Louis Napoleon's Imperialist Politics and the Kearsarge
In order to establish exactly why Manet’s distant depictions of the Kearsarge contradict his political philosophy, it is first necessary to establish how Louis Napoleon’s involvement in Mexico is pertinent to the Boulogne naval battle in France and the Kearsarge itself. In 1849, Louis Napoleon’s accession to the throne of France was accompanied by a distinct singularity of purpose: to reestablish the glory and power of an imperialist France. The self-proclaimed emperor needed an empire – even if the first imperial foothold was Mexico. Early in 1862 there were reports that the emperor was planning to establish a colonial empire in Mexico and that United States bore “some ill-will” toward this prospect (Corley, 245). Furthermore, as the situation in America deteriorated to the brink of civil war, Louis Napoleon recognized his opportunity to make his Mexican ambition a reality: he could undermine the efforts of the Union, the established government that had expressed “ill-will” for his initiatives, with a concentrated “support” for “the Confederate South” (Corley, 245). Napoleon, however, could only support the Confederate effort indirectly by facilitating the trade of armaments, foodstuffs, and other wartime necessities to the South (Corley, 245). Confederate ships like the Alabama, therefore, could feasibly sail in and out of European, especially French, ports for the procurement of these wartime goods.
The Union however, the force Manet would have been expected to portray favorably in his Kearsarge paintings, remained suspicious of such economic “support” and implemented a naval blockade around these ports, commissioning the building of battleships like the U.S.S. Kearsarge for its enforcement (Wilson-Bareau, 20). With the Kearsarge sailing in and around French waters near Boulogne to thwart the efforts of armed Confederate trade ships like the C.S.S. Alabama, conflict was unavoidable. On June 19, 1864, the Kearsarge encountered the Alabama at Cherbourg, sank it, and provided subject matter for sensationalist French journalists and for Manet himself. The battle, however, became more than an isolated war incident: it was a symbol of Louis Napoleon’s Mexican ambition, as exemplified by the Confederacy, against the forces that opposed his incursion into Latin America, the Union. The battle, in essence, represented the conflict between pro-imperialist and anti-imperialist factions within France. It became a judgment on the very initiatives that the Emperor Louis Napoleon sought to pursue (Wilson-Bareau, 31).
Manet's Personal Response to Napoleon's Imperialist Politics
Importantly, Manet, in his stated support for the anti-imperialist faction, placed his own judgment on those very initiatives in a series of statements that contradict his Kearsarge depictions. In these statements, Manet’s antipathy for Louis Napoleon’s politics became increasingly pronounced in the years leading up to and during the naval engagement. Proust noted that in 1863, a year before the battle occurred, Manet established a relationship with Léon Gambetta, Louis Napoleon’s opposition leader and ardent republican politician. Their relationship, as Proust evidenced, began to develop and the two reached “a degree of inseparability” in the ensuing months; Manet would often engage in discourse with the anti-Louis Napoleon, anti-imperialist Gambetta, frequently contending that “it was necessary to get rid of the Empire” (Proust, 56-7, 58). Manet, therefore, did not hesitate to state his antipathy for Napoleon’s “Empire” and all alliances this “Empire” would establish – including the Confederacy. This statement shows how Manet distrusted Louis Napoleon and his dreams of “Empire” – he refused to acquiesce, to comply, to believe in the proclaimed justice of an unjust imperialist regime. He was not to be fooled. On the contrary, he remained intransigent in his mistrust for the emperor’s glorified imperialist policy in Mexico. Manet further expressed his contempt for Louis Napoleon’s imperialist politics in a letter to a friend: “I do not imagine that France could have itself been represented by such a senile crew, not excluding that small-minded Thiers [Louis Napoleon’s deputy] who I hope will croak one day on the rostrum and rid us of his aged little self” (qtd. Brombert, 391). He distrusted not only Louis Napoleon’s “senile crew” and his Mexican initiatives, but also the emperor’s support of the Confederate cause – even of the Alabama itself. Beth Ann Brombert notes in her Edouard Manet: Rebel in a Frock Coat that Manet held “sympathies with the North in opposition to Napoleon III’s support of the South” (Brombert, 295). We would not expect him, then, to paint the Union warship, the Kearsarge, so unfavorably, so distanced on canvas, and so adverse to his Northern political “sympathies.” Since the Alabama was destroyed by the Union’s Kearsarge, in 1864 Manet could have, as Philip Nord notes in his article “Manet and Radical Politics,” seized the “rare opportunity to take a backhand slap at the Empire” (qtd. Brombert, 295) – but he did not. Instead, Manet took a “backhand slap” at the Kearsarge – and allowed his pro-imperialist Kearsarge paintings to take a backhand slap at his stated anti-imperialist political views.