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Some of the materials posted here are grabbed from CGPeers , so it could potentially have something injected in them because the user system might be infected. Thank you. They declined because of his Catholic religion and the political uncertainty about his future, as did the family of Princess Adelheid of Hohenlohe-Langenburg , a niece of Queen Victoria. The daughter of the Count of Montijo , she received much of her education in Paris.
The civil ceremony took place at Tuileries Palace on 22 January , and a much grander ceremony was held a few days later at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris. With an heir to the throne secured, Napoleon III resumed his " petites distractions " with other women. She traveled to Egypt to open the Suez Canal and officially represented him whenever he traveled outside France.
Though a fervent Catholic and conservative on many other issues, she strongly advocated equality for women. In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the world as a supporter of popular sovereignty and nationalism. French troops assisted Italian unification by fighting on the side of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
In return, France received Savoy and the county of Nice in Later, however, to appease fervent French Catholics, he sent soldiers to defend the residual Papal States against annexation by Italy. In a speech at Bordeaux shortly after becoming Emperor, Napoleon III proclaimed that "The Empire means peace" " L'Empire, c'est la paix " , reassuring foreign governments that he would not attack other European powers in order to extend the French Empire. He was, however, determined to follow a strong foreign policy to extend France's influence and warned that he would not stand by and allow another European power to threaten its neighbour.
In all of his foreign policy ventures, he put the interests of France first. Napoleon III felt that new states created on the basis of national identity would become natural allies and partners of France. Palmerston's goal was to arrange peaceful relations with France in order to free Britain's diplomatic hand elsewhere in the world.
After a brief threat of an invasion of Britain in , France and Britain cooperated in the s with an alliance in the Crimean War and a major trade treaty in War scares were consistently worked up by the press nonetheless. John Delane , editor of The Times , visited France in January and was impressed by its military preparedness.
He expressed his conviction that "Louis-Napoleon was resolved on a forward foreign policy". The first purpose-built steam-powered battleship worryingly christened after Napoleon I was launched in , and the fortification of Cherbourg was strengthened. This led to the extension of the breakwater of Alderney and the construction of Fort Clonque.
He had lived there while in exile and saw Britain as a natural partner in the projects he wished to accomplish. An opportunity soon presented itself: In early , Tsar Nicholas I of Russia put pressure on the weak Ottoman government, demanding that the Ottoman Empire give Russia a protectorate over the Christian countries of the Balkans as well as control over Constantinople and the Dardanelles.
When Russia refused to leave the Romanian territories it had occupied, Britain and France declared war on 27 March It took France and Britain six months to organize a full-scale military expedition to the Black Sea. The Anglo-French fleet landed thirty thousand French and twenty thousand British soldiers in the Crimea on 14 September and began to lay siege to the major Russian port of Sevastopol.
As the siege dragged on, the French and British armies were reinforced and troops from the Kingdom of Sardinia joined them, reaching a total of , soldiers, but they suffered terribly from epidemics of typhus , dysentery , and cholera. During the days of the siege, the French lost 95, soldiers, including 75, due to disease. The suffering of the army in the Crimea was carefully concealed from the French public by press censorship. In September, after a massive bombardment, the Anglo-French army of fifty thousand men stormed the Russian positions, and the Russians were forced to evacuate Sevastopol.
The Crimean War added three new place names to Paris: Alma , named for the first French victory on the river of that name; Sevastopol ; and Malakoff , named for a tower in the center of the Russian line captured by the French. The war had two important diplomatic consequences: Alexander II became an ally of France, and Britain and France were reconciled. Victoria was the first British monarch to do so in centuries. The defeat of Russia and the alliance with Britain gave France increased authority and prestige in Europe.
This was the first war between European powers since the close of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna , marking a breakdown of the alliance system that had maintained peace for nearly half a century. The Paris Peace Conference of represented a high-water mark for Napoleon's regime in foreign affairs. On the evening of 14 January , Napoleon and the Empress escaped an assassination attempt unharmed. A group of conspirators threw three bombs at the imperial carriage as it made its way to the opera.
Eight members of the escort and bystanders were killed and over one hundred people injured. The culprits were quickly arrested.
They believed that if Napoleon III were killed, a republican revolt would immediately follow in France and the new republican government would help all Italian states win independence from Austria and achieve national unification.
Bernard was in London at the time. Since he was a political exile, the Government of the United Kingdom refused to extradite him, but Orsini was tried, convicted and executed on 13 March Other states were de jure independent notably the Duchy of Parma or the Grand Duchy of Tuscany but de facto fully under Austrian influence. Napoleon III had fought with the Italian patriots against the Austrians when he was young and his sympathy was with them, but the Empress, most of his government and the Catholic Church in France supported the Pope and the existing governments.
The British Government was also hostile to the idea of promoting nationalism in Italy. Despite the opposition within his government and in his own palace, Napoleon III did all that he could to support the cause of Piedmont-Sardinia. As Cavour had hoped, she caught the Emperor's eye and became his mistress. Between and , she used the opportunity to pass messages and to plead the Italian cause. In July , Napoleon arranged a secret visit by Count Cavour. They agreed to join forces and drive the Austrians from Italy.
