The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

THE EIGHTEENTH

BRUMAIRE

OF

LOUIS BONAPARTE

BY

KARL MARX

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TRANSLATED BY

DANIEL DE LEON

THIRD EDITION

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CHICAGO

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY

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PUBLISHER’S NOTE TO THIRD EDITION

The first edition of this translation was published in New York in

1897. Ten years later we purchased the plates and copyright and

brought out an edition in paper covers. The type was small and the

printing unattractive, but the demand for the book continues, and we

now offer a new edition from new plates. The translation is unchanged

except for a few slight verbal corrections, and we are reprinting the

introduction by the translator just as originally written. The events

of sixteen years have in many ways confirmed his forecast, and the

spectacular figure of Theodore Roosevelt now offers a striking

parallel to that of Napoleon the Little.

C. H. K.

March, 1913.

TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” is one of Karl Marx’ most

profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best

work extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon

the history of the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the

bourgeois and other manifestations that accompany the same, and the

tactics that such conditions dictate.

The recent populist uprising; the more recent “Debs Movement”; the

thousand and one utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up;

the capitalist manoeuvres; the hopeless, helpless grasping after

straws, that characterize the conduct of the bulk of the working

class; all of these, together with the empty-headed, ominous figures

that are springing into notoriety for a time and have their day, mark

the present period of the Labor Movement in the nation a critical

one. The best information acquirable, the best mental training

obtainable are requisite to steer through the existing chaos that the

death-tainted social system of today creates all around us. To aid in

this needed information and mental training, this instructive work is

now made accessible to English readers, and is commended to the

serious study of the serious.

The teachings contained in this work are hung on an episode in recent

French history. With some this fact may detract of its value. A

pedantic, supercilious notion is extensively abroad among us that we

are an “Anglo-Saxon” nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious

habit causes many to look to England for inspiration, as from a racial

birthplace. Nevertheless, for weal or for woe, there is no such thing

extant as “Anglo-Saxon”—of all nations, said to be “Anglo-Saxon,” in

the United States least. What we still have from England, much as

appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our

bone-and-marrow, so to speak, but rather partakes of the nature of

“importations.” We are no more English on account of them than we are

Chinese because we all drink tea.

Of all European nations, France is the one to which we come

nearest. Besides its republican form of government—the directness of

its history, the unity of its actions, the sharpness that marks its

internal development, are all characteristics that find their parallel

here best, and vice versa. In all essentials the study of modern

French history, particularly when sketched by such a master hand as

Marx’, is the most valuable one for the acquisition of that historic,

social and biologic insight that our country stands particularly in

need of, and that will be inestimable during the approaching critical

days.

For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of

France, may be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the

following explanations may prove aidful:

On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of

affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led

with inevitable certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance

that fifty and odd years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis

Bonaparte, to take a similar step with a similar result, gives the

name to this work—“The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.”

As to the other terms and allusions that occur, the following sketch

will suffice:

Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the

Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830,

an uprising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist

class—the aristocracy of finance—overthrew the Bourbon throne, or

landed aristocracy, and set up the throne of Orleans, a younger branch

of the house of Bourbon, with Louis Philippe as king. From the month

in which this revolution occurred, Louis Philippe’s monarchy is called

the “July Monarchy.” In February, 1848, a revolt of a lower tier of

the capitalist class—the industrial bourgeoisie—against the

aristocracy of finance, in turn dethroned Louis Philippe. This affair,

also named from the month in which it took place, is the “February

Revolution.” The “Eighteenth Brumaire” starts with that event.

Despite the inapplicableness to our own affairs of the political names

and political leadership herein described, both these names and

leaderships are to such an extent the products of an economic-social

development that has here too taken place with even greater sharpness,

and they have their present or threatened counterparts here so

completely, that, by the light of this work of Marx’, we are best

enabled to understand our own history, to know whence we come, whither

we are going and how to conduct ourselves.

D. D. L.

New York, Sept. 12, 1897.

THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE

OF

LOUIS BONAPARTE

I.

Hegel says somewhere that all great historic facts and personages

recur twice. He forgot to add: “Once as tragedy, and again as farce.”

Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the “Mountain” of

1848-51 for the “Mountain” of 1793-05, the Nephew for the Uncle. The

identical caricature marks also the conditions under which the second

edition of the eighteenth Brumaire is issued.

Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole

cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but

out of such as he finds close at hand. The tradition of all past

generations weighs like an alp upon the brain of the living. At the

very time when men appear engaged in revolutionizing things and

themselves, in bringing about what never was before, at such very

epochs of revolutionary crisis do they anxiously conjure up into their

service the spirits of the past, assume their names, their battle

cries, their costumes to enact a new historic scene in such

time-honored disguise and with such borrowed language. Thus did Luther

masquerade as the Apostle Paul; thus did the revolution of 1789-1814

drape itself alternately as Roman Republic and as Roman Empire; nor

did the revolution of 1848 know what better to do than to parody at

one time the year 1789, at another the revolutionary traditions of

1793-95. Thus does the beginner, who has acquired a new language, keep

on translating it back into his own mother tongue; only then has he

grasped the spirit of the new language and is able freely to express

himself therewith when he moves in it without recollections of the

old, and has forgotten in its use his own hereditary tongue.

When these historic conjurations of the dead past are closely observed

a striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille Desmoulins,

Danton, Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the

parties and the masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman

costumes and with Roman phrases the task of their time: the

emancipation and the establishment of modern bourgeois society. One

set knocked to pieces the old feudal groundwork and mowed down the

feudal heads that had grown upon it; Napoleon brought about, within

France, the conditions under which alone free competition could

develop, the partitioned lands be exploited, the nation’s unshackled

powers of industrial production be utilized; while, beyond the French

frontier, he swept away everywhere the establishments of feudality, so

far as requisite, to furnish the bourgeois social system of France

with fit surroundings of the European continent, and such as were in

keeping with the times. Once the new social establishment was set on

foot, the antediluvian giants vanished, and, along with them, the

resuscitated Roman world—the Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the

Tribunes, the Senators, and Caesar himself. In its sober reality,

bourgeois society had produced its own true interpreters in the Says,

Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real

generals sat behind the office desks; and the mutton-head of Louis

XVIII. was its political head. Wholly absorbed in the production of

wealth and in the peaceful fight of competition, this society could no

longer understand that the ghosts of the days of Rome had watched over

its cradle. And yet, lacking in heroism as bourgeois society is, it

nevertheless had stood in need of heroism, of self-sacrifice, of

terror, of civil war, and of bloody battle fields to bring it into the

world. Its gladiators found in the stern classic traditions of the

Roman republic the ideals and the form, the self-deceptions, that they

needed in order to conceal from themselves the narrow bourgeois

substance of their own struggles, and to keep their passion up to the

height of a great historic tragedy. Thus, at another stage of

development, a century before, did Cromwell and the English people

draw from the Old Testament the language, passions and illusions for

their own bourgeois revolution. When the real goal was reached, when

the remodeling of English society was accomplished, Locke supplanted

Habakuk.

Accordingly, the reviving of the dead in those revolutions served the

purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not of parodying the old; it

served the purpose of exaggerating to the imagination the given task,

not to recoil before its practical solution; it served the purpose of

rekindling the revolutionary spirit, not to trot out its ghost.

In 1848-51 only the ghost of the old revolution wandered about, from

Marrast the “_Républicain en gaunts jaunes_,”[1] who disguised himself

in old Bailly, down to the adventurer, who hid his repulsively trivial

features under the iron death mask of Napoleon. A whole people, that

imagines it has imparted to itself accelerated powers of motion

through a revolution, suddenly finds itself transferred back to a dead

epoch, and, lest there be any mistake possible on this head, the old

dates turn up again; the old calendars; the old names; the old edicts,

which long since had sunk to the level of the antiquarian’s learning;

even the old bailiffs, who had long seemed mouldering with decay. The

nation takes on the appearance of that crazy Englishman in Bedlam, who

imagines he is living in the days of the Pharaohs, and daily laments

the hard work that he must do in the Ethiopian mines as gold digger,

immured in a subterranean prison, with a dim lamp fastened on his

head, behind him the slave overseer with a long whip, and, at the

mouths of the mine a mob of barbarous camp servants who understand

neither the convicts in the mines nor one another, because they do not

speak a common language. “And all this,” cries the crazy Englishman,

“is demanded of me, the free-born Englishman, in order to make gold

for old Pharaoh.” “In order to pay off the debts of the Bonaparte

family”—sobs the French nation. The Englishman, so long as he was in

his senses, could not rid himself of the rooted thought of making

gold. The Frenchmen, so long as they were busy with a revolution,

could not rid themselves of the Napoleonic memory, as the election of

December 10th proved. They longed to escape from the dangers of

revolution back to the flesh pots of Egypt; the 2d of December, 1851,

was the answer. They have not merely the caricature of the old

Napoleon, but the old Napoleon himself—caricatured as he needs must

appear in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its

poetry from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot

start upon its work before it has stricken off all superstition

concerning the past. Former revolutions required historic

reminiscences in order to intoxicate themselves with their own

issues. The revolution of the nineteenth century must let the dead

bury their dead in order to reach its issue. With the former, the

phrase surpasses the substance; with this one, the substance surpasses

the phrase.

The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken

unawares; and the people proclaimed this political stroke a great

historic act whereby the new era was opened. On the 2d of December,

the February revolution is jockeyed by the trick of a false player,

and what is seen to be overthrown is no longer the monarchy, but the

liberal concessions which had been wrung from it by centuries of

struggles. Instead of society itself having conquered a new point,

only the State appears to have returned to its oldest form, to the

simply brazen rule of the sword and the club. Thus, upon the “coup de

main” of February, 1848, comes the response of the “coup de tête” of

December, 1851. So won, so lost. Meanwhile, the interval did not go by

unutilized. During the years 1848-1851, French society retrieved in

abbreviated, because revolutionary, method the lessons and teachings,

which—if it was to be more than a disturbance of the surface—should

have preceded the February revolution, had it developed in regular

order, by rule, so to say. Now French society seems to have receded

behind its point of departure; in fact, however, it was compelled to

first produce its own revolutionary point of departure, the situation,

circumstances, conditions, under which alone the modern revolution is

in earnest.

Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, rush

onward rapidly from success to success, their stage effects outbid one

another, men and things seem to be set in flaming brilliants, ecstasy

is the prevailing spirit; but they are short-lived, they reach their

climax speedily, then society relapses into a long fit of nervous

reaction before it learns how to appropriate the fruits of its period

of feverish excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the contrary, such

as those of the nineteenth century, criticize themselves constantly;

constantly interrupt themselves in their own course; come back to what

seems to have been accomplished, in order to start over anew; scorn

with cruel thoroughness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses

of their first attempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in

order to enable him to draw fresh strength from the earth, and again

to rise up against them in more gigantic stature; constantly recoil in

fear before the undefined monster magnitude of their own objects—until

finally that situation is created which renders all retreat

impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out:

“Hic Rhodus, hic salta!”[2]

Every observer of average intelligence, even if he failed to follow

step by step the course of French development, must have anticipated

that an unheard of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was

enough to hear the self-satisfied yelpings of victory wherewith the

Messieurs Democrats mutually congratulated one another upon the

pardons of May 2d, 1852. Indeed, May 2d had become a fixed idea in

their heads; it had become a dogma with them—something like the day on

which Christ was to reappear and the Millennium to begin had formed in

the heads of the Chiliasts. Weakness had, as it ever does, taken

refuge in the wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome if, in its

imagination, it hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the

present in the imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand,

and of the deeds, that it had “in petto,” but which it did not yet

want to bring to the scratch. The heroes, who ever seek to refute

their established incompetence by mutually bestowing their sympathy

upon one another and by pulling together, had packed their satchels,

taken their laurels in advance payments and were just engaged in the

work of getting discounted “in partibus,” on the stock exchange, the

republics for which, in the silence of their unassuming dispositions,

they had carefully organized the government personnel. The 2d of

December struck them like a bolt from a clear sky; and the peoples,

who, in periods of timid despondency, gladly allow their hidden fears

to be drowned by the loudest screamers, will perhaps have become

convinced that the days are gone by when the cackling of geese could

save the Capitol.

The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the

blue and the red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from

the tribune, the flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole

literature, the political names and the intellectual celebrities, the

civil and the criminal law, the “liberté, égalité, fraternité,”

together with the 2d of May, 1852,—all vanished like a phantasmagoria

before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do not

pronounce an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have

survived only for a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the

whole world, it should make its own testament with its own hands, and,

in the name of the people, declare: “All that exists deserves to

perish.”

It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was

taken by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the

unguarded hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do

violence to her. The riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only

formulated in other words. There remains to be explained how a nation

of thirty-six millions can be surprised by three swindlers, and taken

to prison without resistance.

Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French

revolution of February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through.

Three main periods are unmistakable:

First—The February period;

Second—The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive

national assembly (May 4, 1848, to May 29th, 1849);

Third—The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative

national assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851).

The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe,

to May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive

assembly—the February period proper—may be designated as the prologue

of the revolution. It officially expressed its own character in this,

that the government which it improvised declared itself “provisional;”

and, like the government, everything that was broached, attempted or

uttered, pronounced itself provisional. Nobody and nothing dared to

assume the right of permanent existence and of an actual fact. All the

elements that had prepared or determined the revolution—dynastic

opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic-republican small

traders’ class, social-democratic labor element—all found

“provisionally” their place in the February government.

It could not be otherwise. The February days contemplated originally a

reform of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically

privileged among the property-holding class was to be extended, while

the exclusive rule of the aristocracy of finance was to be

overthrown. When, however, it came to a real conflict, when the people

mounted the barricades, when the National Guard stood passive, when

the army offered no serious resistance, and the kingdom ran away, then

the republic seemed self-understood. Each party interpreted it in its

own sense. Won, arms in hand, by the proletariat, they put upon it the

stamp of their own class, and proclaimed the social republic. Thus the

general purpose of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose,

however, that stood in most singular contradiction to every thing

that, with the material at hand, with the stage of enlightenment that

the masses had reached, and under existing circumstances and

conditions, could be immediately used. On the other hand, the claims

of all the other elements, that had co-operated in the revolution of

February, were recognized by the lion’s share that they received in

the government. Hence, in no period do we find a more motley mixture

of high-sounding phrases together with actual doubt and helplessness;

of more enthusiastic reform aspirations, together with a more slavish

adherence to the old routine; more seeming harmony permeating the

whole of society together with a deeper alienation of its several

elements. While the Parisian proletariat was still gloating over the

sight of the great perspective that had disclosed itself to their

view, and was indulging in seriously meant discussions over the social

problems, the old powers of society had groomed themselves, had

gathered together, had deliberated and found an unexpected support in

the mass of the nation—the peasants and small traders—all of whom

threw themselves on a sudden upon the political stage, after the

barriers of the July monarchy had fallen down.

The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May, 1849, is the

period of the constitution, of the founding of the bourgeois

republic. Immediately after the February days, not only was the

dynastic opposition surprised by the republicans, and the republicans

by the Socialists, but all France was surprised by Paris. The national

assembly, that met on May 4, 1848, to frame a constitution, was the

outcome of the national elections; it represented the nation. It was a

living protest against the assumption of the February days, and it was

intended to bring the results of the revolution back to the bourgeois

measure. In vain did the proletariat of Paris, which forthwith

understood the character of this national assembly, endeavor, a few

days after its meeting, on May 15, to deny its existence by force, to

dissolve it, to disperse the organic apparition, in which the reacting

spirit of the nation was threatening them, and thus reduce it back to

its separate component parts. As is known, the 15th of May had no

other result than that of removing Blanqui and his associates, i.e.,

the real leaders of the proletarian party, from the public scene for

the whole period of the cycle which we are here considering.

Upon the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, only the bourgeois

republic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the

bourgeoisie having ruled under the name of the king, now the whole

bourgeoisie was to rule under the name of the people. The demands of

the Parisian proletariat are utopian tom-fooleries that have to be

done away with. To this declaration of the constitutional national

assembly, the Paris proletariat answers with the June insurrection,

the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The

bourgeois republic won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance,

the industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders’

class; the army; the slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the

intellectual celebrities, the parsons’ class, and the rural

population. On the side of the Parisian proletariat stood none but

itself. Over 3,000 insurgents were massacred, after the victory 15,000

were transported without trial. With this defeat, the proletariat

steps to the background on the revolutionary stage. It always seeks to

crowd forward, so soon as the movement seems to acquire new impetus,

but with ever weaker effort and ever smaller results. So soon as any

of the above lying layers of society gets into revolutionary

fermentation, it enters into alliance therewith and thus shares all

the defeats which the several parties successively suffer. But these

succeeding blows become ever weaker the more generally they are

distributed over the whole surface of society. The more important

leaders of the Proletariat, in its councils, and the press, fall one

after another victims of the courts, and ever more questionable

figures step to the front. _It partly throws itself upon doctrinaire

experiments, “co-operative banking” and “labor exchange” schemes; in

other words, it goes into movements, in which it gives up the task of

revolutionizing the old world with its own large collective weapons

and on the contrary, seeks to bring about its emancipation, behind the

back of society, in private ways, within the narrow bounds of its own

class conditions, and, consequently, inevitably fails._ The

proletariat seems to be able neither to find again the revolutionary

magnitude within itself nor to draw new energy from the newly formed

alliances until _all the classes_, with whom it contended in June,

shall lie prostrate along with itself. But in all these defeats, the

proletariat succumbs at least with the honor that attaches to great

historic struggles; not France alone, all Europe trembles before the

June earthquake, while the successive defeats inflicted upon the

higher classes are bought so easily that they need the brazen

exaggeration of the victorious party itself to be at all able to pass

muster as an event; and these defeats become more disgraceful the

further removed the defeated party stands from the proletariat.

True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the

ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and

erected; but it, at the same time, showed that there are in Europe

other issues besides that of “Republic or Monarchy.” It revealed the

fact that here the Bourgeois Republic meant the unbridled despotism of

one class over another. It proved that, with nations enjoying an older

civilization, having developed class distinctions, modern conditions

of production, an intellectual consciousness, wherein all traditions

of old have been dissolved through the work of centuries, that with

such countries the republic means only the _political revolutionary

form of bourgeois society_, not its _conservative form of existence_,

as is the case in the United States of America, where, true enough,

the classes already exist, but have not yet acquired permanent

character, are in constant flux and reflux, constantly changing their

elements and yielding them up to one another; where the modern means

of production, instead of coinciding with a stagnant population,

rather compensate for the relative scarcity of heads and hands; and,

finally, where the feverishly youthful life of material production,

which has to appropriate a new world to itself, has so far left

neither time nor opportunity to abolish the illusions of old.[3]

All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a “Party of

Order” against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as

the “Party of Anarchy,” of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to

have “saved” society against the “enemies of society.” They gave out

the slogans of the old social order—“Property, Family, Religion,

Order”—as the pass-words for their army, and cried out to the

counter-revolutionary crusaders: “In this sign thou wilt conquer!”

From that moment on, so soon as any of the numerous parties, which had

marshalled themselves under this sign against the June insurgents,

tries, in turn, to take the revolutionary field in the interest of its

own class, it goes down in its turn before the cry: “Property, Family,

Religion, Order.” Thus it happens that “society is saved” as often as

the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as a more

exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for

the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary

liberalism, for the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest

democracy, is forthwith punished as an “assault upon society,” and is

branded as “Socialism.” Finally the High Priests of “Religion and

Order” themselves are kicked off their tripods; are fetched out of

their beds in the dark, hurried into patrol wagons, thrust into jail

or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their mouths

are sealed, their pen is broken, their law torn to pieces in the name

of Religion, of Family, of Property, and of Order. Bourgeois, fanatic

on the point of “Order,” are shot down on their own balconies by

drunken soldiers, forfeit their family property, and their houses are

bombarded for pastime—all in the name of Property, of Family, of

Religion, and of Order. Finally, the refuse of bourgeois society

constitutes the “holy phalanx of Order,” and the hero Crapulinsky

makes his entry into the Tuileries as the “Savior of Society.”

II.

Let us resume the thread of events.

The history of the Constitutional National Assembly from the June days

on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican

bourgeois party, the party which is known under the several names of

“Tricolor Republican,” “True Republican,” “Political Republican,”

“Formal Republican,” etc., etc.

Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, this party had

constituted the Official Republican Opposition, and consequently had

been a recognized element in the then political world. It had its

representatives in the Chambers, and commanded considerable influence

in the press. Its Parisian organ, the “National,” passed, in its way,

for as respectable a paper as the “Journal des Debats.” This position

in the constitutional monarchy corresponded to its character. The

party was not a fraction of the bourgeoisie, held together by great

and common interests, and marked by special business requirements. It

was a coterie of bourgeois with republican ideas—writers, lawyers,

officers and civil employees, whose influence rested upon the personal

antipathies of the country for Louis Philippe, upon reminiscences of

the old Republic, upon the republican faith of a number of

enthusiasts, and, above all, upon the spirit of French patriotism,

whose hatred of the treaties of Vienna and of the alliance with

England kept them perpetually on the alert. The “National” owed a

large portion of its following under Louis Philippe to this covert

imperialism, that, later, under the republic, could stand up against

it as a deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte. The paper

fought the aristocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the

bourgeois opposition. The polemic against the budget, which, in

France, was closely connected with the opposition to the aristocracy

of finance, furnished too cheap a popularity and too rich a material

for Puritanical leading articles, not to be exploited. The industrial

bourgeoisie was thankful to it for its servile defence of the French

tariff system, which, however, the paper had taken up more out of

patriotic than economic reasons; the whole bourgeois class was

thankful to it for its vicious denunciations of Communism and

Socialism. For the rest, the party of the “National” was _purely

republican_, i.e., it demanded a republican instead of a monarchic

form of bourgeois government; above all, it demanded for the

bourgeoisie the lion’s share of the government. As to how this

transformation was to be accomplished, the party was far from being

clear. What, however, was clear as day to it and was openly declared

at the reform banquets during the last days of Louis Philippe’s reign,

was its unpopularity with the democratic middle class, especially with

the revolutionary proletariat. These pure republicans, as pure

republicans go, were at first on the very point of contenting

themselves with the regency of the Duchess of Orleans, when the

February revolution broke out, and when it gave their best known

representatives a place in the provisional government. Of course, they

enjoyed from the start the confidence of the bourgeoisie and of the

majority of the Constitutional National Assembly. The Socialist

elements of the Provisional Government were promptly excluded from the

Executive Committee which the Assembly had elected upon its convening,

and the party of the “National” subsequently utilized the outbreak of

the June insurrection to dismiss this Executive Committee also, and

thus rid itself of its nearest rivals—the _small traders’ class_ or

_democratic republicans_ (Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the General

of the bourgeois republican party, who commanded at the battle of

June, stepped into the place of the Executive Committee with a sort of

dictatorial power. Marrast, former editor-in-chief of the “National”,

became permanent President of the Constitutional National Assembly,

and the Secretaryship of State, together with all the other important

posts, devolved upon the pure republicans.

