r/todayilearned • u/1salt1pepper • 1d ago
TIL Napoleon III escaped from a fortress where he was serving a life sentence by disguising himself as a laborer and walking through the main gates carrying a large plank over his shoulder to hide his face. Six years later, he became Emperor of France.
https://www.napoleon.org/en/young-historians/napodoc/napoleon-iii-emperor-of-the-french-1808-1873/977
u/Gemmabeta 1d ago
Dude was in prison for trying the overthrow the government of France. Except he showed up on the French coast with 60 people, promptly ran into a squad of custom agents, and everyone got arrested immediately.
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u/jerrymatcat 1d ago
Unlike the original napoleon who was able to get the soldiers sent to capture him to join him on his way to paris after escaping from elba
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u/iron_penguin 22h ago
Everyone respected the first Napoleon. I remember the leader of the garrasion they ran into literally said "but I dont know you". Thats gotta be a little heart breaking when youre claiming to be Emperor.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 20h ago
Tf you mean you remember? Time traveller
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u/amolin 19h ago
Hi Time traveller,
Humans possess the ability to remember things they are told, have seen on various media or even read from books or on websites!
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u/AgentCirceLuna 19h ago
Was a joke dw
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u/Frammingatthejimjam 15h ago
Clearly a joke, humans haven't read a book in a generation.
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u/A_Rogue_Forklift 1d ago
Ironically 179 years later, the same method would be used to steal the crown jewels of france
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u/qwertyalguien 1d ago
Almost 2 centuries, and Napoleon the Third remains at large.
French justice is a joke smh
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u/Squirrelman2712 1d ago
I know people clown on him for being the lesser Napoleon, and he was!
He did accomplish a lot though, even if he ended it like a dipshit
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u/MoonchanterLauma2025 1d ago
I always forget that there was a II and III for the regnal name Napoleon.
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u/dmk_aus 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well Napoleon II only the disputed ruler, for 2 weeks, when he was 4. So not really the fame/notoriety of his father who captured France via coup and most Europe once in power (France had already conquered near half of Europe when he took over).
So no one remembers that guy.
And while Napoleon III was relatively impactful and rulers of the era go - Napoleon I is in the tiny handful of despots who tried to conquer the Western World and got pretty close.
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u/Queasy_Ad_8621 1d ago
The Seven Years War, and Napoleon's rise to power wound up changing the entire developed world. From the whole North American Continent, to Europe, to Africa, to Asia, to both World Wars, to the Cold War... I don't have the focus to even write enough essays about it.
The last 270 years would have played out completely different, for billions of people, if only France had never annexed Corsica and made Napoleone di Buonaparte into a French citizen by birth. In many ways, we are STILL seeing the fall out from it all over the world.
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u/SeenYourScene 1d ago
I've argued that before that none of those things would have happened if Charlemagne's grandkids hadn't had a bitchfit amongst themselves and their father over who would get the title of emperor and get the 'good lands' resulting in a dynastic split that would come to define France, Germany, and contested territories that they fought over for most of the rest of their history up to this point.
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u/AFakeName 21h ago
None of it would have happened if that one fish hadn't fucked that other fish. At a certain point it's meaningless.
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u/emeraude89 23h ago
the french revolutionary armies were quite successful before napoleon, though, they beat/subdued prussia, austria, northern italian states, lowland states, spain. they won the first two wars without him, against all europe
the real effect of the french revolution was getting rid of the feudal system in western europe, and instituting meritocratic organization, that was happening with or without napoleon really, although he certainly did help facilitate seed republics
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u/SinibusUSG 16h ago
Importantly, the French Revolutionary armies were quite successful at furthering the left-wing French Revolution. Napoleon redirected the revolutionary energies into empowering a single individual with near absolute power. A pretty massive swing away from redistribution of power in society that I think you could argue is directly connected to our late-stage capitalist hellscape of today.
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u/nobird36 1d ago
The uk paid the rest of Europe to wage endless war against France.