Cavour protested that Nice was Italian, but Napoleon responded that "these are secondary questions. There will be time later to discuss them. Napoleon III looked for diplomatic support. He approached Lord Derby the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and his government; Britain was against the war, but agreed to remain neutral. Still facing strong opposition within his own government, Napoleon III offered to negotiate a diplomatic solution with the twenty-eight-year-old Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria in the spring of The Austrians demanded the disarmament of Piedmont-Sardinia first, and sent a fleet with thirty thousand soldiers to reinforce their garrisons in Italy.
Napoleon promised to send two hundred thousand soldiers to help one hundred thousand soldiers from Piedmont-Sardinia to force the Austrians out of Northern Italy; in return, France would receive the County of Nice and Savoy provided that their populations would agree in a referendum.
It was the Emperor Franz Joseph, growing impatient, who finally unleashed the war. On 23 April , he sent an ultimatum to the government of Piedmont-Sardinia demanding that they stop their military preparations and disband their army. Napoleon III, though he had very little military experience, decided to lead the French army in Italy himself.
Part of the French army crossed over the Alps, while the other part, with the Emperor, landed in Genoa on 18 May Fortunately for Napoleon and the Piedmontese, the commander of the Austrians, General Giulay, was not very aggressive. His forces greatly outnumbered the Piedmontese army at Turin, but he hesitated, allowing the French and Piedmontese to unite their forces. Napoleon III wisely left the fighting to his professional generals. The first great battle of the war, on 4 June , was fought at the town of Magenta.
It was long and bloody, and the French center was exhausted and nearly broken, but the battle was finally won by a timely attack on the Austrian flank by the soldiers of General MacMahon. The Austrians had seven thousand men killed and five thousand captured, while the French forces had four thousand men killed. The battle was largely remembered because, soon after it was fought, patriotic chemists in France gave the name of the battle to their newly discovered bright purple chemical dye; the dye and the colour took the name magenta.
They were greeted by huge, jubilant crowds waving Italian and French flags. The Austrians had been driven from Lombardy, but the army of General Giulay remained in the region of Venice.
His army had been reinforced and numbered , men, roughly the same as the French and Piedmontese, though the Austrians were superior in artillery. On 24 June, the second and decisive battle was fought at Solferino. This battle was even longer and bloodier than Magenta. In confused and often ill-directed fighting, there were approximately forty thousand casualties, including 11, French. Napoleon III was horrified by the thousands of dead and wounded on the battlefield.
He proposed an armistice to the Austrians, which was accepted on 8 July. A formal treaty ending the war was signed on 11 July Count Cavour and the Piedmontese were bitterly disappointed by the abrupt end of the war. Lombardy had been freed, but Venetia the Venice region was still controlled by the Austrians, and the Pope was still the ruler of Rome and Central Italy. Cavour angrily resigned his post. Napoleon III celebrated the day by granting a general amnesty to the political prisoners and exiles he had chased from France.
There were uprisings in central Italy and the Papal states, and Italian patriots, led by Garibaldi, invaded and took over Sicily, which would lead to the collapse of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Napoleon III wrote to the Pope and suggested that he "make the sacrifice of your provinces in revolt and confide them to Victor Emmanuel".
As Cavour had promised, Savoy and the county of Nice were annexed by France in after referendums, although it is disputed how fair they were.
In Nice, 25, voted for union with France, just against, but Italians still called for its return into the 20th century. Count Cavour died a few weeks later, declaring that "Italy is made. To win over the French Catholics and his wife, he agreed to guarantee that Rome would remain under the Pope and independent from the rest of Italy, and agreed to keep French troops there.
The capital of Italy became Turin in then Florence in , not Rome. However, in , Garibaldi gathered an army to march on Rome, under the slogan, "Rome or death". Napoleon III sought, but was unable to find, a diplomatic solution that would allow him to withdraw French troops from Rome while guaranteeing that the city would remain under Papal control.
Garibaldi made another attempt to capture Rome in November , but was defeated by the French and Papal troops near the town of Mentana on 3 November The garrison of eight thousand French troops remained in Rome until August , when they were recalled at the start of the Franco-Prussian War.
In September , Garibaldi's soldiers finally entered Rome and made it the capital of Italy. After the successful conclusion of the Italian campaign and the annexation of Savoy and Nice to the territory of France, the Continental foreign policy of Napoleon III entered a calmer period. Expeditions to distant corners of the world and the expansion of the Empire replaced major changes in the map of Europe.
He was less engaged in governing and less attentive to detail, but still sought opportunities to increase French commerce and prestige globally. It sent 50, troops under General Philip H.
Napoleon's military was stretched very thin; he had committed 40, troops to Mexico, 20, to Rome to guard the Pope against the Italians, as well as another 80, in restive Algeria. Furthermore, Prussia, having just defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of , was an imminent threat.
Napoleon realised his predicament and withdrew his troops from Mexico in Maximilian was overthrown and executed. In Southeast Asia , Napoleon III was more successful in establishing control with one limited military operation at a time. In the Cochinchina Campaign , he took over Cochinchina the southernmost part of modern Vietnam , including Saigon in In , he established a protectorate over Cambodia. Additionally, France had a sphere of influence during the 19th century and early 20th century in Southern China, including a naval base at Kuangchow Bay Guangzhouwan.
