Quick Look
· Napoleon I founded France’s First Empire and ruled until 1815.
· Napoleon II was his son and titular successor, who never governed France.
· Napoleon III was Napoleon I’s nephew and ruled from 1852 to 1870.
· Portraits and decorative arts trace the legacy of both French empires.
Typically, when people hear the name Napoleon, one person springs to mind. But how many Napoleons were there? Three members of the Bonaparte dynasty bore the imperial names Napoleon I, Napoleon II and Napoleon III. Only Napoleon I and Napoleon III exercised power as reigning emperors; Napoleon II was a child whose succession remained nominal.
Born in Corsica, Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) is shown here in his Paris palace shortly before invading Russia, his most profound mistake. The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries by Jacques-Louis David, 1812. Source.
id you know there were three famous Napoleons in the 1800s, two of whom dramatically altered the destiny of France? Join us as we explore the history of Napoleon and his clan. From a military leader who became emperor to a nephew determined to reclaim the throne, the Bonaparte dynasty was anything but ordinary.
Who were Napoleon I, Napoleon II and Napoleon III?
Napoleon I 1769–1821: Founder of the dynasty. Imperial rule: 1804–1814 and the Hundred Days in 1815.
Napoleon II 1811–1832: Son of Napoleon I and Marie-Louise. Imperial rule: Titular successor in 1815; never governed France.
Napoleon III 1808–1873: Nephew of Napoleon I; son of Louis and Hortense. Imperial rule: 1852–1870.
Napoleon I. Circa 1807. Source.
Napoleon II shown at age 7 in a painting, circa 1818, attributed to Johann Peter Krafft, M.S. Rau.
Napoleon III in an 1862 work by Jean Hippolyte Flandrin. Source.
Napoleon I and the rise of the First Empire
The story of the three Napoleons originated with Napoleon I, who orchestrated a coup d’état in 1799 in Paris. This act followed a tumultuous decade initiated by the French Revolution, a period marked by the fall of the monarchy, the establishment of a republic and the executions of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette. European monarchs sent troops to quash the revolutionary spirit. Meanwhile, the young general Napoleon Bonaparte rose to prominence, winning military victories that made his name known far beyond France.
In the last days of the 18th century, Napoleon returned from Egypt and overthrew the government. Called the Coup of 18 Brumaire, the November 1799 ouster established a three-man Consulate. As First Consul, he reorganized the country, consolidated his authority through administrative and legal reforms, and negotiated a brief peace with Great Britain. Then he changed his title, becoming First Consul for Life in 1802.
An imperial dynasty needs an heir
As his wife Joséphine had not produced an heir, Napoleon looked to his family to secure the dynasty’s future. In 1802, his younger brother Louis married Hortense de Beauharnais, Joséphine’s daughter from a previous marriage. Hortense soon gave birth to a boy, Napoleon Charles, but he died in childhood in 1807. She bore two more sons, Napoleon Louis and Louis-Napoleon. The youngest would one day become Napoleon III; for now, Napoleon’s hopes for a son of his own remained unfulfilled.
Playing a minor role at the time, Louis-Napoleon (1808-1873), shown with Hortense in a painting circa 1805-1807, would become Napoleon III and start the Second French Empire. Source.
Egypt and the Louisiana Purchase
Meanwhile, Napoleon’s overseas missions were running afoul. He had returned to France from Egypt in 1799, leaving behind a campaign that combined military conquest with scientific research. The victory he sought would not last. In 1801, the French surrendered, and the Rosetta Stone passed to the British under the terms of the surrender agreement. The expedition’s scholarly work, however, had a longer life than its military ambitions.
Napoleon brought artists, scientists and scholars with him to Egypt. Their observations and drawings were published in the multi-volume Description de l’Égypte, First Edition, Circa 1826, M.S. Rau.