The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon

itself as the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself

surpassed in its own ideal; but it came into power, not as it had

dreamed under Louis Philippe, through a liberal revolt of the

bourgeoisie against the throne, but through a

grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the proletariat against

Capital. That which it imagined to be the _most revolutionary_, came

about as the _most counter-revolutionary_ event. The fruit fell into

its lap, but it fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not from the Tree of

Life.

The exclusive power of the bourgeois republicans lasted only from June

24 to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the _framing of a

republican constitution_ and in _the state of siege of Paris_.

The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of

the constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July

monarchy, which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from

political power, was irreconcilable with the existence of the

bourgeois republic. The February revolution had forthwith proclaimed

direct and universal suffrage in the place of the old law. The

bourgeois republicans could not annul this act. They had to content

themselves with tacking to it the limitation of a six months’

residence. The old organization of the administrative law, of

municipal government, of court procedures, of the army, etc., remained

untouched, or, where the constitution did change them, the change

affected their index, not their subject; their name, not their

substance.

The inevitable “General Staff” of the “freedoms” of 1848—personal

freedom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of

assemblage, freedom of instruction, of religion, etc.—received a

constitutional uniform that rendered them invulnerable. Each of these

freedoms is proclaimed the absolute right of the French citizen, but

always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not

curtailed by the “equal rights of others,” and by the “public safety,”

or by the “laws,” which are intended to effect this harmony. For

instance:

“Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed

assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through

the press or otherwise. _The enjoyment of these rights has no

limitation other than the equal rights of others and the public

safety_.” (Chap. II. of the French Constitution, Section 8.)

“Education is free. The freedom of education shall be _enjoyed_ under

the conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the

State.” (Section 9.)

“The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms

prescribed by law.” (Chap. I., Section 3), etc., etc.

The Constitution, it will be noticed, constantly alludes to future

organic laws, that are to carry out the glosses, and are intended to

regulate the enjoyment of these unabridged freedoms, to the end that

they collide neither with one another nor with the public

safety. Later on, the organic laws are called into existence by the

“Friends of Order,” and all the above named freedoms are so regulated

that, in their enjoyment, the bourgeoisie encounter no opposition from

the like rights of the other classes. Wherever the bourgeoisie wholly

interdicted these rights to “others,” or allowed them their enjoyment

under conditions that were but so many police snares, it was always

done only in the interest of the “public safety,” i.e., of the

bourgeoisie, as required by the Constitution.

Hence it comes that both sides—the “Friends of Order,” who abolished

all those freedoms, as well as the democrats, who had demanded them

all—appeal with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the

Constitution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower

House—freedom as a generalization, the abolition of freedom as a

specification. Accordingly, so long as the _name_ of freedom was

respected, and only its real enforcement was prevented—in a legal way,

of course—the constitutional existence of freedom remained uninjured,

untouched, however completely its _common_ existence might be

extinguished.

This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however,

like Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its

head, or rather, in the two heads into which it ran out—the

Legislative Assembly, on the one hand, and the President on the

other. Run through the Constitution and it will be found that only

those paragraphs wherein the relation of the President to the

Legislative Assembly is defined, are absolute, positive,

uncontradictory, undistortable. Here the bourgeois republicans were

concerned in securing their own position. Articles 45-70 of the

Constitution are so framed that the National Assembly can

constitutionally remove the President, but the President can set aside

the National Assembly only unconstitutionally, he can set it aside

only by setting aside the Constitution itself. Accordingly, by these

provisions, the National Assembly challenges its own violent

destruction. It not only consecrates, like the charter of 1830, the

division of powers, but it extends this feature to an unbearably

contradictory extreme. The “play of constitutional powers,” as Guizot

styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the executive

powers, plays permanent “vabanque” in the Constitution of 1848. On the

one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and qualified for

re-election by universal suffrage, who constitute an uncontrollable,

indissoluble, indivisible National Assembly, a National Assembly that

enjoys legislative omnipotence, that decides in the last instance over

war, peace and commercial treaties, that alone has the power to grant

amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, continually maintains the

foreground on the stage; on the other, a President, clad with all the

attributes of royalty, with the right to appoint and remove his

ministers independently from the national assembly, holding in his

hands all the means of executive power, the dispenser of all posts,

and thereby the arbiter of at least one and a half million existences

in France, so many being dependent upon the 500,000 civil employees

and upon the officers of all grades. He has the whole armed power

behind him. He enjoys the privilege of granting pardons to individual

criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with the

consent of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal

Councilmen, elected by the citizens themselves. The initiative and

direction of all negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to

him. While the Assembly itself is constantly acting upon the stage,

and is exposed to the critically vulgar light of day, he leads a

hidden life in the Elysian fields, only with Article 45 of the

Constitution before his eyes and in his heart daily calling out to

him, “_Frère, il faut mourir!_[4] Your power expires on the second

Sunday of the beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after your

election! The glory is then at an end; the play is not performed

twice; and, if you have any debts, see to it betimes that you pay them

off with the 600,000 francs that the Constitution has set aside for

you, unless, perchance, you should prefer traveling to Clichy[5] on

the second Monday of the beautiful month of May.”

While the Constitution thus clothes the President with actual power,

it seeks to secure the moral power to the National Assembly. Apart

from the circumstance that it is impossible to create a moral power

through legislative paragraphs, the Constitution again neutralizes

itself in that it causes the President to be chosen by all the

Frenchmen through direct suffrage. While the votes of France are

splintered to pieces upon the 750 members of the National Assembly,

they are here, on the contrary, concentrated upon _one_

individual. While each separate Representative represents only this or

that party, this or that city, this or that dunghill, or possibly only

the necessity of electing some one Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or

other, with whom neither the issue nor the man is closely considered,

that _one_, the President, on the contrary, is the elect of the

nation, and the act of his election is the trump card, that the

sovereign people plays out once every four years. The elected National

Assembly stands in a metaphysical, but the elected President in a

personal, relation to the nation. True enough, the National Assembly

presents in its several Representatives the various sides of the

national spirit, but, in the President, this spirit is incarnated. As

against the National Assembly, the President possesses a sort of

divine right, he is by the grace of the people.

Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die

in the bloom of youth. The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like

Achilles, had also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would

depart by premature death. It was enough for the pure republicans,

engaged at the work of framing a constitution, to cast a glance from

the misty heights of their ideal republic down upon the profane world

in order to realize how the arrogance of the royalists, of the

Bonapartists, of the democrats, of the Communists, rose daily,

together with their own discredit, and in the same measure as they

approached the completion of their legislative work of art, without

Thetis having for this purpose to leave the sea and impart the secret

to them. They sought to outwit fate by means of constitutional

artifice, through Section 111 of the Constitution, according to which

every motion to revise the Constitution had to be discussed three

successive times, between each of which a full month was to elapse,

and required at least a three-fourths majority, with the additional

proviso that not less than 500 members of the National Assembly

voted. They thereby only made the impotent attempt, still to exercise

as a parliamentary minority, to which in their mind’s eye they

prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, that, at this very

time, when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority and

over all the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their

weak hands.

Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a

melodramatic paragraph, “to the watchfulness and patriotism of the

whole French people, and of each individual Frenchman,” after having

just before, in another paragraph, entrusted the “watchful” and the

“patriotic” themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the

High Court, instituted by itself.

That was the Constitution of 1848, which, on the 2d of December, 1851,

was not overthrown by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a

mere hat; though, true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon

hat.

While the bourgeois republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the

work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting,

Cavaignac, on the outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris. The

state of siege of Paris was the midwife of the constitutional

assembly, during its republican pains of travail. When the

constitution is later on swept off the earth by the bayonet, it should

not be forgotten that it was by the bayonet, likewise—and the bayonet

turned against the people, at that—that it had to be protected in its

mother’s womb, and that by the bayonet it had to be planted on

earth. The ancestors of these “honest republicans” had caused their

symbol, the tricolor, to make the tour of Europe. These, in their turn

also made a discovery, which all of itself, found its way over the

whole continent, but, with ever renewed love, came back to France,

until, by this time, it had acquired the right of citizenship in

one-half of her Departments—the _state of siege_. A wondrous discovery

this was, periodically applied at each succeeding crisis in the course

of the French revolution. But the barrack and the bivouac, thus

periodically laid on the head of French society, to compress her brain

and reduce her to quiet; the sabre and the musket, periodically made

to perform the functions of judges and of administrators, of guardians

and of censors, of police officers and of watchmen; the military

moustache and the soldier’s jacket, periodically heralded as the

highest wisdom and guiding stars of society;—were not all of these,

the barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the moustache

and the soldier’s jacket bound, in the end, to hit upon the idea that

they might as well save society once for all, by proclaiming their own

régime as supreme, and relieve bourgeois society wholly of the care of

ruling itself? The barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket,

the moustache and the soldier’s jacket were all the more bound to hit

upon this idea, seeing that they could then also expect better cash

payment for their increased deserts, while at the merely periodic

states of siege and the transitory savings of society at the behest of

this or that bourgeois faction, very little solid matter fell to them

except some dead and wounded, besides some friendly bourgeois

grimaces. Should not the military, finally, in and for its own

interest, play the game of “state of siege,” and simultaneously

besiege the bourgeois exchanges? Moreover, it must not be forgotten,

and be it observed in passing, that Col. Bernard, the same President

of the Military Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to deport

15,000 insurgents without trial, moves at this period again at the

head of the Military Committees now active in Paris.

Although the honest, the pure republicans built with the state of

siege the nursery in which the Praetorian guards of December 2, 1851,

were to be reared, they, on the other hand, deserve praise in that,

instead of exaggerating the feeling of patriotism, as under Louis

Philippe, now they themselves are in command of the national power,

they crawl before foreign powers; instead of making Italy free, they

allow her to be reconquered by Austrians and Neapolitans. The election

of Louis Bonaparte for President on December 10, 1848, put an end to

the dictatorship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional assembly.

In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said: “The President of the

French Republic must never have lost his quality of French citizen.”

The first President of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not

only lost his quality of French citizen, had not only been an English

special constable, but was even a naturalized Swiss citizen.

In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election

of December 10. I shall not here return to it. Suffice it here to say

that it was a _reaction of the farmers’ class_, who had been expected

to pay the costs of the February revolution, against the other classes

of the nation: it was a _reaction of the country against the city_. It

met with great favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of

the “National” had brought neither fame nor funds; among the great

bourgeoisie, who hailed Bonaparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and

among the proletarians and small traders, who hailed him as a scourge

to Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion to enter closer into the

relation of the farmers to the French revolution.

The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the

constitutional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the

downfall of the bourgeois republicans. After they had founded a

republic for the bourgeoisie, had driven the revolutionary proletariat

from the field, and had meanwhile silenced the democratic middle

class, they are themselves shoved aside by the mass of the

bourgeoisie, who justly appropriate this republic as their

property. This bourgeois mass was _Royalist_, however. A part thereof,

the large landed proprietors, had ruled under the restoration, hence,

was _Legitimist_; the other part, the aristocrats of finance and the

large industrial capitalists, had ruled under the July monarchy,

hence, was _Orleanist_. The high functionaries of the Army, of the

University, of the Church, in the civil service, of the Academy and of

the press, divided themselves on both sides, although in unequal

parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic, that bore neither the name of

_Bourbon_, nor of _Orleans_, but the name of _Capital_, they had found

the form of government under which they could all rule in

common. Already the June insurrection had united them all into a

“Party of Order.” The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois

republicans who still held the seats in the National Assembly. As

brutally as these pure republicans had abused their own physical power

against the people, so cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken,

powerless did they yield, now when the issue was the maintenance of

their own republicanism and their own legislative rights against the

Executive power and the royalists. I need not here narrate the

shameful history of their dissolution. It was not a downfall, it was

extinction. Their history is at an end for all time. In the period

that follows, they figure, whether within or without the Assembly,

only as memories—memories that seem again to come to life so soon as

the question is again only about the word “Republic,” and as often as

the revolutionary conflict threatens to sink down to the lowest

level. In passing, I might observe that the journal which gave to this

party its name, the “National,” goes over to Socialism during the

following period.

Before we close this period, we must cast a look back upon the two

powers, one of which destroys the other on December 2, 1851, while,

from December 20, 1848, down to the departure of the constitutional

assembly, they live in marital relations. We mean Louis Bonaparte, on

the one hand, on the other, the party of the allied royalists, of

Order, and of the large bourgeoisie.

At the inauguration of his presidency, Bonaparte forthwith framed a

ministry out of the party of Order, at whose head he placed Odillon

Barrot, be it noted, the old leader of the liberal wing of the

parliamentary bourgeoisie. Mr. Barrot had finally hunted down a seat

in the ministry, the spook of which had been pursuing him since 1830;

and, what is more, he had the chairmanship in this ministry, although

not, as he had imagined under Louis Philippe, the promoted leader of

the parliamentary opposition, but with the commission to kill a

parliament, and, moreover, as an ally of all his arch enemies, the

Jesuits and the Legitimists. Finally he leads the bride home, but only

after she has been prostituted. As to Bonaparte, he seemed to eclipse

himself completely. The party of Order acted for him.

Immediately at the first session of the ministry the expedition to

Rome was decided upon, which it was there agreed, was to be carried

out behind the back of the National Assembly, and the funds for which,

it was equally agreed, were to be wrung from the Assembly under false

pretences. Thus the start was made with a swindle on the National

Assembly, together with a secret conspiracy with the absolute foreign

powers against the revolutionary Roman republic. In the same way, and

with a similar maneuver, did Bonaparte prepare his stroke of December

2 against the royalist legislature and its constitutional

republic. Let it not be forgotten that the same party, which, on

December 20, 1848, constituted Bonaparte’s ministry, constituted also,

on December 2, 1851, the majority of the legislative National

Assembly.

In August, the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it

had prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended

to supplement the Constitution. The party of Order proposed to the

assembly, through Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let

the organic laws go, and rather to order its own dissolution. Not the

ministry alone, with Mr. Odillon Barrot at its head, but all the

royalist members of the National Assembly were also at this time

hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the restoration

of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end to

the existing uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state

of things; they claimed that its continued existence hindered the

effectiveness of the new Government, that it sought to prolong its

life out of pure malice, and that the country was tired of

it. Bonaparte took notice of all these invectives hurled at the

legislative power, he learned them by heart, and, on December 21,

1851, he showed the parliamentary royalists that he had learned from

them. He repeated their own slogans against themselves.

The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went further. They called

all over France for petitions to the National Assembly in which that

body was politely requested to disappear. Thus they led the people’s

unorganic masses to the fray against the National Assembly, i.e.,

against the constitutionally organized expression of the people

itself. They taught Bonaparte to appeal from the parliamentary body to

the people. Finally, on January 29, 1849, the day arrived when the

constitutional assembly was to decide about its own dissolution. On

that day the body found its building occupied by the military;

Changarnier, the General of the party of Order, in whose hands was

joined the supreme command of both the National Guards and the

regulars, held that day a great military review, as though a battle

were imminent; and the coalized royalists declared threateningly to

the constitutional assembly that force would be applied if it did not

act willingly. It was willing, and chaffered only for a very short

respite. What else was the 29th of January, 1849, than the “coup

d’état” of December 2, 1851, only executed by the royalists with

Napoleon’s aid against the republican National Assembly? These

gentlemen did not notice, or did not want to notice, that Napoleon

utilized the 29th of January, 1849, to cause a part of the troops to

file before him in front of the Tuileries, and that he seized with

avidity this very first open exercise of the military against the

parliamentary power in order to hint at Caligula. The allied royalists

saw only their own Changarnier.

Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to

shorten the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws,

the laws that were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance,

the laws on education, on religion, etc. The allied royalists had

every interest in framing these laws themselves, and not allowing them

to be framed by the already suspicious republicans. Among these

organic laws, there was, however, one on the responsibility of the

President of the republic. In 1851 the Legislature was just engaged in

framing such a law when Bonaparte forestalled that political stroke by

his own of December 2. What all would not the coalized royalists have

given in their winter parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but

found this “Responsibility law” ready made, and framed at that, by the

suspicious, the vicious republican Assembly!

After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself

broken its last weapon, the Barrot ministry and the “Friends of Order”

harrassed it to death, left nothing undone to humilitate it, and wrung

from its weakness, despairing of itself, laws that cost it the last

vestige of respect with the public. Bonaparte, occupied with his own

fixed Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough openly to exploit this

degradation of the parliamentary power: When the National Assembly, on

May 8, 1849, passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry on account of

the occupation of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered that the

Roman expedition be brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte

published that same evening in the “Moniteur” a letter to Oudinot, in

which he congratulated him on his heroic feats, and already, in

contrast with the quill-pushing parliamentarians, posed as the

generous protector of the Army. The royalists smiled at this. They

took him simply for their dupe. Finally, as Marrast, the President of

the constitutional assembly, believed on a certain occasion the safety

of the body to be in danger, and, resting on the Constitution, made a

requisition upon a Colonel, together with his regiment, the Colonel

refused obedience, took refuge behind the “discipline,” and referred

Marrast to Changarnier, who scornfully sent him off with the remark

that he did not like “_bayonettes intelligentes_.”[6] In November,

1851, as the coalized royalists wanted to begin the decisive struggle

with Bonaparte, they sought, by means of their notorious “Questors

Bill,” to enforce the principle of the right of the President of the

National Assembly to issue direct requisitions for troops. One of

their Generals, Leflo, supported the motion. In vain did Changarnier

vote for it, or did Thiers render homage to the cautious wisdom of the

late constitutional assembly. The Minister of War, St. Arnaud,

answered him as Changarnier had answered Marrast—and he did so amidst

the plaudits of the Mountain.

Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the

National Assembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the

parliamentary regime. And yet this party objects vociferously when the

2d of December, 1851, banishes that regime from France!

We wish it a happy journey.

III.

On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened. On

December 2, 1851, it was broken up. This period embraces the term of

life of the _Constitutional_ or _Parliamentary Republic_.

In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the

_Constitutionalists_ succeeds that of the _Girondins_; and upon the

reign of the _Girondins_ follows that of the _Jacobins_. Each of these

parties in succession rests upon its more advanced element. So soon as

it has carried the revolution far enough not to be able to keep pace

with, much less march ahead of it, it is shoved aside by its more

daring allies, who stand behind it, and it is sent to the

guillotine. Thus the revolution moves along an upward line.

Just the reverse in 1848. The proletarian party appears as an

appendage to the small traders’ or democratic party; it is betrayed by

the latter and allowed to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June

days. In its turn, the democratic party leans upon the shoulders of

the bourgeois republicans; barely do the bourgeois republicans believe

themselves firmly in power, than they shake off these troublesome

associates for the purpose of themselves leaning upon the shoulders of

the party of Order. The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets

the bourgeois republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws

itself upon the shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the

mind that it is sustained by the shoulders of the armed power, the

party of Order notices one fine morning that these shoulders have

turned into bayonets. Each party kicks backward at those that are

pushing forward, and leans forward upon those that are crowding

backward; no wonder that, in this ludicrous posture, each loses its

balance, and, after having cut the unavoidable grimaces, breaks down

amid singular somersaults. Accordingly, the revolution moves along a

downward line. It finds itself in this retreating motion before the

last February-barricade is cleared away, and the first governmental

authority of the revolution has been constituted.

The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of

crying contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against

the Constitution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional; a

National Assembly that wishes to be omnipotent yet remains

parliamentary; a Mountain, that finds its occupation in submission,

and that parries its present defeats with prophecies of future

victories; royalists, who constitute the “_patres conscripti_” of the

republic, and are compelled by the situation to uphold abroad the

hostile monarchic houses, whose adherents they are, while in France

they support the republic that they hate; an Executive power that

finds its strength in its very weakness, and its dignity in the

contempt that it inspires; a republic, that is nothing else than the

combined infamy of two monarchies—the Restoration and the July

Monarchy—with an imperial label; unions, whose first clause is

disunion; struggles, whose first law is indecision; in the name of

peace, barren and hollow agitation; in the name of the revolution,

solemn sermonizings on peace; passions without truth; truths without

passion; heroes without heroism; history without events; development,

whose only moving force seems to be the calendar, and tiresome by the

constant reiteration of the same tensions and relaxes; contrasts, that

seem to intensify themselves periodically, only in order to wear

themselves off and collapse without a solution; pretentious efforts

made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger of the destruction

of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of the pettiest

intrigues and the performance of court comedies by the world’s

saviours, who, in their “laisser aller,” recall the Day of Judgment

not so much as the days of the Fronde; the official collective genius

of France brought to shame by the artful stupidity of a single

individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it speaks

through the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the

prescriptive enemies of the public interests until it finally finds it

in the arbitrary will of a filibuster. If ever a slice from history is

drawn black upon black, it is this. Men and events appear as reversed

“Schlemihls,”[7] as shadows, the bodies of which have been lost. The

revolution itself paralyzes its own apostles, and equips only its

adversaries with passionate violence. When the “Red Spectre,”

constantly conjured up and exorcised by the counter-revolutionists

finally does appear, it does not appear with the Anarchist Phrygian

cap on its head, but in the uniform of Order, in the _Red Breeches of

the French Soldier_.

We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20,

1849, the day of his “Ascension,” was a ministry of the party of

Order, of the Legitimist and Orleanist coalition. The Barrot-Falloux

Ministry had weathered the republican constitutive convention, whose

term of life it had shortened with more or less violence, and found

itself still at the helm. Changarnier, the General of the allied

royalists, continued to unite in his person the command-in-chief of

the First Military Division and of the Parisian National

Guard. Finally, the general elections had secured the large majority

in the National Assembly to the party of Order. Here the Deputies and

Peers of Louis Phillipe met a saintly crowd of Legitimists, for whose

benefit numerous ballots of the nation had been converted into

admission tickets to the political stage. The Bonapartist

representatives were too thinly sowed to be able to build an

independent parliamentary party. They appeared only as “mauvaise

queue”[8] played upon the party of Order. Thus the party of Order was

in possession of the Government, of the Army, and of the legislative

body, in short, of the total power of the State, morally strengthened

by the general elections, that caused their sovereignty to appear as

the will of the people, and by the simultaneous victory of the

counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe.

Never did party open its campaign with larger means at its disposal

and under more favorable auspices.

