Napoleon III: the other Napoleon and his Empire - Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2002 by Christopher Forbes

In 1848 Paris was convulsed with the riots that would see the fall of the king. On February 22, an opposition political rally had been banned by the government. Ferment grew and after some of the mob were killed while storming the prime minister's house, the National Guard joined the insurgents. The aged Louis Philippe panicked, abdicated, and fled. Louis Napoleon brilliantly exploited the subsequent unrest and its brutal suppression by the provisional government. He was elected deputy of the new Assembly by several departments in the summer of 1848 and then announced his candidacy for the presidency. When the election was held on December 10, 1848, he received nearly 5.5 million votes compared to less than 1.5 million for his nearest opponent. The results were confirmed ten days later, and Louis Napoleon took the oath of office, duly swearing his loyalty to the Republic and to the constitution.

The prince-president was prohibited by this same constitution from serving again after his term expired in May 1852. Before this date he set about trying to change the constitution. When this failed, he and his close cohorts seized power by coup d'etat on December 2, 1851. A plebiscite was held on December 21 and 22, and 7.5 million Frenchmen voted in favor of his actions while only 650,000 disapproved. The following autumn the prince-president made an extensive tour of the provinces, returning in triumph to Pads on October 16, 1852 (Pl. V). A second referendum was held on November 21 to decide whether the people wished "le retablissement de la dignite Imperiale dans la personne de Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte" [the reestablishment of the Imperial dignity in the person of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte]. (3) It passed by an even greater majority: 7.8 million for, 250,000 against.

On December 2, 1852, the Second Empire was officially established and Louis Napoleon was proclaimed Napoleon III. In spite of its many accomplishments socially, economically and militarily over the next eighteen years, historians have consistently treated the Second Empire dismissively. Titles of books published in the last four decades include La feerie imperiale [The imperial fairytale], Imperial Masquerade, Imperial Charade, Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire, and Paris Babylon. (4) Writing a review of the exhibition entitled The Second Empire, 1852-1870: Art in France under Napoleon III in this magazine in October 1978, Jean-Marie Moulin, curator of the Musee national du Chateau de Compiegne paid tribute to the Philadelphia Museum of Art for organizing the show.

Had it been proposed in France it might not have come to fruition because passions still run high there more than a century after the German defeat of the French at the Battle of Sedan brought the reign of Napoleon III to an end. (5)

This attitude has made collecting anything related to Napoleon III a varied and eminently affordable enterprise. Since I began collecting in 1965, prices for everything from portraits to documents, ephemera to folk art have been at most one-tenth those for similar pieces relating to Napoleon I. While no major anniversary of births, buildings, or battles relating to the first Napoleon goes uncelebrated in France, the sesquicentennial of the creation of the Second Empire is being virtually ignored there.