Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (20 April 1808 – 9 January 1873) was the only President (1848–52) of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor (1852–70) of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. When he was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, he organized a coup d'état in 1851, and then took the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution.

During the first years of the Empire, Napoleon's government imposed censorship and harsh repressive measures against his opponents. Some six thousand were imprisoned or sent to penal colonies until 1859. Thousands more, including Victor Hugo, went into voluntary exile abroad. From 1862 onwards he relaxed government censorship, and his regime came to be known as the "Liberal Empire." Many of his opponents returned to France and became members of the National Assembly.