Napoleon III

Napoleon III (Paris, 20 April 1808-Chiselhurst, 9 January 1873) was the third son of Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland and Napoleon I's brother, and of Hortense de Beauharnais, the Emperor's sister-in-law. His tutor was the son of Convention member Le Bas, who instilled him with a love for the history of the French Revolution. In 1830 he left for Italy in his uncle's footsteps, joined the carbonari movement and took part in Menotti's uprising against Pope Gregory XVI in Romagna. The mantle of Bonapartist legitimacy passed to Louis Napoleon after the Duke of Reichstadt's death in 1832. With Persigny's help, on 30 October 1836 he unsuccessfully tried to rouse an uprising of the Strasbourg garrison.

Louis-Philippe exiled him to Brazil. From there he went to the United States, moving in 1837 to England, where he defended his idea of "democratic Caesarism" in his book Les Idées napoléoniennes (1839) and took advantage of the Bonapartist fervor sweeping France after word spread that Napoleon's ashes would be brought to Paris. After another unsuccessful attempt to lead an uprising, this time in Boulogne on 6 August 1840, he was arrested, tried before the Court of Peers, sentenced to life in prison and locked up in Fort Ham (Somme). In May 1846 he escaped and fled to England. Although judged undesirable on French soil, in June 1848 Louis Napoleon was elected to the assembly in five departments, taking his seat three months later.

The ambitious deputy was a dreadful public speaker but worked hard to win the conservatives' backing. He harangued crowds and grew closer to the army, which was feeling nostalgic for the Empire.

In December 1848 he was elected president with a five-million vote lead over his rivals. On 2 December 1851 Louis Napoleon staged a coup d'Etat, approved by plebiscite on the 20th and 21st. Having amended the constitution beforehand, he became president for 10 years and concentrated all power in his hands. He began a series of forays into the French provinces in order to prepare public opinion for the plebiscite on 21 and 22 November 1852, which proclaimed him emperor.

He became Napoleon III on 2 December 1852. Like Napoleon I, he wanted to join the small circle of European dynasties, marrying a Spanish aristocrat, Eugénie Marie de Montijo, on 30 January 1853. From 1852 to 1860, Napoleon III held absolute power on the basis of universal suffrage, which always gave him overwhelming majorities but whose orientation was guided by the mechanism of the "official candidacy".

In the "Ems dispatch" the Iron Chancellor changed the report on the meeting between Benedetti and the Hohenzollerns in such as way as to leave Napoleon III with no other choice but to declare war, which he did on 19 July 1870. Prussian troops dealt the Empire a death blow, capturing Froeschwiller, Forbach and Rezonville-Gravelotte in the first half of August and surrounding Bazaine in Metz. Napoleon III surrendered in Sedan on 2 September, narrowly escaping the firing squad. Gambetta announced the fall of the empire at the Bourbon Palace.

On 4 September the Republic was proclaimed at the Paris city hall. Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was brought to Wilhelmshöhe, Hesse in captivity. Released shortly thereafter, he joined Eugénie de Montijo at Camden Place in Chislehurst, Kent. Like his uncle, he died of disease in exile. One account attributes his death to progressive fiber dysplasia. Fibrous dysplasia (FD) is a rare bone disorder. Bone affected by this disorder is replaced by abnormal scar-like (fibrous) connective tissue. This abnormal fibrous tissue weakens the bone, making it abnormally fragile and prone to fracture. Pain may occur in the affected areas.

The repeated sicknesses of the Emperor had rendered even more important the question, What was to happen after the death of Napoleon III? The cruel sufferings to which the kidney/bladder stones had subjected Napoleon III tended to cripple his energies during the closing years of the Empire. The origin of Napoleon's illness may be dated back to those years when the then Prince Louis Bonaparte, after the unsuccessful plot at Boulogne, was a State prisoner in the citadel of Ham, from 1840 to 1846. Here the foundation was laid for an anaemia caused by frequent losses of blood and painful rheumatic disturbances of the lower extremities. With advancing age this trouble increased and was the cause of his premature weakness and decay. But it was only in 1863 that the first symptoms of an acute trouble of the bladder became manifest, the gradual progress of which was to be synonymous with tedious, torturing agony. The Emperor steadfastly refused surgical intervention.

There would remain the Empress Eugenie, a good but somewhat narrow-minded woman, who clung obstinately to the prerogative of the crown, who was the real head of that Court party which ever hoped to renew the brightness of the dynasty by the brilliancy of its foreign enterprises, and who, lastly, was to be chiefly blamed for the shameful overgrowth of the clerical element, and with it for the foolish opposition to the intelligent education of the masses ; there would be, further, if the Emperor should die soon, a boy, a minor in age, of whose talents, disposition, and character, nothing was known save that he was weakly and badly brought up ; then there remained Prince Jerome Napoleon, who, in spite of his Bonapartist face, was neither respected by the people nor by the army, - and this is taking no account of the civil family of the Emperor, the members of which were constantly causing him trouble and care by their behaviour.

Which of these persons, then, was to continue the personal rule of the Emperor after his death? Would it not be better to think in time of so changing the form of government that a too close inspection of the ruling personage would not be inevitable? Under these circumstances it was natural that the party opposed to personal government should increase apace, although composed of the most heterogeneous elements.

Because for twenty years he was the foremost man in Europe, his infirmities and sufferings, his weakness and agonies, are discussed in clubs and coffeehouses, and made the talk of luncheon-bars and taverns. The case of Napoleon III was a typical example of the influence the bad health of a sovereign can exercise on the destiny of his country.

Napoleon was beset with difficulties at home and abroad. The growth of republican opinion and the dangers which were threatened by the spread of revolutionary and socialistic doctrine among the working classes at last extorted the long delayed reforms. Restrictions upon the Press and upon public meetings were relaxed in January, 1868, and the evolution from personal government to the Liberal Empire began. By 1870 the course of the French Opposition, rapidly emboldened by the illness of Napoleon III and the perfectly visible slackening of his hand upon the reins of government, pointed directly towards another revolution and republic at the earliest possible day.

There was diversity of opinion respecting the immediate cause of death. Some ascribed it to the after effects of the chloroform and opiates administered to procure sleep for surgical procedures in previous days. The post-mortem examination revealed the presence of advanced disease in the kidneys, which ere long must have proved fatal ; but at the time the doctors decided that death was caused by failure of circulation, attributable to the general constitutional state of the patient. Napoleon III sutfered severely from the disease before the out break of the German war, and an operation was then urged, but postponed.