Napoleon III and a Royal CSA

I research various AH history ideas by searching AH.com. I like to see what other board members have said about different AH scenarios. Recently, I stumbled on scenario involving Napoleon III and the CSA.
A member seemed to state that Nap.3 had suggested that the CSA should adopt a monarchy. Someone else suggested heirs of the Bonaparte-Patterson family. Question: Did Napoleon III actually suggest the Confederate States of America should adopt a monarch?? Thanks for reading!
 
If he did, no Confederate probably took it seriously, considering the Confederacy liked to link itself to the American Founding Fathers.
 
I haven't ever heard NIII suggesting such but in other hand I don't know his foreign politics very well.

But even if he would had suggested that, probably Confederates would had rejected that. They were quiet republican and probably even they would had understand that king wouldn't have much more than NIII's puppet.
 
I research various AH history ideas by searching AH.com. I like to see what other board members have said about different AH scenarios. Recently, I stumbled on scenario involving Napoleon III and the CSA.
A member seemed to state that Nap.3 had suggested that the CSA should adopt a monarchy. Someone else suggested heirs of the Bonaparte-Patterson family. Question: Did Napoleon III actually suggest the Confederate States of America should adopt a monarch?? Thanks for reading!

It did happen, not so much the suggestion as the idea. Aronson's got a whole section on the Bonaparte-Pattersons in his bio THE GOLDEN BEES and he talks about it. I think mention is made of it in a bio on Maximilian and the Mexican Empire I read. Napoléon's cousins (Bo Patterson, Plon-Plon and Prince Murat) all popped over the pond (Bo ACTUALLY fought IIRC) to see the situation on the ground. There was talk, I don't think it ever progressed from it, that if the Confederacy were to elect Bo as king-president (same as Napoléon orginally was in France), the French would be obliged to help them, sort of thing.
 
I've never heard of such a scheme, and if Napoléon III was quite clumsy in matters of geopolitics, he wasn't that stupid (in Mexico, his objective was to establish a stable state to enable a rival to the US emerging, and his first plan was to have his monarchical project approved by Mexicans through referendum as per his doctrine of 'free determination of peoples', but his hand was forced by the conservative establishment who proclaimed it early on to avoid and keep their hand on the power, and weak willed in front of fait accomplis as he was then, Napoléon III didn't act against).
Plus, he pretty much disliked the entire Jerome branch of the Bonaparte House (he saw them as his own Orléans branch, by reference to the Bourbon-Orléans rivalry), not to mention of the Pattersons who were considered badly more than illegitimate offspring of King Jérôme by the Bonaparte family (actually, Napoléon III decision to 'aknowledge' their rights to parts of King Jerome's inheritance was more about annoying his troublesome and irritating cousin and second in line to the throne, Prince Napoléon).
 
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