Bradford Conner

Tuesdays, February 2-March 2     3:30 - 5:30 p.m. 5 sessions
King's Chapel Parish House, 64 Beacon Street

In 1808 Napoléon Bonaparte was at the height of his powers. His control over Europe seemed to be beyond contestability. He had married his brother, Louis, to his step daughter, Hortense. Their marriage produced one child, Louis Napoléon, future emperor of France. At the time of Louis Napoléon’s birth, no one could have predicted the outcome of Waterloo or the indifferent fate of Napoléon’s heir, the King of Rome.

Louis Napoléon spent the first 40 years of his life wandering about France and Europe, bearing the yoke of his illustrious uncle and gaining support of Frenchmen eager to reinstate the militaristic glory of Bonapartist France. It was only because of the massive upheavals of 1848 that Louis Napoléon was able to fulfill his manifest destiny. He was elected as First President of the French Republic, and then, treading a similar path to that of his uncle, he became Emperor of the French as Napoléon III. His reign was one of the most interesting in French history. Unlike his uncle, he tried to promote the idea that “The Empire means peace.” His liberal, although authoritarian policies, helped define an “age” and he continued to make Paris a center of European politics and style. His biggest failure occurred in 1870 when he pitted France against the increasing power of the consolidated German states under the ever-wily Otto von Bismarck. French defeat at the hands of the Germans was the end of his Imperial dreams. A monarch would never again rule the French people. We will explore the times, the politicians, and the rulers, both as public and private figures. We will discover many things that continue to have relevance upon the current European political scene.

Recommended reading for this course is Napoleon III: A Life by Fenton Bresler (hardcover – Carroll & Graf, 1999; paperback – Harper Collins Limited, 2000). Another book of interest is “Eugénie: The Empress and Her Empire” by Desmond Seward (The History Press, 2005).

Bradford Conner is a graduate of West Virginia University, having also studied at the University of Salzburg (Austria) and at the American College of Salzburg. He has degrees in business, musicology and foreign language, and has written on his interests in music and world history, including European politics before 1918. Mr. Conner also performs and team teaches regularly with Benjamin Sears. This is his twelfth semester leading a seminar for BHS.