Public life , |317x317px Eugénie faithfully performed the duties of an empress, entertaining guests and accompanying the emperor to balls, opera, and theater. After her marriage, her ladies-in-waiting consisted of six (later twelve)
dames du palais, most of whom were chosen from among the acquaintances to the empress before her marriage, headed by the
Grand-Maitresse Anne Debelle, Princesse d'Essling, and the ''dame d'honneur
, Pauline de Bassano. In 1855 Franz Xaver Winterhalter painted The Empress Eugénie Surrounded by her Ladies in Waiting, where it depicted Eugénie, sitting beside the Grand-Maitresse'' in a countryside setting, with eight of her ladies-in-waiting. She traveled to Egypt for the official opening of the
Suez Canal and represented her husband whenever he traveled outside France. In 1860, she visited Algiers with Napoleon. She strongly advocated equality for women; she pressured the
Ministry of National Education to give the first baccalaureate diploma to a woman and tried unsuccessfully to induce the
Académie Française to elect the writer
George Sand as its first female member. Her husband often consulted her on important questions. She acted as regent during his absences in 1859, 1865 and 1870, as he often accompanied his soldiers on the battlefield to motivate them during the wars. In the 1860s, she often attended meetings of the Council of Ministers, even leading the meetings for a brief space of time in 1866 when her husband was away from Paris. She was a staunch defender of papal temporal powers in Italy and of
ultramontanism. Because of this she ardently tried to dissuade her husband from recognizing the new
Kingdom of Italy, which was formed after
Sardinia's 1861 annexation of the Bourbon-ruled Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and all of the pope's territory outside Rome. She also supported keeping a French garrison in Rome to protect the papacy's continued hold on the city. Her opposition to Italian unification earned her the enmity of
Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, who stated that "the emperor is weakening visibly and the empress is our enemy and works with the priests. If I had her in my hands I would teach her well what women are good for and with what she should meddle." She also clashed with the French foreign minister
Édouard Thouvenel over the question of the French garrison in Rome. Much to Eugénie's chagrin, Thouvenel negotiated an agreement to wind down the French military presence in exchange for a guarantee of papal sovereignty from the new Italian kingdom. The
Duke of Persigny blamed her influence when Thouvenel was dismissed by the emperor, declaring to Louis-Napoléon that, "You allow yourself to be ruled by your wife just as I do. But I only compromise my future...whereas you sacrifice your own interests and those of your son and the country at large." She was blamed for the fiasco of the
French intervention in Mexico and the eventual death of Emperor
Maximilian I of Mexico. However, the assertion of her clericalism and influence on the side of conservatism is often countered by other authors. In 1868, Empress Eugénie visited the
Dolmabahçe Palace in
Constantinople, the home to
Pertevniyal Sultan, mother of
Abdulaziz, 32nd sultan of the
Ottoman Empire. Pertevniyal became outraged by the forwardness of Eugénie taking the arm of one of her sons while he gave a tour of the palace garden, and she slapped the empress on the stomach as a reminder that they were not in France. According to another account, Pertevniyal perceived the presence of a foreign woman within her quarters of the
seraglio as an insult. She reportedly slapped Eugénie across the face, almost resulting in an international incident.
Role in the arts The Empress possessed one of the most important jewellery collections of her time; Catherine Granger recalls that her purchases were estimated at the enormous sum of 3,600,000 francs, a sum to be compared with the 200,000 francs devoted to the purchase of works of art for her personal collection. The American jeweller
Charles Tiffany, who had already acquired the French crown jewels, bought most of the former Empress's jewels from the government and sold them to the ladies of American high society. The empress was "perhaps the last Royal personage to have a direct and immediate influence on fashion". She set the standard for contemporary fashion at a time when the luxury industries of Paris were flourishing. Gowns, colors, and hairstyles ''"à l'impératrice"'' were avidly copied from the empress throughout Europe and America. She was famous for her large
crinolines and for rotating her outfits throughout the day, with a different dress for the morning, afternoon, evening, and night. She never wore the same gown twice, and in this way commissioned and acquired an enormous wardrobe, which she disposed of in annual sales to benefit charity. Her favored couturier,
Charles Frederick Worth, provided hundreds of gowns to her over the years and was appointed the official dressmaker to the court in 1869. In the late 1860s, she caused a shift in fashion by turning against the crinoline and adopting Worth's "new" slimmer silhouettes with the skirt gathered in the back over a bustle. According to Nancy Nichols Barker, her admiration for Marie Antoinette "was nearly an obsession. She collected her portraits and trinkets, lived in her suite at
Saint-Cloud, had constructed a small model of the
Petit Trianon in the park, and frequently engaged
Hübner in lugubrious conversation about the fate of the martyred queen." In 1863, the Empress established a museum of Asian art called the
musée Chinois (Chinese Museum) at the
Palace of Fontainebleau. The collection numbers some 800 objects, with 300 coming from the sack of the Summer Palace.
Biarritz In 1854, Emperor Napoleon III and Eugénie bought several acres of dunes at
Biarritz in the southwest of France near the Spanish border, and gave the engineer Dagueret the task of establishing a summer home surrounded by gardens, woods, meadows, a pond and outbuildings. Napoleon III chose the location near Spain so his wife would not get homesick for her native country. The house was called the Villa Eugénie, today the
Hôtel du Palais. The presence of the imperial couple attracted other European royalty like the British monarchs
Queen Victoria and the Spanish king
Alfonso XIII and made Biarritz well-known.
Role in Franco-Prussian War The Empress held anti-Prussian views and disliked the
North German chancellor,
Otto von Bismarck, for what she perceived as his "meddling" in Spanish affairs. She believed that France's status as a great power was under threat, and that a victory against Prussia would secure her son's future rule.
Maxime du Camp claimed that, after the
Prussian victory over Austria in 1866, the Empress would often state that "Catholic France could not support the neighborhood of a great Protestant power." With the empress directing the country and Bazaine commanding the army, the emperor no longer had any real role to play. At the front, the emperor told Marshal Le Bœuf, "we've both been dismissed." The army was ultimately defeated, and Napoleon III gave himself up to the Prussians at the
Battle of Sedan. The news of the capitulation reached Paris on 3 September. When the empress received word that the emperor and the army were prisoners, she reacted by shouting at the Emperor's personal aide, "No! An emperor does not capitulate! He is dead!...They are trying to hide it from me. Why didn't he kill himself! Doesn't he know he has dishonored himself?!". Later, when hostile crowds formed near the Tuileries Palace and the staff began to flee, the empress slipped out with one of her entourage and sought sanctuary with her American dentist,
Thomas W. Evans, who took her to Deauville. From there, on 7 September, she took the yacht of a British official to England. In the meantime, on 4 September, a group of republican deputies proclaimed the return of the
Republic, and the creation of a
Government of National Defense. From 5 September 1870 until 19 March 1871, Napoleon III and his entourage, including Joseph Bonaparte's grandson Louis Joseph Benton, were held in comfortable captivity in a castle at
Wilhelmshöhe, near
Kassel. Eugénie traveled incognito to Germany to visit Napoleon. ==After the Franco-Prussian War==