They called Napoleon III the Sphinx of the Tulleries.

The nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who, like his more famous uncle,

later got himself elected president of France,

and like his uncle, pulled a coup and declared himself emperor,

this Napoleon III was a mysterious man, enigmatic, complicated. You knew what Napoleon III's goals were,

but what you would never understand were the stratagems he employed to advance those goals,

which were pretty straightforward. Napoleon III believed in French greatness, and that France

was the wellspring of nationalism and liberalism,

which could sweep aside the old sclerotic, blue-blooded feudal orders of Europe, which is why he hated the Vienna system,

the geopolitical order which European leaders had put together in the wake of the first Napoleon

Bonaparte. It was the NATO or the World Trade Organization of its day, a deeply conservative

system which had been erected by the victors of the Napoleonic wars to restrain French

ambition and territory and ensure that there would never again be a Bonaparte remaking the

world in his image. But now there was another Bonaparte. Napoleon III, the nephew of the great

man himself, and Napoleon III chafed under the yoke of this international order, an international order which he believed did

little besides hold France back from her rightful place on the world stage, a weight unfairly

slung around France's neck, an albatross pinned on her by her adversaries. What was confusing were the astonishing, inscrutable tactics

and stratagems that he employed. Time and again, Napoleon would plunge Europe into crisis.

Then, due to public pressure or lack of internal compass to stay his hand, he would reverse

course.

And he would play off this erratic, inconsistent behavior as part of a grand strategy, a complicated ruse

which armchair pundits and military hobbyists couldn't hope to understand.

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