The History of a Crime

is an essay by Victor Hugo about Napoleon III's takeover of France. Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885) was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France.

The work was written in the few months following Hugo's flight, but only published in 1877, when Hugo feared a similar takeover by Marechal Mac-Mahon, who had threatened the dissolution of the republican-dominated Chambre des deputes. Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President of the Second Republic of France and subsequently accepted the title of the Emperor, reigning as Napoleon III.