Napoleon III

Charles Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte , known as Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (April 20th 1808 - January 9th 1873), is the first President of the French Republic, elected the December 10th 1848 with 74% of the voices by the male vote for all, as well as the third emperor of the French (1852 - 1870) under the name of Napoleon III . He is thus at the same time the first president of the France and his last Monarque.

Resulting from the House Bonaparte, it is the nephew of Napoleon {{Rom|I}} {{er}}, wire of Louis Bonaparte, and king de Hollande, and of Hortense de Beauharnais, girl of the empress Joséphine. It becomes the elder one of Napoleon after successive deaths of his older brother and of the duke of Reichstadt (“the Eaglet”).

Its first attempts at Coup d'etat, badly conceived and without popular bases, failed; it is the vague revolutionist of 1848 which leads it to political preeminence. The Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851 then enables him to finally lead the imperial restoration to its profit and to exert a personal power without division, even if the very authoritative character of the Second Empire does not cease attenuating after 1859 to make place gradually with " the empire libéral".

The future Napoleon III fact of early knowing his political philosophy in Napoleonean Ideas and the Extinction of Pauperism (1844), mixture of romanticism, authoritative Liberalism, and utopian Socialism. Admiror of British modernity, his reign is marked by a work of industrial development, economic and financial considerable, in particular by the transformation of Paris by the prefect Haussmann. The end of its mode was sealed by its defeat of 1870 at the time of the Guerre free-Prussian.

Object a long time of a black legend due to the hostile work of Victor Hugo and to the III {{E}} Republic, Napoleon III was recently redécouvert by contemporary historiography, in the complexity of its personality, and in the ambivalence of an immense and original work in spite of its limits.

Youth

The law of January 1st, 1816, banishing all the Bonaparte French territory, constrained the Queen Hortense to exile in Swiss where it buys in 1817 the castle of Arenenberg, dominating the Lac of Constancy. It settles there with its two sons.

Without material concern, Louis-Napoleon is raised by his mother in the worship of his uncle and the certainty of his dynastic vocation. The professors of Constance supplement its education. A former officer of its uncle teaches the art of the war to him.

In 1830, it is voluntary in the army Suisse where it obtains the rank of artillery captain in 1834. It obtains nationality Suisse in the canton of Thurgovie, in 1832, which will make say to certain historians that Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte will have been “the Suisse to only reign on the France”.

Attempt at rising in Strasbourg

After the death of the duke of Reichstadt the July 22nd 1832, and insofar as his/her older brother died in 1831, Louis-Napoleon is regarded as the heir to the imperial crown. It organizes its networks in France, and prepares its takeover. Its plan is to raise a garrison and to go on Paris, by gathering on its passage the troops and the populations, on the model of the return of the isle of Elba in 1814.

October 30th, 1836, prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, with a handle of accomplices, carries out an attempt at rising of Strasbourg. He hopes to raise the garrison and, then, to go on Paris and to reverse the monarchy of July. Its plan is to raise a garrison and to go on Paris, by gathering on its passage the troops and the populations, on the model of the return of the isle of Elba in 1814. It throws its reserved on Strasbourg, important military, easily accessible place since Germany and, especially, town of left and patriot.

On the spot, the heart of the plot is colonel Vaudrey, who orders the 4th artillery regiment, in which Napoleon Bonaparte was used for Toulon in 1793, and which is estimated badly treated by the monarchy of July.

The operation is committed on October 30th, 1836 in the morning. It turns short almost at once. The prince and his accomplices are stopped. The king Louis and the uncles of the young prince condemn the operation at once. The queen Hortense writes with Louis-Philippe to suggest to him letting his/her son leave France. The king convinces his government which, apart from any legal procedure, makes lead the prince to Lorient where, provided with an amount of money, it is embarked on Andromède the November 21st 1836 bound for the the United States of America, where it will be unloaded the March 30th 1837.

During this time, its accomplices are judged in Strasbourg before the Court of Assizes, and are discharged by the jury, under the acclamations of the public, on January 18th, 1837. If the attempt were a complete failure, it made known prince Louis-Napoleon in France and identified it with the cause Bonapartiste.

