Bonaparte had now to rid himself of Sieyès and those republicans who had

no desire to hand over the republic to one man, particularly of Moreau

and Masséna, his military rivals. The victory of Marengo (June 14, 1800)

momentarily in the balance, but secured by Desaix and Kellermann,

offered a further opportunity to his jealous ambition by increasing his

popularity. The royalist plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise (December 24,

1800) allowed him to make a clean sweep of the democratic republicans,

who despite their innocence were deported to Guiana, and to annul

Assemblies that were a mere show by making the senate omnipotent in

constitutional matters; but it was necessary for him to transform this

deceptive truce into the general pacification so ardently desired for

the last eight years. The treaty of Lunéville, signed in February 1801

with Austria who had been disarmed by Moreau's victory at Hohenlinden,

restored peace to the continent, gave nearly the whole of Italy to

France, and permitted Bonaparte to eliminate from the Assemblies all the

leaders of the opposition in the discussion of the Civil Code. The

Concordat (July 1801), drawn up not in the Church's interest but in that

of his own policy, by giving satisfaction to the religious feeling of

the country, allowed him to put down the constitutional democratic

Church, to rally round him the consciences of the peasants, and above

all to deprive the royalists of their best weapon. The "Articles

Organiques" hid from the eyes of his companions in arms and councillors

a reaction which, in fact if not in law, restored to a submissive

Church, despoiled of her revenues, her position as the religion of the

state. The peace of Amiens with England (March 1802), of which France's

allies, Spain and Holland, paid all the costs, finally gave the

peacemaker a pretext for endowing himself with a Consulate, not for ten

years but for life, as a recompense from the nation. The Rubicon was

crossed on that day: Bonaparte's march to empire began with the

constitution of the year X. (August 1802).

Internal reorganization.

Before all things it was now necessary to reorganize France, ravaged as

she was by the Revolution, and with her institutions in a state of utter

corruption. The touch of the master was at once revealed to all the

foreigners who rushed to gaze at the man about whom, after so many

catastrophes and strange adventures, Paris, "la ville lumière," and all

Europe were talking. First of all, Louis XV.'s system of roads was

improved and that of Louis XVI.'s canals developed; then industry put

its shoulder to the wheel; order and discipline were re-established

everywhere, from the frontiers to the capital, and brigandage

suppressed; and finally there was Paris, the city of cities! Everything

was in process of transformation: a second Rome was arising, with its

forum, its triumphal arches, its shows and parades; and in this new Rome

of a new Caesar fancy, elegance and luxury, a radiance of art and

learning from the age of Pericles, and masterpieces rifled from the

Netherlands, Italy and Egypt illustrated the consular peace. The Man of

Destiny renewed the course of time. He borrowed from the _ancien régime_

its plenipotentiaries; its over-centralized, strictly utilitarian

administrative and bureaucratic methods; and afterwards, in order to

bring them into line, the subservient pedantic scholasticism of its

university. On the basis laid down by the Constituent Assembly and the

Convention he constructed or consolidated the funds necessary for

national institutions, local governments, a judiciary system, organs of

finance, banking, codes, traditions of conscientious well-disciplined

labour, and in short all the organization which for three-quarters of a

century was to maintain and regulate the concentrated activity of the

French nation (see the section _Law and Institutions_). Peace and order

helped to raise the standard of comfort. Provisions, in this Paris which

had so often suffered from hunger and thirst, and lacked fire and light,

had become cheap and abundant; while trade prospered and wages ran high.

The pomp and luxury of the _nouveaux riches_ were displayed in the

salons of the good Joséphine, the beautiful Madame Tallien, and the

"divine" Juliette Récamier.

The republican opposition.

But the republicans, and above all the military, saw in all this little

but the fetters of system; the wily despotism, the bullying police, the

prostration before authority, the sympathy lavished on royalists, the

recall of the _émigrés_, the contempt for the Assemblies, the

purification of the Tribunate, the platitudes of the servile Senate, the

silence of the press. In the formidable machinery of state, above all in

the creation of the Legion of Honour, the Concordat, and the restoration

of indirect taxes, they saw the rout of the Revolution. But the

expulsion of persons like Benjamin Constant and Madame de Staël sufficed

to quell this Fronde of the salons. The expedition to San Domingo

reduced the republican army to a nullity; war demoralized or scattered

the leaders, who were jealous of their "comrade" Bonaparte; and Moreau,

the last of his rivals, cleverly compromised in a royalist plot, as

Danton had formerly been by Robespierre, disappeared into exile. In

contradistinction to this opposition of senators and republican

generals, the immense mass of the people received the ineffaceable

impression of Bonaparte's superiority. No suggestion of the possibility

of his death was tolerated, of a crime which might cut short his career.

The conspiracy of Cadoudal and Pichegru, after Bonaparte's refusal to

give place to Louis XVIII., and the political execution of the duc

d'Enghien, provoked an outburst of adulation, of which Bonaparte took

advantage to put the crowning touch to his ambitious dream.

Napoleon emperor May 18, 1804-April 6, 1814.

The decision of the senate on the 18th of May 1804, giving him the title

of emperor, was the counterblast to the dread he had excited.

Thenceforward "the brow of the emperor broke through the thin mask of

the First Consul." Never did a harder master ordain more imperiously,

nor understand better how to command obedience. "This was because," as

Goethe said, "under his orders men were sure of accomplishing their

ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspire them with

that kind of certainty." Indeed no man ever concentrated authority to

such a point, nor showed mental abilities at all comparable to his: an

extraordinary power of work, prodigious memory for details and fine

judgment in their selection; together with a luminous decision and a

simple and rapid conception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign

will. No head of the state gave expression more imperiously than this

Italian to the popular passions of the French of that day: abhorrence

for the emigrant nobility, fear of the _ancien régime_, dislike of

foreigners, hatred of England, an appetite for conquest evoked by

revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory. In this Napoleon was a

soldier of the people: because of this he judged and ruled his

contemporaries. Having seen their actions in the stormy hours of the

Revolution, he despised them and looked upon them as incapable of

disinterested conduct, conceited, and obsessed by the notion of

equality. Hence his colossal egoism, his habitual disregard of others,

his jealous passion for power, his impatience of all contradiction, his

vain untruthful boasting, his unbridled self-sufficiency and lack of

moderation--passions which were gradually to cloud his clear faculty of

reasoning. His genius, assisted by the impoverishment of two

generations, was like the oak which admits beneath its shade none but

the smallest of saplings. With the exception of Talleyrand, after 1808

he would have about him only mediocre people, without initiative,

prostrate at the feet of the giant: his tribe of paltry, rapacious and

embarrassing Corsicans; his admirably subservient generals; his selfish

ministers, docile agents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen

long years felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the

inevitable catastrophe.

So France had no internal history outside the plans and transformations

to which Napoleon subjected the institutions of the Consulate, and the

after-effects of his wars. Well knowing that his fortunes rested on the

delighted acquiescence of France, Napoleon expected to continue

indefinitely fashioning public opinion according to his pleasure. To his

contempt for men he added that of all ideas which might put a bridle on

his ambition; and to guard against them, he inaugurated the Golden Age

of the police that he might tame every moral force to his hand. Being

essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said, all demagogic

action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty, which he desired only for

himself. To make his will predominant, he stifled or did violence to

that of others, through his bishops, his gendarmes, his university, his

press, his catechism. Nourished like Frederick II. and Catherine the

Great in 18th-century maxims, neither he nor they would allow any of

that ideology to filter through into their rough but regular ordering of

mankind. Thus the whole political system, being summed up in the

emperor, was bound to share his fall.

Napoleon's political idea.

Although an enemy of idealogues, in his foreign policy Napoleon was

haunted by grandiose visions. A condottiere of the Renaissance living in

the 19th century, he used France, and all those nations annexed or

attracted by the Revolution, to resuscitate the Roman conception of the

Empire for his own benefit. On the other hand, he was enslaved by the

history and aggressive idealism of the Convention, and of the republican

propaganda under the Directory; he was guided by them quite as much as

he guided them. Hence the immoderate extension given to French activity

by his classical Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from

one to another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with

each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy,

interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains the

retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward, followed

by his criminal treatment of Venice, the foundation of the Cisalpine

republic--a foretaste of future annexations--the restoration of that

republic after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet inchoate

designs, the postponed solution of the Italian problem which the treaty

of Lunéville had raised.

Marengo inaugurated the political idea which was to continue its

development until his Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as yet only of

keeping the duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria, and preparing some

new enterprise in the East or in Egypt. The peace of Amiens, which cost

him Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce; whilst he was

gradually extending his authority in Italy, the cradle of his race, by

the union of Piedmont, and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa,

Parma, Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine Gaul,

laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing in the

Concordat for the moral and material servitude of the pope. When he

recognized his error in having raised the papacy from decadence by

restoring its power over all the churches, he tried in vain to correct

it by the _Articles Organiques_--wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the

legal protector of the pope, and eventually master of the Church. To

conceal his plan he aroused French colonial aspirations against England,

and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763, exasperating English

jealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine, and laying

hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the "Recess" of 1803, which

brought to his side Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, he followed up the

overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt,

back in power, appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition

against this new Charlemagne, who was trying to renew the old Empire,

who was mastering France, Italy and Germany; who finally on the 2nd of

December 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his head, after receiving

the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pius VII. consecrate him

in Notre-Dame.

After this, in four campaigns from 1805 to 1809, Napoleon transformed

his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman

empire. The memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after

Caesar and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of France.

Though the vague plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground Ulm

and Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put the

best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon's disposal.

Treaty of Presburg, 1805.

In the first of these campaigns he swept away the remnants of the old

Roman-Germanic empire, and out of its shattered fragments created in

southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg,

Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to France under the name

of the Confederation of the Rhine; but the treaty of Presburg gave

France nothing but the danger of a more centralized and less docile

Germany. On the other hand, Napoleon's creation of the kingdom of Italy,

his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic empire--wiping out

the humiliation of 1797--and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new

stage in his progress towards his Roman Empire. His good fortune soon

led him from conquest to spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea

of the grand empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes

invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal, and

adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at

Naples; Louis was installed on the throne of Holland; Murat became

grand-duke of Berg, Jerome son-in-law to the king of Württemberg, and

Eugène de Beauharnais to the king of Bavaria; while Stéphanie de

Beauhamais married the son of the grand-duke of Baden.

