Background
to the Second Empire

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 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 overthrew King, Louis-Philippe.
Louis Napoleon got
himself elected to the National Assembly and 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 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 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 dangers.

None more so than when Louis' But
foreign policy went disatrously wrong.
He sought to exert influence across four continents, rather
than to conquer countries like his uncle had done. And a succession
of bad decisions culminated in a humiliating war with Prussia.
Paris was besieged and the Emperor was exiled again. This
time it was to 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
- Napoleon III; from
the BBC History Magazine, June 2010 download
here 
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. 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.
Leonie's 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
and grandson Lucien George, 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 colour Magenta was named in 1859 just
after the costly battle in Italy. The new dye had recently
been developed in Paris and ladies there thought that the
vivid colour resembled blood. The cover picture is by Jean
Beraud (1849-1935).
An exact contemporary of Leonie, they could well have known
one another. A friend of Manet, Degas and Renoir, his work
has the spirit of Impressionism and owes something to the
new art of photography. He frequently exhibited at the Salon and in 1910 helped found the Sociéte Nationale
des Beaux Arts.
See: www.jeanberaud.com
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