Napoleon III

Napoleon III (born April 20, 1808, Paris—died January 9, 1873, Chislehurst, Kent, England) was the nephew of Napoleon I, president of the Second Republic of France (1850–52), and then emperor of the French (1852–70). He gave his country two decades of prosperity under a stable, authoritarian government but finally led it to defeat in the Franco-German War (1870–71).

Youth in exile

He was the third son of Napoleon I’s brother Louis Bonaparte, who was king of Holland from 1806 to 1810, and his wife, Hortense de Beauharnais Bonaparte, stepdaughter of Napoleon I.

Louis-Napoléon’s childhood and youth were spent largely in exile. His mother, like all the Bonapartes, was banished from France in 1815 after the fall of Napoleon I. Eventually, she found a new home in Switzerland, where, in 1817, she bought the castle of Arenenberg. Of romantic disposition herself, she inspired young Louis-Napoléon with a longing for his lost fatherland, as well as with enthusiastic admiration of the genius of Napoleon I. After attending a grammar school at Augsburg, Germany (1821–23), her “sweet stubborn boy” was taught by private tutors. During visits to relatives in southern Germany and Italy, he became acquainted not only with other exiled victims of the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy but also with the life of a suppressed people, such as those Italians who were living under Austrian and papal rule. He was, above all, interested in history and inspired by the idea of national liberty. Accordingly, he took part in an unsuccessful plot against the papal government in Rome in 1830 and in the rebellion in central Italy in 1831, in which his beloved brother perished. He himself was saved from the Austrian troops only by his mother’s bold intervention.

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Claim to the throne

After the death in 1832 of his cousin the Duke of Reichstadt (Napoleon I’s only son), Louis-Napoléon considered himself his family’s claimant to the French throne. To be better prepared for his task, he completed his military training and pursued his studies of economic and social problems. Soon after, he felt ready to publish his own writings on political and military subjects. In his pamphlet “Rêveries politiques” (1832), he asserted that only an emperor could give France both glory and liberty. He thus wanted to make his name known, propagate his ideas, and recruit adherents. Convinced that as Napoleon’s nephew he would be popular with the French army, he vainly tried, on October 30, 1836, to win over the Strasbourg garrison for a coup d’état. King Louis-Philippe exiled him to the United States, from which he was recalled early in 1837 by his mother’s last illness. Expelled from Switzerland in 1838, he settled in England.

In 1839 he published “Des idées napoléoniennes.” So far, Bonapartism had been nothing but a wistful reminiscing of former beneficiaries of the empire or a romantic legend created by those who were dissatisfied with the humdrum present. In his new booklet Louis-Napoléon tried to transform Bonapartism into a political ideology. In doing so, he obeyed mystical inspirations as well as rationalism. To him, ideology and politics were the result of rational reflection as well as of belief. The central exponent in history was, in his opinion, the great personality called by Providence and representing progress. Napoleon I had been such a man, even though he was not allowed to finish his work. But Napoleon, the “Messiah of the new ideas,” was survived by the “Napoleonic idea,” for the “political creed,” like the religious creeds, had its martyrs and apostles. The Napoleonic idea was a “social and industrial one, humanitarian and encouraging trade,” that would “reconcile order and freedom, the rights of the people and the principles of authority.” Louis-Napoléon saw it as his task to accomplish this mission.

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Landing with 56 followers, near Boulogne, France, on August 6, 1840, he was again unsuccessful. The town’s garrison did not join him. He was arrested, brought to trial, and sentenced to “permanent confinement in a fortress.” At his “university of Ham” (the castle in which he was held) he spent his time studying to fit himself for his imperial role. He corresponded with members of the French opposition and published articles in some of their newspapers. He also wrote several brochures, among them “Extinction du paupérisme” (1844), which won him some supporters on the left. It was not until May 25, 1846, that he succeeded in escaping and fleeing to Great Britain, where he waited for another chance to seize power.

Presidency

On hearing of the outbreak of the revolution, in February 1848, he travelled to Paris but was sent back by the provisional government. Some of his supporters, however, organized a small Bonapartist party and nominated him as their candidate for the Constituent Assembly. On June 4 he was elected in four départements but, awaiting more settled conditions, he refused to take his seat. Running again in September, he was elected in five départements, and after his arrival in Paris he lost no time in preparing to run for the presidency. He was supported by the newly founded Party of Order, which consisted of adherents of the Bourbons, Louis-Philippe, and Catholics. Lacking a suitable candidate, they regarded Louis-Napoléon—not a skilled parliamentarian but a popular figure—as a useful tool.

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He used, now on a large scale, the kind of propaganda that had won him elections before. Because of his name and his descent, the Emperor’s nephew captivated the voters. Evoking the Napoleonic legend with its memories of national glory, Louis-Napoléon promised to bring back those days in time of peace. He succeeded also in recommending himself to every group of the population by promising to safeguard their particular interests. He promised “order” and “prosperity” to the middle class and the farmers and assistance to the poor. In December 1848 he was the only candidate to obtain votes—totalling 5,434,226—from among all classes of the population.

He took office, determined to free himself from dependence on the Party of Order, which had also won the parliamentary elections of May 1849. The government sent a military expedition to help the Pope reconquer Rome. At home it deprived active Republicans of their government positions and restricted their liberties, but the President could rely on only about a dozen members of the National Assembly who were Bonapartists. Prudently expanding his power by using every right the constitution granted him, Louis-Napoléon soon obtained key positions in the administration and in the army for his adherents. On October 31, he succeeded for the first time in appointing a Cabinet consisting of men depending more on him than on the National Assembly. By travelling through the country he gained wide popularity. Moreover, he used the disfranchisement of 3,000,000 electors of the poorer classes by the National Assembly in 1850 and an economic recession in 1851 as a pretext for agitating against the parties and for advertising himself as the “strong man” against the danger of a nonexistent revolution.

The constitution forbade the reelection of the president after expiration of his four-year term, and when Louis-Napoléon realized that he could not obtain the three-fourths majority necessary for a revision of the constitution he carried out a coup d’état on December 2. Only the Republicans dared to resist him. On December 4 they were defeated in street fighting in Paris, just as they were in other towns and in some regions. Arrests and deportations numbered in the thousands. Louis-Napoléon dissolved the Legislative Assembly and decreed a new constitution, which among other provisions restored universal suffrage. A plebiscite approved the new constitution. Encouraged by his success, he held another plebiscite in November 1852 and was confirmed as emperor after the resolution of the Senate concerning the restitution of the empire. Failing to obtain the hand of a princess of equal birth, Napoleon III married the countess Eugénie de Montijo in January 1853.