Napoleon III and Eugenie

London England: Constable, 1979. Hardback. First Edition. Slight foxing to edge. Napoleon III and Eugenie.On 20 April 1808 the Queen of Holland gave birth to a son. She wqas Hortense de Beautharnais, wife of Louis Bonaparte and both stepdaughter and sister-in-law of the Emperor Napoleon. Her son, Louis Napoleon, was born in Paris and during his life spent only a few days on Dutch soil. After living many years in Germany, Switzerland and England, he became Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, and then returned to England to die in exile. He married Eugenia del Monmtijo, a Spanish countess who was born in Spain twelve years after Wellington won the Peninsular War and died there sixteen years before Franco began the Civil War of 1936. Eugenia lived for eighteen years at the Tuileries as Empress of the French, and for fifty years as an ex-empress in exile in England at Chislehurn and Farnborough. The author here portrays the lives of two people of supassing interest both as individuals and politically, who were at the centre of the European stage for more than twenty years, from Napoleon III's election as President of the Republic in 1848, until the defeat of France by Germany in the Franco Prussian War in 1870. The canvas is a vast one, but shuch is the author's grasp of the period that he is always in control of his narrative. His researches have unearthed a great deal of material that has not been used before. The author recounts the dramatic events of the time with clarity and tension, whether they are on a small scale, likle Eugenie's supposed suicide attempt by the ingenious method of breaking off the heads of phophorous matches and drinking them dissolved in milk, or on a large scale, such as the Coup d'Elat of December 1851, or France's disastrous involvement in Mexico. In this magnificent double biography a whole period comes to life again, recreated by the pen of a major historian. Illustrated. 768 pp. (We carry a wide selection of titles in The Arts, Theology, History, Politics, Social and Physical Sciences. academic and scholarly books and Modern First Editions, Reference books ,and all types of Academic Literature.). First Edition. Cloth. Very Good/Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" Tall Octavo. Hardback.