Following the model of the Kings of France and of his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon III moved his official residence to the Tuileries Palace , where he had a suite of rooms on the ground floor of the south wing between the Seine and the Pavillon de l'Horloge Clock pavilion , facing the garden.
The French word tuileries denotes " brickworks " or " tile -making works". The palace was given that name because the neighbourhood in which it had been built in was previously known for its numerous mason and tiler businesses.
The Emperor's rooms were overheated and were filled with smoke, as he smoked cigarette after cigarette. The Empress occupied a suite of rooms just above his, highly decorated in the style of Louis XVI with a pink salon, a green salon and a blue salon. The court moved with the Emperor and Empress from palace to palace each year following a regular calendar. In June and July, they moved with selected guests to the Palace of Fontainebleau for walks in the forest and boating on the lake.
At the end of the year the Emperor and Court returned to the Tuileries Palace and gave a series of formal receptions and three or four grand balls with six hundred guests early in the new year. Visiting dignitaries and monarchs were frequently invited. During Carnival , there was a series of very elaborate costume balls on the themes of different countries and different historical periods, for which guests sometimes spent small fortunes on their costumes. Napoleon III was widely renowned for the memorization of people's names.
Not only would the emperor hear the name by ear, he would also write the name down on a paper and study it. Once the emperor was finished with the time he had spent looking at the name, he would rip and then throw away the paper.
Napoleon III had conservative and traditional taste in art: his favourite painters were Alexandre Cabanel and Franz Xaver Winterhalter , who received major commissions, and whose work was purchased for state museums.
At the same time, he followed public opinion, and he made an important contribution to the French avant-garde. The artists and their friends complained, and the complaints reached Napoleon III. His office issued a statement: "Numerous complaints have come to the Emperor on the subject of the works of art which were refused by the jury of the Exposition.
His Majesty, wishing to let the public judge the legitimacy of these complaints, has decided that the works of art which were refused should be displayed in another part of the Palace of Industry. While the paintings were ridiculed by many critics and visitors, the work of the avant-garde became known for the first time to the French public, and it took its place alongside the more traditional style of painting. In , he completed the restoration, begun in , of the stained glass windows of the Sainte-Chapelle , and in , he declared it a national historical monument.
In , he approved and provided funding for Viollet-le-Duc's restoration of the medieval town of Carcassonne. From the beginning of his reign, Napoleon III launched a series of social reforms aimed at improving the life of the working class.
He began with small projects, such as opening up two clinics in Paris for sick and injured workers, a programme of legal assistance to those unable to afford it, as well as subsidies to companies that built low-cost housing for their workers. He outlawed the practice of employers taking possession of or making comments in the work document that every employee was required to carry; negative comments meant that workers were unable to get other jobs.
In , he encouraged the creation of a state insurance fund to help workers or peasants who became disabled and help their widows and families. His most important social reform was the law that gave French workers the right to strike, which had been forbidden since In , he added to this an "Edict of Tolerance" which gave factory workers the right to organise.
He issued a decree regulating the treatment of apprentices and limited working hours on Sundays and holidays. He removed from the Napoleonic Code the infamous article , which said that the declaration of the employer, even without proof, would be given more weight by the court than the word of the employee. In , he made Victor Duruy , the son of a factory worker and a respected historian, his new Minister of Public Education.
Duruy accelerated the pace of the reforms, often coming into conflict with the Catholic Church, which wanted the leading role in education. Despite the opposition of the Church, Duruy opened schools for girls in each commune with more than five hundred residents, a total of eight hundred new schools.
Between and , Duruy created scholastic libraries for fifteen thousand schools and required that primary schools offer courses in history and geography.
Secondary schools began to teach philosophy, which had been banned by the previous regime at the request of the Catholic Church. For the first time, public schools in France began to teach contemporary history, modern languages, art, gymnastics and music. The results of the school reforms were dramatic: in , over 40 percent of army conscripts in France were unable to read or write, yet by , the number had dropped to 25 percent.
The rate of illiteracy among both girls and boys dropped to 32 percent. At the university level, Napoleon III founded new faculties in Marseille , Douai , Nancy , Clermont-Ferrand and Poitiers and founded a network of research institutes of higher studies in the sciences, history, and economics.
These also were criticized by Catholic ecclesiastics. The Cardinal-Archbishop of Rouen, Monseigneur Bonnechose , wrote, "True science is religious, while false science, on the other hand, is vain and prideful; being unable to explain God, it rebels against him.
One of the centerpieces of the economic policy of Napoleon III was the lowering of tariffs and the opening of French markets to imported goods. He had been in Britain in when Prime Minister Robert Peel had lowered tariffs on imported grains, and he had seen the benefits to British consumers and the British economy. However, he faced bitter opposition from many French industrialists and farmers, who feared British competition.
Convinced he was right, he sent his chief economic advisor, Michel Chevalier , to London to begin discussions, and secretly negotiated a new commercial agreement with Britain, calling for the gradual lowering of tariffs in both countries.
He signed the treaty, without consulting with the Assembly, on 23 January Four hundred of the top industrialists in France came to Paris to protest, but he refused to yield. Industrial tariffs on such products as steel rails for railways were lowered first; tariffs on grains were not lowered until June Similar agreements were negotiated with the Netherlands, Italy, and France's other neighbors. France's industries were forced to modernize and become more efficient to compete with the British, as Napoleon III had intended.
