Napoleon III and the French Second Empire

by Roger D. Price

  Cornu, in conversation with the well-connected British political economist Nassau William Senior, described his ‘mission’ as ‘a devotion first to the Napoleonic dynasty, and then to France . . . His duty to his dynasty is to perpetuate it. His duty to France is to give her influence abroad and prosperity at home’ (Senior 1878 II: 115). Even when he relaxed with such old friends, his manner made it impossible for them to forget his rank. Moreover, he rarely spoke openly and unambiguously, and outside this narrow circle most contemporary assessments were provided by political critics.

  Louis-Napoléon’s objectives would be spelled out in a letter to his cousin

  Napoléon-Jérôme: ‘When one bears our name and is head of government, there are two things to do: satisfy the interests of the masses, and secure the loyalty of the upper classes.’ This would require a constant juggling act. His basic ideas were stated quite early in his career in a series of pamphlets. These included most notably Les Reflections politiques (1832), Les Idées napoléoniennes (1839) – based closely on the writings of Napoléon I and on Las Cases’ Mémorial – and L’Extinction du paupérism e (1844). Although the presentation was vague, imprecise and replete with contradictions, these writings, reflecting the utopian optimism of the 1830s and 1840s, were to serve as his ‘guiding ideas’ (Plessis 1985: 9–10, quoting a letter from Napoléon to Walewski in early 1859). His objectives can be characterised by a determination to eliminate the party divisions created by the French Revolution which he believed were responsible for political instability. As heir to the glories of the First Empire, he saw himself as the incarnation of patriotic unity. The role of a future emperor, his authority legitimised by ‘universal suffrage’, would be to 9

  represent the nation. Although sharing with conservatives a determination to safeguard public order, Louis-Napoléon was distinguished by this apparent

  commitment to ‘popular sovereignty’. Periodic plebiscites would serve to ratify the regime’s general policies, as well as to re-affirm the ‘mystical link between Emperor and people’ (Campbell 1978: 4). Through its vote the people would

  delegate power to the Emperor and legitimise his authority (Emerit 1937: 198). The powers of representative assemblies – representative only of the particular interests of deputies (letter to Cornu, quoted in Girard 1986: 30) – were to be reduced to a minimum. A commitment to the principles of 1789, and particularly to equality before the law and to popular sovereignty, was thus combined with belief in the need for strong, centralised government. He assumed confidently that only the Bonapartist dynasty could represent effectively these twin principles of order and democracy. Internal and external policies would be closely related. Revenge for the defeats of France by the allies in 1814–15 and a rejection of the stipulations of the Peace of Vienna which followed were the essential means of reinforcing both the legitimacy of a future restored empire and the glory of France.

  Our immediate need will be to consider the significance of the mid-century

  crisis (1846–51) which created the circumstances in which Louis-Napoléon

  Bonaparte was able, first to secure election to the powerful position of President of the Republic and, subsequently, to make use of the authority of this office in order to seize more permanent and unrestricted power through the re-establishment of the hereditary empire first created by his illustrious uncle. This Second Empire has usually been divided into two phases by historians – the authoritarian in which decisions were largely taken by the Emperor and his close advisors, ministers were responsible to the monarch rather than to a parliament which had very limited powers, the press strictly censored, political meetings banned, election results manipulated, and protest firmly repressed by police action, and the liberal resulting from a gradual easing of the restrictions on political activity. However, in spite of the onset of reforms from 1860, the regime remained far from liberal until the introduction of far-reaching constitutional reform in 1869. The repeated

  descriptions of growing political difficulties, rising opposition, together with the exhaustion and increasing irresolution of the Emperor and leading ministers seems to offer a clear linear vision of inevitable collapse. However, this approach ignores the very real problems of regime transition once the regime’s leading figure(s) had taken the decision(s) to adapt to changing political circumstances. Would reforms which freed political activity and allowed strikes, and which thereby created a 10

  sense of expectancy and demands for further change, provoke the collapse or, by reducing discontent, promote the re-consolidation of the regime? The current problems of post-Communist Russia illustrate the difficulties of transition from authoritarian to more democratic political systems.

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  2

  Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, President of the

  Second Republic

  The February Revolution of 1848 and its aftermath

  The Revolution which overthrew the regime of Louis-Philippe (the so-called July Monarchy) and 1ed to the establishment of a Second Republic (1848–52) brought to power through acclamation by the crowds of insurgents a Provisional