Jena.

Eylau and Friedland.

Peace of Tilsit, July 8, 1807.

Continental blockade.

Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still further and

would tolerate no neutral power. On the 6th of August 1806 he forced the

Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their

Roman-Germanic title of emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the

Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to

further her decision he offered her English Hanover. In a second

campaign he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick

William III., who could not make up his mind between the Napoleonic

treaty of Schönbrunn and Russia's counter-proposal at Potsdam (October

14, 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the vengeance taken at Friedland

finally ruined Frederick the Great's work, and obliged Russia, the ally

of England and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled, and to join

Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former. After Tilsit,

however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile Europe to his

grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought: to make use of his success to

destroy England and complete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin,

on the 21st of November 1806, that he had dated the first decree of a

continental blockade, a monstrous conception intended to paralyze his

inveterate rival, but which on the contrary caused his own fall by its

immoderate extension of the empire. To the coalition of the northern

powers he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and to

the bombardment of Copenhagen by an English fleet he responded by a

second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on the 17th of December

1807.

But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naples led to

the first of those struggles with the pope, in which were formulated two

antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor, and

Pius VII. renewing the theocratic affirmations of Gregory VII. The

former's Roman ambition was made more and more plainly visible by the

occupation of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and the entry of

Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the

pope himself, and Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain, whither

Joseph was afterwards to be transferred. But Napoleon little knew the

flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than the Directory or the men

of the year III., he thought that, with energy and execution, he might

succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797,

in Egypt, and in Hesse, and that he might cut into Spanish granite as

into Italian mosaic or "that big cake, Germany." He stumbled unawares

upon the revolt of a proud national spirit, evolved through ten historic

centuries; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of

Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the Asturias the elect

of popular sentiment, the representative of religion and country.

Bailen.

Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now suddenly

everything was slipping from him. The Peninsula became the grave of

whole armies and a battlefield for England. Dupont capitulated at Bailen

into the hands of Castaños, and Junot at Cintra to Wellesley; while

Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible imperial

armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to

terms with the tsar Alexander at Erfurt; so that abandoning his designs

in the East, he could make the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in

force to Madrid.

Wagram.

Peace of Vienna.

Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for Napoleon's

other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced by forced levies.

Europe had only to wait, and he would eventually be found disarmed in

face of a last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and

showed the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand

and England strengthened the illusion: Why should not the Austrians

emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a pale

copy of the Spanish insurrection. After a short and decisive action in

Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the road to Vienna for a second time; and

after the two days' battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the

failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern Germany and of the

English expedition against Antwerp, the treaty of Vienna (December 14,

1809), with the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed the

colossal empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this campaign which had

been planned for his overthrow. The pope was deported to Savona beneath

the eyes of indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the

Empire; the senate's decision on the 17th of February 1810 created the

title of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope

banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been

more or less promised. Eugène de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was

transferred to Frankfort, and Murat carefully watched until the time

should come to take him to Russia and install him as king of Poland.

Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleon's divorce of Joséphine, and his marriage

with Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of Rome,

shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation

in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he gradually

withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition

on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This

was the apogee of his reign.

Beginning of the end. Uprising of nationalism.

But undermining forces were already at work: the faults inherent in his

unwieldy achievement. England, his chief enemy, was persistently active;

and rebellion both of the governing and the governed broke out

everywhere. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish

insurrection, which he underrated, while yet unable to suppress it

altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst were secretly

preparing Prussia's retaliation. Napoleon's material omnipotence could

not stand against the moral force of the pope, a prisoner at

Fontainebleau; and this he did not realize. The alliance arranged at

Tilsit was seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a

Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at

Constantinople. The very persons whom he had placed in power were

counteracting his plans: after four years' experience Napoleon found

himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of the

_ancien régime_, and all his relations were betraying him. Caroline

conspired against her brother and against her husband; the

hypochondriacal Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found the

supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also the defence of the

Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome, idling in his harem,

lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the

moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at Madrid. The very

nature of things was against the new dynasties, as it had been against

the old.

Treachery.

After national insurrections and family recriminations came treachery

from Napoleon's ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his designs to

Metternich, and had to be dismissed; Fouché corresponded with Austria in

1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with

England; while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural

consequence of the spirit of conquest he had aroused, all these

parvenus, having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power: Bernadotte,

who had helped him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the

crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the Spanish throne after

that of Portugal, thus anticipating the treason of 1813 and the

defection of 1814; many persons hoped for "an accident" which might

resemble the tragic end of Alexander and of Caesar. The country itself,

besides, though flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It

had become satiated; "the cry of the mothers rose threateningly" against

"the Ogre" and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription. The

soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz, cried out for peace

after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence from the press and the

Assemblies, a protest was raised against imperial despotism by the

literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign by Catholicism, and

against the author of the continental blockade by the discontented

bourgeoisie, ruined by the crisis of 1811.

Degeneration of Napoleon.

Napoleon himself was no longer the General Bonaparte of his campaign in

Italy. He was already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman

medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was often lymphatic.

Mental degeneration, too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution.

At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method of acting by

enormous masses of infantry and cavalry, in a mad passion for conquest,

and his misuse of his military resources, were all signs of his moral

and technical decadence; and this at the precise moment when, instead of

the armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned

supreme, the nations themselves were rising against France, and the

events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of two

years brought the final catastrophe.

Russian campaign.

Campaigns of 1813-14.

Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when

the tsar himself headed a European insurrection against the ruinous

tyranny of the continental blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure

his own access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival,

Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country as invincible

as Spain. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the

victory on the Moskwa, and the entry into Moscow, he was vanquished by

Russian patriotism and religious fervour, by the country and the

climate, and by Alexander's refusal to make terms. After this came the

lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him.

Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion, after the

action on the Beresina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers of

1809, and then--having refused the peace offered him by Austria at the

congress of Prague, from a dread of losing Italy, where each of his

victories had marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dream--on

those of 1805, despite Lützen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after

his defeat at Leipzig, where Bernadotte turned upon him, Moreau figured

among the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook him. Following

his retreat from Russia came his retreat from Germany. After the loss of

Spain, reconquered by Wellington, the rising in Holland preliminary to

the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfort which proclaimed it, he had

to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet

farther back upon those of 1792, despite the wonderful campaign of 1814

against the invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have

returned. Paris capitulated on the 30th of March, and the "Delenda

Carthago," pronounced against England, was spoken of Napoleon. The great

empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor's abdication at

Fontainebleau.

Downfall of the Empire.

The military struggle ended, the political struggle began. How was

France to be governed? The Allies had decided on the eviction of

Napoleon at the Congress of Châtillon; and the precarious nature of the

Bonapartist monarchy in France itself was made manifest by the exploit

of General Malet, which had almost succeeded during the Russian

campaign, and by Lainé's demand for free exercise of political rights,

when Napoleon made a last appeal to the Legislative Assembly for

support. The defection of the military and civil aristocracy, which

brought about Napoleon's abdication, the refusal of a regency, and the

failure of Bernadotte, who wished to resuscitate the Consulate, enabled

Talleyrand, vice-president of the senate and desirous of power, to

persuade the Allies to accept the Bourbon solution of the difficulty.

The declaration of St Ouen (May 2, 1814) indicated that the new monarchy

was only accepted upon conditions. After Napoleon's abdication, and

exile to the island of Elba, came the Revolution's abdication of her

conquests: the first treaty of Paris (May 30th) confirmed France's

renunciation of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, and her return

within her pre-revolutionary frontiers, save for some slight

rectifications.

Faults of the Bourbons.

The Hundred Days. March-June 1815.

After the scourge of war, the horrors of conscription, and the despotism

which had discounted glory, every one seemed to rejoice in the return of

the Bourbons, which atoned for humiliations by restoring liberty. But

questions of form, which aroused questions of sentiment, speedily led to

grave dissensions. The hurried armistice of the 23rd of April, by which

the comte d'Artois delivered over disarmed France to her conquerors;

Louis XVIII.'s excessive gratitude to the prince regent of England; the

return of the _émigrés_; the declaration of St Ouen, dated from the

nineteenth year of the new reign; the charter of June 4th, "_concédée et

octroyée_," maintaining the effete doctrine of legitimacy in a country

permeated with the idea of national sovereignty; the slights put upon

the army; the obligatory processions ordered by Comte Beugnot, prefect

of police; all this provoked a conflict not only between two theories of

government but between two groups of men and of interests. An avowedly

imperialist party was soon again formed, a centre of heated opposition

to the royalist party; and neither Baron Louis' excellent finance, nor

the peace, nor the charter of June 4th--which despite the irritation of

the _émigrés_ preserved the civil gains of the Revolution--prevented the

man who was its incarnation from seizing an opportunity to bring about

another military _coup d'état_. Having landed in the Bay of Jouan on the

1st of March, on the 20th Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries in triumph,

while Louis XVIII. fled to Ghent. By the _Acte additionnel_ of the 22nd

of April he induced Carnot and Fouché--the last of the Jacobins--and the

heads of the Liberal opposition, Benjamin Constant and La Fayette, to

side with him against the hostile Powers of Europe, occupied in dividing

the spoils at Vienna. He proclaimed his intention of founding a new

democratic empire; and French policy was thus given another illusion,

which was to be exploited with fatal success by Napoleon's namesake. But

the cannon of Waterloo ended this adventure (June 18, 1815), and, thanks

to Fouché's treachery, the triumphal progress of Milan, Rome, Naples,

Vienna, Berlin, and even of Moscow, was to end at St Helena.

Louis XVIII.

