Louis Napoleon and the Recovery of France, 1848-1856 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Louis Napoleon and the Recovery of France, 1848-1856 But even on purely personal grounds its mournful and enigmatic ruler presents a challenging figure to posterity. And more than the neglect of French historians entitles him to the attention of historians other than French. N o ruler of France - none perhaps of any European country was so as Napoleon 'iii. None certainly was less French. Essentially he was an international figure: too good a citizen perhaps of Europe to be the ultimately successful ruler of any one country in it. The dreams and broodings of South Ger many, the sleepy dignity of the Dutch, the slow speech and kindliness of England, the secretiveness and fatalism of the Italy he so loved - these were his, and a compassion for the people and a humanitarian idealism that were not peculiarly French. In particular he had a dream that after they had combined in war to overthrow a despotism which they believed to threaten civilisation, the two great Western Powers should co-operate in peace to heal the__wounds of a distracted Europe. The eyes of all who suffer,' he said, turn instinctively to the West.' 1 It was a speech in which he described himself as the interpreter of France.' About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.