  Government composed of ministers, headed by the aristocratic poet Alphonse de Lamartine, who owed their republican credentials to parliamentary and journalistic activity. Inexperienced and cautious and being largely men of some substance themselves, they were determined to restore order to the streets and to resist pressure for immediate and substantial social reform. Instead of taking the political initiative, they preferred to await the election of a Constituent Assembly which would prepare a new republican constitution. This would be elected by manhood suffrage, a concession ministers had felt bound to make and which inaugurated a new era in politics, replacing as it did the very restricted electorate of previous regimes. The results were far from those which radical republicans and socialists had dreamed about and conservatives dreaded. The April elections saw the

  nomination by the predominantly small town and rural electorate of a parliament with a large majority of moderate republican and conservative deputies drawn from the educated, property-owning classes. They, too, were anxious to re-establish public order which had been disturbed by the revolution and the immense wave of expectancy it had created among the impoverished popular classes, particularly the 12

  relatively politicised Parisian lowermiddle and working classes. Radical

  republicans, anxious to promote further democratisation and far-reaching social reform, were dismayed. A clash was unavoidable. The decision in June to close the Parisian National Workshops provided the occasion. These had been established by the Provisional Government as a means of providing work relief for the mass of unemployed. Recovery from the extremely severe crisis caused by successive poor cereal harvests and potato disease from 1845, and intensified by declining demand for manufactured goods and lack of confidence among investors, had been well underway by February 1848. However, the economic situation had deteriorated sharply again as a result of the crisis of confidence caused by the revolution itself.

  The Workshops, which had been for the new moderate republican ministers a

  temporary expedient, were viewed by socialist intellectuals and many workers as the first step in a thorough re-casting of society, resulting from the creation of a network of producer cooperatives. Their dream was to eliminate the capitalist employer and the exploitation of labour. The government’s decision to close the National Workshops in order to secure financial savings and balance the budget as well as to eliminate large and increasingly threatening daily gatherings of workers thus had enormous symbolic as well as practical significance. The final effort in Paris to resist the ‘reactionary’ tendencies of the government took the form of the June insurrection in which political radicals and workers, drawn mainly from the ranks of the skilled artisanal crafts, sought to seize power. Their rising was crushed brutally by military forces mobilised by the moderate republican government and commanded by its defence minister, General Cavaignac. Even then,
the threat to social order which had so frightened the propertied classes did not disappear entirely. Democrats and socialists continued to organise. Economic conditions remained depressed. There was widespread fear of another attempted insurrection.

  Conservative publicists combined historical experience with myth to create a nightmare vision of social revolution involving not only a repetition of the Terror of 1793, but also the total dispossession of the propertied classes. This

  unmistakably informed their political behaviour. In this situation, it appeared essential to most of the deputies engaged in preparing the new constitution that the country be provided with a president possessing wide powers and the authority derived from popular sovereignty. The result would be the election on 10

  December 1848 of the nephew of the great Emperor as President of the Republic.

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  The Presidential elections

  When he first stood as a candidate in by-elections in June and September 1848, Louis-Napoléon had enjoyed substantial success in spite of little press support or organisation. Conservative leaders and journalists had ridiculed him initially, but this contempt for the Bonapartist pretender turned into an opportunistic and qualified adherence as it became evident that he was likely to attract substantial popular electoral support often, and alarmingly, in spite of the advice to voters from their social ‘superiors’. The British ambassador Lord Normanby wrote that

  ‘history affords no parallel to this spectacle of all the eminent men of all former political parties uniting in support of a man whom not one of them would personally have selected. They, in fact, follow whilst they assume to direct, a popular impulse which they could not resist’ (Normanby 1851 II: 361). Social elites were largely divided between squabbling monarchist factions – the Legitimist supporters of the Bourbons driven into exile following the July Revolution of 1830 with their ideological commitment to absolutist, hierarchical, paternalistic and theocratic political and social systems, and the Orleanist supporters of Louis-Philippe, deposed in February 1848, equally conservative in terms of their attitudes towards social reform, but liberal in their greater individualism and confidence in the virtues of parliamentary representation based on a restricted suffrage. The leaders of these factions were unable to reach agreement on a candidate likely to defeat Louis-Napoléon and came increasingly to support his candidature. This tactic would at least reduce the impact of their divisions and allow them to take advantage of his popularity. It would additionally facilitate the struggle against what they believed was a growing socialist menace. Most conservative politicians saw the Bonapartist prince as a weakling, a clown they could use. Thiers quipped

  contemptuously ‘We will give him women and we will lead him’ (quoted by

  Dansette 1961: 243). In the absence of a significant group of Bonapartist notables, it seemed certain that if elected he would continue to depend upon their support.

  Moreover, he appeared to be committed to the restoration of social order. At the very least his election would prevent the consolidation of the republic. Influential figures among the former leaders of the ‘loyal’ or ‘dynastic’ opposition to Louis-Philippe such as Molé, Barrot and, most notably, Thiers played an especially important role in rallying conservatives. The only real alternative, the moderate republican General Cavaignac, possessed the merit of having suppressed the June insurrection, but he was still too much of a republican for most conservatives. He attracted support from the port cities in which the ‘black’ legend of the economic 14

  Table 2.1 Results of Presidential elections, 10 December 1848

  Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

  5, 534, 520 (74.2%)

  General Cavaignac

  1, 448, 302

  Ledru-Rollin (radical republican)

  371, 431

  Raspail (socialist)

  36, 964

  Lamartine (moderate republican)

  17, 914

  General Changarnier

  4, 687

  disaster caused by the British maritime blockade during the Empire was still strong, and from some Legitimist and clerical regions, e.g. Morbihan and Finistère in Brittany and Bouches-du-Rhône in the south-east which remained bitterly hostile to Bonapartism. As if to illustrate the complexity of voting behaviour, these same groups in departments like Tarn and Tarnet-Garonne voted for Bonaparte against Cavaignac, who was condemned by both his republicanism and the support of local Protestant elites. Many of the more radical republicans also felt unable to support the major republican candidate. In their eyes he would remain the ‘butcher of June’.

