Emperor of the French

• 1. Introduction

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  Napoleon Bonaparte became Emperor of the French on the 2nd of December 1804, crowning himself at Notre-Dame de Paris with the Crown of Napoleon. He did not receive the crown from any external authority. The title he chose was precise: not Emperor of France, but Emperor of the French. That single word's difference encoded a political argument about sovereignty and the nature of power. The French Revolution had forced those questions onto the world. Why would an empire make a point of belonging to a people rather than a land? How did a title crafted for one Bonaparte survive defeat and exile? And how did it remain in active dispute more than a century after the last emperor died?

• 2. People Over Territory

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  The old royal phrase King of France implied that the monarch owned France as a personal possession, territory included. Emperor of the French reversed that claim. Sovereignty resided in the people, the nation, not the geography beneath their feet.

  Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor by the Senate on the 18th of May 1804, several weeks before the coronation that followed. The title was designed to preserve the appearance of the French Republic and to signal that the feudal system had been abandoned. Equal citizens governed by their emperor, not possessed by a king, was the new formula. The emperor's role was explicitly compared to the earlier office of First Consul, which Napoleon had held before his proclamation.

  The Roman Republic had used the title Imperator for a magistrate who exercised Imperium, or command authority, over an army. In that tradition, the title was not inherited by bloodline but associated with citizens and civic duty. Napoleon's architects used this parallel to frame the new ruler as Chief Magistrate and Commander-in-Chief. The emphasis was on accountability to a nation, not hereditary succession.

  The Holy Roman Emperor held the highest claim to sovereignty in the Western world. His authority rested on papal coronation and on an asserted continuity with the ancient Roman Emperors. By adopting an imperial title for France, the Senate was declaring that the will of French citizens equaled that divine-right claim. The tension was visible even in the state's official name. It was only after the 1st of January 1809 that France was officially referred to as the French Empire. For the first five years of Napoleon's imperial rule, official documents still called the state the French Republic.

• 3. The Interrupted Reign

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  The Bourbon Restoration of 1814 removed Napoleon I from power and sent him to the island of Elba. He escaped from Elba less than a year later and returned to France to reclaim the imperial title. The period that followed became known as the Hundred Days. It lasted 111 days before his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on the 22nd of June 1815. After Waterloo, Napoleon was imprisoned on the island of Saint Helena, where he died on the 5th of May 1821. Not even 50 years would pass before the title of Emperor of the French was claimed again.

• 4. The Nephew's Empire

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  Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Napoleon's nephew, staged a coup d'état in 1851 that ended in the dissolution of the French National Assembly. Less than a year later, a referendum held on the 7th of November 1852 transformed the French Second Republic into the Second French Empire. Louis-Napoléon, who had been serving as president, officially became Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, on the 2nd of December 1852.

  The 2nd of December had been chosen for its symbolic weight: it fell exactly 48 years after his uncle's coronation as the first emperor. Louis-Napoléon was making a point through the calendar itself.

  Napoleon III's hold on the title did not prove as durable as the symbolism suggested. On the 28th of July 1870, his power as head of state was formally transferred to his wife and regent, Eugenie de Montijo. She ruled as empress regent while Napoleon III was overseas with his army. The formal deposition came on the 4th of September 1870, after his capture at the Battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War. In March 1871, he was released from Prussian custody and sent into exile in Chislehurst in the United Kingdom. He died in Chislehurst on the 9th of January 1873, closing the era of emperors without closing the question of imperial succession.

• 5. Bonaparte After Empire

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  Napoleon III's only son, also named Louis-Napoléon, died in 1879. With his death, the direct line of potential successors to the imperial title came to an end. Since then, the House of Bonaparte has produced a line of claimants who each assert rights to the French throne. The current head of the house is Charles, Prince Napoléon, who assumed that position on the 3rd of May 1997. His claim is contested by his son, Jean-Christophe, Prince Napoléon, who was named as heir in his late grandfather's testament. That father-and-son dispute is the most recent chapter of a succession question the House of Bonaparte has never stopped pressing.