Napoleon III of France: Encyclopedia II - Napoleon III of France - Early life

Napoleon III of France - Early life

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, as he was known before becoming emperor, was the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, who was the daughter of Napoléon I's wife Josephine de Beauharnais by her first marriage. The identity of his biological father remains a subject of speculation, given his unhappily married mother's record of extramarital liaisons. His father for the record, however, was Hortense's husband, Louis Bonaparte, a younger brother of Napoléon I, and his whole career was built upon the (supposed) fact that he was the nephew of Napoléon I. During Napoléon I's reign, his parents had been made king and queen of a French puppet state, the Kingdom of Holland, meaning that Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte bore the title of prince. After Napoléon I's final defeat and deposition in 1815 and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, all members of the Bonaparte family were forced into exile, so the young Louis-Napoléon was brought up in Switzerland, Germany (studying at Heidelberg) and Italy. As a young man in Italy, he and his elder brother Napoléon Louis espoused liberal politics and became involved in the Carbonari, a resistance organization fighting Austrian 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 which 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 Napoléon II, a sickly youth living under virtual imprisonment at the court of Vienna, then to his eldest brother Joseph Bonaparte, then to Louis Bonaparte and his sons. (Louis' elder brother Lucien Bonaparte and his descendants were passed over by the law of succession because Lucien had attracted Napoléon I's displeasure and had opposed Napoléon I's making himself Emperor). Since Joseph had no male children, and because Louis-Napoléon's own elder brother had died in 1831, the death of Napoléon II 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. The coup failed but he managed to escape. He tried again in August 1840, sailing a ship with some hired soldiers into Boulogne, and this time he was caught and imprisoned (in relative comfort) in the fortress of the town of Ham. During his years of imprisonment he wrote essays and pamphlets that combined his monarchical claim with progressive, even mildly socialist economic proposals. In 1844 his uncle Joseph died, making him the direct heir apparent to the Bonaparte claim. He finally managed to escape to the United Kingdom in May 1846 by changing clothes with a mason working at the fortress. A month later, his father Louis was dead, making Louis-Napoléon, in Bonapartist eyes, rightful Emperor of the French.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Early life", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki