Napoleon III and Eugenie

by Jasper Godwin Ridley

This is not a history of the Second Empire, but a biography of Louis Napoleon and a biography of Eugenie. Some political events, like the power struggle in France under the Second Republic, the campaign in Mexico, and the revolutionary movements in Paris in 1869 and 1870, are examined in some depth to show the significance of Louis Napoleon’s and Eugenie’s reaction to them; but others of great political and economic importance - the industrialization of France under the Second Empire, the commercial treaty with Britain of 1860, and the army reorganization before the Franco-Prussian War - are ignored. It is only the lives of two people, husband and wife, which link, in my story, the events which occurred at Gavarnie in 1807, i n Madrid in 1843, m Paris in 1851, in Zululand in 1879, and at Farnborough.