Napoleon III and His Carnival Empire

by John Bierman

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.

Genres: History, France, Nonfiction, Biography, 19th Century, European History, World History

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

John David Bierman, journalist and author.

John Bierman was one of the last of a generation of buccaneering reporters and writers who pursued successful careers across the media. Newspaper reporter, editor, radio correspondent, television "fireman", documentary maker and, finally, acclaimed historian, Bierman excelled at each, in a working life that reached back to the days of plate cameras and reporters in trilbies.

His big stories as a BBC TV reporter included a 13-minute, mainly ad-libbed, report from Bloody Sunday in Derry in 1972 (which won a Cannes TV Festival award), the Indo-Pakistan war of 1971 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. His final incarnation as a historian was pursued in the Mediterranean calm of a Cypriot farmhouse - he liked to describe himself as a "palm-tree man". The military historian Sir John Keegan wrote of Alamein: War Without Hate (2002), which Bierman co-authored with fellow journalist Colin Smith: "Few historians write as fluently as they do; few journalists achieve their standards of accuracy and inclusiveness."

Bierman was born within the sound of Bow Bells in London. His father, an antiques dealer, beat a hasty exit, and his mother, who ran a dress shop, paid attention to her son only when in funds. Largely raised by his grandparents, and evacuated from London during the second world war, he had, therefore, a peripatetic childhood that ideally prepared him for life as a globetrotting reporter. His love of the English language was acquired young. Despite attending 16 schools, he had a sound basic education, and could recite long passages of poetry.

In 1960, Bierman was headhunted by the Aga Khan to found and edit The Nation, in Nairobi. Those four years were among his happiest professionally. A colleague recalls: "John was a great editor - driving, dynamic, young, assured, foul-mouthed, contemptuous of settlers, frightened of nobody, a marvellous design man and an elegant writer." He next moved to the Caribbean as a managing editor.

He returned to England in the mid-1960s just as the BBC was recruiting experienced print journalists to stiffen its staff of largely university graduates - "all rather posh men", according to Mike Sullivan, another of the hard-bitten tribe who joined when Bierman did.

Bierman's breakthrough book was Righteous Gentile: The Story of Raoul Wallenberg (1981), which brought to international attention the then largely neglected story of the Swedish diplomat who rescued Hungarian Jews from the Nazis. Bierman's words are inscribed on Wallenberg's statue in central London: "The 20th century spawned two of history's vilest tyrannies. Raoul Wallenberg outwitted the first but was swallowed up by the second. His triumph over Nazi genocide reminds us that the courageous and committed individual can prevail against even the cruellest state machine. The fate of the six million Jews he was unable to rescue reminds us of the evil to which racist ideas can drive whole nations. Finally, his imprisonment reminds us not only of Soviet brutality but also of the ignorance and indifference which led the free world to abandon him. We must never forget these lessons."

One of Bierman's books - The Heart's Grown Brutal, a thriller set in Northern Ireland - was written under the pseudonym David_Brewster; he was still on the BBC staff and not supposed to moonlight. In all, he published eight books (two written with Smith), continuing to work after a kidney (donated by his son Jonathan) transplant in 2002. Despite a later heart bypass, arthritis and damaged nerves in his neck which made writing torture, he stayed at his keyboard. He told an interviewer: "Working, in the sense of writing books, I shall do until I drop because it is my life."

(source: The Guardian)

Reviews

[Jill H. · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was said the Napoleon III (L0uis Napoleon) had no plans, allowing himself to be carried along by events. He had aspirations but no plans. As the nephew of the great Napoleon Bonaparte, he felt that fate had entrusted him with the future of France After two rather pathetic attempts to put himself forward as the logical successor to his uncle, he fled to England and worked with conspirators toward his goal. And his conspirators knew exactly what they were doing when the Assembly (French government) held elections and Louis Napoleon was elected to that body. This was the beginning of his rise to Emperor.

The author covers in detail the personal, public,and governmental environment of Napoleon's 18 year reign and contains an immense amount of information about "the other" Napoleon which can't be captured in a review. Needless to say, he was not cut from his uncle's cloth......he had little military experience which became the death knell of his rule; he was a man who spent more time womanizing than ruling; he was incapable of working in concert with France's allies due to his ignorance of world politics, ad infinitum. His greatest achievement was hiring Georges Haussmann to redesign the city of Paris into the City Of Light that we know today.

