Badinguet’s Lament

Paris: Typ[ographie]. Rouge frères et comp., c. 1870

Attributed to André Gill

CUL, KF.3.9, p. 162

Badinguet was a nickname given to Napoleon III (French president 1848-52, Emperor 1852-70) by republicans. It apparently derives from the name of a worker who lent the future emperor his clothes during the latter’s escape from prison in the castle of Ham, where he had been jailed for an attempted coup in 1846.

This satirical piece imagines the French Emperor Napoleon III writing a lament following his defeat and capture in the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71). The image shows the demoted emperor playing a barrel organ inscribed “Sedan" and his son Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte picking his nose and making a collection, accompanied by a skeletal eagle.

‘Badinguet’s Lament’ lets us in on the rather embarrassing moments of the life of Napoleon III, including failed coup attempts and extra-marital affairs. Throughout, Napoleon is made to sound self-aggrandising, haughty, and unashamed of using violence for his own ends, reflecting common republican criticisms of the erstwhile emperor.

“I don’t want my ashes spread over the banks of the Seine, among the French people whom I’ve cheated so much!’

Napoleon I, as corrected by his nephew [Napoleon III]

Napoleon I’s original quote was: ‘I want my ashes spread over the banks of the Seine, among the French people whom I loved so much’. His nephew, Napoleon III, rejects here both the city of Paris (he becomes captive in Germany, at Wilhelmshöhe palace, after the French defeat at Sedan in early September 1870)

To the tune of Fualdès

This lament attributed to Napoleon III is to be sung to the tune of the ‘Air de Fualdès’ in reference to the murder of a Bonapartist jurist (1761-1817) which shook Restoration France in 1817.

I

Since my friend William

Is affording me some leisure,

I’m making the most of it, with pleasure

To ape this old… Great Man

And from my loyal heart

I’m writing my memoir:

Kaiser Wilhelm I is presented as the special friend of Napoleon III (in a conspiracy of the elites), despite the war between France and Prussia.

Napoleon III’s present “Mémorial" is a comical reference to the more famous and prestigious Mémorial de Sainte-Hélène written by Emmanuel de Las Cases in collaboration with Napoleon I.

II

My parents hardly loved each other

Nevertheless, I was always

The sweet fruit of their love,

According to the dictionary:

After the Beau Dunois was played,

Napoleon the Third was born.

Although according to the official history, Napoleon III was the son of the king of Holland, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (brother of Napoleon I), and Hortense de Beauharnais (Napoleon I’s step-daughter), the poem questions his legitimacy (his mother was reputedly unfaithful to her husband) and presents his birth as a miraculous, fairy-tale event.

The Beau Dunois refers to a song whose music was attributed to Hortense de Beauharnais and which was associated with the Bonapartists. It served as an informal national hymn under the Second Empire (especially when La Marseillaise was banned).

III

Tender exile from birth,

From the cot I learned

With what pain the heart is taken

When one is far from France.

Later, remembering this,

I decided to repopulate Lambessa.

Napoleon III was actually born in Paris but lived in exile in Switzerland, Italy and England after the fall of the First French Empire.

Lambessa is an Algerian village where participants to the 1848 Paris uprising were transported and exiled as a punitive measure, under the new presidency of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the future Napoleon III.

IV

In the valleys of Helvetia

Never lived a single gunner

Who was to me superior.

I swear from the bottom of my guts!

And the Prussian Mr Krupp

Knows I never make things up.

After the fall of Napoleon I in 1815, Louis-Napoleon and his mother went into exile in Switzerland, residing in the castle of Arenenberg by Lake Constance. Louis Napoleon then enrolled in the Swiss Army.

The Krupp family developed and commercialised successful cannons made of steel which were successfully used against the French army during the Franco-Prussian war.

V

To eliminate pauperism

Was my writing’s objective

And the greatest, proudest minds

Did admire my cogitations

Because a miner who you shoot

Is one less suffering soul to boot.

In the 1830s, Louis-Napoleon wrote a series of political works: Rêveries politiques, Considérations politiques et militaires sur la Suisse and Les Idées napoléoniennes.

The song makes fun of the contrast between Louis-Napoleon’s social and progressive theories and the actions of his government, siding with capitalists once in power. In June 1869, the French army opened fire on miners during a strike at La Ricamarie, and again in October 1869 at Aubin. Women and children were among the victims.

VI

What a vile thing ambition is!

At thirty, it was out of love

That in Strasbourg I tried

A little civil war.

