Napoleon III of France
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Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808, Paris, France - 9 January 1873, Chislehurst, Kent, England) was a President of France, and later, Emperor of the French.
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Biography
Bonaparte, generally known as 'Louis Napoleon' until he became Emperor, was the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, who was the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte's wife Josephine de Beauharnais by her first marriage. The identity of his biological father remains a subject of speculation, given his unhappily married mother's record of extramarital liaisons. The father of record, however, was Hortense's husband, Louis Bonaparte, a younger brother of Napoleon, and his whole career was built upon the (supposed) fact that he was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. During Napoleon I's reign, his parents had been made king and queen of a French puppet state, the Kingdom of Holland, meaning that Louis Napoleon bore the title of prince. After Napoleon I's final defeat and deposition in 1815 and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, all members of the Bonaparte family were forced into exile, so the child Louis Napoleon was brought up in Switzerland and Italy. As a young man in Italy, he and his elder brother Napoleon Louis espoused liberal politics and became involved in the Carbonari, a resistance organization fighting Austrian domination of Northern Italy. This would later have an effect on his foreign policy.
There remained in France, under both the Bourbon and then the Orleanist monarchy, a Bonapartist movement which wanted to restore a Bonaparte to the throne. According to the law of succession Napoleon I had made when he was Emperor, the claim passed first to his son, the supposed Napoleon II, a sickly youth living under virtual imprisonment at the court of Vienna, then to his eldest brother Joseph Bonaparte, then to Louis Bonaparte and his sons. (Louis' elder brother Lucien Bonaparte and his descendants were passed over by the law of succession because Lucien had attracted Napoleon I's displeasure and had opposed Napoleon I's making himself Emperor). Since Joseph had no male children, and because Louis Napoleon's own elder brother had died in 1831, the death of Napoleon II in 1832 made Louis Napoleon the Bonaparte heir in the next generation. As such he secretly returned to France in October 1836 for the first time since his childhood to try and lead a Bonapartist coup. He failed but escaped. He tried again in August 1840, and this time was caught and imprisoned (in relative comfort) in the fortress of Ham. While imprisoned he had two illegitimate children by his parlourmaid and wrote tracts that combined his monarchical claim with progressive, even mildly socialist economics. In 1844 his uncle Joseph died, making him the direct heir apparent to the Bonaparte claim. He finally managed to escape to the United Kingdom in May 1846. A month later, his father Louis was dead, making Louis Napoleon, in Bonapartist eyes, rightful Emperor of the French.
Louis Napoleon lived in Britain until the revolution of February 1848 in France desposed King Louis Phillipe and established a Republic. He was now free to return to France, which he immediately did. He ran for, and won, a seat in the assembly elected to draft a new constitution, but did not make a great contribution and, as a mediocre public speaker failed to impress his fellow members. (Some even said, having lived outside France almost all his life, he spoke French with an accent!). However, when the constitution had been was written and direct elections for the Presidency were held on December 10, Louis Napoleon won in a landslide, with 5,454,000 votes (around 75%) to his nearest rival Louis Eugene Cavaignac's 1,448,000. His overwhelming victory was due to above all to the support of the often apolitical peasantry, to whom the Bonaparte name, unlike normal politics, meant something. Louis Napoleon's platform was the restoration of order after months of political turmoil, strong government, social consolidation and national greatness, and its appeal was given great credibility by his name, that of France's national hero who in popular memory was credited with bringing the nation to its pinnacle of military greatness and establishing social stability after the turmoil of the French Revolution.
On December 2, 1851 President Bonaparte seized dictatorial powers. This move was confirmed after the event by referendum. A new constitution officially retained an elected Parliament, but real power was completely concentrated in the hands of Louis Napoleon and his bureaucracy. Exactly one year later, on December 2 1852, after approval by another referendum, the Second Republic was officially ended and the Napoleonic Empire restored. President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor Napoléon III. In a situation that resembles the case of Louis XVIII of France, the numbering of Napoléon's reign treats Napoléon II of France, who never actually ruled, as a true Emperor (he had been briefly recognized as emperor from June 22 to July 7, 1815). That same year, he began shipping political prisoners and criminals to penal colonies such as Devil's Island (in French Guyana) or (in milder cases) New Caledonia. The Emperor, hitherto a bachelor (though certainly not a chaste one) began quickly to look for a wife to produce a legitimate heir. Most of the royal families of Europe were unwilling to marry into the parvenu Bonaparte family (clearly not real royalty), and after a rebuff from Queen Victoria's German niece Princess Adelaide von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Napoleon decided to lower his sights somewhat and 'marry for love' (though he did not give up his mistresses), choosing the young, beautiful Countess of Teba, Eugenie, a Spanish noblewoman with some Scottish ancestry who had been brought up in Paris. On 28 April 1855 Napoleon survived an attempted assassination. In 1856, Eugenie gave birth a legitimate son and heir, Eugene Bonaparte, the Prince Imperial.
Napoléon III was determined to follow a strong foreign policy to extend France's power and glory. His challenge to Russia's claims to influence in the Ottoman Empire led to France's successful participation in the Crimean War (March 1854–March 1856). He approved the launching of a naval expedition in 1858 to punish the Vietnamese and force the court to accept a French presence in the country. On January 14, 1858 Napoléon escaped another assassination attempt. In May–July 1859 French intervention secured the defeat of Austria in Italy, and the result of this was the unification of Italy, and the acquisition of Savoy and the region of Nice (the so-called French Riviera) by France in 1860, the last time France extended its territory in Europe. France took part in the Second Opium War along with Great Britain, and in 1860 the French troops entered Beijing. In the beginning of the 1860s, the objectives of the Emperor in foreign policy had been met: France had scored several military victories in Europe and abroad, the humiliation of Waterloo had been exorcised, and France was regarded again as the largest military power in Europe.