The shipwrecked pure republicans found themselves in the legislative

National Assembly melted down to a clique of fifty men, with the

African Generals Cavaignac, Lamorcière and Bedeau at its head. The

great _Opposition_ party was, however, formed by the Mountain. This

parliamentary baptismal name was given to itself by the _Social

Democratic party_. It disposed of more than two hundred votes out of

the seven hundred and fifty in the National Assembly, and, hence, was

at least just as powerful as any one of the three factions of the

party of Order. Its relative minority to the total royalist coalition

seemed counterbalanced by special circumstances. Not only did the

Departmental election returns show that it had gained a considerable

following among the rural population, but, furthermore, it numbered

almost all the Paris Deputies in its camp; the Army had, by the

election of three under-officers, made a confession of democratic

faith; and the leader of the Mountain, Ledru-Rollin, had, in contrast

to all the representatives of the party of Order, been raised to the

rank of the “parliamentary nobility” by five Departments, who combined

their suffrages upon him. Accordingly, in view of the inevitable

collisions of the royalists among themselves, on the one hand, and of

the whole party of Order with Bonaparte, on the other, the Mountain

seemed on May 29, 1849, to have before it all the elements of

success. A fortnight later, it had lost everything, its honor

included.

Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few

observations are necessary, in order to avoid certain common

deceptions concerning the whole character of the epoch that lies

before us. According to the view of the democrats, the issue, during

the period of the legislative National Assembly, was, the same as

during the period of the constitutive assembly, simply the struggle

between republicans and royalists; the movement itself was summed up

by them in the catch-word _Reaction_—night, in which all cats are

grey, and allows them to drawl out their drowsy commonplaces. Indeed,

at first sight, the party of _Order_ presents the appearance of a

tangle of royalist factions, that, not only intrigue against each

other, each aiming to raise its own Pretender to the throne, and

exclude the Pretender of the opposite party, but also are all united

in a common hatred for and common attacks against the “Republic.” On

its side, the _Mountain_ appears, in counter-distinction to the

royalist conspiracy, as the representative of the “Republic.” The

party of _Order_ seems constantly engaged in a “Reaction,” which,

neither more nor less than in Prussia, is directed against the press,

the right of association and the like, and is enforced by brutal

police interventions on the part of the bureaucracy, the police and

the public prosecutor—just as in Prussia; the _Mountain_, on the

contrary, is engaged with equal assiduity in parrying these attacks,

and thus in defending the “eternal rights of man”—as every so-called

people’s party has more or less done for the last hundred and fifty

years. At a closer inspection, however, of the situation and of the

parties, this superficial appearance, which veils the _Class

Struggle_, together with the peculiar physiognomy of this period,

vanishes wholly.

Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large

factions of the party of Order. What held these two factions to their

respective Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other,

what else was it but the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon

and the House of Orleans, different shades of royalty? Under the

Bourbons, _Large Landed Property_ ruled together with its parsons and

lackeys; under the Orleanist, it was the high finance, large industry,

large commerce, _i.e._, _Capital_, with its retinue of lawyers,

professors and orators. The Legitimate kingdom was but the political

expression for the hereditary rule of the landlords, as the July

monarchy was but the political expression for the usurped rule of the

bourgeois upstarts. What, accordingly, kept these two factions apart

was no so-called set of principles, it was their material conditions

for life—two different sorts of property—; it was the old antagonism

of the City and the Country, the rivalry between Capital and Landed

property. That simultaneously old recollections; personal animosities,

fears and hopes; prejudices and illusions; sympathies and antipathies;

convictions, faith and principles bound these factions to one House or

the other, who denies it? Upon the several forms of property, upon the

social conditions of existence, a whole superstructure is reared of

various and peculiarly shaped feelings, illusions, habits of thought

and conceptions of life. The whole class produces and shapes these out

of its material foundation and out of the corresponding social

conditions. The individual unit to whom they flow through tradition

and education, may fancy that they constitute the true reasons for and

premises of his conduct. Although Orleanists and Legitimists, each of

these factions, sought to make itself and the other believe that what

kept the two apart was the attachment of each to its respective royal

House; nevertheless, facts proved later that it rather was their

divided interest that forbade the union of the two royal Houses. As,

in private life, the distinction is made between what a man thinks of

himself and says, and that which he really is and does, so, all the

more, must the phrases and notions of parties in historic struggles be

distinguished from their real organism, and their real interests,

their notions and their reality. Orleanists and Legitimists found

themselves in the republic beside each other with equal claims. Each

side wishing, in opposition to the other, to carry out the restoration

of its own royal House, meant nothing else than that each of the two

great _Interests_ into which the bourgeoisie is divided—Land and

Capital—sought to restore its own supremacy and the subordinacy of the

other. We speak of two bourgeois interests because large landed

property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has become

completely bourgeois through the development of modern society. Thus

did the Tories of England long fancy that they were enthusiastic for

the Kingdom, the Church and the beauties of the old English

Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the admission

that their enthusiasm was only for _Ground-Rent_.

The coalized royalists carried on their intrigues against each other

in the press, in Ems, in Clarmont—outside of the parliament. Behind

the scenes, they don again their old Orleanist and Legitimist

liveries, and conduct their old tourneys; on the public stage,

however, in their public acts, as a great parliamentary party, they

dispose of their respective royal Houses with mere courtesies, adjourn

“in infinitum” the restoration of the monarchy. Their real business is

transacted as _Party of Order_, _i.e._, under a _Social_, not a

_Political_ title; as representatives of the bourgeois social system;

not as knights of traveling princesses, but as the bourgeois class

against the other classes; not as royalists against

republicans. Indeed, as party of Order they exercised a more unlimited

and harder dominion over the other classes of society than ever before

either under the restoration or the July monarchy—a thing possible

only under the form of a parliamentary republic, because under this

form alone could the two large divisions of the French bourgeoisie be

united; in other words, only under this form could they place on the

order of business the sovereignty of their class, in lieu of the

régime of a privileged faction of the same. If, this notwithstanding,

they are seen as the party of Order to insult the republic and express

their antipathy for it, it happened not out of royalist traditions

only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed, the republic completes

their authority, it at the same time undermined their social

foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of the

crown, without being able to turn aside the national interest by means

of its subordinate struggles among its own conflicting elements and

with the crown, the republic is compelled to stand up sharp against

the subjugated classes, and wrestle with them. It was a sense of

weakness that caused them to recoil before the unqualified demands of

their own class rule, and to retreat to the less complete, less

developed, and, for that very reason, less dangerous forms of the

same. As often, on the contrary, as the allied royalists come into

conflict with the Pretender who stands before them—with Bonaparte—as

often as they believe their parliamentary omnipotence to be endangered

by the Executive, in other words, as often as they must trot out the

political title of their authority, they step up as _Republicans_, not

as _Royalists_—and this is done from the Orleanist Thiers, who warns

the National Assembly that the republic divides them least, down to

Legitimist Berryer, who, on December 2, 1851, the scarf of the

tricolor around him, harangues the people assembled before the Mayor’s

building of the Tenth Arrondissement, as a tribune in the name of the

Republic; the echo, however, derisively answering back to him: “Henry

V.! Henry V.!”[9]

However, against the allied bourgeois, a coalition was made between

the small traders and the workingmen—the so-called _Social Democratic_

party. The small traders found themselves ill rewarded after the June

days of 1848; they saw their material interests endangered, and the

democratic guarantees, that were to uphold their interests, made

doubtful. Hence, they drew closer to the workingmen. On the other

hand, their parliamentary representatives—the _Mountain_—, after being

shoved aside during the dictatorship of the bourgeois republicans,

had, during the last half of the term of the constitutive convention,

regained their lost popularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and

the royalist ministers. They had made an alliance with the Socialist

leaders. During February, 1849, reconciliation banquets were held. A

common program was drafted, joint election committees were empaneled,

and fusion candidates were set up. The revolutionary point was thereby

broken off from the social demands of the proletariat, and a

democratic turn given to them; while, from the democratic claims of

the small traders’ class, the mere political form was rubbed off and

the Socialist point was pushed forward. Thus came the _Social

Democracy_ about. The new _Mountain_, the result of this combination,

contained, with the exception of some figures from the working class

and some Socialist sectarians, the identical elements of the old

Mountain, only numerically stronger. In the course of events it had,

however, changed, together with the class that it represented. The

peculiar character of the Social Democracy is summed up in this: that

democratic-republican institutions are demanded as the means, not to

remove the two extremes—Capital and Wage-slavery—, but in order to

weaken their antagonism and transform them into a harmonious

whole. However different the methods may be that are proposed for the

accomplishment of this object, however much the object itself may be

festooned with more or less revolutionary fancies, the substance

remains the same. This substance is the transformation of society upon

democratic lines, but a transformation within the boundaries of the

small traders’ class. No one must run away with the narrow notion that

the small traders’ class means on principle to enforce a selfish class

interest. It believes rather that the special conditions for its own

emancipation are the general conditions under which alone modern

society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Likewise must we

avoid running away with the notion that the Democratic Representatives

are all “shopkeepers,” or enthuse for these. They may—by education and

individual standing—be as distant from them as heaven is from

earth. That which makes them representatives of the small traders’

class is that they do not intellectually leap the bounds which that

class itself does not leap in practical life; that, consequently, they

are theoretically driven to the same problems and solutions, to which

material interests and social standing practically drive the

latter. Such, in fact, is at all times the relation of the “political”

and the “literary” representatives of a class to the class they

represent.

After the foregoing explanations, it goes without saying that, while

the Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the

so-called “rights of man,” neither the republic nor the “rights of

man” is its real goal, as little as an army, whose weapons it is

sought to deprive it of and that defends itself, steps on the field of

battle simply in order to remain in possession of its implements of

warfare.

The party of Order provoked the Mountain immediately upon the

convening of the assembly. The bourgeoisie now felt the necessity of

disposing of the democratic small traders’ class, just as a year

before it had understood the necessity of putting an end to the

revolutionary proletariat.

But the position of the foe had changed. The strength of the

proletarian party was on the streets; that of the small traders’ class

was in the National Assembly itself. The point was, accordingly, to

wheedle them out of the National Assembly into the street, and to have

them break their parliamentary power themselves, before time and

opportunity could consolidate them. The Mountain jumped with loose

reins into the trap.

The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the bait thrown at

the Mountain. It violated Article V. of the Constitution, which

forbade the French republic to use its forces against the liberties of

other nations; besides, Article IV. forbade all declaration of war by

the Executive without the consent of the National Assembly;

furthermore, the constitutive assembly had censured the Roman

expedition by its resolution of May 8. Upon these grounds,

Ledru-Rollin submitted on June 11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bonaparte

and his Ministers. Instigated by the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even

allowed himself to be carried away to the point of threatening to

defend the Constitution by all means, even arms in hand. The Mountain

rose as one man, and repeated the challenge. On June 12, the National

Assembly rejected the notion to impeach, and the Mountain left the

parliament. The events of June 13 are known: the proclamation by a

part of the Mountain pronouncing Napoleon and his Ministers “outside

the pale of the Constitution”; the street parades of the democratic

National Guards, who, unarmed as they were, flew apart at contact with

the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc. Part of the Mountain fled

abroad, another part was assigned to the High Court of Bourges, and a

parliamentary regulation placed the rest under the school-master

supervision of the President of the National Assembly. Paris was again

put under a state of siege; and the democratic portion of the National

Guards was disbanded. Thus the influence of the Mountain in parliament

was broken, together with the power of the small traders’ class in

Paris.

Lyons, where the 13th of June had given the signal to a bloody labor

uprising, was, together with the five surrounding Departments,

likewise pronounced in state of siege, a condition that continues down

to this moment.[10]

The bulk of the Mountain had left its vanguard in the lurch by

refusing their signatures to the proclamation; the press had deserted:

only two papers dared to publish the pronunciamento; the small traders

had betrayed their Representatives: the National Guards stayed away,

or, where they did turn up, hindered the raising of barricades; the

Representatives had duped the small traders: nowhere were the alleged

affiliated members from the Army to be seen; finally, instead of

gathering strength from them, the democratic party had infected the

proletariat with its own weakness, and, as usual with democratic

feats, the leaders had the satisfaction of charging “their people”

with desertion, and the people had the satisfaction of charging their

leaders with fraud.

Seldom was an act announced with greater noise than the campaign

contemplated by the Mountain; seldom was an event trumpeted ahead with

more certainty and longer beforehand than the “inevitable victory of

the democracy.” This is evident: the democrats believe in the

trombones before whose blasts the walls of Jericho fall together; as

often as they stand before the walls of despotism, they seek to

imitate the miracle. If the Mountain wished to win in parliament, it

should not appeal to arms; if it called to arms in parliament, it

should not conduct itself parliamentarily on the street; if the

friendly demonstration was meant seriously, it was silly not to

foresee that it would meet with a warlike reception; if it was

intended for actual war, it was rather original to lay aside the

weapons with which war had to be conducted. But the revolutionary

threats of the middle class and of their democratic representatives

are mere attempts to frighten an adversary; when they have run

themselves into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently compromised

themselves and are compelled to execute their threats, the thing is

done in a hesitating manner that avoids nothing so much as the means

to the end, and catches at pretexts to succumb. The bray of the

overture, that announces the fray, is lost in a timid growl so soon as

this is to start; the actors cease to take themselves seriously, and

the performance falls flat like an inflated balloon that is pricked

with a needle.

No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than the

democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the

situation. A part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is

of the opinion that the Army would revolt in its favor. And by what

occasion? By an occasion, that, from the standpoint of the troops,

meant nothing else than that the revolutionary soldiers should take

the part of the soldiers of Rome against French soldiers. On the other

hand, the memory of June, 1848, was still too fresh not to keep alive

a deep aversion on the part of the proletariat towards the National

Guard, and a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders of

the secret societies for the democratic leaders. In order to balance

these differences, great common interests at stake were needed. The

violation of an abstract constitutional paragraph could not supply

such interests. Had not the constitution been repeatedly violated,

according to the assurances of the democrats themselves? Had not the

most popular papers branded them as a counter-revolutionary artifice?

But the democrat—by reason of his representing the middle class, that

is to say, a _Transition Class_, in which the interests of two other

classes are mutually dulled—, imagines himself above all class

contrast. The democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged

class, but they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation,

constitute the “PEOPLE.” What they represent is the “people’s rights”;

their interests are the “people’s interests.” Hence, they do not

consider that, at an impending struggle, they need to examine the

interests and attitude of the different classes. They need not too

seriously weigh their own means. All they have to do is to give the

signal in order to have the “people” fall upon the “oppressors” with

all its inexhaustible resources. If, thereupon, in the execution,

their interests turn out to be uninteresting, and their power to be

impotence, it is ascribed either to depraved sophists, who split up

the “undivisible people” into several hostile camps; or to the army

being too far brutalized and blinded to appreciate the pure aims of

the democracy as its own best; or to some detail in the execution that

wrecks the whole plan; or, finally, to an unforeseen accident that

spoiled the game this time. At all events, the democrat comes out of

the disgraceful defeat as immaculate as he went innocently into it,

and with the refreshed conviction that he must win; not that he

himself and his party must give up their old standpoint, but that, on

the contrary, conditions must come to his aid.

For all this, one must not picture to himself the decimated, broken,

and, by the new parliamentary regulation, humbled Mountain altogether

too unhappy. If June 13 removed its leaders, it, on the other hand,

made room for new ones of inferior capacity, who are flattered by

their new position. If their impotence in parliament could no longer

be doubted, they were now justified to limit their activity to

outbursts of moral indignation. If the party of Order pretended to see

in them, as the last official representatives of the revolution, all

the horrors of anarchy incarnated, they were free to appear all the

more flat and modest in reality. Over June 13 they consoled themselves

with the profound expression: “If they but dare to assail universal

suffrage... then... then we will show who we are!” Nous verrons.[11]

As to the “Mountaineers,” who had fled abroad, it suffices here to say

that Ledru-Rollin—he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly

ruining, in barely a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he

stood—, found himself called upon to build up a French government “in

partibus;” that his figure, at a distance, removed from the field of

action, seemed to gain in size in the measure that the level of the

revolution sank and the official prominences of official France became

more and more dwarfish; that he could figure as republican Pretender

for 1852, and periodically issued to the Wallachians and other peoples

circulars in which “despot of the continent” is threatened with the

feats that he and his allies had in contemplation. Was Proudhon wholly

wrong when he cried out to these gentlemen: “Vous n’êtes que des

blaqueurs”?[12]

The party of Order had, on June 13, not only broken up the Mountain,

it had also established the _Subordination of the Constitution to the

Majority Decisions of the National Assembly_. So, indeed, did the

republic understand it, to-wit, that the bourgeois ruled here in

parliamentary form, without, as in the monarchy, finding a check in

the veto of the Executive power, or the liability of parliament to

dissolution. It was a “parliamentary republic,” as Thiers styled

it. But if, on June 13, the bourgeoisie secured its omnipotence within

the parliament building, did it not also strike the parliament itself,

as against the Executive and the people, with incurable weakness by

excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies,

without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it

abolished its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating

regulation, that it subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of

the republic in the same measure that it lowered the individual

Representatives of the people. By branding an insurrection in defense

of the Constitution as anarchy, and as a deed looking to the overthrow

of society, it interdicted to itself all appeal to insurrection

whenever the Executive should violate the Constitution against

it. And, indeed, the irony of history wills it that the very General,

who by order of Bonaparte bombarded Rome, and thus gave the immediate

occasion to the constitutional riot of June 13, that _Oudinot_, on

December 2, 1851, is the one imploringly and vainly to be offered to

the people by the party of Order as the General of the

Constitution. Another hero of June 13, Vieyra, who earned praise from

the tribune of the National Assembly for the brutalities that he had

committed in the democratic newspaper offices at the head of a gang of

National Guards in the hire of the high finance—this identical Vieyra

was initiated in the conspiracy of Bonaparte, and contributed

materially in cutting off all protection that could come to the

National Assembly, in the hour of its agony, from the side of the

National Guard.

June 13 had still another meaning. The Mountain had wanted to place

Bonaparte under charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct

victory of Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic

enemies. The party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed

only to pocket it. He did so. On June 14, a proclamation was to be

read on the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it were, without

his connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of

circumstances, steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like

misjudged virtue, complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and,

while seeming to identify his own person with the cause of order,

rather identifies the cause of order with his own person. Besides

this, the National Assembly had subsequently approved the expedition

against Rome; Bonaparte, however, had taken the initiative in the

affair. After he had led the High Priest Samuel back into the Vatican,

he could hope as King David to occupy the Tuileries. He had won the

parson-interests over to himself.

The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful

street procession. There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from

it. Nevertheless, in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party

of Order converted this bloodless battle into a second

Austerlitz. Tribune and press lauded the army as the power of order

against the popular multitude, and the impotence of anarchy; and

Changarnier as the “bulwark of society”—a mystification that he

finally believed in himself. Underhand, however, the corps that seemed

doubtful were removed from Paris; the regiments whose suffrage had

turned out most democratic were banished from France to Algiers; the

restless heads among the troops were consigned to penal quarters;

finally, the shutting out of the press from the barracks, and of the

barracks from contact with the citizens was systematically carried

out.

We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the

French National Guard. In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the

restoration. Under Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at which the

National Guard stood on the side of the troops. When, in the February

days of 1848, it showed itself passive against the uprising and

doubtful toward Louis Philippe himself, he gave himself up for

lost. Thus the conviction cast root that a revolution could not win

without, nor the Army against, the National Guard. This was the

superstitious faith of the Army in bourgeois omnipotence. The June

days of 1848, when the whole National Guard, jointly with the regular

troops, threw down the insurrection, had confirmed the

superstition. After the inauguration of Bonaparte’s administration,

the position of the National Guard sank somewhat through the

unconstitutional joining of their command with the command of the

First Military Division in the person of Changarnier.

As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attribute

of the military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear

only as an appendage of the regular troops. Finally, on June 13, the

National Guard was broken up, not through its partial dissolution

only, that from that date forward was periodically repeated at all

points of France, leaving only wrecks of its former self behind. The

demonstration of June 13 was, above all, a demonstration of the

National Guards. True, they had not carried their arms, but they had

carried their uniforms against the Army—and the talisman lay just in

these uniforms. The Army then learned that this uniform was but a

woolen rag, like any other. The spell was broken. In the June days of

1848, bourgeoisie and small traders were united as National Guard with

the Army against the proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie

had the small-traders’ National Guard broken up; on December 2, 1851,

the National Guard of the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte

attested the fact when he subsequently signed the decree for its

disbandment. Thus the bourgeoisie had itself broken its last weapon

against the army, from the moment when the small traders’ class no

longer stood as a vassal behind, but as a rebel before it; indeed, it

was bound to do so, as it was bound to destroy with its own hand all

its means of defence against absolutism, so soon as itself was

absolute.

In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power

that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels

in 1849, it be found again through invectives against the republic and

the Constitution; through the malediction of all future, present and

past revolutions, that one included which its own leaders had made;

and, finally, in laws by which the press was gagged, the right of

association destroyed, and the stage of siege regulated as an organic

institution. The National Assembly then adjourned from the middle of

August to the middle of October, after it had appointed a Permanent

Committee for the period of its absence. During these vacations, the

Legitimists intrigued with Ems; the Orleanists with Claremont;

Bonaparte through princely excursions; the Departmental Councilmen in

conferences over the revision of the Constitution;— occurrences, all

of which recurred regularly at the periodical vacations of the

National Assembly, and upon which I shall not enter until they have

matured into events. Be it here only observed that the National

Assembly was impolitic in vanishing from the stage for long intervals,

and leaving in view, at the head of the republic, only one, however

sorry, figure—Louis Bonaparte’s—, while, to the public scandal, the

party of Order broke up into its own royalist component parts, that

pursued their conflicting aspirations after the restoration. As often

as, during these vacations, the confusing noise of the parliament was

hushed, and its body was dissolved in the nation, it was unmistakably

shown that only one thing was still wanting to complete the true

figure of the republic: to make the vacation of the National Assembly

permanent, and substitute its inscription—“Liberty, Equality,

Fraternity”—by the unequivocal words, “Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery!”

IV.

The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October. On November

1, Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the

dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a

new. Never have lackeys been chased from service with less ceremony

than Bonaparte did his ministers. The kicks, that were eventually

destined for the National Assembly, Barrot & Company received in the

meantime.

The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and

Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order. Bonaparte needed

that Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent

assembly, to effect the expedition against Rome, and to break up the

democratic party. He had seemingly eclipsed himself behind this

Ministry, yielded the reins to the hands of the party of Order, and

assumed the modest mask, which, under Louis Philippe, had been worn by

the responsible overseer of the newspapers—the mask of “homme de

paille.”[13] Now he threw off the mask, it being no longer the light

curtain behind which he could conceal, but the Iron Mask, which

prevented him from revealing his own physiognomy. He had instituted

the Barrot Ministry in order to break up the republican National

Assembly in the name of the party of Order; he now dismissed it in

order to declare his own name independent of the parliament of the

party of Order.

