Napoléon III, also known as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (1808–1873) was the first President of the French Republic and the last monarch of France. Made president by popular vote in 1848, Napoleon III ascended to the throne on 2 December 1852, the forty-eighth anniversary of his uncle, Napoleon I's, coronation. He ruled as Emperor of the French until September 1870, when he was captured in the Franco-Prussian War.