A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 47

[Austrian Concordat, Sept. 18, 1855.]

The powerlessness of Prussia was the measure of Austrian influence and prestige. The contrast presented by Austria in 1848 and Austria in 1851 was indeed one that might well arrest political observers. Its recovery had no doubt been effected partly by foreign aid, and in the struggle with the Magyars a dangerous obligation had been incurred towards Russia; but scarred and riven as the fabric was within, it was complete and imposing without. Not one of the enemies who in 1848 had risen against the Court of Vienna now remained standing. In Italy, Austria had won back what had appeared to be hopelessly lost; in Germany it had more than vindicated its old claims. It had thrown its rival to the ground, and the full measure of its ambition was perhaps even yet not satisfied. "First to humiliate Prussia, then to destroy it," was the expression in which Schwarzenberg summed up his German policy. Whether, with his undoubted firmness and daring, the Minister possessed the intellectual qualities and the experience necessary for the successful administration of an Empire built up, as Austria now was, on violence and on the suppression of every national force, was doubted even by his admirers. The proof, however, was not granted to him, for a sudden death carried him off in his fourth year of power (April 5th, 1852). Weaker men succeeded to his task. The epoch of military and diplomatic triumph was now ending, the gloomier side of the reaction stood out unrelieved by any new succession of victories. Financial disorder grew worse and worse. Clericalism claimed its bond from the monarchy which it had helped to restore. In the struggle of the nationalities of Austria against the central authority the Bishops had on the whole thrown their influence on to the side of the Crown. The restored despotism owed too much to their help and depended too much on their continued goodwill to be able to refuse their demands. Thus the new centralised administration, reproducing in general the uniformity of government attempted by the Emperor Joseph II., contrasted with this in its subservience to clerical power. Ecclesiastical laws and jurisdictions were allowed to encroach on the laws and jurisdiction of the State; education was made over to the priesthood; within the Church itself the bishops were allowed to rule uncontrolled. The very Minister who had taken office under Schwarzenberg as the representative of the modern spirit, to which the Government still professed to render homage, became the instrument of an act of submission to the Papacy which marked the lowest point to which Austrian policy fell. Alexander Bach, a prominent Liberal in Vienna at the beginning of 1848, had accepted office at the price of his independence, and surrendered himself to the aristocratic and clerical influences that dominated the Court. Consistent only in his efforts to simplify the forms of government, to promote the ascendency of German over all other elements in the State, to maintain the improvement in the peasant's condition effected by the Parliament of Kremsier, Bach, as Minister of the Interior, made war in all other respects on his own earlier principles. In the former representative of the Liberalism of the professional cla.s.ses in Vienna absolutism had now its most efficient instrument; and the Concordat negotiated by Bach with the Papacy in 1855 marked the definite submission of Austria to the ecclesiastical pretensions which in these years of political languor and discouragement gained increasing recognition throughout Central Europe. Ultramontanism had sought allies in many political camps since the revolution of 1848. It had dallied in some countries with Republicanism; but its truer instincts divined in the victory of absolutist systems its own surest gain. Accommodations between the Papacy and several of the German Governments were made in the years succeeding 1849; and from the centralised despotism of the Emperor Francis Joseph the Church won concessions which since the time of Maria Theresa it had in vain sought from any ruler of the Austrian State.

[France after 1848.]

[Louis Napoleon.]

The European drama which began in 1848 had more of unity and more of concentration in its opening than in its close. In Italy it ends with the fall of Venice; in Germany the interest lingers till the days of Olmutz; in France there is no decisive break in the action until the Coup d'Etat which, at the end of the year 1851, made Louis Napoleon in all but name Emperor of France. The six million votes which had raised Louis Napoleon to the Presidency of the Republic might well have filled with alarm all who hoped for a future of const.i.tutional rule; yet the warning conveyed by the election seems to have been understood by but few. As the representative of order and authority, as the declared enemy of Socialism, Louis Napoleon was on the same side as the Parliamentary majority; he had even been supported in his candidature by Parliamentary leaders such as M. Thiers. His victory was welcomed as a victory over Socialism and the Red Republic; he had received some patronage from the official party of order, and it was expected that, as nominal chief of the State, he would act as the instrument of this party. He was an adventurer, but an adventurer with so little that was imposing about him, that it scarcely occurred to men of influence in Paris to credit him with the capacity for mischief. His mean look and spiritless address, the absurdities of his past, the insignificance of his political friends, caused him to be regarded during his first months of public life with derision rather than with fear. The French, said M. Thiers long afterwards, made two mistakes about Louis Napoleon: the first when they took him for a fool, the second when they took him for a man of genius. It was not until the appearance of the letter to Colonel Ney, in which the President ostentatiously separated himself from his Ministers and emphasised his personal will in the direction of the foreign policy of France, that suspicions of danger to the Republic from his ambition arose. From this time, in the narrow circle of the Ministers whom official duty brought into direct contact with the President, a constant sense of insecurity and dread of some new surprise on his part prevailed, though the accord which had been broken by the letter to Colonel Ney was for a while outwardly re-established, and the forms of Parliamentary government remained unimpaired.

