On the morning of September 2, 1870, the Emperor of France climbed into a carriage at Sedan and was driven to deliver his sword in person to the King of Prussia. It was the most humiliating moment in French imperial history since Waterloo, and it fell to a man who had spent his entire life escaping from impossible situations to preside over the one from which there was no escape. Napoleon III had twice attempted to seize power by coup before finally succeeding, had survived assassination attempts, had modernized Paris beyond recognition, had navigated the Crimean War and the unification of Italy with the nimble opportunism that was his particular genius, and had now contrived, through a combination of diplomatic overreach and catastrophic military misjudgment, to lose an entire army and his own freedom to Bismarck's Prussia in a single afternoon. He was taken prisoner, deposed in absentia by a republic proclaimed in Paris while he was still in German captivity, and died in exile in England three years later, still planning his return. He never made it back. The city he had rebuilt from the ground up, the boulevards and parks and monuments that remain the Paris the world visits today, stands as his most enduring monument, and it bears no plaque with his name.
Napoleon III (1808–1873) is the great misunderstood figure of 19th-century European history, perpetually overshadowed by the uncle whose name he inherited and the catastrophe that ended his reign, and perpetually underestimated as a result. Yet the paradoxes of his career are precisely what make him so rewarding a historical subject. He was a genuine social reformer who championed workers' rights, oversaw the transformation of Paris under Baron Haussmann into the most admired city in the world, and pursued economic modernization with a pragmatic energy that France had rarely seen in its rulers. He was also a man of imperial vanity and strategic recklessness whose Mexican adventure and Prussian miscalculation suggest that the gap between his ambitions and his abilities widened dangerously as his reign progressed. To call him simply a visionary or simply a failure is to miss the genuinely interesting question of how the same man managed so plausibly to be both.
The reign of Napoleon III is also, in the deepest sense, a story about the shadow cast by a legendary name. Born Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, he spent the first four decades of his life trading on an inheritance that was simultaneously his greatest asset and his most impossible burden. The first Napoleon had remade Europe and then destroyed what he built; the nephew spent his career trying to recapture the grandeur without repeating the catastrophe, and ended by repeating it anyway, on a smaller stage and with less excuse. Understanding Napoleon III fully means understanding what it cost him to be a Napoleon, and what it ultimately cost France to have one.
To navigate those contradictions with the depth and authority they demand, we turn to Alan Strauss-Schom, Senior Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of eleven acclaimed works of French historical biography whose research into the Bonaparte dynasty is without parallel in the English-speaking world. His biography, Napoleon Bonaparte, honored by the Los Angeles Times and nominated for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, established him as a writer of rare gifts: the ability to hold sweeping historical analysis and vivid personal drama in a single narrative frame without sacrificing the integrity of either. Through works including One Hundred Days: Napoleon's Road to Waterloo and Trafalgar: Countdown to Battle, Strauss-Schom has spent his career illuminating the pivotal moments and the flawed human beings through which French history turned. In this interview, he reflects on Napoleon III's complicated legacy, the long shadow of his famous uncle, and why the man who rebuilt Paris and lost France deserves to be rescued from the footnote history has too often made of him.
Charles Carlini: Napoleon III often lived in the shadow of his famous uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte. How did this relationship shape his ambitions and decisions as a ruler?
Alan Strauss-Schom: Louis Napoleon’s entire life and existence were powerfully influenced by Napoleon I, his rule, and his ideas. He grew up under his shadow and viewed him as his role model. As a boy, he was educated by former officers of the Grande Armée. He worshipped Napoleon and admired the vast empire he had created. His mother, Hortense, had been married to Napoleon’s brother, Louis (King of Holland).
As Emperor, Louis Napoleon wanted to reestablish France as a worldwide power, much like Napoleon I had done. In the changed circumstances of the 1850s and 60s, Louis Napoleon measured France’s position and greatness against those of England, a nation he greatly admired and looked up to. In all his undertakings as Emperor of the French, he aimed to match England’s achievements in every sphere of endeavor, such as building a vast national rail network like England's, creating a powerful new Navy, and making Paris a financial center of the Continent, while emulating England’s impressive colonial empire.