Return in Europe

The prince does not remain a long time with the the United States. He returns soon to Europe and returns to settle in Suisse. In June 1838, one of entreated of Strasbourg, the ex-lieutenant Armand Laity, in a remote way related with the family of Beauharnais, publishes in 10 000 specimens a booklet, undoubtedly financed by Louis-Napoleon, entitled historical Relation of the events of the October 30th 1836 , which is an apology for the Bonapartism. Following this incident, the French government asks Switzerland, at the beginning of the month of August 1838, the expulsion of prince Louis-Napoleon and, sure of the support of the Austria, threat the confederation of a rupture of the diplomatic relations and even of a war, going until concentrating in the the Jura an army of 25 000 men. The Swiss government, made indignant, calls upon the quality of middle-class man of Thurgovie of the prince. Ultimately, this one announces, the August 22nd, its intention to settle in England.

Inheriting his mother in 1839, Louis-Napoleon has the means of printing with 500 000 specimens a booklet detailing its political program: Napoleonean Ideas , in which it makes of the precursor of freedom. With beginning of 1840, its faithful Fialin lance to its turn its Letters of London , which exaltent this prince who “only dares and without support, to undertake the great mission of continuing the work of his/her uncle”.

Since London, the prince prepares a new coup attempt of State. Wanting to benefit from the movement of enthusiasm Bonapartist caused by the decision of the cabinet Thiers to bring back Grey waxbill ashes of the Emperor, it unloads with Boulogne-sur-Mer, the August 6th 1840, in company of some comparses among which a companion of with Sainte-Hélène, the general of Montholon, with the hope to rejoin the 42 {{E}} regiment of line. The operation is a total failure: Louis-Napoleon and his accomplices are stopped and imprisoned with the Fort of Ham. Their lawsuit is held in front of the Chambre of the pars of the September 28th with the October 6th, in an general indifference. The prince, defended by the famous lawyer legitimist Berryer, makes an eloquent speech:

“I represent in front of you a principle, a cause, a defeat. The principle, it is the sovereignty of the people, the cause that of the Empire, the Waterloo defeat. The principle, you recognized it; the cause, you served it; the defeat, you want to avenge it. Representative of a political cause, I then to accept, like judges my wills and of my acts, a political jurisdiction. I do not have justice to await you, and I do not want your generosity. ”

He is not condemned less by it to the perpetual imprisonment.

With the Fortress of Ham, he writes extinction of pauperism (1844), work influenced by the ideas Saint-Simon iennes and developing a populist means to reach the capacity: “ Today, the reign of the castes is finished, one can control only with the masses ”. He escaped from his prison six years later, by borrowing clothing and papers of a painter who, according to some, was called Badinguet. He is established with London before returning during the French revolution of 1848 to present itself to new elections.

Prince-president

The June 4th 1848, it is elected (in 4 departments) and sits at the Assemblée in September. It with the chance not to be compromised in the bloody repression of the Parisian workmen revolted at the time of the insurrectionary days of the 22 - June 26th. Following the promulgation, the November 4th 1848, Constitution of the {{IIe}} Republic, he is candidate with the presidential election, the first with the Vote for all male in France. He is elected for four years the December 10th 1848, with nearly 75% to the voices, exits in particular of the Parti the Order, benefitting from the division of the lefts and the imperial legend, especially since the return of ashes of Napoleon i in 1840.

He lends oath to the constituent Assembly the December 20th 1848 and settles the evening even with the Elysium.

The Constitution of 1848 limit largely capacities of the President who is submitted either to the Parliament or with the Council of State. The presidency of Louis-Napoleon thus is marked by his opposition to the preserving policy of the elected assembly in May 1849: sending in Rome of the troops to subdue a rebellion against the pope; vote Loi Falloux, favorable to religious teaching…

The May 31st 1850, the Parliament votes an electoral law which abolishes the Vote for all Masculin by imposing a three year old residence for the voters what eliminates 3 million people of the electorate of which craftsmen and seasonal workers. The November 4th 1851, in order to divide its adversaries and to increase its personal prestige, Louis Napoleon proposes with the Parliament, on the council of Morny, the abrogation of this law, proposal which is disallowed by 355 votes against 348.

