Three years ago, hardly anyone knew his name. A year ago, he was a member of the government of one the most unpopular French presidents in history. Now, at 39, he has won France's presidential election, and he will soon be France's youngest head of state since Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as its first modern president not to belong to either of the centre-left or centre-right parties that have run the country for 60 years.

"It's entirely unprecedented in the Fifth Republic," said Francois Heisbourg, a well-known French defence expert who has advised Macron on security and terrorism issues. "It's extraordinarily unusual, the way he has broken through the system - coming from nowhere."

No doubt about it, Mr Macron was carried to victory in part by the winds of fortune. A public scandal knocked out the initial frontrunner, centre-right candidate Francois Fillon; and Socialist candidate Benoît Hamon, already on the left fringe of the party, suffered a very public drubbing as traditional voters looked elsewhere.

"He was very lucky, because he was facing a situation that was completely unexpected, "says Marc-Olivier Padis, of Paris-based think tank Terra Nova.

The Saturday preceding presidential elections in France is usually quiet. By law, the electoral campaign is suspended for the final 48 hours before the polling stations close. Candidates are forbidden from campaigning. They all but disappear from public view until the moment they cast their vote on the Sunday. The media are compelled to restrict their reporting, and are banned from discussing in detail the candidate's platforms. It is the calm before the storm.

But the 2017 French presidential election was unusual. Up to the last minute there were twists in this surreal campaign, where the unexpected has become the rule. On Friday evening, within a few hours of the official end of the campaign, a message posted on 4chan, a forum favoured by online activists and US far-right supporters alike, signalled the publication of a huge load of data hacked from En Marche!, Emmanuel Macron's movement. Personal emails, photos, financial files were among the documents, amounting to about 9GB.

Minutes before the legally enforced ending of the campaign, Macron's movement issued a statement warning about a "massive hacking attack." En Marche! explained that these documents had been hacked over a period of several weeks, that some of them were genuine and without any compromising content. Other documents in the data trove, however, appeared to have been fabricated.

Macron had already become, by far, the most targeted candidate by hackers during the campaign. The timing was evidently aimed at bringing chaos to the last hours of the French campaign, but the leaks had no apparent impact on the final result. In fact the leak might have had the opposite effect from what the hackers hoped.

In France, 2017 proved an ideal year to run as an independent candidate, as a rare political vacuum emerged, and the results show the extent of Emmanuel Macron's national sweep to a resounding victory over Le Pen, the far right candidate who was his major opponent.