The Second Empire: Bonapartism, the Prince, the President, the Emperor

by Philip Guedalla

‘BONAPARTISM stands to Napoleon in the somewhat peculiar relation in which most religions stand to their founder. The picturesque imagination of innumerable ironists has exhausted itself in speculations upon the probable feelings of various divine and semi-divine teachers when confronted with the full glories of their own shrines. But it may be doubted whether the sensations of the central personage at Kamakura or St. Peter’s would bear comparison for irony with the thoughts which must rise in that little white-breeched, green-uniformed figure, fresh from a bath of ambrosial eau-de-Cologne prepared by an Elysian Constant, as he studies the externals of his career on the painted canvas of Meissonier or spells out his political message from the printed page of M. Paul de Cassagnac…’

The Second Empire , originally published in 1922, is one of Philip Guedalla’s earlier works. It aims to shine new light on the life of Napoleon III, whose career gradually become ever more mysteriously shrouded, obscured by the ‘martyrology’ of the Napoleonic myth. The Second Empire scrapes away at the palimpsest of voices, from the ‘romantics, sentimentalists, and the reactionaries’, that have added their distortions to the true and original story of Napoleon III. This volume is a fascinating treatment of one France’s most famed historical figures, bringing together a rich array of sources from personal correspondences, popular contemporary verse, and even quasi-religious chants commonly heard in the streets of France that upheld Napoleon as a miraculous and legendary leader. Coupled with Guedalla’s articulate and intellectual prose, The Second Empire presents a vivid, captivating, and scholarly biography that charts Napoleon’s evolution from Prince, to President, to Emperor.

Philip Guedalla was a prolific and popular biographer and historical and travel writer. With over 30 published works, including collections of essays and edited collections of the private letters of historical figures, Guedalla’s oeuvre covers an impressively vast range of subjects from Napoleon and Palestine, If the Moors in Spain had Won, to The Jewish Past, and finally Middle East, 1940 to 1942: A Study in Air Power. Guedalla’s epigrams – ‘History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other’, for example – are much beloved for their jocularity; indeed, his writing is distinguished for its wit and engaging style. He has been honoured by the National Portrait Gallery in London who hold many portraits of Guedalla in various mediums. He died in 1944 after contracting an illness during his service as Squadron Leader in the R.A.F.


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294 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Philip Guedalla was an English barrister, and a popular historical and travel writer and biographer. He was educated at Rugby and at Balliol College in Oxford, where he was the President of the Union. In 1913, he qualified as a barrister and practised for ten years, retiring to stand for Parliament five times as a Liberal candidate (he was never elected, however), and to write a series of travel books and historical biographies, often reflecting his interest in the Empires of both Napoleons. His final book, written at the height of the Second World War, was Mr. Churchill, A Portrait.

His wit and epigrams are well-known. He also was the originator of a now-common theory on Henry James, writing that "The work of Henry James has always seemed divisible by a simple dynastic arrangement into three reigns: James I, James II, and the Old Pretender".

Reviews

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ordinarily I'd have given this probably a four and a half, but I've docked half a star due to the author's somewhat annoying practice of leaving all the French quotations and so on untranslated. Still, that aside, this is beautifully written, insanely readable and quite witty too.