There was no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The Barrot

Ministry had neglected even the forms of decency that would have

allowed the president of the republic to appear as a power along with

the National Assembly. For instance, during the vacation of the

National Assembly, Bonaparte published a letter to Edgar Ney, in which

he seemed to disapprove the liberal attitude of the Pope, just as, in

opposition to the constitutive assembly, he had published a letter, in

which he praised Oudinot for his attack upon the Roman republic; when

the National Assembly came to vote on the budget for the Roman

expedition, Victor Hugo, out of pretended liberalism, brought up that

letter for discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of

Bonaparte’s under exclamations of contempt and incredulity as though

notions of Bonaparte could not possibly have any political weight;—and

none of the Ministers took up the gauntlet for him. On another

occasion, Barrot, with his well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the

speakers’ tribune in the Assembly, words of indignation upon the

“abominable machinations,” which, according to him, went on in the

immediate vicinity of the President. Finally, while the Ministry

obtained from the National Assembly a widow’s pension for the Duchess

of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil

list;—and, in Bonaparte, be it always remembered, the Imperial

Pretender was so closely blended with the impecunious adventurer, that

the great idea of his being destined to restore the Empire was ever

supplemented by that other, to-wit, that the French people was

destined to pay his debts.

The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary

Ministry that Bonaparte called into life. Its dismissal marks,

accordingly, a decisive period. With the Ministry, the party of Order

lost, never to regain, an indispensable post to the maintenance of the

parliamentary régime,—the handle to the Executive power. It is readily

understood that, in a country like France, where the Executive

disposes over an army of more than half a million office-holders, and,

consequently, keeps permanently a large mass of interests and

existences in the completest dependence upon itself; where the

Government surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and guards

society, from its mightiest acts of national life, down to its most

insignificant motions; from its common life, down to the private life

of each individual; where, due to such extraordinary centralization,

this body of parasites acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a

quickened capacity for motion and rapidity that finds an analogon only

in the helpless lack of self-reliance, in the unstrung weakness of the

body social itself;—that in such a country the National Assembly lost,

with the control of the ministerial posts, all real influence, unless

it simultaneously simplified the administration; if possible, reduced

the army of office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public

opinion to establish its own organs, independent of government

censorship. But the _Material Interest_ of the French bourgeoisie is

most intimately bound up in maintenance of just such a large and

extensively ramified governmental machine. There the bourgeoisie

provides for its own superfluous membership; and supplies, in the

shape of government salaries, what it can not pocket in the form of

profit, interest, rent and fees. On the other hand, its _Political

Interests_ daily compel it to increase the power of repression,

_i.e._, the means and the personnel of the government; it is at the

same time forced to conduct an uninterrupted warfare against public

opinion, and, full of suspicion, to hamstring and lame the independent

organs of society—whenever it does not succeed in amputating them

wholly. Thus the bourgeoisie of France was forced by its own class

attitude, on the one hand, to destroy the conditions for all

parliamentary power, its own included, and, on the other, to render

irresistible the Executive power that stood hostile to it.

The new Ministry was called the d’Hautpoul Ministry. Not that General

d’Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President. Along with

Barrot, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted,

condemned the President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a

constitutional kind, of a constitutional king at that, without throne

and crown, without sceptre and without sword, without

irresponsibility, without the imperishable possession of the highest

dignity in the State, and, what was most untoward of all—without a

civil list. The d’Hautpoul Ministry numbered only one man of

parliamentary reputation, the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious

members of the high finance. To him fell the portfolio of

finance. Turn to the Paris stock quotations, and it will be found that

from November 1, 1849, French stocks fall and rise with the falling

and rising of the Bonapartist shares. While Bonaparte had thus found

his ally in the Bourse, he at the same time took possession of the

Police through the appointment of Carlier as Prefect of Police.

But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves

only in the course of events. So far, Bonaparte had taken only one

step forward, to be all the more glaringly driven back. Upon his harsh

message, followed the most servile declarations of submissiveness to

the National Assembly. As often as the Ministers made timid attempts

to introduce his own personal hobbies as bills, they themselves seemed

unwilling and compelled only by their position to run the comic

errands, of whose futility they were convinced in advance. As often as

Bonaparte blabbed out his plans behind the backs of his Ministers, and

sported his “idées napoléoniennes,”[14] his own Ministers disavowed

him from the speakers’ tribune in the National Assembly. His

aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible only to the end

that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should not die out. He

deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the world takes

for a simpleton. Never did he enjoy in fuller measure the contempt of

all classes than at this period. Never did the bourgeoisie rule more

absolutely; never did it more boastfully display the insignia of

sovereignty.

It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative

activity, which is summed up in two laws passed during this period:

the law reestablishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to

suppress infidelity. While the drinking of wine was made difficult to

the Frenchmen, all the more bounteously was the water of pure life

poured out to them. Although in the law on the duty on wine the

bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff system to be

inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure

the old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One

wonders to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old

apostles of Voltarianism and of eclectic philosophy, entrusting the

supervision of the French intellect to their hereditary enemies, the

Jesuits. But, while Orleanists and Legitimists could part company on

the question of the Pretender to the crown, they understood full well

that their joint reign dictated the joining of the means of oppression

of two distinct epochs; that the means of subjugation of the July

monarchy had to be supplemented with and strengthened by the means of

subjugation of the restoration.

The farmers, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground

down by the law scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on

the other, by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to

stir in the Departments. They were answered by the systematic baiting

of the school masters, whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by

the systematic baiting of the Mayors, whom it subjected to the

Prefects; and by a system of espionage to which all were subjected. In

Paris and the large towns, the reaction itself carries the physiognomy

of its own epoch; it irritates more than it cows; in the country, it

becomes low, mean, petty, tiresome, vexatious,—in a word, it becomes

“gensdarme.” It is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme

régime, sanctified by the régime of the clergyman, was bound to

demoralize unripe masses.

Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order

expended from the speakers’ tribune in the National Assembly against

the minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the

Christian, whose speech was to be “Aye, aye; nay, nay.” It was

monosyllabic, whether from the tribune or the press; dull as a

conundrum, whose solution is known beforehand. Whether the question

was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the liberty of the

press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of individual

freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns ever

again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready

and unchanged: Socialism! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced

socialistic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and,

likewise, socialistic national financial reform. It was socialistic to

build a railroad where already a canal was; and it was socialistic to

defend oneself with a stick when attacked with a sword.

This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party

tactics. The bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons,

which it forged against feudalism, turn their edges against itself;

that all the means of education, which it brought forth, rebel against

its own civilization; that all the gods, which it made, have fallen

away from it. It understands that all its so-called citizens’ rights

and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both in its

social foundation and its political superstructure—consequently, have

become “socialistic.” It justly scents in this menace and assault the

secret of _Socialism_, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more

correctly than the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of

estimating itself, and which, consequently, is unable to understand

how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately shuts up its ears to it,

alike whether it sentimentally whines about the sufferings of

humanity; or announces in Christian style the millennium and universal

brotherhood; or twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and

freedom; or doctrinally matches out a system of harmony and wellbeing

for all classes. What, however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is

the consequence that its own parliamentary régime, its own political

reign, is also of necessity bound to fall under the general ban of

“socialistic.” So long as the rule of the bourgeoisie is not fully

organized, has not acquired its purely political character, the

contrast with the other classes cannot come into view in all its

sharpness; and, where it does come into view, it cannot take that

dangerous turn that converts every conflict with the Government into a

conflict with Capital. When, however, the French bourgeoisie began to

realize in every pulsation of society a menace to “peace,” how could

it, at the head of society, pretend to uphold the régime of unrest,

its own régime, the parliamentary régime, which, according to the

expression of one of its own orators, lives in struggle, and through

struggle? The parliamentary régime lives on discussion,—how can it

forbid discussion? Every single interest, every single social

institution is there converted into general thoughts, is treated as a

thought,—how could any interest or institution claim to be above

thought, and impose itself as an article of faith? The orators’

conflict in the tribune calls forth the conflict of the rowdies in the

press; the debating club in parliament is necessarily supplemented by

debating clubs in the salons and the bar-rooms; the representatives,

who are constantly appealing to popular opinion, justify popular

opinion in expressing its real opinion in petitions. The parliamentary

régime leaves everything to the decision of majorities,—how can the

large majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide?

If, from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be

expected than that those below should dance?

Accordingly, by now persecuting as _Socialist_ what formerly it had

celebrated as _Liberal_, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest

orders it to raise itself above the danger of self government; that,

in order to restore rest to the land, its own bourgeois parliament

must, before all, be brought to rest; that, in order to preserve its

social power unhurt, its political power must be broken; that the

private bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes and

rejoice in “property,” “family,” “religion” and “order” only under the

condition that his own class be condemned to the same political

nullity of the other classes; that, in order to save their purse, the

crown must be knocked off their heads, and the sword, that was to

shield them, must at the same time be hung over their heads as a sword

of Damocles.

In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly

proved itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the

Paris-Avignon railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe

for a vote on December 2, 1851. Wherever it did not oppress or was

reactionary, the bourgeoisie was smitten with incurable barrenness.

While Bonaparte’s Ministry either sought to take the initiative of

laws in the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their

severity in their enforcement and administration, he, on his part,

sought to win popularity by means of childishly silly propositions, to

exhibit the contrast between himself and the National Assembly, and to

hint at a secret plan, held in reserve and only through circumstances

temporarily prevented from disclosing its hidden treasures to the

French people. Of this nature was the proposition to decree a daily

extra pay of four sous to the under-officers; so, likewise, the

proposition for a “word of honor” loan bank for working-men. To have

money given and money borrowed—that was the perspective that he hoped

to cajole the masses with. Presents and loans—to that was limited the

financial wisdom of the slums, the high as well as the low; to that

were limited the springs which Bonaparte knew how to set in

motion. Never did Pretender speculate more dully upon the dullness of

the masses.

Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these

unmistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the

growing danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and

unrestrained by reputation, might venture upon some desperate act. The

strained relations between the party of Order and the President had

taken on a threatening aspect, when an unforeseen event threw him

back, rueful into its arms. We mean the supplementary elections of

March, 1850. These elections took place to fill the vacancies created

in the National Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment and

exile. Paris elected only Social-Democratic candidates; it even united

the largest vote upon one of the insurgents of June,

1848,—Deflotte. In this way the small traders’ world of Paris, now

allied with the proletariat, revenged itself for the defeat of June

13, 1849. It seemed to have disappeared from the field of battle at

the hour of danger only to step on it again at a more favorable

opportunity, with increased forces for the fray, and with a bolder war

cry. A circumstance seemed to heighten the danger of this electoral

victory. The Army voted in Paris for a June insurgent against Lahitte,

a Minister of Bonaparte’s, and, in the Departments, mostly for the

candidates of the Mountain, who, there also, although not as

decisively as in Paris, maintained the upper hand over their

adversaries.

Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the

revolution. As on January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10,

1850, he vanished again behind the party of Order. He bent low; he

timidly apologized; he offered to appoint any Ministry whatever at the

behest of the parliamentary majority; he even implored the Orleanist

and Legitimist party leaders—the Thiers, Berryers, Broglies, Molés, in

short, the so-called burgraves—to take hold of the helm of State in

person. The party of Order did not know how to utilize this

opportunity, that was never to return. Instead of boldly taking

possession of the proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to

restore the Ministry, dismissed on November 1; it contented itself

with humiliating him with its pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche

to the d’Hautpoul Ministry. This Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor,

stormed before the High Court at Bourges, once against the

revolutionists of May 15, another time against the Democrats of June

13, both times on the charge of “attentats” against the National

Assembly. None of Bonaparte’s Ministers contributed later more towards

the degradation of the National Assembly; and, after December 2, 1851,

we meet him again as the comfortably stalled and dearly paid

Vice-President of the Senate. He had spat into the soup of the

revolutionists for Bonaparte to eat it.

On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for

pretexts in order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its

edge. Vidal, one of the newly elected Paris representatives, was

returned for Strassburg also. He was induced to decline the seat for

Paris and accept the one for Strassburg. Thus, instead of giving a

definite character to their victory at the hustings, and thereby

compelling the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament;

instead of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular

enthusiasm and of a favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party

tired out Paris with a new campaign during the months of March and

April; it allowed the excited popular passions to wear themselves out

in this second provisional electoral play; it allowed the

revolutionary vigor to satiate itself with constitutional successes,

and lose its breath in petty intrigues, hollow declamation and sham

moves; it gave the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and make its

preparations; finally, it allowed the significance of the March

elections to find a sentimentally weakening commentary at the

subsequent April election in the victory of Eugene Sue. In one word,

it turned the 10th of March into an April Fool.

The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its

adversary. Its seventeen burgraves—Bonaparte had left to it the

direction ofand responsibility for the attack—, framed a new election

law, the moving of which was entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied

for the honor. On May 8, he introduced the new law whereby universal

suffrage was abolished; a three years’ residence in the election

district imposed as a condition for voting; and, finally, the proof of

this residence made dependent, for the working-man, upon the testimony

of his employer.

As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during

the constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when

it was imperative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their

late electoral victories, preach order, “majestic calmness,” lawful

conduct, i.e., blind submission to the will of the counter-revolution,

which revealed itself as law. During the debate, the Mountain put the

party of Order to shame by maintaining the passionless attitude of the

law-abiding burger, who upholds the principle of law against

revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party of Order with the

fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner. Even the

newly elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and

thoughtful deportment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them

as anarchists, or explain their election as a victory of the

revolution. The new election law was passed on May 31. The Mountain

contented itself with smuggling a protest into the pockets of the

President of the Assembly. To the election law followed a new press

law, whereby the revolutionary press was completely done away with. It

had deserved its fate. The “National” and the “Presse,” two bourgeois

organs, remained after this deluge the extreme outposts of the

revolution.

We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did

everything to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how,

after May 8, they did everything to keep it away from a real

battle. We may not here forget that the year 1850 was one of the most

brilliant years of industrial and commercial prosperity; consequently,

that the Parisian proletariat was completely employed. But the

election law of May 31, 1850, excluded them from all participation in

political power; it cut the field of battle itself from under them; it

threw the workingmen back into the state of pariahs, which they had

occupied before the February revolution. In allowing themselves, in

sight of such an occurrence, to be led by the democrats, and in

forgetting the revolutionary interests of their class through

temporary comfort, the workingmen abdicated the honor of being a

conquering power; they submitted to their fate; they proved that the

defeat of June, 1848, had incapacitated them from resistance for many

a year to come; finally, that the historic process must again, for the

time being, proceed over their heads. As to the small traders’

democracy, which, on June 13, had cried out: “If they but dare to

assail universal suffrage... then... then we will show who we

are!”—they now consoled themselves with the thought that the

counter-revolutionary blow, which had struck them, was no blow at all,

and that the law of May 31 was no law. On May 2, 1852, according to

them, every Frenchman would appear at the hustings, in one hand the

ballot, in the other the sword. With this prophecy they set their

hearts at ease. Finally, the Army was punished by its superiors for

the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished for the

election of May 29, 1849. This time, however, it said to itself

determinately: “The revolution shall not cheat us a third time.”

The law of May 31, 1850, was the “coup d’état” of the bourgeoisie. All

its previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary

character: they became uncertain the moment the National Assembly

stepped off the stage; they depended upon the accident of general

elections, and the history of the elections since 1848 proved

irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual reign of the

bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses wore

off. Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against

the reign of the bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the

banishment of universal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly,

one of the necessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the

constitution required a minimum of two million votes for the valid

election of the President of the republic. If none of the Presidential

candidates polled this minimum, then the National Assembly was to

elect the President out of the three candidates polling the highest

votes. At the time that the constitutive body made this law, ten

million voters were registered on the election rolls. In its opinion,

accordingly, one-fifth of the qualified voters sufficed to make a

choice for President valid. The law of May 31 struck at least three

million voters off the rolls, reduced the number of qualified voters

to seven millions, and yet, notwithstanding, it kept the lawful

minimum at two millions for the election of a President. Accordingly,

it raised the lawful minimum from a fifth to almost a third of the

qualified voters, i.e., it did all it could to smuggle the

Presidential election out of the hands of the people into those of the

National Assembly. Thus, by the election law of May 31, the party of

Order seemed to have doubly secured its empire, in that it placed the

election of both the National Assembly and the President of the

republic in the keeping of the stable portion of society.

V.

The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly

and Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and

universal suffrage was abolished.

The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000

francs. Barely half a year after his installation, he succeeded in

raising this sum to its double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the

constitutive assembly a yearly allowance of 600,000 francs for

so-called representation expenses. After June 13, Bonaparte hinted at

similar solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then turned a deaf

ear. Now, after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable moment,

and caused his ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the

National Assembly. A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him

with the best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when

he could venture upon squeezing money from his bourgeois. He carried

on regular blackmail. The National Assembly had maimed the sovereignty

of the people with his aid and his knowledge: he now threatened to

denounce its crime to the tribunal of the people, if it did not pull

out its purse and buy his silence with three millions annually. It had

robbed three million Frenchmen of the suffrage: for every Frenchman

thrown “out of circulation,” he demanded a franc “in circulation.” He,

the elect of six million, demanded indemnity for the votes he had been

subsequently cheated of. The Committee of the National Assembly turned

the importunate fellow away. The Bonapartist press threatened: Could

the National Assembly break with the President of the republic at a

time when it had broken definitely and on principle with the mass of

the nation? It rejected the annual civil list, but granted, for this

once, an allowance of 2,160,000 francs. Thus it made itself guilty of

the double weakness of granting the money, and, at the same time,

showing by its anger that it did so only unwillingly. We shall

presently see to what use Bonaparte put the money. After this

aggravating after-play, that followed upon the heels of the abolition

of universal suffrage, and in which Bonaparte exchanged his humble

attitude of the days of the crisis of March and April for one of

defiant impudence towards the usurping parliament, the National

Assembly adjourned for three months, from August 11, to November

11. It left behind in its place a Permanent Committee of 18 members

that contained no Bonapartist, but did contain a few moderate

republicans. The Permanent Committee of the year 1849 had numbered

only men of order and Bonapartists. At that time, however, the party

of Order declared itself in permanence against the revolution; now the

parliamentary republic declared itself in permanence against the

President. After the law of May 31, only this rival still confronted

the party of Order.

When the National Assembly reconvened in November, 1850, instead of

its former petty skirmishes with the President, a great headlong

struggle, a struggle for life between the two powers, seemed to have

become inevitable.

As in the year 1849, the party of Order had, during this year’s

vacation, dissolved into its two separate factions, each occupied with

its own restoration intrigues, which had received new impetus from the

death of Louis Philippe. The Legitimist King, Henry V, had even

appointed a regular Ministry, that resided in Paris, and in which sat

members of the Permanent Committee. Hence, Bonaparte was, on his part,

justified in making tours through the French Departments,

and—according to the disposition of the towns that he happened to be

gladdening with his presence—some times covertly, other times more

openly blabbing out his own restoration plans, and gaining votes for

himself. On these excursions, which the large official “Moniteur” and

the small private “Moniteurs” of Bonaparte were, of course, bound to

celebrate as triumphal marches, he was constantly accompanied by

affiliated members of the “Society of December 10.” This society dated

from the year 1849. Under the pretext of founding a benevolent

association, the slum-proletariat of Paris was organized into secret

sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bonapartist

General at the head of all. Along with ruined roués of questionable

means of support and questionable antecedents, along with the foul and

adventures-seeking dregs of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds,

dismissed soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves,

sharpers, jugglers, lazzaroni, pickpockets, sleight-of-hand

performers, gamblers, procurers, keepers of disorderly houses,

porters, literati, organ grinders, rag pickers, scissors grinders,

tinkers, beggars—in short, that whole undefined, dissolute,

kicked-about mass that the Frenchmen style “la Bohéme.” With this

kindred element, Bonaparte formed the stock of the “Society of

December 10,” a “benevolent association” in so far as, like Bonaparte

himself, all its members felt the need of being benevolent to

themselves at the expense of the toiling nation. The Bonaparte, who

here constitutes himself _Chief of the Slum-Proletariat_; who only

here finds again in plenteous form the interests which he personally

pursues; who, in this refuse, offal and wreck of all classes,

recognizes the only class upon which he can depend

unconditionally;—this is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte without

qualification. An old and crafty roué, he looks upon the historic life

of nations, upon their great and public acts, as comedies in the

ordinary sense, as a carnival, where the great costumes, words and

postures serve only as masks for the pettiest chicaneries. So, on the

occasion of his expedition against Strassburg when a trained Swiss

vulture impersonated the Napoleonic eagle; so, again, on the occasion

of his raid upon Boulogne, when he struck a few London lackeys into

French uniform: they impersonated the army;[15] and so now, in his

“Society of December 10,” he collects 10,000 loafers who are to

impersonate the people as Snug the Joiner does the lion. At a period

when the bourgeoisie itself is playing the sheerest comedy, but in the

most solemn manner in the world, without doing violence to any of the

pedantic requirements of French dramatic etiquette, and is itself

partly deceived by, partly convinced of, the solemnity of its own

public acts, the adventurer, who took the comedy for simple comedy,

was bound to win. Only after he has removed his solemn opponent, when

he himself takes seriously his own role of emperor, and, with the

Napoleonic mask on, imagines he impersonates the real Napoleon, only

then does he become the victim of his own peculiar conception of

history—the serious clown, who no longer takes history for a comedy,

but a comedy for history. What the national work-shops were to the

socialist workingmen, what the “Gardes mobiles” were to the bourgeois

republicans, that was to Bonaparte the “Society of December 10,”—a

force for partisan warfare peculiar to himself. On his journeys, the

divisions of the Society, packed away on the railroads, improvised an

audience for him, performed public enthusiasm, shouted “vive

l’Empereur,” insulted and clubbed the republicans,—all, of course,

under the protection of the police. On his return stages to Paris,

this rabble constituted his vanguard, it forestalled or dispersed

counter-demonstrations. The “Society of December 10” belonged to him,

it was his own handiwork, his own thought. Whatever else he

appropriates, the power of circumstances places in his hands; whatever

else he does, either circumstances do for him, or he is content to

copy from the deeds of others; but he, posing before the citizens with

the official phrases about “Order,” “Religion,” “Family,” “Property,”

and, behind him, the secret society of skipjacks and picaroons, the

society of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft,—that is Bonaparte

himself as the original author; and the history of the “Society of

December 10” is his own history. Now, then, it happened that

Representatives belonging to the party of order occasionally got under

the clubs of the Decembrists. Nay, more. Police Commissioner Yon, who

had been assigned to the National Assembly, and was charged with the

guardianship of its safety, reported to the Permanent Committee upon

the testimony of one Alais, that a Section of the Decembrists had

decided on the murder of General Changarnier and of Dupin, the

President of the National Assembly, and had already settled upon the

men to execute the decree. One can imagine the fright of Mr. Dupin. A

parliamentary inquest over the “Society of December 10,” i.e., the

profanation of the Bonapartist secret world, now seemed

inevitable. Just before the reconvening of the National Assembly,

Bonaparte circumspectly dissolved his Society, of course, on paper

only. As late as the end of 1851, Police Prefect Carlier vainly

sought, in an exhaustive memorial, to move him to the real dissolution

of the Decembrists.

