The democratic election of a president for the Second Republic, in December 1848, was followed by a coup d'état and his assumption of unrestricted power in 1851. This was endorsed by plebiscites which turned the president into an emperor a year later. So came into being the French Second Empire under Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. There was much about this which was alarming, not least his name. He was the first democratic dictator, endorsed by popular vote. Liberals despaired.

---John Roberts, "Revolution from Above and Below: European Politics from the French Revolution to the First World War", in The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe