What led to the fall of Napoleon III?

Napoleon III's fall was primarily due to his defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the subsequent Paris Commune uprising.

Napoleon III, also known as Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, was the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte and the first President of France from 1848 to 1852. He then declared himself Emperor and ruled until 1870. His reign was marked by significant economic development and modernisation, but also by political repression and a series of foreign policy failures.

The most significant of these failures was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Napoleon III, underestimating the strength of the newly unified Germany under Otto von Bismarck, declared war in July 1870. The French army was ill-prepared and suffered a series of defeats. Napoleon III himself was captured at the Battle of Sedan in September 1870, effectively ending his rule.

While Napoleon III was in captivity, the Third Republic was declared in Paris. However, the new government's attempt to continue the war led to the Siege of Paris and the city's eventual surrender in January 1871. The harsh terms of the peace treaty, including the loss of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, caused widespread anger in France.

This anger led to the Paris Commune uprising in March 1871. The Commune, a radical socialist and revolutionary government, ruled Paris for two months before being brutally suppressed by the French army. The Commune's defeat marked the end of the revolutionary period in France and the consolidation of the Third Republic.

In the aftermath of these events, Napoleon III was released by the Germans and went into exile in England, where he died in 1873. His fall from power marked the end of the Second French Empire and the beginning of the Third Republic, which would last until the German occupation of France in 1940. The Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune uprising were thus the key events that led to the fall of Napoleon III.