The consequences of the Hundred Days were very serious; France was

embroiled with all Europe, though Talleyrand's clever diplomacy had

succeeded in causing division over Saxony and Poland by the secret

Austro-Anglo-French alliance of the 3rd of January 1815, and the

Coalition destroyed both France's political independence and national

integrity by the treaty of peace of November 20th: she found herself far

weaker than before the Revolution, and in the power of the European

Alliance. The Hundred Days divided the nation itself into two

irreconcilable parties: one ultra-royalist, eager for vengeance and

retaliation, refusing to accept the Charter; the other imperialist,

composed of Bonapartists and Republicans, incensed by their defeat--of

whom Béranger was the Tyrtaeus--both parties equally revolutionary and

equally obstinate. Louis XVIII., urged by his more fervent supporters

towards the _ancien régime_, gave his policy an exactly contrary

direction; he had common-sense enough to maintain the Empire's legal and

administrative tradition, accepting its institutions of the Legion of

Honour, the Bank, the University, and the imperial nobility--modifying

only formally certain rights and the conscription, since these had

aroused the nation against Napoleon. He even went so far as to accept

advice from the imperial ministers Talleyrand and Fouché. Finally, as

the chief political organization had become thoroughly demoralized, he

imported into France the entire constitutional system of England, with

its three powers, king, upper hereditary chamber, and lower elected

chamber; with its plutocratic electorate, and even with details like the

speech from the throne, the debate on the address, &c. This meant

importing also difficulties such as ministerial responsibility, as well

as electoral and press legislation.

Louis XVIII., taught by time and misfortune, wished not to reign over

two parties exasperated by contrary passions and desires; but his

dynasty was from the outset implicated in the struggle, which was to be

fatal to it, between old France and revolutionary France.

Anti-monarchical, liberal and anti-clerical France at once recommenced

its revolutionary work; the whole 19th century was to be filled with

great spasmodic upheavals, and Louis XVIII. was soon overwhelmed by the

White Terrorists of 1815.

Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labédoyère were followed

by violent and unpunished action by the White Terror, which in the south

renewed the horrors of St Bartholomew and the September massacres. The

elections of August 14, 1815, made under the influence of these royalist

and religious passions, sent the "_Chambre introuvable_" to Paris, an

unforeseen revival of the _ancien régime_. Neither the substitution of

the duc de Richelieu's ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouché, nor a

whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter, were

successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and Louis XVIII.

needed something like a _coup d'état_, in September 1816, to rid himself

of the "ultras."

The Constitutional party's rule.

The reaction of 1820.

He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition between the dynasty

and the constitution, until a reaction took place between 1820 and 1822.

State departments worked regularly and well, under the direction of

Decazes, Lainé, De Serre and Pasquier, power alternating between two

great well-disciplined parties almost in the English fashion, and many

useful measures were passed: the reconstruction of finance stipulated

for as a condition of evacuation of territory occupied by foreign

troops; the electoral law of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct

election and a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the

preponderance of the _bourgeoisie_; the Gouvion St-Cyr law of 1818,

which for half a century based the recruiting of the French army on the

national principle of conscription; and in 1819, after Richelieu's

dismissal, liberal regulations for the press under control of a

commission. But the advance of the Liberal movement, and the election of

the generals--Foy, Lamarque, Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the

"ultras" and caused the dismissal of Richelieu; while that of the

constitutional bishop Grégoire led to the modification in a reactionary

direction of the electoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de

Berry, second son of the comte d'Artois (attributed to the influence of

Liberal ideas), caused the downfall of Decazes, and caused the

king--more weak and selfish than ever--to override the charter and

embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame du Cayla, a trusted

agent of the ultra-royalist party, gained great influence over the king;

and M. de Villèle, its leader, supported by the king's brother, soon

eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissal of the duc de Richelieu,

who had been recalled to tide over the crisis--just as the fall of M.

Decazes had signalized the defeat of the Left Centre (December 15,

1821)--and moderate policy thus received an irreparable blow.

Thenceforward the government of M. de Villèle--a clever statesman, but

tied to his party--did nothing for six years but promulgate a long

series of measures against Liberalism and the social work of the

Revolution; to retain power it had to yield to the impatience of the

comte d'Artois and the majority. The suspension of individual liberty,

the re-establishment of the censorship; the electoral right of the

"double vote," favouring taxation of the most oppressive kind; and the

handing over of education to the clergy: these were the first

achievements of this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish

expedition, in which M. de Villèle's hand was forced by Montmorency and

Chateaubriand, was the united work of the association of Catholic

zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocratic powers of the

Grand Alliance; it was responded to--as at Naples and in Spain--by

secret Carbonari societies, and by severely repressed military

conspiracies. Politics now bore the double imprint of two rival powers:

the Congregation and Carbonarism. By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty

seemed firm--the Spanish War had reconciled the army, by giving back

military prestige; the Liberal opposition had been decimated;

revolutionary conspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public

credit and material prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved

by the "_Chambre retrouvée_" of 1824. The law of septennial elections

tranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regular

manifestation by the nation for seven years.

Charles X.

Victory of the constitutional parties, 1827.

The Revolution of 1830.

It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, on the accession of

Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This inconsistent prince soon exhausted

his popularity, and remained the fanatical head of those _émigrés_ who

had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition became

conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties, the king and

the clerical party surrounding him challenged the spirit of modern

France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for re-establishing the

right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a milliard francs, which

looked like compensation given to the _émigrés_, and finally by the

"_loi de liberté et d'amour_" against the press. The challenge was so

definite that in 1826 the Chamber of Peers and the Academy had to give

the Villèle ministry a lesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to

this _ancien régime_ reaction by its weakness and its party-promises.

The elections "_de colère et de vengeance_" of January 1827 gave the

Left a majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignac ministry tried

to revive the Right Centre which had supported Richelieu and Decazes

(January 1828). Martignac's accession to power, however, had only meant

personal concessions from Charles X., not any concession of principle:

he supported his ministry but was no real stand-by. The Liberals, on the

other hand, made bargains for supporting the moderate royalists, and

Charles X. profited by this to form a fighting ministry in conjunction

with the prince de Polignac, one of the _émigrés_, an ignorant and

visionary person, and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo.

Despite all kinds of warnings, the former tried by a _coup d'état_ to

put into practice his theories of the supremacy of the royal

prerogative; and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the

Morea, and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forget this

conflict at home. The united opposition of monarchist Liberals and

imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance, then by a popular

_coup d'état_, to the ordinances of July 1830, which dissolved the

intractable Chamber, eliminated licensed dealers from the electoral

list, and muzzled the press. After fighting for three days against the

troops feebly led by the Marmont of 1814, the workmen, driven to the

barricades by the deliberate closing of Liberal workshops, gained the

victory, and sent the white flag of the Bourbons on the road to exile.

Republican and Orleanist parties.

Louis Philippe.

The rapid success of the "Three Glorious Days" ("_les Trois

Glorieuses_"), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of the

parliamentary opposition into an embarrassing position. While they had

contented themselves with words, the small Republican-Imperialist party,

aided by the almost entire absence of the army and police, and by the

convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of those times

offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolution and brought it

to pass. But the Republican party, which desired to re-establish the

Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from among the students and workmen,

and led by Godefroy Cavaignac, the son of a Conventionalist, and by the

chemist Raspail, had no hold on the departments nor on the dominating

opinion in Paris. Consequently this premature attempt was promptly

seized upon by the Liberal _bourgeoisie_ and turned to the advantage of

the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organized since 1829 under

the leadership of Thiers, with the _National_ as its organ. Before the

struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant, Casimir Périer, Lafitte, and

Odilon Barrot had gone to fetch the duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on

receiving his promise to defend the Charter and the tricolour flag,

installed him at the Palais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm,

while La Fayette and the Republicans established themselves at the Hôtel

de Ville. An armed conflict between the two governments was imminent,

when Lafayette, by giving his support to Louis Philippe, decided matters

in his favour. In order to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which

had arisen with the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions were

imposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacy of the people by

the title of "king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the

people," the responsibility of ministers, the suppression of hereditary

succession to the Chamber of Peers, now reduced to the rank of a council

of officials, the suppression of article 14 of the charter which had

enabled Charles X. to supersede the laws by means of the ordinances, and

the liberty of the press. The qualification for electors was lowered

from 300 to 200 francs, and that for eligibility from 1000 to 500

francs, and the age to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally,

Catholicism lost its privileged position as the state religion. The

_bourgeois_ National Guard was made the guardian of the charter. The

liberal ideas of the son of Philippe Égalité, the part he had played at

Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domestic virtues, all

united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinion of the public.

The bourgeois monarchy.

He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of the electors, that

the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing but the head of the state.

But in reality the July monarchy was affected by a fundamental weakness.

It sought to model itself upon the English monarchy, which rested upon

one long tradition. But the tradition of France was both twofold and

contradictory, i.e. the Catholic-legitimist and the revolutionary. Louis

Philippe had them both against him. His monarchy had but one element in

common with the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limited

electorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcry against the

English monarchy, which, on the other hand, met with firm support among

the aristocracy and the clergy. The July monarchy had no such support.

The aristocracy of the _ancien régime_ and of the Empire were alike

without social influence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close

alliance with Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw the

rise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people, the

future source of all power. Even the monarchical principle itself had

suffered from the shock, having proved by its easy defeat how far it

could be brought to capitulate. Moreover, the victory of the people, who

had shown themselves in the late struggle to be brave and disinterested,

had won for the idea of national supremacy a power which was bound to

increase. The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether

this expansion would take place gradually and by a progressive

evolution, as in England, or not.

The parties.

Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeois and

peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering an authority which

was menaced from the very first on the one hand by the anger of the

royalists at their failures, and on the other hand by the impatience of

the republicans to follow up their victory. He wanted the insurrection

to stop at a change in the reigning family, whereas it had in fact

revived the revolutionary tradition, and restored to France the

sympathies of the nationalities and democratic parties oppressed by

Metternich's "system." The republican party, which had retired from

power but not from activity, at once faced the new king with the serious

problem of the acquisition of political power by the people, and

continued to remind him of it. He put himself at the head of the party

of progress ("parti du mouvement") as opposed to the ("parti de la

cour") court party, and of the "resistance," which considered that it

was now necessary "to check the revolution in order to make it fruitful,

and in order to save it." But none of these parties were homogeneous; in

the chamber they split up into a republican or radical Extreme Left, led

by Garnier-Pagès and Arago; a dynastic Left, led by the honourable and

sincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre and Left Centre,

differing in certain slight respects, and presided over respectively by

Thiers, a wonderful political orator, and Guizot, whose ideas were those

of a strict doctrinaire; not to mention a small party which clung to the

old legitimist creed, and was dominated by the famous _avocat_ Berryer,

whose eloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.'s

grandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerial majority

which was always uncertain; and the only occasion on which Guizot

succeeded in consolidating it during seven years resulted in the

overthrow of the monarchy.

