Napoleon III Bonaparte (Paris, April 20, 1808 - London, January 9, 1873) was the only president of the Second French Republic (1848-1852) and, later, emperor of the French between 1852 and 1870, being the last monarch of France.
Son of Luis Bonaparte (one of the brothers of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte) and Hortensia de Beauharnais (daughter of Empress Josephine), he was born into the House of Bonaparte. Due to his kinship with his uncle Napoleon Bonaparte, he became the legitimate heir to dynastic rights after the successive deaths of his older brother and Napoleon II.
His political philosophy was a mixture of romanticism, authoritarian liberalism and utopian socialism, although in recent years he was a distinguished defender of traditionalism and Catholic civilization. He wanted to signify reparation against the anticlericalism and atheism of the French Revolution. He had a policy of expansion of classical civilization that, in his opinion, France represented, against the rise of Germany and the United States, emerging powers of the Protestant type.
On December 10, 1848, after several months of political turmoil caused by the February 1848 revolution, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had been elected president of the Second French Republic with the support of the popular classes.
The Second French Empire is a historiographical term used to designate a period of French history between 1852 and 1870. The official name of the regime was the French Empire, the term "second" being used to differentiate it from the First French Empire. , established in the early 19th century by the general, and later emperor, Napoléon Bonaparte.
The Empire was proclaimed on December 2, 1852 (the anniversary of Napoléon I's coronation) when the first and only president of the Second Republic, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, became Napoléon III, Emperor of the French. Although a year earlier, on December 2, 1851, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had already led a coup d'état, dissolved parliament and had become dictator, acquiring the position of prince-président (prince-president). The proclamation of the Empire was approved by the Senate, purged of any republican or monarchist opposition, and ratified through a popular referendum
Although at first the Empire was characterized by limiting individual liberties and civil rights, censoring the press, limiting the power of parliament and silencing the opposition, it progressively evolved towards more liberal positions until in 1869 Émile was appointed head of government. Ollivier, of republican tendencies. The following year, an important reform moved the Empire towards a parliamentary monarchy, limiting the power of the emperor and increasing that of the chambers.
Internally, the Empire was characterized by the promotion of the regime through lavish staging that went beyond the mere sphere of the imperial court. The so-called "fête impériale" ("imperial party") was exemplified by the universal exhibitions of 1855 and 1867, the construction of the Nouveau Louvre, the reforms in Paris or the many trips that the Emperor and Empress made through France and to the Foreign. This staging was accompanied, and in part made possible, by an authentic economic boom in the context of the Second Industrial Revolution. It also ran parallel to the development of the pompous Napoléon III style, a historicism that mixed influences from the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo and Louis XVI style; its most outstanding example was the Nouvel Opéra de Paris.
Regarding foreign policy, Napoleon III, wishing to reassure the other European states, proclaimed "l'Empire c'est la paix" ("Empire is peace"), however, he carried out an ambitious international policy. It is worth highlighting the intervention in the Crimean War (1854), in the Italian Wars (1859) and the Conchinchina Expedition (1858-1862) as his most successful interventions. While the Mexico Expedition (1862-1867) or the Luxembourg Crisis (1867), sealed the imperial decline, the collapse of the Empire took place as a consequence of its resounding defeat during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871): in the Battle of Sedan, Napoléon III was captured and two days later his dismissal and the establishment of the republic in Paris were proclaimed.
After its fall, the Second Empire was widely reviled by politicians and ignored by historians, but since the 1970s it has once again been a period studied and reinterpreted from a more balanced perspective.
