When Napoleon III was forced into exile following the defeat of France by the Prussian Army it was England that offered him both a refuge and a final resting place, reports The Telegraph.
But now his French admirers want him back.
A campaign calling for the repatriation of Napoleon III’s body from its mausoleum at a Catholic abbey in Hampshire has been taken up by French politicians.
Roger Karoutchi, deputy speaker of the Senate in France, is calling on ministers to make a formal request to the UK Government to return the emperor.
Campaigners have also launched a petition calling for his remains to be transferred from St Michael’s Abbey, Farnborough, to Saint-Augustin church in Paris.
It was here that Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte – nephew to the more famous Napoleon Bonaparte – had intended himself to be buried in the church he commissioned in 1860.