Napoleon Bonparte

The family, the country, and the continent into which Louis Napoleon was born were dominated by a single will: that of his uncle, the Emperor Napoleon. Nine years ago the Corsican exile had made himself master of Paris. Four years ago he had been crowned Emperor of the French people. In less than ten years, by efficient autocracy and a series of military successes, he had ordered France, Italy, the Netherlands, and western Germany under his rule, and had dictated terms to Prussia, Austria, and Russia. His code of law, his economic system, his garrisons and officials, his ambassadors and spies were in action all over Europe. There was hardly a man, from general to merchant, from bishop to statesman, who must not consider, before he made a decision, what Napoleon would think of it; or, more probably, what he should do in view of some decision that Napoleon had already made. For without any question the Emperor held the initiative: his was the master mind.

Napoleon's seven brothers and sisters called him Sire and Votre Majeste . Joseph was King of Naples, and would soon be King of Spain. Louis was King of Holland, Jerome King of Westphalia. Elisa and Pauline became Princesses, Caroline a Queen. Only Lucien refused the obedience that could have earned a crown. Napoleon dictated their marriages, their divorces, and the names of their children. They had to come when and where he summoned them, and could not travel without his leave. In return they had wealth, palaces, and flattery; but all just so long as his favour might last, or his fortune hold. Nouveaux riches and nouveaux royales , they were unsure of themselves, shallow-rooted in an alien soil, and without traditions amongst some of the oldest aristocracies in Europe.

When Napoleon made himself Emperor the Bonapartes became a dynasty, and quarrelled over his succession. They were already jealous of the Beauharnais - the Empress Josephine, her son Eugene, and her daughter Hortense; and soon became doubly so, because Hortense's sons by Louis, Napoleon-Charles ( 1802) and NapoleonLouis ( 1804), were the only male Bonapartes of the next generation in the line of succession; for Joseph Bonaparte had only daughters, and Charles-Lucien, son of Lucien Bonaparte, and Jerome, son of Jerome Bonaparte, were excluded, with their fathers, because their mothers were commoners.

When Hortense's third son, Louis-Napoleon, was born ( 1808) he stood fourth in the line of succession after his uncle Joseph, his father Louis, and his elder brother Napoleon-Louis: for his eldest brother, Napoleon-Charles, had died the year before ( May 5th, 1807): but within less than three years the birth of Napoleon's legitimate son, the King of Rome ( March 20th, 1811), made it unlikely that Louis' branch of the family would be needed to supply a successor; and the abdication of 1815, followed by fifteen years' reign of the restored Bourbons and eighteen of the Orleanist LouisPhilippe, might seem to end all hope of another Napoleonic Empire. Yet for thirty years Louis stubbornly believed that he was destined to fulfil his uncle's last dream at St. Helena, and took as omens of it every event that brought him nearer to that goal: the deaths of Napoleon ( 1821), of Napoleon-Louis ( 1831), of the King of Rome (1832), of Joseph Bonaparte ( 1844), and of his father Louis ( 1846); till in 1848 he remained the only legitimate heir of Bonapartism.