After 1870 : Second Empire Vignettes

[galileo-034]

Moving faster than Disraeli on Suez would be difficult. He was already looking into buying into the Canal when the Khedive came knocking and he cut basically every corner available to purchase them first. There were literally only 9 days between the first inkling of the Khedive meaning to sell and the British purchase. Nonetheless, it’s something I can accept as a possibility.

You can hardly do faster than the man who actually built the canal. De Lesseps is the Foreign Minister when the convention happens. Yet you may have noticed he wasn't when Rouher had quit the scene...

Presumably the 1882 action in Egypt would have been an Anglo-French affair all the way through rather than the French Fleet returning home and the British taking Egypt?

That's a reasonable assumption.

With Britain not quite as secure in the Eastern Med as OTL they are more likely to still maintain a posture against Russia on the Straits. This and lesser losses to Germany in 1870 could possibly preclude the Russo-French alliance. Which obviously has interesting consequences down the line, if so.

🤐

Additionally, with a long term policy of maintaining relations with Britain and a continued Monarchy I doubt Aubé and the Jeune Ecole gets much of a look in. That would probably help the French Navy with a more consistent policy in place.

The Jeune Ecole had an underlying somewhat republican philosophy I understand. ITTL, that doesn't happen, and with the likes of Schneider close to power, you bet there is more spending in big ships.
Besides, not having a revolving door of governments alone gets a long way to maintain coherence in any area of policy, navy included.

 

[ArtosStark]

You can hardly do faster than the man who actually built the canal. De Lesseps is the Foreign Minister when the convention happens. Yet you may have noticed he wasn't when Rouher had quit the scene...

Honestly not sure what you mean by this. AIUI, both the French and British were made aware of the Khedive’s desire to sell his shares on the same day, 14 November, 1875. The British Cabinet almost immediately directed their man in Egypt to negotiate with the Khedive to purchase them. On the 23rd the negotiated price came back (£4,000,000) with the requirement of providing an answer by the 25th. The Khedive needed cash to meet his December debt obligations. Unable to get a Treasury advance since Parliament was not in session Disraeli had a representative at the house of Lionel Rothschild that night. The next day (the 24th) they sent an affirmative answer to the Khedive.

I am not sure that this timeline would change if Lesseps is in charge of Quai D’Orsay. It certainly doesn’t seem that he would have an advantage in speed. And the French Government is still dealing with the fallout of a major war loss, even if less crippling than OTL. It’s possible that having Lesseps in a government position would make a difference but I am not seeing how.

I’m also not sure how you get Lesseps into office. He avoided becoming enmeshed in politics. He stood for office only once in 1869, largely due to the entreaties of the Imperial government to gain goodwill for the canal. Once he lost, he refused every subsequent offer to hold or run for office. And with the Canal complete by then there doesn’t seem to be much reason for him to change his OTL stance. He seemed to prefer to move on to new projects. He was apparently looking at a railway from Europe to Mumbai and Beijing by 1873.

The Jeune Ecole had an underlying somewhat republican philosophy I understand

It was basically an attempt at a cheap anti-British policy. The idea being that a smaller navy could challenge a larger one through attacks by smaller torpedo armed vessels. This basically only had utility against British trade and the RN. If France is leaning pro-British it seems an unlikely road to take. Particularly since a monarchy is more likely to prefer the prestige of a battleship and cruiser navy.

 

[galileo-034]

I'm positing there that de Lesseps did have personal connections in the Khedive's court and governments dating back to the construction of the canal, and a more intimate knowledge of what's going and perhaps before the British are made aware of it... If you hear "insider trading", I couldn't blame you for it.

As for de Lesseps' becoming Foreign Minister, let's say that the Empress Dowager did not care too much about electoral politics in 1873, that she'd better have her cousin, "her man" so to speak at Quai d'Orsay, and that, well, there is another big project on the horizon that might get done way more easily if he was Foreign Minister.
My understanding of the man is that he was proud man, very ambitious in his endeavours, perhaps overconfident or too sure of himself, very capable a publicist, and while not inherently corrupt, he had a "tendency" towards corruptive behaviour... If his kinship was enough, his credentials as a carreer diplomat certainly made him a serious candidate for the Quai d'Orsay. Then, the other attempts after 1869 to draft him into politics are to put back in the context of the Third Republic tumultuous first years, and the need to avoid any risk of endangering his other projects, since his ties to the Bonapartists put him potentially at odds with the Republicans and getting in the crossfire between them and the monarchists (in the larger context of the confrontation between MacMahon and the Republicans after 1875).

