Napoleon III

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Not to be confused with Napoleon.
"Louis Napoleon" redirects here. For other uses, see Louis Napoleon (disambiguation).

Napoleon III

Portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Emperor of the French

Reign 2 December 1852 –

4 September 1870

Cabinet Chief See list

 President of France

In office 20 December 1848 –

2 December 1852

Prime Minister See list

Born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte

20 April 1808
Paris, French Empire

Died 9 January 1873 (aged 64)

Chislehurst, Kent, England, United Kingdom

Burial St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough

Eugénie de Montijo (m. 1853)

Spouse

Issue Louis Napoléon, Prince Imperial

Full name

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

House Bonaparte

Father Louis I of Holland

Mother Hortense de Beauharnais

Religion Roman Catholicism

Napoleon III (born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873)
was the first elected President of France from 1848 to 1852. When he could not constitutionally
be re-elected, he seized power in 1851 and became the Emperor of the French from 1852 to
1870. He founded the Second French Empire and was its only emperor until the defeat of the
French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He
worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the overseas
empire, and engaged in the Crimean War and the war for Italian unification. After his defeat
and downfall he went into exile and died in England in 1873.
Napoleon III commissioned the grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of the
Seine, Baron Haussmann. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and
other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded
and consolidated the French railway system and made the French merchant marine the
second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established
modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter.
Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and
similar agreements with France's other European trading partners. Social reforms included
giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize. The first women students
were admitted at the Sorbonne, and women's education greatly expanded as did the list of
required subjects in public schools.
In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the
world. He was a supporter of popular sovereigntyand of nationalism. In Europe, he allied with
Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853–56). His regime assisted Italian
unificationand in doing so annexed Savoy and the County of Nice to France—at the same time,
his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. Napoleon III doubled the
area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific and Africa, however his
army's intervention in Mexico, which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French
protection, ended in total failure.
From 1866, Napoleon had to face the mounting power of Prussia as its Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck sought German unification under Prussian leadership. In July 1870, Napoleon
entered the Franco-Prussian War without allies and with inferior military forces. The French
army was rapidly defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The Third
Republic was proclaimed in Paris and Napoleon went into exile in England, where he died in
1873.