamour, it reminds me of that. But then also it’s like the public face is like, “Oh, look at this beautiful woman,” and behind the scenes, it’s this not great marriage. 

Nancy: Terrible marriage, terrible marriage. He shoved it in her face. I mean, it was very public. Whenever he fell in love with anybody… He would fall in love every fourth day with somebody else. So, she had to just deal with that and so she was always pretty, pretty sad about that. 

Ann: Well, and again, this is where, like, your book, and I think it does this really beautifully, Sisi and Eugénie who are being hailed as these, like, look at these wonderful, beautiful women. Look, they’re so stylish, they’re so gorgeous, and their personal lives are just… sad. 

Nancy: Right. And they put it on as it’s part of their… it’s armour. This is what they are… The glamour and everything is what keeps them inside private. You know, they at least have that kind of thing. But Eugénie, everyone knew everyone all over Europe knew and there was nothing to do about it. This is who he was. 

We should get into though, the Empire was not all great, okay? The Second Empire. That was the domestic side, all right? And he did, he gave them railroads, he put them into the future; everything that you see today, they’re still living off the Second Empire, what they did domestically. Internationally, he was a disaster. And we’re dealing with it right now. He was an agent of chaos. In the 19th century, we’re coming back to it today. It was like, there was a big poker table, and all the kings sat around it, all the major powers sat around it and tried to out-cheat each other at cards and to see who had the best hand and scheme and all that stuff. And Napoleon III, he thought he was a lot smarter… They always think they’re the smartest one with the best hand at the table and, believe me, there’s always somebody smarter. Today, everyone’s smarter from the guy we have at the head of the table. But they had Otto von Bismarck and he was a very smart guy and way ahead of everybody, way ahead, certainly of Napoleon III. 

Ann: And this is all leading towards civil war. You described it. 

Nancy: No, no, civil war was… The reason why the textile industry, why the economy, why they soured on Eugénie and why they soured on the Second Empire was because the Americans were a big, big market for French goods, especially the South. When the American Civil War hit…

Ann: Oh! Okay.

Nancy: … then all those textile companies, all the textile industry went into depression. On top of that, Mexico had a little revolution and a guy named Benito Juárez came into power and there were a lot of French people who had invested in Mexico with bonds and he reneged on all of them, So, they started to go into a tailspin a little bit in the economy. They had also spent a lot of money on wars; they had participated in the Crimean War and the war in Italy, and it didn’t really… They needed to build up again. All of a sudden, the debt that they had gone into for everything — for the railroads, for the army — just starts to… they need money. And that’s when the Empire starts to falter. That’s when people start to get sour on the Empire. 

Ann: So, it’s kind of all these things put together. Like, you mentioned his international relations were awful. Part of that is going to these wars and then going into debt because the war is that they don’t win combined with what you mentioned about the South. So, just everything is… So, how long was the Empire thriving? [laughs] 10 years? 20 years? 

Nancy: So, he gets it in 1852. 1853, she comes in. 1860, 1861 is when they’ve already had two wars; they’ve had the Crimean War and Italy. 1863, probably… So, 10 years. 10 years and then it all starts to, then it starts to become difficult. 

That’s where Eugénie comes up because Eugénie has learned about foreign relations from her husband. In fact, the notes I took trying to figure out, she has nothing, no diploma, she doesn’t know anything, but what she loves about him is that she says, “He pushes, he’ll gamble everything on one action and that’s why he wins,” all right? And he had gambled everything on Italy, and he didn’t win there. He got out but he set off all this stuff in motion that Italy was going to become one nation, which was not what he wanted. 

But Eugénie says, “Okay. I know what we should do. We should get somebody to take over Mexico that will help us get silver,” because there are silver mines in Mexico. Because this was the age of colonialism and people did want to, I mean, England is, is going to the Zulus and India and they want resources. “This way we’ll get our money back out of Mexico having defaulted on the bonds and we’ll have a friendly power there.” She puts in Sisi’s brother-in-law, Max, they send an army down with Max to take over Mexico, that was her biggest mistake. She knew that was her biggest mistake, she always took credit for Mexico and she should never have done that. But, you know, we’re all human, that’s what she did. But you know, you can tell that she meant, she meant to take over Mexico in the nicest possible way. She just wanted to do it for the good of the people. She thought having a European ruler would be better for them than Benito Juárez. 