The “Society of December 10” was to remain the private army of

Bonaparte until he should have succeeded in converting the public Army

into a “Society of December 10.” Bonaparte made the first attempt in

this direction shortly after the adjournment of the National Assembly,

and he did so with the money which he had just wrung from it. As a

fatalist, he lives devoted to the conviction that there are certain

Higher Powers, whom man, particularly the soldier, cannot

resist. First among these Powers he numbers cigars and champagne, cold

poultry and garlic-sausage. Accordingly, in the apartments of the

Elysée, he treated first the officers and under-officers to cigars and

champagne, to cold poultry and garlic-sausage. On October 3, he

repeats this manoeuvre with the rank and file of the troops by the

review of St. Maur; and, on October 10, the same manoeuvre again, upon

a larger scale, at the army parade of Satory. The Uncle bore in

remembrance the campaigns of Alexander in Asia; the Nephew bore in

remembrance the triumphal marches of Bacchus in the same

country. Alexander was, indeed, a demigod; but Bacchus was a

full-fledged god, and the patron deity, at that, of the “Society of

December 10.”

After the review of October 3, the Permanent Committee summoned the

Minister of War, d’Hautpoul, before it. He promised that such breaches

of discipline should not recur. We have seen how, on October 10th,

Bonaparte kept d’Hautpoul’s word. At both reviews Changarnier had

commanded as Commander-in-chief of the Army of Paris. He, at once

member of the Permanent Committee, Chief of the National Guard, the

“Savior” of January 29, and June 13, the “Bulwark of Society,”

candidate of the Party of Order for the office of President, the

suspected Monk of two monarchies,—he had never acknowledged his

subordination to the Minister of War, had ever openly scoffed at the

republican Constitution, and had pursued Bonaparte with a protection

that was ambiguously distinguished. Now he became zealous for the

discipline in opposition to Bonaparte. While, on October 10, a part of

the cavalry cried: “Vive Napoléon! Vivent les saucissons;”[16]

Changarnier saw to it that at least the infantry, which filed by under

the command of his friend Neumeyer, should observe an icy silence. In

punishment, the Minister of War, at the instigation of Bonaparte,

deposed General Neumeyer from his post in Paris, under the pretext of

providing for him as Commander-in-chief of the Fourteenth and

Fifteenth Military Divisions. Neumeyer declined the exchange, and had,

in consequence, to give his resignation. On his part, Changarnier

published on November 2, an order, wherein he forbade the troops to

indulge, while under arms, in any sort of political cries or

demonstrations. The papers devoted to the Elysée interests attacked

Changarnier; the papers of the party of Order attacked Bonaparte; the

Permanent Committee held frequent secret sessions, at which it was

repeatedly proposed to declare the fatherland in danger; the Army

seemed divided into two hostile camps, with two hostile staffs; one at

the Elysée, where Bonaparte, the other at the Tuileries, where

Changarnier resided. All that seemed wanting for the signal of battle

to sound was the convening of the National Assembly. The French public

looked upon the friction between Bonaparte and Changarnier in the

light of the English journalist, who characterized it in these words:

“The political servant girls of France are mopping away the glowing

lava of the revolution with old mops, and they scold each other while

doing their work.”

Meanwhile Bonaparte hastened to depose the Minister of War,

d’Hautpoul; to expedite him heels over head to Algiers; and to appoint

in his place General Schramm as Minister of War. On November 12, he

sent to the National Assembly a message of American excursiveness,

overloaded with details, redolent of order, athirst for conciliation,

resignful to the Constitution, dealing with all and everything, only

not with the burning questions of the moment. As if in passing he

dropped the words that according to the express provisions of the

Constitution, the President alone disposes over the Army. The message

closed with the following high-sounding protestations:

“France demands, above all things, peace... Alone bound by an oath, I

shall keep myself within the narrow bounds marked out by it to

me... As to me, elected by the people, and owing my power to it alone,

I shall always submit to its lawfully expressed will. Should you at

this session decide upon the revision of the Constitution, a

Constitutional Convention will regulate the position of the Executive

power. If you do not, then, the people will, in 1852, solemnly

announce its decision. But, whatever the solution may be that the

future has in store, let us arrive at an understanding to the end that

never may passion, surprise or violence decide over the fate of a

great nation... That which, above all, bespeaks my attention is, not

who will, in 1852, rule over France, but to so devote the time at my

disposal that the interval may pass by without agitation and

disturbance. I have straightforwardly opened my heart to you, you will

answer my frankness with your confidence, my good efforts with your

co-operation. God will do the rest.”

The honnête, hypocritically temperate, commonplace-virtuous language

of the bourgeoisie reveals its deep meaning in the mouth of the

self-appointed ruler of the “Society of December 10,” and of the

picnic-hero of St. Maur and Satory.

The burgraves of the party of Order did not for a moment deceive

themselves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They were

long blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and

virtuosi of perjury. The passage about the army did not, however,

escape them. They observed with annoyance that the message, despite

its prolix enumeration of the lately enacted laws, passed, with

affected silence, over the most important of all, the election law,

and, moreover, in case no revision of the Constitution was held, left

the choice of the President, in 1852, with the people. The election

law was the ball-and-chain to the feet of the party of Order, that

hindered them from walking, and now assuredly from

storming. Furthermore, by the official disbandment of the “Society of

December 10,” and the dismissal of the Minister of War, d’Hautpoul,

Bonaparte had, with his own hands, sacrificed the scapegoats on the

altar of the fatherland. He had turned off the expected

collision. Finally, the party of Order itself anxiously sought to

avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive, to weaken and to

blur it over. Fearing to lose its conquests over the revolution, it

let its rival gather the fruits thereof. “France demands, above all

things, peace,”—with this language had the party of Order been

apostrophizing the revolution, since February; with this language did

Bonaparte’s message now apostrophize the party of Order: “France

demands, above all things, peace.” Bonaparte committed acts that aimed

at usurpation, but the party of Order committed a “disturbance of the

peace,” if it raised the hue and cry, and explained them

hypochrondriacally. The sausages of Satory were mouse-still when

nobody talked about them;—“France demands, above all things, peace.”

Accordingly, Bonaparte demanded that he be let alone; and the

parliamentary party was lamed with a double fear: the fear of

re-conjuring up the revolutionary disturbance of the peace, and the

fear of itself appearing as the disturber of the peace in the eyes of

its own class, of the bourgeoisie. Seeing that, above all things,

France demanded peace, the party of Order did not dare, after

Bonaparte had said “peace” in his message, to answer “war.” The

public, who had promised to itself the pleasure of seeing great scenes

of scandal at the opening of the National Assembly, was cheated out of

its expectations. The opposition deputies, who demanded the submission

of the minutes of the Permanent Committee over the October

occurrences, were outvoted. All debate that might excite was fled from

on principle. The labors of the National Assembly during November and

December, 1850, were without interest.

Finally, toward the end of December, began a guerilla warfare about

certain prerogatives of the parliament. The movement sank into the

mire of petty chicaneries on the prerogative of the two powers, since,

with the abolition of universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie had done

away with the class struggle.

A judgment for debt had been secured against Mauguin, one of the

Representatives. Upon inquiry by the President of the Court, the

Minister of Justice, Rouher, declared that an order of arrest should

be made out without delay. Mauguin was, accordingly, cast into the

debtors’ prison. The National Assembly bristled up when it heard of

the “attentat.” It not only ordered his immediate release, but had him

forcibly taken out of Clichy the same evening by its own greffier. In

order, nevertheless, to shield its belief in the “sacredness of

private property,” and also with the ulterior thought of opening, in

case of need, an asylum for troublesome Mountainers, it declared the

imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be permissible upon its

previous consent. It forgot to decree that the President also could be

locked up for debt. By its act, it wiped out the last semblance of

inviolability that surrounded the members of its own body.

It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police

Commissioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan to

murder Dupin and Changarnier. With an eye upon that, the questors

proposed at the very first session, that the parliament organize a

police force of its own, paid for out of the private budget of the

National Assembly itself, and wholly independent of the Police

Prefects. The Minister of the Interior, Baroche, protested against

this trespass on his preserves. A miserable compromise followed,

according to which the Police Commissioner of the Assembly was to be

paid out of its own private budget and was to be subject to the

appointment and dismissal of its own questors, but only upon previous

agreement with the Minister of the Interior. In the meantime Allais

had been prosecuted by the Government. It was an easy thing, in Court,

to present his testimony in the light of a mystification, and, through

the mouth of the Public Prosecutor, to throw Dupin, Changarnier, Yon,

together with the whole National Assembly, into a ridiculous

light. Thereupon, on December 29, Minister Baroche writes a letter to

Dupin, in which he demands the dismissal of Yon. The Committee of the

National Assembly decides to keep Yon in office; nevertheless, the

National Assembly, frightened by its own violence in the affair of

Mauguin, and accustomed, every time it has shied a blow at the

Executive, to receive back from it two in exchange, does not sanction

this decision. It dismisses Yon in reward for his zeal in office, and

robs itself of a parliamentary prerogative, indispensable against a

person who does not decide by night to execute by day, but decides by

day and executes by night.

We have seen how, during the months of November and December, under

great and severe provocations, the National Assembly evaded and

refused the combat with the Executive power. Now we see it compelled

to accept it on the smallest occasions. In the affair of Mauguin, it

confirms in principle the liability of a Representative to

imprisonment for debt, but to itself reserves the power of allowing

the principle to be applied only to the Representatives whom it

dislikes,—and for this infamous privilege we see it wrangling with the

Minister of Justice. Instead of utilizing the alleged murder plan to

the end of fastening an inquest upon the “Society of December 10,” and

of exposing Bonaparte beyond redemption before France and Europe in

his true figure, as the head of the slum-proletariat of Paris, it

allows the collision to sink to a point where the only issue between

itself and the Minister of the Interior is, Who has jurisdiction over

the appointment and dismissal of a Police Commissioner? Thus we see

the party of Order, during this whole period, compelled by its

ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its conflict with the

Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction, in chicaneries,

in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the stalest

questions of form into the very substance of its activity. It dares

not accept the collision at the moment when it involves a principle,

when the Executive power has really given itself a blank, and when the

cause of the National Assembly would be the cause of the nation. It

would thereby have issued to the nation an order of march; and it

feared nothing so much as that the nation should move. Hence, on these

occasions, it rejects the motions of the Mountain, and proceeds to the

order of the day. After the issue has in this way lost all magnitude,

the Executive power quietly awaits the moment when it can take it up

again upon small and insignificant occasions; when, so to say, the

issue offers only a parliamentary local interest. Then does the

repressed valor of the party of Order break forth, then it tears away

the curtain from the scene, then it denounces the President, then it

declares the republic to be in danger,--but then all its pathos

appears stale, and the occasion for the quarrel a hypocritical

pretext, or not at all worth the effort. The parliamentary tempest

becomes a tempest in a tea-pot, the struggle an intrigue, the

collision a scandal. While the revolutionary classes gloat with

sardonic laughter over the humiliation of the National Assembly—they,

of course, being as enthusiastic for the prerogatives of the

parliament as that body is for public freedom—the bourgeoisie, outside

of the parliament, does not understand how the bourgeoisie, inside of

the parliament, can squander its time with such petty bickerings, and

can endanger peace by such wretched rivalries with the President. It

is puzzled at a strategy that makes peace the very moment everybody

expects battles, and that attacks the very moment everybody believes

peace has been concluded.

On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Minister of the

Interior on the “Goldbar Lottery.” This lottery was a “Daughter from

Elysium”; Bonaparte, together with his faithful, had given her birth;

and Police Prefect Carlier had placed her under his official

protection, although the French law forbade all lotteries, with the

exception of raffles for benevolent purposes. Seven million tickets, a

franc a piece, and the profit ostensibly destined to the shipping of

Parisian vagabonds to California. Golden dreams were to displace the

Socialist dreams of the Parisian proletariat; the tempting prospect of

a prize was to displace the doctrinal right to labor. Of course, the

workingmen of Paris did not recognize in the lustre of the California

gold bars the lack-lustre francs that had been wheedled out of their

pockets. In the main, however, the scheme was an unmitigated

swindle. The vagabonds, who meant to open California gold mines

without taking the pains to leave Paris, were Bonaparte himself and

his Round Table of desperate insolvents. The three millions granted by

the National Assembly were rioted away; the Treasury had to be

refilled somehow or another. In vain did Bonaparte open a national

subscription, at the head of which he himself figured with a large

sum, for the establishment of so-called “cités ouvrières.”[17] The

hard-hearted bourgeois waited, distrustful, for the payment of his own

shares; and, as this, of course, never took place, the speculation in

Socialist castles in the air fell flat. The gold bars drew

better. Bonaparte and his associates did not content themselves with

putting into their own pockets part of the surplus of the seven

millions over and above the bars that were to be drawn; they

manufactured false tickets; they sold, of Number 10 alone, fifteen to

twenty lots—a financial operation fully in the spirit of the “Society

of December 10”! The National Assembly did not here have before it the

fictitious President of the Republic, but Bonaparte himself in flesh

and blood. Here it could catch him in the act, not in conflict with

the Constitution, but with the penal code. When, upon Duprat’s

interpellation, the National Assembly went over to the order of the

day, this did not happen simply because Girardin’s motion to declare

itself “satisfied” reminded the party of Order of its own systematic

corruption: the bourgeois, above all the bourgeois who has been

inflated into a statesman, supplements his practical meanness with

theoretical pompousness. As statesman, he becomes, like the Government

facing him, a superior being, who can be fought only in a higher, more

exalted manner.

Bonaparte—who, for the very reason of his being a “bohemian,” a

princely slum-proletarian, had over the scampish bourgeois the

advantage that he could carry on the fight after the Assembly itself

had carried him with its own hands over the slippery ground of the

military banquets, of the reviews, of the “Society of December 10,”

and, finally, of the penal code—now saw that the moment had arrived

when he could move from the seemingly defensive to the offensive. He

was but little troubled by the intermediate and trifling defeats of

the Minister of Justice, of the Minister of War, of the Minister of

the Navy, of the Minister of Finance, whereby the National Assembly

indicated its growling displeasure. Not only did he prevent the

Ministers from resigning, and thus recognizing the subordination of

the executive power to the Parliament; he could now accomplish what

during the vacation of the National Assembly he had commenced, the

separation of the military power from the Assembly—the deposition of

Changarnier.

An Elysée paper published an order, issued during the month of May,

ostensibly to the First Military Division, and, hence, proceeding from

Changarnier, wherein the officers were recommended, in case of an

uprising, to give no quarter to the traitors in their own ranks, to

shoot them down on the spot, and to refuse troops to the National

Assembly, should it make a requisition for such. On January 3, 1851,

the Cabinet was interpellated on this order. The Cabinet demands for

the examination of the affair at first three months, then one week,

finally only twenty-four hours’ time. The Assembly orders an immediate

explanation. Changarnier rises and declares that this order never

existed; he adds that he would ever hasten to respond to the calls of

the National Assembly, and that, in case of a collision, they could

count upon him. The Assembly receives his utterances with

inexpressible applause, and decrees a vote of confidence to him. It

thereby resigns its own powers; it decrees its own impotence and the

omnipotence of the Army by committing itself to the private protection

of a general. But the general, in turn, deceives himself when he

places at the Assembly’s disposal and against Bonaparte a power that

he holds only as a fief from that same Bonaparte, and when, on his

part, he expects protection from this Parliament, from his protegé,

itself needful of protection. But Changarnier has faith in the

mysterious power with which since January, 1849, he had been clad by

the bourgeoisie. He takes himself for the Third Power, standing beside

the other Powers of Government. He shares the faith of all the other

heroes, or rather saints, of this epoch, whose greatness consists but

in the interested good opinion that their own party holds of them, and

who shrink into every-day figures so soon as circumstances invite them

to perform miracles. Infidelity is, indeed, the deadly enemy of these

supposed heroes and real saints. Hence their virtuously proud

indignation at the unenthusiastic wits and scoffers.

That same evening the Ministers were summoned to the Elysée; Bonaparte

presses the removal of Changarnier; five Ministers refuse to sign the

order; the “Moniteur” announces a Ministerial crisis; and the party of

Order threatens the formation of a Parliamentary army under the

command of Changarnier. The party of Order had the constitutional

power hereto. It needed only to elect Changarnier President of the

National Assembly in order to make a requisition for whatever military

forces it needed for its own safety. It could do this all the more

safely, seeing that Changarnier still stood at the head of the Army

and of the Parisian National Guard, and only lay in wait to be

summoned, together with the Army. The Bonapartist press did not even

dare to question the right of the National Assembly to issue a direct

requisition for troops;—a legal scruple, that, under the given

circumstances, did not promise success. That the Army would have

obeyed the orders of the National Assembly is probable, when it is

considered that Bonaparte had to look eight days all over Paris to

find two generals—Baraguay d’Hilliers and St. Jean d’Angley—who

declared themselves ready to countersign the order cashiering

Changarnier. That, however, the party of Order would have found in its

own ranks and in the parliament the requisite vote for such a decision

is more than doubtful, when it is considered that, eight days later,

286 votes pulled away from it, and that, as late as December, 1851, at

the last decisive hour, the Mountain rejected a similar

proposition. Nevertheless, the burgraves might still have succeeded in

driving the mass of their party to an act of heroism, consisting in

feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in accepting the

services of the Army, which found itself deserted in its camp. Instead

of this, the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the Elysée on

the evening of January 6, with the view of inducing Bonaparte, by

means of politic words and considerations, to drop the removal of

Changarnier. Him whom we must convince we recognize as the master of

the situation. Bonaparte, made to feel secure by this step, appoints

on January 12 a new Ministry, in which the leaders of the old, Fould

and Baroche, are retained. St. Jean d’Angley becomes Minister of War;

the “Moniteur” announces the decree cashiering Changarnier; his

command is divided up between Baraguay d’Hilliers, who receives the

First Division, and Perrot, who is placed over the National Guard. The

“Bulwark of Society” is turned down; and, although no dog barks over

the event, in the Bourses the stock quotations rise.

By repelling the Army, that, in Changarnier’s person, put itself at

its disposal, and thus irrevocably stood up against the President, the

party of Order declares that the bourgeoisie has lost its vocation to

reign. Already there was no parliamentary Ministry. By losing,

furthermore, the handle to the Army and to the National Guard, what

instrument of force was there left to the National Assembly in order

to maintain both the usurped power of the parliament over the people,

and its constitutional power over the President? None. All that was

left to it was the appeal to peaceful principles, that itself had

always explained as “general rules” merely, to be prescribed to third

parties, and only in order to enable itself to move all the more

freely. With the removal of Changarnier, with the transfer of the

military power to Bonaparte, closes the first part of the period that

we are considering, the period of the struggle between the party of

Order and the Executive power. The war between the two powers is now

openly declared; it is conducted openly; but only after the party of

Order has lost both arms and soldiers. Without a Ministry, without any

army, without a people, without the support of public opinion; since

its election law of May 31, no longer the representative of the

sovereign nation; sans eyes, sans ears, sans teeth, sans everything,

the National Assembly had gradually converted itself into a French

Parliament of olden days, that must leave all action to the

Government, and content itself with growling remonstrances “post

festum.”[18]

The party of Order receives the new Ministry with a storm of

indignation. General Bedeau calls to mind the mildness of the

Permanent Committee during the vacation, and the excessive prudence

with which it had renounced the privilege of disclosing its

minutes. Now, the Minister of the Interior himself insists upon the

disclosure of these minutes, that have now, of course, become dull as

stagnant waters, reveal no new facts, and fall without making the

slightest effect upon the blasé public. Upon Remusat’s proposition,

the National Assembly retreats into its Committees, and appoints a

“Committee on Extraordinary Measures.” Paris steps all the less out of

the ruts of its daily routine, seeing that business is prosperous at

the time, the manufactories busy, the prices of cereals low,

provisions abundant, the savings banks receiving daily new

deposits. The “extraordinary measures,” that the parliament so noisily

announced, fizzle out on January 18 in a vote of lack of confidence

against the Ministry, without General Changarnier’s name being even

mentioned. The party of Order was forced to frame its motion in that

way so as to secure the votes of the republicans, because, of all the

acts of the Ministry, Changarnier’s dismissal only was the very one

they approved, while the party of Order cannot, in fact, condemn the

other Ministerial acts which it had itself dictated.

The January 18 vote of lack of confidence was decided by 415 ayes

against 286 nays. It was, accordingly, put through by a coalition of

the uncompromising Legitimists and Orleanists with the pure

republicans and the Mountain. Thus it revealed the fact that, in its

conflicts with Bonaparte, the party of Order had lost, not only the

Ministry, not only the Army, but also its independent parliamentary

majority; that a troop of Representatives had deserted its camp out of

a fanatic zeal for harmony, out of fear of fight, out of lassitude,

out of family considerations for the salaries of relatives in office,

out of speculations on vacancies in the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or

out of that unmitigated selfishness that causes the average bourgeois

to be ever inclined to sacrifice the interests of his class to this or

that private motive. The Bonapartist Representatives belonged from the

start to the party of Order only in the struggle against the

revolution. The leader of the Catholic party, Montalembert, already

then threw his influence in the scale of Bonaparte, since he despaired

of the vitality of the parliamentary party. Finally, the leaders of

this party itself, Thiers and Berryer—the Orleanist and the

Legitimist—were compelled to proclaim themselves openly as

republicans; to admit that their heart favored royalty, but their head

the republic; that their parliamentary republic was the only possible

form for the rule of the bourgeoisie. Thus were they compelled to

brand, before the eyes of the bourgeois class itself, as an

intrigue—as dangerous as it was senseless—the restoration plans, which

they continued to pursue indefatigably behind the back of the

parliament.

