What Empress Eugénie's Life Was REALLY Like Behind the Throne | History for Sleep
Henry’s History for Sleep
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What was life really like for Empress Eugénie and the vast household that served her behind the throne at the Tuileries Palace in Second Empire Paris? Born in Granada in 1826, Eugenia de Montijo married Napoleon III in January 1853, and for seventeen years the Tuileries was the seat of the imperial court. Hostile Parisians often called her "the Spaniard," and in January 1858 the Orsini bomb outside the Paris opera killed eight people as the imperial couple arrived.Tonight's history walks through the daily machinery of the imperial court: chamberlains, ladies-in-waiting, footmen in livery, laundresses and wardrobe women working below stairs. Court dress meant crinolines, tightly laced corsets and gowns in the style of Charles Frederick Worth, the couturier Eugénie made famous. The palace ran on beeswax candles, gaslight, bell-pull systems and back service staircases, with servants housed in cramped attic rooms under the roof. Etiquette, ceremony and rank shaped every hour, from the morning toilette to state dinners and court balls.The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 ended the Second Empire: after the defeat at Sedan on 1 September, the Third Republic was proclaimed on 4 September 1870, and the Empress left the Tuileries and escaped to exile in England. During the Paris Commune in May 1871 the palace was set on fire, and in 1883 its ruins were demolished, leaving the Tuileries Garden that stands there today.The answer is that behind the gold and ceremony, the court of the Tuileries was a fragile world held together by etiquette and hundreds of unseen servants, and it vanished in a single day in September 1870.
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What Empress Eugénie's Life Was REALLY Like Behind the Throne | History for Sleep
Henry’s History for Sleep
925 views
What was life really like for Empress Eugénie and the vast household that served her behind the throne at the Tuileries Palace in Second Empire Paris? Born in Granada in 1826, Eugenia de Montijo married Napoleon III in January 1853, and for seventeen years the Tuileries was the seat of the imperial court. Hostile Parisians often called her "the Spaniard," and in January 1858 the Orsini bomb outside the Paris opera killed eight people as the imperial couple arrived.Tonight's history walks through the daily machinery of the imperial court: chamberlains, ladies-in-waiting, footmen in livery, laundresses and wardrobe women working below stairs. Court dress meant crinolines, tightly laced corsets and gowns in the style of Charles Frederick Worth, the couturier Eugénie made famous. The palace ran on beeswax candles, gaslight, bell-pull systems and back service staircases, with servants housed in cramped attic rooms under the roof. Etiquette, ceremony and rank shaped every hour, from the morning toilette to state dinners and court balls.The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 ended the Second Empire: after the defeat at Sedan on 1 September, the Third Republic was proclaimed on 4 September 1870, and the Empress left the Tuileries and escaped to exile in England. During the Paris Commune in May 1871 the palace was set on fire, and in 1883 its ruins were demolished, leaving the Tuileries Garden that stands there today.The answer is that behind the gold and ceremony, the court of the Tuileries was a fragile world held together by etiquette and hundreds of unseen servants, and it vanished in a single day in September 1870.