Ann: Yeah. Well, and like you said, everything she’s doing, you know, in this context, it’s a colonial way, but for the good of the people is how she saw her actions always. 

Nancy: Absolutely, always. But she is also tainted with having provoked the Franco-Prussian war and that she had nothing, that she did not want. She did not want to go to war. He was already more or less out of— And that was the other good thing about them, okay? They had already switched from an absolute monarchy and empire to a constitutional monarchy based on the English version. So, he was no longer in charge of everything. Napoleon III, by 1870 is no longer… He was never an autocrat in the way, never tyrannical, but he didn’t even have the power anymore. There was an elected assembly, you had a prime minister who was responsible to the assembly, not to him, he didn’t pick the ministers. He was out of it by that time. And it was in fact, the Republicans, the liberals who wanted to go to war with Prussia, they thought they would win, and they just didn’t have any clue. I mean, Bismarck was so far ahead of them. Henry Kissinger wished he was Otto von Bismarck. He really had a very clear-eyed vision of what he wanted to do and, in my opinion, he was a wisecracking evil genius, but okay. [laughs] They love him in Germany. 

Ann: Yeah. Well, I mean, again, that strong man, the hero sort of figure. So, when the Empire, the Second Empire ends, I don’t know how you would, like… crumbles? I don’t know what word we would use. Where does that leave Eugénie? 

Nancy: So, the Empire crumbles because they lose at the war, they lose at Sedan against the Germans. In true French fashion, what the people of Paris do is rise up and kick out the one person and the defence, the defenceless government that’s there and take over, thinking that they will do better. 

Eugénie, it happens, it’s one of these things where there’s a mob, there’s an insurrection, there’s a mob, they attack first where the elected delegates were sitting. And then they come to the Tuileries where Eugénie is, and she’s got to decide whether to stay and get arrested basically with all of her ladies and all the people who are loyal to her, or flee. She would have stayed for sure, but she doesn’t want everyone around her to get into trouble because they wouldn’t leave, they wouldn’t leave her, that’s how loyal they were to her. They wouldn’t leave her; she goes down, they go down and she didn’t, there were women there with children, there were people who had been her good friends. She wasn’t going to make them go through that so she has to leave Paris. 

And then this was just the best thing. So, who saves her? Who saves her? Where can she go? She can’t go to, like… She can’t go to an embassy or something, then it becomes an international incident; she doesn’t know who’s going to be on the side of the French at this point. She can’t go to the Americans, they were on the side of the Germans, usually. She can’t just go to the English embassy and get them involved. She’s got to find a private citizen. She tries one of her old-time retainers, he’s not home. So, then she goes to a guy who I would never have believed would be this hero, this wonderful hero in history. She goes to her ex-patriot, Philadelphian, her American dentist. She had an American dentist, and he rises to the occasion like nothing I’ve ever seen. [laughs] This is just… This guy turns into James Bond and Lancelot at the same time. She comes in, she’s got nothing, she’s got her one lady-in-waiting, she just throws herself on and he leaps into action! All I can say is: Be nice to your dentist [Ann laughs] because if you ever need anyone to save you from a howling mob, that’s the person, clearly, that you want. 

He gets his friend who’s a doctor as kind of a sidekick, it’s like Holmes and Watson, and they come up with a plan to get her out of France. Now, she is the most recognizable face in France and everyone’s looking for her because she’s, you know, it proves how revolutionary you are, to take her, it’s very similar to the Marie Antoinette situation. 

Ann: I know! I was thinking, the person who she idolized so much, and suddenly she’s in such a similar situation. 

