EMPRESS EUGENIE.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 July 1920, Page 9

EMPRESS EUGENIE.

A TRAGIC FIGURE. DEATH OF FRANCE'S LAST EMPRESS. Eugenie, 'widow of Napoleon 3rd., a beautiful girl, and -a brilliant and powerful woman, had a career of intensu interest, romance, and tragedy. Or.e day she was a poor Spaniard, visiting i J aris with her widowed mother. The next day she was a beloved and loving Empress, with the jewels of a dynasty, the drfiad majesty of reigning, the world's delight in her glittering person, and the enthusiastic imitation of all women. Eugenie's influence over lier husband was always great, and she urged him into many things which were, as the event showed, dangerous to the Empire; but for twenty years France was victorious in war and magnificent in peace, and she ruled over a brilliant court.

She was in many ways her husband's evil genius. She had urged him to set up the pinchbeck Empire in Mexico, in defiance of the United States, and in order that she might patronise a peopl.; speaking her native Spanish tongue' When tlmt Umpire fell, and Maximilian was shot, there came the beginning of the end in France, for Napoleon's star was waning. ■

It was her "party" that had been eager for the war with Prussia, and had practically forced it upon Napoleon, though he knew well how unprepared his country was. After the first two great disasters in the field, lie would have returned to Paris to prepare for the defence of the capital and to help secure the dynasty, but the headstrong Eugenie had now gone beyond all bounds. She wrote that he must not come with the disgrace of two defeats upon him, and then summoned Parliament.

She had done everything to bring defeat 011 France. She had refused to allow the King of Italy to occupy the city of Rome, though in return for this he Would have lent his armies to Napoleon. Estranging Italy, she also lost the_ support of Austria, which at first might have joined in the alliance. She deprived her country of allies; she left her husband to be made prisoner at Sedan; the Parliament that she summoned dethroned her and her consort! the glittering Empire in which she hail shone with all her beauty, was'-lost in one tremendous crash. Her very life was threatened by the ruffians of tlw faubourgs, so that at last, haggard ami in disguise, she was glad to take refuge in the house of the American dentist, Dr Evans, who conveyed her and one of her ladies to the sea coast, whence an English yacht carried her, in the midst of a tremendous storm, to the safe shelter of a British port. When the fallen Emperor was released front' his captivity in Germany, and joined liei*, together with their son, they retired to a modest home at Chiselhurst, in Kent, where, three years later, the ex-Emperor died of a disease that had tortured him for years. It would seem as if fate could have nothing more in bitterness in store for her, and yet she was destined still to suffer. Her son, tlie young Prince Louis, who, she hoped, might some day regain the throne of France, was brought up to believe in such a destiny. At 23 he was sent out to South Africa, in 187(1, to see some active service in the field against the Zulus. He was stabbed by blacks, being left to his fate by an English officer, who mistaker.'.y supposed that he had made his escape. Eugenie has sina* lived in retirement, chiefly in England, with occasional visits to France and Spain.