CC: In The Shadow Emperor, you describe Napoleon III as a complex figure with a mix of ambition, insecurity, and vision. What do you think were his most defining personal qualities, and how did they impact his rule?
AS: In almost every aspect, Napoleon III was the complete opposite of Napoleon. He was quiet, generous, kind, and thoughtful about those who served under him. Unlike Napoleon I, he did not set out to punish those who disagreed with him. Unlike Napoleon I, he did not shout at and insult his officers, friends, and servants. In brief, the two men were so different that it was difficult to believe that they were even related to one another.
CC: The Second Empire was a period of great modernization and growth in France. Can you elaborate on Napoleon III’s contributions to France’s economic and social development, and how he envisioned France’s place in the world?
AS: Ever since the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789, the country’s finances and economy had been languishing, with little money in circulation and commerce in the doldrums. This state of affairs worsened during the last half of Napoleon I’s reign and continued under the Bourbon Restoration and Louis Philippe’s reign from 1830 to 1848. However, with Louis Napoleon’s accession to the throne in December 1852, France changed almost overnight.
Thanks largely to his influential half-brother, Auguste de Morny, and Morny’s dual role as President of the Legislative Body and private entrepreneur, taxation was reduced, and antiquated bureaucratic practices were swept away. Investment in finance and industry was encouraged, and vast amounts of money from private investors poured into the economy, causing the banking industry to prosper. For the first time in French history, the government created new agencies making large-scale loans available or guaranteed to businesses, industry, and agriculture.
Of critical importance in developing economic, commercial, and industrial growth, Louis Napoleon pressed for the creation of the country’s first railways, resulting in a nationwide network. This extended to shipbuilding and large-scale public construction projects. Louis Napoleon personally encouraged the creation of the country’s first international passenger steamship companies servicing North America, Africa, and the Far East.
As a result of this transformed French economy, a new class of entrepreneurs sought lucrative investments in various fields, including Russian railways and De Lesseps’ Suez Canal Company.
National education was taken out of the hands of the Catholic Church and handed over to public schools. Elementary education became mandatory, greatly increasing national literacy, expanding political representation, and encouraging readership in newspapers and publications. Louis Napoleon’s ministers reorganized and modernized the university curriculum and encouraged scientific research and development. He also created the first old-age and unemployment insurance. Louis Napoleon genuinely wished to improve the plight of the masses.
CC: Napoleon III’s foreign policies were often bold and controversial. In your view, what motivated his decisions in conflicts like the Crimean War and the Mexican Expedition, and how did these choices impact France’s standing?
AS: The keystone to Napoleon III’s foreign policy, strongly encouraged by Auguste de Morny, was always to remain in friendly relations with England, and his close friendship with Queen Victoria was intended to ensure that. He desired to avoid war, any war at all costs, and only joined England’s war against the Russian Empire in the Crimea because of considerable pressure from Whitehall to do so.
Louis Napoleon was strongly opposed to military intervention in Mexico and only did so reluctantly because of his half-brother, Auguste de Morny’s financial interests in Mexico. Empress Eugénie also strongly supported that intervention and the creation of a new Roman Catholic State on the borders of Protestant America.
On the other hand, Louis Napoleon, who had previously visited the United States, greatly admired Americans and did not wish to jeopardize that relationship over the Mexican venture—a problem he ultimately failed to resolve. But Americans always remained welcome at the Tuileries Palace.
Although Louis Napoleon sought to avoid involvement in foreign wars, he consistently pursued a policy of colonial expansion in competition with England, notably in Indochina, where he first engaged France in the Far East, including New Caledonia.
After a visit to Algeria, that North African Colony became a veritable obsession with Napoleon III. He spent much time drawing up plans for reforming the Algerian people, bringing them into the modern new world. He wanted them to abandon tribal life and Islamic values and move to modern new towns with public sanitation and broad streets, something the Algerians neither understood nor wanted. They were happy with their religion and their way of life.
He built the first railway in Algeria, which the Algerians never used. But inadvertently, to achieve his idealistic reforms for Algeria, he had “to pacify” those rebellious tribes, which led to larger French armies in Algeria, over 100,000 strong, in one devastating campaign after another. Through warfare and carrying out the first survey of the colony, tribal lands and tribal structure were broken up—a policy of detribalization was executed by the French Army, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dispossessed Algerians fleeing to the coastal cities looking for housing and work that did not exist.
