With his son Charles he founds and edits L‘Événement, a liberal paper that un wisely campaigns to have Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, the nephew of the former Emperor, elected president.

1849Hugo presides over the International Peace Conference in Paris and delivers the first public speech that proposes the creation of a United States of Europe. Eugène Delacroix paints the ceiling of the Louvre’s Salon d’Apollon.
1849 1851Hugo increasingly criticizes the government’s policies, mak ing fiery speeches on poverty, liberty, and the church. His positions provoke the ire of the government.
1851The government briefly imprisons Hugo’s two sons in June for having published disloyal articles in L‘Événement. Soon after Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état (actually, a legal election that creates the Second Empire) in early December, Hugo learns that the imperial police have issued a warrant for his arrest. He flees with his family and mistress to Belgium and then to the Isle of Jersey, a British possession in the English Channel.
1852 1853In 1852 Louis-Napoléon declares himself emperor as Napoleon III. Hugo writes a scathing satire, Napoleon le petit. From 1853 to 1855 he attends séances at which the spirits of both the living and the dead (including Shake speare, Jesus, and a cowering Napoleon I) seem to commu nicate by tapping on the table. They explain that all living beings must expiate their sins through a cycle of punitive reincarnations, but that all, even Satan, will finally be par doned and merge with the Godhead. These ideas figure prominently in Hugo’s visionary poetry for the remainder of his life. Georges Haussmann (1809-1891) begins the urban renewal of Paris.
1853Hugo publishes Les Châtiments (The Punishments), power ful anti-Napoleonic satire.
1855Hugo moves to the Channel island of Guernsey.
1856Hugo’s Les Contemplations, his poetic masterpiece, appears. Profits from its sales allow him to purchase Hauteville House on Guernsey, today a museum.
1857Gustave Flaubert’s novel of adultery, Madame Bovary—the work most influential on Western novelists until after World War II-is published in book form, as is the first edition of Charles Baudelaire’s poetry, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil). Both men and their publishers are placed on trial for offenses to public morals. Baudelaire’s publisher is fined and must remove seven poems treating lesbianism and sadism.
1859The first volume of Hugo’s poetic history of the world, La Légende des siècles (The Legend of the Centuries), appears.
1861The danger of arrest having subsided, Hugo’s wife, Adèle, and her sons begin leaving him to stay in Paris during the winter months. She secretly meets with Sainte-Beuve there.
1862Les Misérables, a 1,200-page epic completed in fourteen months, is published on the heels of a fertile period during which Hugo wrote many political speeches and creative works. Hugo’s famous novel gains an enormous popular au dience, although the book is panned by critics and banned by the government. He begins hosting a weekly banquet for fifty poor children.
1866Guernsey provides the setting for Hugo’s regional novel Les Travailleurs de la mer (The Toilers of the Sea). Edgar Degas commences his series of ballet paintings. Works of Cézanne, Renoir, Monet, and other Impressionists appear. The next year Emile Zola’s novel Thérèse Raquin is published.
1868Hugo’s wife, Adèle, dies unexpectedly in Brussels. She had
been living apart from Victor for several years, but the two had remained friends.
1869Hugo publishes the historical novel L‘Homme qui rit (The Man Who Laughs). He declines a second offer of amnesty from Napoleon III. Sainte-Beuve dies.
1870Defeated by the Prussians at Sedan, Napoleon III surrenders to them and is deposed. France’s Third Republic is pro claimed. Hugo returns to Paris in triumph after nineteen years in exile.
1871Hugo is elected to the National Assembly, but resigns due to the opposition of right-wing members. His son Charles dies.
1872Consumed by madness, Hugo’s daughter Adèle is institu tionalized until her death, in 1915. Jules Verne’s Le Tour du Monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days) is published.
1873Hugo’s younger son, François-Victor, dies. French Symbol ist poet Arthur Rimbaud publishes Un Saison en enfer (A Season in Hell).
1874Hugo publishes Quatrevingt-treize (Ninety-three), a histori cal novel about the counter-revolutionary rebellion in la Vendee (in eastern France) and events leading to the Reign of Terror in 1793. He provides nuanced portraits of both sides.
1876Hugo is elected to the Senate.
1877As senator, Hugo plays a leading role in preventing Marshal Marie Edmé Patrice de MacMahon, president of the Third Republic from 1873 to 1879, from becoming dictator of France. Because the monarchists have split their support among various claimants to the throne, the republicans achieve a working majority. The second volume of Hugo’s poetic history of the world, La Légende des siècles, appears.
1878A stroke leaves Hugo incapable of composing additional lit erary works.
1880After years of efforts, Hugo arranges amnesty for the Commu nards, popular-front rebels in the Paris of 1871 opposed to surrender to the Prussians. Some 20,000 of them, including women and children, had been slaughtered by French gov ernment troops—more than the total of those guillotined during the Reign of Terror in 1793. Guy de Maupassant’s collected Contes (Stories) are published.
1881On February 26, Hugo’s birthday, a national holiday is pro claimed, and 600,000 marchers pass his windows.