Being a fan of Napoleon III can be frustrating. Friends and relatives confuse the glorious victor of Marengo, the Pyramids, and Austerlitz with his nephew who was sickened by the sight of blood at the battles of Solferino and Magenta in 1859. They confuse the vendor of Louisiana for the instigator of the Mexican adventure. “Their” Napoleon wanted to invade England from the French port of Boulogne; “your” Napoleon actually invaded Boulogne from England. The prints and books and portraits of the first Napoleon given to you as presents collect dust on upper shelves, while your prized miniature bust of Napoleon III elicits the surprised remark, “I didn’t know you were a Stalinist!”
Fenton Bresler’s Napoleon III: A Life should help clear up some of the confusion. The subtitle is accurate; this is most definitely a book concerned with the personal life of the last monarch of France, while “his times” are related only incidentally. Colorful events, like the emperor’s masterminding of the quixotic Mexican empire of Maximilian and Carlotta, get a few pages; parliamentary elections and the like get only a few lines. As Bresler writes, “this book’s primary aim is to present a fascinating man, in all his fullness, to a modern audience.” Accordingly, he concentrates on “the human side” of Napoleon III, relegating events in Europe to the background.
An English lawyer and author of books about Georges Simenon, Lord Goddard, and international crime, Bresler says that he treated this book as