The January 18 vote of lack of confidence struck the Ministers, not

the President. But it was not the Ministry, it was the President who

had deposed Changarnier. Should the party of Order place Bonaparte

himself under charges? On account of his restoration hankering? These

only supplemented their own. On account of his conspiracy at the

military reviews and of the “Society of December 10”? They had long

since buried these subjects under simple orders of business. On

account of the discharge of the hero of January 29 and June 13, of the

man who, in May, 1850, threatened, in case of riot, to set Paris on

fire at all its four corners? Their allies of the Mountain and

Cavaignac did not even allow them to console the fallen “Bulwark of

Society” with an official testimony of their sympathy. They themselves

could not deny the constitutional right of the President to remove a

General. They stormed only because he made an unparliamentary use of

his constitutional right. Had they not themselves constantly made an

unconstitutional use of their parliamentary prerogative, notably by

the abolition of universal suffrage? Consequently they were reminded

to move exclusively within parliamentary bounds. Indeed, it required

that peculiar disease, a disease that, since 1848, has raged over the

whole continent, “Parliamentary Idiocy,”—that fetters those whom it

infects to an imaginary world, and robs them of all sense, all

remembrance, all understanding of the rude outside world;—it required

this “Parliamentary Idiocy” in order that the party of Order, which

had, with its own hands, destroyed all the conditions for

parliamentary power, and, in its struggle with the other classes, was

obliged to destroy them, still should consider its parliamentary

victories as victories, and imagine it hit the President by striking

his Ministers. They only afforded him an opportunity to humble the

National Assembly anew in the eyes of the nation. On January 20, the

“Moniteur” announced that the dismissal of the whole Ministry was

accepted. Under the pretext that none of the parliamentary parties had

any longer the majority—as proved by the January 18 vote, that fruit

of the coalition between Mountain and royalists—, and, in order to

await the re-formation of a majority, Bonaparte appointed a so-called

transition Ministry, of whom no member belonged to the

parliament—altogether wholly unknown and insignificant individuals; a

Ministry of mere clerks and secretaries. The party of Order could now

wear itself out in the game with these puppets; the Executive power no

longer considered it worth the while to be seriously represented in

the National Assembly. By this act Bonaparte concentrated the whole

executive power all the more securely in his own person; he had all

the freer elbow-room to exploit the same to his own ends, the more his

Ministers became mere supernumeraries.

The party of Order, now allied with the Mountain, revenged itself by

rejecting the Presidential endowment project of 1,800,000 francs,

which the chief of the “Society of December 10” had compelled his

Ministerial clerks to present to the Assembly. This time a majority of

only 102 votes carried the day; accordingly, since January 18, 27 more

votes had fallen off; the dissolution of the party of Order was making

progress. Lest any one might for a moment be deceived touching the

meaning of its coalition with the Mountain, the party of Order

simultaneously scorned even to consider a motion, signed by 189

members of the Mountain, for a general amnesty to political

criminals. It was enough that the Minister of the Interior, one

Baissé, declared that the national tranquility was only in appearance,

in secret there reigned deep agitation, in secret, ubiquitous

societies were organized, the democratic papers were preparing to

re-appear, the reports from the Departments were unfavorable, the

fugitives of Geneva conducted a conspiracy via Lyons through the whole

of southern France, France stood on the verge of an industrial and

commercial crisis, the manufacturers of Roubaix were working shorter

hours, the prisoners of Belle Isle had mutinied;—it was enough that

even a mere Baissé should conjure up the “Red Spectre” for the party

of Order to reject without discussion a motion that would have gained

for the National Assembly a tremendous popularity, and thrown

Bonaparte back into its arms. Instead of allowing itself to be

intimidated by the Executive power with the perspective of fresh

disturbances, the party of Order should rather have allowed a little

elbow-room to the class struggle, in order to secure the dependence of

the Executive upon itself. But it did not feel itself equal to the

task of playing with fire.

Meanwhile, the so-called transition Ministry vegetated along until the

middle of April. Bonaparte tired out and fooled the National Assembly

with constantly new Ministerial combinations. Now he seemed to intend

constructing a republican Ministry with Lamartine and Billault; then,

a parliamentary one with the inevitable Odillon Barrot, whose name

must never be absent when a dupe is needed; then again, a Legitimist,

with Batismenil and Benoist d’Azy; and yet again, an Orleansist, with

Malleville. While thus throwing the several factions of the party of

Order into strained relations with one another, and alarming them all

with the prospect of a republican Ministry, together with the

there-upon inevitable restoration of universal suffrage, Bonaparte

simultaneously raises in the bourgeoisie the conviction that his

sincere efforts for a parliamentary Ministry are wrecked upon the

irreconcilable antagonism of the royalist factions. All the while the

bourgeoisie was clamoring louder and louder for a “strong Government,”

and was finding it less and less pardonable to leave France “without

an administration,” in proportion as a general commercial crisis

seemed to be under way and making recruits for Socialism in the

cities, as did the ruinously low price of grain in the rural

districts. Trade became daily duller; the unemployed hands increased

perceptibly; in Paris, at least 10,000 workingmen were without bread;

in Rouen, Muehlhausen, Lyons, Roubaix, Tourcoign, St. Etienne, Elbeuf,

etc., numerous factories stood idle. Under these circumstances

Bonaparte could venture to restore, on April 11, the Ministry of

January 18; Messieurs Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc., reinforced by

Mr. Léon Faucher, whom the constitutive assembly had, during its last

days, unanimously, with the exception of five Ministerial votes,

branded with a vote of censure for circulating false telegraphic

dispatches. Accordingly, the National Assembly had won a victory on

January 18 over the Ministry, it had, for the period of three months,

been battling with Bonaparte, and all this merely to the end that, on

April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able to take up the Puritan

Faucher as third in their ministerial league.

In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an

_Unparliamentary_, in January, 1851, with an _Extra-Parliamentary_, on

April 11, he felt strong enough to form an _Anti-Parliamentary_

Ministry, that harmoniously combined within itself the votes of lack

of confidence of both assemblies—the constitutive and the legislative,

the republican and the royalist. This ministerial progression was a

thermometer by which the parliament could measure the ebbing

temperature of its own life. This had sunk so low by the end of April

that, at a personal interview, Persigny could invite Changarnier to go

over to the camp of the President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier,

considered the influence of the National Assembly to be wholly

annihilated, and already the proclamation was ready, that was to be

published after the steadily contemplated, but again accidentally

postponed “coup d’état.” Changarnier communicated this announcement of

its death to the leaders of the party of Order; but who was there to

believe a bed-bug bite could kill? The parliament, however beaten,

however dissolved, however death-tainted it was, could not persuade

itself to see, in the duel with the grotesque chief of the “Society of

December 10,” anything but a duel with a bed-bug. But Bonaparte

answered the party of Order as Agesilaus did King Agis: “I seem to you

an ant; but shall one day be a lion.”

VI.

The coalition with the Mountain and the pure republicans, to which the

party of Order found itself condemned in its fruitless efforts to keep

possession of the military and to reconquer supreme control over the

Executive power, proved conclusively that it had forfeited its

independent parliamentary majority. The calendar and clock merely

gave, on May 29, the signal for its complete dissolution. With May 29

commenced the last year of the life of the National Assembly. It now

had to decide for the unchanged continuance or the revision of the

Constitution. But a revision of the Constitution meant not only the

definitive supremacy of either the bourgeoisie or the small traders’

democracy, of either democracy or proletarian anarchy, of either a

parliamentary republic or Bonaparte, it meant also either Orleans or

Bourbon! Thus fell into the very midst of the parliament the apple of

discord, around which the conflict of interests, that cut up the party

of Order into hostile factions, was to kindle into an open

conflagration. The party of Order was a combination of heterogeneous

social substances. The question of revision raised a political

temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original

components.

The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they were

above all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade

Bonaparte’s re-election and the prolongation of his term. Not less

simple seemed to be the position of the republicans; they rejected all

revision, seeing in that only a general conspiracy against the

republic; as they disposed over more than one-fourth of the votes in

the National Assembly, and, according to the Constitution, a

three-fourths majority was requisite to revise and to call a revisory

convention, they needed only to count their own votes to be certain of

victory. Indeed, they were certain of it.

Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found

itself tangled in inextricable contradictions. If it voted against the

revision, it endangered the “status quo,” by leaving to Bonaparte only

one expedient—that of violence and handing France over, on May 2,

1852, at the very time of election, a prey to revolutionary anarchy,

with a President whose authority was at an end, with a parliament that

the party had long ceased to own, and with a people that it meant to

re-conquer. If it voted constitutionally for a revision, it knew that

it voted in vain, and would constitutionally have to go under before

the veto of the republicans. If, unconstitutionally, it pronounced a

simple majority binding, it could hope to control the revolution only

in case it surrendered unconditionally to the domination of the

Executive power: it then made Bonaparte master of the Constitution, of

the revision and of itself. A merely partial revision, prolonging the

term of the President, opened the way to imperial usurpation; a

general revision, shortening the existence of the republic, threw the

dynastic claims into an inevitable conflict: the conditions for a

Bourbon and those for an Orleanist restoration were not only

different, they mutually excluded each other.

The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the

two factions of the French bourgeoisie—Legitimists and Orleanists,

large landed property and manufacture—could lodge together with equal

rights. It was the indispensable condition for their common reign, the

only form of government in which their common class interest could

dominate both the claims of their separate factions and all the other

classes of society. As royalists, they relapsed into their old

antagonism: into the struggle for the overlordship of either landed

property or of money; and the highest expression of this antagonism,

its personification, were the two kings themselves, their

dynasties. Hence the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of

the Bourbons.

The Orleanist Representative Creton moved periodically in 1849, 1850

and 1851 the repeal of the decree of banishment against the royal

families; as periodically did the parliament present the spectacle of

an Assembly of royalists who stubbornly shut to their banished kings

the door through which they could return home. Richard III. murdered

Henry VI, with the remark that he was too good for this world, and

belonged in heaven. They declared France too bad to have her kings

back again. Forced by the power of circumstances, they had become

republicans, and repeatedly sanctioned the popular mandate that exiled

their kings from France.

The revision of the Constitution, and circumstances compelled its

consideration, at once made uncertain not only the republic itself,

but also the joint reign of the two bourgeois factions; and it

revived, with the possibility of the monarchy, both the rivalry of

interests which these two factions had alternately allowed to

preponderate, and the struggle for the supremacy of the one over the

other. The diplomats of the party of Order believed they could allay

the struggle by a combination of the two dynasties through a so-called

fusion of the royalist parties and their respective royal houses. The

true fusion of the restoration and the July monarchy was, however, the

parliamentary republic, in which the Orleanist and Legitimist colors

were dissolved, and the bourgeois species vanished in the plain

bourgeois, in the bourgeois genus. Now, however, the plan was to turn

the Orleanist Legitimist and the Legitimist Orleanist. The kingship,

in which their antagonism was personified, was to incarnate their

unity; the expression of their exclusive faction interests was to

become the expression of their common class interest; the monarchy was

to accomplish what only the abolition of two monarchies—the

republic—could and did accomplish. This was the philosopher’s stone,

for the finding of which the doctors of the party of Order were

breaking their heads. As though the Legitimate monarchy ever could be

the monarchy of the industrial bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois monarchy

the monarchy of the hereditary landed aristocracy! As though landed

property and industry could fraternize under one crown, where the

crown could fall only upon one head, the head of the older or the

younger brother! As though industry could at all deal upon a footing

of equality with landed property, so long as landed property did not

decide itself to become industrial. If Henry V. were to die tomorrow,

the Count of Paris would not, therefore, become the king of the

Legitimists, unless he ceased to be the King of the

Orleanists. Nevertheless, the fusion philosophers, who became louder

in the measure that the question of revision stepped to the fore, who

had provided themselves with a daily organ in the “Assemblée

Nationale,” who, even at this very moment (February, 1852) are again

at work, explained the whole difficulty by the opposition and

rivalries of the two dynasties. The attempts to reconcile the family

of Orleans with Henry V., begun since the death of Louis Philippe,

but, as all these dynastic intrigues carried on only during the

vacation of the National Assembly, between acts, behind the scenes,

more as a sentimental coquetry with the old superstition than as a

serious affair, were now raised by the party of Order to the dignity

of a great State question, and were conducted upon the public stage,

instead of, as heretofore, in the amateurs’ theater. Couriers flew

from Paris to Venice, from Venice to Claremont, from Claremont to

Paris. The Duke of Chambord issues a manifesto in which he announces,

not his own, but the “national” restoration, “with the aid of all the

members of his family.” The Orleanist Salvandy throws himself at the

feet of Henry V. The Legitimist leaders Berryer, Benoit d’Azy,

St. Priest travel to Claremont, to persuade the Orleans; but in

vain. The fusionists learn too late that the interests of the two

bourgeois factions neither lose in exclusiveness nor gain in pliancy

where they sharpen to a point in the form of family interests, of the

interests of the two royal houses. When Henry V. recognized the Count

of Paris as his successor—the only success that the fusion could at

best score—the house of Orleans acquired no claim that the

childlessness of Henry V. had not already secured to it; but, on the

other hand, it lost all the claims that it had conquered by the July

revolution. It renounced its original claims, all the title, that,

during a struggle nearly one hundred years long, it had wrested from

the older branch of the Bourbons; it bartered away its historic

prerogative, the prerogative of its family-tree. Fusion, accordingly,

amounted to nothing else than the resignation of the house of Orleans,

its Legitimist resignation, a repentful return from the Protestant

State Church into the Catholic;—a return, at that, that did not even

place it on the throne that it had lost, but on the steps of the

throne on which it was born. The old Orleanist Ministers Guizot,

Duchatel, etc., who likewise hastened to Claremont, to advocate the

fusion, represented in fact only the nervous reaction of the July

monarchy; despair, both in the citizen kingdom and the kingdom of

citizens; the superstitious belief in legitimacy as the last amulet

against anarchy. Mediators, in their imagination, between Orleans and

Bourbon, they were in reality but apostate Orleanists, and as such

were they received by the Prince of Joinville. The virile, bellicose

part of the Orleanists, on the contrary—Thiers, Baze, etc.—, persuaded

the family of Louis Philippe all the easier that, seeing every plan

for the immediate restoration of the monarchy presupposed the fusion

of the two dynasties, and every plan for fusion the resignation of the

house of Orleans, it corresponded, on the contrary, wholly with the

tradition of its ancestors to recognize the republic for the time

being, and to wait until circumstances permitted the conversion of the

Presidential chair into a throne. Joinville’s candidacy was set afloat

as a rumor, public curiosity was held in suspense, and a few months

later, after the revision was rejected, openly proclaimed in

September.

Accordingly, the essay of a royalist fusion between Orleanists and

Legitimists did not miscarry only, it broke up their parliamentary

fusion, the republican form that they had adopted in common, and it

decomposed the party of Order into its original components. But the

wider the breach became between Venice and Claremont, the further they

drifted away from each other, and the greater the progress made by the

Joinville agitation, all the more active and earnest became the

negotiations between Faucher, the Minister of Bonaparte, and the

Legitimists.

The dissolution of the party of Order went beyond its original

elements. Each of the two large factions fell in turn into new

fragments. It was as if all the old political shades, that formerly

fought and crowded one another within each of the two circles—be it

that of the Legitimists or that of the Orleanists—, had been thawed

out like dried infusoria by contact with water; as if they had

recovered enough vitality to build their own groups and assert their

own antagonisms. The Legitimists dreamed they were back amidst the

quarrels between the Tuileries and the pavilion Marsan, between

Villèle and Polignac; the Orleanists lived anew through the golden

period of the tourneys between Guizot, Molé, Broglie, Thiers, and

Odillon Barrot.

That portion of the party of Order—eager for a revision of the

Constitution but disagreed upon the extent of revision—made up of the

Legitimists under Berryer and Falloux and of those under Laroche

Jacquelein, together with the tired-out Orleanists under Molé,

Broglie, Montalembert and Odillon Barrot, united with the Bonapartist

Representatives in the following indefinite and loosely drawn motion:

“The undersigned Representatives, with the end in view of restoring to

the nation the full exercise of her sovereignty, move that the

Constitution be revised.”

At the same time, however, they unanimously declared through their

spokesman, Tocqueville, that the National Assembly had not the right

to move the abolition of the republic, that right being vested only in

a Constitutional Convention. For the rest, the Constitution could be

revised only in a “legal” way, that is to say, only in case a

three-fourths majority decided in favor of revision, as prescribed by

the Constitution. After a six days’ stormy debate, the revision was

rejected on July 19, as was to be foreseen. In its favor 446 votes

were cast, against it 278. The resolute Orleanists, Thiers,

Changarnier, etc., voted with the republicans and the Mountain.

Thus the majority of the parliament pronounced itself against the

Constitution, while the Constitution itself pronounced itself for the

minority, and its decision binding. But had not the party of Order on

May 31, 1850, had it not on June 13, 1849, subordinated the

Constitution to the parliamentary majority? Did not the whole republic

they had been hitherto having rest upon the subordination of the

Constitutional clauses to the majority decisions of the parliament?

Had they not left to the democrats the Old Testament superstitious

belief in the letter of the law, and had they not chastised the

democrats therefor? At this moment, however, revision meant nothing

else than the continuance of the Presidential power, as the

continuance of the Constitution meant nothing else than the deposition

of Bonaparte. The parliament had pronounced itself for him, but the

Constitution pronounced itself against the parliament. Accordingly, he

acted both in the sense of the parliament when he tore up the

Constitution, and in the sense of the Constitution when he chased away

the parliament.

The parliament pronounced the Constitution, and, thereby, also, its

own reign, “outside of the pale of the majority”; by its decision, it

repealed the Constitution, and continued the Presidential power, and

it at once declared that neither could the one live nor the other die

so long as itself existed. The feet of those who were to bury it stood

at the door. While it was debating the subject of revision, Bonaparte

removed General Baraguay d’Hilliers, who showed himself irresolute,

from the command of the First Military Division, and appointed in his

place General Magnan, the conqueror of Lyon, the hero of the December

days, one of his own creatures, who, already under Louis Philippe, on

the occasion of the Boulogne expedition, had somewhat compromised

himself in his favor.

By its decision on the revision, the party of Order proved that it

knew neither how to rule nor how to obey; neither how to live nor how

to die; neither how to bear with the republic nor how to overthrow it;

neither how to maintain the Constitution nor how to throw it

overboard; neither how to co-operate with the President nor how to

break with him. From what quarter did it then, look to for the

solution of all the existing perplexities? From the calendar, from the

course of events. It ceased to assume the control of events. It,

accordingly, invited events to don its authority and also the power to

which in its struggle with the people, it had yielded one attribute

after another until it finally stood powerless before the same. To the

end that the Executive be able all the more freely to formulate his

plan of campaign against it, strengthen his means of attack, choose

his tools, fortify his positions, the party of Order decided, in the

very midst of this critical moment, to step off the stage, and adjourn

for three months, from August 10 to November 4.

Not only was the parliamentary party dissolved into its two great

factions, not only was each of these dissolved within itself, but the

party of Order, inside of the parliament, was at odds with the party

of Order, outside of the parliament. The learned speakers and writers

of the bourgeoisie, their tribunes and their press, in short, the

ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie itself, the

representatives and the represented, stood estranged from, and no

longer understood one another.

The Legitimists in the provinces, with their cramped horizon and their

boundless enthusiasm, charged their parliamentary leaders Berryer and

Falloux with desertion to the Bonapartist camp, and with apostacy from

Henry V. Their lily-mind[19] believed in the fall of man, but not in

diplomacy.

More fatal and completer, though different, was the breach between the

commercial bourgeoisie and its politicians. It twitted them, not as

the Legitimists did theirs, with having apostatized from their

principle, but, on the contrary, with adhering to principles that had

become useless.

I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould in the

Ministry, that portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed

the lion’s share in Louis Philippe’s reign, to-wit, the aristocracy of

finance, had become Bonapartist. Fould not only represented

Bonaparte’s interests at the Bourse, he represented also the interests

of the Bourse with Bonaparte. A passage from the London “Economist,”

the European organ of the aristocracy of finance, described most

strikingly the attitude of this class. In its issue of February 1,

1851, its Paris correspondent writes: “Now we have it stated from

numerous quarters that France wishes above all things for repose. The

President declares it in his message to the Legislative Assembly; it

is echoed from the tribune; it is asserted in the journals; it is

announced from the pulpit; it is demonstrated by the sensitiveness of

the public funds at the least prospect of disturbance, and their

firmness the instant it is made manifest that the Executive is far

superior in wisdom and power to the factious ex-officials of all

former governments.”

In its issue of November 29, 1851, the “Economist” declares

editorially: “The President is now recognized as the guardian of order

on every Stock Exchange of Europe.” Accordingly, the _Aristocracy of

Finance_ condemned the parliamentary strife of the party of Order with

the Executive as a “disturbance of order,” and hailed every victory of

the President over its reputed representatives as a “victory of

order.” Under “aristocracy of finance” must not, however, be

understood merely the large bond negotiators and speculators in

government securities, of whom it may be readily understood that their

interests and the interests of the Government coincide. The whole

modern money trade, the whole banking industry, is most intimately

interwoven with the public credit. Part of their business capital

requires to be invested in interest-bearing government securities that

are promptly convertible into money; their deposits, _i.e._, the

capital placed at their disposal and by them distributed among

merchants and industrial establishments, flow partly out of the

dividends on government securities. The whole money market, together

with the priests of this market, is part and parcel of this

“aristocracy of finance” at every epoch when the stability of the

government is to them synonymous with “Moses and his prophets.” This

is so even before things have reached the present stage when every

deluge threatens to carry away the old governments themselves.

But the _Industrial Bourgeoisie_ also, in its fanaticism for order,

was annoyed at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with

the Executive. Thiers, Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after

their vote of January 18, on the occasion of the discharge of

Changarnier, public reprimands from their constituencies, located in

the industrial districts, branding their coalition with the Mountain

as an act of high treason to the cause of order. Although, true

enough, the boastful, vexatious and petty intrigues, through which the

struggle of the party of Order with the President manifested itself,

deserved no better reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois

party, that expects of its representatives to allow the military power

to pass without resistance out of the hands of their own Parliament

into those of an adventurous Pretender, is not worth even the

intrigues that were wasted in its behalf. It showed that the struggle

for the maintenance of their public interests, of their class

interests, of their political power only incommoded and displeased

them, as a disturbance of their private business.

The bourgeois dignitaries of the provincial towns, the magistrates,

commercial judges, etc., with hardly any exception, received Bonaparte

everywhere on his excursions in the most servile manner, even when, as

in Dijon, he attacked the National Assembly and especially the party

of Order without reserve.

Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the

commercial bourgeoisie stormed against every Parliamentary strife,

lest business be put out of temper. Business being dull, as from the

end of February, 1851, on, the bourgeoisie accused the Parliamentary

strifes as the cause of the stand-still, and clamored for quiet in

order that business may revive. The debates on revision fell just in

the bad times. Seeing the question now was the to be or not to be of

the existing form of government, the bourgeoisie felt itself all the

more justified in demanding of its Representatives that they put an

end to this tormenting provisional status, and preserve the “status

quo.” This was no contradiction. By putting an end to the provisional

status, it understood its continuance, the indefinite putting off of

the moment when a final decision had to be arrived at. The “status

quo” could be preserved in only one of two ways: either by the

prolongation of Bonaparte’s term of office or by his constitutional

withdrawal and the election of Cavaignac. A part of the bourgeoisie

preferred the latter solution, and knew no better advice to give their

Representatives than to be silent, to avoid the burning point. If

their Representatives did not speak, so argued they, Bonaparte would

not act. They desired an ostrich Parliament that would hide its head,

in order not to be seen. Another part of the bourgeoisie preferred

that Bonaparte, being once in the Presidential chair, be left in the

Presidential chair, in order that everything might continue to run in

the old ruts. They felt indignant that their Parliament did not openly

break the Constitution and resign without further ado.