The Republicans crushed.

Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of the party of

"movement," Dupont de l'Eure, and afterwards Lafitte, in order to keep

control of the progressive forces for his own ends. They wished to

introduce democratic reforms and to uphold throughout Europe the

revolution, which had spread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy

and Poland, while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis

Philippe took fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after the

trial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the church of Saint

Germain l'Auxerrois and the archbishop's palace (February, 1831), and at

the terrible strike of the silk weavers at Lyons. Casimir Périer, who

was both a Liberal and a believer in a strong government, was then

charged with the task of heading the resistance to advanced ideas, and

applying the principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13,

1831). After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which he

had succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenoble and in the

Vendée, where it had been stirred up by the romantic duchess of Berry,

began to gain ground. The struggle against the republicans was still

longer; for having lost all their chance of attaining power by means of

the Chamber, they proceeded to reorganize themselves into armed secret

societies. The press, which was gaining that influence over public

opinion which had been lost by the parliamentary debates, openly

attacked the government and the king, especially by means of caricature.

Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of which Guizot, Thiers and

the duc de Broglie were members, had to combat the terrible

insurrections in Lyons and Paris (1834). The measures of repression were

threefold: military repression, carried out by the National Guard and

the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud; judicial repression,

effected by the great trial of April 1835; and legislative repression,

consisting in the laws of September, which, when to mere ridicule had

succeeded acts of violence, such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835),

aimed at facilitating the condemnation of political offenders and at

intimidating the press. The party of "movement" was vanquished.

The bourgeois policy.

But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement, had to

make concessions to popular demands. Casimir Périer had carried a law

dealing with municipal organization, which made the municipal councils

elective, as they had been before the year VIII.; and in 1833 Guizot had

completed it by making the _conseils généraux_ also elective. In the

same year the law dealing with primary instruction had also shown the

mark of new ideas. But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it

did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and

fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions. In

spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintained a

fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle

class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring masses

poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.

The socialist party.

The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting the king,

disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he was to be given.

The Left Centre, led by Thiers, held that he should reign but not

govern; the Right Centre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an active

part in the government; and the third party (tiers-parti) wavered

between these two. And so between 1836 and 1840, as the struggle against

the king's claim to govern passed from the sphere of outside discussion

into parliament, we see the rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by

side with the now dwindling republican party. It no longer confined its

demands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimate

representation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Led by

Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimed at realizing a

better social organization for and by means of the state. But the

question was by what means this was to be accomplished. The secret

societies, under the influence of Blanqui and Barbès, two

revolutionaries who had revived the traditions of Babeuf, were not

willing to wait for the complete education of the masses, necessarily a

long process. On the 12th of May 1839 the _Société des Saisons_ made an

attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated.

Democrats like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued to

repeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old profession

of faith: _vox populi, vox Dei_. And finally this republican doctrine,

already confused, was still further complicated by a kind of mysticism

which aimed at reconciling the most extreme differences of belief, the

Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartism of Cormenin, and the

humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans. It was in vain that Auguste Comte,

Michelet and Quinet denounced this vague humanitarian mysticism and the

pseudo-liberalism of the Church. The movement had now begun.

The Bonapartist revival.

At first these moderate republicans, radical or communist, formed only

imperceptible groups. Among the peasant classes, and even in the

industrial centres, warlike passions were still rife. Louis Philippe

tried to find an outlet for them in the Algerian war, and later by the

revival of the Napoleonic legend, which was held to be no longer

dangerous, since the death of the duke of Reichstadt in 1832. It was

imprudently recalled by Thiers' _History of the Consulate and Empire_,

by artists and poets, in spite of the prophecies of Lamartine, and by

the solemn translation of Napoleon I.'s ashes in 1840 to the Invalides

at Paris.

Parliamentary opposition to the royal power.

All theories require to be based on practice, especially those which

involve force. Now Louis Philippe, though as active as his predecessors

had been slothful, was the least warlike of men. His only wish was to

govern personally, as George III. and George IV. of England had done,

especially in foreign affairs, while at home was being waged the great

duel between Thiers and Guizot, with Molé as intermediary. Thiers, head

of the cabinet of the 22nd of February 1836, an astute man but not

pliant enough to please the king, fell after a few months, in

consequence of his attempt to stop the Carlist civil war in Spain, and

to support the constitutional government of Queen Isabella. Louis

Philippe hoped that, by calling upon Molé to form a ministry, he would

be better able to make his personal authority felt. From 1837 to 1839

Molé aroused opposition on all hands; this was emphasized by the refusal

of the Chambers to vote one of those endowments which the king was

continually asking them to grant for his children, by two dissolutions

of the Chambers, and finally by the Strasburg affair and the stormy

trial of Louis Napoleon, son of the former king of Holland (1836-1837).

At the elections of 1839 Molé was defeated by Thiers, Guizot and Barrot,

who had combined to oppose the tyranny of the "Château," and after a

long ministerial crisis was replaced by Thiers (March 1, 1840). But the

latter was too much in favour of war to please the king, who was

strongly disposed towards peace and an alliance with Great Britain, and

consequently fell at the time of the Egyptian question, when, in answer

to the treaty of London concluded behind his back by Nicholas I. and

Palmerston on the 15th of July 1840, he fortified Paris and proclaimed

his intention to give armed support to Mehemet Ali, the ally of France

(see MEHEMET ALI). But the violence of popular Chauvinism and the

renewed attempt of Louis Napoleon at Boulogne proved to the holders of

the doctrine of peace at any price that in the long-run their policy

tends to turn a peaceful attitude into a warlike one, and to strengthen

the absolutist idea.

Guizot's ministry.

In spite of all, from 1840 to 1848 Louis Philippe still further extended

his activity in foreign affairs, thus bringing himself into still

greater prominence, though he was already frequently held responsible

for failures in foreign politics and unpopular measures in home affairs.

The catchword of Guizot, who was now his minister, was: Peace and no

reforms. With the exception of the law of 1842 concerning the railways,

not a single measure of importance was proposed by the ministry. France

lived under a régime of general corruption: parliamentary corruption,

due to the illegal conduct of the deputies, consisting of slavish or

venal officials; electoral corruption, effected by the purchase of the

200,000 electors constituting the "_pays légal_," who were bribed by the

advantages of power; and moral corruption, due to the reign of the

plutocracy, the bourgeoisie, a hard-working, educated and honourable

class, it is true, but insolent, like all newly enriched parvenus in the

presence of other aristocracies, and with unyielding selfishness

maintaining an attitude of suspicion towards the people, whose

aspirations they did not share and with whom they did not feel

themselves to have anything in common. This led to a slackening in

political life, a sort of exhaustion of interest throughout the country,

an excessive devotion to material prosperity. Under a superficial

appearance of calm a tempest was brewing, of which the industrial

writings of Balzac, Eugène Sue, Lamartine, H. Heine, Vigny, Montalembert

and Tocqueville were the premonitions. But it was in vain that they

denounced this supremacy of the bourgeoisie, relying on its two main

supports, the suffrage based on a property qualification and the

National Guard, for its rallying-cry was the "Enrichissez-vous" of

Guizot, and its excessive materialism gained a sinister distinction from

scandals connected with the ministers Teste and Cubières, and such

mysterious crimes as that of Choiseul-Praslin.[35] In vain also did they

point out that mere riches are not so much a protection to the ministry

who are in power as a temptation to the majority excluded from power by

this barrier of wealth. It was in vain that beneath the inflated _haute

bourgeoisie_ which speculated in railways and solidly supported the

Church, behind the shopkeeper clique who still remained Voltairian, who

enviously applauded the pamphlets of Cormenin on the luxury of the

court, and who were bitterly satirized by the pencil of Daumier and

Gavarni, did the thinkers give voice to the mutterings of an immense

industrial proletariat, which were re-echoing throughout the whole of

western Europe.

Guizot's Foreign Policy.

Campaign of the banquets.

In face of this tragic contrast Guizot remained unmoved, blinded by the

superficial brilliance of apparent success and prosperity. He adorned by

flights of eloquence his invariable theme: no new laws, no reforms, no

foreign complications, the policy of material interests. He preserved

his yielding attitude towards Great Britain in the affair of the right

of search in 1841, and in the affair of the missionary Pritchard at

Tahiti (1843-1845). And when the marriage of the duc de Montpensier with

a Spanish infanta in 1846 had broken this _entente cordiale_ to which he

clung, it was only to yield in turn to Metternich, when he took

possession of Cracow, the last remnant of Poland, to protect the

_Sonderbund_ in Switzerland, to discourage the Liberal ardour of Pius

IX., and to hand over the education of France to the Ultramontane

clergy. Still further strengthened by the elections of 1846, he refused

the demands of the Opposition formed by a coalition of the Left Centre

and the Radical party for parliamentary and electoral reform, which

would have excluded the officials from the Chambers, reduced the

electoral qualification to 100 francs, and added to the number of the

electors the _capacitaires_ whose competence was guaranteed by their

education. For Guizot the whole country was represented by the "_pays

légal_," consisting of the king, the ministers, the deputies and the

electors. When the Opposition appealed to the country, he flung down a

disdainful challenge to what "les brouillons et les badauds appellent le

peuple." The challenge was taken up by all the parties of the Opposition

in the campaign of the banquets got up somewhat artificially in 1847 in

favour of the extension of the franchise. The monarchy had arrived at

such a state of weakness and corruption that a determined minority was

sufficient to overthrow it. The prohibition of a last banquet in Paris

precipitated the catastrophe. The monarchy which for fifteen years had

overcome its adversaries collapsed on the 24th of February 1848 to the

astonishment of all.

