Napoleon III

Biography

Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte was born on April 20, 1808, the nephew of Napoleon I, and spent his early life in exile, conspiracy, and twice-failed coup attempts that landed him in prison. He escaped from the fortress of Ham in 1846 disguised as a laborer — carrying a plank on his shoulder past the guards — and returned to France after the 1848 revolution, winning election as President of the Second Republic before staging the coup d'état of December 2, 1851 that made him Emperor Napoleon III. He ruled France for nineteen years, presiding over industrialization, urban modernization (Haussmann's rebuilding of Paris), colonial expansion, and an activist foreign policy that made France the dominant power in European affairs through the 1860s. Napoleon III was a more capable ruler than his critics admitted and a worse commander than his position required. He understood economics, public works, and the management of a democratic empire with unusual sophistication. He did not understand war. His health had been declining for years before 1870 — kidney stones, possibly bladder cancer — and he arrived at the front in July 1870 in such pain that he could barely sit his horse, his complexion gray, his judgment impaired by suffering. His decision to take personal command of the army after the disasters of Worth and Spicheren was politically necessary and militarily catastrophic: it placed him in the army's path as it retreated toward Sedan. At Sedan, Napoleon III spent the battle riding through the fighting in search of the death that would redeem his dynasty's honor. He was not particularly concerned about dying; he was desperately concerned about the humiliation of capture. The death refused to come. German shells killed horses under him and officers beside him; he rode through the worst fire his generals could identify; and emerged unscathed. At 4 PM he ordered the white flag raised. His letter to Wilhelm I — 'Not having been able to die in the midst of my troops, nothing remains for me but to surrender my sword' — was one of the most dignified acts of his reign, and one of its last. He died in exile in England in January 1873, his empire dissolved, his dynasty ended, his health finally destroying him.

Key Battles