This study examines Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's use of public spectacle to dazzle and seduce the French population after the inception of universal male suffrage in 1848. Drawing on newspapers, archival sources, and memoirs, Truesdell argues that as President of the Second Republic and then as Emperor Napoleon III, Louis-Napoleon pioneered the modern techniques of image poitics and the manipulation of a mass electorate. This study will be of interest to scholars of early modern France, political practice, and modern Europe.