Nancy: They all had to leave. Everybody left, you know, once Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI got their heads cut off, nobody stayed after. That was a lesson that all the monarchs learned. So, nobody stayed; they left, but they knew they had to do it quickly, they had to do it silently. He takes her, they could have taken a train and gotten her out, but everybody in the compartment would know who she was, and they couldn’t take that risk. So, they had to take a private carriage, a closed carriage, and drive with horses from Paris all the way to the Channel so they could get a boat across. And he does it. He learns how to be a spy, like along the way, because to get out of Paris, they were going to have to open the window, open the shades and talk to the guards because they were looking to make sure you had the right papers or whatever, or that there wasn’t something going on. 

So, when they get there, they had this whole fictional story, just like Marie Antoinette had a fictional story when she left. Their fictional story is that the Eugénie is a very ill woman, and the doctor that was with them was her doctor. And then the dentist, he’s her brother who’s helping, and the other woman is her cousin or, you know, is her nurse, the lady-in-waiting. And so, they go through, they get to the first border guards and they, and Dr. Evans, the dentist, opens the window and he talks to the guards, but he does it by holding up his newspaper so that they can’t see the faces of the women, you know, he can’t see Eugénie’s face and they get her through. They get her through, and then they keep her… She has to stay in that carriage. When they stop places, only the men get out, they eat a meal, and then at the very end, they say, “Oh, you know, I might get hungry later in the road, can I have a bread and a sausage or something to take on the road?” And they give it to them, and that’s how he feeds her. Finally, they get her all the way to the coast, where Dr. Evan’s wife happened to be vacationing there. 

But still, they got to get her across to England. He’s got to find a private boat. And this was the best part was because he finds a private boat and it’s an English boat, it’s an Englishman, Burgoyne, it’s a Burgoyne is, like, a chivalrous name in England and a very high aristocrat. And he says, he says to him, “Oh, are you a gentleman? Will you help this lady in distress?” And Burgoyne goes, “No! I don’t want to help her. No, I’ll just get myself into trouble for nothing.” And they have to appeal to his wife. It is Mrs. Burgoyne, it’s Lady Burgoyne, who says, “Of course we will take her. Of course, we will take her across.” And they almost didn’t make it because it was a terrible storm. It’s an adventure story out of, you know, out of a novel, out of The Count of Monte Cristo. So, that’s how she gets out. 

Ann: I think we talked about this before we started recording, but in general, I think I had said, “Why have I never heard of her?” And you said it’s because after this, like, after the fall of the Second Empire, people just want to forget that she ever existed because they wanted to… 

Nancy: They blamed her like they blamed— She was the Spanish woman where Marie Antoinette was the Austrian. They love to do this in France. They see themselves as the… So, they don’t take any credit. She doesn’t get any credit, they tried to ignore that they had the Second Empire, but they kept a lot of stuff from, not just the physical Paris, but they kept a lot of stuff from Eugénie. 

For example, the Olympics, if you saw the Paris Olympics, that was so much in the tradition of the Second Empire; that fabulous party, the over-the-top stuff, the celebration of French culture. That’s all she ever did, bringing people to the city, tourism, that was another, that was another of the economies, you know, economic things they tried to do to help the economy to bring money in and jobs and get French culture out there. So, that’s a direct line to the fabulous Second Empire. They still have haute couture; that was her. They still have, you know, all everything fine living that this is what we go to. This is what we love about France is what they love about themselves too, I think, most of them. They think they want equality, but there’s still all that in their culture that celebrates… As they should! They are unique and wonderful and we all love going there and for this and admire them for that. 

Ann: I’m just thinking about the throughline of her being raised to really see Napoleon as a hero, but also her own personal feelings about Marie Antoinette, you know, like finding and unearthing all of these household goods and things, and the way that she admired her, the big skirts and everything. And then the way that she brought back— It just seems like Marie Antoinette to Eugénie to now is, kind of, that’s where we see the glamorous, the chic French woman. Like, that’s still, to so many people, the epitome of glamour and fashion, and that’s, that’s kind of the throughline. 