However, the French intervention in Mexico (January 1862–March 1867) ended in defeat and in the execution of the French-backed Emperor Maximilian. More importantly, France saw her influence eroded by Prussia's crushing victory over Austria in June–August 1866. Due to his Carbonari past, Napoléon was unable to bring himself to ally with Austria, despite the obvious threat that a victorious Prussia would present to France.
He would pay the price for this blunder in 1870 when, forced by the diplomacy of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Napoléon began the Franco-Prussian War. This war proved disastrous, and was instrumental in giving birth to the German Empire. In battle against Prussia in July 1870 the Emperor was captured at the Battle of Sedan (September 2) and was deposed by the forces of the Third Republic in Paris two days later. He died in exile in England on January 9, 1873.
He is buried in the Imperial Crypt at Saint Michael's Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire, England.
Napoleon stayed at No. 6 Clarendon Square, Royal Leamington Spa between 1838-1839. The building is now called Napoleon House and has a 'Blue Badge' put up by the local council.
Legacy
An important change during his reign was the rebuilding of Paris. Part of the design decisions were taken in order to reduce the ability of future revolutionaries to challenge the government. Large sections of the city were razed and the old convoluted streets were replaced with many broad avenues, with the intent of allowing cannon and cavalry to be used easily within the city. The rebuilding of Paris was directed by Baron Haussmann (1809–1891; Prefect of the Seine département 1853–1870).
He also directed the building of the French railway network, which greatly contributed to the development of the coal mining and steel industry in France, radically changing the nature of the French economy, which entered the modern age of large-scale capitalism. The French economy, the second largest in the world at the time (behind Great Britain), experienced a very strong growth during the reign of Napoléon III. Names such as steel tycoon Eugène Schneider or banking mogul James de Rothschild are symbols of the period. The two largest French banks, Société Générale and Crédit Lyonnais, still in existence today, were founded during that period. The French stock market also expanded prodigiously, with many coal mining and steel companies issuing stocks. Although largely forgotten by later Republican generations, which only remembered the non-democratic nature of the regime, the economic successes of the Second Empire are today recognized as impressive by historians. The emperor himself, who had spent his youth in Victorian England, was largely influenced by the ideas of the Industrial Revolution in England, and he took particular care of the economic development of the country. He is recognized as the first ruler of France to have taken great care of the economy, previous rulers considering it secondary.
Napoléon III, to this day, has not enjoyed the prestige that Napoleon I enjoyed. Victor Hugo called him "Napoleon the small", as opposed to Napoleon I "The Great". Karl Marx mocked Napoléon III by saying that history repeats itself: "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." Napoléon III has often been seen as a mediocrity, an authoritarian but ineffectual leader who brought France into dubious, and ultimately disastrous, foreign military adventures. In France, the arch-opposition of the age's central literary figure, Victor Hugo, whose attacks on Napoleon III were obsessive and powerful, made it impossible for a very long time to assess his reign objectively. However, in the latter part of the 20th century historians have done much to restore the image of Napoléon III. The diplomatic, and above all economic achievements of the reign are now recognized. His supporters among historians have emphasised his attention to the problem of poverty. In an age where 'laissez-faire' economics were the unquestioned orthodoxy, the poor left to market forces and private charity, Napoleon III's approach sometimes seemed vaguely radical. His book Extinction du paupérisme ("Extinction of pauperism"), which he wrote while imprisoned at the Fort of Ham in 1844, contributed greatly to his popularity among the working classes and thus his election win in 1848, and throughout his reign the emperor showed concerns to alleviate the sufferings of the poor in the empire, on occasion doing the unthinkable and using state resorces or interfering in the market. Among other things, the Emperor granted the right to strike to French workers in 1864, despite intense opposition from corporate lobbies. The Emperor also ordered the creation of three large parks in Paris (Parc Monceau, Parc Montsouris, and Parc des Buttes-Chaumont) with the clear intention of offering them for poor working families as an alternative to the pub (bistrot) on Sundays, much as Victoria Park in London was also built with the same social motives in mind. For his combination of these economic ideas with monarchical pomp and an aggressive foreign and military policy, Napoleon III has been called a "socialist on horseback". Others have seen in Napoleon's combination of illiberal, undemocratic, centralised government, state interference in the economy, and foreign policy adventurism the forerunner of modern totalitarianism, even fascism, although of course very far from the modern product.
Preceded by: Louis-Eugène CAVAIGNAC (President of the Council of Ministers) |
Head of State of France | Succeeded by: Louis-Jules TROCHU (chairman of the Government of National Defense) |
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President of the Republic (December 20, 1848 – December 2, 1852) |
Emperor of the French (December 2, 1852 – September 4, 1870) |
Succeeded by: Napoléon IV (not recognized, never reigned) |
Publications
- The leading comprehensive histories of the Second Empire are:
- De la Gorce, Histoire du second empire, (four volumes, Paris, 1885-98), and
- Taxile Delord, Histoire du second empire, (six volumes, Paris, 1869-76).
- Other works are many, e. g.,:
- Bernhard Simson, Ueber die Beziehungen Napoleond III. zu Preussen und Deutschland, (Freiburg, 1882)
- Adolf Ebeling, Napoleon III. und sein Hof, (Cologne, 1891-94)
- Thirra, Napoléon III avant l'empire, (Paris, 1895)
- E. Ollivier, L'Empire libéral, (Paris, 1895-1909)
- A. L. Imbert de Saint-Amand, Napoleon III at the Height of his Power, (New York, 1900)
- T. W. Evans, Memoirs of the Second French Empire, (New York, 1905)
See also
External links