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Updated: May 4, 2025
There the father and son parted from the empress, who removed the same day to the Tuileries, where she administered the imperial government under the title of empress-regent. "It would have been injudicious for the emperor at this time to risk a public departure from Paris. The Parisians were so full of confidence and enthusiasm that he might have received an inconvenient ovation in advance."
Power still remained with the Empress-Regent and the Palikao Ministry. All must admit that the Empress Eugénie did what was possible in this hopeless position. M. Thiers politely but firmly refused to give a helping hand to the dynasty which he looked on as the author of his country's ruin.
Joseph Bonaparte strongly urged her departure, because a letter from the Emperor had directed that in case of Paris being threatened the Empress-Regent and all the Council of Regency should retire to Blois.
Gambetta was so little desirous of establishing a republic by revolution that, even when the tidings arrived on the night of September 3d of the emperor's surrender at Sedan, his chief concern was as to how he could get the deposition of Napoleon III. and the Empress-Regent effected by lawful methods.
And he went on giving further particulars: how Marshal Bazaine had been blockaded in Metz with the army, bound hand and foot, making no effort to break the wall of adamant that surrounded him; the doubtful relations that existed between him and Prince Frederick Charles, his indecision and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play a great role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have fixed upon himself; then all the dirty business of parleys and conferences, and the communications by means of lying, unsavory emissaries with Bismarck, King William and the Empress-regent, who in the end put her foot down and refused to negotiate with the enemy on the basis of a cession of territory; and, finally, the inevitable catastrophe, the completion of the web that destiny had been weaving, famine in Metz, a compulsory capitulation, officers and men, hope and courage gone, reduced to accept the bitter terms of the victor.
Further, that the Empress-Regent issue from the fleet four proclamations viz. to foreign governments, to the fleet, to the army, and to the French people. It will suffice to quote two of those suggested proclamations: To foreign governments! To firmly insist upon the fact that the Imperial Government is the actual government, as it is the government by right. To the fleet!
Although additional men had recently been enrolled in the National Guard the arming of them had been intentionally delayed, precisely from a fear of revolutionary troubles, which the entourage of the Empress-Regent at Saint Cloud feared from the very moment of the first defeats.
Then on the next day, the ever-memorable 4th of September, was the upheaval of all things, the second Empire swept from existence in atonement for its mistakes and crimes, the entire population of the capital in the streets, a torrent of humanity a half a million strong filling the Place de la Concorde and streaming onward in the bright sunshine of that beautiful Sabbath day to the great gates of the Corps Legislatif, feebly guarded by a handful of troops, who up-ended their muskets in the air in token of sympathy with the populace smashing in the doors, swarming into the assembly chambers, whence Jules Favre, Gambetta and other deputies of the Left were even then on the point of departing to proclaim the Republic at the Hotel de Ville; while on the Place Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois a little wicket of the Louvre opened timidly and gave exit to the Empress-regent, attired in black garments and accompanied by a single female friend, both the women trembling with affright and striving to conceal themselves in the depths of the public cab, which went jolting with its scared inmates from the Tuileries, through whose apartments the mob was at that moment streaming.
Meanwhile at Paris the Chamber of Deputies had overthrown the Ollivier Ministry, and the Empress-Regent installed in office Count Palikao. For the Emperor to order such a retreat in his own name was thought to be inopportune. Bazaine was a convenient scapegoat, and he himself knew it.
But now, in Paris, the Clerical party were seized with panic, and the Empress-Regent, then, as always, completely under their control, did all in her power to arouse the Emperor's opposition.
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