Nancy: And you can tell, Marie Antoinette is starting to get some of her mojo back, I guess, because they’re starting to run exhibits about her where she isn’t just this tyrant, you know, that deservedly got her head cut off. Marie Antoinette, you know, she could have been a much better queen, all right. She didn’t want to be a queen, really. She wanted to be private, she didn’t want to get involved in government. That wasn’t her personality. But she was forced into it because her husband just couldn’t do it. 

But Eugénie… I will tell you, when Eugénie died, in spite of them kicking her out like that and pursuing her and everything they did to her, she left the bulk of her fortune to French charities, okay? You know, there was a recent Leonardo, they sold some of her jewelry. She left everything she did. She totally left everything when she left. She just went in her one dress, she didn’t even have money with her. They sold her some of her jewels because the Prussian agreement after the surrender, when they finally had to surrender to Prussia and come up with an agreement, the only way to get the Prussians to leave (because the Prussian soldier army was occupying France) the only way to get them to leave was to pay them off. So, they took whatever some of the jewels that she had that Eugénie had left and sold them as part of this. She would have been the first one to say, “Yes, please! Take them, take them, here!” 

All she wanted to do was negotiate peace with Bismarck so that they didn’t come in and just annihilate Paris and annihilate the kingdom. But they wouldn’t let her. She was regent; she could have done it, but they wouldn’t let her. You cannot argue with people who refuse to accept reality. They just didn’t believe that they would lose, and they kept that belief that they shouldn’t have to pay or give up territory until it became impossible and they had to. And the peace was much worse, much worse for the French because of that, because they kicked her out, than it would have been. They could have left her in there, let her negotiate, and then kicked her out; they would have been better off. And she wasn’t the person who brought them into that war. Napoleon III and she were not— Napoleon III tried the hardest he possibly could to keep himself out of the war, he knew they weren’t prepared. He had asked the assembly to vote 15 million francs for the army, and they said, “Oh, we don’t need that much. We don’t need that. We’re only going to give you 5 million.” And so, they were totally unprepared when it happened. 

Ann: So, the aftermath of all of this is… Maybe I’m forgetting some other interim rebellion or revolution, but after the fall of the Second Empire, France went into a situation where they have a president, and that’s it, a voted, elected president. 

Nancy: They had a republic.

Ann: And that’s how it still is now. 

Nancy: It’s how it still is now, right. That was the Third Republic. Well, except for when you get into World War II, you know, there’s the Germans come in and stuff like that. So, there are different governments. But no, they stayed a republic after that, like they have today, an elected assembly and a president. They fought it out, and they decided this is what they want. 

Ann: So, having written this book about these two women, it seems to me that Sisi, and maybe it’s because of those movies from the 1950s or ‘60s. 

Nancy: I love those two, yeah. [laughs]

Ann: Yeah. It seems like she’s always been part of the conversation, her memory continues. But Eugénie, like again, I had never known anything about her until I read this book. So, comparing the two women, is it because… Well, Sisi had the tragic assassination and everything, too, which sort of lends to her mystique. But it’s just this whole erasure of the Second Empire. Like, France, they blamed her for that, they didn’t want to think about it. 

Nancy: But they kept so much of it. They used to have these big world fairs, they called them exhibition universelles, where they showed everything off. I was stunned that after the fall of the Empire, the republic did an exhibition universelles, they kept it, right? They kept all the stuff that they did. I mean, they didn’t have the same glamour right off the bat because they were… [chuckles] But the one of the reasons they were able to pay off the Prussians so fast was that they all the improvements to the infrastructure and the economy that Napoleon III had put in the telegraph, the railroads, all that stuff, that allowed them to come back. That’s why they were able to come back, and they kept all that stuff he put in to help them in the future and has kept them going all this time. Now, I don’t know how long it will… They probably need to do some refreshing now, but that that happened last to the century, at least, which is, you know, I wish people would put an infrastructure in here. [laughs] 

Ann: So, it’s sort of like her name might not be remembered very widely, but the effects of what she did are still every single day. 

