Victor Hugo—Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

The relationship between Victor Hugo and Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte began in support and ended in political enmity. Hugo first regarded the prince as the continuator of Napoleonic greatness; as Louis-Napoléon’s government became authoritarian, Hugo emerged as a fierce opponent, resisted the coup of 1851, and was forced into exile.

From Support to Opposition

Hugo’s republican commitment developed gradually rather than being present from the start. He initially favored Louis-Napoléon, seeing in him a successor to the grandeur associated with Napoleon. The prince-president’s movement toward authoritarian government changed that alignment: Hugo took an increasingly vehement position against him and gave him the contemptuous sobriquet Napoléon le Petit.

The Coup and Exile

The decisive break came on December 2, 1851, when Louis-Napoléon overthrew the French Second Republic; he restored the Empire a year later. Hugo was then a deputy in the republic. During the coup, he attempted to rouse the people of Paris against the seizure of power. His resistance left him compelled to leave France, beginning an exile in Belgium and continuing in the Channel Islands.

Political Conflict in Writing

Exile did not end Hugo’s opposition. Away from France under the French Second Empire, he composed Les Châtiments in 1853, a collection shaped by both personal sadness and political revolt. In Souvenir de la nuit du 4, he returned to a scene he had witnessed during the coup: a young child was shot dead, struck by two bullets in the head. The poem made the violence of the political rupture part of Hugo’s writing from exile, extending his conflict with Louis-Napoléon beyond the immediate struggle in Paris.