Anglomania Under the French Second Empire
Cross-Channel relations were cordial during the reign of the Emperor Napoleon III, writes Joanna Richardson.
During the Second Empire, there was a Victoria and the Emperor, and, of course, by the remarkable understanding, a genuine allied victory in the Crimea. A British officer entente cordiale, between England and declared, just after the war, that ‘history presents France.
This understanding was strengthened by no example of two great nations passing so the exchange of State visits between Queen speedily and on grounds so reasonable and intelligible - on grounds, too, independent of political combinations - from coldness to confidence’.
Some English observers were less enthusiastic. In his Imperial Paris, published in 1855, William Blanchard Jerrold raised an eyebrow at traditional French arrogance:
We are barbarians, to be raised from our vulgar debasement by the surpassing excellencies of French artists and French authors. Poetry is to arrive in London, presently, from Paris direct. This is the Parisian view of the consequences of our entente excessivement cordiale...
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