1852 in France

Incumbents

• Monarch - Napoleon III

  Events

• 14 January - French Constitution of 1852 enacted by Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte.
• 29 February - Legislative Election held.
• 14 March - Legislative Election held.
• 24 September - Engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip from Paris to Trappes.
• 21 November - New French Empire confirmed by referendum.
• 2 December - Napoleon III becomes Emperor of the French.

  Births

• 26 January - Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, explorer
• 1 March - Théophile Delcassé, statesman
• 28 September - Henri Moissan, chemist, Nobel Prize laureate
• 22 November - Paul-Henri-Benjamin d'Estournelles de Constant, diplomat and politician, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
• 15 December - Henri Becquerel, physicist, Nobel Prize laureate

  Deaths

• 6 January - Louis Braille, teacher, inventor of braille
• 26 February - Hélène Jégado, domestic servant and serial killer, executed
• 17 April - Étienne Maurice Gérard, general and statesman
• 28 May - Eugène Burnouf, orientalist
• 22 July - Auguste de Marmont, general, nobleman and marshal
• 26 July - Jean-Jacques Feuchère, sculptor

  Full date unknown

• Jacques Bernard Hombron, naval surgeon and naturalist