Napoleon III


Book Description

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 Shadow Emperor


Book Description

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.




Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris


Book Description

A classic history of the creation of modern Paris by Napoleon III and Haussmann Between 1850 and 1870, Napoleon III and his Prefect of the Seine, Baron Haussmann, created the modern city of Paris out of the congested and ill-equipped capital of the eighteenth century. They gave Paris many of its present major streets, its great municipal parks, the Central Markets, the Opera House and other well-known buildings, and a water supply system and sewer network that still serve the city. In Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, David Pinkney tells the story of how Paris was transformed and examines the many challenges that the venture faced, including an increasing population, engineering problems, political complications, and personality clashes. Pinkney sets the undertaking in the context of French political and economic history, shows its relation to the public health movement of the mid-nineteenth century, and explains its significance in the history of city planning.




Napoleon III


Book Description

In this assessment James McMillan moves away from ideologically-based representations of the man to focus on his use of power. He recognises the Emporer as a highly skilled operator who in the face of innumerable obstacles, attempted to conduct an original policy.




Intervale


Book Description

With a penetrating eye and a deep and spiritual intelligence, Betty Adcock writes poems that range from elegy to dark humor as they confront both loss and possibility. Intervale, selections from her first four books plus a new collection, traces the continuity of her vision and shows that lyric intensity can bring light to even the most obdurate darkness. Moving from the original loss of a world at her mother's death during the poet's sixth year to the world's loss of the arboreal leopards of Cambodia and Vietnam; from vanishing farmland to the endangered Sacred Harp music that once flourished in backwoods churches; from the difficult history of a little-known rural place to the weighted ruins of Greece -- these poems frame lessenings, divestations, and devastations in the midst of plenty. A wilderness disappears into cozy myth, farming into industry, tiger and elephant into zoos; the very ground underfoot, with its attendant necessities and contingencies, can seem to fade into fabrications we take for reality. The seam where such themes touch Adcock's personal history is the path these poems travel toward a harsh but luminous transcendence.




Paris Reborn


Book Description

Stephane Kirkland gives an engrossing account of Napoleon III, Baron Haussmann, and one of the greatest transformations of a major city in modern history Traditionally known as a dirty, congested, and dangerous city, 19th Century Paris, France was transformed in an extraordinary period from 1848 to 1870, when the government launched a huge campaign to build streets, squares, parks, churches, and public buildings. The Louvre Palace was expanded, Notre-Dame Cathedral was restored and the French masterpiece of the Second Empire, the Opéra Garnier, was built. A very large part of what we see when we visit Paris today originates from this short span of twenty-two years. The vision for the new Nineteenth Century Paris belonged to Napoleon III, who had led a long and difficult climb to absolute power. But his plans faltered until he brought in a civil servant, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to take charge of the implementation. Heedless of controversy, at tremendous cost, Haussmann pressed ahead with the giant undertaking until, in 1870, his political enemies brought him down, just months before the collapse of the whole regime brought about the end of an era. Paris Reborn is a must-read for anyone who ever wondered how Paris, the city universally admired as a standard of urban beauty, became what it is.




Napoleon III and Mexico


Book Description




Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire


Book Description

Profiles the life and rollicking times of the man who became the Emperor Napoleon III, detailing his improbable rise, his theatrical politics, and the numerous liasons that made him the most scandalous ruler of the day




The French Second Empire


Book Description

This is a most thoroughly researched book on Napoleon III's Second Empire. It makes a vital contribution to the quarter-century of French history following the 1848 revolution, which saw major developments in the 'modernization' of the French state and in its relationships with its citizens.




Napoleon III and Eugenie


Book Description

"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.