It was at this time in the 1860s that Napoleon III, for the first time, also offered Algerians French citizenship and the right to live in France.
(Today, several million Algerians live in squalid conditions in French cities. All of Napoleon III’s well-meant reforms for Algeria not only failed, but also led to the ethnic cleansing of ca. 350,000 Algerians by the French Army (p. 351 of my biography). The continuing wars in Algeria in the late 19th century were largely the result of Louis Napoleon’s interference in Algeria, and of removing the tribes (their self-contained communities) from their land.
Today, President Macron’s government is attempting to return hundreds of thousands of “French” Algerians to Algeria. (He is currently doing the same thing with Moroccans in France.)
Thanks to the intervention of Auguste de Morny, France was able to reestablish amicable relations with Russia, just a few years after the Crimean War. A remarkable achievement, and the first step to bringing France and Russia closer to becoming firm allies by the eve of the First World War.
Surprisingly, given Louis Napoleon’s position as a Bonaparte and his lip service to strengthening the French Army, in reality, he did not follow through with the army reforms he sought, as the results of the Franco-Prussian War were to attest.
On the other hand, he was very much impressed by Great Britain’s powerful Royal Navy and introduced very large budgets for the crash development of a modern French Imperial Navy, resulting in the construction of dozens of new steam-powered warships, including the first iron-clad ships of the line.
Result: by 1870, France had a stronger Navy than the USA.
Louis Napoleon followed naval development very closely, a fact omitted in most history books.
CC: You depict Napoleon III as a ruler with a strong interest in social reforms, yet his reign was not without its authoritarian aspects. How do you reconcile his progressive ideals with his autocratic tendencies?
AS: The fact is that Louis Napoleon never succeeded in developing a means by which to reconcile his various projects of reform, in particular by giving the Legislative Body more freedom to act, while reducing his own imperial powers.
He encouraged a wider electorate, but that new electorate demanded greater freedom from the powers of Napoleon III. The more freedom given to the Legislative Corps, the greater opposition they offered to the throne in return. Louis Napoleon obviously could not both offer those reforms and retain all his traditional powers.
This clash was rapidly coming to a real test in 1870 when the Franco-Prussian War broke out. With the fall and exile of Napoleon III, the long-suppressed political opposition came to power, resulting in the launching of the Third French Republic, ending any future monarchical rule in France.
CC: The transformation of Paris under Baron Haussmann is one of the most visible legacies of Napoleon III. What role did Napoleon III play in this urban renewal, and what were his goals for Paris and for French society through this transformation?
AS: After living in exile in London in the 1840s, upon his return to France, Louis Napoleon gave priority to the rebuilding of Paris.
London had offered street lamps, tree-lined streets and squares, and large public gardens—Hyde Park, Green Park, Regents Park—complete with vast immaculate lawns, splendid flower gardens, elegant fountains, and lakes. Paris not only had none of these but remained a dark, crowded mass of squalid 16th-century tenements lining dirty, sunless, narrow winding streets without even elementary sewers and sanitation. This led to plagues, diseases, and a largely unhealthy, unemployable population.
Napoleon was determined to replace all that and make Paris the most beautiful capital in Europe. Having planned this years earlier while still in exile, when in power, he appointed the brilliant, talented engineer Georges Haussmann to execute this extraordinarily complex and ambitious project.
The entire 16th-century heart of Paris was to be razed to the ground and replaced with spacious tree-lined boulevards and large new parks, complete with flower gardens, fountains, and lakes. Hundreds of acres were acquired, and the Bois de Boulogne and Vincennes, among others, were created.
The old five- and six-story tenements were replaced with modern, beautiful houses and apartment blocks with running water and gas lighting. Palatial railway depots were erected. New sources of safe drinking water were brought to the capital by new canals.
An enormous underground sewage system was built, replacing the disease-breeding piles of filth daily dumped in the streets, and the rate of illness began dropping dramatically.
Louis Napoleon may have lost the war to the Prussians in 1870, but he left behind the jewel that was—and is—Paris. Few men in history have had the opportunity to fulfill such dreams!
CC: Your book sheds light on the many personal challenges Napoleon III faced, from family dynamics to health issues. How did these aspects of his life affect his governance, particularly in the later years of his reign?
AS: Napoleon I had created his own universe and, upon suppressing the Holy Roman Empire, attempted to place his siblings on newly created thrones—Joseph, Louis, Jerome, Lucien, Caroline, Pauline, and Elise—only to see every experiment collapse due to perversity, character failings, and Napoleon’s heavy dictatorial interference.
Louis Napoleon, on the other hand, had fewer problems with his aunts, uncles, and cousins, apart from Uncle Jerome and his son, Jerome Napoleon, better known as Plon-Plon, who seemed to spend their entire lives undermining Napoleon III.
The Bonapartes always seemed to be at each other's throats.
CC: Napoleon III’s involvement in the Italian unification movement was significant. What were his motives behind supporting Italian independence, and how did this align or conflict with his vision for the French Empire?
AS: Queen Hortense brought her son, Louis Napoleon, to her palace in Rome every year. The boy loved the country and spoke Italian fluently.
As a young man, he had gone to Italy with his elder brother to fight with the revolutionary party against the Austrian occupiers. Once in power, as Napoleon III, he encouraged the creation of an independent Italian state.
In January 1859, he signed a secret pact with Victor Emmanuel, agreeing to provide a French army of 100,000 men to join with 60,000 Italians. The French army quickly defeated the enemy, and on November 10, 1859, the Peace of Zürich was signed with the Austrians, who evacuated the country.
(As a reward, Victor Emmanuel ceded Savoy and Nice to France in March 1860.) On March 17, 1861, the new Italian Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel II King of Italy. Without the full support of the French army, Italian unification might never have been achieved.
CC: The Franco-Prussian War marked a tragic end to Napoleon III’s rule. How do you think his strategic missteps and the political climate in France led to his downfall?
AS: This war ought never to have been fought, but through a comedy of perverse errors and Bismarck’s determination, war broke out in September 1870, resulting in the collapse of the French army and the capture of Napoleon III at Sedan.
Louis Napoleon had been strongly against this war, but Eugénie had goaded him on, calling him a coward if he were not to fight. He was, in fact, very ill at this time and could not even sit in a saddle.
The French Army was quickly defeated because of the lack of long-term preparation and training, inadequate planning, fouled-up logistical support, lamentable military leadership, and even betrayal in the field.
The consequences: Napoleon III’s Second Empire collapsed in September, and he and Eugénie fled for their lives to England and the protection of Queen Victoria. Upon his release, the deposed Louis Napoleon joined her there.
Bismarck’s spoils of war included staggering reparations in gold and the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, which were incorporated into the new German Reich. The loss of these two provinces became a source of humiliation and the cry for revanche—vengeance—a driving force in French foreign policy right up to August 1914.
CC: Looking back on his legacy, what do you believe are the most misunderstood aspects of Napoleon III’s life and reign, and what insights from The Shadow Emperor would you most like readers to remember?
AS: Napoleon III left behind a much more prosperous, modern France, stimulated and linked by the country’s first national rail network. He restored France as a great power on the Continent. He introduced the first secular public schools in the country and created literacy among the masses, a public capable of reading newspapers and books.
He literally erased a crowded, unsanitary medieval city, replacing it with a spacious, modern, healthy city complete with spacious municipal gardens. He transformed Paris into a beautiful, thriving capital. He left a completely revitalized economy and commerce, with the financial institutions and means necessary for stimulating future growth and prosperity. He spread the wealth of the nation and created France’s first real bourgeoisie.
He left behind political chaos that was to continue for years before evolving into a “relatively” smoothly functioning republic. He left behind a growing colonial empire, including a developing presence in Indochina and an unstable Algeria, and with it, the seeds of grave problems for future generations.
But after all his positive contributions, as a result of the French defeat at Sedan and a Prussian occupation of the country, he was largely rejected by his own people, who, to this day, have not allowed his remains to be returned from England to France for reburial in the Invalides with his uncle, Napoleon I.
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