Nancy: You walk through, that’s her. And they’ve just opened up the Napoleon III rooms with and they put the fashion show there. If to go to France right now, you can go to the Louvre and see what it was like. 

Ann: Oh, wow. 

Nancy: They refurnished them. They are also kind of coming back slowly. That happens in history; it takes a couple of hundred years for people to get real perspective on what actually happened back then. 

Ann: So, when this episode comes out, your book will have just come out in mid-February. So, like, the conversations you’ve been having with people about this book, what sorts of responses… Are most people talking to you about, Sisi? Is anyone asking about Eugénie besides me? [chuckles]

Nancy: No, I will do all the things about Eugénie because… I think that’s what I do; I’m the person who writes about all the most important and influential women in European history or nobody’s ever heard of. And people have heard of Sisi, you know, in Germany, she’s a rock star. She’s got a movie every year about her, she’s got two series going on about her at the same time. German language, one on Netflix, one on BBS. So, of course, people want to talk about her, but they don’t really see her in context, I don’t think, in Germany. They certainly don’t give her the credit. They’re fascinated by her being sort of insane, kind of thing. And believe me, if you had Sisi’s life and that mother-in-law and that court and everything that happened to her, you’d be you’d be a little nutsy, too. [laughs] You’d wander the world, too, if you had everything that happened to her. 

But actually, she was an even better empress in many ways. You know, she didn’t do any of the stuff that… Well, she went around to the local people, she didn’t stay and behave like a normal empress, but she saved what was left of that empire. Franz Joseph had lost almost all of it. Franz Joseph just gets this big pass because he lived for so long, he outlived everybody, and he comes across as a figure of peace. Well, he’s only a figure of peace because he lost everything that anybody had wanted in the first two decades. And Sisi saved Hungary. Sisi, actually, the dual monarchy which came in in 1867, which for seven years, she tried to get… The Hungarians wanted power sharing. No one power shared in the 19th century; it was always a fight. And Sisi helped negotiate the single incidents where a political difference between two places was negotiated peacefully and ended without violence, without repression, without any of that. Today, you’d get the Nobel Peace Prize for that. But back then, she was ignored. They gave the credit to a foreign minister who came in with three months’ experience and couldn’t speak Hungarian. But the Hungarians knew who did that. 

Ann: Oh, and I’ve heard from people there who’ve traveled there, she’s so beloved in Hungary. 

Nancy: Oh, it was at a great personal cost, it was at an enormous personal cost that she did that, and they just will not give her the credit for that. They much prefer to see her as an eccentric, beautiful woman. Well, she was a beautiful woman and eccentric, but she also did something that… You know, if they’d done that, if Queen Victoria… Ireland was asking for home rule at the same time, and Great Britain was totally happy to try to help Italy get its freedom, to have tried to have Italy have home rule. But Ireland, no. And if they’d done it, if they’d negotiated it then, look how much they would have trouble they would have saved themselves over the past century. 

Ann: No, it just reminds me, I recently just saw it was a clip of Halle Berry was being interviewed and she’s I’m not sure how old she is, in her fifties now, I think, and you could see how angry she still is and has always been when people see her as she’s like, “Don’t tell me I’m beautiful. Don’t tell me I’m pretty. I don’t care. There’s so much more about me,” and the fact that people didn’t see that. It reminds me of in your book and also just how you’re sharing the stories today where people think about Sisi and Eugénie, it’s like, “Oh, weren’t they beautiful?” It’s like, yes and all these other interesting things like it’s not right. It’s easy to be dismissive of a beautiful person. 

Nancy: Right. And they use their beauty, but they used it politically. They used it to help. That was Diana. That’s really Diana. Yeah. And I think Meghan Markle also would have loved to have used her beauty and celebrity to help, but they don’t… That’s a whole different deal. 

Ann: But I think it is like when you look at contemporary royals and past royals and women, if you’re not the actual monarch, then what power do you have? A lot of the power does come, as you said, the beauty can be the armour, but that can also be… It’s like soft diplomacy, it’s a way to get people interested in you. And once they’re interested in you, then like Diana did, you talk about landmines, you talk about the AIDS crisis, and that’s what both these women were modeling.

