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Person1808 – 1873

Napoleon III

Also called: Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

Louis-Napoléon, nephew of Napoleon I, elected president in 1848, who made himself emperor (1852–1870) by a coup but was captured in the Franco-Prussian War and deposed

A nephew of Napoleon I, he twice tried and failed to seize power, but after the February Revolution of 1848 his name carried him to the presidency. He staged a coup in 1851 and the following year became emperor by plebiscite (the Second Empire). He promoted Haussmann’s rebuilding of Paris, railways and industry, and plunged into the Crimean War and the war for Italian unification. Under his rule France attacked Korea in 1866 (the French campaign against Korea). Captured at Sedan in 1870, he saw his empire collapse and died in England.

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4 related events

  1. 1
    1848February Revolutionrelated figure

    Parisians and workers demanding a wider franchise overthrew the July Monarchy and founded the Second Republic. Universal male suffrage was introduced, and revolution spread across Europe.

  2. 2
    1853 – 1856Crimean Warmonarch

    When Russia, seeking to expand southward, went to war with the Ottoman Empire, Britain, France and Sardinia sided with the Ottomans. Russia lost Sevastopol and the war, and its southward drive was checked.

  3. 3
    1859 – 1870Unification of Italyrelated figure

    Cavour of the Kingdom of Sardinia joined the north and centre through diplomacy and war, and Garibaldi brought in the south; the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861. Venice was added in 1866 and Rome in 1870, completing unification.

  4. 4
    1870 – 1871Franco-Prussian War and the Founding of the German Empiremonarch

    Bismarck's Prussia defeated France and in 1871 proclaimed the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. France lost Alsace-Lorraine.

People who appear alongside

  • Louis Philippe I1773 – 1850

    The “Citizen King” of France (1830–1848) placed on the throne by the July Revolution; his July Monarchy rested on the wealthy bourgeoisie and fell in the February Revolution of 1848

  • Alexander II of Russia1818 – 1881

    Emperor of Russia (1855–1881) who, after defeat in the Crimean War, emancipated the serfs and pursued reform from above, but was assassinated by revolutionaries

  • Florence Nightingale1820 – 1910

    British nurse who reformed sanitation in the military hospitals of the Crimean War, cutting soldiers’ death rates, and laid the foundations of modern nursing and its training

  • Camillo Cavour1810 – 1861

    Prime minister of Sardinia who led Italian unification through modernization and diplomacy, becoming the first prime minister of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861

  • Giuseppe Garibaldi1807 – 1882

    Italian soldier and revolutionary who in 1860 led the Thousand, the “Redshirts”, to conquer Sicily and Naples and handed them to the King of Sardinia

  • Victor Emmanuel II1820 – 1878

    King of Sardinia (1849–1861) and first king of united Italy (1861–1878)

  • Giuseppe Mazzini1805 – 1872

    Italian revolutionary who founded Young Italy and called for Italy to be united as a single republic

  • Otto von Bismarck1815 – 1898

    Minister-president of Prussia (1862–1890) and first chancellor of the German Empire (1871–1890) who unified Germany through three wars by his policy of “blood and iron”

Themes this person appears in

  • Revolutions and Nation-States1776 – 1871

    From the Declaration of Independence to the German Empire — a century in which liberalism and nationalism toppled the old order in Europe and the Americas and built nation-states