Louis Napoleon offers in his own person an example of those extremes of fortune which constitute the essence of romantic conditions and appeal to the imagination.  The third son of Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland (brother of Napoleon), and Hortense Beauharnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine by her first marriage, he was born in Paris, in the palace of the Tuileries, April 20, 1808.  Living in Switzerland, with his mother and brother (Napoleon Louis), he was well-educated, expert in all athletic sports,—­especially in riding and fencing,—­and trained to the study and practice of artillery and military engineering.  The two brothers engaged in an Italian revolt in 1830; both fell ill, and while one died the other was saved by the mother’s devotion.  In 1831 the Poles made an insurrection, and offered Louis Napoleon their chief command and the crown of Poland; but the death, in 1832, of the only son of his uncle aroused Louis’s ambition for a larger place, and the sovereignty of France became his “fixed idea.”  He studied hard, wrote and published several political and military works, and in 1836 made a foolish attempt at a Napoleonic revolt against Louis Philippe.  It ended in humiliating failure, and he was exiled to America, where he lived in obscurity for about a year; but he returned to Switzerland to see his dying mother, and then was obliged to flee to England.  In 1838 he published his “Napoleonic Ideas;” in 1840 he made, at Boulogne, another weak demonstration upon the French throne, and was imprisoned in the fortress of Ham.  Here he did much literary work, but escaped in 1848 to Belgium, whence he hurried back to Paris when the revolution broke out.  Getting himself elected a deputy in the National Assembly, he took his seat.

The year 1848, when Louis Napoleon appeared on the stage of history, was marked by extraordinary political and social agitations, not merely in France but throughout Europe.  It saw the unexpected fall of the constitutional monarchy in France, which had been during eighteen years firmly upheld by Louis Philippe, with the assistance of the ablest and wisest ministers the country had known for a century,—­the policy of which was pacific, and the leading political idea of which was an alliance with Great Britain.  The king fled before the storm of revolutionary ideas,—­as Metternich was obliged to do in Vienna, and Ferdinand in Naples,—­and a provisional government succeeded, of which Lamartine was the central figure.  A new legislative assembly was chosen to support a republic, in which the most distinguished men of France, of all opinions, were represented.  Among the deputies was Louis Napoleon, who had hastened from England to take part in the revolution.  He sat on the back benches of the Chamber neglected, silent, and despised by the leading men in France, but not yet hated nor feared.

When a President of the Republic had to be chosen by the suffrages of the people, Louis Napoleon unexpectedly received a great majority of the votes.  He had been quietly carrying on his “presidential campaign” through his agents, who appealed to the popular love for the name of Napoleon.