EUGENIE’S ESTIMATE OF TROCHU.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 7, 14 October 1871, Page 3

EUGENIE’S ESTIMATE OF TROCHU.

The following private letter of the exEmpress Eugenie to a friend in regard to General Trochu’s attack on her in the National Assembly will bo read with considerable interest by all who have watched the course of events in Franco during the past twelve months: Chiselhurst, June 27th, 1871. My Dear A,—l have just read the discourses with which General Trocliu has defended himself in the Assembly, and I assure you they have awakened in mo rather a painful emotion than the mere astonishment that might seem natural. It was especially painful to me to see a General—and a French General—-in order to excuse the faults he had committed, endeavour to throw the responsibilityon a woman. I do not say that there were not grave errors on our side, and in these I accept my share ; but what I cannot suffer is that any one should accuse me of having acted at a moment when the eountry was so unhappy only to save the dynasty. From the sixth of August to the fourth of September, laying aside, as was my duty, all pei-sonal thoughts, I had but one preoccupation, only—that of saving our poor couetry. General Trocliu recites inaccurately the dispatch received on the night of August 17th, and which contained these words : “ The General returns, and the Emperor will follow him.” It was he, and he alone, who asked that I should suppress the name of the Emperor, and his pretext for this was a proclamation that he had already made in advance. He appears to say now that, yielding to a fenliment of personal ambition, I could have sacrificed the sovereign to the regency. You know the affection that I have always had, and that I have still, at the bottom of my heart for the Emperor. It only increases now that I see him so calmly and resignedly uxcept everything —even to the most infamous calumnies. General Trocliu has gone round the defence of Paris, as he went around the Tuileries—without even entering. He had said himself that at the end of September, his opinion was that any successful resistance was impossible. Why, then, push the sublime folly of continuing the defence anyhow ? He put on a good face towards the Republic, which he had betrayed, disdaining his engagements elsewhere. I will never forget with what an air of assumed sincerity he told me I could count on his faith as a Catholic and a Breton. He does not know, then, that a Catholic never lies, and that a Breton never used the sword received from his sovereign against that sovereign himself. He know wells that the revolution of the 4th of September broke the engagement for intervention to which certain powers had pledged themselves. _ General Trocliu will not wash away with his discourses the ineffaceable stain of having lied to the Republic, as he had lied to the Empire. I would write you all of this at greater length, my dear A , if I were not pressed for time. lam obliged to send this letter by a sure person, who leaves immediately. I think of you often and embrace you and yours. Your affectionate aunt, Eugenie.