A nickname given to Napoleon III. It was the name of the workman whose clothes he wore when he contrived to escape from the fort of Ham, in 1846.
“If Badinguet and Bismarck have a row together let them settle it between them with their fists, instead of troubling hundreds of thousands of men who ... have no wish to fight.” —Zola: The Downfall , chap. ii. (1892).
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894