Napoleon III | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-28

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Napoleon III

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SUMMARY
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Napoleon III (born Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870 and, as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the President of France from 1848 to 1852. He was the only president of the French Second Republic and the founder of the Second French Empire.
The nephew and heir of Napoleon I, he was the first head of state of France to hold the title of president, the first elected by a direct popular vote and the youngest until the election of Emmanuel Macron in 2017. Barred by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, he organized a self-coup d'état in 1851 and then took the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of his uncle's coronation. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution. His downfall was brought about by the Franco-Prussian War in which France was quickly and decisively defeated by the North German Confederation, led by Prussia.
During the first years of the Empire, Napoleon's government imposed censorship and harsh repressive measures against his opponents. Some six thousand were imprisoned or sent to penal colonies until 1859. Thousands more went into voluntary exile abroad, including Victor Hugo. From 1862 onwards, he relaxed government censorship and his regime came to be known as the "Liberal Empire". Many of his opponents returned to France and became members of the National Assembly.Napoleon III commissioned the grand reconstruction of Paris, carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann. He launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, greatly expanded and consolidated the French railway system and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world. He promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made France an agricultural exporter. Napoleon III negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier free trade agreement with Britain and similar agreements with France's other European trading partners. Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike and the right to organize. Women's education greatly expanded as did the list of required subjects in public schools.In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the world. He was a supporter of popular sovereignty and of nationalism. In Europe, he allied with Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853–56). His regime assisted Italian unification and in doing so annexed Savoy and the County of Nice to France—at the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy. Napoleon doubled the area of the French overseas empire in Asia, the Pacific and Africa. His army's intervention in Mexico which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection ended in failure.
From 1866, Napoleon had to face the mounting power of Prussia as Chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought German unification under Prussian leadership. In July 1870, Napoleon entered the Franco-Prussian War without allies and with inferior military forces. The French army was rapidly defeated and Napoleon III was captured at the Battle of Sedan. The Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris and Napoleon went into exile in England, where he died in 1873.