Napoleon III and his regime

"Referred to in his time as "the Pretender" and "the sphinx of the Tuileries," Louis Napoleon Bonaparte - the nephew of Emperor Napoleon I of France and himself ruler of the Second Empire (1852-1870) - so managed the manufacture of his public image and the masking of his private self that he is, ultimately, unknowable to this day. From the mysterious circumstances of his conception in 1807 to the strange events of his downfall in 1870 and death in 1873, he lived, loved, and reigned in an extraordinary aura of myth and fantasy under the shadow of his more famous uncle.". "Taking an innovative approach to this intriguing historical figure, David Baguley entertains sources in a melange of media and forms - pictures, performances, spectacles, rituals, music, fiction, poems, plays, architecture, fashion, as well as Louis Napoleon's own writings - to explore how the ruler was represented, invented, and interpreted by detractors and defenders alike. The dynamic process by which the legend of Napoleon III was elaborately fabricated and then vigorously dismantled unfolds under Baguley's hand not chronologically but by generic categories, reflecting the author's underlying conviction that hi