With the beginning of the year 1851, Louis-Napoleon makes pressure to increase the duration of its mandate while the National Assembly is opposed to any project of revision constitutional.

Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851

In the night of the 1 {{er}} with the December 2nd 1851, is 47 years day for day after the sacring of Napoleon {{Rom|I}} {{er}} and 46 years after the Battle of Austerlitz, a decree dissolves illegally the National Assembly and restores the Vote for all. The troops, ordered by the general Magnan, occupy the strategic points of Paris, and the opponents of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte - inter alia Thiers and Cavaignac - are stopped in their residence. Between 5 and 6 hours, two proclamations - with the people and the army - are posted in the streets; Louis Napoleon announces there the dissolution of the Parliament, the re-establishment of the vote for all and the convocation of the electorate for a plebiscite.

Under the terms of article 69 of the Constitution, which very explicitly envisaged the forfeiture of the President in the event of takeover by force against the Parliament, a certain number of deputies brought together with the town hall of Xe district declare L.N. Guilty Bonaparte of high treason. The high Court of justice makes a verdict similar. All are dispersed at once.

Some risings burst in protest. In Paris, the December 3rd, a battalion, hooted by middle-class men Boulevard Good-News, opens fire on crowd. The following day, of the Barricades are dismantled in the working suburbs; the deputy Baudoin dies on the barricade of the Faubourg Saint-Anthony. The 5, the troops controls the city; the engagements made 380 civilian victims. Rural risings Républicains are vigorously repressed in certain departments like the Yonne, the the Low-Alps, the Var and the Lot-et-Garonne. Repression falls down on the republicans, breaking the opposition by massive arrests (approximately 27.000). The case of the defendants is studied in each department by Joint Committees which condemn 15.300 people, 238 being off-set with Cayenne, 9530 in Algérie, 1545 expelled, 2804 interned in France. Organized at once after the coup d'etat, the Plebiscite of the 20 and December 21st 1851 on the new institutions receives a very vast majority of favorable opinions.

In January 1852, a news Constitution increases the term of the office of the President to 10 years.

Emperor

The November 7th 1852, a Sénatus-consulte restores the imperial mode. It is approved by the people at the time of a plebiscite to a very vast majority, the 21 and November 22nd 1852. The December 2nd 1852 begins the Second Empire, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte becomes Napoleon III .
On January 29th and 30th 1853: he marries Eugenie de Montijo, countess of Teba, of which he will have a son, Eugene, the March 16th 1856.

Personality of Napoleon III

Of his past of conspirator, Napoleon III preserved the practice never not to let show through his personal emotions and his thoughts. From where its impenetrable face and its famous enigmatic expression, whose photography and accounts of the contemporaries left us trace.

The Emperor often makes his decisions only, in the secrecy of his thought. He shares his decision-making power neither with his family, nor with his close relations, not more than with his wife or his mistresses, of which none will never have had the role of favorite. Starting from the middle of the years 1860, however, Napoleon III growing old and mined by the disease shows himself more sensitive to the influences of his close relations: the Eugenie empress, her hybrid half-brother the duke of Morny, his faithful Fialin known as Persigny. Of 1863 with 1869, its right-hand man, Eugene Rouher, had the appearance of a " vice-empereur" and of Prime Minister without the title.

Sometimes “heading in indecision” (Emile Olivier), the Emperor is shown more and more often hesitant, awkward or empêtré in its contradictions, with the length of its reign. What in its mode of personal capacity will weigh inevitably on the general evolution of the French policy.

Its contradictions are also due to the composite nature of its ideas and its entourage. According to her famous joke, “the empress is Légitimiste, Morny Orléaniste, me I am Socialiste. Only Persigny is Bonapartiste, but it is insane”.

Authoritative, but stripped of any personal inhumanity or rancour, Napoleon III can as well choke any opposition as to express his sincere concern for the workmen, the humble ones and the poor. By temperament as by policy, he likes to use of measurements of leniency to rejoin the old adversaries and to mitigate his lack of supports in the traditional elites.

