page_title: Napoleon III
section_title: Search for a wife
hierarchical_section_title: Napoleon III / Middle years / Search for a wife
caption_attribution_description: English: Eugenie, Empress of the French in 1862.
context_page_description: Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I and cousin of Napoleon II, was the first president of France, from 1848 to 1852, and the last French monarch, from 1852 to 1870. First elected president of the French Second Republic in 1848, he seized power in 1851, when he could not constitutionally be re-elected, and became the emperor of the French. He founded the Second French Empire and was its only emperor until the defeat of the French army and his capture by Prussia and its allies in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He worked to modernize the French economy, rebuilt the center of Paris, expanded the French overseas empire, and engaged in the Crimean War and the Second Italian War of Independence.
  Napoleon III commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris carried out by his prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, and launched similar public works projects in Marseille, Lyon and other French cities. Napoleon III modernized the French banking system, expanded and consolidated the French railway system, and made the French merchant marine the second largest in the world.
context_section_description: Soon after becoming emperor, Napoleon III began searching for a wife to give him an heir. He was still attached to his companion Harriet Howard, who attended receptions at the Élysée Palace and traveled around France with him. He quietly sent a diplomatic delegation to approach the family of Princess Carola of Vasa, the granddaughter of deposed King Gustav IV Adolf of Sweden. 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.
  Louis-Napoleon finally announced that he found the right woman: a Spaniard called Eugénie du Derje de Montijo, age 23, 20th Countess of Teba and 15th Marchioness of Ardales. She received much of her education in Paris. Her beauty attracted Louis-Napoleon, who, as was his custom, tried to seduce her, but Eugénie told him to wait for marriage. The civil ceremony took place at Tuileries Palace on 22 January 1853, and a much grander ceremony was held a few days later at the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris. In 1856, Eugénie gave birth to a son and heir-apparent, Napoléon, Prince Imperial.
  With an heir to the throne secured, Napoleon III resumed his "petites distractions" with other women. Eugénie faithfully performed the duties of an empress, entertaining guests and accompanying the Emperor to balls, opera, and theater. 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. She pressured the Ministry of National Education to give the first baccalaureate diploma to a woman and tried unsuccessfully to induce the Académie française to elect the writer George Sand as its first female member.
caption: Eugénie and the Prince Imperial in 1862
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