 

[galileo-034]

"... the House of Jérôme was, like had been the Orléans, a family of cadets to the reigning dynasty. This comparison had always loomed high in Napoléon III's mind, and had consistently fed into the distrust he directed at his radical cousin. Prince Napoléon was a radical, and he was not shy about using his status to protect the enemies of his throne, from Victor Hugo to the Proudhon. And the memory of the Orléans "usurping" their Bourbon cousins was still fresh in the minds well into his reign [1]. After him, Napoléon IV was not quite of his father's mind, however his mother most certainly was. Her son might be sitting strong on the throne, she never let go of her feeling of insecurity, and had made her duty to carry the dynasty, her son's dynasty, to the next step. It thus she was when she received the news of Prince Victor's engagement with Princess Marie Amélie of Orléans.

When in 1873 Rouher and Eschassériaux had worked to formalize the "dynastic alliance" with the Orléans, the question of marriage had not gone further than vague projects. The simple reality was that there were noone to marry back then. Napoléon IV was to be married to Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom, and the only prospective princes the House of Bonaparte could marry were the children of Prince Napoléon, none of whom had yet reached the adult age. On the Orléans' side, the only prospective brides were among the children of Philip, Count of Paris and head of the house, and François, Duke of Chartes, his brother; but then again, none were of age. Any such project of marriage, unfeasible as it was, was postponed to another day; on the backdrop of the other concessions made by Dowager Empress Eugénie, the question was not deemed critical, yet, to their alliance with the Bonapartes. On 18 July 1880 however, on the day of Prince Napoléon Victor's eighteenth birthday, that was a question that became relevant anew.

Since the return of the Orléans family from exile [2], they and the Jérômes had found a common ground in being their reigning cousins' cadets, and friendship had followed not far behind. Princess Mathilde, Prince Napoléon's sister, was the key articulation of this rapproachment. Her salon and parties had nothing to envy to the Duchess of Teck's, and she was as much a frequent host of the Duke of Aumale and the Prince of Joinville, as she was a friend - or accomplice - of the Duchess of Uzes. To them, the idea of a union was a natural and logic continuation of the Orléans' return to the high abodes of power in France, and a match between Napoléon Victor and Marie Amélie came to be seen as feasible. To Empress Eugénie however, this match was anything but desirable, and it was behind her back that the small clique plotted its way to the marriage over the next two years.

Later, paraphrasing a saying on trains, Georges Clemenceau would quip in his journal about the whole affair : "one marriage can hide another". He was here referring to the Prince Impérial, another Napoléon Victor [3]. Napoléon IV's first son had been born in 1875, and it seemed to most as if a marriage between the Bonaparte heir and Isabelle of Orléans, born in 1876 [4], was possible. The age gap was not too wide, though it was understood any union would have to wait for at least a decade, but it was a project that Eugénie did not particularly mind. Empress Béatrice was yet uncommitted to the idea, but she would accept at the Duchess of Uzes' suggestion, to let the children meet and become play partners during the weekends at Trouville. It then happened invariably that Isabelle would always come to Trouville accompanied, innocently enough, by her eldest sister Amélie. And as innocently, Princess Marie Clothilde, placed in Béatrice's suite by Eugénie to teach her the proper ways of the Roman Catholic faith, would be accompanied at Trouville by her son, Prince Victor.

By Christmas of 1882, following the French expression, the "mass was said" - the die was cast - when Victor confessed his newfound love to his wholeheartedly supportive cousin and Emperor. Eugénie, learning of it the day after, was livid. It had all happened under her nose and she had seen nothing. The feeling of suspicion and betrayal was gripping her altogether. The distrust she had lavished upon Prince Napoléon's house soon began to spread to Beatrice's court where "the crime had been committed", and she began to open the eyes to the danger her daughter-in-law, all ignorant she was of the whole intrigue, posed to her position. But it was too late, or at least it seemed until Henri of Artois, Count of Chambord and head of the Bourbons, died in his exile of Frohsdorf at the peak of the Red Summer of '83."

---

[1] : Perhaps not entirely unwarranted. King Jérôme and his son were in negotiations with Louis-Philippe, before the revolution of 1848, for him to return from exile and be appointed to the House of Peers, which essentially meant denoucing Louis Napoléon, then in his London exile. The revolution aborted the scheme, but it certainly did not help the Jérômes.
[2] : I may elaborate in a future update on this. ^^
[3] : Named after Beatrice's mother. Prince Napoléon's son would be usually referred as simply Victor, whereas the Prince Impérial would be called Victor Eugène.
[4] : OTL 1878. The OTL schedule of Philippe of Orléans' children after Hélènes is moved a couple years ahead by author's fiat, call it butterfly effect.

 

[A Random Man]

Nice chapter

 

[Dragonboy]

@galileo-034 , amazing work! Hope little Victor has many healthy siblings to secure his father's line!

 

[FesteringSpore]

So we gain more insight on the dynastic 'deal' between the Orleanists and the Bonapartes. Good work.