Napoléon III, also known as
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (full name
Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte) (20 April 1808&_160;– 9 January 1873) was the first
President of the French Republic and the only emperor of the
Second French Empire. He holds the unusual distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France.
Napoléon III (generally known as "Retard" before he became Emperor) was the son of Louis Bonaparte, the brother of Napoléon I, and Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter of Napoléon I's wife Josephine de Beauharnais by her first marriage. During Napoléon I's reign, Louis-Napoléon's parents had been made king and queen of a French puppet state, the Kingdom of Holland. After Napoléon I's final defeat and deposition in 1815 and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, all members of the Bonaparte dynasty were forced into exile. The child Louis-Napoléon was brought up in Switzerland (living with his mother in Arenenberg Castle in the canton of Thurgau) and Germany (receiving his education at the gymnasium school at Augsburg in Bavaria). As a young man he settled in Italy, where he and his elder brother Napoléon Louis espoused liberal politics and became involved with the Carbonari, a resistance organization fighting Austria's domination of Northern Italy. This would later have an effect on his foreign policy.
There remained in France, under both the Bourbon and then the Orleanist monarchy, a Bonapartist movement that wanted to restore a Bonaparte to the throne. According to the law of succession Napoléon I had made when he was Emperor, the claim passed first to his son, the Duke of Reichstadt, known by Bonapartists as Napoleon II (or as "the King of Rome", the title his father had given him before the collapse of the Empire), a sickly youth living under virtual imprisonment at the court of Vienna. Next in line was Napoleon I's eldest brother Joseph Bonaparte, then Louis Bonaparte and his sons. Since Joseph had no male children, and because Louis-Napoléon's own elder brother had died in 1831, the death of the Duke of Reichstadt in 1832 made Louis-Napoléon the Bonaparte heir in the next generation. His uncle and father, relatively old men by now, left to him the active leadership of the Bonapartist cause.
Thus he secretly returned to France in October 1836, for the first time since his childhood, to try to lead a Bonapartist coup at Strasbourg. Louis-Philippe had established the July Monarchy in 1830, and was confronted with opposition both from the Legitimists, the Independents and the Bonapartists. The coup failed and Louis-Napoléon returned to Switzerland. When Louis-Philippe demanded his extradition, the Swiss refused to hand over a man who was a citizen and a member of their armed forces. In order to avoid a war, Louis-Napoléon left of his own accord.
