International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte , seemed an unlikely heir to his uncle's legacy. Conspirator, politician, and then emperor of France, Louis-Napoleon established a political system whose closest counterpart is Mussolini's Italy of the twentieth century. Louis-Napoleon's ambiguous personal and political history has been the subject of scholarly debate ever since. Following Napoleon I's exile in 1815, the Bonapartes were forbidden to live in France, and so Louis-Napoleon was raised in Switzerland and Germany. He spent years traveling, developing a special fondness for Italy, where he joined the Carbonari in its struggle for an independent Italy. As heir to the Napoleonic crown, Louis-Napoleon made two ill-fated, almost comical attempts to come to power in France: the first launched from Strasbourg in 1836 and the second from Boulogne in 1840. The latter led to imprisonment, where he wrote Napoleonic Ideas , giving a social and economic dimension to the “bonapartism” he would later call upon as emperor. The chance to come to power legally came with the presidential elections following the French Revolution of 1848. Louis-Napoleon returned to France during the Second Republic and gained financial and political support from sections of society unhappy with the turmoil of revolution and the June Days . Louis-Napoleon promised order; his famous name helped ... log in or subscribe to read full text