I took an innocent delight

In this bloody fight.

In 1836, Louis-Napoleon (at 28, rather than 30) attempted a coup d’état in Strasbourg against the constitutional monarchy headed by King Louis-Philippe. He and a band of mutineers seized a garrison. However, the coup was a failure, and the defeated Napoleon was arrested and quickly forced to leave France.

VII

After that, another chore!

Slave of my own destiny,

The star of false celebrity

Led me to Boulogne;

An eagle – what a coincidence!

Tracing my steps, found ham.

In August 1840 Louis-Napoleon launched a second coup, this time by boat from across the channel. The time seemed ripe for a Bonapartist coup: Napoleon I’s ashes were due to return to France from Saint-Helena four months later, and nostalgia for the Empire was heightening. Before leaving England, the crew purchased a vulture to ape the eagle, symbolic of Napoleonic power. Here the song claims an eagle followed them because he was attracted by ham - among the ample stocks of food prepared for the expedition. It may be a pun on the name of the Château de Ham where Louis-Napoleon was imprisoned, following the failure of this second attempt.

VIII

Louis-Philippe, the tyrant

As I was on the verge of death

Locked me up in a fortress:

Oh! What an unprincipled man!

To top off this cruelty

I was fed but beef and tea.

Louis-Napoleon was quickly arrested for his role in the attempted coup at Boulogne in 1840, and sentenced to life imprisonment at the Château de Ham in north-western France.

IX

One day a loyal friend

It was I believe, Conneau’s dad -

One of the best doctor’s we’ve ever had –

Said: “Swallow in captivity

Whose name is oh so fine

I have for you a plank divine".

Henri Conneau (1803-77) was a French doctor and politician, and avowed Bonapartist. Conneau took part in the Boulogne coup and was also locked up at Ham, where in 1846 he aided the escape of the future Emperor. His unfortunate surname literally means ‘little imbecile’ in French. His son, Louis Conneau (hence the redundant “Petit-Conneau"), born in 1856, grew up as a companion to the Imperial prince. Louis-Napoleon escaped Ham by dressing as a carpenter, hence the reference to Conneau’s salvatory plank.

X

Thanks to this man’s salvatory plank

Got that nose of mine disguised

Snuck right beneath the soldiers’ eyes

They said, protecting my escape:

We’ve all seen that bloke before,

It’s an orderly, nothing more.

Mocking Napoleon’s large nose was a well-trodden niche in caricature of the emperor throughout his reign.

XI

Safe and sound I reached London,

From a Frenchman became a Greek,

And a policeman – so to speak.

But I had nothing to do!

Then Miss Howard, so excellent

Fu…nded me: a few quid was lent.

After his escape from Ham, Louis-Napoleon returned to London. Briefly a police officer, he quickly found a place in upper-class circles. In addition to working in the rooms at the British Museum, Louis-Napoleon often met with the likes of Charles Dickens and Benjamin Disreali. In London he had two major affairs: the first to famed French actress Rachel (1821-1858), and the second to Harriett Howard (born Elizabeth Ann, 1823-1865). The latter funded Louis-Napoleon’s conspiracies and continued to be his mistress until his marriage to Eugénie de Montijo in 1853.

XII

With the coming of the Republic,

I thought: honest people, as ever

Are obviously not all that clever.

I’ll have their business quite quick;

So off to Paris I sped

To be a little better fed.

Louis Napoleon returned to Paris in February 1848 following the outbreak of revolution in the city, which had led to the abdication of King Louis-Philippe and the declaration of the Second Republic. However, he quickly returned to London following the advice of the head of the provisional government, Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), who suggested that his presence might cause further unrest.

XIII

My calculations were accurate, I’ll gloat:

Uncle’s nephew, decorated

I was soon venerated

For my august frock coat.

And when a few were with batons hit

All that scorn: forgotten quick.

A second wave of revolutionary fervour in June 1848 (in response to the plan to close the National Workshops which had been instituted in February), was quickly crushed by the forces of the Second Republic. In addition to the deaths of around three thousand on the barricades, around four thousand insurgents were transported to the aforementioned Lambessa, in Algeria. In the following months, a new constitution with the four-year role of President was created, and Louis-Napoleon - thanks to both nostalgia for the imperial era and his status as a relative outsider - won. It was a landslide: Louis-Napoleon received 74% of the vote, almost four million more votes than the second-placed candidate, Louis-Eugène Cavaignac.