Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Rise of Louis Napoleon
But Louis Napoleon was not an ordinary modern monarch; in the phrase of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, he was no kcommon king-born king.' Before his accession to power he was not merely a prince, but a pretender. And for this reason his career demands exceptional treat men in irwt rt to his own rolon ed exerti ns, twmwwvm essential portion of his life. And when, further, the exertions which have brought him to the throne have so affected his character as to have a pro found and abiding in?uence on his conduct of affairs as king, then some acquaintance with these early adventures becomes a necessary prelim inary to the right understanding not merely of his life, but of his reign. To those, then, who would study the history of the Second Empire, I offer this book without further apology. I venture also to hope that the larger band, which is more generally or more vaguely interested in Napoleonic literature, may find in it an account in some ways more adequate than any yet existing in this language, of the process by which the gulf between the two great Napoleonic experiments was bridged.
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