The General Councils of the Departments, these provisional

representative bodies of the large bourgeoisie, who had adjourned

during the vacation of the National Assembly since August 25,

pronounced almost unanimously for revision, that is to say, against

the Parliament and for Bonaparte.

Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its

Parliamentary Representatives, did the bourgeoisie exhibit its wrath

at its literary Representatives, its own press. The verdicts of the

bourgeois juries, inflicting excessive fines and shameless sentences

of imprisonment for every attack of the bourgeois press upon the

usurping aspirations of Bonaparte, for every attempt of the press to

defend the political rights of the bourgeoisie against the Executive

power, threw, not France alone, but all Europe into amazement.

While on the one hand, as I have indicated, the Parliamentary party of

Order ordered itself to keep the peace by screaming for peace; and

while it pronounced the political rule of the bourgeoisie

irreconcilable with the safety and the existence of the bourgeoisie,

by destroying with its own hands in its struggle with the other

classes of society all the conditions for its own, the Parliamentary

régime; on the other hand, the mass of the bourgeoisie, outside of the

Parliament, urged Bonaparte—by its servility towards the President, by

its insults to the Parliament, by the brutal treatment of its own

press—to suppress and annihilate its speaking and writing organs, its

politicians and its literati, its orators’ tribune and its press, to

the end that, under the protection of a strong and unhampered

Government, it might ply its own private pursuits in safety. It

declared unmistakably that it longed to be rid of its own political

rule, in order to escape the troubles and dangers of ruling.

And this bourgeoisie, that had rebelled against even the Parliamentary

and literary contest for the supremacy of its own class, that had

betrayed its leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to

blame the proletariat for not having risen in its defence in a bloody

struggle, in a struggle for life! Those bourgeois, who at every turn

sacrificed their common class interests to narrow and dirty private

interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice from their own

Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sacrificed their

ideal-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois class

now strikes the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned,

at a critical moment, by the proletariat, that has been misled by the

Socialists. And its cry finds a general echo in the bourgeois

world. Of course, I do not refer to German cross-road politicians and

kindred blockheads. I refer, for instance, to the “Economist,” which,

as late as November 29, 1851, that is to say, four days before the

“coup d’état” pronounced Bonaparte the “Guardian of Order” and Thiers

and Berryer “Anarchists,” and as early as December 27, 1851, after

Bonaparte had silenced those very Anarchists, cries out about the

treason committed by “the ignorant, untrained and stupid proletaires

against the skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence,

intellectual resources and moral weight of the middle and upper

ranks.” The stupid, ignorant and contemptible mass was none other than

the bourgeoisie itself.

France had, indeed, experienced a sort of commercial crisis in

1851. At the end of February, there was a falling off of exports as

compared with 1850; in March, business languished and factories shut

down; in April, the condition of the industrial departments seemed as

desperate as after the February days; in May, business did not yet

pick up; as late as June 28, the reports of the Bank of France

revealed through a tremendous increase of deposits and an equal

decrease of loans on exchange notes, the standstill of production; not

until the middle of October did a steady improvement of business set

in. The French bourgeoisie accounted for this stagnation of business

with purely political reasons; it imputed the dull times to the strife

between the Parliament and the Executive power, to the uncertainty of

a provisional form of government, to the alarming prospects of May 2,

1852. I shall not deny that all these causes did depress some branches

of industry in Paris and in the Departments. At any rate, this effect

of political circumstances was only local and trifling. Is there any

other proof needed than that the improvement in business set in at the

very time when the political situation was growing worse, when the

political horizon was growing darker, and when at every moment a

stroke of lightning was expected out of the Elysée—in the middle of

October? The French bourgeois, whose “skill, knowledge, mental

influence and intellectual resources,” reach no further than his nose,

could, moreover, during the whole period of the Industrial Exposition

in London, have struck with his nose the cause of his own business

misery. At the same time that, in France, the factories were being

closed, commercial failures broke out in England. While the industrial

panic reached its height during April and May in France, in England

the commercial panic reached its height in April and May. The same as

the French, the English woolen industries suffered, and, as the

French, so did the English silk manufacture. Though the English cotton

factories went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with the same old

profit of 1849 and 1850. The only difference was this: that in France,

the crisis was an industrial, in England it was a commercial one; that

while in France the factories stood still, they spread themselves in

England, but under less favorable circumstances than they had done the

years just previous; that, in France, the export, in England, the

import trade suffered the heaviest blows. The common cause, which, as

a matter of fact, is not to be looked for within the bounds of the

French political horizon, was obvious. The years 1849 and 1850 were

years of the greatest material prosperity, and of an overproduction

that did not manifest itself until 1851. This was especially promoted

at the beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the Industrial Exposition;

and, as special causes, there were added, first, the failure of the

cotton crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty of a larger cotton

crop than was expected; first, the rise, then the sudden drop; in

short, the oscillations of the cotton market. The crop of raw silk in

France had been below the average. Finally, the manufacture of woolen

goods had received such an increment since 1849, that the production

of wool could not keep step with it, and the price of the raw material

rose greatly out of proportion to the price of the manufactured

goods. Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of three staple

articles a threefold material for a commercial crisis. Apart from

these special circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was,

after all, nothing but the halt that overproduction and

overspeculation make regularly in the course of the industrial cycle,

before pulling all their forces together in order to rush feverishly

over the last stretch, and arrive again at their point of

departure—the _General Commercial Crisis_. At such intervals in the

history of trade, commercial failures break out in England, while, in

France, industry itself is stopped, partly because it is compelled to

retreat through the competition of the English, that, at such times

becomes resistless in all markets, and partly because, as an industry

of luxuries, it is affected with preference by every stoppage of

trade. Thus, besides the general crisis, France experiences her own

national crises, which, however, are determined by and conditioned

upon the general state of the world’s market much more than by local

French influences. It will not be devoid of interest to contrast the

prejudgment of the French bourgeois with the judgment of the English

bourgeois. One of the largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly

report of trade for 1851: “Few years have more completely disappointed

the expectations entertained at their beginning than the year that has

just passed; instead of the great prosperity, that was unanimously

looked forward to, it proved itself one of the most discouraging years

during the last quarter of a century. This applies, of course, only to

the mercantile, not to the industrial classes. And yet, surely there

were grounds at the beginning of the year from which to draw a

contrary conclusion; the stock of products was scanty, capital was

abundant, provisions cheap, a rich autumn was assured, there was

uninterrupted peace on the continent and no political and financial

disturbances at home; indeed, never were the wings of trade more

unshackled... What is this unfavorable result to be ascribed to? We

believe to excessive trade in imports as well as exports. If our

merchants do not themselves rein in their activity, nothing can keep

us going, except a panic every three years.”

Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic,

having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with

rumors of a “coup d’état” and the restoration of universal suffrage;

with the struggle between the Legislature and the Executive; with the

Fronde warfare between Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic

conspiracies in southern France; with alleged Jacqueries[20] in the

Departments of Nièvre and Cher; with the advertisements of the several

candidates for President; with “social solutions” huckstered about by

the journals; with the threats of the republicans to uphold, arms in

hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with the gospels,

according to the emigrant heroes “in partibus,” who announced the

destruction of the world for May 2,—imagine that, and one can

understand how the bourgeois, in this unspeakable and noisy confusion

of fusion, revision, prorogation, constitution, conspiracy, coalition,

emigration, usurpation and revolution, blurts out at his parliamentary

republic: _“Rather an End With Fright, Than a Fright Without End.”_

Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the

growing anxiety of the creditors’ class, who, with every sunset, that

brought nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the

motion of the stars a protest against their earthly drafts. They had

become regular astrologers. The National Assembly had cut off

Bonaparte’s hope of a constitutional prolongation of his term; the

candidature of the Prince of Joinville tolerated no further

vacillation.

If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence,

it was Bonaparte’s “coup d’état.” Already on January 29, 1849, barely

a month after his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition

to that effect. His own Prime Minister, Odillon Barrot, had covertly,

in 1849, and Thiers openly, in the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme

of the “coup d’état.” In May, 1851, Persigny had again sought to win

Changarnier over to the “coup,” and the “Messager de l’Assemblée”

newspaper had published this conversation. At every parliamentary

storm, the Bonapartist papers threatened a “coup,” and the nearer the

crisis approached, all the louder grew their tone. At the orgies, that

Bonaparte celebrated every night with a swell mob of males and

females, every time the hour of midnight drew nigh and plenteous

libations had loosened the tongues and heated the minds of the

revelers, the “coup” was resolved upon for the next morning. Swords

were then drawn, glasses clinked, the Representatives were thrown out

at the windows, the imperial mantle fell upon the shoulders of

Bonaparte, until the next morning again drove away the spook, and

astonished Paris learned, from not very reserved Vestals and

indiscreet Paladins, the danger it had once more escaped. During the

months of September and October, the rumors of a “coup d’état” tumbled

close upon one another’s heels. At the same time the shadow gathered

color, like a confused daguerreotype. Follow the issues of the

European daily press for the months of September and October, and

items like this will be found literally:

“Rumors of a ‘coup’ fill Paris. The capital, it is said, is to be

filled with troops by night, and the next morning decrees are to be

issued dissolving the National Assembly, placing the Department of the

Seine in state of siege, restoring universal suffrage, and appealing

to the people. Bonaparte is rumored to be looking for Ministers to

execute these illegal decrees.”

The newspaper correspondence that brought this news always close

ominously with “postponed.” The “coup” was ever the fixed idea of

Bonaparte. With this idea he had stepped again upon French soil. It

had such full possession of him that he was constantly betraying and

blabbing it out. He was so weak that he was as constantly giving it up

again. The shadow of the “coup” had become so familiar a spectre to

the Parisians, that they refused to believe it when it finally did

appear in flesh and blood. Consequently, it was neither the reticent

backwardness of the chief of the “Society of December 10,” nor an

unthought of surprise of the National Assembly that caused the success

of the “coup.” When it succeeded, it did so despite his indiscretion

and with its anticipation—a necessary, unavoidable result of the

development that had preceded.

On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision to

restore universal suffrage; on the 16th day they handed in their

resignations; on the 26th Paris learned of the formation of the

Thorigny Ministry. The Prefect of Police, Carlier, was simultaneously

replaced by Maupas; and the chief of the First Military Division

Magnan, concentrated the most reliable regiments in the capital. On

November 4, the National Assembly re-opened its sessions. There was

nothing left for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the

course it had traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only

after it had expired.

The first post that it had forfeited in the struggle with the

Executive was the Ministry. It had solemnly to admit this loss by

accepting as genuine the Thorigny Ministry, which was but a

pretence. The permanent Committee had received Mr. Giraud with

laughter when he introduced himself in the name of the new

Ministers. So weak a Ministry for so strong a measure as the

restoration of universal suffrage! The question, however, then was to

do nothing _in_, everything _against_ the parliament.

On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the

message from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage

and the repeal of the law of May 31, 1850. On the same day, his

Ministers introduced a decree to that effect. The Assembly promptly

rejected the motion of urgency made by the Ministers, but repealed the

law itself, on November 13, by a vote of 355 against 348. Thus it once

more tore to pieces its own mandate, once more certified to the fact

that it had transformed itself from a freely chosen representative

body of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a class; it once

more admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that connected

the parliamentary head with the body of the nation.

While the Executive power appealed from the National Assembly to the

people by its motion for the restoration of universal suffrage, the

Legislative power appealed from the people to the Army by its

“Quæstors’ Bill.” This bill was to establish its right to immediate

requisitions for troops, to build up a parliamentary army. By thus

appointing the Army umpire between itself and the people, between

itself and Bonaparte; by thus recognizing the Army as the decisive

power in the State, the National Assembly was constrained to admit

that it had long given up all claim to supremacy. By debating the

right to make requisitions for troops, instead of forthwith collecting

them, it betrayed its own doubts touching its own power. By

subsequently rejecting the “Quæstors’ Bill,” it publicly confessed its

impotence. This bill fell through with a minority of 108 votes; the

Mountain had, accordingly, thrown the casting vote. It now found

itself in the predicament of Buridan’s donkey, not, indeed, between

two sacks of hay, forced to decide which of the two was the more

attractive, but between two showers of blows, forced to decide which

of the two was the harder; fear of Changarnier, on one side, fear of

Bonaparte, on the other. It must be admitted the position was not a

heroic one.

On November 18, an amendment was moved to the Act, passed by the party

of Order, on municipal elections to the effect that, instead of three

years, a domicile of one year should suffice. The amendment was lost

by a single vote—but this vote, it soon transpired, was a

mistake. Owing to the divisions within its own hostile factions, the

party of Order had long since forfeited its independent parliamentary

majority. It was now plain that there was no longer any majority in

the parliament. The National Assembly had become impotent even to

decide. Its atomic parts were no longer held together by any cohesive

power; it had expended its last breath, it was dead.

Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament was

once more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside

of the parliament a few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a

parliamentary hero conspicuously smitten by that incurable

disease—Parliamentary Idiocy—, had hatched out jointly with the

Council of State, after the death of the parliament, a new

parliamentary intrigue in the shape of a “Responsibility Law,” that

was intended to lock up the President within the walls of the

Constitution. The same as, on September 15, Bonaparte bewitched the

fishwives, like a second Massaniello, on the occasion of laying the

corner-stone for the Market of Paris,—though, it must be admitted, one

fishwife was equal to seventeen Burgraves in real power—; the same as,

after the introduction of the “Quæstors’ Bill,” he enthused the

lieutenants, who were being treated at the Elysée;—so, likewise, did

he now, on November 25, carry away with him the industrial

bourgeoisie, assembled at the Circus, to receive from his hands the

prize-medals that had been awarded at the London Industrial

Exposition. I here reproduce the typical part of his speech, from the

“Journal des Débats”:

“With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great

the French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her

real interests, and reform her institutions, instead of being

constantly disturbed in this by demagogues, on one side, and, on the

other, by monarchic hallucinations. (Loud, stormy and continued

applause from all parts of the amphitheater). The monarchic

hallucinations hamper all progress and all serious departments of

industry. Instead of progress, we have struggle only. Men, formerly

the most zealous supporters of royal authority and prerogative, become

the partisans of a convention that has no purpose other than to weaken

an authority that is born of universal suffrage. (Loud and prolonged

applause). We see men, who have suffered most from the revolution and

complained bitterest of it, provoking a new one for the sole purpose

of putting fetters on the will of the nation... I promise you peace

for the future.” (Bravo! Bravo! Stormy bravos.)

Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile “Bravo!” to the

“coup d’état” of December 2, to the destruction of the parliament, to

the downfall of their own reign, to the dictatorship of Bonaparte. The

rear of the applause of November 25 was responded to by the roar of

cannon on December 4, and the house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been

loudest in applauding, was the one demolished by most of the bombs.

Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its

midst, pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue

to exist one minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove out

each individual member with gay and humorous invectives. Napoleon,

smaller than his prototype, at least went on the 18th Brumaire into

the legislative body, and, though in a tremulous voice, read to it its

sentence of death. The second Bonaparte, who, moreover, found himself

in possession of an executive power very different from that of either

Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the annals of

universal history, but in the annals of the “Society of December 10,”

in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. He robs the Bank of France of

twenty-five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and

the soldiers with fifteen francs and a drink to each; comes secretly

together with his accomplices like a thief by night; has the houses of

the most dangerous leaders in the parliament broken into; Cavalignac,

Lamorcière, Leflô, Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze, etc., taken out

of their beds; the principal places of Paris, the building of the

parliament included, occupied with troops; and, early the next

morning, loud-sounding placards posted on all the walls proclaiming

the dissolution of the National Assembly and of the Council of State,

the restoration of universal suffrage, and the placing of the

Department of the Seine under the state of siege. In the same way he

shortly after sneaked into the “Moniteur” a false document, according

to which influential parliamentary names had grouped themselves round

him in a Committee of the Nation.

Amidst cries of “Long live the Republic!”, the rump-parliament,

assembled at the Mayor’s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, and

composed mainly of Legitimists and Orleanists, resolves to depose

Bonaparte; it harangues in vain the gaping mass gathered before the

building, and is finally dragged first, under the escort of African

sharpshooters, to the barracks of Orsay, and then bundled into

convicts’ wagons and transported to the prisons of Mazas, Ham and

Vincennes. Thus ended the party of Order, the Legislative Assembly and

the February revolution.

Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its

history:

I.—_First Period_. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February

period. Prologue. Universal fraternity swindle.

II.—_Second Period_. Period in which the republic is constituted, and

of the Constitutive National Assembly.

1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all the classes against the

proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days.

2. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bourgeois

republicans. Drafting of the Constitution. The state of siege hangs

over Paris. The bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 10 by

the election of Bonaparte as President.

3. December 20, 1848, to May 20, 1849. Struggle of the Constitutive

Assembly with Bonaparte and with the united party of Order. Death

of the Constitutive Assembly. Downfall of the republican

bourgeoisie.

III.—_Third Period_. Period of the constitutional republic and of the

Legislative National Assembly.

1. May 29 to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the small traders’, middle

class with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the small

traders’ democracy.

2. June 13, 1849, to May, 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of the

party of Order. Completes its reign by the abolition of universal

suffrage, but loses the parliamentary Ministry.

3. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851. Struggle between the

parliamentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.

a. May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851. The parliament loses the

supreme command over the Army.

b. January 12 to April 11, 1851. The parliament succumbs in the

attempts to regain possession of the administrative power. The

party of Order loses its independent parliamentary majority. Its

coalition with the republicans and the Mountain.

c. April 11 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion and

prorogation. The party of Order dissolves into its component

parts. The breach between the bourgeois parliament and the

bourgeois press, on the one hand, and the bourgeois mass, on the

other, becomes permanent.

d. October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between the

parliament and the executive power. It draws up its own decree

of death, and goes under, left in the lurch by its own class, by

the Army, and by all the other classes. Downfall of the

parliamentary régime and of the reign of the bourgeoisie.

Bonaparte’s triumph. Parody of the imperialist restoration.

VII.

The _Social Republic_ appeared as a mere phrase, as a prophecy on the

threshold of the February Revolution; it was smothered in the blood of

the Parisian proletariat during the days of 1848; but it stalks about

as a spectre throughout the following acts of the drama. The

_Democratic_ Republic next makes its bow; it goes out in a fizzle on

June 13, 1849, with its runaway small traders; but, on fleeing, it

scatters behind it all the more bragging announcements of what it

means do to. The _Parliamentary Republic_, together with the

bourgeoisie, then appropriates the whole stage; it lives its life to

the full extent of its being; but the 2d of December, 1851, buries it

under the terror-stricken cry of the allied royalists: “Long live the

Republic!”

The French bourgeoisie reared up against the reign of the working

proletariat;—it brought to power the slum-proletariat, with the chief

of the “Society of December 10” at its head. It kept France in

breathless fear over the prospective terror of “red

anarchy;”—Bonaparte discounted the prospect when, on December 4, he

had the leading citizens of the Boulevard Montmartre and the Boulevard

des Italiens shot down from their windows by the grog-inspired “Army

of Order.” It made the apotheosis of the sabre;—now the sabre rules

it. It destroyed the revolutionary press;—now its own press is

annihilated. It placed public meetings under police surveillance;—now

its own salons are subject to police inspection. It disbanded the

democratic National Guards;—now its own National Guard is

disbanded. It instituted the state of siege;—now itself is made

subject thereto. It supplanted the jury by military commissions;—now

military commissions supplant its own juries. It subjected the

education of the people to the parsons’ interests;—the parsons’

interests now subject it to their own systems. It ordered

transportations without trial;—now itself is transported without

trial. It suppressed every movement of society with physical

force;—now every movement of its own class is suppressed by physical

force. Out of enthusiasm for the gold bag, it rebelled against its own

political leaders and writers;—now, its political leaders and writers

are set aside, but the gold bag is plundered, after the mouth of the

bourgeoisie has been gagged and its pen broken. The bourgeoisie

tirelessly shouted to the revolution, in the language of St. Orsenius

to the Christians: “Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!”—flee, be silent, submit!—;

Bonaparte shouts to the bourgeoisie: “Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!”—flee, be

silent, submit!

The French bourgeoisie had long since solved Napoleon’s dilemma: “Dans

cinquante ans l’Europe sera républicaine ou cosaque.”[21] It found the

solution in the “république cosaque.”[22] No Circe distorted with

wicked charms the work of art of the bourgeois republic into a

monstrosity. That republic lost nothing but the appearance of

decency. The France of to-day was ready-made within the womb of the

Parliamentary republic. All that was wanted was a bayonet thrust, in

order that the bubble burst, and the monster leap forth to sight.

Why did not the Parisian proletariat rise after the 2d of December?

The downfall of the bourgeoisie was as yet merely decreed; the decree

was not yet executed. Any earnest uprising of the proletariat would

have forthwith revived this bourgeoisie, would have brought on its

reconciliation with the army, and would have insured a second June

rout to the workingmen.

On December 4, the proletariat was incited to fight by

Messrs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader. On the evening of that day, several

legions of the National Guard promised to appear armed and uniformed

on the place of battle. This arose from the circumstance that

Messrs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader had got wind that, in one of his

decrees of December 2, Bonaparte abolished the secret ballot, and

ordered them to enter the words “Yes” and “No” after their names in

the official register. Bonaparte took alarm at the stand taken on

December 4. During the night he caused placards to be posted on all

the street corners of Paris, announcing the restoration of the secret

ballot. Messrs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader believed they had gained

their point. The absentees, the next morning, were

Messieurs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader.

During the night of December 1 and 2, the Parisian proletariat was

robbed of its leaders and chiefs of barricades by a raid of

Bonaparte’s. An army without officers, disinclined by the

recollections of June, 1848 and 1849, and May, 1850, to fight under

the banner of the Montagnards, it left to its vanguard, the secret

societies, the work of saving the insurrectionary honor of Paris,

which the bourgeoisie had yielded to the soldiery so submissively that

Bonaparte was later justified in disarming the National Guard upon the

scornful ground that he feared their arms would be used against

themselves by the Anarchists!

“C’est le triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism!”[23] Thus did

Guizot characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of

the parliamentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of

the proletarian revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the

triumph of Bonaparte over the parliament, of the Executive over the

Legislative power, of force without phrases over the force of

phrases. In the parliament, the nation raised its collective will to

the dignity of law, _i.e._, it raised the law of the ruling class to

the dignity of its collective will. Before the Executive power, the

nation abdicates all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an

outsider of Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive

power expresses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its

autonomy. Accordingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a

class only in order to fall under the despotism of an individual,

under the authority, at that, of an individual without authority. The

struggle seems to settle down to the point where all classes drop down

on their knees, equally impotent and equally dumb.

