Napoleon III and the French Second Empire (5 page)

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

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

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

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

administration in communal affairs bred resentment. Repression drove remaining
démoc-soc
militants underground, forcing them to use traditional forms of popular sociability such as cafés and private drinking clubs as cover. This radicalisation of the
démoc-soc
movement further heightened official anxiety about plots by secret societies to seize power by force.

The impact of repression was also weakened by the tension which continued to exist between the various monarchist factions, in spite of their shared fear of social revolution. Memories of past conflicts, ideological divisions, personal rivalries and suspicion of the Prince-President’s ambitions ensured that the Party of Order remained divided. Bonapartism, although enjoying considerable popular support, gained little sympathy among the political elites. Yet, as the prospect of a
démoc-17

soc
electoral victory in 1852 drew closer, as the ‘red spectre’ became ever more real and rumours of socialist plots were given greater credence, the willingness of notables to accept more extreme measures to preserve ‘order’ became increasingly pronounced. In this anxious and economically depressed climate more and more people looked to the President of the Republic for a solution. As head of state, Louis-Napoléon controlled the government machine and the army which was,

before the creation of a modern police, the essential means of securing internal order. His position was reinforced by the inability of Legitimists and Orleanists, as in 1848, to agree on an alternative candidate for the 1852 presidential elections.

Bonaparte’s problem was that provisions of the constitution barred him from standing for a second successive term in office and there were a sufficient number of republicans in the Assembly to prevent constitutional revision by the necessary two-thirds majority. His utter determination to retain power left him with little choice but to attempt a third
coup d’état
and, on this occasion, from a position of strength.

The Presidential coup d’état

The coup, which took place on 2 December 1851, was directed against both the republicans and the monarchist groups represented in parliament. The fact that only the former offered armed resistance, and that conservatives tended to

welcome the President’s seizure of power, gave it an overwhelmingly anti-

republican character. Thus, it might be seen as the culmination of a long period of political repression, with the extension of martial law to the entire country facilitating the final destruction of the
démoc-soc
movement. Mounting the coup proved to be relatively easy for the head of government of a centralised state in which army officers and officials were committed to passive obedience. It had been carefully planned by the President and his closest advisors. Trusted personnel had been moved into key positions, notably the President’s half-brother, the Comte de Morny, to the Interior Ministry and General Saint-Arnaud to the War Ministry. In implementing the coup, the semaphore telegraph system, reserved for official use, allowed the government a considerable time advantage for the despatch of

instructions and receipt of information. Preventative arrests of monarchist leaders like Adolphe Thiers, the Generals Changarnier, Bedeau and Lamoricière, and

republicans who might be tempted to organise resistance, had been carefully planned. On 30 November a practice alert had even allowed a military rehearsal.

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The tactic was to concentrate troops in the major urban centres and garrison towns and, once their security had been assured, to deploy mobile columns into the countryside. The practical disadvantage of this plan was that it would allow time for insurrections to develop in some disaffected and under-policed small towns as well as in surrounding rural areas.

In Paris there was only very limited resistance to the coup. This was because of obvious military preparations and partly due to preventative arrests. Conservative deputies vied with each other for the privilege of being arrested and absolved of any further responsibility in the affair. There were appeals to rally to the defence of republican institutions launched by a small group of republican deputies including such luminaries as Victor Hugo, Hippolyte Carnot, Jules Favre, Michel de Bourges and Victor Schoelcher, and additionally by Jules Leroux and August Desmoulins on behalf of workers associated with a
comité central des corporations.
None the less, few workers were prepared to risk a repetition of the slaughter which had followed the June insurrection, particularly in defence of the sovereignty of a parliament dominated by monarchists who had deprived many of them of the right to vote. Moreover, the President still enjoyed the personal prestige of his Bonapartist inheritance and, in the proclamation which justified the coup,

promised the immediate restoration of manhood suffrage. Nevertheless, on 3 and 4 December, demonstrations (mainly involving workers) occurred and some 70

barricades were constructed in the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Antoine and in the old centres of popular revolution in the streets adjoining the rues Saint-Denis, Rambuteau and Transnonain. The army did not repeat the mistakes of February 1848 and again, as in June, deployed large, concentrated formations, well supplied with provisions and ammunition. Around 30, 000 troops faced some 1,200

insurgents. This unequal struggle was inevitably short lived. Subsequently, the official newspaper, the
Moniteur universel
announced that 27 soldiers and 380

civilians had been killed, although the second figure was inflated by the casualties caused when panicking soldiers fired volleys at peaceful, and mainly middle-class, spectators along the boulevards Bonne-Nouvelle, Poissonnière, Montmartre and des Italiens.