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u/Roland_Traveler 22h ago
The UK paid the rest of Europe to defend their national interests (Britain’s being a continental hegemon was bad for business, everyone else because Napoleon was a treacherous weasel who couldn’t be trusted and kept pushing for total victory instead of trying for an amicable peace). Had Napoleon ever been willing to stop, he probably could have worn down British will to fight while leaving France ascendant. Instead he decided to invade Russia because they weren’t kowtowing sufficiently.
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u/biskutgoreng 1d ago
Uhhh so when we talk about the famous Napoleon and make movies about him which one is it
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u/Silaquix 1d ago
Napoleon the First because he came to power right after the revolution happened so he basically took over from Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette after they were executed
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u/truthofmasks 1d ago
There were six years between the execution of Marie Antoinette and Napoleon coming to power.
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u/Hot-Thought-1812 1d ago
Tbf most of the credit for conquering a quarter of Europe before his coronation still goes to Napoleon
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u/the_direful_spring 23h ago edited 12h ago
He was never properly crowded but Napoleon III's son Louis-Napoléon, was sometimes also referred to as Napoleon IV by Bonapartist supporters, though he spent much of his adult life and later teens in exile in Britain, he then served in the british army and was killed by Zulu warriors.
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u/ChronosBlitz 1d ago
Domestically, he did a lot of good; he basically gave us the modern city of Paris.
When it came to leading the country during a time of war... about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
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u/GAV17 1d ago
It was a mixed bag really. Started great, but ended catastrophically.
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u/Paddy_Tanninger 1d ago
I do feel like that's how a chocolate teapot would go...
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u/CLOUDMlNDER 23h ago edited 22h ago
he basically gave us the modern city of Paris
Who is "us"? Napoleon III crushed the working class. After the attempted revolution of 1848 they had to have sense beaten into them. He was elected at the end of that year, the initial suppression over, but took up the subjugatin' with enthusiasm. Many everyday French rose up again to resist his coup and the put-down was bloody. Thousands were killed, soldiers firing directly into crowds, and tens of thousands deported. In the reworking of Paris, lower class workers were driven out of the centre which was consciously rebuilt as an investment opportunity for the wealthy. Boulevards wide enough for a cavalry charge ensured easy movement of troops so that the dirty oiks could not effectively use barricades again.
we'll always have Paris
Rick BlaineThe Blood-Soaked Bourgeoisie10
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u/Obeast09 1d ago
"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce"
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u/Elpsyth 22h ago
Meh, his territorial conquest stayed up until today in France, while his Uncle lost everything.
Napo 3 was also a great administrator that managed to modernise France smoothly during industrialisation.
He did not even want to go to war with Prussia. He knew he was cooked. But his hand was forced by the people and his circle
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u/Singer211 1d ago
His domestic policy was honestly pretty successful. Made a lot of good reforms and developed infrastructure.
Heck he kind of built modern Paris.
His foreign policy was more hit and miss, but he did have some accomplishments.
His biggest mistake was getting drawn into a conflict with Otto Von Bismarck (it turned out that he was in really poor health at the time as well IIRC).
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u/Sushigami 18h ago
Good reforms like:
The workers no longer have any rights.
Developed infrastructure like:
Wide streets to stop the working class from being able to build barricades and effectively fight the army.
(What happened the literal instant he was gone? Immediate, radical socialist revolution in Paris. People were not happy with him.)
As with many "But he really pushed the nation forward, y'know" kinds of people the question is - "Who benefited?"
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u/No-Interview8811 1d ago
It was actually a wild political rise, not six quiet years:
- 1846: Louis-Napoléon escaped his imprisonment in Ham and fled to Britain.
- 1848: Revolution broke out in France, overthrowing the monarchy and creating the Second Republic.
- 1848: He returned to France, ran for president, and won by a huge margin, despite having spent years in exile.
- 1848–1851: He served as president but increasingly clashed with the National Assembly.