Commerce between the countries surged. By the s, the huge state investment in railways, infrastructure and fiscal policies of Napoleon III had brought dramatic changes to the French economy and French society. French people travelled in greater numbers, more often and farther than they had ever travelled before. The opening of the first public school libraries by Napoleon III and the opening by Louis Hachette of the first bookstores in Napoleon's new train stations led to the wider circulation of books around France.
During the Empire, industrial production increased by 73 percent, growing twice as rapidly as that of the United Kingdom, though its total output remained lower. From to , the French economy grew at a pace of five percent a year and exports grew by sixty percent between and French agricultural production increased by sixty percent, spurred by new farming techniques taught at the agricultural schools started in each Department by Napoleon III, and new markets opened by the railways.
The threat of famine, which for centuries had haunted the French countryside, receded. The last recorded famine in France was in During the Empire, the migration of the rural population to the cities increased. The portion of the population active in agriculture dropped from 61 percent in to 54 percent in The average salary of French workers grew by 45 percent during the Second Empire, but only kept up with price inflation.
On the other hand, more French people than ever were able to save money; the number of bank accounts grew from , in to 2,, in The liberal republicans on the left had always opposed him, believing he had usurped power and suppressed the Republic. The conservative Catholics were increasingly unhappy, because he had abandoned the Pope in his struggle to retain political control of the Papal States and had built up a public education system that was a rival to the Catholic system.
Many businessmen, particularly in the metallurgical and textile industries, were unhappy, because he had reduced the tariffs on British products, putting the British products in direct competition with their own. The members of Parliament were particularly unhappy with him for dealing with them only when he needed money. When he had liberalized trade with England, he had not even consulted them. Napoleon's large-scale program of public works, and his expensive foreign policy, had created rapidly mounting government debts; the annual deficit was about million gold-francs, and the cumulative debt had reached nearly 1, million gold-francs 1 billion in US readings.
The Emperor needed to restore the confidence of the business world and to involve the legislature and have them share responsibility. On 24 December , Napoleon III, against the opposition of his own ministers, issued a decree announcing that the legislature would have greater powers. The Senate and the Assembly could, for the first time, give a response to the Emperor's program, ministers were obliged to defend their programs before the Assembly, and the right of Deputies to amend the programs was enlarged.
On 1 February , further reforms were announced: Deputies could speak from the tribune, not just from their seats, and a stenographic record would be made and published of each session. Another even more important reform was announced on 31 December the budget of each ministry would be voted section by section, not in a block, and the government could no longer spend money by special decree when the legislature was not in session.
He did retain the right to change the budget estimates section by section. In the legislative elections of 31 May , the pro-government candidates received 5,, votes, while the opposition received 1,, votes, three times more than in the previous elections. The rural departments still voted for Napoleon III's candidates, but in Paris, 63 percent of the votes went to anti-government republican candidates, with similar numbers in all the large cities. Despite the opposition in the legislature, Napoleon III's reforms remained popular in the rest of the country.
A new plebiscite was held in , on this text: "The people approve the liberal reforms added to the Constitution since by the Emperor, with the agreement of the legislative bodies and ratified by the Senate on April 20, The final vote was 7,, votes yes, 1,, votes no, and 1,, abstentions. The Emperor is more popular than ever. Napoleon III with his family, c. Napoleon III in normal attire, c. Through the s, the health of the Emperor steadily worsened. It had been damaged by his six years in prison at Ham; he had chronic pains in his legs and feet, particularly when it was cold, and as a result, he always lived and worked in overheated rooms and offices.
He smoked heavily, distrusted doctors and their advice and attributed any problems simply to "rheumatism", for which he regularly visited the hot springs at Vichy and other spas. It became difficult for him to ride a horse, and he was obliged to walk slowly, often with a cane. From onwards, the crises of his urinary tract were treated with opium , which made him seem lethargic and apathetic. His writing became hard to read and his voice weak. In the spring of , he was visited by an old friend from England, Lord Malmesbury.
Malmesbury found him to be "terribly changed and very ill". The health problems of the Emperor were kept secret by the government, which feared that, if his condition became public, the opposition would demand his abdication. One newspaper, the Courrier de la Vienne , was warned by the censors to stop publishing articles which had "a clear and malicious intent to spread, contrary to the truth, alarms about the health of the Emperor". They were reluctant to operate, however, because of the high risk gallstone operations did not become relatively safe until the s and because of the Emperor's weakness.
Before anything further could be done, however, France was in the middle of a diplomatic crisis. In the s, Prussia appeared on the horizon as a new rival to French power in Europe. Its chancellor, Otto von Bismarck , had ambitions for Prussia to lead a unified Germany. They had cordial relations. On 30 September , however, in Munich, Bismarck declared, in a famous speech: "It is not by speeches and votes of the majority that the great questions of our period will be settled, as one believed in , but by iron and blood.
