EARLY FRENCH 2ND REPUBLIC MEDUSA BELT BUCKLE

Medusa French Chasseur or cavalry three piece buckle with keeper dating to the second Empire. The face or head of Medusa appears for some reason in various French military ornaments and decorative touches, from bandoleers to swords. Excellent The French Second Republic was a short-lived republican government of France under President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte. It lasted from the 1848 Revolution to the 1851 coup by which the president made himself Emperor Napoleon III and initiated the Second Empire. It officially adopted the motto of the First Republic, Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. The Second Republic witnessed the tension between the "Social and Democratic Republic" and a liberal form of republicanism, which exploded during the June Days uprising of 1848. The Republic would ultimately last four years, one of the shortest regimes in French history.