- 1851: He staged a coup d'état, dissolving the legislature and taking control.
- 1852: A referendum approved a new empire, and he became Emperor Napoleon III.
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u/Wizardof1000Kings 1d ago
The 1852 referendum was kind of a sham. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1852_French_Second_Empire_referendum
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u/MisakaMikotoxKuroko 1d ago
I mean, when all the ballots didn't even have the "no" or "abstain" option, the referendum is bound to be a bit sketchy
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u/Vennomite 1d ago
I mean. Almost (as in i cant think of a counterexample) any election for a dictator falls under that category.
Your vote doesnt matter and your options are more along the lines of
A) yes
B) i volunteer to disapear
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u/SilveRX96 1d ago
Not exactly the same but the ticket austrians got to vote to join nazi germany or not was comical. "Yes" with a huge circle in the middle, and a tiny "no" circle in the corner. Got an actual copy of it from a student who had a copy and learned what it was from my class. Tbf the austrians didn't need much persuasion in joining nazi germany or participate in the holocaust, but the ticket itself is still hilarious
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u/The_Truthkeeper 1d ago
And yet a quarter of a million people managed to figure out a way to vote against it.
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u/MisakaMikotoxKuroko 1d ago
if you're gonna have a sketchy referendum you gotta at least pretend some people voted against it
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u/jgo3 1d ago
Everybody had some kind of revolution or turmoil in 1848. I don't remember a ton from AP European History, but I remember writing that date down about nine thousand times.
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u/HZCH 20h ago
Switzerland didn’t… because we had our own in 1847. It is actually thought that our own Civil War made the other rather conservative regimes shit their pants, with France considering an intervention to stop the Swiss radicals. The fact the war lasted for 2 weeks and with fewer than 200 dead stopped most foreign interventions before such an act would be seriously planned…
Then 1848 happened, I remember some liberal movements claiming some inspiration from what had happened in Switzerland, then all the revolutions failed, crushed by more conservative parties, and Switzerland was standing alone, wondering how the fuck they managed to pull such a trick without falling apart.
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u/-runs-with-scissors- 21h ago
It mainly goes to show that a family of tyrants can haunt a nation and an entire continent for a century. It‘s the Bonapartes.
We haven‘t seen the beginning of the damage the Trumps are capable of.
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u/eulerolagrange 18h ago
Reading Marx's pamphlet on the rise of Napoleon III (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte) looks like reading about how Trump got to power. Populism working every time in the same way (it's incredible to see how Napoleon III got his votes from the poor strata of the society, championing himself as a defender of the workers and of democracy, just to set up a regime in the interests of himself and the upper bourgeoisie)
The pamphlet starts with the extremely famous quote of history repeating itself twice, first as tragedy then as farce. It turned up to happen much more than two times.
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u/distelfink33 16h ago
I keep saying this to people and most people listen but I don’t think people really understand
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u/Ash_Crow 8h ago
I mean the Capetians did it before them for a millennium. And still have two monarchs currently (the King of Spain and the Grand Duke of Luxembourg)
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u/Sushigami 18h ago
Where's the bit where he shot a random soldier in the face because people weren't listening to him?
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u/seditious3 1d ago
Just FYI, because a lot of people don't realize this:
At the Louvre, the apartments attached which contain jewels., etc, are Napoleon III's apartments, not his uncle Napoleon.
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u/DazzlingAd7021 1d ago
I mean, it's well-documted that Cleopatra had her servants roll her up in a rug and deliver her to Julius Caesar. She then proceeded to seduce him and secure her place as queen of Egypt.
History is neat.
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u/Raetekusu 16h ago
Let's not forget about that one guy who sat in front of the gate playing music which was enough to scare away an enemy general, who thought it was some kind of masterful gambit and a trap (it was neither of those things, but that makes it loop back around to being a masterful gambit).