The Revolution of Feb. 24, 1848.

The industrial population of the faubourgs on its way towards the centre

of the town was welcomed by the National Guard, among cries of "Vive la

réforme." Barricades were raised after the unfortunate incident of the

firing on the crowd in the Boulevard des Capucines. On the 23rd Guizot's

cabinet resigned, abandoned by the _petite bourgeoisie_, on whose

support they thought they could depend. The heads of the Left Centre and

the dynastic Left, Molé and Thiers, declined the offered leadership.

Odilon Barrot accepted it, and Bugeaud, commander-in-chief of the first

military division, who had begun to attack the barricades, was recalled.

But it was too late. In face of the insurrection which had now taken

possession of the whole capital, Louis Philippe decided to abdicate in

favour of his grandson, the comte de Paris. But it was too late also to

be content with the regency of the duchess of Orleans. It was now the

turn of the Republic, and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of

the provisional government elected by the Chamber under the pressure of

the mob.

The Provisional Government.

This provisional government with Dupont de l'Eure as its president,

consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Crémieux for justice,

Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot for public instruction, Gondchaux

for finance, Arago for the navy, and Bedeau for war. Garnier-Pagès was

mayor of Paris. But, as in 1830, the republican-socialist party had set

up a rival government at the Hôtel de Ville, including L. Blanc, A.

Marrast, Flocon, and the workman Albert, which bid fair to involve

discord and civil war. But this time the Palais Bourbon was not

victorious over the Hôtel de Ville. It had to consent to a fusion of the

two bodies, in which, however, the predominating elements were the

moderate republicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be the

policy of the new government. One party, seeing that in spite of the

changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions, the

position of the people had not been improved, demanded a reform of

society itself, the abolition of the privileged position of property,

the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoisted the red flag.

The other party wished to maintain society on the basis of its ancient

institutions, and rallied round the tricolour.

Universal suffrage.

The Executive Commission.

The first collision took place as to the form which the revolution of

1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to their original

principles, as Lamartine wished, and accept the decision of the country

as supreme, or were they, as the revolutionaries under Ledru-Rollin

claimed, to declare the republic of Paris superior to the universal

suffrage of an insufficiently educated people? On the 5th of March the

government, under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decided in favour

of an immediate reference to the people, and direct universal suffrage,

and adjourned it till the 26th of April. In this fateful and unexpected

decision, which instead of adding to the electorate the educated

classes, refused by Guizot, admitted to it the unqualified masses,

originated the Constituent Assembly of the 4th of May 1848. The

provisional government having resigned, the republican and

anti-socialist majority on the 9th of May entrusted the supreme power to

an executive commission consisting of five members: Arago, Marie,

Garnier-Pagès, Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin. But the spell was already

broken. This revolution which had been peacefully effected with the most

generous aspirations, in the hope of abolishing poverty by organizing

industry on other bases than those of competition and capitalism, and

which had at once aroused the fraternal sympathy of the nations, was

doomed to be abortive.

The result of the general election, the return of a constituent assembly

predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashed the hopes of those who

had looked for the establishment, by a peaceful revolution, of their

ideal socialist state; but they were not prepared to yield without a

struggle, and in Paris itself they commanded a formidable force. In

spite of the preponderance of the "tricolour" party in the provisional

government, so long as the voice of France had not spoken, the

socialists, supported by the Parisian proletariat, had exercised an

influence on policy out of all proportion to their relative numbers or

personal weight. By the decree of the 24th of February the provisional

government had solemnly accepted the principle of the "right to work,"

and decided to establish "national workshops" for the unemployed; at the

same time a sort of industrial parliament was established at the

Luxembourg, under the presidency of Louis Blanc, with the object of

preparing a scheme for the organization of labour; and, lastly, by the

decree of the 8th of March the property qualification for enrolment in

the National Guard had been abolished and the workmen were supplied with

arms. The socialists thus formed, in some sort, a state within the

state, with a government, an organization and an armed force.

The June Days.

In the circumstances a conflict was inevitable; and on the 15th of May

an armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui and Barbès, and assisted by the

proletariat Guard, attempted to overwhelm the Assembly. They were

defeated by the bourgeois battalions of the National Guard; but the

situation none the less remained highly critical. The national workshops

were producing the results that might have been foreseen. It was

impossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuine unemployed,

and of the thousands who applied the greater number were employed in

perfectly useless digging and refilling; soon even this expedient

failed, and those for whom work could not be invented were given a half

wage of 1 franc a day. Even this pitiful dole, with no obligation to

work, proved attractive, and all over France workmen threw up their jobs

and streamed to Paris, where they swelled the ranks of the army under

the red flag. It was soon clear that the continuance of this experiment

would mean financial ruin; it had been proved by the _émeute_ of the

15th of May that it constituted a perpetual menace to the state; and

the government decided to end it. The method chosen was scarcely a happy

one. On the 21st of June M. de Falloux decided in the name of the

parliamentary commission on labour that the workmen should be discharged

within three days and such as were able-bodied should be forced to

enlist. A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughout the whole

of the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, the eastern industrial quarter of

Paris, led by Pujol, carried on a furious struggle against the western

quarter, led by Cavaignac, who had been appointed dictator. Vanquished

and decimated, first by fighting and afterwards by deportation, the

socialist party was crushed. But they dragged down the Republic in their

ruin. This had already become unpopular with the peasants, exasperated

by the new land tax of 45 centimes imposed in order to fill the empty

treasury, and with the _bourgeois_, in terror of the power of the

revolutionary clubs and hard hit by the stagnation of business. By the

"massacres" of the June Days the working classes were also alienated

from it; and abiding fear of the "Reds" did the rest. "France," wrote

the duke of Wellington at this time, "needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet see

him ... Where is he?"[36]

The Constitution of 1848.

France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon; and the demand

was soon to be supplied. The granting of universal suffrage to a society

with Imperialist sympathies, and unfitted to reconcile the principles of

order with the consequences of liberty, was indeed bound, now that the

political balance in France was so radically changed, to prove a

formidable instrument of reaction; and this was proved by the election

of the president of the Republic. On the 4th of November 1848 was

promulgated the new constitution, obviously the work of inexperienced

hands, proclaiming a democratic republic, direct universal suffrage and

the separation of powers; there was to be a single permanent assembly of

750 members elected for a term of three years by the _scrutin de liste_,

which was to vote on the laws prepared by a council of state elected by

the Assembly for six years; the executive power was delegated to a

president elected for four years by direct universal suffrage, i.e. on a

broader basis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for

re-election; he was to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be

responsible. Finally, all revision was made impossible since it involved

obtaining three times in succession a majority of three-quarters of the

deputies in a special assembly. It was in vain that M. Grévy, in the

name of those who perceived the obvious and inevitable risk of creating,

under the name of a president, a monarch and more than a king, proposed

that the head of the state should be no more than a removable president

of the ministerial council. Lamartine, thinking that he was sure to be

the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won over the

support of the Chamber, which did not even take the precaution of

rendering ineligible the members of families which had reigned over

France. It made the presidency an office dependent upon popular

acclamation.

Louis Napoleon.

The election was keenly contested; the socialists adopted as their

candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac; and the recently

reorganized Imperialist party Prince Bonaparte. Louis Napoleon, unknown

in 1835, and forgotten or despised since 1840, had in the last eight

years advanced sufficiently in the public estimation to be elected to

the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five departments. He owed this rapid

increase of popularity partly to blunders of the government of July,

which had unwisely aroused the memory of the country, filled as it was

with recollections of the Empire, and partly to Louis Napoleon's

campaign carried on from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of

socialistic tendencies. Moreover, the monarchists, led by Thiers and the

committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer content even with the

safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac, and joined forces with the

Bonapartists. On the 10th of December the peasants gave over 5,000,000

votes to a name: Napoleon, which stood for order at all costs, against

1,400,000 for Cavaignac.

Expedition to Rome.

For three years there went on an indecisive struggle between the

heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silently awaiting his

opportunity. He chose as his ministers men but little inclined towards

republicanism, for preference Orleanists, the chief of whom was Odilon

Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, he endeavoured to

conciliate the reactionary parties, without committing himself to any of

them. The chief instance of this was the expedition to Rome, voted by

the Catholics with the object of restoring the papacy, which had been

driven out by Garibaldi and Mazzini. The prince-president was also in

favour of it, as beginning the work of European renovation and

reconstruction which he already looked upon as his mission. General

Oudinot's entry into Rome provoked in Paris a foolish insurrection in

favour of the Roman republic, that of the Château d'Eau, which was

crushed on the 13th of June 1849. On the other hand, when Pius IX.,

though only just restored, began to yield to the general movement of

reaction, the president demanded that he should set up a Liberal

government. The pope's dilatory reply having been accepted by his

ministry, the president replaced it on the 1st of November by the

Fould-Rouher cabinet.

The Legislative Assembly.

"Loi Falloux."

Electoral law of May 31.

This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic and

monarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which had been elected

on the 28th of May in a moment of panic. But the prince-president again

pretended to be playing the game of the Orleanists, as he had done in

the case of the Constituent-Assembly. The complementary elections of

March and April 1850 having resulted in an unexpected victory for the

advanced republicans, which struck terror into the reactionary leaders,

Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert, the president gave his countenance to

a clerical campaign against the republicans at home. The Church, which

had failed in its attempts to gain control of the university under Louis

XVIII. and Charles X., aimed at setting up a rival establishment of its

own. The _Loi Falloux_ of the 15th of March 1850, under the pretext of

establishing the liberty of instruction promised by the charter, again

placed the teaching of the university under the direction of the

Catholic Church, as a measure of social safety, and, by the facilities

which it granted to the Church for propagating teaching in harmony with

its own dogmas, succeeded in obstructing for half a century the work of

intellectual enfranchisement effected by the men of the 18th century and

of the Revolution. The electoral law of the 31st of May was another

class law directed against subversive ideas. It required as a proof of

three years' domicile the entries in the record of direct taxes, thus

cutting down universal suffrage by taking away the vote from the

industrial population, which was not as a rule stationary. The law of

the 16th of July aggravated the severity of the press restrictions by

re-establishing the "caution money" (_cautionnement_) deposited by

proprietors and editors of papers with the government as a guarantee of

good behaviour. Finally, a skilful interpretation of the law on clubs

and political societies suppressed about this time all the Republican

societies. It was now their turn to be crushed like the socialists.

