Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire

by JohnBierman (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1989

  $6.75

  Napoleon III, the nephew of Napolean Bonaparte, was elected President of France in 1848 and three years later became Emperor. He was considered the arbiter of Europe and led his country into four major wars. His political techniques anticipated the Fascist dictators of the 1920s and 1930s, and included many characteristics which foreshadowed modern democratic politics. He also scandalized Europe with his numerous mistresses, who included Countess Castiglione, a young Italian spy who was known as the most beautiful woman in Europe, and Countess Walewska, the scheming wife of his own foreign minister. This biography of Napoleon III chronicles his rise to power, his influence on Fascism, and describes the Second Empire, a frenetic epoch in French history.

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.28

  This is a biography of Napoleon III who ruled over 18 years of glittering success in France known as the Second Empire. Modern Paris was created out of its medieval slums - 47 acres of parkland became 5,000, the streets were redesigned by Hausmann into the grand boulevards we see today, and the dame of the fashion house of Worth became an international figure. But the stability was a facade. When Bismarck outmanoeuvred Napoleon in 1866 he brought an entire age to a close. The empire's costly and empty militarism was finally unsupportable. The economy had already had to support three major wars and could support no more. Perhaps the most ludicrous of these had been Eugenie's whim to place a European prince on the throne in Mexico - a plan doomed from its inception.