This tendency gradually became accentuated in the successive ministries
which the king called to his aid; the republican and liberal aspirations
on the one hand and the Bonapartist and Imperial souvenirs--greatly
strengthened by the imposing ceremonial attending the return of the
ashes of Napoleon to the capital in December, 1840--combined to make
difficult the task of the government. Paris, which, in the words of M.
Duruy, "loves to _fronder_ as soon as it ceases to be afraid," was
entirely given over to the opposition. At the opening of the session of
the Chambre in 1848, the ministers persuaded the king to declare in a
discourse that a hundred of the deputies were enemies of the throne. The
republicans planned a great reunion at a banquet to be given in the
twelfth arrondissement, the ministry forbade the assembly, the conflicts
began in the streets between the citizens and the soldiers, the préfet
de police, who, in his daily reports, was able to dispose of the 12th of
February in this paragraph: "Order and tranquillity continue to prevail
in Paris: no extraordinary agitation is to be observed," was obliged,
ten days later, to conclude a long account of the manifestations in the
capital by a recommendation to hold the army in readiness for an
organized attack "in case the insurrection recommences." It did
recommence, that night, and the next day Marshal Gérard announced to the
insurgents in the Palais-Royal the abdication of the king.
He abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Comte de Paris, with the
Duchesse d'Orléans for regent, and the duchess was left in the Tuileries
when the king, taking off his grand cordon and his uniform, depositing
his sword on a table, arrayed himself with his wife's assistance in a
bourgeois costume and took his departure for Saint-Cloud. The duchess,
with her two sons, was escorted to the Chamber, where the president
declared that her regency should be proclaimed by that body, and
Lamartine was in the midst of a speech advising the constitution of a
provisory government for that purpose when he was interrupted by the
invasion of a revolutionary mob shouting: "A bas la Régence! Vive la
République! A bas les corrompus!" The little Comte de Paris was seized
by the throat by one of these demonstrative citizens, and only saved
from being choked by the intervention of a national guardsman. The
provisional government proclaimed the Republic; before the Hôtel de
Ville, Lamartine, in a burst of eloquence, repelled the proposition of
the mob to adopt the red flag and secured the adoption of the tricolor,
and the provinces, following the lead of the capital, seemed to accept
the Republic.
But a stable administration of the city and the nation seemed more
unattainable than ever. The new government had to suppress popular
uprisings in the streets of Paris in March, in May, and in June; the new
Assemblée Nationale, elected by universal suffrage,--nine millions of
electors, instead of 220,000, as under the late monarchy,--made haste to
organize a new government consisting of a single president, to be
elected, and a single legislative body. The new president, elected by an
overwhelming majority, was Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the
Emperor. He was given power to nominate all the innumerable employés of
the government, to negotiate treaties, and to organize the army, but he
could not take command of the latter nor dissolve the Assemblée, and he
was not eligible for re-election. The two chief powers of the government
were not long in coming into collision; the legislative body, divided
into numerous factions, lacked decision and initiative, and it lost in
popular favor by the law of the 31st of May, 1850, which struck three
millions of electors from the lists by restricting the suffrage to those
only who could prove a continuous residence of three years in the
canton. The President, seizing his opportunity, demanded the repeal of
this law (November 4, 1851), and on the 2d of December following, by a
series of summary nocturnal arrests, succeeded in putting all the chiefs
of the various parties in the Assemblée, and all his most formidable
opponents, under lock and key. "I have broken out of the way of
legality," said he, "to re-enter that of the right;" and the nation, by
7,437,216 votes against 640,737, accepted the new constitution which he
proposed for it, the renewal of his power for ten years, the abolition
of the law of the 31st of May, and the dissolution of the Assemblée
Nationale. The Empire followed naturally, a year later, and was
ratified by the nation by an even more overwhelming majority.
So much obloquy has been attached to the person and the reign of this
sovereign, he has been made the object of such unlimited denunciation,
deserved and undeserved, at home and abroad, that it will doubtless come
as a surprise to many of our readers to find how liberal and enlightened
were at least many of the aims of his administration, and how
enthusiastically he was supported by the people that have since found no
terms too strong to express their detestation. "Napoleon III," says M.
Duruy, "at the very moment that he took possession of the throne, had
promised that liberty should one day crown the new political edifice.
After Solferino, he endeavored to introduce her again into our
institutions. He began this work by the decree of the 24th of November,
1860, which associated the Corps Législatif more directly with the
politics of the government. He continued it by the sénatus-consulte of
the 2d of December, 1861, which deprived the Emperor of the power of
decreeing extraordinary credits in the intervals of the sessions; by the
letter of the 19th of January, 1867, which gave the ministers the right
of appearing before the Chambers, in order that they might at any moment
render an account of their acts to the nation; by the laws on the press,
which was restored to its natural privileges, and on the popular
assemblages, of which a few were useful and a great many detestable
(11th of May and 6th of June, 1868). Finally, at the period when,
abroad, the unfortunate issue of the expedition to Mexico, and the
menacing position assumed in Germany by Prussia, after her victory of
Sadowa over the Austrians; in the interior, the progress of public
intelligence, favored by the general prosperity, had developed stronger
desires for freedom which the elections of 1869 made evident, the
Emperor renounced his personal authority, and by the sénatus-consulte of
the 20th of April, 1870, proposed to the French people the
transformation of the autocratic Empire into the liberal Empire. On the
8th of May, 7,300,000 citizens replied _yes_ to this question, against
1,500,000 who replied _no_."
Thus this dignified and candid historian does not hesitate to lay the
responsibility of the war of 1870-71, "most certainly, on the ministers,
the deputies, and the unreasoning folly of Paris." "Paris," says another
writer, an eye-witness, "was inflamed with a peculiar fever, and even
words changed their meaning. Workmen were maltreated on the Boulevard
des Italiens for having traversed it crying: '_Vive la Paix, vive la
Travail!_' ['Give us Peace! Hurrah for Labor!'] The courts themselves
interfered, and citizens were condemned to prison for having uttered
publicly this seditious cry: '_Vive la Paix!_'" The latest historian of
the war, the Commandant Rousset, who "has summed up, with more clearness
and force than any other, the political and military considerations
which explain its issue," in the opinion of the critics, defines as one
of the three principal causes of its disasters after the 4th of
September, the excessive importance attributed to the capital. The
necessity of delivering Paris paralyzed all the efforts of the armies of
the provinces, in depriving them of all liberty of action. "Enough can
never be said of the fatal incubus which weighed upon us in the shape of
the specious theory which certain pontiffs of the high strategy had
erected upon the abstract value of positions, and of entrenched camps,
nor of the amount of profit which the German army derived from the
disdain which it entertained for this theory." This inordinate
importance of the capital, as we have already seen in many instances, is
one of the most striking facts in the history of France.
[Illustration: "THE PROGRESS OF MUSIC." PLAFOND OF THE GRANDE SALLE DES
FÊTES IN THE NEW HOTEL DE VILLE.