Second French Empire The Second French Empire ( ) was the Imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870 , between the Second Republic and the Third Republic , in France . Rule of Napoleon III . Although the machinery of government was almost the same under the Second Empire as it had been under the First , its founding principles were different . The function of the Empire , as Emperor Napoleon III often repeated , was to guide the people internally towards justice and externally towards perpetual peace . Holding his power by universal male suffrage , and having frequently , from his prison or in exile , reproached previous oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions , he set out to solve them by organising a system of government based on the principles of the " Napoleonic Idea " , i . e . of the emperor , the elect of the people as the representative of the democracy , and as such supreme ; and of himself , the representative of the great Napoleon I of France , " who had sprung armed from the French Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove " , as the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary period . The anti - parliamentary French Constitution of 1852 instituted by Napoleon III on January 14 , 1852 was largely a repetition of that of the year 1848 . All executive power was entrusted to the emperor , who , as head of state , was solely responsible to the people . The people of the Empire , lacking democratic rights , were to rely on the benevolence of the emperor rather than on the benevolence of politicians . He was to nominate the members of the council of state , whose duty it was to prepare the laws , and of the senate , a body permanently established as a constituent part of the empire . One innovation was made , namely , that the Legislative Body was elected by universal suffrage , but it had no right of initiative , all laws being proposed by the executive power . This new political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as had attended that of Brumaire . On December 2 , 1852 , France , still under the effect of Napoleon ' s legacy , and the fear of anarchy , conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power , with the title of emperor , upon Napoleon III . The Legislative Body was not allowed to elect its own president or to regulate its own procedure , or to propose a law or an amendment , or to vote on the budget in detail , or to make its deliberations public . Similarly , universal suffrage was supervised and controlled by means of official candidature , by forbidding free speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition , and by a gerrymandering in such a way as to overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population . The press was subjected to a system of " cautionnements " ( " caution money " , deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour ) and " avertissements " ( requests by the authorities to cease publication of certain articles ) , under sanction of suspension or suppression . Books were subject to censorship . In order to counteract the opposition of individuals , a surveillance of suspects was instituted . Felice Orsini ' s attack on the emperor in 1858 , though purely Italian in its motive , served as a pretext for increasing the severity of this " régime " by the law of general security ( " sûreté générale " ) which authorised the internment , exile or deportation of any suspect without trial . In the same way public instruction was strictly supervised , the teaching of philosophy was suppressed in the " lycée s " , and the disciplinary powers of the administration were increased . For seven years France had no democratic life . The Empire governed by a series of plebiscite s . Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist ; from then till 1860 it was reduced to five members : Darimon , Emile Ollivier , Hénon , Jules Favre and Ernest Picard . The royalists waited inactive after the new and unsuccessful attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853 , by a combination of the legitimist s and Orleanist s , to re - create a living monarchy out of the ruin of two royal families . History . Coup of 1851 . On 2 December 1851 Louis - Napoléon Bonaparte , who had been elected President of the Republic , staged a coup d ' état by dissolving the National Assembly without having the constitutional right to do so . He thus became sole ruler of France , and re - established universal suffrage , previously abolished by the Assembly . His decisions and the extension of his mandate for 10 years were popularly endorsed by referendum , as was the re - establishment of the Empire from 2 December 1852 . He thus became " Napoléon III , Emperor of the French " , while the popular referendum became a distinct sign of bonapartism , which Charles de Gaulle would later use . Early reign . Napoleon III ' s joy was at its height in 1856 , as the Crimean War resulted in a peace which excluded Russia from the Black Sea , and when his son Eugène Bonaparte was born , which promised a continuation of his dynasty . In 1859 , Napoleon led France to war with Austria over Italy . France was victorious , and gained Savoy and Nice , but the idea of Italian unification - based as it was on the exclusion of the temporal power of the popes - outraged French Catholics , who had been the leading supporters of the Empire . A keen Catholic opposition sprang up , voiced in Louis Veuillot ' s paper the " Univers " , and was not silenced even by the Syrian expedition ( 1860 ) in favour of the Catholic Maronite side of the Druze – Maronite conflict . On the other hand , the commercial treaty with the United Kingdom which was signed in January 1860 , and which ratified the free trade policy of Richard Cobden and Michel Chevalier , had brought upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign competition . Thus both Catholics and protectionists discovered that authoritarian rule can be an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests , but a bad one when exercised at their expense . But Napoleon , in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly awakened hostility of public opinion , tried to gain from the Left the support which he had lost from the Right . After the return from Italy the general amnesty of August 16 , 1859 had marked the evolution of the absolutist or authoritarian empire towards the liberal , and later parliamentary empire , which was to last for ten years . Freedom of the press . Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in silence . On November 24 , 1860 , he granted to the Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the speech from the throne , and to the press the right of reporting parliamentary debates . He counted on the latter concession to hold in check the growing Catholic opposition , which was becoming more and more alarmed by the policy of " laissez - faire " practised by the emperor in Italy . The government majority already showed some signs of independence . The right of voting on the budget by sections , granted by the emperor in 1861 , was a new weapon given to his adversaries . Everything conspired in their favour : the anxiety of those candid friends who were calling attention to the defective budget ; the commercial crisis , aggravated by the American Civil War ; and above all , the restless spirit of the emperor , who had annoyed his opponents in 1860 by insisting on an alliance with the United Kingdom in order to forcibly open the Chinese ports for trade , in 1863 by his ill - fated attempt of a military intervention in Mexico to set up a Latin empire in favour of the archduke Maximilian of Austria , and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on colonising experiments in Cochinchina ( southern Vietnam ) and Annam ( central Vietnam ) . Similar inconsistencies occurred in the emperor ' s European policies . The support which he had given to the Italian cause had aroused the eager hopes of other nations . The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy on February 18 , 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany and the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half - measures . But when a concession , however narrow , had been made to the liberty of one nation , it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the rest . In 1863 these " new rights " again clamoured loudly for recognition : in Poland , in Schleswig and Holstein , in Italy , now indeed united , but with neither frontiers nor capital , and in the Danubian principalities . In order to extricate himself from the Polish " impasse " , the emperor again had recourse to his expedient — always fruitless because always inopportune — of a congress . He was again unsuccessful : Great Britain refused even to admit the principle of a congress , while Austria , Prussia and Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile , i . e . they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland . The " Union libérale " . Thus Napoleon had to yet again disappoint the hopes of Italy , let Poland be crushed , and allow Prussia to triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig - Holstein question . These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the opposition parties , Legitimist , Liberal and Republican , in the " Union libérale " . The elections of May – June 1863 gained the Opposition forty seats and a leader , Adolphe Thiers , who at once urgently gave voice to its demand for " the necessary liberties " . It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance of this manifestation of French opinion , and in view of his international failures , impossible to repress it . The sacrifice of Persigny minister of the interior , who was responsible for the elections , the substitution for the ministers without portfolio of a sort of presidency of the council filled by Eugène Rouher , the " Vice - Emperor " , and the nomination of Jean Victor Duruy , an anti - clerical , as minister of public instruction , in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to culminate in the Syllabus of 1864 , all indicated a distinct " rapprochement " between the emperor and the Left . But though the opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional than dynastic , there was another and irreconcilable opposition , that of the amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans , of whom Victor Hugo was the eloquent mouthpiece . Thus those who had formerly constituted the governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern . There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the bourgeoisie might spread to the people . As Antaeus recruited his strength by touching the earth , so Napoleon believed that he would consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the labouring masses , by whom that power had been established . Assured of support , the emperor , through Rouher , a supporter of the absolutist " régime " , refused all fresh claims on the part of the Liberals . He was aided by the cessation of the industrial crisis as the American Civil War came to an end , by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of September 15 , which guaranteed to the papal states the protection of Italy , and finally by the treaty of October 30 , 1864 , which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the Schleswig - Holstein question . Rise of Prussia . Things went badly , however , when Prussia defeated Austria in the Austro - Prussian War of 1866 and emerged as the dominant power in Germany . Confidence in the excellence of imperial " régime " vanished . Thiers and Jules Favre , as representatives of the Opposition , denounced the blunders of 1866 . Emile Ollivier split the official majority by the amendment of the 45 , and made it understood that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible until the emperor granted entire liberty . The recall of French troops from Rome , in accordance with the convention of 1864 , led to further attacks by the Ultramontane party , who were alarmed for the papacy . Napoleon III felt the necessity for developing " the great act of 1860 " by the decree January 19 , 1867 . In spite of Rouher , by a secret agreement with Ollivier , the right of interpellation was restored to the Chambers . Reforms in press supervision and the right of holding meetings were promised . In vain did Rouher try to meet the Liberal opposition by organising a party for the defence of the Empire , the " Union dynastique " . The rapid succession of international reverses prevented him from effecting anything . The emperor was abandoned by men and disappointed by events . He had hoped that , though by granting the freedom of the press and authorising meetings , he had conceded the right of speech , he would retain the right of action ; but he had played into the hands of his enemies . Victor Hugo ' s " Châtiments " , Rochefort ' s " Lanterne " , the subscription for the monument to Baudin , the deputy killed at the barricades in 1851 , followed by Léon Gambetta ' s speech against the Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze , soon showed that the republican party was irreconcilable . Mobilization of the working classes . On the other hand , the Ultramontane party were becoming discontented , while the industries formerly protected were dissatisfied with free trade reform . The working classes had abandoned their political neutrality . Disregarding Pierre - Joseph Proudhon ' s impassioned attack on communism , they had gradually been won over by the collectivist theories of Karl Marx and the revolutionary theories of Mikhail Bakunin , as set forth at the congresses of the International . At these Labour congresses , the fame of which was only increased by the fact that they were forbidden , it had been affirmed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from his political emancipation . The union between the internationalists and the republican bourgeois became an accomplished fact . The Empire , taken by surprise , sought to curb both the middle classes and the labouring classes , and forced them both into revolutionary actions . There were multiple strikes . The elections of May 1869 , which took place during these disturbances , inflicted upon the Empire a serious moral defeat . In spite of the revival by the government of the cry of the " red terror " , Ollivier , the advocate of conciliation , was rejected by Paris , while 40 irreconcilables and 116 members of the Third Party were elected . Concessions had to be made to these , so by the " senatus - consulte " of September 8 , 1869 a parliamentary monarchy was substituted for personal government . On January 2 , 1870 Ollivier was placed at the head of the first homogeneous , united and responsible ministry . Plebiscite of 1870 . But the republican party , unlike the country , which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and order , refused to be content with the liberties they had won ; they refused all compromise , declaring themselves more than ever decided upon the overthrow of the Empire . The killing of the journalist Victor Noir by Pierre Bonaparte , a member of the imperial family , gave the revolutionaries their long desired opportunity ( January 10 ) . But the " émeute " ended in a failure . In a concession to democratic currents , the emperor put his policy to a plebiscite on May 8 , 1870 . The result was a substantial success for Bonaparte , with seven and a half million in favour and only one and a half million against . However , the vote also signified divisions in France . Those affirming were found mainly in rural areas , while the opposition prevailed in the big towns . This success , which should have consolidated the Empire , determined its downfall . It was thought that a diplomatic success would make the country forget liberty in favour of glory . It was in vain that after the parliamentary revolution of January 2 , 1870 , Comte Daru revived , through Lord Clarendon , Count Beust ' s plan of disarmament after the Battle of Königgratz . He met with a refusal from Prussia and from the imperial entourage . The Empress Eugénie was credited with the remark , " If there is no war , my son will never be emperor . " End of the Empire . The rise of neighbouring Prussia during the 1860s caused a great deal of unease within the National Assembly of France , culminating in the July Crisis of 1870 . On July 15 , the government of Emile Ollivier declared war on Prussia , nominally over the Hohenzollern candidature for the throne of Spain , the pretext for France to declare war in order to satisfy France ' s increasing unease and desire to halt Prussian expansion in Europe . During July and August 1870 , the Imperial French Army suffered a series of defeats which culminated in the Battle of Sedan . At Sedan , the remnants of the French field army , and Napoleon III himself , surrendered to the Prussians on September 1 . News of Sedan reached Paris on September 4 . The National Assembly was invaded by a mob and during the afternoon of September 4 , Parisian deputies formed a new government . At the Hôtel de Ville , Republican deputy Léon Gambetta declared the fall of the Empire and the establishment of the Third Republic . Empress Eugénie fled the Tuileries for Great Britain , effectively ending the Empire , which was officially declared defunct and replaced with the Government of National Defence .