In the winter and spring of , when the German Confederation invaded and occupied the German-speaking provinces of Denmark Schleswig and Holstein , Napoleon III recognized the threat that a unified Germany would pose to France, and he looked for allies to challenge Germany, without success. The British government was suspicious that Napoleon wanted to take over Belgium and Luxembourg, felt secure with its powerful navy, and did not want any military engagements on the European continent at the side of the French.
The Russian government was also suspicious of Napoleon, whom it believed had encouraged Polish nationalists to rebel against Russian rule in Bismarck and Prussia, on the other hand, had offered assistance to Russia to help crush the Polish patriots. In October , Napoleon had a cordial meeting with Bismarck at Biarritz. They discussed Venetia, Austria's remaining province in Italy. Bismarck told Napoleon that Germany had no secret arrangement to give Venetia to Italy, and Napoleon assured him in turn that France had no secret understanding with Austria.
Bismarck hinted vaguely that, in the event of a war between Austria and Prussia, French neutrality would be rewarded with some sort of territory as a compensation. Napoleon III had Luxembourg in mind. In , relations between Austria and Prussia worsened and Bismarck demanded the expulsion of Austria from the German Confederation. Napoleon and his foreign minister, Drouyn de Lhuys , expected a long war and an eventual Austrian victory.
On 12 June , France signed a secret treaty with Austria, guaranteeing French neutrality in a Prussian-Austrian war. In exchange, in the event of an Austrian victory, Austria would give Venetia to France and would also create a new independent German state on the Rhine, which would become an ally of France.
At the same time, Napoleon proposed a secret treaty with Bismarck, promising that France would remain neutral in a war between Austria and Prussia. In the event of a Prussian victory, France would recognize Prussia's annexation of smaller German states, and France, in exchange, would receive a portion of German territory, the Palatinate region north of Alsace. Bismarck, rightly confident of success due to the modernization of the Prussian Army , summarily rejected Napoleon's offer. On 2 July, Austria asked Napoleon to arrange an armistice between Italy, which had allied itself with Prussia, and Austria, in exchange for which France would receive Venetia.
The way to Vienna was open for the Prussians, and Austria asked for an armistice. Marshal Canrobert , who saw him on 28 July, wrote that the Emperor "was pitiful to see.
He could barely sit up in his armchair, and his drawn face expressed at the same time moral anguish and physical pain. Napoleon III still hoped to receive some compensation from Prussia for French neutrality during the war. His foreign minister, Drouyn, asked Bismarck for the Palatinate region on the Rhine, which belonged to Bavaria, and for the demilitarization of Luxembourg, which was the site of a formidable fortress staffed by a strong Prussian garrison in accordance with international treaties.
Luxembourg had regained its de jure independence in as a grand duchy. However, it was in personal union with the Netherlands.
Bismarck swiftly intervened and showed the British ambassador a copy of Napoleon's demands; as a result, he put pressure on William III to refuse to sell Luxembourg to France. France was forced to renounce any claim to Luxembourg in the Treaty of London Napoleon III gained nothing for his efforts but the demilitarization of the Luxembourg fortress. Despite his failing health, Napoleon III could see that the Prussian Army, combined with the armies of Bavaria and the other German states, would be a formidable enemy.
In , Prussia, with a population of 22 million, had been able to mobilize an army of , men, while France, with a population of 26 million, had an army of only , men, of whom , were in Algeria, Mexico, and Rome.
His proposal was opposed by many French officers, such as Marshal Randon , who preferred a smaller, more professional army; he said: "This proposal will only give us recruits; it's soldiers we need. What is the necessity? Where is the danger? Who is threatening us? If France were to disarm, the Germans would know how to convince their governments to do the same.
It was replaced in January by a much more modest project to create a garde mobile , or reserve force, to support the army. Napoleon III was overconfident in his military strength and went into war even after he failed to find any allies who would support a war to stop German unification.
Following the defeat of Austria, Napoleon resumed his search for allies against Prussia. In April , he proposed an alliance, defensive and offensive, with Austria. If Austria joined France in a victorious war against Prussia, Napoleon promised that Austria could form a new confederation with the southern states of Germany and could annex Silesia , while France took for its part the left bank of the Rhine River.
But the timing of Napoleon's offer was poorly chosen; Austria was in the process of a major internal reform , creating a new twin monarchy structure with two components, one being the Empire of Austria and the other being the Kingdom of Hungary.
Napoleon's attempt to install the archduke Maximilian, the brother of the Austrian Emperor, in Mexico was just coming to its disastrous conclusion; the French troops had just been withdrawn from Mexico in February , and the unfortunate Maximilian would be captured, judged and shot by a firing squad on 19 June.
Napoleon III made these offers again in August , on a visit to offer condolences for the death of Maximilian, but the proposal was not received with enthusiasm.
Italian King Victor Emmanuel was personally favorable to a better relationship with France, remembering the role that Napoleon III had played in achieving Italian unification, but Italian public opinion was largely hostile to France; on 3 November , French and Papal soldiers had fired upon the Italian patriots of Garibaldi, when he tried to capture Rome. Napoleon presented a proposed treaty of alliance on 4 June , the anniversary of the joint French-Italian victory at Magenta.
