BY ALEXANDRE-RAOUL MOREL (FL. 1833-1850), MARKED, PARIS, CIRCA 1850

Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808-1873) was the only President (1848-1852) of the French Second Republic and, as Napoleon III, the Emperor (1852-1870) of the Second French Empire. He was the nephew and heir of Napoleon I. He was the first President of France to be elected by a direct popular vote. When he was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term, he organized a coup d'état in 1851, and then took the throne as Napoleon III on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation. He remains the longest-serving French head of state since the French Revolution.
Gold boxes by Alexandre-Raoul Morel are rare. He was born in 1801 and took over the business of his father, the famous goldsmith Gabriel-Raoul Morel in 1832. He worked in premises in the rue Neuve des Bons Enfants and was last recorded in 1850.