Louis-Napolon Bonaparte (20 April 1808 9 January 1873) was the first President of the French

Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor of the Second French Empire. He was the
nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a direct
popular vote. However, when he was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for
a second term, he organized a coup d'tat in 1851, and then took the throne as Napoleon III on 2
December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation.
During the first years of the Empire, his government imposed censorship and harsh repressive
measures against his opponents. Some six thousand were imprisoned or sent to penal colonies
until 1859. Thousands more, including Victor Hugo, went into voluntary exile abroad.[1] Beginning
in 1862, Napoleon loosened the reins, in what was known as the "Liberal Empire." Many of his
opponents returned to France and became members of the National Assembly.[2]
Napoleon III is best known today for his grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of
the Seine Baron Haussmann. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and
other French cities.[3]
Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded and consolidated the
French railroad system, and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world.
He promoted the building of the Suez Canal, and established modern agriculture, which ended
famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter. He negotiated the first international
free trade agreement with Britain, and similar agreements with France's other European trading
partners.[4] Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to
organize. Women's education greatly expanded, as did the list of required subjects in public
schools.[5]
In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the world.
He was a supporter of popular sovereignty, and of nationalism.[6] In Europe, he allied with Britain
and defeated Russia in the Crimean War (185456). French troops both assisted Italian
unification, and defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. Napoleon doubled the
area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific and Africa. His attempt to control Mexico
ended in a spectacular failure in 1867.
Beginning in 1866 Napoleon had to face the mounting power of Prussia, as Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck sought German unification under Prussian leadership. In July 1870 Napoleon entered
the Franco-Prussian War without allies and with inferior military forces. The French army was
rapidly defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The French Third Republic
was proclaimed in Paris, and Napoleon went into exile in England, where he died in 1873.
Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, later known as Louis Napoleon and then Napoleon III, was
born in Paris on the night of 2021 April 1808. His father was Louis Bonaparte, the younger
brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made Louis the King of Holland from 1805 until 1810. His
mother was Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter by the first marriage of Napoleon's wife
Josphine de Beauharnais. As empress, Josphine proposed the marriage as a way to produce
an heir for the Emperor, who agreed, as Josphine was by then infertile.[7] Louis married
Hortense when he was twenty-four and she was nineteen. They had a difficult relationship, and
only lived together for brief periods. Their first son died in 1807, and, though separated, they
decided to have a third. They resumed their marriage for a brief time in Toulouse in July 1807,
and Louis was born, premature, two weeks short of nine months later. Louis Bonaparte's
enemies, including Victor Hugo, spread the gossip that he was the child of a different man, but
most historians agree today that he was the legitimate son of Louis Bonaparte.[8][9] (see
Ancestry) .[10]
Charles-Louis was baptized at the Palace of Fontainebleau on 5 November 1810, with the
Emperor Napoleon serving as his godfather, and the Empress Marie-Louise as his godmother.

His father, once again separated from Hortense, stayed away. At the age of seven, LouisNapoleon visited his uncle at the Tuileries Palace in Paris. His uncle held him up to the window to
see the soldiers parading in the courtyard of the Carousel below. He last saw his uncle with the
family at the Chteau de Malmaison, shortly before Napoleon departed for Waterloo.[11]
After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France,
all members of the Bonaparte dynasty were forced into exile. Hortense and Louis-Napoleon
wandered from Aix to Berne to Baden, and finally to Switzerland, in a lakeside house at
Arenenberg, in the canton of Thurgau, and to Germany, where he received some of his education
at the gymnasium school at Augsburg, Bavaria. As a result, for the rest of his life his French had a
slight, but noticeable, German accent. His tutor at home was Philippe Le Bas, an ardent
republican and the son of a revolutionary and close friend of Robespierre. Le Bas taught him
French history and radical politics.[12]
When Louis-Napoleon was fifteen, Hortense moved to Rome, where the Bonapartes had a villa.
He passed his time learning Italian, exploring the ancient ruins, and learning the arts of seduction
and romantic affairs, which he used often in his later life. He became friends with the French
Ambassador, Franois-Ren Chateaubriand the father of romanticism in French literature, with
whom he remained in contact for many years. He was reunited with his older brother Napolon
Louis, and together they became involved with the Carbonari, secret revolutionary societies
fighting Austria's domination of northern Italy. In the spring of 1831, when he was twenty-three,
the Austrian and papal governments launched an offensive against the Carbonari, and the two
brothers, wanted by the police, were forced to flee. During their flight Napoleon-Louis contracted
measles and, on 17 March 1831, died in his brother's arms.[13] Hortense joined her son and
together they evaded the police and Austrian army and finally reached the French border.[14]
Hortense and Louis-Napolon travelled incognito to Paris, where the old regime had just fallen
and had been replaced by the more liberal regime of King Louis-Philippe I. They arrived in Paris
on 23 April 1831, and took up residence under the name "Hamilton." in the Hotel du Holland on
Place Vendme. Hortense wrote an appeal to the King, asking to stay in France, and LouisNapoleon offered to volunteer as an ordinary soldier in the French Army. The new King agreed to
meet secretly with Hortense; Louis Napoleon had a fever and did not join them. The King finally
agreed that Hortense and Louis-Napoleon could stay in Paris as long as their stay was brief and
incognito. Louis-Napoleon was told that he could join the French Army if he would simply change
his name, something he indignantly refused to do. Hortense and Louis Napoleon remained in
Paris until 5 May, the tenth anniversary of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. The presence of
Hortense and Louis-Napoleon in the hotel had become known, and a public demonstration of
mourning for the Emperor took place on Place Vendme in front of their hotel. The same day,
Hortense and Louis-Napoleon were ordered to leave Paris. They went to Britain briefly, and then
back into exile in Switzerland.[15]
Bonaparte Succession and philosophy of Bonapartism[edit]
Ever since the fall of Napoleon in 1815, a Bonapartist movement existed in France, hoping to
return a Bonaparte to the throne. According to the law of succession established by Napoleon I,
the claim passed first to his son, who, at birth, had been given the title "King of Rome" by his
father. Known by Bonapartists as Napoleon II, he was living under virtual imprisonment at the
court of Vienna under the name Duke of Reichstadt. Next in line was Napoleon I's eldest brother
Joseph Bonaparte, followed by Louis Bonaparte, but neither Joseph nor Louis Bonaparte had any
interest in reentering public life. When the Duke of Reichstadt died in 1831, Louis-Napolon
became the heir of the dynasty and the leader of the Bonaparte cause.[16]
In exile with his mother in Switzerland, he enrolled in the Swiss Army, trained to become an
officer, and wrote a manual of artillery; his uncle Napoleon Bonaparte had become famous as an
artillery officer. He also began writing about his political philosophy; In 1833, at the age of 25, he
published his Rveries politique, or "political dreams", followed in 1834 by Considrations
politiques et militaire sur la suisse ("Political and military considerations about Switzerland"),

