This was the year in which Paris lay under siege by a Prussian army and eventually Napoleon III fled into exile, eventually making his home in England, where he died in 1873. If we leave the confusions of the 1850s issues for a moment and leap forward to 1870 we discover that stamps depicting Napoleon III had indeed spread across the French Empire but that reign was about to come to an abrupt end. His first stamps were issued progressively from September 1852. Louis-Napoleon became Emperor Napoleon III, and stamps displaying Ceres were withdrawn, to be replaced by issues carrying the new Emperor’s portrait. In 1851 in the wake of a coup led by the President the Second Empire replaced the Second Republic. Thus a blue 20 centimes never replaced the earlier black but other values and colours followed in 1850: Plans to switch to a blue 20 centimes had progressed by the spring of 1850 to the printing stage when the issue had suddenly to be halted because a new postal rate rendered a 20 centimes value unnecessary. The smooth introductions of other denominations and colours were thrown into confusion when the error of issuing a black 20 centimes had to be corrected by altering the colours, or proposed colours, of other values. In January 1849, the first denominations were: The Second Republic planned to have Ceres stamps of different values to meet the postal needs of running a service similar to Britain’s that would bring low-cost postage to the whole of France, Corsica and French Algeria. The revolutionaries created the Second Republic and appointed Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (nephew of the battle loser at Waterloo) as President. In 1848 a popular uprising in France swept away the last remnants of the monarchy that had regained power following the total defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte at Waterloo. How much should I pay for France’s imperforate Ceres stamps? Find out in our price guide
The French chose the Roman deity Ceres, goddess of the harvest, to represent and personify the French Republic an appropriate choice given France’s vast agricultural estates.
The first France Ceres stamp was black it carried a central, left-facing female portrait head the flanking vertical borders displayed simple decoration the engraved white lettering on the lower border included the postage value and the stamp was imperforate. However, France followed the British design more closely than those who had gone before. Four other countries took up Britain’s adhesive stamp system of postage prepayment before France adopted the innovation in 1849.
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