Nancy: That was a direct line to Eugénie and Sisi. That was what they tried to do also. You know, so much of history has been written by men. When I started out, if you could have heard my reject— I wish I’d saved my rejection letters when I started out because I’ve been doing this… From the 13th century on, every century, I find women who are just these amazing lives, some of them inspiring, some of them not so inspiring, but still everybody has a huge effect on the time that they lived in. And the publishers would say they would say, “Who wants to read about people and women of no one ever has ever heard of? No one wants to do that.” And now, just recently, I saw that men have started to write about women who no one has ever heard of. So, it’s finally taken off, and my work here is done. [laughs]  

Ann: Yeah. Well, and again, I said at the beginning of the episode, but also I am so grateful for your work because I’ve done episodes about Joanna of Naples, Catherine de’ Medici, Queen Margot, and, like, your books, they’re really such a good way of explaining… Like, to me, who was just starting, I didn’t know anything about Joanna of Naples or that world. You explain things really well. But then how you described it, what did you say? You’re a narrative historian? 

Nancy: Narrative historian. It’s not a biographer. It’s not a straight biography. I have to tell you, in this book, it’s really about glamour and power. Once you’re out of power, I don’t… Sisi had so much bad happen to her that her younger sister burned up, and I couldn’t even get it in the book. I couldn’t. [laughs] So, you know… But the biographies, especially the German one that is supposed to be the Bible about her is so… Because they don’t have the context, they’re not looking at it from the outside world at all, they’re just being very narrow. I thought it was so mean and so unfair. I would often just throw that book across the room when I read something. The biographer just comes out and says, “Oh, she was terrible at this, and she was terrible about that.” Excuse me! She’s got to fight all these people. 

So, you know, I love both these women. Both these women are, I think… I wish Eugénie had not done Mexico, of course. I mean, we’re all flawed, and it was something of its time. So, you can’t put her in as a great ruler or anything like that. But boy, did she try in every other way. And believe me, all this stuff, all the glamour, this was just in service to the people that she was trying to help. Nothing else. 

Ann: Well, thank you so much for joining me today. 

Nancy: Thank you!

Ann: This was such a treat. And honestly, I read your book, and I feel like I learned even more. I love being able to talk to the author because I’m like, “Explain this to me!” And now I’m like, oh! I understand this better. Maybe I could maybe I kind of understand France in the 19th century. [laughs] Maybe not.

Nancy: I know it’s really hard, and everybody’s named Napoleon, so there’s nothing to do. [laughs] 

Ann: I know it’s like everyone was called Louie when it’s the monarchs, and then suddenly everyone’s called Napoleon. And I’m just… It’s… 

Nancy: Brand name recognition. You were never sure that your guy wasn’t going to be… [laughs] 

Ann: Yeah, true. Well, thank you again for taking the time to talk to me today. 

Nancy: Thank you! 

—————

So, Nancy’s latest book is The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe. I did want to mention that we talked a lot about Napoleon III and all of his mistresses, one of them (not mentioned in this book, but it’s because there were a lot of mistresses, there’s not room to talk about all of them in the book) was Rachel, the Jewish actress who we did an episode about a bit ago. Rachel was she was one of the mistresses of Napoleon III, and allegedly, she was one who taught Eugénie how to curtsy in the most, I don’t know, acceptable or dramatic way. The whole thing with Rachel, this actress, was she had really good hand gestures and really good posture. And then Eugénie, we learned about here, like, she wasn’t raised as a royal, so it makes sense to me that maybe she would have turned to Rachel to learn what’s the correct way to curtsy or to bow. 