Modern man and by no means stripped of political or diplomatic intelligence, it constantly was underestimated or scorned per many of his contemporaries, in particular by the traditional elites which saw in him a parvenu and by the adversaries monarchists or republicans of his authoritarian regime. Thiers in 1848 painted it as “a cretin whom we will carry out”. Victor Hugo called upon systematically the glory of Napoleon i to lower Napoleon III, depicts in his works like a vulgar adventurer, poor, perjury and tyrannical. He actually showed himself able to control France during 19 years (22 years since its election with the presidency), which places its mode at the third rank, by the duration, to France since 1789.

Foreign politics

See also: French International policy under the Second Empire, Crimean War, Napoleon III and the Italian question

In 1851, preparing the imperial restoration, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte seeks to reassure the French public opinion and European and declares in Bordeaux: “The Empire, it is peace! ” (October 10th 1852). However, its mode is shown rather quarrelsome, with three European wars and several colonial forwardings in less than twenty years.

The Emperor at the same time intends to dislocate the coalition anti-Frenchwoman heiress of the Congrès of Vienna (1815), and to help to reorganize the chart of the Europe according to the " principle of the nationalités" : each people must be able to have itself and the regroupings in State-Nations is to be supported.

The emperor knows successes initially, while at the same time it must compose with an important administration and diplomats mainly monarchists and opposed to the cesarism of Napoleon III . That reinforces the insulation of the Emperor whereas the foreign and metropolitan personnel is not inevitably informed of the political line of the government of Napoleon III .

At the time of the Crimean War, (1854 - 1856) Napoleon III confirm the return of France in the European political life with more or less of success. Coinciding with the birth of its heir the March 16th 1856, the treated of Paris is a personal triumph for him. It marks the apogee of its good agreement with the Great Britain of the queen Victoria.

Napoleon III plays also a big role in the birth of the Romania independent, while advising at the Parliaments of the two ex-provinces Othoman are to vote for the same candidate with the throne.

On the colonial level, Napoleon III triple the surface of the French possessions, launching for example the establishment in New Caledonia and with Djibouti by the purchase of Obock (1862), or letting the governor Faidherbe found Dakar with the Senegal (1854). In 1859 - 1860, its troops takes part in the side of England to a forwarding against the China, during which takes place the setting with bag of the Palais of summer to Beijing.

the Arab policy of Napoleon III - It goes in person to Algiers to promote its colonial development model. For Napoleon III the Colonies must be attached to the person of the Emperor and not to France directly. He declares in Algiers: “I am the emperor of the French and the Arabs”. Thus has a presentiment of it, with nearly one century in advance, the model of the community linked by the person of the sovereign, such as the the British Commonwealth will carry it out.

the Italian policy of the Emperor - in favor of the Unification and with the detriment of the Austria - makes it possible France to annex after a Plébiscite the county of Nice and the Savoy (1860), the Emperor “having paid his person” with the battles of Magenta and Solférino during the countryside of Italy. However, Napoleon III alienates also the Catholiques French ultramontanes, because the unit of the Italy of North puts the Papal States in danger. In addition, while refusing to continue the countryside victorious (but expensive as men) of 1859, the Emperor leaves Venice with the hands of the Autrichiens and disappoints its Savoyard allies. Until 1870, it prevents the new kingdom of Italy from finalizing the unit, by leaving French troops to Rome to protect the last vestiges from the Temporal power of the Pape.

The expensive failure shingling and Forwarding of Mexico (1861 - 1867), and the attitude of Neutrality monnayée (political known as of the “tips”, that the Prussian Chancelier Bismarck exploits to discredit Napoleon III in all German space) at the time of the conflicts between Austria and the Prussia in 1866, weaken the mode and put an end to this voluntarist foreign politics of the Emperor whereas this one starts to be corroded by the disease and the discords of its entourage.

Interior policy

An entry of France in modernity

Under the Empire, France knows years of economic progresses (creation of a banking system, development of the Railroads, transformation of the big cities).

