Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Paris on April 20, 1808. His father Louis Bonaparte was the brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I, and was the King of Holland. His mother Hortense de Beauharnais was the daughter of Louis Bonaparte from his first marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais, who proposed the marriage between Louis and her daughter as a way for Louis Bonaparte to produce an heir, as by that time Joséphine was infertile. When Napoleon I was defeated at Waterloo and the Bourbon monarchy was reinstated the Bonaparte family was exiled from France and so Louis-Napoleon spent his early childhood in Augsburg, Germany. In 1831, when Louis-Napoleon was 23, he and his mother travelled to Paris under assumed identities, where a new progressive regime had been established under King Louis-Phillipe I. Unfortunately, their true identities were discovered and they were forced to leave the country and once again were sent into exile.
On October 29, 1836, Louis-Napoleon attempted a coup against King Phillipe I. He was convinced that if he made his presence in France known the French people would rally behind him and he would be able to take the throne. This however was not the case, the regiment of French soldiers that he had convinced to join his cause were arrested and he was forced to flee to Switzerland and then to Britain. After several years of travelling around the world, Louis-Napoleon once again attempted a coup to overthrow King Louis-Phillipe I on August 6, 1840. This attempt was even less successful than the last and he was arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. In 1844 while imprisoned Louis wrote a book called L'extinction du pauperism analysing the causes of poverty in the French working middle class and proposing several solutions to this issue. In the book he proclaimed "The working class has nothing, it is necessary to give them ownership. They have no other wealth than their own labour, it is necessary to give them work that will benefit all....they are without organization and without connections, without rights and without a future; it is necessary to give them rights and a future and to raise them in their own eyes by association, education, and discipline." This book and his political ideals concerning the lower and middle class in France played an important role in his eventual election as president. On May 5, 1846 with the help of his personal physician he escaped the prison where he was being held by disguising himself as a worker at the prison and essentially walking out the front gate. He returned once again to Britain. Not very long after his escape Louis-Napoleon's father died making him the rightful heir to the Bonaparte dynasty.
President and Emperor
Throughout most of the 19th century France was a place of turmoil and revolution and in February of 1848 the Paris population revolted against the monarchy headed by Louis-Phillipe I. Facing not only opposition from his subjects, but from those within his own government, King Louis-Phillipe abdicated and a democratic government was established, lead by a writer and politician named Alphonse de Lamartine. With that the Second Republic of France was born. It was at this point that Louis-Napoleon was finally allowed to return to France without the threat of imprisonment. Although he did not run in any of the early elections for positions in French government in April of 1848, he did run for five different positions later in June of the same year. He was elected for four of those positions and later was elected for five more positions in departments around Paris. In less than a year Louis-Napoleon had gone from an outcast hiding in Britain to a high ranking member of the National Assembly and a serious candidate in the race for President of France. Running on a platform of social and economic reform Louis-Napoleon became very popular among many socialist political groups and the lower-middle class in France who made up a large portion of his supporters. On December 10 and 11 of 1848 the election for president was held and when the results were announced on December 20th they stunned everyone. Most of France had expected Napoleon to win the election but they were shocked that he had managed to win nearly 75% of all the votes cast. Now the Prince-President of France Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte began the reform that he had promised during the race for president, however many of his efforts were rejected by the conservative majority in the National Assembly causing tension between Louis, his supporters and the “red republicans”, who were the conservative members of the National Assembly, a trend which would continue for the rest of his presidency. The constitution in France prevented Louis-Napoleon from being re-elected after his term as president was complete, however Napoleon felt that the French population were behind him and that he should be allowed to continue his presidency. He attempted to make a constitutional amendment that would allow him to be re-elected, however his efforts were unsuccessful. So, with the help of his family and the French military, in December of 1851 Louis-Napoleon carried out a coup d'etat, wherein he named himself the Emperor of France, Napoleon III. The government itself did not change very much, however many conservative enemies of Napoleon III were exiled or arrested. As a show of his governments good will Napoleon III, held a national poll asking the people of France whether they supported the coup d'etat. More then 75% of the French population stated that they supported the coup d'etat, and many politicians commended him for his decision. In 1852 Napoleon III officially established himself as the Emperor of France, ending the Second Republic and beginning the Second Empire. That same year Napoleon III hired Georges Eugene Haussmann as the Prefect of the Seine Department and began the reconstruction of Paris.