Short-lived demonstrations also occurred in many other towns. In Lille, the republican newspaper
Messager du Nord
on 3 December launched a call for resistance and, in the evening, workers gathered on the
grande-place.
They were easily dispersed. News of the failure of resistance in Paris discouraged further action. To take another example, in eastern France, Dijon, a crowd of 400–500

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people gathered outside the railway station in the afternoon of 3 December to wait for news from Paris. The local
démoc-soc
leadership was, however, mostly arrested while waiting at a printer’s for leaflets calling for resistance to be printed. Militants in Dijon itself and in Beaune and other small towns in the region who habitually followed their lead remained inactive. Their hesitancy was in marked contrast with the obvious determination of the authorities. From the government’s point of view, the situation was, unexpectedly, to become far more serious in the provinces than in the large towns. Some 100, 000 men from around 900 communes were involved in various forms of protest; as many as 70, 000 from at least 775 communes actually took up arms and over 27, 000 participated in acts of violence (Margadant 1979).

Insurrections occurred where
démoc-soc
militants had succeeded in appealing to popular conceptions of justice, linking their political programme to widespread practical grievances and, above all, where organisational structures centred on small towns and market villages had survived repression. Risings occurred in the centre (Allier, Nièvre); south-west (Lot-et-Garonne, Gers) and especially the south-east (Drôme, Ardèche, Basses-Alpes, Hérault, Var) – i.e. in a minority of rural areas south of a line Biarritz–Pithiviers (Loiret)–Strasbourg. These were regions in which small-scale peasant farming predominated and which were

experiencing the effects of growing population pressure on the land. The difficult situation within them was made all the worse by the persistent difficulties of market-orientated activities like vine and silk cultivation, forestry and rural manufacture. To the north and west of this line, in the departments of western France, the north, north-east and most of the Paris region, there was little disorder.

These were mostly either areas of larger-scale commercial farming in which more advanced industrial development did something to relieve population pressure, or zones in the west characterised by economic backwardness and intense poverty.

They were regions in which traditional elites, generally enjoying the support of the church, retained considerable influence.

The insurrections provided further justification for a settling of accounts. Over 26, 000
démoc-soc
militants were arrested throughout France, rather than simply where insurrections had occurred. The authorities were anxious to eliminate the radical republican leadership, irrespective of whether individuals had been involved in resistance to the coup or not. The official statistics on those arrested revealed that 10.6 per cent belonged to the middle-class professions (including 1, 570 rentiers, 325 doctors and 225 lawyers) and that the largest group were artisans and workers in the traditional trades (builders, shoemakers, tailors, etc.), followed by peasants (5, 423
cultivateurs
, 1, 850
journaliers
, etc.), although peasants made 20

up a far higher proportion of the rank-and-file (Price 1972: 289). The coup allowed the authorities to complete the work of repression without paying too much

attention to the rule of law. The fright they had received, their bitter hatred of the left and their inability to comprehend its motives is evident from the insulting phraseology contained in the interrogation records. The insurrection was explained by the authorities in terms of the poor and ignorant being led astray by the greedy, envious and perverted. That many of the
démoc-soc
leaders were educated and comparatively well-off bourgeois, were in effect class traitors, was almost beyond comprehension. Throughout France republican leaders were arrested, exiled or discredited. Their followers, if they had been arrested, were usually soon released, but most had been frightened into political quiescence, throwing themselves on the mercy of the authorities as the only means of protecting themselves from

retribution, and the terrifying arbitrariness of police and military action. The contrast between this situation and their dreams of the social and democratic republic which was to have been established following electoral victory in 1852

were only too marked. Nevertheless, it was during the Second Republic, and in spite of the early onset of repression, that the idea of the Republic gained precision and mass support. Although substantial differences had appeared within the

republican movement, between moderates and
démoc-socs
, to an important degree they still shared the universalistic ideals of the revolutionary years of 1789 to 1794.

The insurrection of 1851, which in some respects had much in common with the archaic, ‘primitive’ traditions of popular protest, was inspired nevertheless by political ideology.
La République démocratique et sociale
had been presented, with some success, as the means of alleviating misery and insecurity and of creating a more just and egalitarian society. More broadly, the Second Republic represented an important stage in the process of mass politicisation. Historians have frequently associated politicisation with a vote for the left and against traditional social elites, but whether they voted for republican or conservative candidates large numbers of people, previously excluded from political activity, were now persuaded of its relevance to their daily lives. The introduction of manhood suffrage had stimulated political organisation and mobilisation. Doubtless, many soon relapsed into apathy, but others would continue to take at least an episodic interest in affairs outside their own communities. During the Second Empire the accelerating

development of education, communications, urban reconstruction, regular (even if stage-managed) electoral campaigns, and the growing governmental intervention within communities which all this required, would reinforce these trends.

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Towards an imperial restoration

Most of the population even in those regions in which resistance did occur had responded to news of the coup with indifference or delight. Among notables, initial reservations about the replacement of a liberal parliamentary regime by a