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Bonapartism had its followers from 1815 forward among those who never accepted the defeat at Waterloo or the Congress of Vienna. Napoleon I's death in exile on Saint Helena in 1821 only transferred the allegiance of many of these persons to other members of his family. The disturbances of 1848 gave this group hope and they were essential in the election of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the Second Republic and gave him the political support necessary for his 1852 discarding of the constitutionThe Constitution of a given organisation defines its form, structure, activities, character, and fundamental rules. To view particular constitutions, refer to the list of national constitutions. The term comes from Latin constitutio which referred to any and proclaiming the Second EmpireThe Second French Empire or Second Empire was the imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France. Steps towards Empire The anti-parliamentary constitution instituted by Napoleon.
After Louis' weak leadership led to PrussiaThe word Prussia ( German: Preussen (Preussen Polish: Prusy Lithuanian: Prusai Latin: Borussia has had various (often contradictory) meanings: The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of southern Lithuania, the Kaliningrad exclave of Russian triumph in the Franco-Prussian WarMars-la-Tour, August 16, 1870 The Franco-Prussian War ( July 19, 1870 May 10, 1871) was waged between the Empire of France and the Prussian led North German Confederation allied with the south German states of Baden, Bavaria and Wurttemberg. The conflict, and Louis' subsequent abdication, Bonapartists continued to aspire and to agitate for another member of the family to be placed on the throne. However, from 1871Events January January 18 The member-states of the North German Confederation unite into a single nation-state known as the German Empire. The King of Prussia is declared the first German Emperor as Wilhelm I of Germany. January 28 France surrenders to en forward, they competed with monarchist groups which favoured the restoration of the family of Louis-Philippe, King of the French ( 1830Events February 3 The previously autonomous state of Greece gains full independence from the Ottoman Empire as the final result of the Greek War of Independence. Negotiations for the borders between the two states continue until 1832, under the supervisio-1848) (the Orleanists) , and with those who favoured the restoration of the House of Bourbon, the traditional French royal family ( Legitimists). The strength of these three monarchist factions combined was almost undoubtedly greater than that of the Republicans of the era, but as the three proved to be irreconcilable on the choice of who should be the new French monarch, monarchist fervor eventually waned and the French Republic became more or less a permanent facet of French life, and Bonapartism was slowly relegated to being the civic faith of a few romantics as more of a hobby than a practical political philosophy. The final death knell for Bonapartism was probably sounded when Eugene Bonaparte, only son of Napoleon III, was killed in action while serving as a British Army officer in Zululand in 1879.
Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire. In Marxist terminology, Bonapartism refers to when counterrevolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. In the process, Marx argues, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a narrower ruling class. He judged Napoleon Bonaparte and Napoleon III of having thus corrupted revolutions in France. Marx's "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" ( 1852) gives his analysis of French Bonapartism and what he calls the phenomenon's repetitive history. French history