Following a series of disastrous defeats of the French Army, on 19 September 1870, Prussian forces had taken control of the country around Paris, and put the capital under siege. With the surrender of the French Emperor Napoleon III, a provisional republican government had been established, and ushered in the Third Republic as successor to the Second Empire, in the most difficult of circumstances.

The new French government wasn’t yet ready to admit defeat. They called for guerilla warfare against the occupying Prussian forces to deprive them of supplies, and the formation of large armies from the unoccupied provinces to the west and south. Prussian opinion favoured the bombardment of Paris to try to bring the war to a more rapid conclusion, but thankfully Prussian High Command wouldn’t accept that on moral grounds.

As the Prussians sent small armies out to the provinces to disrupt French attempts at re-organisation, conditions in Paris steadily deteriorated.

Anton von Werner shows the contrasting life In the Troops’ Quarters Outside Paris (1894), here in the luxurious Château de Brunoy, which had been abandoned to or requisitioned by those occupying forces. Prussian soldiers were blamed for the almost complete destruction of Pissarro’s work prior to the war, when they occupied his house in 1870.

Édouard Detaille’s painting of action at Champigny, December 1870 (1879) took place only 12.5 km (under eight miles) from the centre of Paris.

There were French counter-attacks. On 29 October 1870, General Carey de Bellemare attacked the Prussian Guard at Le Bourget, despite having no orders to do so, and forced them to cede the town to his troops. Despite these positions being of little value to either side, the Prussians re-took them in the Battle of Le Bourget on 30 October. Although incorrectly dated, de Neuville shows French soldiers sheltering in a Bivouac after the Battle of Bourget, 21 December 1870 (1873). This was a major blow to the beleaguered citizens still in Paris.

As the winter grew colder, Parisians were starting to starve. A city which had long been proud of its restaurants and food was reduced to scavenging meals based on horse, dog, cat, and even the city’s rats.

Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonier’s romanticised view of The Siege of Paris from 1870 combines almost every symbol relevant to the city’s distress, dressing Marianne in a lionskin against a battle-worn flag. Meissonier had originally been attached to the staff of Napoleon III, and accompanied him in early phases of the war in Italy. During the siege of Paris, though, he was a Colonel commanding an improvised infantry unit, and knew well the realities of combat.

Another artist who was trapped inside Paris was the great illustrator and painter Gustave Doré, who made several works showing scenes such as this Sister of Charity Saving a Child. An Episode of the Siege of Paris (1870-71).

The greatest memorial to those who lost their lives in the siege, and those who survived it, is Louis-Ernest Barrias’ bronze The Defence of Paris of 1883. This has so dominated the part of the city where it’s situated that the area is known as La Défense.

Military action continued into 1871, although it was already clear that France was utterly defeated. Secret discussions about an armistice started on 23 January, but the French government feared that their capitulation could precipitate rebellion, even revolution.

Édouard Detaille’s depiction of The Armistice of 28th January 1871 (1873) shows the moment the symbolic white flag was raised over a bleak plain.

To the nearly 400,000 French dead from the war, the Prussians were determined to add profound insult: as shown in Anton von Werner’s painting of the Crowning of Wilhelm I as Emperor of Germany, in Versailles (1882). Prussia had celebrated victory in this ceremony held at the most famous of French royal palaces, on 18 January 1871.

Neither were participants afraid to spread ‘false news’: Emil Hünten’s undated Welcome of Empress Eugénie by Prussian Soldiers shows an event that never occurred. When the Empress was told of her husband’s surrender to the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan, she’s reported to have said:
“No! An Emperor does not capitulate! He is dead!… They are trying to hide it from me. Why didn’t he kill himself! Doesn’t he know he has dishonored himself?!”

With hostile crowds forming outside her Tuileries Palace, she slipped out to find sanctuary in the company of her American dentist, then fled to England by yacht on 7 September 1870. She was later joined by the former emperor, and the couple lived at Chislehurst in Kent. She never fraternised with Prussian soldiers.

Gustave Doré had a deeply personal involvement, as he had been born in Strasbourg, a French city the Prussians had taken early in the war. He volunteered to serve in the National Guard, and produced several moving paintings of the suffering of Paris.

His The Enigma (souvenirs de 1870) and two other works were painted using grisaille, greys normally used to model tones in traditional layered technique. This shows the shattered and still-burning remains of the city in the background, bodies of some of the Prussian artillery in the foreground, and two mythical beasts silhouetted in an embrace. The winged creature is female, and probably represents France, who clasps the head of a sphinx, who personifies the forces that determine victory or defeat. The enigmatic question would then relate to the Franco-Prussian War, and the reasons for France’s defeat.

Over the next seventy-five years, France and Germany were to fight one another twice more, before the Treaty of London of 5 May 1949 created the Council of Europe, which West Germany joined in 1951, and became ancestor of the European Union.

Neither Napoleon nor his wife Joséphine were faithful during their marriage, but she failed to produce the heir that the Emperor wanted. In 1809, he informed her that he had to find a wife who could provide an heir, and they divorced the following January. Pierre-Paul Prud’hon went on to paint her successor Marie-Louise of Austria as well.

Following his marriage to the eighteen year-old Marie-Louise of Austria, the new Empress became pregnant, and on 20 March 1811 gave birth to their son, who was soon made King of Rome. That year, Prud’hon painted this Portrait of the King of Rome, setting him asleep in a glade with a waterfall behind. Prud’hon was also involved in decorating a crib for the infant.

