Napoleon III | Biography, Emperor, Family & Death

Napoleon III (born April 20, 1808, in Paris, and died on January 9, 1873, in Chislehurst near London) was born as Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte he was the Second Republic French President from 1848 to 1852 and Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870.

With the coup d’état on December 2, 1851, the president, who emerged from a popular election, had a dictatorship built. A year later he proclaimed himself emperor and his country the second empire. Parliament was largely disempowered and only gained a little more power at the end of its reign.

Due to the plebiscitary character of his reign, the emperor was practically forced to show new successes in order to maintain the favor of the masses. This led to a relatively expansionary foreign policy, which also pursued the goal of expanding France’s territories at the expense of its neighboring countries.

The Emperor was initially successful in the Italian unification war in 1859. However, the planned annexation of Luxembourg in 1867 failed. Napoleon’s aggressive foreign policy led to the question of the Spanish succession to the Franco-Prussian War ended.

After Napoleon was captured on September 2, 1870, a new national government was formed in Paris, which declared him deposed and proclaimed the republic. He spent his last two years in exile in England.

The Early Life of Napoleon III

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Bordeaux. His father was Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, younger brother of Napoleon I, and his mother Hortensia de Beauharnais, therefore his political career was built on the fact that he was a relative (nephew) of Napoleon I.

After the final defeat of Napoleon I and his deposition in 1815 and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, by the law of January 1, 1816, all Bonaparte were exiled from French territory. Queen Hortensia went into exile in Switzerland with her children and bought, in 1817, the castle of Arenenberg (Switzerland), which overlooks Lake Constance.

The future emperor attended the Lyceum in Augsburg and acquired his first martial skills from a former officer of Napoleon I. In 1830 he was a volunteer in the Swiss army, where he obtained the rank of artillery captain in 1834.

The young Louis-Napoleon resided in addition to Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. As a young man in Italy, he and his brother Napoleon Louis were involved in the protests of the Carbonarios, an organization of the Italian resistance, related to Freemasonry, which was fighting against Austrian domination in northern Italy.

Marriage, son and family

Napoleon III Married to Eugenia de Montijo (countess of Teba), a Spanish noblewoman of Scottish and Spanish descent, Napoleon III had a son, Eugenio Bonaparte (Napoléon Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Bonaparte, 1856-1879), who on Napoleon’s death became head of the family and was called by his supporters Napoleon IV.

Succession of Bonapartism

According to the succession law that Napoleon I had established during the First Empire, the prelature for the imperial throne was: his direct legitimate offspring and then his brothers and offspring.

The first in the order of succession was his son: the king of Rome. He was followed by José Bonaparte, King of Naples and Spain, and later by Luis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and his sons. Luciano Bonaparte, prince of Canino, and his descendants were excluded from the imperial succession.

As Joseph had no male child, and his brother Napoleon Louis Bonaparte (1804-1831) and his cousin Napoleon II in 1832 preceded him, Louis-Napoleon became Bonaparte’s heir to the next generation.

Fight for power

Already the heir to Bonapartism and resident in the United Kingdom, he secretly returned to France in October 1836, for the first time since childhood, to attempt a coup d’etat in Strasbourg. The blow failed, but he was able to escape.

Again, he attempted another coup in August 1840, crossing the English Channel with a small ship with some soldiers at Boulogne-sur-Mer. Caught, this time he was imprisoned under a regime of relative comfort in the fortress of the city of Ham.

During his years of imprisonment, he wrote essays denoting his romantic ideology, his authoritarian liberalism, and even his utopian socialism. He managed to escape from prison to Southport, UK, in May 1846, changing clothes with a carpenter who worked at Ham Fort.

Napoleon III Emperor of the French

In November 1852, supported by the great bourgeoisie, he called for another plebiscite, which, with 95% of the favorable votes, instituted the empire and transformed the prince-president Louis Napoleon into Emperor of the French, with the title of Napoleon III.

With the coup, Bonaparte created the Second French Empire. In January 1853, he married the Spanish countess Eugênia de Montijo. From the union, in 1856, Napoleon Eugénio, Imperial Prince was born. Her lover was Virginia Verasis, Countess of Castiglione.

From 1852 to 1858, Napoleon III exercised absolute power (Authoritarian Empire), limiting parliamentary opposition and muzzling the press. From 1860 onwards, liberal pressures increased, and from 1858 to 1867, some freedoms were granted to citizens; from 1867 to 1870, the so-called Liberal Empire developed, which expanded the powers of the Legislative Assembly and lifted restrictions on civil liberties.

Supported by the bourgeoisie, the clergy and the armed forces, the emperor, in order to obtain the support of the workers, undertook large and numerous public works, especially in Paris, carried out by Mayor Baron Haussmann; built railroads and popular houses; opened channels; encouraged agriculture, industry, and trade; favored credit institutions; he founded mutual aid societies and workers’ organizations.

Abroad, Napoleon III, wanting to exercise hegemony in Europe, participated in the Crimean War (1854-1856) and chaired the Paris Congress (1856), which marked the end of the war (defeat of Russia ), assuming the role of arbitrator of the continent.

With the effervescence of nationalism, the struggles for the independence of dominated peoples since before the Congress of Vienna, Napoleon III started to defend the politics of nationalities. However, at times, it made France dominate other states.

It was in favor of the independence of the Romanian states of Moldova and Wallachia, against the Turkish-Ottoman Empire, and the formation of the kingdom of Romania (1856). A supporter of liberal policy in Algeria, he met opposition from the colonists and intervened decisively in pacification in 1857.

He sent troops with China to England (1857-1860) in the Second Opium War and seized Cochinchina, southern Vietnam (1859-1862).

End of life

Napoleon III went into exile in Britain after the war ended. On March 19, 1871, he left Wilhelmshöhe Castle and reached Chislehurst on March 21, now part of the borough of London Borough of Bromley. From there, he planned to land in France again, following the example of his uncle’s rule over a hundred days.

However, he died before the implementation of his plans. On January 3 and 6, 1873, Napoleon underwent operations to remove his bladder stones. He was due to be operated on again on January 9th. Chloroform administered in the course of the surgery performed by England’s first urologist Henry Thompson, whose side effects were not known at the time, but in connection with the weakening of Napoleon by the advanced disease led to heart failure.

His last words are said to have been “Étiez-Vous à Sedan?” (“Were you in Sedan?”), But according to another source he said: “Henri, you were with Sedan?” To his doctor Henri Conneaut.

Napoleon III is buried in the imperial crypt of Saint Michael’s Abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire, England. His only son, Napoleon Eugène Louis Bonaparte, who died in the Zulu War in 1879, and Napoleon’s wife, who died in 1920 at the age of 94, were also buried there.