CITIZEN--PRESIDENT--EMPEROR.
The date is December 20, 1848, and. M. Marrast, President of the
National Assembly, invites Citizen Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to
take the oath required by the Constitution on his election as President
of the French Republic.
The Citizen, in evening dress, with the riband of the Légion d’Honneur
en sautoir, ascends the tribune, raises his right hand, and, with the
slightest tremor in his voice, says, “I swear.”
What is his record?
1836.--Deported to America for attempting to procure a military rising
in his favour at Strasburg.
1840.--Sentenced to perpetual confinement in the fortress of Ham for a
similar attempt at Boulogne.
1846.--“Broke prison” and reached London.
In August, 1849, the Prince-President was at Tours, where he opened a
new railway. Miss Howard was of the party, and was found lodgings at the
residence of the Receiver-General, the Préfecture. That functionary was
at “the waters” with his wife, and when he heard that the English
lady--the Prince’s “favourite” for so many years--was actually staying
under his Prefectorial roof-tree he “made trouble.” Louis Napoleon wrote
on the subject to Odillon Barrot:
Your brother has shown me a letter from a M. André, to which I
should disdain to reply did it not contain some false statements
which it is right to refute.
A lady in whom I take the highest interest, accompanied by one of
her friends (a lady) and by two persons of my household, wished to
see the carrousel at Saumur, and from there they came to Tours.
But, fearing they might not find lodgings, they asked me to take
steps to obtain them some.
When I arrived at Tours I told a counsellor of the Préfecture he
would oblige me by looking for an appartement for Comte Bacciochi
and two ladies of my acquaintance. Chance, and their evil star, led
them, it appears, to the house of M. André, where--I know not
why--it was thought that one of them bore the name of Bacciochi.
She has never used that name, and if such a mistake has been
committed it is by strangers, and unknown to me or to the lady in
question.
I should like to know why M. André, without having taken the
trouble to ascertain the truth of the matter, wishes to make me
responsible for the use made of his house and for the false name
attributed to one of the persons. Does a proprietor make a good use
of hospitality whose first care is to scrutinize the past life of
anybody whom he receives? How many women, a hundred times less
pure, a hundred times less devoted, a hundred times less excusable
than the lady who lodged at M. André’s would have been received by
him with all possible honours because they would have borne the
name of their husbands to conceal their culpable liaisons!
I detest this pedantic strictness, which badly conceals the âme
sèche, indulgent for himself, inexorable for others. True religion
is not intolerant. It does not seek to raise storms in a glass of
water, to make a scandal for nothing, and to change into a crime a
simple accident or an excusable mistake.
M. André, who I am told is a Puritan, has not sufficiently
meditated upon the passage of the Scriptures where Christ,
addressing those as little charitable as M. André, says on the
subject of a woman they wished to stone, “Let him, etc.” Let him
practise this teaching. As to myself, I accuse nobody, and I admit
I am culpable for seeking in illegitimate ties an affection of
which my heart is in need. However, as until now my position has
prevented me from marrying, as in the midst of the cares of
government I have not, alas! in my country, from which I have been
so long absent, either intimate friends, or youthful liaisons, or
relations to give me the sweetness of the family, I may be
pardoned, I think, for entertaining an affection which does no harm
to anybody, and to which I do not seek to afficher myself.
To return to M. André, if he believes, as he declares, his house to
have been soiled by the presence of an unmarried woman, I beg you
will let him know that, on my side, I greatly regret that a lady of
a devotion so pure and of a character so elevated should have
stumbled by chance into a house where, under the mask of religion,
there remains but the ostentation of a formal virtue without
Christian charity.
Make whatever use you like of this letter.[112]
In November, 1851, the imminence of the coup d’état was talked about all
over Paris as being necessary and anticipated. In the salons it was a
topic of “chaff”; at the Elysée (the Prince-President’s abode) it was
studied in detail; the Church hoped for it; the people expected it; the
army reckoned upon it. The plan (says the pseudonymous Baron d’Ambès)
was sketched at the end of October by Saint-Arnaud and Maupas, whom
Louis Napoleon informed, about this time, of Changarnier’s conspiracy
against the Elysée. To wait longer would be fatal. The lists of those
who were to be proscribed were prepared in September. The programme for
December 1 was drawn up to the most minute details. From 3 to 4 a.m. the
police commissaries were to be received by the Préfet. At 5.30 the
Palace of the Assembly would be occupied. At 6 arrest of Generals,
representatives of Parliament, heads of societies, and dangerous
democrats. At 6.30 proclamations were to be affixed to the walls, troops
to be posted near the houses of those persons who were to be arrested,
and positions for fighting were to be taken up by the military. By 7
o’clock it was to be “all over.” At 8 the Minister of the Interior was
to send instructions to the Préfets.