Meanwhile, the Emperor’s youngest sister Caroline had married one of Napoleon’s most brilliant cavalry officers who succeeded Joseph Bonaparte (the emperor’s older brother) as King of Naples. Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, known best for her brilliant pastel paintings, used oils for this portrait of Caroline Murat, Queen of Naples, with her Daughter Letizia in 1807.

Napoleon had continued leading French forces from his success at the Battle of Austerlitz in Austria in 1805, through Eastern Europe, then in Spain in 1808, where he installed his older brother Joseph as king. However, the French invasion of Russia in the summer of 1812 proved a disaster.

Ary Scheffer’s account of The Retreat of Napoleon’s Army from Russia in 1812 (1826) shows this march of death starting from Moscow in the middle of October 1812, which took until the middle of December to clear Russian territory. In the appalling winter weather, Napoleon’s Grande Armée is claimed to have shrunk from 100,000 to around 22,000.

The tide had turned. The following year Napoleon was decisively defeated at Leipzig, France was invaded, he was forced to abdicate in April 1814, and was exiled to the island of Elba, in the Mediterranean between Corsica and Tuscany. He escaped and returned to France, where he and his forces were defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. He was finally sent to the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821.

JMW Turner’s War. The Exile and the Rock Limpet from 1842 shows an imagined moment from Napoleon’s exile on the British island of Saint Helena, no doubt inspired by the return of the emperor’s ashes for state burial in France in 1840. In the background is one of the British sentries stationed on this remote island to guard the former emperor. Napoleon is bowing slightly to a tiny limpet on a rock, a symbol of the futility of war. The sunset behind forms the sea of blood resulting from Napoleon’s many battles across Europe.

Michel Ney (1769-1815) was a leading military commander during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and was made a Marshal of France by Napoleon. Following Napoleon’s defeat and exile in the summer of 1815, Ney was arrested, and tried for treason by the Chamber of Peers. He was found guilty, and executed by firing squad near the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris on 7 December 1815. He refused a blindfold, and was allowed to give the command to fire upon himself.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Death of Marshal Ney (1868) uses a similar narrative approach to Gérôme’s earlier paintings of the murder of Caesar, in showing a moment after the climax of the story. Ney’s body is abandoned, slumped and lifeless on the muddy ground, his top hat apart at the right edge of the canvas. Behind where he stood but a few moments ago there are half a dozen bullet impact marks on the wall, as the firing squad is being marched off, to the left and into the distance.

For a few brief weeks after Napoleon’s abdication, he tried to make his son the King of Rome his successor, as Napoleon II.

His cousin Louis Napoleon Bonaparte had been born in the Tuileries Palace in Paris. After Napoleon I had been sent to Saint Helena, the rest of the emperor’s family were dispersed elsewhere. Louis Napoleon joined the Swiss Army, developed political aspirations, and in 1836 led an attempted coup from Strasbourg. After a period of exile in London, he attempted a second coup in 1840 that quickly turned into a fiasco. He escaped from prison in 1846, fled to London, only to return to Paris after the French Revolution of 1848. He then gained a place in the National Assembly, where he campaigned successfully for election as President of France. He staged a further coup in December 1851, and won a referendum enabling him to proclaim himself Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, on 2 December 1852.

Gérôme articulated Napoleon III’s aspirations for empire in his elaborate and formal painting of the Reception of Siamese Ambassadors by Napoleon III (1864), depicting a grand reception held at Fontainebleau on 27 June 1861. Gérôme had attended in the role of semi-official court painter (commissioned by the State), made sketches of some of the key figures, and was further aided by photographs made by Nadar. He also included himself, and the older artist Ernest Meissonier (1815-1891), in the painting: I believe that they are both at the back, at the far left.

Cabanel’s life-sized full-length portrait of the Emperor Napoleon III from about 1865 proved controversial, as many felt that his image of their emperor should have greater grandeur. Some critics even accused Cabanel of making him look like a hotel manager or waiter, and I can see their point. The Empress Eugénie and Napoleon’s family had no such qualms, though: Cabanel’s painting was hung in the Tuileries Palace, and when the Second Empire collapsed, and the empress fled to Britain, she took this painting with her into exile.

Napoleon III clearly lacked his uncle’s flair for military leadership, and declaration of war against Prussia on 19 July 1870 led to a series of disastrous defeats ending with the Battle of Sedan, a fortified French city in the Ardennes. The French Army surrendered to the Prussians and Napoleon III became a prisoner of war.

Emil Hünten’s undated Welcome of Empress Eugénie by Prussian Soldiers shows an event that never occurred. When the Empress was told of her husband’s surrender to the Prussians at the Battle of Sedan, she is reported to have said: “No! An Emperor does not capitulate! He is dead!… They are trying to hide it from me. Why didn’t he kill himself! Doesn’t he know he has dishonored himself?!” With hostile crowds forming outside her Tuileries Palace, she slipped out to find sanctuary in the company of her American dentist, then fled to England by yacht on 7 September 1870. She was later joined by the former emperor, and the couple lived at Chislehurst in Kent.

Perhaps the most lasting memorial to these French emperors is the Suez Canal. During Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign in 1798, he had engineers and others search for an ancient canal running north from the Red Sea. In 1804, the new Emperor considered constructing a canal to connect the south-eastern Mediterranean with the Red Sea. Early in the reign of Napoleon III, Ferdinand de Lesseps obtained a concession to construct the canal that Napoleon I had dreamed of. The Suez Canal was officially opened on 17 November 1869, with both the Empress Eugénie of France and the Crown Prince of Prussia present as guests.

Painted by the great marine artist Ivan Aivazovsky shortly after that official opening in 1869, Suez Canal shows a convoy of ships passing through in an unearthly light. Within a year the Second Empire had fallen, but Napoleon’s canal went on.