Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte

He was born in Paris as the son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland (1806–1810), and his wife, Hortense de Beauharnais.

Napoleon I was Louis Napoleon's paternal uncle, and one of his cousins was the disputed Napoleon II.

His father was Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made Louis the king of Holland from 1806 until 1810.

His mother was Hortense de Beauharnais, the only daughter of Napoleon's wife Joséphine by her first marriage to Alexandre de Beauharnais.

He was the first Bonaparte prince born after the proclamation of the empire.

As empress, Joséphine had proposed the marriage of Louis and Hortense as a way to produce an heir for the Emperor, who agreed, as Joséphine was by then infertile.

Louis and Hortense had a difficult relationship and only lived together for brief periods.

Their first son, Napoléon Charles Bonaparte, died in 1807 and—though separated and parents of a healthy second son, Napoléon Louis—they decided to have a third child.

They resumed their marriage for a brief time in Toulouse starting from 12 August 1807 and Louis Napoleon was born prematurely, (at least) three weeks short of nine months.

Hortense was known to have lovers and Louis Napoleon's enemies, including Victor Hugo, spread the gossip that he was the child of a different man, but most historians agree today that he was the legitimate son of Louis Bonaparte.

Napoleon III (Charles-Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first president of France from 1848 to 1852, and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 until he was deposed in absentia on 4 September 1870.

Prior to his reign, Napoleon III was known as Louis Napoleon Bonaparte.

Charles-Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, later known as Louis Napoleon and then Napoleon III, was born in Paris on the night of 19–20 April 1808.

Louis Napoleon was baptized at the Palace of Fontainebleau on 5 November 1810, with Emperor Napoleon serving as his godfather and Empress Marie-Louise as his godmother.

His father stayed away, once again separated from Hortense.

At the age of seven, Louis Napoleon visited his uncle at the Tuileries Palace in Paris.

Napoleon held him up to the window to see the soldiers parading in the Place du Carrousel below.

Louis Napoleon was the first and only president of the French Second Republic, elected in 1848.

He seized power by force in 1851 when he could not constitutionally be reelected.

In Europe, he allied with Britain and defeated Russia in the Crimean War (1853–1856).

His regime assisted Italian unification by defeating the Austrian Empire in the Second Italian War of Independence and later annexed Savoy and Nice through the Treaty of Turin as its deferred reward.

At the same time, his forces defended the Papal States against annexation by Italy.

He was also favourable towards the 1859 union of the Danubian Principalities, which resulted in the establishment of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia.

Napoleon doubled the area of the French colonial empire with expansions in Asia, the Pacific, and Africa.

On the other hand, the intervention in Mexico, which aimed to create a Second Mexican Empire under French protection, ended in total failure.

He negotiated the 1860 Cobden–Chevalier Free Trade Agreement with Britain and similar agreements with France's other European trading partners.

Social reforms included giving French workers the right to strike, the right to organize, and the right for women to be admitted to a French university.

In foreign policy, Napoleon III aimed to reassert French influence in Europe and around the world.

From 1866, Napoleon had to face the mounting power of Prussia as its minister president Otto von Bismarck sought German unification under Prussian leadership.

He later proclaimed himself Emperor of the French and founded the Second Empire, reigning until the defeat of the French Army and his capture by Prussia and its allies at the Battle of Sedan in 1870.

Napoleon III was a popular monarch who oversaw the modernization of the French economy and filled Paris with new boulevards and parks.

He expanded the French colonial empire, made the French merchant navy the second largest in the world, and personally engaged in two wars.

Maintaining leadership for 22 years, he was the longest-reigning leader of France since the fall of the Ancien Régime, although his reign would ultimately end on the battlefield.

Napoleon III commissioned a grand reconstruction of Paris carried out by prefect of the Seine, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

He expanded and consolidated the railway system throughout the nation and modernized the banking system.

Napoleon promoted the building of the Suez Canal and established modern agriculture, which ended famines in France and made the country an agricultural exporter.

In July 1870, Napoleon reluctantly declared war on Prussia after pressure from the general public.

The French Army was rapidly defeated, and Napoleon was captured at Sedan.

He was swiftly dethroned and the Third Republic was proclaimed in Paris.

After he was released from German custody, he went into exile in England, where he died in 1873.