The decision to engage in a hazardous war was nevertheless the Emperor’s
responsibility, although the role of public opinion should not be ignored. The crisis when it arose would be unexpected, short and intense. The conservative press responded in bellicose terms to the announcement on 3 July of the candidature of the Prussian Prince Leopold for the Spanish throne. Hohenzollern monarchs on the Rhine and Pyrenean frontiers appeared to threaten encirclement. Although the Emperor and Ollivier might have been willing to accept a simple Prussian
withdrawal of this candidature, conservatives in the Corps législatif demanded guarantees which the Prussian chancellor Bismarck refused in terms calculated to enflame the situation in the famous Ems telegram. Another humiliating foreign policy reversal and a possible parliamentary defeat would have thrown the bases of the revised constitution, and particularly the Emperor’s personal power, into doubt.
In these circumstances Napoléon and Ollivier appear to have weakly accepted the advice of the Empress, the foreign minister the Duc de Gramont, and the more authoritarian Bonapartists to opt for war in the hope that victory would further consolidate the regime. Military credits – in effect a declaration of war – were voted by the Corps législatif on 15 July: 245 deputies voted in favour, ten against and seven abstained revealing that many republicans and almost the entire liberal opposition had rallied. The initial public response was quite positive, throughout the country, and especially in the towns, although this was probably as much out of a sense of resignation rather than real enthusiasm. In Paris and frontier departments in the north-east, where people still remembered the cruelty of the Prussian occupiers in 1815, huge crowds gathered in the streets to see the troops leave for the front, singing patriotic songs, including – by special permission of the Interior Ministry – the republican hymn, the Marseillaise. With the exception of a small minority of revolutionary militants, even republicans felt obliged to rally to the cause of national defence. There was every confidence in the ability of the army to achieve rapid victory. Recently, historians have pointed to the development of an embryonic ‘Sacred Union’ in 1870 similar to that of 1914. Peasants appear to have become Frenchmen well before the Third Republic despite arguments to the
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contrary by the American historian, Eugen Weber. Only the extreme left, not represented in parliament and more then ever isolated in this situation, continued to manifest an irreconcilable opposition to both the regime and what they perceived to be its war. Even so, this apparent union concealed efforts by the various political groupings to improve their situation. Above all, in 1870 there were the efforts of the authoritarian Bonapartists, marginalised in the precious year’s elections, to reverse the liberalising trend and weaken the Ollivier government.
Reports of a French victory, in an insignificant engagement at Sarrebrück on 2
August, were greeted with great enthusiasm. The first defeats on 4 and 6 August were a massive shock. Rumours spread and with them panic. In Paris, Lyon and Marseille during the first two weeks of August demonstrators had already begun to call for the Republic as the only means of saving France. The Emperor’s response to the deepening military crisis was to replace the Ollivier ministry on 9 August with a government made up of authoritarian Bonapartists under General Cousin-Montauban. At the same time, efforts were made to mobilise more men and to re-establish popular morale. It was too late. The French army had gone to war
suffering from major structural weaknesses, compounded by the absence of
reform. One of the paradoxes of the situation was that the Emperor had been well aware of these deficiencies and still had chosen to risk war. The army was, in practice, better prepared to deal with internal security problems than with a major European campaign. In terms of its training and equipment, it was unprepared. Its mobilisation procedures resulted in chaos. It suffered from a catastrophic lack of central coordination and the Emperor’s presence with the armies and constant interference only made this worse. Certainly, he had not inherited his uncle’s military genius. Elan, frontal attacks and the spirit of improvisation, of muddling through, would cost the army dearly. The heroic efforts of its officers and men were no compensation for the high command’s inability to achieve the strategic
concentration of its forces which alone might have compensated for numerical inferiority.
In an effort to relieve the army of the Rhine which was encircled at Metz,
Napoléon and Marshal MacMahon led another army into a trap at Sedan. The
Emperor surrendered on 2 September. News of this humiliating capitulation was received in Paris on the evening of 3 September and became public knowledge during the following day. The contrast with past military glory was extreme. With this the Empire lost all credit. It simply faded away. Catastrophic defeat had destroyed its claims to legitimacy. In this political vacuum, the small group of 27
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republican deputies in the Corps législatif demanded the replacement of the regime. They were supported by crowds which on 4 September, as in 1848, invaded the Palais Bourbon. There was no resistance and no bloodshed. Troops and police guarding the building had been unwilling to resort to force against the
demonstrators in such an uncertain political situation. The more moderate among the republican députés de Paris seized their opportunity and established a Provisional Government of National Defense partly to prevent the much feared seizure of power by the Parisian revolutionaries, partly from a determination to re-organise the military effort. This would be presided over by the military governor of Paris, General Trochu. A similar, unopposed republican take-over had occurred in Lyon and Marseille even before the news of events in the capital had been received. Elsewhere, in the provinces news of military defeat and revolution frequently came as a great surprise. The Imperial administration collapsed and only the republicans had the organisation and record of consistent opposition which allowed them to present themselves as the legitimate successors to the Empire.
