9781422285831

Through his military genius, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Italian states, and Spain were added to France’s empire. To secure his power, Napoleon installed his brother, Joseph Bonaparte, as king of Spain, as well of Naples and Sicily in today’s southern Italy. But it was his campaign against Russia that was his undoing. Suffering from exhaustion and the severe winter, Napoleon and his army retreated from Rus- sia in late 1812, and other countries successfully fought for the return of their lands. Napoleon abdicated in 1814 and went into exile on the island of Elba. The country reverted to monarchy in 1814 when Louis XVI’s younger brother, Louis XVIII, became king. Napoleon I, however, came out of exile and led his army once more, culminating in a final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. During the reign of Charles X, workers grew more and more disillusioned with their lack of rights, and he was deposed in 1830. In May 1848 an armed uprising occurred and by the year’s end, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, became France’s first elected president. But when he was limited by the con- stitution from a second term, he seized power and became the emperor of the Second French Empire. Although he promised a peaceful rule, Napoleon III, as

he was known, entered into major wars, including the Crimean War (1854–1856), followed almost immedi- ately by the Second Opium War against China. The Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871) ended with Napo- leon III surrendering to German troops. Following this defeat and the tough conditions imposed by the Germans, a new government was set up, beginning the Third Republic. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the country at last saw prosper- ity and peace. Interest in the arts grew with movements such as Impressionism and Art Nouveau. In 1889 the Exposition Universelle sponsored the building of the Eif- fel Tower, a “temporary” structure that lasts to this day, becoming one of France’s best-known landmarks. The Emperor Napoleon in His Study at the Tuileries (1812), by Jacques-Louis David.

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CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY, RELIGION, AND TRADITION