WCount Olympe-Clemente-Alexandre-Auguste Aguado de las Marismas was a Franco-Spanish photographer and socialite, active primarily in the 1850s and 1860s. One of several early photographers who learned the practice from Gustave Le Gray, Aguado pioneered a number of photographic processes, including carte de visite photographs and photographic enlargement processes. He was also a founding member of the influential French Photographic Society in 1854.
WFélix Baciocchi was a French politician. Nephew of Felice Pasquale Bacciocchi, Napoleon I's brother in law, he was first chamberlain to Napoleon III, then surintendant des spectacles de la cour, surintendant général des théâtres de l'Empire and finally a senator.
WArmand Barbès was a French Republican revolutionary and a fierce and steadfast opponent of the July monarchy (1830–1848). He is remembered as a man whose life centers on two days:12 May 1839, the day of the uprising in which the Republicans tried to overthrow the king, Louis Philippe. His ill-considered actions on this day led to a sentence of life imprisonment; he was, however, released by the revolution of 1848; and 15 May 1848, the day when demonstrators invaded the Assemblée Nationale, where Barbès had been serving, for only about three weeks, as a deputy. The demonstrators' ostensible aim was to urge the government to exercise whatever influence it could in support of the liberation of Poland. Things got out of hand, however, and Barbès got caught up in what was perceived to be a coup d'état through the imposition of a provisional government.
WPauline Marie Ghislaine de Bassano, née van der Linden d'Hooghvorst, was a French courtier. She served as dame d'honneur to Empress Eugénie de Montijo in 1853–1867.
WMarguerite Bellanger was a French stage actress and courtesan. She was a celebrity of Second Empire France and known for her relationship with Napoleon III of France. She was often caricatured in contemporary press and is considered to be the model for Émile Zola's Nana. A candy is also named after her. She was reputedly the most universally loathed of Napoleon III's mistresses, though perhaps his favorite. She outlived Napoleon's deposal in 1870 and died in 1886 aged 48.
WJean-Baptiste Billot was a French general and politician.
WPrincess Marie-Félix Bonaparte was a French heiress. Born into a wealthy French bourgeoisie family with financial holdings in Monaco and Germany, she was left with a large inheritance after her father's death. Despite her mother's objections, in 1880, she married Prince Roland Bonaparte, a member of a morganatic branch of the House of Bonaparte. She died from an embolism a month after giving birth to her only child, Princess Marie Bonaparte.
WMadame Cavé was a French painter and drawing professor. Born Marie-Élisabeth Blavot and also known as Marie Monchablon in her youth, she married the painter Clément Boulanger and then, after Boulanger's death, Edmond Cavé—whom she also outlived.
WClaire Emilie MacDonnel, vicomtesse Aguado, marquise de Las Marismas de Guadalquivir (1817–1905) was a French courtier. She served as lady-in-waiting to the empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo.
WCharles Pierre Dejean, vicomte was a French general and politician.
WEstelle Emma Skidmore Doremus was the daughter of Hubbard Skidmore, who served in the American Revolutionary War, and became a charter member and honorary vice president general of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). She was also a charter officer and regent of the New York City chapter of the DAR between 1892 and 1894. The wife of U.S. chemist Robert Ogden Doremus, Estelle (Skidmore) Doremus was a leading member of the American community in Paris during the height of the Second French Empire. Upon returning to New York City, she and her husband became important figures in society and well-known supporters of music and the arts, including the Philharmonic Society, of which her husband served as president for many years.
WAnne Debelle, Princesse d'Essling, was a French courtier. She served as Grand-Maitresse to Empress Eugénie de Montijo in 1853-1870.
WMarthe de Florian was a French demimondaine and socialite during the Belle Époque. She was known for having famous lovers including Georges Clemenceau, Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau, Paul Deschanel, Gaston Doumergue, Robert de Montesquiou, and Giovanni Boldini. Initially forgotten from history, her story resurfaced in 2010 after her belongings were discovered in her Parisian apartment, located at 2 square La Bruyère in the 9th arrondissement, untouched for decades. The discovery of her apartment was the inspiration behind Michelle Gable's novel A Paris Apartment.
WJane Mary Thorne, baronne de Pierres was a French courtier of American origin. She served as lady-in-waiting to the empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo.
WMaurice Joly (1829–1878) was a French publicist and lawyer known for his political satire titled Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu ou la politique de Machiavel au XIXe siècle, that attacked the regime of Napoleon III. Available English translations include: Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by Herman Bernstein, and The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu by John S. Waggoner.
WDoña María Manuela Enriqueta Kirkpatrick de Grevignée, Countess of Montijo, was the mother of Eugénie, Empress of the French.
WBarthélémy Louis Joseph Lebrun was a French Army officer of the Second French Empire.