followed in 1839 by Les Ides napoloniennes ("Napoleonic Ideas"), a compendium of his

political ideas, which was published in three editions and eventually translated in six languages.
His doctrine was based upon two ideas; universal suffrage and the primacy of the national
interest. He called for a "Monarchy which procures the advantages of the Republic without the
inconveniences...", a regime "strong without despotism, free without anarchy, independent without
conquest
Living in the comfort of London, he had not given up the dream of returning to France to complete
his destiny. In the summer of 1840 he bought weapons and uniforms and had proclamations
printed, gathered a contingent of about sixty armed men, hired a ship called the EdinburghCastle, and on 6 August 1840, sailed across the Channel to the port of Boulogne. The attempted
coup turned into an even greater fiasco than Strasbourg mutiny. The mutineers were stopped by
the customs agents, the soldiers of the garrison refused to join, the mutineers were surrounded
on the beach, one was killed and the others arrested. Both the British and French press heaped
ridicule on Louis-Napoleon and his plot. The newspaper Le Journal des Dbats wrote, "this
surpasses comedy. One doesn't kill crazy people, one just locks them up." He was put on trial,
where, despite an eloquent defense of his cause, he was sentenced to life in prison in the fortress
of Ham in the Somme department of northern France.[22]
The register of the fortress Ham for 7 October 1840 contained a concise description of the new
prisoner: "Age: thirty-two years. Height: one meter sixty-six. Hair and eyebrows: chestnut. Eyes:
Gray and small. Nose: large. Mouth: ordinary. Beard: brown. Moustache: blond. Chin: pointed.
Face: oval. Complexion: pale. Head: sunken in his shoulders, and large shoulders. Back: bent.
Lips: thick."[23] He had a mistress, a young woman from the nearby town named lonore
Vergeot, who gave birth to two of his children.[24]
While in prison, he wrote poems, political essays, and articles on diverse topics. He contributed
articles to regional newspapers and magazines in towns all over France, becoming quite well
known as a writer. His most famous book was L'extinction du pauperism (1844), a study of the
causes of poverty in the French industrial working class, with proposals to eliminate it. His
conclusion: "The working class has nothing, it is necessary to give them ownership. They have no
other wealth than their own labor, it is necessary to give them work that will benefit all....they are
without organization and without connections, without rights and without a future; it is necessary
to give them rights and a future and to raise them in their own eyes by association, education,
and discipline." He proposed various practical ideas for creating a banking and savings system
that would provide credit to the working class, and to establish agricultural colonies similar to the
kibutzes later founded in Israel.[25] This book was widely reprinted and circulated in France, and
played an important part in his future electoral success.
He was busy in prison, but also unhappy and impatient. He was aware that the popularity of
Napoleon Bonaparte was steadily increasing in France; the Emperor was the subject of heroic
poems, books and plays. Huge crowds had gathered in Paris on 15 December 1840 when the
ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte were returned with great ceremony to Paris and handed over to
Louis-Napoleon's old enemy, King Louis-Philippe, while Louis Napoleon could only read about it
in prison. On 25 May 1846, with this assistance of his doctor and other friends on the outside, he
disguised himself as a laborer carrying lumber, and walked out of the prison. His enemies later
derisively called him "Badinguet", the name of the laborer whose identity he had assumed. A
carriage was waiting to take him to the coast and then by boat to England. A month after his
escape, his father Louis died, making Louis-Napoleon the clear heir to the Bonaparte dynasty.[26]
He returned to England, and quickly resumed his place in British society. He lived on King Street
in St James's, went to the theatre and hunted, renewed his acquaintance with Benjamin Disraeli,
and met Charles Dickens. He went back to his studies at the British Museum. He had an affair
with the actress Rachel the most famous French actress of the period, during her tours to
England. More important for his future career, he had an affair with the wealthy heiress Harriet
Howard (182365). They had met In 1846, soon after his return to England. They began to live

together, she took in his two illegitimate children and raised them with her own son, and she
provided financing for his political plans so that, when the moment came, he could return to Franc