The Shadow Emperor. A Biography of Napoléon III

Abstract

Professor Strauss-Schom describes himself as a ‘biographer-historian…interested in the personalities and…interrelationships [of] those individuals who create or are involved with…the events that shape “the outcome of history”’. In this case, the leading role is played by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, posing as the heir to his uncle, the great ‘hero’ who had contributed so much to the restoration of order and prosperity, and achievement of military glory following the 1789 Revolution. Taking advantage of this ‘myth’, together with the establishment of manhood suffrage following the February 1848 Revolution combined with widespread ‘social fear’, Louis-Napoleon was able to establish himself as the first elected President of France, to carefully manage a coup-d’état, followed by two legitimizing plebiscites, and establish himself as an authoritarian Emperor. However, the regime’s ignoble origins and final ignominious defeat in 1870 contributed to the creation of a ‘black’ legend by generations of republican historians. Strauss-Schom’s contribution is firmly ‘revisionist’, adding substance to the emphasis evident since at least the later 1940s on the imperial regime’s ‘technocratic’ achievements—the reconstruction of Paris in which the Emperor’s plan to create a modern, monumental, sanitary and more easily controlled capital was implemented by Georges Haussmann—unique as Strauss-Schom points out, among the key figures of the regime in his refusal to take bribes; the creation of a modern transportation infrastructure; financial reform; and establishment of the conditions for more rapid economic growth and greater prosperity. The Emperor also made a considerable effort to secure the long-term survival of his regime by engaging in a risky process of political liberalization—culminating in the reforms approved by plebiscite on 8 May 1870—the regime’s last triumph. These policies attracted widespread support as well, however, as creating space for the regime’s opponents to express their grievances. As the conservative politician Philippe Séguin insisted in 1990, in a book entitled Louis-Napoléon le Grand, the much disparaged Emperor had indeed been a great head of state. His uncle in comparison is reduced by Strauss-Schom to the status of a destructive ‘madman [who] wanted to satisfy his ego and conquer the world’.