WEugène-Emmanuel Mermet-Cachon, was a French priest and Roman Catholic missionary in Bakumatsu period Japan, who served as interpreter for and advisor to French diplomatic missions, playing crucial role in the development of a special relationship between the French government and the Tokugawa shogunate.
WAnne Mortier de Trévise, marquise de Latour-Maubourg (1829-1900), was a French courtier. She served as lady-in-waiting to the empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo.
WAdolphe Niel was a French Army general and statesman, also Marshal of France.
WCount Alfred Émilien O'Hara van Nieuwerkerke was a French sculptor of Dutch descent and a high-level civil servant in the Second French Empire. He is also notable as the lover of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, after her estrangement from her husband Anatoly Nikolaievich Demidov, 1st Prince of San Donato.
WEsther Lachmann was the most famous of the 19th-century French courtesans. A notable investor and architecture patron, and a collector of jewels, she had a personality so hard-bitten that she was described as the "one great courtesan who appears to have had no redeeming feature". Count Horace de Viel-Castel, a society chronicler, called her "the queen of kept women, the sovereign of her race".
WCharles Guillaume Marie Appollinaire Antoine Cousin-Montauban, 1er Comte de Palikao was a French general and statesman.
WLouise Poitelon du Tarde, vicomtesse de Lezay-Marnésia (1826–1891), was a French courtier. She served as lady-in-waiting to the empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo.
WJacques Louis César Alexandre Randon, 1st Count Randon was a French military and political leader, also Marshal of France and governor of Algeria.
WAuguste Michel Étienne Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély, later 2nd Count Regnaud de Saint-Jean d'Angély was a Marshal of France, soldier and politician.
WAdmiral Pierre-Louis-Charles Rigault de Genouilly was a French naval officer. He fought with distinction in the Crimean War and the Second Opium War, but is chiefly remembered today for his command of French and Spanish forces during the opening phase of the Cochinchina campaign (1858–62), which inaugurated the French conquest of Vietnam.
WLouis-Victor-Léon de Rochechouart was a French general of the House of Rochechouart fighting in the Royalist, Imperial Russian and Bourbon armies of the Napoleonic Wars.
WPrincess Éléonore-Justine Bonaparte was the wife of Prince Pierre-Napoléon Bonaparte. Under the pseudonym Nina Bonaparte she published a memoir titled History of My Life. As she was from a peasant background, her morganatic marriage to Prince Pierre-Napoléon, although recognized by the Catholic Church, was not accepted by Napoleon III and the House of Bonaparte and did not receive civil legitimacy until the fall of the Second French Empire.
WMarie Valentine Joséphine de Sainte-Aldegonde, Duchess of Dino was the wife of Alexandre Edmond de Talleyrand-Périgord, 3rd Duke of Dino, and mistress of Anatoly Nikolaievich Demidov, 1st Prince of San Donato.
WNathalie de Ségur, baronne de Malaret, was a French courtier. She served as lady-in-waiting to the empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo.
WEdmond de Talleyrand-Périgord, 2nd Duke of Talleyrand, 2nd Duke of Dino, was a French general of the Napoleonic Wars.
WCharles Guillaume Frédéric Boson de Talleyrand-Périgord, prince of Sagan, duke of Sagan and duke of Talleyrand was a famous French dandy, and the grandson of Dorothea von Biron.
WJean-Baptiste Philibert Vaillant, 1st Comte Vaillant, born in Dijon, was a Marshal of France.
WCharles-Louis-Gaspard-Gabriel de Salviac, baron de Viel Castel was a French historian and diplomat. He was a great-nephew of Mirabeau via his mother, and the elder brother of Horace de Viel-Castel.
WMarc-Roch-Horace de Salviac, comte de Viel-Castel, known as Horace de Viel-Castel, was an art lover and collector, and director of the Louvre until 1863. A Bonapartist, he staunchly supported Napoleon III. He was an intimate of Princess Mathilde and of Alfred de Musset, the right arm of Nieuwerkerke until his disgrace on 12 March 1863.
WAdrienne de Villeneuve-Bargemont, comtesse de Montebello (1826-1870), was a French courtier. She served as lady-in-waiting to the empress of France, Eugénie de Montijo.
WDoña María Amparo Muñoz y Borbón, 1st Countess of Vista Alegre was the daughter of Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, queen dowager and regent of Spain, and her morganatic second husband, Agustín Fernando Muñoz, Duke of Riánsares. Her full title was María de los Desamparados Muñoz y de Borbón, condesa de Vista Alegre.
WMarie-Anne Walewska, Duchess Colonna-Walewski, née di Ricci, (1823–1912), was a French courtier and royal mistress. She served as Première dame d'honneur to Empress Eugénie de Montijo in 1868–1870, and was the last to perform this function in France. She is also known for her relationship to Emperor Napoleon III of France in 1857–1861.