Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (20 April 1808-9 January 1873) was the President of the Second French Republic from 20 December 1848 to 2 December 1852 and Emperor of the Second French Empire from 2 December 1852 to 9 January 1873. The son of Louis I of Holland and the nephew of Napoleon I, Louis-Napoleon came to power after the French Revolution of 1848, during which the French people overthrew King Louis-Philippe of France and created a new republic. In 1851, he learned that he was ineligible to run for re-election, so he led his Bonapartists in a coup and became the emperor of the Second Empire. Napoleon increased the civil liberties of the French people, granted women more rights, doubled the size of France's colonial empire, and rebuilt Paris, but he was overthrown after he was captured by Prussia at the Battle of Sedan in 1870. He died in exile in the United Kingdom in 1873.
Biography[]
The exiled prince[]
Napoleon at Strasbourg, 1836
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Paris, First French Empire on 20 April 1808, the son of Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother Louis I of Holland. In 1823, the family moved to Italy after the Bourbon Restoration, and Napoleon was involved with the Carbonari insurrection against the Austrian Empire. He would also move to Switzerland with his family, and it was there that he planned to enter France, gain the support of the Bonapartists, and return to power via a coup d'etat. On 29 October 1836, he moved to Strasbourg in Alsace-Lorraine to execute a coup against the July Monarchy, but the regiment commander in Strasbourg gathered some loyal troops and forced the mutineers to surrender. Napoleon returned to Switzerland, and he moved to England, Brazil, and the United States before settling in the United Kingdom in 1838. In 1840, he attempted to cross the English Channel into France with 60 armed men, but he was arrested by customs agents and sentenced to life imprisonment at the fortress of Ham. In 1846, he escaped from the fortress and returned to England.
French Revolution[]
Napoleon III in 1856
On 27 February 1848, after discovering that King Louis-Philippe of France had abdicated during the French Revolution of 1848, Napoleon returned to France, finding that three of his relatives had been elected to the National Assembly. He was considered to be a dangerous revolutionary by the conservative French Republicans, but the June Days uprising of 23-26 June 1848 led to the government drafting a new constitution that marked the victory of liberalism over anarcho-liberalism. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte ran for president, becoming the first President of France to be elected through direct voting. As Prince-President from 1848 to 1851, he had the support of the people, who were happy that a Bonaparte was leading them to greatness again. When he found out that he was ineligible for re-election in 1851, Napoleon launched a coup on 2 December 1852, the 48th anniversary of his uncle's coronation and the 47th anniversary of the Battle of Austerlitz. He became the leader of the new Second French Empire, and he made himself Emperor.
Imperial rule[]
Napoleon III in 1863
Napoleon would begin his reign by modernizing the infrastructure and economy of France, creating the first department stores in 1852 and remodelling Paris based on the ideas of Georges-Eugene Haussmann. Napoleon also sought to reassert French influence across the world, and France allied with the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire during the Crimean War and assisted Italy during its independence struggle against the Austrian Empire during the late 1850s and early 1860s. Napoleon would attempt to colonize Mexico by installing Archduke Maximilian of Austria on the throne as a puppet, but this venture would devolve into a five-year civil war (1862-1867) that led to the infamous French loss at Puebla and the destruction of Napoleon's dreams of recreating a North American empire. However, France pursued imperialism elsewhere, doubling the size of its empire with the conquests of Vietnam, North Africa, and much of West Africa. Napoleon also lowered tariffs, increased education for women, invested in railways, and made concessions to liberals, including enforcing the right to protest and the right to strike. His relations with Prussia soured after they refused to compensate him for remaining neutral during the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, however, and he failed to increase the size of the French Army and to find an ally. The Ems Dispatch of 1870 led to the Franco-Prussian War, and France's armies were wiped out in two pitched battles at Metz and Sedan. Napoleon III himself was captured while commanding the army at Sedan, and the Third French Republic was proclaimed while Napoleon was in Prussian captivity. Napoleon died in exile in England in 1873.