  Frequently, they appear to have believed that Napoléon I had continued the work of the revolution and failed to see a vote for his self-proclaimed heir as entirely incompatible with their own republican principles. This was the great strength of the Bonapartist legend. It allowed Louis-Napoléon to present himself as ‘all things to all men’, as a leader above existing party struggles. His victory in December was overwhelming (see Table 2.1).

  In Paris Louis-Napoléon gained 58 per cent of the votes cast but, significantly, support for the author of the apparently socialistic pamphlet on the Extinction du paupérisme was highest in the popular quartiers in which both before and even during the June insurrection there had already been plenty of evidence of

  Bonapartist sentiment. The democrat and former Interior Minister Ledru-Rollin and the socialist Raspail shared a mere 12.4 per cent of the vote, a pattern repeated in most large cities. However, in spite of this strong showing, it was the rural vote which would continue to provide the bedrock of Bonaparte’s popular support for the next two decades.

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  Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Prince-President

  Following his appointment, the new president named a government made up

  mostly of former Orleanists headed by Odillon Barrot. This appeared to confirm to the supporters of the conservative alliance, the so-called ‘Party of Order’, that they could rely on his subservience. However, more perceptive observers like the Austrian diplomat Apponyi were already observing that ‘if they believe

  themselves able to do anything with him and to dominate him, they are badly mistaken’ (Apponyi 1948: 78). The essential objective of these monarchist

  ministers remained the restoration of order. In the short term, repression depended upon police action against left-wing political activists. Following the June insurrection, a series of laws and bureaucratic processes which restricted political activity were introduced. They provided the legal basis for both an increasingly authoritarian republic and the Imperial regime which would follow it. For the longer term, conservatives looked forward to the moral re-education of the

  population. The objective of a new education law introduced in March 1850 (the loi Falloux) was defined by Michel, a member of the extra-parliamentary committee which prepared it, as being ‘to train a child to the yoke of obedience, to create in him a principle of energy which will enable him to resist his passions, accept of his own free will the law of labour and duty and contract habits of order and regularity . . .‘ (Price 1972: 254). Deferential behaviour was to be internalised by the young. The essential agents of this were to be the clergy. The notorious anti-clerical Adolphe Thiers, another member of the preparatory committee, insisted on this with breathtaking cynicism. Priests would be encouraged both to teach and to supervise a thoroughly purged secular teaching force, the members of which would also be expected to inculcate a conservative and intensely religious ideology. The clergy responded very positively to this opportunity to increase their influence, but at the cost of a considerable intensification of anti-clericalism on the left. More immediately, an effort was made to restore social order through the continuous tightening of repressive measures directed at a left united, from the Autumn of 1848, under the démocrate-socialiste banner. This led to the demobilisation of many of its intimidated supporters, to the fragmentation of its organisation as the more persistent activists were driven undergroun
d, and to the bankruptcy of most of its newspapers as a result of repeated fines and suspensions. The election of a substantial minority of démocrate-socialiste deputies in the May 1849 general elections, as well as in subsequent by-elections, nevertheless revealed that the 16

  threat from the left was far from dead. In particular, its ability to attract support in some rural areas, especially in the south-east, reinforced old concerns about the principle of manhood suffrage. The apparent unreliabihty of peasant support for the conservative cause created the nightmare possibility of victory by the left in both the legislative and presidential elections due in 1852. It was intolerable, according to the state prosecutor at Rouen, that ‘the communists [be offered] the possibility of becoming kings one day by an electoral coup d’état. Society must not commit suicide’. The provincial newspaper L’Opinion of Auch echoed many others in asking whether ‘the fate of a great nation [can] be abandoned to this blind power .

  . . ?’ It concluded that ‘Universal suffrage will bring the ruin of France’. Legislation was introduced on 31 May 1850 which imposed new preconditions for electoral registration, including three years’ prior residence in a constituency, the absence of a criminal record, and ‘eligibility’ to pay the personal tax. This disqualified 31.4

  per cent of the electorate at a stroke and, as was intended, much higher proportions in the industrial and major urban centres. Significantly, if he did not oppose the new law, the President distanced himself publicly from this legislation, leaving all the running in its preparation to the monarchist majority in parliament. Although this legislation seemed likely to guarantee their electoral success in 1852, it did little to reduce conservative hysteria. Démoc-soc propaganda encouraged the disenfranchised to seize their rights, weapons in hand if necessary, on election day.

  Although repression enjoyed considerable success and fear of persecution forced many republicans out of politics, démoc-soc organisation survived in fragmented form. This was particularly true in under-policed rural regions of the centre and south in which substantial mass support had previously been built up. There, domiciliary searches, arbitrary arrests and continued interference by the