ABSTRACT
The Empire's sordid origins in a military coup and its even more ignoble end in military disaster, have often obscured the accomplishments of the years in between. For the political leaders of the Third Republic in particular, the Second Empire offered little more than a long tale of mistakes it was determined not to replicate. Both liberalism and democratic republicanism had emerged out of the convulsions of the French Revolutionary era as major political movements, but as June 1848 demonstrated their proponents were not necessarily allies. Historians have traditionally divided the Second Empire into two phases, the authoritarian empire of the 1850s and the liberal empire of the 1860s. More than any other French government during the nineteenth century, the Second Empire took a direct and extensive role in promoting economic growth. The 1863 parliamentary elections graphically demonstrated the failure of liberal reform to mollify the opposition and win the support of the French people.
