And the emperor was particularly fond of the one whose uncle and grandfather he was at the same time. When Louis-Napoleon was born on 20 April 1808, the First Empire was at its peak. How did the son of Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of Josephine, and Charles Bonaparte, brother of the Emperor, finally succeed Napoleon I? It is the realization of an ambition born from his earliest childhood that is told here. ' His life is a colourful adventure, made up of plots, exiles, uncontrollable loves, triumphs and disasters,' explains Stéphane Bern from the Château de Compiègne, one of Napoleon III's favourite residences.
It is the romantic life of the man who was the first President of the Republic, elected by universal suffrage in 1848, then the last Emperor of the French, after the coup d'état of December 2, 1851, that is retraced in detail in this unpublished episode of 'Secrets of History'.
