This novel is set in France's glittering
Second Empire when Paris was known as Europe's Capital of Light and Pleasure.

With its shimmering gaslights, dazzling inventions, artistic delights and racy nightlife, all played out to Jacques Offenbach's lilting melodies, it closed the door on the age of revolutions.

Until things went wrong.

The Second Empire was all the doing of one man, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (pictured right), nephew of the first great Emperor. After spending most of his life in exile, he seized his chance to return in 1848 when the people forced France's last king, Louis-Philippe, to abdicate.

Louis Napoleon got himself elected to the National Assembly and then stood in the election for France's first president. He won in a landslide with voters seduced by the glamour of his name.

In 1851 he staged a coup d'etat to extend his four year term to ten years. And the following year he was elected as Emperor, again by a huge majority.

Since the first Bonaparte had a son who died young, but had been known to Bonapartistes as Napoleon II, Louis took the title of Napoleon III.

He moved into the Tuileries Palace and the first half of his reign was highly successful. He and his Spanish wife, the Empress Eugenie forged a close friendship with Britain's Queen Victoria and many old enmities were buried when the two nations fought as allies in the Crimean War.

Louis reformed many aspects of French life. He instructed Baron Haussmann to rebuild the centre of Paris and he promoted the growth of railways, banking, health care, commerce, shipbuilding and the telegraph.


Music, the arts and popular entertainment flourished and taking their example from an Emperor with a wandering eye, the middle and upper classes partied like never before. For Leonie, growing up in this dazzling city was filled with delights. But also with personal dangers and life-threatening illnesses.

Finally, the Emperor's foreign policy went disastrously wrong. He sought to exert influence across four continents, rather than to conquer countries like his uncle had done. But a succession of bad decisions and the cunning of Prussia's chancellor Otto von Bismarck propelled him into the disastrous Franco-Prussian War.

Defeat at the battle of Sedan was followed by the Siege of Paris. The Emperor was exiled again. This time he made his home at Camden Place, Chislehurst, in Southern England, along with Eugenie and their only child, the Prince Imperial.

From there he could only look on in horror as his former capital experienced the bloodiest revolution of them all.

Chislehurst Guide: http://Rands.Holman.org

For more on this exceptional Emperor, see Tony Boullemier's article 'My History Hero' from BBC History Magazine, June 2010

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Background to the Michel and Boullemier families

Leonie Michel was born in Paris in 1848, the year that Louis Napoleon returned there from exile. She and Louis also departed for England in the same year, 1871.
Leonie had many encounters with the Imperial Family and her father did cure the Emperor of skin cancer. Her brother certainly helped save the Empress's life and the remarkable story of the wedding day flower and the chance meeting with the wounded officer in Bar-le-Duc did take place.
Her husband Anton became a world-renowned ceramic artist with Mintons in Staffordshire. His work is still admired today, along with that of his son Lucien Emile Boullemier and grandson Lucien George Boullemier, the author's father. They were also eminent ceramic artists at leading Staffordshire Potteries and then at Maling Pottery, Newcastle upon Tyne.
See:
www.thepotteries.org/potters/minton.htm
www.maling-pottery.org.uk

Background to the book cover:

The cover picture is based on a well-known work by Jean Beraud (1849-1935) and has been adapted by the author.
An exact contemporary of Leonie, she and Jean could well have known one another. He was a friend of Manet, Degas and Renoir and his work has the spirit of Impressionism besides owing something to the new art of photography.
He frequently exhibited at the Salon and in 1910 helped found the Sociéte Nationale des Beaux Arts.