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u/FreeRun5179 1d ago
Emperor of the French, not Emperor of France. He also held the title of Prince-President which is pretty cool
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u/MagnifyingGlass 1d ago
People often forget that after the revolution France just kept reinstalling monarchies.
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u/Gemmabeta 1d ago
To be fair, it did take this guy three coups before it finally stuck.
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u/zorniy2 1d ago
And they're in the Fifth Republic.
(Every time they rewrite the Republic Charter, the previous Republic legally ceases to exist.)
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u/Gyrgir 1d ago
The First Republic was established by the French Revolution, and after a few rough patches transformed itself in stages into the First Empire (OG Napoleon). National Assembly, Committee for Public Safety, Directorate, and Consulate are all grouped together as First Republic.
The Second Republic was established in the Revolutions of 1848. They elected Napoleon's nephew as their first President, and within a few years he did a coup and proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III (we don't talk about Napoleon II).
After Napoleon III made a fool of himself in the Franco-Prussian War, what was left of the French Government couldn't agree on which monarchy should replace him so they established the Third Republic as a placeholder. This wound up lasting until WW2, when after France got beaten by Germany again, the legislature voted itself out of existence and gave dictatorial powers to Prime Minister Petain in hopes that this would endear them to the Nazis (it didn't).
The Fourth Republic got set up towards the tail end of WW2 by Charles du Gaulle, the head of the "Free France" government in exile, on the legal theory that Petain's government in Vichy had been established unconstitutionally, and also that Petain was a fascist and a Nazi collaborator. It stuck mostly because of the second reason, and also because by that point American, British, and Free France soldiers were all over France.
The Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958 because the French army in Algeria rebelled against the elected government. I'm fuzzy on the details, but it wound up with du Gaulle coming out of retirement, assuming temporary dictatorial powers, and rewriting the constitution again. He seems to have done of better job of this the second time around, and the Fifth Republic has surpassed the Third Republic as France's longest-lived post-Revolution constitutional order.
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u/UInferno- 1d ago
As far as I know, the consideration of a sixth Republic is most just a "what if" every time something halfway controversial happens in France. Like "are they really gonna do it?" Like Scottish secession and Irish reunification.
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u/ThePr1d3 20h ago
It's gaining traction as an actual political project though. Some major left wing parties are in favour of writing a new constitution
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u/Sushigami 18h ago
What's wrong with the current one in their eyes?
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u/gavavavavus 18h ago
Way too much power for the executive branch, which is more or less capable of governing alone even passing laws without the agreement of the parliament. Compared to the USA for instance we have way less "checks and balances" between the branches of government, and the ones that exist kinda rely on the executive branch not exploiting the system because technically they have ways to not care about them.
The fifth republic was always flawed in that way, de Gaulle thought it was a good thing to have a strong head of state rather than a strong assembly, but it really was highlighted by the second term of Macron, during which he was highly unpopular on every project he had and still bruteforced the democratic process to go through with them.
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u/Sushigami 18h ago
It is an interesting notion - How many people in history have ever gotten a second shot at writing a constitution?
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u/Vulpes_Corsac 15h ago
John Dickinson was the main author leading the writing of the original articles of confederation for the USA, and then later participated in the convention which wrote the US constitution. So that's one. A number of others were probably at the signing of both and contributed in some way. Though they only did so because the first one wasn't working well, so maybe it's less a function of prestige and more that it's easy to get wrong the first time.
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u/ThePr1d3 20h ago
You are correct, but so that there is no confusion, the monarchies were the Bourbon not the Bonaparte. It bounced between 4 monarchies, 3 Republics and 3 times the Empire
It goes pretty much like this :
496 - 1792 : Monarchy
1792 - 1804 : First Republic
1804 - 1814 : First Empire
1814 - 1815 : First Restoration (Bourbons come back and reestablish the Monarchy)
1815 : First Empire (Napoléon retakes power)
1815 - 1830 : Second Restoration (back to the Monarchy)
1830 - 1848 : July Monarchy (revolution leads to new constitution under a new Bourbon king)
1848 - 1852 : Second Republic
1852 - 1871 : Second Empire
1871 - 1940 : Third Republic
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u/127-0-0-1_1 1d ago
Yep. It's always funny when people talk about the french revolution like it's the birthplace of democracy or something.
