Been reading about Napoleon III a lot the last few days and I’m surprised by how much he largely gets ignored or mocked by history. I get that his uncle casts a huge shadow, but it seems like Napoleon III doesn’t get enough credit, particularly for the stuff he didnt do.
Like he seized control of the government and crowned himself emperor and supreme commander of the army or whatever and didnt go to war against the rest of Europe like most every other leader in history that went that route. He didn’t do evil shit to minority ethnic groups. He used his supreme authority and “mandate to rule” and modernized industries and rebuilt Paris and drastically improved the quality of life for the people in his country. He created alliances and trade deals with England and helped form the kingdom of Italy. It really seems like if he had died or abdicated sometime around 1865 maybe he’d be remembered much more and as a much greater leader in history.
And was there much he could have done differently about Prussia in the years leading up to 1870? Had he started a massive troop buildup or started militarizing the economy to be able to defend against Otto’s forces that’d have likely spooked the rest of Europe into attacking. Nobody was willing to get involved with him for most of the 60s because everyone knew he was about to get steamrolled. He was seemingly in a no-win situation and he knew it was coming for years.
And then even the things everyone hated him for at the time, like surrendering to prevent tens of thousands of men getting slaughtered by an overwhelming force, is something I see as heroic and virtuous, and it’s a tragedy that “doing the right thing” haunted him so much that he used his dying breath still trying to justify it.
It’s mostly because the political opposition in France and its greatest writer (Victor Hugo) didn’t like the man, so they spent quite the time emphasising on his shortcomings.
In 1870, Napoleon III was no longer the absolute monarch, rather a dying old man with barely any power left.
After the war, the French Republic placed all of the blame on the former emperor’s back, despite him being one of the few french people involved in politics who actually was reluctant to declare war. This was proven since when the prospect came up, he asked several marshals several times if France was ready, and only signed the declaration after massive public and government pressure. The emperor expected a long and difficult war, and and told one of his marshals he felt “too old and sick” however left to join the army 9 days later.
As for what he could’ve done differently, well he tried.
“In the autumn of 1867, Napoleon III proposed a form of universal military service similar to the Prussian system to increase the size of the French Army, if needed, to 1 million. His proposal was opposed by many French officers, such as Marshal Randon, who preferred a smaller, more professional army; he said: "This proposal will only give us recruits; it's soldiers we need." It was also strongly opposed by the republican opposition in the French parliament, who denounced the proposal as a militarization of French society. The republican deputy, Émile Ollivier, who later became Napoleon's prime minister, declared: "The armies of France, which I always considered too large, are now going to be increased to an exorbitant size. Why? What is the necessity? Where is the danger? Who is threatening us? ...If France were to disarm, the Germans would know how to convince their governments to do the same." Facing almost certain defeat in the parliament, Napoleon III withdrew the proposal. It was replaced in January 1868 by a much more modest project to create a garde mobile, or reserve force, to support the army.”
It was honestly the opposite of the quote, he was seen as a villain because of the coup and dictatorship, however he started to soften on his opposition and became a hero in 1859 after successfully leading his army to victory at the field of Solferino. After that his health began declining, so did his power, and the opposition began to effectively drag the emperor around and he couldn’t pass any reforms if they disagreed with it, and once he went to war in 1870, he was no longer anything of significance, in his own words to the former commander-in-chief who resigned following the triple defeats in the east, “we’ve both been dismissed” and less than a month later he was officially deposed in absentia as he was a prisoner of war, so the quote is quite inaccurate. I would call it more of a villain, who became the hero, and then declined to a nobody.