Second French Empire

The Second French Empire was the France of Napoleon III, from his coup-presidency's proclamation as Emperor of the French on 2 December 1852 to the catastrophe of Sedan in September 1870. The nephew's regime aped the uncle's forms with bourgeois substance: universal suffrage managed by prefects, a Corps legislatif that grew teeth, and Paris rebuilt by Haussmann into the boulevards, sewers and stations of the modern city. The Empire laid railways, lit the Opéra, floated the Credit Mobilier and dug Suez with Lesseps. The Empress Eugenie set the fashion, Offenbach the tune, and the Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867 showed the world the new Paris. Abroad it won the Crimea with Britain, freed Lombardy with Piedmont, lost an army in Mexico raising a Habsburg archduke, and sold Louisiana's shadow in the south. Bismarck's trap snapped in 1870: the Emperor surrendered his sword at Sedan, Paris besieged itself into the Commune, and the Third Republic inherited the ruins after eighteen years of glittering authoritarian modernity.