The Italians responded by demanding that France withdraw its troops who were protecting the Pope in Rome. While Napoleon III was having no success finding allies, Bismarck signed secret military treaties with the southern German states, who promised to provide troops in the event of a war between Prussia and France. In , Bismarck signed an accord with Russia that gave Russia liberty of action in the Balkans in exchange for neutrality in the event of a war between France and Prussia. This treaty put additional pressure on Austria, which also had interests in the Balkans, not to ally itself with France.
But most importantly, Prussia promised to support Russia in lifting the restrictions of the Congress of Paris In any war between France and Prussia, France would be entirely alone.
France took the bait and declared war on Prussia, which proved to be a major miscalculation. In his memoirs, written long after the war, Bismarck wrote, "I always considered that a war with France would naturally follow a war against Austria I was convinced that the gulf which was created over time between the north and the south of Germany could not be better overcome than by a national war against the neighbouring people who were aggressive against us.
I did not doubt that it was necessary to make a French-German war before the general reorganization of Germany could be realized. In Bavaria , the largest of the southern German states, unification with mostly Protestant Prussia was being opposed by the Patriotic Party , which favoured a confederacy of Catholic Bavaria with Catholic Austria. German Protestant public opinion was on the side of unification with Prussia. In France, patriotic sentiment was also growing.
On 8 May , French voters had overwhelmingly supported Napoleon III's program in a national plebiscite, with 7,, votes yes against 1,, votes no, an increase of support of two million votes since the legislative elections in The Emperor was less popular in Paris and the big cities, but highly popular in the French countryside.
Napoleon had named a new foreign minister, Antoine Agenor, the Duke de Gramont , who was hostile to Bismarck. The Emperor was weak and ill, but the more extreme Bonapartists were prepared to show their strength against the republicans and monarchists in the parliament.
In July , Bismarck found a cause for a war in an old dynastic dispute. At the end of , Napoleon III had let it be known to the Prussian king and his Chancellor Bismarck that a Hohenzollern prince on the throne of Spain would not be acceptable to France. King Wilhelm had no desire to enter into a war against Napoleon III and did not pursue the subject further.
At the end of May, however, Bismarck wrote to the father of Leopold, asking him to put pressure on his son to accept the candidacy to be King of Spain. Leopold, solicited by both his father and Bismarck, agreed. The news of Leopold's candidacy, published 2 July , aroused fury in the French parliament and press.
The government was attacked by both the republicans and monarchist opposition, and by the ultra-Bonapartists, for its weakness against Prussia. He asked Marshal Leboeuf , the chief of staff of the French army, if the army was prepared for a war against Prussia. Leboeuf responded that the French soldiers had a rifle superior to the Prussian rifle, that the French artillery was commanded by an elite corps of officers, and that the army "would not lack a button on its puttees ". He assured the Emperor that the French army could have four hundred thousand men on the Rhine in less than fifteen days.
On 10 July, he told Leopold's father that his candidacy should be withdrawn. Leopold resisted the idea, but finally agreed on the 11th, and the withdrawal of the candidacy was announced on the 12th, a diplomatic victory for Napoleon.
On the evening of the 12th, after meeting with the Empress and with his foreign minister, Gramont, he decided to push his success a little further; he would ask King Wilhelm to guarantee the Prussian government would never again make such a demand for the Spanish throne. The King told him courteously that he agreed fully with the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidacy, but that he could not make promises on behalf of the government for the future.
He considered that the matter was closed. As he was instructed by Gramont, Benedetti asked for another meeting with the King to repeat the request, but the King politely, yet firmly, refused. Benedetti returned to Paris and the affair seemed finished. However, Bismarck edited the official dispatch of the meeting to make it appear that both sides had been hostile: "His majesty the King," the dispatch read, "refused to meet again with the French ambassador, and let him know, through an aide-de-camp of service, that His Majesty had nothing more to say to the Ambassador.
The Ems telegram had exactly the effect that Bismarck had intended. Once again, public opinion in France was inflamed. Gramont, the French foreign minister, declared that he felt "he had just received a slap. A crowd of 15,—20, persons, carrying flags and patriotic banners, marched through the streets of Paris, demanding war. On 19 July , a declaration of war was sent to the Prussian government.
When France entered the war, there were patriotic demonstrations in the streets of Paris, with crowds singing La Marseillaise and chanting "To Berlin! To Berlin! He told General Lepic that he expected the war to be "long and difficult", and wondered, "Who knows if we'll come back? On 28 July, he departed Saint-Cloud by train for the front. He was accompanied by the year-old Prince Imperial in the uniform of the army, by his military staff, and by a large contingent of chefs and servants in livery.
He was pale and visibly in pain. The Empress remained in Paris as the Regent , as she had done on other occasions when the Emperor was out of the country. The mobilization of the French army was chaotic.
Two hundred thousand soldiers converged on the German frontier, along a front of kilometers, choking all the roads and railways for miles. Officers and their respective units were unable to find one another. General Moltke and the German army, having gained experience mobilizing in the war against Austria, were able to efficiently move three armies of , men to a more concentrated front of just kilometers. In addition, the German soldiers were backed by a substantial reserve of the Landwehr Territorial defence , with , men, and an additional reserve of , territorial guards.
The French army arrived at the frontier equipped with maps of Germany, but without maps of France—where the actual fighting took place—and without a specific plan of what it was going to do. The French won a minor skirmish and advanced no further. Napoleon III, very ill, was unable to ride his horse and had to support himself by leaning against a tree.
