Napoleon III of France

This article is about the president and emperor of France. For the king of Holland, please see Louis Bonaparte

Napoléon III, Emperor of the French (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte) (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was President of France from 1849 to 1852, and then Emperor of the French under the name Napoléon III from 1852 to 1870.

Biography

Early life

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, as he was known before becoming emperor, was born in Paris. He was the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, who was the daughter of Napoléon I'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. His assumed father, however, was Hortense's husband, Louis Bonaparte, a younger brother of Napoléon I, and his whole career was built upon the (supposed) fact that he was the nephew of Napoléon I. During Napoléon I's reign, his parents had been made king and queen of a French puppet state, the Kingdom of Holland, meaning that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte bore the title of prince. After Napoléon 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 young Louis-Napoléon was brought up in Switzerland, Germany (studying at Heidelberg) and Italy. As a young man in Italy, he and his elder brother Napoléon 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 Napoléon I had made when he was Emperor, the claim passed first to his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, known by Bonapartists as Napoléon 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 Napoléon I's displeasure and had opposed Napoléon I's making himself Emperor). Since Joseph had no male children, and because Louis-Napoléon's own elder brother had died in 1831, the death of Napoléon II in 1832 made Louis-Napoléon the Bonaparte heir in the next generation. His uncle and father, relatively old men by now, left to him the active leadership of the Bonapartist cause.

Thus he secretly returned to France in October 1836, for the first time since his childhood, to try to lead a Bonapartist coup at Strasbourg. The coup failed but he managed to escape. He tried again in August 1840, sailing a ship with some hired soldiers into Boulogne, and this time he was caught and imprisoned (in relative comfort) in the fortress of the town of Ham. During his years of imprisonment he wrote essays and pamphlets that combined his monarchical claim with progressive, even mildly socialist economic proposals. In 1844 his uncle Joseph died, making him the direct heir apparent to the Bonaparte claim. He finally managed to escape to Southport, United Kingdom in May 1846 by changing clothes with a mason working at the fortress. A month later, his father Louis was dead, making Louis-Napoléon, in Bonapartist eyes, rightful Emperor of the French.

President of the French Republic

Louis-Napoléon lived in Great Britain until the revolution of February 1848 in France deposed 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 orator, failed to impress his fellow members. Some even said that having lived outside of France almost all his life, he spoke French with an accent.

However, when the constitution of the French Second Republic was finally promulgated and direct elections for the presidency were held on December 10, 1848, Louis-Napoléon won in a landslide, with 5,454,000 votes (around 75% of votes) against his closest rival Louis-Eugene Cavaignac's 1,448,000 votes. His overwhelming victory was above all due to the support of the non-politicized rural masses, to whom the name of Bonaparte meant something, contrary to the names of the other contenders for the presidency which were unknown to the masses. Louis-Napoléon's platform was the restoration of order after months of political turmoil, strong government, social consolidation, and national greatness, to which he appealed with all the credit of his name, that of France's national hero Napoléon I 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.

In the third year of his four-year mandate, President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte asked the National Assembly for a revision of the constitution to enable the president to run for re-election, arguing that four years were not enough to implement his political and economic program fully. The Constitution of the Second Republic stated that the presidency of the Republic was to be held for a single term of four years, with no possibility to run for re-election, a restriction written in the constitution for fear that a president would abuse his power to transform the Republic into a dictatorship or a sort of life presidency. The National Assembly, which was dominated by the Monarchists, opposed to Louis-Napoléon and in favor of the restoration of the Bourbon dynasty, refused to amend the constitution.

After months of stalemate, President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte staged a coup and seized dictatorial powers on the symbolic date of December 2, 1851, the exact 47th anniversary of Napoléon I's crowning as Emperor, and also the exact 46th anniversary of the famous Battle of Austerlitz. The coup was later approved by French people in a national referendum whose fairness and legality has been questioned ever since. The coup of 1851 definitely alienated Republicans from Napoléon III, and durably tarnished his reputation among later historians. Victor Hugo, who had hitherto shown support toward Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, decided to go into exile after the coup, and became one of the harshest critics of Napoléon III.

Emperor of the French

Authoritarian Empire

New constitutional statutes were passed which officially maintained an elected Parliament, but real power was completely concentrated in the hands of Louis-Napoléon and his bureaucracy. Exactly one year later, on December 2, 1852, after approval by another referendum, the Second Republic was officially ended and the Empire restored, ushering in the Second French Empire. President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became Emperor Napoléon III. In a situation that resembles the case of Louis XVIII of France, the numbering of Napoléon's reign treats Napoléon II, 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, 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, and after a rebuff from Queen Victoria's German niece Princess Adelaide von Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Napoléon decided to lower his sights somewhat and 'marry for love', choosing the young, beautiful Countess of Teba, Eugénie de Montijo, a Spanish noblewoman with some Scottish ancestry who had been brought up in Paris. On April 28, 1855 Napoléon survived an attempted assassination. In 1856, Eugenie gave birth to a legitimate son and heir, Napoléon Eugène Louis, the Prince Impérial. On January 14, 1858 Napoléon and his wife escaped another assassination attempt, plotted by Felice Orsini.

