[LINK] Blessed by an early death

[rfmcdonald]

There's an active interesting discussion on soc.history.what-if right now, imagining what would have happened had Napoléon III died of an unfortunate accident in the middle of 1861. One interesting possibility is the survival of the Bonaparte dynasty on the French imperial throne and a transition to British-style constitutional monarchy; another is the crushing defeat of Prussia and its allies in the Seven Weeks War when Empress Eugénie prompts France to invade the Hohenzollern state's territories on the Rhine. Certainly, without the Mexican expedition, the failure to prevent German unification under Prussia, and the military collapse of the Second Empire in 1870, Napoléon III would have had a much better reputation, and late 19th century France would have been in rather better shape.