Napoleon III

Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–73) Third son of Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland (the brother of Napoleon I) and Hortense Beauharnais; the president of the Second French Republic (1848–52) and emperor of the French (1852–70), born in Paris, France.

After the death of Napoleon II he became the head of the Napoleonic dynasty. He made two abortive attempts on the French throne (1836, 1840), for which he was imprisoned. He escaped to England (1846), but when the Bonapartist tide swept France after the 1848 revolution he was elected first to the Assembly and then to the presidency (1848). Engineering the dissolution of the constitution, he assumed the title of emperor, and in 1853 married Eugénie de Montijo de Guzman (1826–1920), a Spanish countess, who bore him a son, the Prince Imperial, Eugène Louis Jean Joseph Napoleon (1856). He actively encouraged economic expansion and the modernization of Paris, while externally the Second Empire coincided with the Crimean War (1854–6), the expeditions to China (1857–60), the annexation (1860) of Savoy and Nice, and the ill-starred intervention in Mexico (1861–7). Encouraged by the empress, he unwisely declared war on Prussia in 1870, and suffered humiliating defeat, culminating in the Battle of Sedan.

Confined at Wilhelmshohe until 1871, he went into exile in England.

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