What about Pierre Milza? This gentleman is one of the very important French historians specialized in contemporary history and the double question of fascism and democracy, it was necessary to speak of a Napoleon III, whose populist character dimension and perhaps a harbinger the fascist did not escape him ... So I put forward to reading this biography. The first pleasure one feels comes from his reading style: Pierre Milza never falls into the trap of scholarship in stifling his reader under the references; so he naturally tale fate wire Hortense de Beauharnais as if he was being followed in a novel. Yet Milza none the less precise in its analysis of the facts: everything begins with the birth of a prince in a tumultuous time: a first born son of the couple formed by Louis (brother of Napoleon) and Hortense ( daughter of Josephine de Beauharnais, the first empress and wife of Napoleon), but he died too quickly pram. Then a second child was born, Louis Napoleon, in which King Louis grants its interest, but doubt that the little Louis Napoleon, later Napoleon III, far from it, leading to a relative neglect of the child during his early years.
It is in the tumultuous climate of one hundred days, during which Napoleon tries his last shot of poker, that Louis Napoleon opens to the story. He rubs his uncle and then Emperor knows exile with his mother and older brother, after the defection of Napoleon I, a period which he probably will keep bright traces. Without accurate information on the psychological development of our future emperor, Milza prefers to stick to the point, although it emphasizes the nightmares and anxiety attacks suffered by a young boy raised by women for which there will be a insatiable appetite.
Finally, everything will be decided for him in Rome. With his brother, he discovered a passion for it intrigue, revolution and socialism! It is hard to believe, but the future emperor was indeed a young man in love with freedom and democracy. However, even if he unity of the people of dream he think the public needs a leader. He, why not! After the death of his brother, who died of tuberculosis, Louis Napoleon makes a first shot from just incredible state which fails quickly but still worries the French government, aware of the growing impact of Bonapartism in minds. His mother releases but will soon die some time later from cancer. Hurt by this news, our young adventurer tent not least a second coup to equally dismal failure, even depriving him of the honor of dying at the foot of where Napoleon I had to give the first legions of honor.
But the young adventurer politics do not despair: the election of the president by universal suffrage will be the casus belli. Income on French territory, he was elected on name. Then engages a tussle with several members of the congregation suspect his future takeover. But contrary to popular belief, the left-most are not those that we imagine. The meeting is full of very worried members of the rising red and anarchy in the country. Napoleon meanwhile embodies the return to order and right ideas while being secretly socialist. The takeover in December 2, will thus leave a bitter taste when he learns that there were many good times innocent Parisian killed by the French military balls overzealous.
Arrived at this event so special, when he was elected emperor, Milza abandons the pure chronological narrative he then borrowed to spend most of the rest of his work to study the thematic-chronological aspects of the reign. Thus fell to Napoleon Foreign Policy Analysis in Italy, the distrust with Austria, the gradual liberalization of the regime and his outstretched hand to the workers, the metamorphosis of Paris by Baron Haussmann or the French setbacks in Mexico City the absurd to war of France against Prussia, which lead to the defeat of Sedan ... Impossible to summarize all this part: in any case, it is very rich and whenever he can, Pierre Milza rectifies imaging Epinal or the caricatures of the reign. We discover a very modern emperor, european, eager to see the peoples to free themselves from foreign tutelage authorizing the right to strike and assembly, fostering mutual working and all this in front tack against his own side and even vis-a -vis the Republicans. No one believes for a moment to humanity of the emperor. Or no one accepts. But he, like a true man of the left, it must advance while concealing his thoughts and personal ideas to gradually impose its designs.
But the disease catches up: his captivity for the Ham, in its second cost statement has affected his health. A gallstone accentuates the problem: the emperor suffers martyrdom, takes opium to take lives with death has on his shoulder. We can not imagine how this degrading health played in the disaster facing Mexico and Prussia. Pressed by an assembly of going to war and his wife pressed for battle, Napoleon must embark on a conflict which he doubted. Further evidence of humanity: he will go after Sedan to avoid unnecessary deaths.
The end of the book allows Milza to engage in an interesting analysis of Bonapartism: he studies the foundations in Napoleon I and Napoleon III before discussing the political significance after the death of the last emperor of France. An important consideration, since today, the sociologist Alain Soral, reporting to Jean-Marie Le Pen, Le Pen approaches of Napoleon III. Napoleon is it populist? He announces fascism? A reflection contained implicit in the book and that Milza done a lot. Yes, Napoleon III is populist but also paternalistic. No, he does not embody a proto-fascism, on the contrary because its regime has continued to liberalize while fascism hardens. However Bonapartism gave birth to a double current, one of the French Fascist Action and the deeply Republican Charles de Gaulle. In fact, the populist and plebiscitary regime of Napoleon III does not advertise the dark hours of France is considering ways of governing and bind the company to the head of state by ignoring the intermediate bodies and linking at will People and direction of the country.
This Napoleon III concludes with a historiographical reflection on the figure of the emperor: there found that if the character has been demonized in the aftermath of defeat: it is to form the Third Republic by making a clean sweep of the past; short, it is to discredit the empire to value the young Republic. Then, after the return of Nice and Savoy, the historiography calm his ardor against Napoleon missing since the territories of France are finally recovered. Historians therefore agree to finally give a true picture of the character of the emperor. The own book Milza brings an extra touch to a building which the author acknowledges paternity Girard and Louis Philippe Séguin: rereading of their reign has recently transformed the perception of the character.
This book of Pierre Milza is valuable in the sense that not content to do justice to an emperor with a humane and generous dimension unmistakable, it helps to understand the genesis of our modern parties of lefts and rights. In terms of writing, so to rave about the first part of the book, the second becomes more difficult and technical, losing its romantic appearance to fit the style of the analyst. We lose literary pleasure that we gain in reflection. Clearly, this Napoleon III is therefore aimed at an audience of historians unafraid to rub the workings of the Napoleonic policy and who want to understand both the whole meaning and scope.