French Revolution - "The Reign of Terror" -> Empire ruled by Napolean as a military junta -> Restored Monarchy -> Monarchial rule by Napoleon
It was only getting crushed by the Prussians that finally got France to embrace democracy!
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u/ThePr1d3 20h ago
The Révolution/First Empire isn't really about democracy, it's about getting rid of the Ancient Regime and established aristocracy
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u/Sushigami 18h ago
(ancien (the best translation here is "previous" - It can mean "ancient" but that's not how it's being used))
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u/Bakoro 1d ago
Most revolutions are started/led by people who just want their turn to be the oppressor.
Any form of actual, functioning democracy/republic taking hold is still a relatively new phenomena.
Even then, it usually starts with opening the gates of power a little, not actual "everyone gets a voice".
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u/Johannes_P 19h ago
And the reason why he was serving a life sentence was because, in 1840, he gathered 60 armed men, hired a ship and attempted to land in Boulogne, where he was arrested by customs. And it was four years after he attempted to provoke a regiment to mutiny in Strasbourg.
The attempted coup turned into an even greater fiasco than the Strasbourg mutiny. The mutineers were stopped by customs agents, the soldiers of the garrison refused to join them, and the group was surrounded on the beach; one man was killed and the others were arrested. Both the British and French press ridiculed Louis Napoleon and his plot. The newspaper Le Journal des Débats wrote, “this surpasses comedy. One does not kill madmen; one locks them up.”
After this evasion, he was nicknamed Badinguet, as the worker whose clothes he stole.
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u/Resident-Spirit808 14h ago
“Hey. I know I’m being a real dumbass, but I’m pretty sure I’m in the wrong line. You see I’m supposed to be getting out today. I’ve already been in there. Had my face sat on and everything.”
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u/MoldyWorp 16h ago
I gazed upon that island in July, whilst floating lazily in the sea off the coast of Corsica. I knew he had escaped but didn’t know the details. Thank you for sharing!
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u/Channel250 11h ago
Did you just write a poem about the first time in recorded history someone pulled off the "Look busy with a ladder and no one will stop you?"
I love it!
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u/Nimr0d1991 1d ago
Thats not even the craziest story from his stupid life. Behind the Bastards does an incredible series on him.
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u/3Green1974 1d ago
I didn’t learn this today, but I but of other people learned today that there was more than one Napoleon.
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u/hazzmatazzlyons 1d ago
Reminds me of when Nathan Fielder used a similar trick.
If it ain't broke...
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u/MtRainierWolfcastle 1d ago
Can anyone recommend a good book about Neapolian?
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u/Honeyblublu 1d ago
the ice cream?
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u/2021isevenworse 18h ago
TIL the ice cream is called that because it vaguely looks like the French flag.
Originally the chocolate was mint/pistachio - which still doesn't explain why it wasn't called Florentine or something Italian.
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u/tony_countertenor 1d ago
This is the farce people talk about when they talk about things happening once as tragedy once as farce
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u/doubleexposurehoser 23h ago
Sources say they saw a labourer walking past a janitorial closet suddenly pulled inside by the collar of his shirt as the sounds of muffled punches and glasses breaking erupted within the closet. Later a man walked out in ill-fitting clothes and adjusted his hat before continuing on the same route, whistling.
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u/MilkersMoth 18h ago
Third time's the charm.
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u/Nigtharchive 17h ago
Do not confuse Napoléon III with Napoléon Ier. For all the people reading this
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u/Doombot890 17h ago
There was an episode of it’s always sunny in Philadelphia that covers something like this
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u/ChronosBlitz 1d ago
Throw on a reflector vest, carry a ladder, and it'll get you into most places.