The “men of the coup d’état” were divided into three classes:
First, Saint-Arnaud, Morny, and Maupas.
Second, General Magnan, Persigny, and Fleury.
Third, Baroche, Rouher, F. Barrot, De Parieu, Dumas, Véron, Romieu,
Fould, Magne, Drouyn de Lhuys, De Royer, Schneider, Fortoul, Espinasse,
Billault, etc.
The programme was carried out to the letter on December 1, and a year
later the Prince-President had exchanged that title for the supreme one
of Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. The Bonapartists’ excuse for
the “coup” was that it was absolutely necessary to “sweep the board” of
the President’s opponents in Parliament and out of it, and also in the
army. There was sanguinary fighting in the streets, it is true, and the
President was branded throughout the World as a perjurer and a criminal
of the deepest dye, who had “waded through blood to a throne.” To many
historians of the period he remains the “Man of December.” To later
writers, not overburdened with a knowledge of the facts, he is the “Man
of Sedan,” a pitiful and an ignominious figure, unworthy of sympathy.
The new Constitution was promulgated on January 14, 1852. It confided
the Government of the French Republic for ten years to “Prince Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, the present President of the Republic.” (Prince
Jérôme, ex-King of Westphalia, was President of the Senate.)
On November 4 the Prince sent a message to the Senate, saying that the
nation had “loudly manifested its will to re-establish the Empire.” This
message was dated from the Palace of St. Cloud. The Prince had now
governed France for four years. A Committee of the Senate was appointed
to draw up a report, and on November 6 it submitted to the Senate
several resolutions, the series being known as “Senatus Consultum.”
Article I declared that the “Imperial dynasty is re-established. Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte is Emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon
III.” The imperial dignity was made hereditary from male to male, “to
the perpetual exclusion of the females and their descendants.” The
Senate passed and signed all the articles, and on Sunday, November 21,
the voting “for the Empire” began, and lasted several days.
On December 2, 1852, the anniversary of the coup d’état, in the
afternoon, the Emperor, who had been “proclaimed” at St. Cloud the
previous evening, made his official entry into his capital. It was wet
and cold, and, although all Paris had turned out to see the military
pageant, the enthusiasm might have been greater than it was. The
Emperor, mounted on a showy charger, looked anything but bright. He
[Illustration: MR. ALFRED AUSTIN
(POET LAUREATE)
was Special Correspondent of the _Standard_ during the
Franco-German War in 1870-71. His accounts of his interviews with
Bismarck were everywhere read. Mr. Austin is one of the two English
survivors of the campaign. His sonnet on the Prince Imperial,
written a few days after the news of the tragedy in Zululand was
received, is reproduced by the Poet Laureate’s special permission.
The photograph of Mr. Austin, taken in 1870, was kindly lent by
Mrs. Austin.
_To face p. 272._]
did not once take off his General’s plumed tricorne, but contented
himself with acknowledging the salutations of the crowd by occasionally
touching his hat. By his own orders he rode alone; the escort, separated
from his own by a considerable space, front and rear. This was an
example of the pluck which he invariably displayed both as President and
as Emperor.
During his four years’ Presidency of the Republic he had been surrounded
by open foes in France and by opponents who lay in ambush awaiting
opportunities to strike. Foreign opinion, however, was less hostile
prior to than it became after the coup d’état, which was the signal for
an outburst of almost universal execration. Even Queen Victoria, who,
some three years later, was entertaining, and was entertained by, the
Emperor and Empress, condemned the act of December, 1851. Early in 1852
the Queen, in a letter to King Frederick William of Prussia, wrote:[113]
The political stratagem in Paris will have taken your Majesty back
to the days of your youth.... Louis Napoleon had tried to freshen
up the memories of all European Governments by the reintroduction
of the eagle on the standards of the French army, and by allusions
to changes of the boundaries, etc. In spite of this, I firmly
believe in the maintenance of peace. But I am made much more
anxious by the thought that those Continental Governments which
have gone too far in their blind reaction, led astray by the Paris
example, are of the erroneous opinion that a State is likely to
last eternally which has been raised on the ruins of civil liberty
with the blood of the middle classes of France, and that they may
be encouraged to widen the breach between them and their peoples,
and completely destroy the belief in the political morality of
Governments in general.