"Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808? 9 January 1873) was the first President of the French Republic and, as Napoleon III, the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. Elected President by popular vote in 1848, he initiated a coup d'état in 1851, before ascending the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He ruled as Emperor of the French until 4 September 1870. He holds the distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France ... Doña María Eugenia Ignacia Augustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick, 16th Countess of Teba and 15th Marquise of Ardales (5 May 1826? 11 July 1920), known as Eugénie de Montijo (French pronunciation: {7f200b}[ø?eni d montixo]), was the last Empress consort of the French from 1853 to 1871 as the wife of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French."--Wikipedia.
Eugenie de Montijo was Empress of the French, sharing the Second Empire with her husband Napoleon III. She impressed the Prussian Chancellor Bismarck so much that he called her The only man in Paris.
Reconstructing Empress Eugénie's position as private collector and public patron, this study is the first to examine Eugénie (1826-1920) in these roles. Her patronage and collecting is considered within the context of her political roles in the development of France's institutions and international relations. The book also examines representations of the empress, and the artistic transformation of a Hispanic woman into a leading figure in French politics.
The Empress Eugénie was one of the most glamorous, celebrated and ultimately tragic figures of the nineteenth century. Wife of Napoleon III and close friend of Queen Victoria, she suffered the loss of her beloved sister, her only son, and her adopted country. But did Eugénie take her greatest secret-an illegitimate child, conceived when she was a teenager in Spain and fathered by the only man she ever truly loved-to the grave with her? And if so, what became of the child? After half a lifetime's research Joyce Cartlidge has pieced together evidence from historic records and clues in correspondence from Eugénie and her family and friends, some of it never printed before, to tell a compelling story of love and motherhood that ties the Spanish house of Montijo and the French throne to a small family in Victorian Lancashire. 'An extraordinary odyssey into family history' -The Mail on Sunday
A breakout biography of Louis-Napoleon III, whose controversial achievements have polarized historians. Considered one of the pre-eminent Napoleon Bonaparte experts, Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian Alan Strauss-Schom has turned his sights on another in that dynasty, Napoleon III (Louis-Napoleon) overshadowed for too long by his more romanticized forebear. In the first full biography of Napoleon III by an American historian, Strauss-Schom uses his years of primary source research to explore the major cultural, sociological, economical, financial, international, and militaristic long-lasting effects of France's most polarizing emperor. Louis-Napoleon’s achievements have been mixed and confusing, even to historians. He completely revolutionized the infrastructure of the state and the economy, but at the price of financial scandals of imperial proportions. In an age when “colonialism” was expanding, Louis-Napoleon’s colonial designs were both praised by the emperor’s party and the French military and resisted by the socialists. He expanded the nation’s railways to match those of England; created major new transoceanic steamship lines and a new modern navy; introduced a whole new banking sector supported by seemingly unlimited venture capital, while also empowering powerful new state and private banks; and completely rebuilt the heart of Paris, street by street. Napoleon III wanted to surpass the legacy of his famous uncle, Napoleon I. In The Shadow Emperor, Alan Strauss-Schom sets the record straight on Napoleon III's legacy.
Prince Louis Napoleon was born with a compelling sense of destiny. The eldest nephew of Bonaparte, he came from exile and ignominy to rule France, first as President then as Emperor for 22 years, from 1848 to 1870. Under his benevolent dictatorship, the nation grew in artistic fulfilment, industrial wealth and international influence - until catastrophic defeat at the hands of Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 cast her back into the shadows.
The tragic story of Clisson and Eugenie reveals one of history's great leaders to also be an accomplished writer of fiction.Written in an eloquently Romantic style true to its period, the story offers the reader a fascinating insight into how the young Napoleon viewed love, women and military life.
THE HAMMOCK: A novel based on the true story of French painter James Tissot portrays ten remarkable years in the life of James Tissot (1836-1902), who rebuilt - and then lost - his reputation in London. THE HAMMOCK is a psychological portrait, exploring the forces that unwound the career of this complex man. Based on contemporary sources, the novel brings Tissot's world alive in a story of war, art, Society glamour, love, scandal, and tragedy.
Referred to in his time as “the Pretender” and “the sphinx of the Tuileries,” Louis Napoléon Bonaparte—the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I of France and himself ruler of the Second Empire (1852–1870)—so managed the manufacture of his public image and the masking of his private self that he is, ultimately, unknowable to this day. From the mysterious circumstances of his conception in 1807 to the strange events of his downfall in 1870 and death in 1873, he lived, loved, and reigned in an extraordinary aura of myth and fantasy under the shadow of his more famous uncle. Taking a highly innovative approach to this intriguing historical figure, David Baguley entertains sources in a mélange of media and forms—pictures, performances, spectacles, rituals, music, fiction, poems, plays, architecture, fashion, as well as Louis Napoléon’s own writings—to explore how the ruler was represented, invented, and interpreted by detractors and defenders alike. The dynamic process by which the legend of Napoleon III was elaborately fabricated and then vigorously dismantled unfolds under Baguley’s hand not chronologically but by generic categories, reflecting the author’s underlying conviction that history and literary depictments are not as incompatible as is often assumed. Baguley examines works by, among many others, Victor Hugo, Karl Marx, Émile Zola, Honoré Daumier, Jacques Offenbach, Gustave Flaubert, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning that range from history and biography to romanticized versions of the Emperor’s feats to parody, caricature, and satire. With its conspiratorial origins, its rising and dramatically falling action, its schemes, scandals, and tragic denouement, the Second Empire appears designed to inspire writers and artists. Napoleon III, Baguley observes, could well have been the central character, or temperament, in a naturalist novel. While most historians consider Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état of December 1851 to be his boldest endeavor, Baguley shows in this expansive and eloquent work that his most extravagant venture was to found a second Napoleonic empire, and he illustrates not only the power of the name and the image but also the precariousness of the Emperor’s reliance upon them. For Napoleon III, dissimulation was his natural state; opportunist or utopian reformer, or something in between, he must remain one of history’s most elusive and controversial figures, ever resisting final assessment.