I have not read any other of this author's works but was captured by his style and unbiased writing. I would recommend this book to all history buffs.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably one of the best popular histories of Napoleon III and his 'empire', or to be honest 'life and very little of the times' because the French empire, though launched by Charles X and brought to life by Louis Phillipe (the Bourbon monarchs preceding him), only began to take on permanence and importance under Louis Napoleon, is barely mentioned. This history covers all the risible antics, scandals, tragedies, adventures and down right absurdities - and a great deal is absurd or farcical about the reincarnated 'Napoleonic' empire, but it is hard to disentangle cause from effect - was Napoleon's interventions in Italy the result of his youthful idealism, Orsini's assassination attempt or the pillow talk of the Countess di Castiglione (the later is hard to credit when you see any of her photographs, it would hard to imagine her charming the attentions of waiter in a busy restaurant far less influencing the international affairs of empires)? Napoleon's 'empire' was always a rather ramshackle and makeshift affair so the authors subtitle of 'carnival' is not inaccurate.

While this book is good it is not better than many of the other popular histories and or biographies that have been produced at any time in the last fifty years. None of them have achieved any lasting status and this history is simply the most recent, least inaccurate, popular history/biography of Napoleon III and his times.

The problem for me is that Louis Napoleon is such an embarrassment - he is there as an essential part of the story of the Crimean War, Italian and German unification, all those parts of the 19th century which helped create the history of the twentieth century up to WWII, but he is a buffoon and cipher and it is impossible to take him seriously. His contribution to events barely rises to the level of king Ludwig II of Bavaria in the creation of the German empire. He is the original sphinx without a secret.

Even his desire to be Emperor of France was not so much quixotic as bizarre. He knew nothing, and had seen nothing, of France since leaving it when he was 6 years old at the time he became 'president' of France. He was 42 and always spoke French with a German accent. Perhaps that was why he got on so well with the British royal family, they spoke English with a German accent as well. He had as little French blood in him as the Hanoverians had English. Tsar Alexander II with 3.1% Russian blood looks like a native compared to Louis Napoleon.

There may be a great untranslated biography of Napoleon III in French but in English there are no really good biographies. I think at this stage Louis Napoleon needs a writer of fiction, not a biographer (though the history of his times is something completely different). Brian Moore in his novel 'The Magician's Wife' managed to shine a spotlight on the utter vulgarity and vacuity of Napoleon III court at Compiègne and the dishonesty at the root of French imperial power with greater acuity than any history I have read.

What Napoleon III needs, in my opinion, is an author to do for him what Fernando del Paso in 'News from the Empire' did for princess Charlotte of Belgium, archduchess of the House of Hapsburg and one time empress of Mexico and one of the victims, though a minor one, of Napoleon's attempts to match his uncle's grandeur. It was a shambolic, grotesque and bloody failure and above all a tragedy and not especially for the idiotic Maximilian and Charlotte who were so bored with being superfluous younger royals that they were willing to do anything to give meaning to their lives. The real tragedy of the Mexican adventure was the hundreds of thousands of Mexican dead who almost invariably get short shrift in the accounts of this adventure.

This is a lively but mediocre account of a potentially fascinating subject.

[Louise · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title implies that you will be in for some fun, and you are.

Just about everything in his life is dubious. His lineage is his sole qualification for his position, but was "The" Napoleon's brother really his father? How did a democratically elected official morph into an Emperor... like maybe "The" Napoleon his maybe uncle?

We can chuckle along with John Bierman as he interprets Napoleon III's early attempts to attain his destiny, his (very active) love life, his fast track marriage, his meeting with Queen Victoria and more. His mother, the daughter of "The" Josephine, teaches him if you continue to say something, it becomes true.

This book has the clearest interpretation I've seen of how the Austrian noble, Ferdinand Maximilian, assumed the crown of Mexico. Perhaps when I knew this before I dismissed it as somewhat flimsy. Now I understand that it is a case of, "well... You have to know the people". After this, I have a new appreciation for Cinco de Mayo.