Thus, Republican notables were able to take over local administration virtually without opposition. There were odd exceptions: at Tourcoing (Nord) workers
demonstrated against their employers, and peasants in a number of places were reported to have complained that the Emperor had been ‘betrayed by the rich and the republicans’ (Corbin 1992). Generally, even the conservative press, like the Mémorial de Lille (5 September) called for unity in defence of the nation. If the liberal Empire had attracted substantial support from all social groups, and in particular had satisfied the demand of the social elites for a greater role in decision making, military defeat represented governmental failure on a scale sufficient to destroy the regime’s legitimacy.
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6
Conclusion
After Sedan, Napoléon remained a prisoner in Germany for over six months, until his release in March 1871. Subsequently, he established his family in England, in a mansion at Camden Place, Chiselhurst. There he began to plan another coup d’état, but the continued deterioration of his health made this an unrealistic prospect. He died on 9 January 1873 following an operation to remove a stone from his bladder.
This was not, however, the end of Bonapartism. The outbreak of the Paris
Commune, within days of the deposed ruler’s arrival in Britain, which culminated in the slaughter of 20, 000 men and women by the former imperial army, released from its German prisoner-of-war camps for the purpose, revealed once more the intensity of social fear within the elites and the potential for conflict in French society. The death of the discredited Emperor had left Bonapartists with an attractive candidate for the throne in the person of his son, born in 1856. By 1874, a propaganda campaign in favour of the Prince-Imperial supported by over 70
newspapers and an outpouring of pamphlets and prints was being organised by former pillars of the Empire such as Rouher and Pietri. In the general election of January–March 1876, some 75 Bonapartist deputies were elected, notably in
the south-west. At its peak in October 1877, there were 104 Bonapartist deputies. They were overwhelmingly conservative and clerical, wealthy and paternalistic, and enjoying solid local political bases – men like Granier de Cassagnac in Gers, Echassériaux in Charente and the Baron de Bourgoigne in the Nièvre. Elsewhere, although much of the previous popular support for a democratic Bonapartism was draining away to the republicans, a latent sympathy survived. This continued to associate the Empire with prosperity and attracted support in regions as diverse as 64
the cereal cultivating plains of the Beauce in the Paris basin and the vineyards of the Hérault. There were also many sympathisers within the bureaucracy and the army. However, with the futile death of the Prince-Imperial in Africa, fighting the Zulus with the British army, the movement largely expired.
How should we conclude? Previous assessments have very much reflected
historians’ personalities and contemporaneous public concerns. These have
ranged from the political stability of the early Third Republic to the need to promote economic development and political stability during the inter-war depression and the period of post-war reconstruction, as well as the emergence of de Gaulle at the head of another ‘Bonapartist’ regime. The label has been used as an explanatory category by both historians and political sociologists, and as a term of abuse by politicians and journalists. In the aftermath of the mid-century crisis, given the intensity of the social fear caused by the 1848 Revolution, the preference of elites for a strong authoritarian government was not surprising. Conservatives would probably have made a pact with the devil in order to safeguard their property and privileges. Indeed, much wider sections of the population desperately desired a return to order and prosperity, to ‘normality’ as they conceived it. The parallels with Germany in 1933 and the rise of Hitler are, in this respect, striking. The authoritarian option carried substantial risks, however. It involved granting considerable power to a single individual, an opportunist with his own agenda, his own strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, effective government would depend on the ruler’s physical and mental well-being and Napoléon III’s capacity to rule was soon reduced by persistent ill-health and premature ageing. In the longer term, the dangers of personal rule would become increasingly apparent to many erstwhile supporters of the regime, in a series of policy decisions which appeared contrary to the interests of powerful vested interest groups. From personal inclination, and under pressure, Napoléon III was at least prepared to adapt and to engage in a process of transition from authoritarianism towards a more liberal political system.
Recent experience in Eastern Europe has provided some insights into the
difficulties involved. A sense of expectancy builds up which is difficult to satisfy.
Latent tensions once again are openly displayed as pressure from above eases and as social and political groups feel able to compete for power. What had begun as a series of voluntary concessions made possible by the regime’s success against the menace of revolution, very rapidly turned into enforced concessions to pressure from the socio-political elites upon whose collaboration the regime depended.
Moreover, the impact of these reforms was always reduced by the Emperor’s
continued determination to pursue his personal policies at the expense of what 65
important business circles as well as the Church and its clerical supporters saw as their vital interests. Taken together with a succession of foreign policy failures, this ensured widening support for the reinforcement of parliamentary control over the errant monarch. Unable to win over the urban masses and faced with a gradual weakening in the loyalty of the rural population, the Emperor finally conceded a
‘liberal’ constitution which, while retaining much of his personal power especially in matters of defence and foreign policy, substantially reinforced the potential for parliamentary control. In spite of this substantial weakening of Napoléon’s personal power, and the accompanying decline in his prestige, the plebiscite in May 1870 had seemed to mark a new beginning. Even then, if war had been avoided a liberal empire still would have encountered considerable difficulty. However, this is mere speculation. The propensity for war was an integral part of Bonapartism as defined by Napoléon III. But success in waging war depended on military
efficiency and neither the organisation of the French army nor the quality of its leadership made it fit for war against Prussia. If, then, the experience of the Second Empire offers a lesson, it is simply that authoritarian government (while it might appear to offer an attractive solution in a moment of intense social crisis) is, due to the brutality of its origins, more likely to reinforce than reduce social and political divisions and, in the longer term, is likely to prove to be an extremely inefficient and dangerous method of conducting affairs.
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