Napoleon III is influenced by the ideas saint-simoniennes of his close adviser Michel Chevalier.

Influenced by its stay with London, Napoleon III decide to transform Paris and to make a large European, salubrious and functional capital of it. He entrusts to the baron Haussmann the building site of Paris. The Emperor took care of very close with the layout many new boulevards, with the construction of new buildings (of which large the Gares, new the Law courts and new the Hôtel-Dieu or the Palais Garnier (Opéra) that it never saw succeeded), with the development of the network of the sewers and especially with constructions of tens of new public gardens and green areas (Montsouris, Hillock-Chaumont, Bois of Vincennes and Boulogne, Boucicaut…). This work of the Second Empire modelled the face of Paris of the 20th century. They however had a considerable cost, that it is on the financial plan (Déficit, vagueness of Spéculation), social (repression of the popular classes out of the center of Paris) and cultural (destruction of many vestiges of last); it was said that the grand boulevards (very broad and right) made it possible to better thwart the possible revolts by preventing the formation of Barricades.

In parallel, Napoleon III encourages this policy in the other large ones and average towns of France, of Lyon to Biarritz while passing by Dieppe (the many imperial streets then traced are often thereafter renamed " street of République"). The Emperor multiplies the personal stays in the Villes of water such as Vichy, Plombières, Biarritz, which contributes much to their launching and their durable fortune.

Capital of the Europe as well as the London victorienne, Paris accommodates great international meetings such as the World Fair of 1855 and that of 1867.

The reign of Napoleon III is also marked by the completion of the construction of the French railway network supervised by the State: the railroad serves from now on all the large ones and average French cities. The Emperor encourages the banking revolution, at the origin of the birth of the modern establishments the such Loan on personal property of the brothers Pereire. The Grands Stores multiply (like the Cheap), the Bourse knows a golden age, industry (steel, textile) a strong growth, at least until the middle of the years 1860 and the mines, of coal for example, take their rise.

Member of the imperial government of 1863 with 1869 as a Minister for the State education, the historian Victor Duruy opens the Secondary education with the young girls and endeavors to develop the Primary school education, in spite of the hostility of the Catholic church which fears a loss of its influence. He makes teach the contemporary Histoire, up to that point forsaken with the profit of the study of the Antiquité.

Authoritative Empire with the liberal Empire

The constitution of 1852 leaves in Napoleon III an absolute personal capacity. The press is subjected to a particularly rigorous Censure. Justice is returned on its behalf. He is also the last Head of French State to assume the right to declare the war only, or to conclude only the Traités from peace or trade. Several tens of deputies are proscribed after the Coup d'etat of the December 2nd 1851, among which Victor Hugo, which then composes in exile the Châtiments and Napoleon-the-Small to stigmatize Napoleon III. Thousands of opponents are off-set in Algérie or Guyana.

The ministers, persons in charge in front of the Emperor alone, do not train a ministerial team and the government is not responsible before the Parliament, whose debates are not published. The platform of the Palate-Bourbon is destroyed at the time of the coup d'etat and reappears only on the end of the reign. The Vote for all was restored by Napoleon III but its free exercise is distorted by the practice of the official candidatures (the prefects put the means of the administration at the service of the candidates of the capacity) and by the quasi-disappearance of the Freedom of the press and of meeting. The rare opponents who manage to be made elect cannot sit that if they lend oath of fidelity to the Emperor and his mode.

The imperial authority also prevails in the field of the Arts and the Lettres: Baudelaire and Flaubert is prosecuted for their contrary works “with public and religious morals” (1856 - 1857), Renan relieved of its pulpit to the Collège de France in 1863. In 1863, Napoleon III lets be held a " living room of the refusés" where expose Courbet and the futures Impressionnistes, but he denounces Olympia Manet like offending the moralities.

Prevailing with a hand, the Emperor also seeks to allure and rejoin other. Equipped with a strong official pension and a very comfortable civil list, it carries out a sumptuous way of life which strikes the spirits. Its imposing festivals and its receptions with the Tileries, Saint-Cloud or Compiegne also confer on the " Impériale" celebrates; a role of Propaganda.