Struggle between the President and the Assembly.

But the president had only joined in Montalembert's cry of "Down with

the Republicans!" in the hope of effecting a revision of the

constitution without having recourse to a _coup d'état_. His concessions

only increased the boldness of the monarchists; while they had only

accepted Louis Napoleon as president in opposition to the Republic and

as a step in the direction of the monarchy. A conflict was now

inevitable between his personal policy and the majority of the Chamber,

who were, moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of

the death of Louis Philippe in August 1850. Louis Napoleon skilfully

exploited their projects for a restoration of the monarchy, which he

knew to be unpopular in the country, and which gave him the opportunity

of furthering his own personal ambitions. From the 8th of August to the

12th of November 1850 he went about France stating the case for a

revision of the constitution in speeches which he varied according to

each place; he held reviews, at which cries of "_Vive Napoléon_" showed

that the army was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, on whose

arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchical _coup d'état_;

he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure men devoted to his own

cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny, and gathered round him

officers of the African army, broken men like General Saint-Arnaud; in

fact he practically declared open war.

Coup d'État of Dec. 2, 1851.

His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, and their

refusal to increase his civil list, was to hint at a vast communistic

plot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denounce the electoral

law of the 31st of May in order to gain the support of the mass of the

people. The Assembly retaliated by throwing out the proposal for a

partial reform of that article of the constitution which prohibited the

re-election of the president and the re-establishment of universal

suffrage (July). All hope of a peaceful issue was at an end. When the

questors called upon the Chamber to have posted up in all barracks the

decree of the 6th of May 1848 concerning the right of the Assembly to

demand the support of the troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a

restoration of the monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the

measure, thus disarming the legislative power. Louis Napoleon saw his

opportunity. On the night between the 1st and 2nd of December 1851, the

anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the Chamber, re-established

universal suffrage, had all the party leaders arrested, and summoned a

new assembly to prolong his term of office for ten years. The deputies

who had met under Berryer at the _Mairie_ of the tenth arrondissement to

defend the constitution and proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon

were scattered by the troops at Mazas and Mont Valérian. The resistance

organized by the republicans within Paris under Victor Hugo was soon

subdued by the intoxicated soldiers. The more serious resistance in the

departments was crushed by declaring a state of siege and by the "mixed

commissions." The plebiscite of the 20th of December ratified by a huge

majority the _coup d'état_ in favour of the prince-president, who alone

reaped the benefit of the excesses of the Republicans and the

reactionary passions of the monarchists.

The Second Empire.

The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only served as a

preface to the restoration of the Empire. The new anti-parliamentary

constitution of the 14th of January 1852 was to a large extent merely a

repetition of that of the year VIII. All executive power was entrusted

to the head of the state, who was solely responsible to the people, now

powerless to exercise any of their rights. He was to nominate the

members of the council of state, whose duty it was to prepare the laws,

and of the senate, a body permanently established as a constituent part

of the empire. One innovation was made, namely, that the Legislative

Body was elected by universal suffrage, but it had no right of

initiative, all laws being proposed by the executive power. This new and

violent political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as

had attended that of Brumaire. On the 2nd of December 1852, France,

still under the effect of the Napoleonic _virus_, and the fear of

anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power,

with the title of emperor, upon Napoleon III.

But though the machinery of government was almost the same under the

Second Empire as it had been under the First, the principles upon which

its founder based it were different. The function of the Empire, as he

loved to repeat, was to guide the people internally towards justice and

externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal

suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached

former oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions, he set

out to solve them by organizing a system of government based on the

principles of the "Napoleonic Idea," i.e. of the emperor, the elect of

the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme;

and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon, "who had

sprung armed from the Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove," as

the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary epoch. But he

soon proved that social justice did not mean liberty; for he acted in

such a way that those of the principles of 1848 which he had preserved

became a mere sham. He proceeded to paralyze all those active national

forces which tend to create the public spirit of a people, such as

parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education and associations.

The Legislative Body was not allowed either to elect its own president

or to regulate its own procedure, or to propose a law or an amendment,

or to vote on the budget in detail, or to make its deliberations public.

It was a dumb parliament. Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised

and controlled by means of official candidature, by forbidding free

speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a

skilful adjustment of the electoral districts in such a way as to

overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The

press was subjected to a system of _cautionnements_, i.e. "caution

money," deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, and

_avertissements_, i.e. requests by the authorities to cease publication

of certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression; while

books were subject to a censorship. France was like a sickroom, where

nobody might speak aloud. In order to counteract the opposition of

individuals, a _surveillance_ of suspects was instituted. Orsini's

attack on the emperor in 1858, though purely Italian in its motive,

served as a pretext for increasing the severity of this régime by the

law of general security (_sûreté générale_) which authorized the

internment, exile or deportation of any suspect without trial. In the

same way public instruction was strictly supervised, the teaching of

philosophy was suppressed in the _Lycées_, and the disciplinary powers

of the administration were increased. In fact for seven years France had

no political life. The Empire was carried on by a series of plebiscites.

Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 it was

reduced to five members: Darimon, Émile Ollivier, Hénon, J. Favre and E.

Picard. The royalists waited inactive after the new and unsuccessful

attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by a combination of the legitimists

and Orleanists, to re-create a living monarchy out of the ruin of two

royal families. Thus the events of that ominous night in December were

closing the future to the new generations as well as to those who had

grown up during forty years of liberty.

Material prosperity a condition of despotism.

But it was not enough to abolish liberty by conjuring up the spectre of

demagogy. It had to be forgotten, the great silence had to be covered by

the noise of festivities and material enjoyment, the imagination of the

French people had to be distracted from public affairs by the taste for

work, the love of gain, the passion for good living. The success of the

imperial despotism, as of any other, was bound up with that material

prosperity which would make all interests dread the thought of

revolution. Napoleon III., therefore, looked for support to the clergy,

the great financiers, industrial magnates and landed proprietors. He

revived on his own account the "Let us grow rich" of 1840. Under the

influence of the Saint-Simonians and men of business great credit

establishments were instituted and vast public works entered upon: the

Crédit foncier de France, the Crédit mobilier, the conversion of the

railways into six great companies between 1852 and 1857. The rage for

speculation was increased by the inflow of Californian and Australian

gold, and consumption was facilitated by a general fall in prices

between 1856 and 1860, due to an economic revolution which was soon to

overthrow the tariff wall, as it had done already in England. Thus

French activity flourished exceedingly between 1852 and 1857, and was

merely temporarily checked by the crisis of 1857. The universal

Exhibition of 1855 was its culminating point. Art felt the effects of

this increase of comfort and luxury. The great enthusiasms of the

romantic period were over; philosophy became sceptical and literature

merely amusing. The festivities of the court at Compiègne set the

fashion for the bourgeoisie, satisfied with this energetic government

which kept such good guard over their bank balances.

Napoleon III.'s ideas.

If the Empire was strong, the emperor was weak. At once headstrong and a

dreamer, he was full of rash plans, but irresolute in carrying them

out. An absolute despot, he remained what his life had made him, a

conspirator through the very mysticism of his mental habit, and a

revolutionary by reason of his demagogic imperialism and his democratic

chauvinism. In his opinion the artificial work of the congress of

Vienna, involving the downfall of his own family and of France, ought to

be destroyed, and Europe organized as a collection of great industrial

states, united by community. of interests and bound together by

commercial treaties, and expressing this unity by periodical congresses

presided over by himself, and by universal exhibitions. In this way he

would reconcile the revolutionary principle of the supremacy of the

people with historical tradition, a thing which neither the Restoration

nor the July monarchy nor the Republic of 1848 had been able to achieve.

Universal suffrage, the organization of Rumanian, Italian and German

nationality, and commercial liberty; this was to be the work of the

Revolution. But the creation of great states side by side with France

brought with it the necessity for looking for territorial compensation

elsewhere, and consequently for violating the principle of nationality

and abjuring his system of economic peace. Napoleon III.'s foreign

policy was as contradictory as his policy in home affairs, "L'Empire,

c'est la paix," was his cry; and he proceeded to make war.

The Crimean War.

So long as his power was not yet established, Napoleon III. made

especial efforts to reassure European opinion, which had been made

uneasy by his previous protestations against the treaties of 1815. The

Crimean War, in which, supported by England and the king of Sardinia, he

upheld against Russia the policy of the integrity of the Turkish empire,

a policy traditional in France since Francis I., won him the adherence

both of the old parties and and the Liberals. And this war was the

prototype of all the rest. It was entered upon with no clearly defined

military purpose, and continued in a hesitating way. This was the cause,

after the victory of the allies at the Alma (September 14, 1854), of the

long and costly siege of Sevastopol (September 8, 1855). Napoleon III.,

whose joy was at its height owing to the signature of a peace which

excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to the birth of the prince

imperial, which ensured the continuation of his dynasty, thought that

the time had arrived to make a beginning in applying his system. Count

Walewski, his minister for foreign affairs, gave a sudden and unexpected

extension of scope to the deliberations of the congress which met at

Paris in 1856 by inviting the plenipotentiaries to consider the

questions of Greece, Rome, Naples, &c. This motion contained the

principle of all the upheavals which were to effect such changes in

Europe between 1859 and 1871. It was Cavour and Piedmont who immediately

benefited by it, for thanks to Napoleon III. they were able to lay the

Italian question before an assembly of diplomatic Europe.

The War in Italy.

It was not Orsini's attack on the 14th of January 1858 which brought

this question before Napoleon. It had never ceased to occupy him since

he had taken part in the patriotic conspiracies in Italy in his youth.

The triumph of his armies in the East now gave him the power necessary

to accomplish this mission upon which he had set his heart. The

suppression of public opinion made it impossible for him to be

enlightened as to the conflict between the interests of the country and

his own generous visions. The sympathy of all Europe was with Italy,

torn for centuries past between so many masters; under Alexander II.

