Napoleon III

Napoleon III was the first president of France from 1848 to 1852, and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 until he was deposed in absentia on 4 September 1870. Prior to his reign, Napoleon III was known as Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. He was born in Paris as the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland, and his wife, Hortense de Beauharnais. Napoleon I was Louis Napoleon's paternal uncle, and one of his cousins was the disputed Napoleon II¹. Louis Napoleon was the first and only president of the French Second Republic, elected in 1848. He seized power by force in 1851 when he could not constitutionally be reelected. He later proclaimed himself Emperor of the French and founded the Second Empire, reigning until the defeat of the French Army and his capture by Prussia and its allies at the Battle of Sedan in 1870¹. Napoleon III was a popular monarch who oversaw the modernization of the French economy and filled Paris with new boulevards and parks. He expanded and consolidated the railway system throughout the nation and modernized the banking system. Napoleon promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made the country an agricultural exporter. Napoleon III also engaged in two wars: the Second Italian War of Independence (1859) and the Franco-Prussian War (1870–71). In the former, he allied with Sardinia against Austria and helped achieve Italian unification. In the latter, he declared war on Prussia after being provoked by Otto von Bismarck, but suffered a humiliating defeat that led to his capture and the collapse of his regime². He spent his last years in exile in England, where he died in 1873 from complications of a kidney stone¹. He was buried at St Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, alongside his wife Eugénie and his son Louis-Napoléon, who died fighting for the British Army in South Africa.