With the elections of 1858, five republican deputies are elected at Paris, town of opposition to the Empire, of which Jules Favre, Ernest Picard and Emile Olivier. The Emperor refuses to call into question the vote for all like asks him for his anxious entourage. But an bomb attack perpetrated against the imperial couple by the Italian patriot Orsini enables him to launch a wave of brutal repression against the republican opposition, however innocent in this business. The general Espinasse, Minister of Interior Department from January to July 1858, uses the " law of General security " to make off-set without judgment several hundreds of republicans. The law remains theoretically in force until the end of the reign.

The August 15th 1859, the Emperor promulgates a general Amnistie at the time of its victory in Italy of North. Some as Victor Hugo refuse to benefit from it: “when freedom returns, I rentrerai". Starting from this date, the mode takes a more liberal turning.

To gain new supports in the company, Napoleon III multiplies the concessions with destination in particular Ouvriers. He thus makes legalize the right to strike in 1864 by the law Emile Olivier. He indeed deprived himself of the support of the catholics that its anxious Italian policy and of that of the employers, ulcerated by its treaty of Libre-échange concluded in 1860 with Great Britain (negotiated and ratified by the Emperor alone, he has the appearance of “a customs coup d'etat”). Joining again with the Socialism of his youth, Napoleon III leaves a delegation of workmen led by Tolain to go to London where she discovers the power of the British Syndicalisme. The International association of the Workers is authorized to open an office in France. But the efforts of the Emperor to take itself the head of an official labor movement fail: the workmen remain in their mass republicans. Napoleon III dissolves the Parisian office of HAS in 1867 and the troop intervenes in several hard Grèves which mark the end of the reign.

With the passing of years 1860, it loosens also gradually the Censure, liberalizes the right of meeting and the parliamentary debates. Under the influence in particular of his half-brother the duke of Morny, it moves slowly towards a more parliamentary practice of the mode.

In 1869, Napoleon III fact call to new a " first ministre" in fact, Emile Olivier, resulting from the benches of the republican opposition to the National Assembly. It was the recognition of the parliamentary principle. Olivier then constituted a government of new men by associating liberal Bonapartistes (center right) and Orléanistes rejoined with the liberal Empire (center left), but by excluding the authoritative Bonapartists (right-hand side) and the republicans (left). He took itself the Ministère of Justice and the Cultes, the first in the protocolar order and seemed the true chief of the ministry.

Seeking to reconcile order and freedom, he convinces the Emperor to proceed to an overall constitutional revision to set up a Système semi-member of Parliament. The processes of official candidature were given up and the prefect Haussmann, considered to be too authoritative, was returned (January 5th, 1870). A Sénatus-consulte proposing a more liberal mode is subjected to the approval of the people at the time of a plebiscite (the third since 1851): the May 8th 1870, the reforms are approved with more than 7 million " oui" in spite of the opposition of the monarchists Legitimists and republicans who invited to vote " non" or to abstain from. Thus the constitution of the May 21st 1870 sets up. Napoleon III exclaimed on this occasion: " I found my figure! " (its score of presidential of 1848). Emile Olivier believed capacity to say of the Emperor: “We will make him a happy old age” .

However, released by the republicans and disputed by the authoritative Bonapartists, Olivier was isolated more and more and was not maintained any more but thanks to the favor of Napoleon III . As of the first military setbacks of August 1870, it was dismissed by the empress Eugenie, regent, who named in his place the authoritative Bonapartist Cousin-Montauban, count of Palikao. One month after, the Emperor was prisoner and the Empire discredited by the defeat disappeared without opposition from whoever.

War of 1870

Although both personally favorable to peace, Olivier and Napoleon III let themselves exceed by the partisans of the war of which the Impératrice Eugenie. Olivier and Napoleon III both with the majority opinion pro-war expressed within the government and at the Parliament joined, including at the Républicain S, the most solved with in découdre with the Prussia.

Following tensions with Prussia in connection with the Succession of Spain and misused by famous the Dispatch of Ems - scornful version by Bismarck, of a polished advertisement of Guillaume of Prussia -, Napoleon III declares the war in Prussia. Begin the Franco-German Guerre from 1870.