In the meantime, the Germans had assembled a much larger army opposite Alsace and Lorraine than the French had expected or were aware of. On 4 August , the Germans attacked with overwhelming force against a French division in Alsace at the Battle of Wissembourg German: Weissenburg , forcing it to retreat.
The French soldiers fought bravely, and French cavalry and infantry attacked the German lines repeatedly, but the Germans had superior logistics, communications, and leadership. The decisive weapon was the new German Krupp six pound field gun , which was breech-loading , had a steel barrel, longer range, a higher rate of fire, and was more accurate than the bronze muzzle-loading French cannons.
The Krupp guns caused terrible casualties in the French ranks. When news of the French defeats reached Paris on 7 August, it was greeted with disbelief and dismay. She chose General Cousin-Montauban , better known as the Count of Palikao, seventy-four years old and former commander of the French expeditionary force to China, as her new prime minister.
Napoleon III proposed returning to Paris, realizing that he was not doing any good for the army. The Empress, in charge of the government, responded by telegraph, "Don't think of coming back, unless you want to unleash a terrible revolution. They will say you quit the army to flee the danger. At the front, the Emperor told Marshal Leboeuf, "we've both been dismissed.
On 18 August , the Battle of Gravelotte , the biggest battle of the war, took place in Lorraine between the Germans and the army of Marshal Bazaine. The Germans suffered 20, casualties and the French 12,, but the Germans emerged as the victors, as Marshal Bazaine's army, with , soldiers, six divisions of cavalry and five hundred cannons, was trapped inside the fortifications of Metz, unable to move.
MacMahon, Marshal Bazaine, and the count of Palikao, with the Empress in Paris, all had different ideas of what the army should do next, and the Emperor had to act as a referee. The Emperor and MacMahon proposed moving their army closer to Paris to protect the city, but on 17 August Bazaine telegraphed to the Emperor: "I urge you to renounce this idea, which seems to abandon the Army at Metz Couldn't you make a powerful diversion toward the Prussian corps, which are already exhausted by so many battles?
The Empress shares my opinion. The Emperor, riding in an open carriage, was jeered, sworn at and insulted by demoralized soldiers. The direction of movement of MacMahon's army was supposed to be secret, but it was published in the French press and thus was quickly known to the German general staff.
Moltke, the German commander, ordered two Prussian armies marching toward Paris to turn towards MacMahon's army. On 30 August, one corps of MacMahon's army was attacked by the Germans at Beaumont , losing five hundred men and forty cannons.
MacMahon, believing he was ahead of the Germans, decided to stop and reorganize his forces at the fortified city of Sedan , in the Ardennes close to the Belgian border.
The Battle of Sedan was a total disaster for the French—the army surrendered to the Prussians and Napoleon himself was made a prisoner of war. The Germans arrived on 31 August, and by 1 September, occupied the heights around Sedan where they placed artillery batteries, and began shelling the French positions below. At five o'clock in the morning on 1 September, a German shell seriously wounded MacMahon in the hip.
Sedan quickly came under bombardment from seven hundred German guns. During the battle and bombardment, the French lost seventeen thousand killed or wounded and twenty-one thousand captured.
One officer of his military escort was killed and two more received wounds. A doctor accompanying him wrote in his notebook, "If this man has not come here to kill himself, I don't know what he has come to do. I have not seen him give an order all morning.
Finally, at one o'clock in the afternoon, Napoleon emerged from his reverie and ordered a white flag hoisted above the citadel. He then had a message sent to the Prussian King, who was at Sedan with his army: "Monsieur my brother, not being able to die at the head of my troops, nothing remains for me but to place my sword in the hands of Your Majesty.
Some people believe that, by burying ourselves under the ruins of Sedan, we would have better served my name and my dynasty. It's possible. Nay, to hold in my hand the lives of thousands of men and not to make a sign to save them was something that was beyond my capacity At six o'clock in the morning on 2 September, in the uniform of a general and accompanied by four generals from his staff, Napoleon was taken to the German headquarters at Donchery.
They dictated the terms of the surrender to Napoleon. Napoleon asked that his army be disarmed and allowed to pass into Belgium, but Bismarck refused. Napoleon told the King that he had not wanted the war, but that public opinion had forced him into it. It is impossible for me to say what I have suffered and what I am suffering now I would have preferred death to a capitulation so disastrous, and yet, under the present circumstances, it was the only way to avoid the butchering of sixty thousand people.
If only all my torments were concentrated here! I think of you, our son, and our unhappy country. The news of the capitulation reached Paris on 3 September, confirming the rumors that were already circulating in the city.
When the Empress heard the news that the Emperor and the army had been taken prisoner, she reacted by shouting at the Emperor's personal aide, "No! An Emperor does not capitulate! He is dead!
They are trying to hide it from me. Why didn't he kill himself! Doesn't he know he has dishonored himself?! From there, on 7 September, she took the yacht of a British official to England. The Second Empire had come to an end. He had wished to at least be martyred and remain as a brave hero who died for his country. General Bazaine, besieged with a large part of the remaining French Army in the fortification of Metz, had secret talks with Bismarck's envoys on 23 September. The idea was for Bazaine to establish a conservative regime in France, for himself or for Napoleon's son.