Amidst so many foreign affairs blunders, Napoleon built Paris. He oversaw the creation of parks, the Louvre, the wide boulevards Paris is known for and the Eiffel tower. Despite the autocratic elements of his reign there was a flourishing culture of novelists and painters who left a world wide imprint that exists today.

The chapter "Death in Exile" has an interesting and feasible interpretation of what made him tick.

The final chapter "The Long Twilight" has some interesting things to say about Napoleon IV and his short life and the long life of the Empress Eugenie.

There are some good photos. The index is weak and the book could use a genealogy chart, but the writing is so compelling I won't deduct a star.
This is an interpretive work. While the author claims no original research it is informed by an extensive bibliography.

I highly recommend this for general readers. There is a lot to keep you glued.

[Miles Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although this is a popular history, it manages to transcend merely being gossipy or pulpy. Bierman makes thoughtful observations and for the most part the history is solid. He also includes endnotes so even though it’s not sourced like a scholarly work it’s not without some measure of research. The strength of this work really lays in the fact that it’s very well written and the narrative moves fast. If you’re looking for a worthwhile standard work on the second French empire this is not a bad place to start.

[David L. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I included a mention of this book in my recently published journal: Across Two Novembers: A Year in the Life of a Blind Bibliophile. "Rather witty, presenting a complex Napoleon III (1808–1873), who was a somewhat papier–mâché version of his uncle Napoleon. Napoleon III ruled during one of the most fascinating periods in French history, one giving a foretaste of modernity. At the time, there were several daily newspapers in Paris. Mail was delivered more than once a day, aided by the development of an elaborate system of pneumatic tubes throughout the city. Major construction was undertaken in Paris to modernize the city. French industry boomed. A new empire was established in Asia and Africa. If only he had left Bismarck’s Germany alone, and his glamorous empress, Eugénie, had been content to be a style icon, not a frustrated politician! But he didn’t, and she wasn’t, and it all came tumbling down in a war with Germany." But his empress would make a fascinating novel. I cannot understand why the writers of fictionalized royal biography including Philippa Gregory and Alison Weir. Surely, someone out there realizes the potential gold to be mined by writing this woman's story, especially in first person from her point of view and possibly alternating it with that of a servant or including a third person narrative from a fictional French journalist.

[Mshelton50 · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Bierman's look at the life of Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte--later "Napoleon III" was a terrific read. I came to this book with some reluctance, as Napoleon III was a figure I viewed with some distaste. Nonetheless, I wanted to know more about his Second Empire. No matter how much I still dislike his foreign policy, Bierman painted the picture of a man I would have enjoyed knowing. I appreciated the author's prose style--witty and crisp--as well as his eagle-eyed look at all facets of his subject. If you have any interest in the history of the Second Republic and/or Second Empire, or in the creation of the Paris we know today, you would do well to read this book; it will be rewarding and entertaining.

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well researched but not scholarly biography of Louis Napoleon, Emperor Napoleon III of France. Who? Well, the Napoleon we all know had a nephew, Louis, who believed he was the heir to the throne, even though France went through a couple other kings and a republic. He was determined to become Emperor, as in, a few botched revolutions and finally getting elected President against all odds, and staging a coups. He seems to have been a fairly good ruler (implementing policies to help the working class) but he also seemed to get into a lot of wars, which was his final undoing—getting captured while leading his army against Prussia. He was also quite playboy and partier. This is an interesting narrative history about a figure most people know nothing about, but who actually had quite an impact. He essentially made the Paris we know today, with wide boulevards and parks. He’s also responsible in a round about way for Cinco de Mayo!

[David Montgomery · Rating 3 out of 5]

A readable but somewhat flippant biography of one of the most enigmatic figures of the 19th Century, French Emperor Napoleon III. Bierman covers the lesser Napoleon's entire life from his disputed parentage to his rise to power, apogee and finally his ignominious fall. I feel like it could have used more focus on policy, on Napoleon's very real impacts on France and the world. Instead it was mostly focused on personalities, though admittedly very colorful ones.

[Jonathan Blanchet · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 *

For those who like : well-intentioned yet strangely weak emperor; beautiful and ambitious courtisanes; graceful yet slightly gossipy writing; learning about the rise and fall of France's Second Empire; 19th century diplomacy.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reactionary imperial nonsense, poorly researched and poorly cited.

