Napoleon III and his regime

Referred to in his time as “the Pretender” and “the sphinx of the Tuileries”, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte so managed to manufacture his public image and mask his private self that he is, ultimately, unknowable to this day. From the mysterious circumstances of his conception in 1807 to the strange events of his downfall in 1870 and death in 1873, he lived, loved and reigned in an extraordinary aura of myth and fantasy under the shadow of his more famous uncle. In his approach to the emperor, David Baguley reviews sources mixed in both media and form – notably, pictures, performances, spectacles, rituals, music, fiction, poems, plays, architecture, fashion, as well as Louis Napoleon's own writings – in his exploration of how the ruler was represented, invented and interpreted by detractors and defenders alike. While most historians consider Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat of December 1851 to be his boldest endeavour, Baguley contends that his most extravagant venture was his foundation of a second Napoleonic empire, illustrating not only the power of the name and the image but also the precariousness of the Emperor's reliance upon them.
 
This book was awarded the R.H. Gapper prize, awarded by the review French Studies (UK) in 2001 for the best book on a French topic published the previous year.