The first reverses are charged to Napoleon III and in Olivier, providing to the Room the occasion to reverse Olivier, with one crushing majority, the August 9th 1870, leaving the Emperor alone on the frontline, whether it is political or soldier.

Under the pressure of the empress, Napoleon III gives up folding up himself on Paris and walks towards Metz to the help of the marshal Bazaine encircled. Its troops themselves are then encircled with Sedan. The September 2nd 1870, not having been able to find death in the middle of its men, Napoleon III deposits the weapons at the end of the Bataille of Sedan. It tries to negotiate with Bismarck close to the village of Donchery. During the discussion, he denies his personal liabilities by calling upon a war to which he “would have been pushed by the public opinion”. Bismarck, little deceive, counterpart: “the public opinion pushed by the ministry! ”

The prisoner attends with the king Guillaume of Prussia with the act of rendering of the French Army the Château of Bellevue located meadows of Frénois at the south of Sedan.

the September 3rd 1870, the Emperor, from now on captive, goes in Belgium to Bouillon, then it takes the train to be interned with the castle of Wilhelmshöhe with Kassel in Germany.

September 4th, 1870, in Paris, crowd invades the Palate-Bourbon while the Eugenie empress takes refuge in her dentist and flees in England. The Governor of Paris, Trochu, remains passive and the imperial mode hardly finds defenders. Deputies (whose Leon Gambetta) proclaims the République and sets up a Gouvernement of National defense which in vain tries to counter the invasion of the territory. At the end of the war, the official forfeiture of Napoleon III definitively by the Room only on March 1st 1871 is voted. In the majority of the French departments, the new republican mode is often accommodated in the indifference. Nobody however takes either the defense of the deposed Empire, discredited by the defeat.

In March 1871, the deposed Emperor is exiled in England. It prepares there new plans of coup d'etat, dreaming to republish with its profit the return of the isle of Elba of his uncle Napoleon I {{er}}. But an operation of the Bladder at a rate of him.

The January 9th 1873, Napoleon III dies and is buried with Chislehurst (today: Bromley (London district)). Thereafter the Eugenie Empress built a mausoleum with the to him Abbaye St Michel (St Michael' S abbey) of Farnborough where it rests to date at the sides of his wife (deceased in 1920) and of their only son, the Prince Impérial Eugene-Louis, enlisted voluntary in the army British and killed in South Africa by the Zoulous during a patrol in June 1879, at the time of the war anglo-Zulu. It did not have which 23 years.

A flourishing and ambivalent reign

Badly known nowadays, the Second Empire however corresponds to the one of the most formidable times of development and prosperity which France knew.

At the economic level, the country obtained modern infrastructures of a financial system, banking and commercial innovative and caught up with in 1870 its industrial backwardness on the the United Kingdom, partly thanks to the political volunteer of the emperor and with his choice of the Libre-échange.

On the level of town planning, Napoleon III is the silent partner of work of Haussmann in Paris, which made this city considered for its dirtiness in the middle of the 19th century, one of the most beautiful capitals of the world.

This period was also very productive at the literary level, of Flaubert to Sand or with the brothers Goncourt (Edmond and Jules). The Opéra Garnier illustrates the importance attached to the entertainment world, element of the “imperial festival”. Impassioned history (one owes him monumental a Histoire of Jules César ), the Emperor also played a role-key in the setting-up of true a national Archéologie, with the creation of the Musée of the National antiquities of Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer and the rise given to the excavations of Gergovie, Alésia and Bibracte.

The social progress was also undeniable: right to strike and of organization of paid (ancestors of Syndicats) granted in 1864, rise in standard of living in workmen and in peasants, soup kitchens organized for the poor, first systems of Retirements and of insurance-handicap for workmen, development of education of mass, in particular for girls under impulse of empress Eugenie, which also strongly supported work of Louis Pasteur and Ferdinand de Lesseps, which will lead respectively to the vaccine against the Rage and to the Suez Canal, inaugurated in 1869.