Anyway, I love that Nancy took the time to talk with me about this book, and I do really recommend this book. And I think having half the book Sisi, half the book Eugénie really helps ground it or did for me because I kind of knew the time and the place a bit from the Sisi stuff so that I could, kind of, more understand what was happening with Eugénie. But also, this does connect with our overall theme that we’re kind of, like, dipping in and out of this year, where we’re looking at Marie Antoinette and 18th-century France and the French Revolution. This was like what we’re talking about, what we just talked about, what you just heard about Eugénie really gets into what happened after the French Revolution and what happened after the French Revolution was more revolutions and just kind of constant chaos. 

And that reminds me of a thing that I had mentioned towards the beginning of this whole season when we started it last year, which is the astrology of it all. By which I mean that on November 19th of 2024, this past year, Pluto moved into Aquarius, and the last time Pluto was in Aquarius was around 200 years ago in 1778, around the time of the American Revolution. It stayed there until 1798, around the time of the French Revolution. And so, during the time that Pluto was in Aquarius last time, the American Revolutionary War, French Revolution, Haitian Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment era, the Irish uprising, lots of things happened. So, I mentioned when we started the Marie Antoinette series, I was like, wow, we’re just going to get into this astrological thing that happened before. Little did I realize how chaotic everything, how unprecedented times this would all have turned out for all of us. I don’t know. 

So, like, I talked about in last week’s episode a bit, like to me, looking at people who lived through chaotic, unprecedented times and just kept going, I find some reassurance in that or inspiration, like, just the fact that people put one foot in front of the other, able-bodied people, just that people kept breathing, just the people kept living another day, even when things around them were just, like, constant chaos. And again, truly, I never conceived how chaotic things would feel right now when these episodes were coming out. But it’s kind of like what we’re talking about with Eugénie and even with Sisi, it’s kind of like, well, they were living in these chaotic times as well. Anyway, by which I mean, I’m going to have this podcast every week, and I hope that brings some reassurance to all of you, especially people listening to this from America, which is just like, wow, quite a time you’re having. 

I also wanted to mention some other things that I like to mention at the end of episodes, such as I am writing a book, Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Uncrowned Queen. It’s going to be coming out next year. And every week, there are new updates from me about what’s happening with that book and what the latest things are that I’m doing. If you want to get that behind the scenes, look at what’s going on, the best way to do that is to join my mailing list. With my mailing list, what it is is once a month, like, mid-month, I’ll send an email with kind of like, here’s the book updates, here’s some information about the podcast stuff, here’s some books and TV shows and movies that I’ve been enjoying, here’s my next in-person events, there might be one coming up, maybe, in Toronto. Stay tuned. So, if you want to sign up for that and just get kind of like your Ann Foster updates, go to VulgarHistory.com/News and sign up for my newsletter. You can also follow me on Substack, where I post essays. Women’s History Month! You know, I do this all the year anyway. But it is Women’s History Month, and if you’re like, I want some, every two weeks, a women’s history newsletter, you can get that on my Substack VulgarHistory.Substack.com. 

The best way, if you want even more from me, you can keep up with me on Patreon, where I am at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter. I’ve been posting more stuff there and less stuff on other various social media things as part of my attempt to divest from billionaire oligarchs and their fucked up algorithms. So, if you want to just keep up with kind of like, more random thoughts, just kind of like interesting links or what’s going on, like little chats, that’s all happening at Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, which you can join for absolute free. You can just hang out there and see the things that I post there for free people which is, like, a couple of things a week. 

If you want to get a little bit more for $1 a month, you can on Patreon, Patreon.com/AnnFosterWriter, you get early, ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History, and that includes also ad-free access to previous episodes of Vulgar History. So, you can just get all your episodes there without any advertising breaks for $1 a month. Or if you pledge $5 or more a month on Patreon, then you also get bonus episodes of things like Vulgarpiece Theatre, where we did talk about a movie, a Sisi-based movie. I don’t know if there is a Eugénie-based movie, but we did talk about, oh, what was it called? Corsage. Corsage, the Sisi movie from a few years ago. We talked about that in Vulgarpiece Theatre. There’s also episodes there of So This Asshole. I haven’t done one about Napoleon III, but I feel like I might. Anyway, that’s all at the $5 or more a month level on Patreon. And also, when you join at the $5 or more a month level, you get to join our Discord, which is like a big group chat where we just chill out, hang out. We talk about the Survivor, The Traitors, share pictures of our pets, provide emotional support for each other. One of the members of the Discord, I hope I’m not saying anything that I shouldn’t be saying, acquired a copy of Lola Montez’s book, like, a vintage copy from actually when Lola Montez wrote it and shared pictures of that, and we were all losing our minds. It was really cool to see. 