The scholars who accompanied Napoleon recorded Egyptian monuments, natural history and contemporary life. Their work became the multi-volume Description de l’Égypte, a publication explored in this illustrated feature.
By late 1802, Napoleon’s plan to expand into the Americas was also falling apart. Thanks to a secret deal negotiated with Spain in 1800, Louisiana was to return to France, including the port of New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Control of that port and the vast territory beyond it offered a route to rebuilding France’s colonial presence. But the French expedition sent to regain control of Saint-Domingue, today’s Haiti, faced resistance and devastating disease. The Caribbean campaign helped undermine Napoleon’s ambitions in the Americas.
What’s more, renewed war with Britain threatened France’s hold on Louisiana. In 1803, American negotiators arrived seeking to acquire New Orleans. Napoleon instead offered the entire Louisiana Territory for $15 million. The purchase approximately doubled the United States’ size, turning a negotiation over one port into an agreement that transformed the map of North America.
Map showing the territory gained in the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. Source.
The Imperial Coronation and Civil Code
1804 was a standout year for Napoleon. His Civil Code, often called the Napoleonic Code, standardized French civil law, with rules governing property, inheritance and family relations. Its influence would extend beyond France, but its provisions were not equally liberating for everyone. It protected property rights while imposing significant legal restrictions on married women. The code’s lasting importance belongs to the history of civil law, rather than the political freedoms sometimes attributed to it.
And in May, Napoleon became Emperor of the French. His lavish coronation took place in December at Notre-Dame, with Pope Pius VII present. The former general made the ceremony unmistakably his own: he placed the crown on his own head before crowning Joséphine. Jacques-Louis David’s monumental painting preserved the occasion, turning the new emperor’s carefully staged ceremony into one of the best-known images of his reign.
In this massive work, The Coronation of Napoleon, completed in 1807, artist Jacques-Louis David painted Napoleon’s mother, Letizia, even though in reality she was angry with Napoleon and didn’t attend. Source.
Expanding control and influence
Emperor Napoleon I was intent on expanding his empire and overcoming France’s rival, Britain. At sea, however, his ambitions met a formidable opponent. The British victory over the combined French and Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805 confirmed Britain’s naval ascendancy. On land, the story was different. Leading victorious campaigns in Italy, Germany, Austria and beyond, Napoleon extended French influence across much of the Continent, placing members of his family on thrones in dependent kingdoms.
Unable to defeat Britain at sea, Napoleon tried to weaken it through trade. His Continental System restricted commerce with the British, but the blockade also hurt the economies it was meant to protect. Raw materials became harder to obtain, exports suffered and smuggling became rampant. Enforcing the system drew Napoleon into further conflicts. His interventions in Portugal and Spain contributed to the Peninsular War, pitting France against Britain, Portugal and Spain from 1808 to 1814. The war drained French military resources while Napoleon continued to pursue ambitions elsewhere.
Bronze and Marble Relief Plaque of Napoleon and Marie-Louise. M.S. Rau
The imperial court also promoted a recognizable decorative vocabulary. Explore M.S. Rau’s Empire antiques and its guide to French furniture styles for the material legacy of this period.
In 1809, Napoleon ended his marriage to Joséphine, and the next year wed the Austrian emperor’s daughter, Archduchess Marie-Louise. At last, the long-awaited heir arrived. On March 20, 1811, she gave birth to Napoleon François Charles Joseph. Called the King of Rome, he was later briefly known as Napoleon II. His birth seemed to secure the dynasty’s future, yet the child’s life would unfold far from the French throne.
Napoleon before the Battle of Moscow by Joseph Franque, 1812, M.S. Rau.
Russia, Waterloo and the end of Napoleon I
The celebrations didn’t last long. Napoleon’s alliance with Russian Tsar Alexander I deteriorated, in part over the Continental System. In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia, undertaking a campaign that proved disastrous. Combat, disease, supply failures and the retreat destroyed much of the invading army. The Russian campaign proved his undoing: his forces returned weakened, and renewed attacks by a coalition of European powers placed the empire under mounting pressure.