[Bap · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not know much about France in the 19th century after the fall of Napoleon I. How did the French after 35 years in the vortex of revolution and the grand adventure and tragedy of Napoleon lapsed into mediocrity, conservatism, materialism and it's own guilded age. Napoleon Iii was the embodiment of this carnival empire. There is serious doubt that his father was actually Napoleon's brother as his mother detested his father. Interestingly though his mother was the daughter of Josephine's first marriage before she divorced and married Napoleon I.
Marx commented that history repeats itself first as tragedy and than as farce. Louis Napoleon ruled France for 22 years, the palest of imitations of hie supposed uncle until he had the astounding poor judgment to declare war on Prussia which was spoiling for a fight and soundly thrashed the French, unified the rest of Germany and sowed the seeds of future war with a harsh peace. The rabble in Paris unfurled the red flag and pounced the commune in 1670 which in turn gave way to the third Republic.
I learned a lot about this strange man and enjoyed the book.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-written, accessible historic look at the man, Napoleon III. I thought the author did a good job of capturing the various aspects of Napoleon's background and how it informed the role he played in 19th Century history. Bierman's interpretation differs in certain ways from mainstream historians' accounts, but the author does a good job to support his view. The passages about Eugenie's influence over Napoleon's foreign policy were fascinating and made me want to further explore her role in certain catastrophic decisions that were taken. I also enjoyed (and would have liked to learn more about) the social context. For example, I was interested to read about the public pressure/clamoring leaders allegedly felt to go to war against Prussia. I also was interested in the discussion of campaigning (with the advent of trains, Napoleon was the first travelling campaigner) as well as Haussmann's transformation of Paris.

[David Bird · Rating 3 out of 5]

...but his concept of government as theater and sleight-of-hand--a business to be conducted conspiratorially behind the back of parliament--also showed the way to a breed of democratic leader which found its transatlantic apotheosis over a century later in Ronald Reagan. His immense popularity and apparent purposefulness during his early years in power, in contrast with the drift, detachment, and defeat of his final years, are also eerily reminiscent of the Reagan presidency.

But poor Napoleon III fared less well in that his Peggy Noonan was even more self-absorbed, and failed to turn him into the martyred, mis-remembered saint of a movement.

Bierman's book is entertaining, and fills in a hole of perspective for me. But it is not more substantial than its subject. It is interesting as a portrait of a dictator who was not megalomaniacal, a rather small set.

[Nick Garbutt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was delighted to find this on my shelves because I’m working my way through Zola’s Rougon Macquart novel cycle which is set in this very period so I thought it would give me the background.
It was very disappointing; I’ve learned far more about the corruption of Napoleon III from the footnotes to the novels’ translators than from Bierman’s work.
He seems more interested in writing about the emperor’s sexual conquests and portraying the events as burlesque comedy rather than providing any real illumination of a fascinating period. Deeply disappointing tabloid trash from the former BBC foreign correspondent which fails to explain how Paris came to be regarded as the capital of Europe during this period or to explore the wholescale corruption that this tottering façade actually rested on.

[Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bierman writes good prose, but the book lacked a narrative force. There was nothing propelling the story along. Rather, it felt to me like a string of events described one after the next with little to link them together. Napoleon III's motivations went unexplained in key parts. From what I gather, the author was hampered by a lack of original source material such as letters/diaries of Napoleon III.

Nevertheless, I recommend the book to anyone with a particular interest in this subject. After all, I did painlessly learn a good deal about Napoleon III, which is what I had aimed to do when purchasing this book. A particular highlight is the author's dryly humorous account of Napoleon III's failed coup attempt of 1840.

[Mary Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

I forced myself to finish this book. I did not care for the author's writing style at all. However Napoleon III is a fascinating individual as is his wife, Eugenie. Plan to seek out additional biographies of them both.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining read of Napoleon III, his repeated attempts to seize power, and his political and personal life during his reign as Emperor. Though not a scholarly account, good overview of his life and successes and failings.

[Dana Mees-athuring · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good historical overview of the Second Empire. While we get to know the personalities of Louis Napoleon and his Empress I don't agree with many of the conclusions Mr. Bierman comes to about their psyches.

[Rene Paul Meillon]

Retrata de manera muy elocuente el reinado carnavalesco de Napoleón III...recomendado