Anyway, we also have a brand partner, which is Common Era Jewelry, which is a woman-owned small business that makes beautiful heirloom jewelry. The pieces are made in New York City, everybody who is involved in this company has healthcare and good wages. The packaging is made by a little family-owned business in Chicago. So, if you’re just thinking about like, who do I want to buy my shit from? Do I know what the company is about? Do I want to support that company? Like, where I’ve always felt comfortable joining with Common Era Jewelry is because of everything I just said, like, this is a bespoke company. So, they make gorgeous designs; they make necklaces, they make rings, and a lot of them are inspired by women from history, like they have a little face of a person on it, like Cleopatra or whoever, also women from myth. Maybe you’re feeling like Medusa, that one sold really well, that one’s been selling really well. Apparently, the more the patriarchy is taking over the world in a Handmaid’s Tale nightmare, people are turning to people like Medusa. 

Anyway, they also have a new collection, Common Era Jewelry does, of zodiac jewelry inspired by an obscure 17th-century alchemical manuscript. So, basically, this is not just like, “I’m an Aries,” so it’s not just kind of like, “Oh, look, it’s a ram.” No, it looks like zodiac jewelry you’ve maybe never seen before. It “Reimagines zodiac jewelry through the lens of ancient alchemical wisdom. Each pendant features an ancient sigil crafted under precise astrological conditions, once believed to hold protective and transformative powers.” Now, I don’t know about Eugénie’s vibe, but I feel like this is very Catherine de’ Medici vibe, this is very, like, Nostradamus vibe. “More than adornment, these pieces are modern talismans, symbols of connection and tension and the timeless magic of the stars.” These pieces are, all the pieces from Common Era Jewelry are available in solid gold, as well as a more affordable gold vermeil, the zodiac stuff, there is a delay in getting those in the more affordable gold vermeil, but you can, if you go to their website, you can go on the wait list. You’ll be notified when those are for sale. And if you purchase from Common Era Jewelry, you get 15% off your order by going to CommonEra.com/Vulgar or using code ‘VULGAR’ at checkout. 

You can also get your Vulgar History merchandise at VulgarHistory.com/Store in the US. If you’re outside the US, I recommend going to our other store, our Redbubble store, because the shipping is better outside the US, VulgarHistory.Redbubble.com. You can get in touch with me using the form at VulgarHistory.com if you have things that you want to talk about. And I’m on social media. I’m trying to divest, but I am still on Instagram, and you can still DM me there. Just go to whatever social media, Bluesky, whatever. @VulgarHistoryPod is where you will find me. 

Next week… It’s Women’s History Month, and guess what we’re talking about next week? A woman from history. It’s going to be revisiting a classic episode that I think through the new lens of people we’ve talked about since and what the connections are to other people. And I think it’s an interesting one to revisit. They’re always interesting to revisit. This one feels especially timely in some ways. So, until next week, I’m your Canadian friend, Ann, and keep your pants on and your tits out. 

Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Ann Foster, that’s me! The editor is Cristina Lumague. Theme music is by the Severn Duo. The Vulgar History show image is by Deborah Wong. Transcripts are written by Aveline Malek. Find transcripts of recent episodes at VulgarHistory.com.

References:

Order a copy of Nancy Goldstone’s book The Rebel Empresses: Elisabeth of Austria and Eugénie of France, Power and Glamour in the Struggle for Europe.

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Get 15% off all the gorgeous jewellery and accessories at common.era.com/vulgar or go to commonera.com and use code VULGAR at checkout

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