BONAPARTE. NAPOLEON IL 



BONAPARTE. NAPOLEON III. 



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Bonaparte. His military genius speaks for itself. His personal 

 character, hidden motives and actual policy, can only be arrived at by 

 a wide and calm consideration of his whole history as developed in 

 public documents and private memoirs, correspondence and commen- 

 taries. But far more ample and satisfactory materials for estimating 

 the character, policy, and motives of Bonaparte than had previously 

 been obtainable, have quite recently been furnished to the student in 

 the ' Mt'moires et Correspondance du Roi Joseph Bonaparte,' published 

 under the care of M. Du Casse, Paris, 1853-55, and of which a well 

 made selection has been translated into English, under the title of 

 ' The Confidential Correspondence of Napoleon Bonaparte with his 

 brother Joseph, some time king of Spain,' 8vo., 1855. The letters of 

 Napoleon to his brother, written with characteristic impetuosity, 

 extend through the whole of the most important period of his career 

 from 1795 to 1815 ; and they refer to most of the great events in 

 which he was the chief actor, as well as to his personal and family 

 history. And while they bring out with the utmost force because 

 from his own pen, and, as it were, incidentally and unconsciously the 

 grave defects of his character, and above all his overweening arro- 

 gance and constant, intense, unscrupulous and remorseless selfishness 

 they exhibit most distinctly his lofty and comprehensive intellect ; 

 his thorough knowledge of human nature; bis strange facility in 

 making other men subservient to his purpose, and the utter reckless- 

 ness with which he employs and casts aside his instruments; his clear 

 perception of the force of circumstances, and his readiness in moulding 

 them to his own end, until by his marvellous career of success he 

 came with defiant perversity to speak and act as though circumstances 

 were within bis absolute control : and they bear equally clear testimony 

 to hi* surpassing administrative ability, unswerving self-reliance, un- 

 wearying energy, indomitable vigour, and unhappily the utter disregard 

 of all moral considerations which accompanied this gigantic manifesta- 

 tion of mental power and despotic will. 



BONAPARTE. NAPOLEON II. NAPOLEON FRANCOIS BONA- 

 PARTE, son of the Emperor Napoleon I. and of Maria Louisa of Austria, 

 wag born at Paris, March 20, 1811. From his birth he was stylud 

 'King of Rome.' After his father's first abdication in 1814 he went 

 with bis mother to Vienna, where he wa brought up at the court of 

 hi* grandfather, the emperor Francis, who made him Duke of Reich- 

 atadt. His education was carefully attended to, and he was early 

 trained up to the military profession. After passing through the 

 various subordinate grades he was made a lieutenant-colonel in June 

 1831, and he took the command of a battalion of Hungarian infantry 

 then in garrison at Vienna. He was extremely assiduous in his mili- 

 tary duties, but his constitution was weak ; he had grown very tall 

 and slender, and symptoms of a consumptive habit had early shown 

 themselves. His physician advised a removal to Schonbrunn, which 

 had at first a beneficial effect, but a relapse soon followed, and after 

 lingering for several months young Napoleon died on the 22ud of 

 July 1832, in the palace of Schonbrunn, attended by his mother, who 

 had come from Parma to visit him. He seems to have been generally 

 regretted at the Austrian court, especially by his grandfather, the 

 emperor, who had always behaved to him with paternal kindness. 

 There is an interesting account of this young man's short career by 

 M. de Montbel, ' Le Due de Reichstadt,' Paris, 1832. 



Although Napoleon I. abdicated in favour of liis son, the title of 

 Napoleon II. was not admitted by the allies or by the French nation. 

 Nor was it put forward by any party in France during the life of 

 Napoleon Francois, nor did he himself ever assume the title. But 

 when the question of conferring the title of emperor upon the prince- 

 president Louis Napoleon was put to the popular vote in 1852, it 

 was as Napoleon III. ; the right of Napoleon Francois to the title of 

 Napoleon II. being thus assumed. No objection was raised iu France, 

 and the governments of Europe by recognising Napoleon III. without 

 protest, of course acknowledged Napoleon II. also. 



BONAPARTE. NAPOLEON III. CHARLES Louis NAPOLEON 

 is the third and youngest son of Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, 

 and of Hortensa Eugenie, daughter of the Empress Josephine, first 

 wife of Napoleon I., by her first husband, the Viscount de Beauharnais. 

 He was born in Paris, at the palace of the Tuileries, on the 20th of 

 April 1808. Hia father Louis was the fourth in age of the brothers 

 of tho emperor ; but Napoleon I, by the imperial edicts of 1804 and 

 1805, set aside the usual order of descent, and declared the succession 

 to the imperial crown to lie in the family of his brother Louis. Louis 

 Napoleon was the first prince born under the imperial rule in the 

 direct line of succession, and his birth was iu consequence announced 

 throughout the empire by discharges of artillery and other solemnities. 