Russia, won over since the interview of Stuttgart by the emperor's

generosity rather than conquered by armed force, offered no opposition

to this act of justice; while England applauded it from the first. The

emperor, divided between the empress Eugénie, who as a Spaniard and a

devout Catholic was hostile to anything which might threaten the papacy,

and Prince Napoleon, who as brother-in-law of Victor Emmanuel favoured

the cause of Piedmont, hoped to conciliate both sides by setting up an

Italian federation, intending to reserve the presidency of it to Pope

Pius IX., as a mark of respect to the moral authority of the Church.

Moreover, the very difficulty of the undertaking appealed to the

emperor, elated by his recent success in the Crimea. At the secret

meeting between Napoleon and Count Cavour (July 20, 1858) the eventual

armed intervention of France, demanded by Orsini before he mounted the

scaffold, was definitely promised.

The peace of Villafranca.

The ill-advised Austrian ultimatum demanding the immediate cessation of

Piedmont's preparations for war precipitated the Italian expedition. On

the 3rd of May 1859 Napoleon declared his intention of making Italy

"free from the Alps to the Adriatic." As he had done four years ago, he

plunged into the war with no settled scheme and without preparation; he

held out great hopes, but without reckoning what efforts would be

necessary to realize them. Two months later, in spite of the victories

of Montebello, Magenta and Solferino, he suddenly broke off, and signed

the patched-up peace of Villafranca with Francis Joseph (July 9).

Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon III., who in turn ceded it to Victor

Emmanuel; Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes,

the Romagna to the pope, now president of an Italian federation. The

mountain had brought forth a mouse.

The Italian problem.

The reasons for this breakdown on the part of the emperor in the midst

of his apparent triumph were many. Neither Magenta nor Solferino had

been decisive battles. Further, his idea of a federation was menaced by

the revolutionary movement which seemed likely to drive out all the

princes of central Italy, and to involve him in an unwelcome dispute

with the French clerical party. Moreover, he had forgotten to reckon

with the Germanic Confederation, which was bound to come to the

assistance of Austria. The mobilization of Prussia on the Rhine,

combined with military difficulties and the risk of a defeat in Venetian

territory, rather damped his enthusiasm, and decided him to put an end

to the war. The armistice fell upon the Italians as a bolt from the

blue, convincing them that they had been betrayed; on all sides despair

drove them to sacrifice their jealously guarded independence to national

unity. On the one hand the Catholics were agitating throughout all

Europe to obtain the independence of the papal territory; and the French

republicans were protesting, on the other hand, against the abandonment

of those revolutionary traditions, the revival of which they had hailed

so enthusiastically. The emperor, unprepared for the turn which events

had taken, attempted to disentangle this confusion by suggesting a fresh

congress of the Powers, which should reconcile dynastic interests with

those of the people. After a while he gave up the attempt and resigned

himself to the position, his actions having had more wide-reaching

results than he had wished. The treaty of Zürich proclaimed the

fallacious principle of non-intervention (November 10, 1859); and then,

by the treaty of Turin of the 24th of May 1860, Napoleon threw over his

ill-timed confederation. He conciliated the mistrust of Great Britain by

replacing Walewski, who was hostile to his policy, by Thouvenel, an

anti-clerical and a supporter of the English alliance, and he

counterbalanced the increase of the new Italian kingdom by the

acquisition of Nice and Savoy. Napoleon, like all French governments,

only succeeded in finding a provisional solution for the Italian

problem.

Catholic and protectionist opposition.

But this solution would only hold good so long as the emperor was in a

powerful position. Now this Italian war, in which he had given his

support to revolution beyond the Alps, and, though unintentionally,

compromised the temporal power of the popes, had given great offence to

the Catholics, to whose support the establishment of the Empire was

largely due. A keen Catholic opposition sprang up, voiced in L.

Veuillot's paper the _Univers_, and was not silenced even by the Syrian

expedition (1860) in favour of the Catholic Maronites, who were being

persecuted by the Druses. On the other hand, the commercial treaty with

Great Britain which was signed in January 1860, and which ratified the

free-trade policy of Richard Cobden and Michael Chevalier, had brought

upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign competition. Thus both

Catholics and protectionists made the discovery that absolutism may be

an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests, but a

bad thing when it is exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order

to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened

hostility of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support

which he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the

general amnesty of the 16th of August 1859 had marked the evolution of

the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary

empire, which was to last for ten years.

The Liberal Empire.

Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in

silence. On the 24th of November 1860, "by a _coup d'état_ matured

during his solitary meditations," like a conspirator in his love of

hiding his mysterious thoughts even from his ministers, he granted to

the Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the

speech from the throne, and to the press the right of reporting

parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter concession to hold in

check the growing Catholic opposition, which was becoming more and more

alarmed by the policy of _laissez-faire_ practised by the emperor in

Italy. But the government majority already showed some signs of

independence. The right of voting on the budget by sections, granted by

the emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries.

Everything conspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid

friends who were calling attention to the defective budget; the

commercial crisis, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above all,

the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his opponents in

1860 by insisting on an alliance with Great Britain in order forcibly to

open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 by his ill-fated attempt to

put down a republic and set up a Latin empire in Mexico in favour of the

archduke Maximilian of Austria, and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on

colonizing experiments in Cochin China and Annam.

The policy of nationalism.

The same inconsistencies occurred in the emperor's European politics.

The support which he had given to the Italian cause had aroused the

eager hopes of other nations. The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy

on the 18th of February 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany and

the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half-measures. But when a

concession, however narrow, had been made to the liberty of one nation,

it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the

rest. In 1863 these "new rights" again clamoured loudly for recognition,

in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed united, but

with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian principalities.

In order to extricate himself from the Polish _impasse_, the emperor

again had recourse to his expedient--always fruitless because always

inopportune--of a congress. He was again unsuccessful: England refused

even to admit the principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and

Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile,

i.e. they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.

Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy, let Poland

be crushed, and Germany triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein

question. These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the

opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and Republican, in the _Union

libérale_. The elections of May-June 1863 gained the Opposition forty

seats and a leader, Thiers, who at once urgently gave voice to its

demand for "the necessary liberties."

The régime of concessions.

It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance

of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view of his

international failures, impossible to repress it. The sacrifice of

Persigny, minister of the interior, who was responsible for the

elections, the substitution for the ministers without portfolio of a

sort of presidency of the council filled by Rouher, the "Vice-Emperor,"

and the nomination of V. Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public

instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to

culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct

rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though the

opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional than

dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition, that of the

amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom Victor Hugo was the

eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had formerly constituted the

governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern.

There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the

_bourgeoisie_ might spread to the people. As Antaeus recruited his

strength by touching the earth Napoleon believed that he would

consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the labouring masses,

by whom that power had been established.

Industrial policy of the Empire.

This industrial policy he embarked upon as much from motives of interest

as from sympathy, out of opposition to the _bourgeoisie_, which was

ambitious of governing or desirous of his overthrow. His course was all

the easier, since he had only to exploit the prejudices of the working

classes. They had never forgotten the _loi Chapelle_ of 1791, which by

forbidding all combinations among the workmen had placed them at the

mercy of their employers, nor had they forgotten how the limited

suffrage had conferred upon capital a political monopoly which had put

it out of reach of the law, nor how each time they had left their

position of rigid isolation in order to save the Charter or universal

suffrage, the triumphant _bourgeoisie_ had repaid them at the last with

neglect. The silence of public opinion under the Empire and the

prosperous state of business had completed the separation of the labour

party from the political parties. The visit of an elected and paid

labour delegation to the Universal Exhibition of 1862 in London gave the

emperor an opportunity for re-establishing relations with that party,

and these relations were to his mind all the more profitable, since the

labour party, by refusing to associate their social and industrial

claims with the political ambitions of the _bourgeoisie_, maintained a

neutral attitude between the parties, and could, if necessary, divide

them, while by its keen criticism of society it aroused the conservative

instincts of the _bourgeoisie_ and consequently checked their enthusiasm

for liberty. A law of the 23rd of May 1863 gave the workmen the right,

as in England, to save money by creating co-operative societies. Another

law, of the 25th of May 1864, gave them the right to enforce better

conditions of labour by organizing strikes. Still further, the emperor

permitted the workmen to imitate their employers by establishing unions

for the permanent protection of their interests. And finally, when the

_ouvriers_, with the characteristic French tendency to insist on the

universal application of a theory, wished to substitute for the narrow

utilitarianism of the English trade-unions the ideas common to the

wage-earning classes of the whole world, he put no obstacles in the way

of their leader M. Tolain's plan for founding an International

Association of Workers (_Société Internationale des Travailleurs_). At

the same time he encouraged the provision made by employers for thrift

and relief and for improving the condition of the working-classes.

Sadowa (1866).

Thus assured of support, the emperor, through the mouthpiece of M.

Rouher, who was a supporter of the absolutist régime, was able to refuse

all fresh claims on the part of the Liberals. He was aided by the

cessation of the industrial crisis as the American civil war came to an

end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of

the 15th of September, which guaranteed to the papal states the

protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of the 30th of October

1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the

Schleswig-Holstein question. But after 1865 the momentary agreement

which had united Austria and Prussia for the purpose of administering

the conquered duchies gave place to a silent antipathy which foreboded a

rupture. Yet, though the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 was not unexpected,

its rapid termination and fateful outcome came as a severe and sudden

shock to France. Napoleon had hoped to gain fresh prestige for his

throne and new influence for France by an intervention at the proper

moment between combatants equally matched and mutually exhausted. His

calculations were upset and his hopes dashed by the battle of Sadowa

(Königgrätz) on the 4th of July. The treaty of Prague put an end to the

secular rivalry of Habsburg and Hohenzollern for the hegemony of

Germany, which had been France's opportunity; and Prussia could afford

to humour the just claims of Napoleon by establishing between her North

German Confederation and the South German states the illusory frontier

of the Main. The belated efforts of the French emperor to obtain

"compensation" on the left bank of the Rhine, at the expense of the

South German states, made matters worse. France realized with an angry

surprise that on her eastern frontier had arisen a military power by

which her influence, if not her existence, was threatened; that in the

name of the principle of nationality unwilling populations had been

brought under the sway of a dynasty by tradition militant and

aggressive, by tradition the enemy of France; that this new and

threatening power had destroyed French influence in Italy, which owed

the acquisition of Venetia to a Prussian alliance and to Prussian arms;

and that all this had been due to Napoleon, outwitted and outmanoeuvred

at every turn, since his first interview with Bismarck at Biarritz in

October 1865.

