Excerpt from Memoirs of the Empress Eugenie, Vol. 2

When the Prince-President was proclaimed Emperor of the French and had been recognized as such by the chief powers of Europe, the Emperor of Russia, acknowledging Napoleon's official announcement of the fact, saw fit to alter somewhat the style of address always used between sovereigns. In the official letter delivered to the Tuileries court by the Russian ambassador, Count Paul Kisseleff, Napoleon, instead of being addressed as "Monsieur men Frère" (Sire, my brother), the form employed among sovereigns, was addressed as "Monsieur et Bon Ami, " (Sire and Good Friend), which was the form used when writing to the President of the Republic This modification was not without importance and caused a considerable amount of surprise in imperial circles at Paris. As Napoleon well said on one occasion, "its effect was to give a sort of accidental and transitory stamp to the character of Russia's recognition of the new government, it was rather shutting out the new ruler from the circle of European sovereigns." At the same time, with considerable astuteness, the Czar Nicolas, who was hiding his hand and biding his time, treated the French ambassador to St. Petersburg, General de Castelbajac, with the greatest cordiality.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.