France, Second Empire, 10 Francs – 1863

Description

In December 1851, Luis Napoleón Bonaparte gives a coup d”etat and changed the Constitution, assuming practically all powers and avoiding re -election for ten years. Among the changes in the Constitution, he reinituted universal suffrage. The new Constitution was subjected to referendum, which was approved with a large majority (although of doubtful reliability). Not content with this, in November 1852 the transformation of the country into an empire and the title of Emperor for Luis Napoleon as Napoleon III was approved in a popular referendum. The country quickly transformed with numerous successes in internal policy, and very few abroad. Napoleon III was a pioneer in the country”s industrialization subsidy. If at first it was harshly criticized for this, the results were spectacular and subsequently copied by other countries. An important railway network centered in Paris, but also roads, ports and channels, was also created. The Paris reform was also initiated by Haussmann, a city that multiplied in the root of these new infrastructure. In foreign policy, although Crimea”s war was a sounded success, the intervention in Mexico was a failure, and above all, it fell into the traps lying by Bismarck, and when the time came, France was isolated, as Austria had been before in his conflict with Prussia. The defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, and its capture in Sedan, meant the end of this second empire. Numismatically speaking, it is a classic silver-gold pattern, with the pieces of 1 to 10 cents in copper, from 20 to 5 francs in silver, and 5 to 100 francs in gold. In fact, in 1865 France participates in the creation of the Latin Monetary Union.