Prince Louis Napoleon was born with a compelling sense of destiny. The eldest nephew of Bonaparte, he came from exile and ignominy to rule France, first as President then as Emperor for 22 years, from 1848 to 1870. Under his benevolent dictatorship, the nation grew in artistic fulfilment, industrial wealth and international influence - until catastrophic defeat at the hands of Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 cast her back into the shadows. Subsequently, with his wife, the Empress Eugenie, Napoleon III went into exile in Chislehurst, Kent, until his death in 1873. There is now a movement in France to retrieve his ashes from their mausoleum in Farnborough and bring them back to France. This biography includes recent new research into the life of Napoleon Bonaparte's nephew, Prince Louis Napoleon, who presided over the glittering years of France's Second Empire and the grandiloquent rebuilding of Paris.