All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its

passage through purgatory. It does its work methodically. Down to

December 2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme, it now

fulfils the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature

into fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it

has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of

the Executive into equal maturity; it reduces this power to its purest

expression; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject

for reproof in order to concentrate against it all the revolutionary

forces of destruction. When the revolution shall have accomplished

this second part of its preliminary programme, Europe will jump up

from her seat to exclaim: “Well hast thou grubbed, old mole!”

The Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military

organization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of

government—an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together

with a military force of another million men—; this fearful body of

parasites, that coils itself like a snake around French society,

stopping all its pores, originated at the time of the absolute

monarchy, along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped to

hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities

were transformed into so many attributes of the Executive power; the

feudal dignitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design

of conflicting mediæval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a

government, work is subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The

first French revolution, having as a mission to sweep away all local,

territorial, urban and provincial special privileges, with the object

of establishing the civic unity of the nation, was bound to develop

what the absolute monarchy had begun—the work of centralization,

together with the range, the attributes and the menials of

government. Napoleon completed this governmental machinery. The

Legitimist and the July Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a

greater subdivision of labor, that grew in the same measure as the

division and subdivision of labor within bourgeois society raised new

groups and interests, _i.e._, new material for the administration of

government. Each _Common_ interest was in turn forthwith removed from

society, set up against it as a higher _Collective_ interest, wrested

from the individual activity of the members of society, and turned

into a subject for governmental administration, —from the bridges, the

school house and the communal property of a village community, up to

the railroads, the national wealth and the national University of

France. Finally, the parliamentary republic found itself, in its

struggle against the revolution, compelled, with its repressive

measures, to strengthen the means and the centralization of the

government. Each overturn, instead of breaking up, carried this

machine to higher perfection. The parties, that alternately wrestled

for supremacy, looked upon the possession of this tremendous

governmental structure as the principal spoils of their victory.

Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, during the first

revolution, and under Napoleon, the bureaucracy was only the means

whereby to prepare the class rule of the bourgeoisie; under the

restoration, under Louis Philippe, and under the parliamentary

republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class, however eagerly

this class strained after autocracy. Not before the advent of the

second Bonaparte does the government seem to have made itself fully

independent. The machinery of government has by this time so

thoroughly fortified itself against society, that the chief of the

“Society of December 10” is thought good enough to be at its head; a

fortune-hunter, run in from abroad, is raised on its shield by a

drunken soldiery, bought by himself with liquor and sausages, and whom

he is forced ever again to throw sops to. Hence the timid despair, the

sense of crushing humiliation and degradation that oppresses the

breast of France and makes her to choke. She feels dishonored.

And yet the French Government does not float in the air. Bonaparte

represents an economic class, and that the most numerous in the

commonweal of France—the _Allotment Farmer_.[24]

As the Bourbons are the dynasty of large landed property, as the

Orleans are the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of

the farmer, _i.e._, of the French masses. Not the Bonaparte, who threw

himself at the feet of the bourgeois parliament, but the Bonaparte,

who swept away the bourgeois parliament, is the elect of this farmer

class. For three years the cities had succeeded in falsifying the

meaning of the election of December 10, and in cheating the farmer out

of the restoration of the Empire. The election of December 10, 1848,

is not carried out until the “coup d’état” of December 2, 1851.

The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members

live in identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold

relations with one another. Their method of production isolates them

from one another, instead of drawing them into mutual

intercourse. This isolation is promoted by the poor means of

communication in France, together with the poverty of the farmers

themselves. Their field of production, the small allotment of land

that each cultivates, allows no room for a division of labor, and no

opportunity for the application of science; in other words, it shuts

out manifoldness of development, diversity of talent, and the luxury

of social relations. Every single farmer family is almost

self-sufficient; itself produces directly the greater part of what it

consumes; and it earns its livelihood more by means of an interchange

with nature than by intercourse with society. We have the allotted

patch of land, the farmer and his family; alongside of that another

allotted patch of land, another farmer and another family. A bunch of

these makes up a village; a bunch of villages makes up a

Department. Thus the large mass of the French nation is constituted by

the simple addition of equal magnitudes—much as a bag with potatoes

constitutes a potato-bag. In so far as millions of families live under

economic conditions that separate their mode of life, their interests

and their culture from those of the other classes, and that place them

in an attitude hostile toward the latter, they constitute a class; in

so far as there exists only a local connection among these farmers, a

connection which the individuality and exclusiveness of their

interests prevent from generating among them any unity of interest,

national connections, and political organization, they do not

constitute a class. Consequently, they are unable to assert their

class interests in their own name, be it by a parliament or by

convention. They can not represent one another, they must themselves

be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as

their master, as an authority over them, as an unlimited governmental

power, that protects them from above, bestows rain and sunshine upon

them. Accordingly, the political influence of the allotment farmer

finds its ultimate expression in an Executive power that subjugates

the commonweal to its own autocratic will.

Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the

French farmers that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all

manner of glory. Now, then, an individual turns up, who gives himself

out as that man because, obedient to the “Code Napoléon,” which

provides that “La récherche de la paternité est interdite,”[25] he

carries the name of Napoleon.[26] After a vagabondage of twenty years,

and a series of grotesque adventures, the myth is verified, and that

man becomes the Emperor of the French. The rooted thought of the

Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided with the rooted thought

of the most numerous class among the French.

“But,” I shall be objected to, “what about the farmers’ uprisings over

half France, the raids of the Army upon the farmers, the wholesale

imprisonment and transportation of farmers?”

Indeed, since Louis XIV., France has not experienced such persecutions

of the farmer on the ground of his “demagogic machinations.”

But this should be well understood: The Bonaparte dynasty does not

represent the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer; it

does not represent the farmer, who presses beyond his own economic

conditions, his little allotment of land, it represents him rather who

would confirm these conditions; it does not represent the rural

population, that, thanks to its own inherent energy, wishes, jointly

with the cities to overthrow the old order, it represents, on the

contrary, the rural population that, hide-bound in the old order,

seeks to see itself, together with its allotments, saved and favored

by the ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but

the superstition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not

his future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes;[27] but his modern

Vendée.[28]

The three years’ severe rule of the parliamentary republic had freed a

part of the French farmers from the Napoleonic illusion, and, though

even only superficially; had revolutionized them. The bourgeoisie

threw them, however, violently back every time that they set

themselves in motion. Under the parliamentary republic, the modern

wrestled with the traditional consciousness of the French farmer. The

process went on in the form of a continuous struggle between the

school teachers and the parsons;—the bourgeoisie knocked the school

teachers down. For the first time, the farmer made an effort to take

an independent stand in the government of the country; this manifested

itself in the prolonged conflicts of the Mayors with the Prefects;—the

bourgeoisie deposed the Mayors. Finally, during the period of the

parliamentary republic, the farmers of several localities rose against

their own product, the Army;—the bourgeoisie punished them with states

of siege and executions. And this is the identical bourgeoisie, that

now howls over the “stupidity of the masses,” over the “vile

multitude,” which, it claims, betrayed it to Bonaparte. Itself has

violently fortified the imperialism of the farmer class; it firmly

maintained the conditions that constitute the birth-place of this

farmer-religion. Indeed, the bourgeoisie has every reason to fear the

stupidity of the masses—so long as they remain conservative; and their

intelligence—so soon as they become revolutionary.

In the revolts that took place after the “coup d’état” a part of the

French farmers protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of

December 10, 1848. The school house had, since 1848, sharpened their

wits. But they had bound themselves over to the nether world of

history, and history kept them to their word. Moreover, the majority

of this population was still so full of prejudices that, just in the

“reddest” Departments, it voted openly for Bonaparte. The National

Assembly prevented, as it thought, this population from walking; the

farmers now snapped the fetters which the cities had struck upon the

will of the country districts. In some places they even indulged the

grotesque hallucination of a “Convention together with a Napoleon.”

After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into

freeholders, Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which,

unmolested, they could exploit the soil of France, that had just

fallen into their hands, and expiate the youthful passion for

property. But that which now bears the French farmer down is that very

allotment of land; it is the partition of the soil, the form of

ownership, which Napoleon had consolidated. These are the material

conditions that turned the French feudal peasant into a small or

allotment farmer, and Napoleon into an Emperor. Two generations have

sufficed to produce the inevitable result: the progressive

deterioration of agriculture, and the progressive encumbering of the

agriculturist. The “Napoleonic” form of ownership, which, at the

beginning of the nineteenth century was the condition for the

emancipation and enrichment of the French rural population, has, in

the course of the century, developed into the law of their enslavement

and pauperism. Now, then, this very law is the first of the “idées

Napoléoniennes,” which the second Bonaparte must uphold. If he still

shares with the farmers the illusion of seeking, not in the system of

the small allotment itself, but outside of that system, in the

influence of secondary conditions, the cause of their ruin, his

experiments are bound to burst like soap-bubbles against the modern

system of production.

The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom

upward the relation of the farmer to the other classes of

society. Under Napoleon, the parceling out of the agricultural lands

into small allotments supplemented in the country the free competition

and the incipient large production of the cities. The farmer class was

the ubiquitous protest against the aristocracy of land, just then

overthrown. The roots that the system of small allotments cast into

the soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its

boundary-posts constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie

against every stroke of the old overlords. But in the course of the

nineteenth century, the City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the

Feudal Lord, the Mortgage substituted the Feudal Duties formerly

yielded by the soil, bourgeois Capital took the place of the

aristocracy of Landed Property. The former allotments are now only a

pretext that allows the capitalist class to draw profit, interest and

rent from agricultural lands, and to leave to the farmer himself the

task of seeing to it that he knock out his wages. The mortgage

indebtedness that burdens the soil of France imposes upon the French

farmer class the payment of an interest as great as the annual

interest on the whole British national debt. In this slavery of

capital, whither its development drives it irresistibly, the allotment

system has transformed the mass of the French nation into

troglodytes. Sixteen million farmers (women and children included),

house in hovels most of which have only one opening, some two, and the

few most favored ones three. Windows are to a house what the five

senses are to the head. The bourgeois social order, which, at the

beginning of the century, placed the State as a sentinel before the

newly instituted allotment, and that manured this with laurels, has

become a vampire that sucks out its heart-blood and its very brain,

and throws it into the alchemist’s pot of capital. The “Code Napoleon”

is now but the codex of execution, of sheriff’s sales and of

intensified taxation. To the four million (children, etc., included)

official paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prostitutes, that France

numbers, must be added five million souls who hover over the precipice

of life, and either sojourn in the country itself, or float with their

rags and their children from the country to the cities, and from the

cities back to the country. Accordingly, the interests of the farmers

are no longer, as under Napoleon, in harmony but in conflict with the

interests of the bourgeoisie, _i.e._, with capital; they find their

natural allies and leaders among the urban proletariat, whose mission

is the overthrow of the bourgeois social order. But the “strong and

unlimited government”—and this is the second of the “idées

Napoléoniennes,” which the second Napoleon has to carry out—, has for

its mission the forcible defence of this very “material” social order,

a “material order” that furnishes the slogan in Bonaparte’s

proclamations against the farmers in revolt.

Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer’s

allotment, this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of

life to the bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short

to the whole apparatus of the Executive power. A strong government,

and heavy taxes are identical. The system of ownership, involved in

the system of allotments lends itself by nature for the groundwork of

a powerful and numerous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of

conditions and of persons over the whole surface of the country; it,

therefore, allows the exercise of an even influence upon all parts of

this even mass from a high central point downwards; it annihilates the

aristocratic gradations between the popular masses and the Government;

it, consequently, calls from all sides for the direct intervention of

the Government and for the intervention of the latter’s immediate

organs; and, finally, it produces an unemployed excess of population,

that finds no room either in the country or in the cities, that,

consequently, snatches after public office as a sort of dignified

alms, and provokes the creation of further offices. With the new

markets, which he opened at the point of the bayonet, and with the

plunder of the continent, Napoleon returned to the farmer class with

interest the taxes wrung from them. These taxes were then a goad to

the industry of the farmer, while now, on the contrary, they rob his

industry of its last source of support, and completely sap his power

to resist poverty. Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly gallooned

and well fed is that “idée Napoléonienne” that above all others suits

the requirements of the second Bonaparte. How else should it be,

seeing he is forced to raise alongside of the actual classes of

society, an artificial class, to which the maintenance of his own

régime must be a knife-and-fork question? One of his first financial

operations was, accordingly, the raising of the salaries of the

government employés to their former standard, and the creation of new

sinecures.

Another “idée Napoléonienne” is the rule of the parsons as an

instrument of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony

with society, in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its

subordination to the authority that protected it from above, was

naturally religious, the debt-broken allotment, on the contrary, at

odds with society and authority, and driven beyond its own narrow

bounds, becomes as naturally irreligious. Heaven was quite a pretty

gift thrown in with the narrow strip of land that had just been won,

all the more as it makes the weather; it, however, becomes an insult

from the moment it is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for his

allotment. Then the parson appears merely as the anointed bloodhound

of the earthly police,—yet another “idée Napoléonienne.” The

expedition against Rome will next time take place in France, but in a

reverse sense from that of M. de Montalembert.

Finally, the culminating point of the “idées Napoléoniennes” is the

preponderance of the Army. The Army was the “point of honor” with the

allotment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending

abroad their newly established property, glorifying their recently

conquered nationality, plundering and revolutionizing the world. The

uniform was their State costume; war was their poetry; the allotment,

expanded and rounded up in their phantasy, was the fatherland; and

patriotism became the ideal form of property. But the foe, against

whom the French farmer must now defend his property, are not the

Cossacks, they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors. The allotment

no longer lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of

mortgages. The Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the

farmers, it is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer

class. It consists of “remplaçants,” substitutes, just as the second

Bonaparte himself is but a “remplaçant,” a substitute, for

Napoleon. Its feats of heroism are now performed in raids instituted

against farmers and in the service of the police;—and when the

internal contradictions of his own system shall drive the chief of the

“Society of December 10” across the French frontier, that Army will,

after a few bandit-raids, gather no laurels but only hard knocks.

It is evident that all the “idées Napoléoniennes” are the ideas of the

undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for

the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of

its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to

spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free

the mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to

elaborate sharply the contrast between Government and Society. Along

with the progressive decay of the allotment, the governmental

structure, reared upon it, breaks down. The centralization of

Government, required by modern society, rises only upon the ruins of

the military and bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged

in contrast to feudalism.

The conditions of the French farmers’ class solve to us the riddle of

the general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second

Bonaparte to the top of Sinai, not to receive, but to decree laws.

The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect

Bonaparte. When, at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained

of the sinful life of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform

in morals, Cardinal d’Ailly thundered into their faces: “Only the

devil in his own person can now save the Catholic Church, and you

demand angels.” So, likewise, did the French bourgeoisie cry out after

the “coup d’état”: “Only the chief of the ‘Society of December 10’ can

now save bourgeois society, only theft can save property, only perjury

religion, only bastardy the family, only disorder order!”

Bonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to

secure “bourgeois order.” But the strength of this bourgeois order

lies in the middle class. He feels himself the representative of the

middle class, and issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he

is something only because he has broken the political power of this

class, and daily breaks it anew. Hence he feels himself the adversary

of the political and the literary power of the middle class. But, by

protecting their material, he nourishes anew their political

power. Consequently, the cause must be kept alive, but the result,

wherever it manifests itself, swept out of existence. But this

procedure is impossible without slight mistakings of causes and

effects, seeing that both, in their mutual action and reaction, lose

their distinctive marks. Thereupon, new decrees, that blur the line of

distinction. Bonaparte, furthermore, feels himself, as against the

bourgeoisie, the representative of the farmer and the people in

general, who, within bourgeois society, is to render the lower classes

of society happy. To this end, new decrees, intended to exploit the

“true Socialists,” together with their governmental wisdom. But, above

all, Bonaparte feels himself the chief of the “Society of December

10,” the representative of the slum-proletariat, to which he himself,

his immediate surroundings, his Government, and his army alike belong,

the main object with all of whom is to be good to themselves, and draw

Californian tickets out of the national treasury. And he affirms his

chieftainship of the “Society of December 10” with decrees, without

decrees, and despite decrees.

This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of

his own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to

win, then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by

arraying against itself all the classes; whose actual insecurity

constitutes a highly comical contrast with the imperious, categoric

style of the Government acts, copied closely from the Uncle.

Industry and commerce, _i.e._, the business of the middle class, are

to be made to blossom in hot-house style under the “strong

Government.” Loans for a number of railroad grants. But the

Bonapartist slum-proletariat is to enrich itself. Peculation is

carried on with railroad concessions on the Bourse by the initiated;

but no capital is forthcoming for the railroads. The bank then pledges

itself to make advances upon railroad stock; but the bank is itself to

be exploited; hence, it must be cajoled; it is released of the

obligation to publish its reports weekly. Then follows a leonine

treaty between the bank and the Government. The people are to be

occupied: public works are ordered; but the public works raise the tax

rates upon the people; thereupon the taxes are reduced by an attack

upon the national bond-holders through the conversion of the five per

cent. “rentes”[29] into four-and-halves. Yet the middle class must

again be tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the

people, who buy it at retail, and is reduced to one-half for the

middle class, that drink it at wholesale. Genuine labor organizations

are dissolved, but promises are made of future wonders to accrue from

organization. The farmers are to be helped: mortgage-banks are set up

that must promote the indebtedness of the farmer and the concentration

of property; but again, these banks are to be utilized especially to

the end of squeezing money out of the confiscated estates of the House

of Orleans; no capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover,

is not mentioned in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere

decree, etc., etc.

Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all

classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others. As

was said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was

the most obliging man in France because he had converted all his

estates into bonds upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon

like to be the most obliging man in France and convert all property

and all labor of France into a personal bond upon himself. He would

like to steal the whole of France to make a present thereof to France,

or rather to be able to purchase France back again with French

money;—as chief of the “Society of December 10,” he must purchase that

which is to be his. All the State institutions, the Senate, the

Council of State, the Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the Soldiers’

decorations, the public baths, the public buildings, the railroads,

the General Staff of the National Guard, exclusive of the rank and

file, the confiscated estates of the House of Orleans, —all are

converted into institutions for purchase and sale. Every place in the

Army and the machinery of Government becomes a purchasing power. The

most important thing, however, in this process, whereby France is

taken to be given back to herself, are the percentages that, in the

transfer, drop into the hands of the chief and the members of the

“Society of December 10.” The witticisms with which the Countess of

L., the mistress of de Morny, characterized the confiscations of the

Orleanist estates: “C’est le premier vol de l’aigle,”[30] fits every

flight of the eagle that is rather a crow. He himself and his

followers daily call out to themselves, like the Italian Carthusian

monk in the legend does to the miser, who displayfully counted the

goods on which he could live for many years to come: “Tu fai conto

sopra i beni, bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni.”[31] In order

not to make a mistake in the years, they count by minutes. A crowd of

fellows, of the best among whom all that can be said is that one knows

not whence he comes—a noisy, restless “Bohème,” greedy after plunder,

that crawls about in gallooned frocks with the same grotesque dignity

as Soulonque’s[32] Imperial dignitaries—, thronged the court, crowded

the ministries, and pressed upon the head of the Government and of the

Army. One can picture to himself this upper crust of the “Society of

December 10” by considering that Véron Crevel[33] is their preacher of

morality, and Granier de Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the

time he was Minister, employed this Granier on an obscure sheet

against the dynastic opposition, he used to praise him with the term:

“C’est le roi des drôles.”[34] It were a mistake to recall the days of

the Regency or of Louis XV. by the court and the kit of Louis

Bonaparte’s: “Often did France have a mistress-administration, but

never yet an administration of kept men.”[35]

Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled,

like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant

surprises, the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the

substitute of Napoleon, compelled, consequently, every day to

accomplish a sort of “coup” on a small scale, Bonaparte throws the

whole bourgeois social system into disorder; he broaches everything

that seemed unbroachable by the revolution of 1848; he makes one set

of people patient under the revolution, and another anxious for it;

and he produces anarchy itself in the name of order, by rubbing off

from the whole machinery of Government the veneer of sanctity, by

profanating it, by rendering it at once nauseating and laughable. He

rehearses in Paris the cult of the sacred coat of Trier with the cult

of the Napoleonic Imperial mantle. But, when the Imperial Mantle shall

have finally fallen upon the shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, then will

also the iron statue of Napoleon drop down from the top of the Vendôme

column.[36]

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Endnotes

[1]: Silk-stocking republican.

[2]: Here is Rhodes, leap here! An allusion to Æsop’s Fables.

[3]: This was written at the beginning of 1852.

[4]: Brother, you must die!

[5]: The debtors’ prison.

[6]: Intelligent bayonets.

[7]: The hero in Chamisso’s “Peter Schlemihl,” who loses his own

shadow.

[8]: Practical joke.

[9]: The candidate of the Bourbons, or Legitimists, for the throne.

[10]: January, 1852.

[11]: We shall see.

[12]: You are nothing but fakirs.

[13]: Man of straw.

[14]: Napoleonic ideas.

[15]: Under the reign of Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts

to restore the throne of Napoleon: one in October, 1836, in an

expedition from Switzerland upon Strassburg; and one in August,

1840, in an expedition from England upon Boulogne.

[16]: Long live Napoleon! Long live the sausages!

[17]: Work cities.

[18]: After the act is done; after the feast.

[19]: An allusion to the lilies of the Bourbon coat-of-arms.

[20]: Peasant revolts.

[21]: Within fifty years Europe will be either republican or Cossack.

[22]: Cossack republic.

[23]: It is the complete and definite triumph of Socialism.

[24]: The first French Revolution distributed the bulk of the

territory of France, held at the time by the feudal lords, in

small patches among the cultivators of the soil. This allotment

of lands created the French farmer class.

[25]: The inquiry into paternity is forbidden.

[26]: L. N. Bonaparte is said to have been an illegitimate son.

[27]: The Cévennes were the theater of the most numerous revolutionary

uprisings of the farmer class.

[28]: La Vendée was the theater of protracted reactionary uprisings of

the farmer class under the first Revolution.

[29]: The name of the French national bonds.

[30]: “It is the first flight of the eagle.” The French word “vol”

means theft as well as flight.

[31]: “You count your property, you should rather count the years left

to you.”

[32]: Soulonque was the negro Emperor of the shortlived negro Empire

of Hayti.

[33]: Crevel is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr. Véron, the

proprietor of the “Constitutional” newspaper, as a type of the

dissolute Parisian Philistine.

[34]: “He is the king of the clowns.”

[35]: Madame de Girardin.

[36]: A prophecy that a few years later, after Bonaparte’s coronation

as Emperor, was literally fulfilled. By order of the Emperor

Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the first Napoleon that

originally surmounted the Vendome column was taken down and

replaced by one of first Napoleon in imperial robes.