Forced to abdicate in 1814, Napoleon was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. Louis XVIII returned to the French throne, while Marie-Louise and Napoleon’s son remained under Austrian protection. The imperial story appeared to be over. Then Napoleon escaped his exile and returned to France in 1815, ruling again during the Hundred Days. His French forces were defeated at Waterloo on June 18. He abdicated on June 22 and was later exiled to the Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died on May 5, 1821.
Napoleon II the son who never governed France
Before being exiled to Saint Helena, Napoleon named his four-year-old son as successor. Bonapartists recognized the child as Napoleon II, but the boy remained in Austria and never exercised power in France. His succession was titular: he bore the imperial name without governing the country. That brief place in the dynasty explains why his cousin would later take the name Napoleon III, rather than Napoleon II.
When Napoleon I died in exile, dynastic hopes turned to his son. Raised at the Austrian court and later styled Duke of Reichstadt, Napoleon II lived a very different life from the one his father had imagined for him. In 1832, at age 21, he died of tuberculosis. His short life became a subject of historical fascination, but he left no reign or government of his own.
Napoleon III and the Second French Empire
The Napoleonic tale could have ended right there. But it didn’t. Napoleon’s nephew Louis-Napoleon took matters into his own hands. The son of Louis Bonaparte and Hortense de Beauharnais, he grew up largely outside France after the fall of the First Empire. He had known his uncle only as a child, yet the idea that the Bonapartes should reclaim the imperial throne became a defining ambition of his life.
Louis-Napoleon’s first attempt to seize power, at Strasbourg in 1836, failed. Undeterred, he tried again at Boulogne in 1840. That attempt also failed, and this time the consequences were more serious: he was imprisoned at the fortress of Ham. Six years later, the would-be emperor found a way out. Disguised as a workman, he escaped in 1846 and returned to England. The throne remained beyond his reach, but his political fortunes were about to change.
Following the revolution of 1848, Louis-Napoleon returned to French political life and won the presidential election in December. The escaped prisoner was now president of France. The new constitution allowed him only a single four-year term, a limit that stood in the way of his ambitions. On December 2, 1851, he carried out a coup against the republic. The next year he became Emperor Napoleon III and launched the Second French Empire, which lasted from 1852 to 1870.
His Second French Empire lasted from 1852 to 1870. Napoleon III commissioned the modernization of Paris, carried out under Baron Haussmann through new boulevards, infrastructure and public spaces. Read M.S. Rau’s account of the Second French Empire for more on the period and its decorative arts.
La Place de la Concorde, Paris by H. Claude Pissarro. M.S. Rau.
The imperial spectacle and the modernization continued until 1870, when war against Prussia ended in defeat for France. Captured at Sedan in September, Napoleon III lost the throne as a republic was proclaimed in Paris. The Second French Empire had come to an end. So, too, had the Bonapartes’ rule, closing the chapter on the three Napoleons of the 19th century.
Collecting the legacy of the three Napoleons
Portraits, documents and decorative works offer different ways to study the Bonaparte dynasty. Compare M.S. Rau’s Napoleon collection with its Napoleon III antiques to explore objects associated with the emperors and the styles of their periods.
Works Cited
Fondation Napoléon. Timeline Consulate and First French Empire.
Fondation Napoléon. Napoleon II.
Fondation Napoléon. Napoleon III Emperor of the French 1808–1873.
Delage, Irène. The French Civil Code or Code Civil 21 March 1804 An Overview. Fondation Napoléon.
National Archives. Louisiana Purchase Treaty 1803.
British Museum. The Rosetta Stone.
Fondation Napoléon. Napoleon III and Haussmann.
Wikimedia Commons. Queen Hortense and Napoleon Charles Prince Royal of Holland.
Musée du Louvre. The Coronation of Napoleon image and caption.
