The Italian War was the turning-point in the history of the Second Empire. Up to 1860 everything seemed to have succeeded with the man who twelve years before could not boast of
Louis Bonaparte, the nephew of Napoleon, was the third son of Louis, the ex-King of Holland, and his wife Hortense Beauharnais. He was born in 1808, recollected having seen his illustrious uncle
The Bourbon dynasty who were recalled to France in 1814 owed this sudden favour of fortune to no merit of their own. Their party was almost extinct, their persons dim and forgotten,
To those who concentrate their attention upon the civil work of Napoleon, upon the chaos which he found and the order which he created, and above all upon the endurance of his
It was part of France's good fortune that the man who came to save her was himself a homeless adventurer, sprung not of French but of Italian stock, and attached to no