Foreign policy

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 for their mistreatment of French Catholic missionaries and force the court to accept a French presence in the country. 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. 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 defeat at Waterloo had been exorcised, and France was regarded again as the largest military power in Europe.

During the American Civil War, Napoleon III brought France to the fore of the pro-Confederate European powers. For a time, Napoleon III inched steadily towards officially recognizing the Confederacy, especially after the crash of the cotton industry and his expedition in Mexico. It is also said that he was driven by a desire to keep the Union split. Through 1862, Napoleon III entertained Confederate diplomats, raising hopes that he would unilaterally recognize the Confederacy. The Emperor, however, could move little without the support of Great Britain, and never officially recognized the Confederacy.

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 dominance on the continent of Europe 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.

Demise

Napoléon III paid the price for his Austrian blunder in 1870 when, forced by the diplomacy of the Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Napoléon began the Franco-Prussian War. This war proved disastrous for France, and was instrumental in giving birth to the German Empire, which took France's place as the major land power on the continent of Europe. 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, at Chislehurst (Kent), on January 9, 1873.

He is buried in the Imperial Crypt at Saint Michael's Abbey, Farnborough, Hampshire, England.

Napoléon stayed at No. 6 Clarendon Square, Royal Leamington Spa between 1838-1839. The building is now called Napoleon House and has a 'Blue plaque' put up by the local council.

For more details on Napoléon III's reign, see the article on the Second French Empire.

Legacy

An important legacy of Napoléon III's 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 by capitalizing on the small, medieval streets Paris to form barricades. However, this should not overlook the fact that the main reason for the complete transformation of Paris was Napoléon III's desire to modernize Paris based on what he had seen of the modernizations of London during his exile there in the 1840s. With his characteristic social approach to politics, Napoléon III desired to improve health standards and living conditions in Paris with the following goals: build a modern sewage system to improve health, develop new housing with larger apartments for the masses, create green parks all across the city to try and keep working classes away from the pubs on Sunday, etc. Large sections of the city were thus flattened down and the old winding streets were replaced with large thoroughfares and broad avenues. The rebuilding of Paris was directed by Baron Haussmann (1809–1891; Prefect of the Seine département 1853–1870). It was this rebuilding that turned Paris into the city of broad tree-lined boulevards and parks so beloved of tourists today.

Napoléon III 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. Two of France's largest 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 several years in exile in Victorian Lancashire, 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.

Opinions

Napoléon III, to this day, has not enjoyed the prestige that Napoléon I enjoyed. Victor Hugo portrayed him as "Napoléon the small" (Napoléon le Petit), a mere mediocrity in contrast with Napoléon I "The Great", presented as a military and administrative genius. In France, such arch-opposition from the age's central literary figure, whose attacks on Napoléon III were obsessive and powerful, made it impossible for a very long time to assess his reign objectively. Karl Marx mocked Napoléon III by saying that history repeats itself: "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce" (in relation to the fact that both Napoleon I and subsequently Napoleon III seized power with dubious legality). Napoléon III has often been seen as an authoritarian but ineffectual leader who brought France into dubious, and ultimately disastrous, foreign military adventures.

However, in the latter part of the 20th century historians have moved to reconsider the image of Napoléon III. The diplomatic, and above all, the economic achievements of the reign are now recognized (although diplomatic blunders must also be admitted - most noticeably, he was no match in diplomatic shrewdness for Bismarck). Historians have also emphasized his attention to the fate of working classes and poor people. He was one of the very few rulers of Europe showing concern for these issues, in an age where 'laissez-faire' economics were the unquestioned orthodoxy, the poor left to market forces and private charity. 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. 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 resources 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 active foreign and military policy, Napoléon III has been called a "socialist on horseback".

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)
Marie-Clotilde-Elisabeth Louise de Riquet, comtesse de Mercy-Argenteau, The Last Love of an Emperor: reminiscences of the Comtesse Louise de Mercy-Argenteau, née Princesse de Caraman-Chimay, describing her association with the Emperor Napoléon III and the social and political part she played at the close of the Second Empire (Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, Page & Co., 1926)

Movie portrayals

Leon Ames played him in Suez (1938), although Loretta Young as Eugenie is much more highlighted.
Claude Rains shows him in Juarez (1939) as a weak man ready to betray Maximilian in Mexico.

External links

Napoléon III

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