Napoleon Iii Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte 1808-1873

NAPOLEON III. [CHARLES LOUIS NAPOLEON BONAPARTE] (1808-1873), emperor of the French, was born on April 20, 1808, in Paris at 8 rue Cerutti (now rue Laffitte), and not at the Tuileries, as the official historians state. He was the third son of Louis Bonaparte (see BONAPARTE), brother of Napoleon I., and king of Holland (1806-1o), and of HORTENSE DE BEAUHARNAIS (q.v.). Of the two other sons of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense, the elder, Napoleon Charles (1802-1807), died in infancy; the second, Napoleon Louis (1804-1831), died in the insurrection of the Romagna, leaving no children.

Exile of Hortense.

After Waterloo, Hortense, suspected by the Bourbons of having arranged the return from Elba, had to go into exile. The ex-king Louis, who now lived at Florence, had compelled her by a scandalous law-suit to give up to him the elder of her two children. With her remaining child she wandered, under the name of duchesse de Saint-Leu, from Geneva to Aix, Carlsruhe and Augsburg. In 1817 she bought the castle of Arenenberg, in the canton of Thurgau, on a wooded hill looking over the Lake of Constance. Hortense supervised her son's education in person. The young prince also studied at the gymnasium at Augsburg, and there he acquired his slight German accent.

In 1823 he accompanied his mother to Italy, visiting his father at Florence, and his grandmother Letitia at Rome, and dreaming with Le Bas on the banks of the Rubicon. He returned to Arenen berg to complete his military education under Colonel Armandi and Colonel Dufour, who instructed him in artillery and military engineering. At the age of twenty he was a "Liberal," an enemy of the Bourbons and of the treaties of 1815; but he was dom inated by the cult of the emperor, and for him the liberal ideal was confused with the Napoleonic.

Revolution of 1830.

The July revolution of 1830, of which he heard in Italy, roused all his young hopes. He could not return to France, for the law of 1816 banishing all his family had not been abrogated. But the liberal revolution knew no frontiers. Italy shared in the agitation. He had already met some of the conspirators at Arenenberg, and it is practically established that he now joined the associations of the Carbonari. Following the advice of his friend the Count Arese and of Menotti, he and his brother were among the revolutionaries who in February 1831 attempted a rising in Romagna and the expulsion of the pope from Rome. They distinguished themselves at Civita Castellana, a little

town which they took; but the Austrians arrived in force, and during the retreat Napoleon Louis, the elder son, took cold, fol lowed by measles, of which he died. Hortense hurried to the spot and took steps which enabled her to save her second son from the Austrian prisons. He escaped into France, where his mother, on the plea of his illness, obtained permission from Louis Philippe for him to stay in Paris. But he intrigued with the republicans, and Casimir-Perier insisted on the departure of both mother and son. In May 1831 they went to London, and afterwards returned to Arenenberg.

For a time he thought of responding to the appeal of some of the Polish revolutionaries, but Warsaw succumbed (September 1831) before he could set out. Moreover the plans of this young and visionary enfant du siecle were becoming more definite. The duke of Reichstadt died in 1832. His uncle, Joseph, and his father, Louis, showing no desire to claim the inheritance prom ised them by the constitution of the year XII., Louis Napoleon henceforth considered himself as the accredited representative of the family. He endeavoured to define his ideas, and in 1833 published his Reveries politiques, suivies d'un pro jet de constitu tion, and Considerations politiques et militaires sur la Suisse; in 1836, as a captain, in the Swiss service, he published a Manuel d'artillerie, in order to win popularity with the French army.

Strasbourg Conspiracy.

With the aid of his friend Fialin and of Eleonore Gordon, a singer, and of certain officers, such as Colonel Vaudrey, an old soldier of the Empire, commanding the 4th regiment of artillery, and Lieutenant Laity, he tried to bring about a revolt of the garrison of Strasbourg (Oct. 3o, 1836). The conspiracy was a failure, and Louis Philippe, fearing lest he might make the pretender popular either by the glory of an acquittal or the aureole of martyrdom, had him taken to Lorient and put on board a ship bound for America, while his accomplices were brought before the court of assizes and acquitted (February 1837). The prince was set free in New York in April; by the aid of a false passport he returned to Switzerland in August, in time to see his mother before her death on Oct. 3,1837.