Parents: Louis I, king of Holland, and Hortense de Beauharnais
Date of birth: 20 April 1808
Royal House: Bonaparte
Spouse: Eugénie de Montijo
Predecessor: None; the Second French Republic
Predecessor: None; the Second French Republic
Reign: 1852 – 1870
Summary: Louis-Napoléon was born at the height of the French Empire. His parents were the rulers of a French puppet state, the Kingdom of Holland. When the empire fell in 1815, he with his family fled to Switzerland and then Italy, where Louis-Napoléon began a campaign against the Austrian occupation of parts of northern Italy. In France, the restoration of the Capetian Bourbon dynasty gave way to a populist monarchy ruled by a junior line of that dynasty. A large Bonapartist movement began which sought to restore Bonaparte power to France. From 1815 until 1832, the heir-general of the Bonaparte family was the Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon II, the only child of Napoleon I. When he died, the Bonaparte claim passed to Joseph, Napoleon I's eldest brother. His death in 1844 passed the claim to a younger line headed by Louis-Napoléon's father, Louis, who himself died in 1846. Louis-Napoléon was now heir-general and living in exile in England after an attempted coup in 1846. He returned to France in 1848 and, after many odd troubles, was elected president of the Second French Republic on 10 December.
Louis-Napoléon then led a coup d'etat against his own government in 1851 and took the throne the following year as Napoleon III. As emperor, he fought throughout his reign to reassert France's primacy in Europe. During he 1850s, he helped Italy unify under the House of Savoy, sparking warfare with Austria in the process. In the Middle East, France fought with the United Kingdom against Russia in the Crimean War. The French Colonial Empire expanded in Asia and in Africa during his tenure as well. Attempts to install a new emperor in Mexico failed utterly in 1867 due to Mexican resistance and American diplomatic pressure. In France, Napoleon industrialized much of the country turning it into a 19th century industrial powerhouse. Paris was renovated to the state that it appears today, creating new boulevards and the central hub of the Arc du Triumph. The brief Franco-Prussian War proved to be Napoleon's undoing. Even as Germany finally unified under the Hohenzollern King of Prussia, France fell apart. At the Battle of Sedan, Napoleon III was captured and forced to abdicate. France continued to fight the war for another year under the Third French Republic and the Paris Commune, but Napoleon went into exile again to England where he died three years later. He ended up being the last monarch of France, despite initial attempts to restore the Bourbon dynasty again.
Date of Death: 9 January 1873
Successor: None: monarchy abolished and replaced with the Third French Republic
Other Monarchs Who Died Today:
Other Monarchs Who Died Today:
- Xizong, Jin emperor of China (1150)
- Abû 'Uthmân Sa'îd, ruler of Minorça (1282)
- John Cicero, elector of Brandenburg (1499)
- Anna, duchess of Brittany (1514)
- Victor Emmanuel II, king of Italy (1878)
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