France wants the Emperor's remains back. A senior Minister will go to Britain this week to request the return of the remains of the Emperor and his wife Empress Eugenie.
LONDON: He holds the unusual distinction of being both the first titular President and the last monarch of France but for 130 years, Emperor Napoleon III's remains are in Britain where he spent the last few years of his life.
Now, France wants the Emperor's remains back. A senior Minister will go to Britain this week to request the return of the remains of the Emperor and his wife Empress Eugenie, which lie in a crypt in St Michael's Abbey in Hampshire, 'The Sunday Telegraph' reported on Sunday.
"This trip will be for me an occasion to send a clear message to the British -- to thank them for all they did for the imperial couple in exile but also to remind them that we have some rights over them," French Secretary of State for Overseas Territories Christian Estrosi was quoted as saying.
Napoleon III spent the last few years of his life in exile in England, with Eugenie and his only son, after his defeat in the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. They lived at the Camden Place Chislehurst in Kent.
The Emperor died on January nine, 1873, during a multistage process to break up a bladder stone -- the actual cause of death being kidney failure and septicaemia. He was originally buried at St. Mary's Church in Chislehurst.
However, after Napoleon III's son also died in 1879 fighting in the British Army against the Zulus in South Africa, Eugenie decided to build a monastery to house monks driven out of France by the anti-clerical laws of the Third Republic, which would provide a resting place for her husband and son.
Thus in 1888 the bodies of Napoleon III and his son was moved to the Imperial Crypt at Saint Michael's Abbey in Hampshire. Eugenie, who died many years later in 1920, is now buried there with them.
But Father Cuthbert, the Benedictine monk who heads the abbey, is unlikely to agree to Estrosi's request to return the remains of Napoleon III. "I hope the French Minister is coming to ask forgiveness for having left the monastery so long without news or support."
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