Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Napoleon III (20 April 1808 9 January 1873), also known as Louis-Napolon Bonaparte, n Charles Louis Napolon Bonaparte, was the President of the French Second Republic and the ruler of the Second French Empire. He was also the nephew of Napoleon I. Elected President by popular vote in 1848, he initiated a coup d'tat in 1851, becoming dictator before ascending the throne as Napoleon III on December 2, 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He ruled as Emperor of the French until September 4, 1870. He holds the unusual distinction of being both the first titular president and the last monarch of France. Napoleon III is primarily remembered for renovating Paris, as well as several military ventures, including the French participation in the Crimean War, the conquest of Senegal, the Second Opium War, the Cochinchina Campaign, the Second Italian War of Independence, the Franco-Mexican War, the Taiping Rebellion, the 1866 campaign against Korea, the Boshin War, and the Franco-Prussian War. The Second French Empire was overthrown three days after Napoleon's disastrous surrender at the Battle of Sedan in 1870, which resulted in both the proclamation of the French Third Republic and the secession of the territory of Alsace-Lorraine to the newly-formed German Empire. Napoleon III, known as "Louis-Napolon" prior to becoming Emperor, was the nephew of Napoleon I by his brother Louis Bonaparte, who married Hortense de Beauharnais, the daughter by the first marriage of Napoleon's wife Josephine de Beauharnais. The Empress Josephine proposed the marriage as a way to produce an heir for the Emperor, who agreed, as Josephine was by then infertile. Louis's paternity has been brought into question (see Ancestry). Louis Bonaparte also ... More: http://booksllc.net/?id=62581