Further concessions of Napoleon III.

Struggle between Ollivier and Rouher.

All confidence in the excellence of imperial régime vanished at once.

Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of the Opposition denounced in

the Legislative Body the blunders of 1866. Émile Ollivier split up the

official majority by the amendment of the 45, and gave it to be

understood that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible

until the emperor would grant entire liberty. The recall of the French

troops from Rome, in accordance with the convention of 1864, also led to

further attacks by the Ultramontane party, who were alarmed for the

papacy. Napoleon III. felt the necessity for developing "the great act

of 1860" by the decree of the 19th of January 1867. In spite of Rouher,

by a secret agreement with Ollivier the right of interpellation was

restored to the Chambers. Reforms in press supervision and the right of

holding meetings were promised. It was in vain that M. Rouher tried to

meet the Liberal opposition by organizing a party for the defence of the

Empire, the "Union dynastique." But the rapid succession of

international reverses prevented him from effecting anything.

The year 1867.

The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico "the

greatest idea of the reign" ended in a humiliating withdrawal before the

ultimatum of the United States, while Italy, relying on her new alliance

with Prussia and already forgetful of her promises, was mobilizing the

revolutionary forces to complete her unity by conquering Rome. The

chassepots of Mentana were needed to check the Garibaldians. And when

the imperial diplomacy made a belated attempt to obtain from the

victorious Bismarck those territorial compensations on the Rhine, in

Belgium and in Luxemburg, which it ought to have been possible to exact

from him earlier at Biarritz, Benedetti added to the mistake of asking

at the wrong time the humiliation of obtaining nothing (see LUXEMBURG).

Napoleon did not dare to take courage and confess his weakness. And

finally was seen the strange contrast of France, though reduced to such

a state of real weakness, courting the mockery of Europe by a display of

the external magnificence which concealed her decline. In the Paris

transformed by Baron Haussmann and now become almost exclusively a city

of pleasure and frivolity, the opening of the Universal Exhibition was

marked by Berezowski's attack on the tsar Alexander II., and its success

was clouded by the tragic fate of the unhappy emperor Maximilian of

Mexico. Well might Thiers exclaim, "There are no blunders left for us to

make."

Peace or war.

But the emperor managed to commit still more, of which the consequences

both for his dynasty and for France were irreparable. Old, infirm and

embittered, continually keeping his ministers in suspense by the

uncertainty and secrecy of his plans, surrounded by a people now bent

almost entirely on pleasure, and urged on by a growing opposition, there

now remained but two courses open to Napoleon III.: either to arrange a

peace which should last, or to prepare for a decisive war. He allowed

himself to drift in the direction of war, but without bringing things to

a necessary state of preparation. It was in vain that Count Beust

revived on behalf of the Austrian government the project abandoned by

Napoleon since 1866 of a settlement on the basis of the _status quo_

with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on hearing from Colonel

Stoffel, his military attaché at Berlin, that Prussia would not agree to

disarmament. But he was more anxious than he was willing to show. A

reconstitution of the military organization seemed to him to be

necessary. This Marshal Niel was unable to obtain either from the

Bonapartist Opposition, who feared the electors, in whom the old

patriotism had given place to the commercial or cosmopolitan spirit, or

from the Republican opposition, who were unwilling to strengthen the

despotism. Both of them were blinded by party interest to the danger

from outside.

Action of the revolutionaries.

The emperor's good fortune had departed; he was abandoned by men and

disappointed by events. He had vainly hoped that, though by the laws of

May-June 1868, granting the freedom of the press and authorizing

meetings, he had conceded the right of speech, he would retain the right

of action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies. Victor

Hugo's _Châtiments_, the insults of Rochefort's _Lanterne_, the

subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killed at the

barricades in 1851, followed by Gambetta's terrible speech against the

Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze, soon showed that the

republican party was irreconcilable, and bent on the Republic. On the

other hand, the Ultramontane party were becoming more and more

discontented, while the industries formerly protected were equally

dissatisfied with the free-trade reform. Worse still, the working

classes had abandoned their political neutrality, which had brought them

nothing but unpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising

Proudhon's impassioned attacks on the slavery of communism, they had

gradually been won over by the collectivist theories of Karl Marx or the

revolutionary theories of Bakounine, as set forth at the congresses of

the International. At these Labour congresses, the fame of which was

only increased by the fact that they were forbidden, it had been

affirmed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from

his political emancipation. Henceforth the union between the

internationalists and the republican bourgeois was an accomplished fact.

The Empire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middle classes

and the labouring classes, and forced them both into revolutionary

actions. On every side took place strikes, forming as it were a review

of the effective forces of the Revolution.

The parliamentary Empire.

The elections of May 1869, made during these disturbances, inflicted

upon the Empire a serious moral defeat. In spite of the revival by the

government of the cry of the red terror, Ollivier, the advocate of

conciliation, was rejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116

members of the Third Party were elected. Concessions had to be made to

these, so by the _senatus-consulte_ of the 8th of September 1869 a

parliamentary monarchy was substituted for personal government. On the

2nd of January 1870 Ollivier was placed at the head of the first

homogeneous, united and responsible ministry. But the republican party,

unlike the country, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and

order, refused to be content with the liberties they had won; they

refused all compromise, declaring themselves more than ever decided upon

the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of the journalist Victor Noir by

Pierre Bonaparte, a member of the imperial family, gave the

revolutionaries their long desired opportunity (January 10). But the

_émeute_ ended in a failure, and the emperor was able to answer the

personal threats against him by the overwhelming victory of the

plebiscite of the 8th of May 1870.

The Franco-German War.

The Hohenzollern candidature.

But this success, which should have consolidated the Empire, determined

its downfall. It was thought that a diplomatic success should complete

it, and make the country forget liberty for glory. It was in vain that

after the parliamentary revolution of the 2nd of January that prudent

statesman Comte Daru revived, through Lord Clarendon, Count Beust's plan

of disarmament after Sadowa. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from

the imperial _entourage_. The Empress Eugénie was credited with the

remark, "If there is no war, my son will never be emperor." The desired

pretext was offered on the 3rd of July 1870 by the candidature of a

Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French people it

seemed that Prussia, barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against

France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. France, having rejected

for dynastic reasons the candidature of a Frenchman, the duc de

Montpensier, saw herself threatened with a German prince. Never had the

emperor, now both physically and morally ill, greater need of the

counsels of a clear-headed statesman and the support of an enlightened

public opinion if he was to defeat the statecraft of Bismarck. But he

could find neither.

The declaration of war.

Ollivier's Liberal ministry, wishing to show itself as jealous for

national interests as any absolutist ministry, bent upon doing something

great, and swept away by the force of that opinion which it had itself

set free, at once accepted the war as inevitable, and prepared for it

with a light heart.[37] In face of the decided declaration of the duc de

Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, before the Legislative Body

of the 6th of July, Europe, in alarm, supported the efforts of French

diplomacy and obtained the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature.

This did not suit the views either of the war party in Paris or of

Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. The ill-advised

action of Gramont in demanding from King William one of those promises

for the future which are humiliating but never binding, gave Bismarck

his opportunity, and the king's refusal was transformed by him into an

insult by the "editing" of the Ems telegram. The chamber, in spite of

the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, now voted by 246 votes to

10 in favour of the war.

France isolated.

France found herself isolated, as much through the duplicity of Napoleon

as through that of Bismarck. The disclosure to the diets of Munich and

Stuttgart of the written text of the claims laid by Napoleon on the

territories of Hesse and Bavaria had since the 22nd of August 1866

estranged southern Germany from France, and disposed the southern states

to sign the military convention with Prussia. Owing to a similar series

of blunders, the rest of Europe had become hostile. Russia, which it had

been Bismarck's study both during and after the Polish insurrection of

1863 to draw closer to Prussia, learnt with annoyance, by the same

indiscretion, how Napoleon was keeping his promises made at Stuttgart.

The hope of gaining a revenge in the East for her defeat of 1856 while

France was in difficulties made her decide on a benevolent neutrality.

The disclosure of Benedetti's designs of 1867 on Belgium and Luxemburg

equally ensured an unfriendly neutrality on the part of Great Britain.

The emperor counted at least on the alliance of Austria and Italy, for

which he had been negotiating since the Salzburg interview (August

1867). But Austria, having suffered at his hands in 1859 and 1866, was

not ready and asked for a delay before joining in the war; while the

hesitating friendships of Italy could only be won by the evacuation of

Rome. The chassepots of Mentana, Rouher's "Never," and the hostility of

the Catholic empress to any secret article which should open to Italy

the gates of the capital, deprived France of her last friend.

Sedan. Fall of the Empire.

Marshal Leboeuf's armies were no more effective than Gramont's

alliances. The incapacity of the higher officers of the French army, the

lack of preparation for war at headquarters, the selfishness and

shirking of responsibility on the part of the field officers, the

absence of any fixed plan when failure to mobilize had destroyed all

chance of the strong offensive which had been counted on, and the folly

of depending on chance, as the emperor had so often done successfully,

instead of scientific warfare, were all plainly to be seen as early as

the insignificant engagement of Saarbrücken. Thus the French army

proceeded by disastrous stages from Weissenburg, Forbach, Froeschweiler,

Borny, Gravelotte, Noisseville and Saint-Privat to the siege of Metz and

the slaughter at Illy. By the capitulation of Sedan the Empire lost its

only support, the army, and fell. Paris was left unprotected and emptied

of troops, with only a woman at the Tuileries, a terrified Assembly at

the Palais-Bourbon, a ministry, that of Palikao, without authority, and

leaders of the Opposition who fled as the catastrophe approached.

(P. W.)