Bazaine was willing to take over power in France after the Germans had defeated the republic in Paris. Because of the weakening of the French position overall, Bismarck lost interest in this option. On 27 November, Napoleon composed a memorandum to Bismarck that raised the possibility that the Prussian King might urge the French people to recall him as Emperor after a peace treaty was signed and Paris surrendered. But by this time, Metz had already fallen, leaving Napoleon without a power base.
Bismarck did not see much chance for a restored empire, as the French people would consider Napoleon a mere marionette of the enemy. Bismarck refused to acknowledge the former empress, as this had caused irritations with Britain and Russia.
Shortly afterwards, the Germans signed a truce with the Government of France. Napoleon continued to write political tracts and letters and dreamed of a return to power. Bonapartist candidates participated in the first elections for the National Assembly on 8 February, but won only five seats. On 1 March, the newly elected assembly officially declared the removal of the emperor from power and placed all the blame for the French defeat squarely on him. Having limited funds, Napoleon sold properties and jewels and arrived in England on 20 March He was received by Queen Victoria, who also visited him at Chislehurst.
Louis-Napoleon had a longtime connection with Chislehurst and Camden Place: years earlier, while exiled in England, he had often visited Emily Rowles, whose father had owned Camden Place in the s. She had assisted his escape from French prison in He had also paid attention to another English girl, Elizabeth Howard, who later gave birth to a son, whose father not Louis-Napoleon settled property on her to support the son, via a trust whose trustee was Nathaniel Strode.
Strode had also received money from the Emperor, possibly to buy Camden Place and maintain it as a bolt hole. Napoleon passed his time writing and designing a stove which would be more energy efficient. In the summer of , his health began to worsen. Doctors recommended surgery to remove his gallstones. After two operations, he became very seriously ill. His final defeat in the war would haunt the dying former emperor throughout his last days.
On his deathbed, he was attended by Henri Conneau , one of his attendants. He was given last rites and died on 9 January Napoleon was originally buried at St Mary's , the Catholic church in Chislehurst.
Louis Napoleon has a historical reputation as a womanizer, yet he said: "It is usually the man who attacks. As for me, I defend myself, and I often capitulate. During his reign, it was the task of Count Felix Bacciochi , his social secretary, to arrange for trysts and to procure women for the Emperor's favours. His affairs were not trivial sideshows: they distracted him from governing, affected his relationship with the empress, and diminished him in the views of the other European courts.
By his late forties, Napoleon started to suffer from numerous medical ailments, including kidney disease , bladder stones, chronic bladder and prostate infections, arthritis , gout , obesity , and the chronic effects of smoking. In , Dr. Robert Ferguson, a consultant called from London, diagnosed a "nervous exhaustion" that had a "debilitating impact upon sexual Napoleon III also directed the building of the French railway network, which contributed to the development of the coal mining and steel industry in France.
This advance radically changed the nature of the French economy, which entered the modern age of large-scale capitalism. The French stock market also expanded prodigiously, with many coal mining and steel companies issuing stocks. Historians credit Napoleon chiefly for supporting the railways, but not otherwise building the economy. Napoleon's military pressure and Russian mistakes, culminating in the Crimean War, dealt a blow to the Concert of Europe , since it precipitated a war that disrupted the post-Napoleonic peace, although the ultimately diplomatic solution to the war demonstrated the continued vitality of the system.
The concert was based on stability and balance of powers, whereas Napoleon attempted to rearrange the world map to France's advantage. A pound cannon designed by France is commonly referred to as a "Napoleon cannon" or "pounder Napoleon" in his honor. In France, such arch-opposition from the age's central literary figure, whose attacks on Napoleon III were obsessive and powerful, made it impossible for a very long time to assess his reign objectively.
Karl Marx , in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon , famously mocked Napoleon III by saying "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historical facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
Historians by the s saw the Second Empire as a precursor of fascism, but by the s were celebrating it as leading example of a modernizing regime. His greatest achievements came in material improvements, in the form of a grand railway network that facilitated commerce and tied the nation together and centered it on Paris.
He is given high credits for the rebuilding of Paris with broad boulevards, striking public buildings, very attractive residential districts for upscale Parisians, and great public parks, including the Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes , used by all classes of Parisians.
In international policy, he tried to emulate his uncle, with numerous imperial ventures around the world, as well as wars in Europe. He badly mishandled the threat from Prussia and found himself without allies in the face of overwhelming force. Historians have also praised his attention to the fate of the working classes and poor people.
Throughout his reign, the emperor worked to alleviate the sufferings of the poor, on occasion breaching the 19th-century economic orthodoxy of freedom and laissez-faire and using state resources or interfering in the market. Among other things, the Emperor granted the right to strike to French workers in , despite intense opposition from corporate lobbies.
National []. Foreign []. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. President —52 and Emperor —70 of the French.
For other uses, see Louis Napoleon disambiguation. Portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter , c. St Michael's Abbey. French Armed Forces. Commander-in-chief of the French Armed Forces — This section relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. September Learn how and when to remove this template message. Further information: French presidential election.
Further information: History of rail transport in France. Main article: Haussmann's renovation of Paris.