General Lee CDV in photo album compiled by French Catholic Royalist, c. 1860s

chubachus

First Sergeant
Joined
Nov 27, 2014
Location
Virginia
cdv lee.jpg


Interesting placement on a page with some other foreign subjects to a Frenchman. This album was said to have been compiled during the 1860s or 1870s.

Source: Getty, http://www.getty.edu/art/collection...yalist-album-of-cartes-de-visite-1860s-1870s/
 
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This popular photo of Lee is attributed to Minnis & Cowell and is thought to have been taken in 1862.
The Virginia Museum of History and Culture.
From the Collections of the Confederate Memorial Literary Society and the Virginia Historical Society.

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The bespectacled man on the opposite page to Lee is Paul Alexandre Protais, a French painter of military subjects, and the card next to him which is described as "Avant le Combat, Tableau de Protais" is in fact entitled, "Matin: Avant L'Attaque," and I think it shows an imaginary scene in the Franco-Prussian War.

Protais also painted a depiction of the recovery of the body of Louis Napoleon, the French Prince Imperial, during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879.
His father, Emperor Napoleon III (nephew of Napoleon I) and Empress Eugenie sought refuge in England after the French National Assembly blamed the Emperor for their humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and established the Third French Republic.

Their son, the Prince Imperial joined the British Army. He was killed when he and a small party were involved in a small skirmish with Zulus. An officer named Carey who had been detailed as a bodyguard survived the fight, and although he was officially exonerated by a court martial he never lived down the disgrace, in the eyes of the Army, of failing to either save the Prince, or die alongside him. There is a fine statue of the Prince at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

Part of the entourage accompanying Napoleon and Eugenie to England was the American "Colonel" Zebulon Howell Benton (b. 1811, d. 1893) who had married the daughter of Joseph Bonaparte, the brother of Napoleon I. I don't know of any ACW history pertaining to Zebulon - perhaps other Forum members may be able to throw some light on this ? (If there is any to be thrown.)

Napoleon III, his wife Eugenie, and their only child, the Prince Imperial (whose body was returned from South Africa) are all buried in England.
 
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