The mode of Napoleon III was discredited however a long time in the national collective memory. There had it with its a long time authoritative and repressive character remained (even if the man personally does not have anything brutal nor bloodthirsty man) and with its end without glory in the disastrous war free-Prussian, immediately followed by the civil war at the time of the Commune of Paris. Even its successes are not necessarily stripped of ambivalent aspects, criticized by the contemporaries. A writer such Zola thus recalled in his Romans the unrestrained speculation and the corruption born of the haussmanisation and the stock exchange blaze ( the Quarry , the Money ), the shock which the irruption of the department stores represented for the small shop ( With the Happiness of the Ladies ), the hardness of the social struggles under Napoleon III ( Germinal ).

Forged by a generation in fight against the Second Empire, the III {{E}} République could only make of Napoleon III a driving bolt. The work of Victor Hugo, built on the permanent opposition between the glory of Napoleon i and the tyrannical lowness lent to Napoleon III, contributed considerably to sit the image of a poor despot and without scruples. The precedent of a president become emperor made also unthinkable until in 1962 any election of the Head of the State by the universal direct suffrage. François Mitterrand appears thus with virulence De Gaulle in Napoleon III to inform the lawsuit of the institutions of the Ve République ( the permanent Coup d'etat , 1964). It is only in years 1980-1990 that contemporary historiography rehabilitated of good part Napoleon III and her reign, without seeking either to deny contradictions and the limits of the man and work.

Quotations

“ In policy it is necessary to cure the evils; to never avenge them. ” (Source: Napoleonean ideas)
“ the political faith, like the religious faith, had its martyrs; it will have like it its apostles, like it his empire! ” (Source: Napoleonean ideas)
“ Plus the world improves, plus the barriers which divide the men widen, more there are countries that the same interests tend to join together. ” (Source: Napoleonean ideas)
“ Aujourd'hui the goal of any skilful government must be of tending by efforts so that one can say soon: “The triumph of Christianity destroyed slavery; the triumph of the French revolution destroyed serfdom; the triumph of the democratic ideas destroyed pauperism! ”
“ poverty will not be seditious any more when opulence is not oppressive any more. ” (Source: The extinction of pauperism)
“ Surtout do not be afraid of the people, it is more preserving than you! ” (Source: Mixtures)
“ the Empress is legitimist, Morny is orleanist, Prince Napoleon is republican and I am myself socialist. There is one Bonapartist, it is Persigny, and it is insane ”
“ Malheur with the sovereigns whose interests are not related to those of the nation! ” (Source: Political daydreams)
“ I want to be baptized well with the water of the vote for all, but I do not intend to have the feet in water ”
“ the empire, it is peace ”

Mistresses

Napoleon III had many mistresses among whom:

Elizabeth-Anarchist Haryett, (1823 - 1865) known as Miss Harriet Howard (finance its Electoral campaign of 1848);
Armance Depuille (1830 - 1913), wife of François Isidore Depuille, of which Benoni Depuille;
Pascalie Corbière (1828 -19??), which was the nurse of the imperial children bastard, wife of Auguste Corbière, second coachman of the emperor, of which Christian Corbière;
Virginia Oldoini, Comtesse of Castiglione (1837 - 1899) celebrates Italian Courtisane 19th century which became the mistress of Napoleon III in 1856 - 1857;
Miss Sauvez, Picardy, with which it had a relation during its imprisonment with Ham.

Caricatures

Napoleon III was called by its opponents the man of December 2nd , Napoleon Small the or Naboléon (Victor Hugo), Boustrapa (of its three coups d'etat: Boulogne, Strasbourg and Paris) or Badinguet (of the name of the painter under the disguise of which he escaped from the fortress where he was held). During its Napoleon reign III was caricatured much. Opposite, Napoleon III in Bat weighing up Thiers and the Republic. Allusion to the position of Napoleon III at the time of the Common of Paris.

Napoleon:
to control, always avid,
Here is my plan: - It is splendid! -
I make them beat both,
I wait until they eat between them
And when death made the vacuum
I return to Paris…, if I CAN!

In front of this loose and stupid plan
Each one of us, with spirit,
With this monster bald person… smiles!

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