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France, Louis-Napoleon Imprisoned in the Fort of Ham, 1843, a large uniface cast iron portrait medal, signed D.H.C., bust left, 180mm. With small piercing for suspension, extremely fine and rare, a most attractive item (£70-90)

Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-73), who took the title Napoleon III on establishing the Second Empire in 1852, had made two failed attempts to start a new Bonapartist insurrection – in Strasbourg in 1836, and in Boulogne in 1840. After the latter he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the fort of Ham, but escaped in 1846 and fled to England, returning to France only after Louis Philippe I was overthrown in the 1848 February Revolution