 At his baptism, in 1810, the sponsors were the emperor and the em- 

 press, Maria Louisa. From his infancy the young prince resided with 

 his mother, and his education was conducted under her superintend- 

 ence. Until the abdication of Napoleon, with whom she was always 

 in great fi.vour, Hortense resided at Paris, where she had an hotel and 

 a princely household, and went by the title of Queen of Holland, 

 though her husband was no longer king. She was in fact separated, 

 though not divorced from her husband. Whilst Napoleon was at 

 Klbn, Louis Bonaparte instituted a suit in tho courts at Paris to have 

 bin sons removed from their mother's charge and restored to him ; 

 but the emperor's return put a stop to the proceedings, and henceforth 

 the children remained under the charge of their mother. During the 



Hundred Days she resided at the Tuileries, and did the honours of 

 Napoleon's court. At the great assemblage on the Champ-de-Mai, 

 Napoleon presented his nephew Louis Napoleon, then seven years 

 old, to the soldiers and to the deputies ; and the scene is said to have 

 left a deep and abiding impression on the memory and the imagination 

 of the boy. After the battle of Waterloo, Hortense and her sons 

 attended Napoleon in his retirement at Malmaison. Upon the restora- 

 tion of the Bourbons she made a visit to Bavaria, but being forced to 

 quit Germany, she retired to Switzerland, residing first at Constance, 

 and subsequently, in 1816, at the estate she had purchased of Arenen- 

 burg in the canton of Thurgau. Here she used with her sons to spend 

 the summers ; the winters she passed in Rome, at the Villa Borghese, 

 which belonged to her sister-in-law Pauline. Her sons had thus 

 opportunities of observing very different forms of government, and 

 forming extensive connections with politicians and political adven- 

 turers both in Switzerland and Italy opportunities which the young 

 Louis Napoleon by no means neglected. 



The scholastic education of Louis Napoleon was conducted under 

 the direction of M. Lebas, son of Robespierre's friend, a man, like hia 

 father, of stern republican principles ; and from him it may have been 

 that the young prince imbibed those social doctrines which he held in 

 opening manhood, and which, as developed in his early writings, 

 appeared to consort rather oddly with tho determined and pervading 

 imperialism of all his literary productions. He was for a time a 

 student in the military college at Thun, and is said to have made 

 much progress in the art of gunnery. In these years he also made 

 several pedestrian tours, knapsack on shoulder, among tho wilder 

 parts of Switzerland. 



On the revolution of 1830, Louis Napoleon memorialised Louis 

 Philippe for permission to return to France, offering to serve as a 

 common soldier in the national army. The request was peremptorily 

 refused; and the government of Rome fancying that a meeting of the 

 Bonaparte family in that city had a political tendency, Louis Napoleon 

 and his brother wore ordered to quit the papal territory. They retired 

 to Tuscany, and at once united themselves with the Italian revolu- 

 tionary party. In the insurrectionary movement of 1831 both the 

 brothers took an active part; and under General Sercognani they 

 shared in the victories gained over the papal troops. But the inter- 

 ference of Austria and France soon put an end to the progress of the 

 popular arms. The elder brother, Napoleon, died at Pesaro, a victim 

 to fatigue and anxiety, March 27, 1831 ; but Louis Napoleon succeeded, 

 though with much difficulty, iu escaping from Italy, and with his 

 mother returned to the chateau of Areneiiburg. Here he settled 

 quietly for awhile, obtained letters of naturalisation as a citizen of the 

 canton of Tliurgau, and pursued steadily his military and political 

 studies. 



But a new career was gradually unfolding itself before him. His 

 eldest brother died in infancy ; the second, as we have seen, died in 

 1831; and in 1832 the only son of the emperor, now known as 

 Napoleon II., but then as the Duke of Reichstadt, also died. Louis 

 Napoleon had thus become, according to the decree of 1804, the 

 immediate heir to the emperor. Thenceforward the restoration of 

 the empire, and the Napoleon dynasty in his person, became the pre- 

 dominant idea of his life. He laboured hard, not only to fit himstlf 

 for the lofty post his ambition led him to believe he should at no 

 distant period occupy, but also to impress his countryrneu with his 

 views, and to accustom them to associate his name with the future. 

 He now published his first work, ' Political Reviews,' in which the 

 necessity of the emperor to the state is assumed throughout as the sole 

 means of uniting republicanism with the genius and the requirements 

 of the French people. His 'Ide'es Napole'oniennes ' were afterwards 

 more fully developed, but the germ is to be found in his first publi- 

 cation. The 'Political Reviews' were followed by 'Political and 

 Military Reflections upon Switzerland,' a work of considerable labour 

 and unquestionable ability ; and this again, after an interval, by a 

 large treatise entitled ' Manuel sur 1'Artillerie,' the result of the 

 studies begun in the military school of Thun. 



At length he fancied the time had arrived for attempting to carry 

 his great purpose into effect. He had become convinced that the 

 French people were tired of their citizen king, and that it only needed 

 a personal appeal on the pait of the heir of the great Napoleon to 

 rally the nation around his standard. He had obtained assurances of 

 support from military officers and others ; and finally at a meeting in 

 Baden he secured the aid of Colonel Vaudry, the commandant of 

 artillery in the garrison of Strasburg. His plan was to obtain posses- 

 sion of that fortress, and with the troops in garrison, who he doubted 

 not would readily join him, to march directly on Paris, which he hoped 

 to surprise before the government could make sufficient preparations 

 to resist him. Having made all necessary preparations, on the morn- 

 ing of the 30th of October 1836 the signal was given by sound of 

 trumpet, and Colonel Vaudry presented the prince to the regiment, 

 assembled in the square of the artillery barracks, telling the soldiers 

 that a great revolution was begun, and that the nephew of their 

 emperor was before them. Tho soldiers who heard the address 

 received him with acclamations; some of his partisans had secured 

 the prefect and other civil officers ; and for a few minutes all seemed 

 prospering. But the commanders of the other regiments were true 

 to their duty. One of them denounced the prince as an impostor, and 



