Second French Empire
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The French regime founded on 2 December 1852, when Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became Napoleon III after a plebiscite. It began as an authoritarian empire that drew its legitimacy from universal male suffrage and plebiscites while hobbling the Legislative Body and controlling the press, moved in the 1860s towards a "liberal empire" that widened parliament's powers, and fell after the defeat at Sedan and the proclamation of the Republic on 4 September 1870.
In depth
The constitution of 14 January 1852 gave the head of state all executive power and the initiative of laws, while the Legislative Body elected by universal suffrage could neither propose laws nor vote the budget in detail. Prefects put the whole administration behind official candidates, and newspapers were bound by caution money and "warnings". After Orsini's attempt on the emperor in 1858 a law of general security allowed former political convicts to be interned or sent to Algeria without trial.
Coinciding with an international boom, the Empire expanded the railway network to nearly 20,000 km, built up investment banks and had Haussmann rebuild Paris as a city of boulevards and parks. Abroad it won the Crimean War and the Italian war of 1859, but the Mexican expedition ended in failure. Having lost the support of the Catholics and the protectionist industrialists, in the 1860s it widened parliament's powers, allowed strikes in 1864 and relaxed controls on the press and public meetings in 1868.
Through these openings grew the French sections of the First International, the Blanquists and the radical republicans, and in the elections of 1869 a majority of workers voted republican for the first time. The plebiscite of May 1870 was won by a wide margin, but two months later the Empire went to war with Prussia and ended when the emperor was captured at Sedan in September. In The Civil War in France Marx saw the Second Empire as the only form of government possible at a time when the bourgeoisie had lost and the working class had not yet acquired the faculty of ruling the nation.