Soledad Bazaine
Bazaines, apart from a miscarriage which occured somewhere along the way, until war again caught up with them at the end of the decade. This was the Emperor's bid to free the Italians from Austria, and the fighting took place in the northern mountains of Italy. This time Soledad, whom he now referred to as 'chere Marie', could not join Achille close to the battlefield and she spent the campaign miserably cooped up in Genoa, where she suffered a further miscarriage. With the war won she was able to join her husband in Pavia, but the weather was terrible, she was still feeling weak and unwell and was no doubt depressed that she did not seem to be able to bear children.
In 1862, the couple were parted again, as Achille was selected to play a major part in Louis Napoleon's Mexican adventure. He performed brilliantly and as hostilities drew to a close he was nominated Viceroy. At the beginning of 1864 he was looking forward to his beloved Soledad coming out to join him in the Cortez palace, when shocking news came of her strangely sudden death.
Even at the end of her life, Soledad had attracted controversy. There were strong rumours of a liaison with the husband of a famous actress of the Comedie Francaise. The lady in question had discovered passionate letters from Soledad amongst her husband's affairs, and in a jealous rage had dispatched them to Bazaine in Mexico, telling Soledad that she had done so. Soledad, the rumours went, had rushed off to Compiegne to the Emperor, imploring him to intercept the mail. This he undertook to do, but he was too late, and Soledad had returned home in a highly emotional state, the news of her death coming very shortly afterwards.
In the event Bazaine never received the letters - his personal staff always opened his mail, and would have destroyed them immediately - and he was devastated by the loss of his beloved 'Marie'; Her death seems to have been widely regretted - the grieving widower received the personal condolences of the Emperor and the Empress. Notwithstanding, he doesn't seem to have stayed grieving for very long - such strong rumours of scandal could not have been kept from him for ever - and he was to remarry only a year later His second wife Pepita Pena, a 17 year old raven haired Mexican beauty (he was
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