[Message of Oct. 31, 1849.]

The first year of Louis Napoleon's term of office was drawing to a close when a message from him was delivered to the a.s.sembly which seemed to announce an immediate attack upon the Const.i.tution. The Ministry in office was composed of men of high Parliamentary position; it enjoyed the entire confidence of a great majority in the a.s.sembly, and had enforced with at least sufficient energy the measures of public security which the President and the country seemed agreed in demanding. Suddenly, on the 31st of October, the President announced to the a.s.sembly by a message carried by one of his aides-de-camp that the Ministry were dismissed. The reason a.s.signed for their dismissal was the want of unity within the Cabinet itself; but the language used by the President announced much more than a ministerial change. "France, in the midst of confusion, seeks for the hand, the will of him whom it elected on the 10th of December. The victory won on that day was the victory of a system, for the name of Napoleon is in itself a programme. It signifies order, authority, religion, national prosperity within; national dignity without. It is this policy, inaugurated by my election, that I desire to carry to triumph with the support of the a.s.sembly and of the people." In order to save the Republic from anarchy, to maintain the prestige of France among other nations, the President declared that he needed men of action rather than of words; yet when the list of the new Ministers appeared, it contained scarcely a single name of weight.

Louis Napoleon had called to office persons whose very obscurity had marked them as his own instruments, and guaranteed to him the ascendency which he had not hitherto possessed within the Cabinet. Satisfied with having given this proof of his power, he resumed the appearance of respect, if not of cordiality, towards the a.s.sembly. He had learnt to beware of precipitate action; above two years of office were still before him; and he had now done enough to make it clear to all who were disposed to seek their fortunes in a new political cause that their services on his behalf would be welcomed, and any excess of zeal more than pardoned. From this time there grew up a party which had for its watchword the exaltation of Louis Napoleon and the derision of the methods of Parliamentary government.

Journalists, unsuccessful politicians, adventurers of every description, were enlisted in the ranks of this obscure but active band. For their acts and their utterances no one was responsible but themselves. They were disavowed without compunction when their hardihood went too far; but their ventures brought them no peril, and the generosity of the President was not wanting to those who insisted on serving him in spite of himself.

[Law limiting the Franchise, May 31, 1850.]

France was still trembling with the shock of the Four Days of June; and measures of repression formed the common ground upon which Louis Napoleon and the a.s.sembly met without fear of conflict. Certain elections which were held in the spring of 1850, and which gave a striking victory in Paris and elsewhere to Socialist or Ultra-Democratic candidates, revived the alarms of the owners of property, and inspired the fear that with universal suffrage the Legislature itself might ultimately fall into the hands of the Red Republicans. The principle of universal suffrage had been proclaimed almost by accident in the midst of the revolution of 1848. It had been embodied in the Const.i.tution of that year because it was found already in existence. No party had seriously considered the conditions under which it was to be exercised, or had weighed the political qualifications of the ma.s.s to whom it was so lightly thrown. When election after election returned to the Chamber men whose principles were held to menace society itself, the cry arose that France must be saved from the hands of the vile mult.i.tude; and the President called upon a Committee of the a.s.sembly to frame the necessary measures of electoral reform. Within a week the work of the Committee was completed, and the law which it had drafted was brought before the a.s.sembly. It was proposed that, instead of a residence of six months, a continuous residence of three years in the same commune should be required of every voter, and that the fulfilment of this condition should be proved, not by ordinary evidence, but by one of certain specified acts, such as the payment of personal taxes. With modifications of little importance the Bill was pa.s.sed by the a.s.sembly. Whether its real effect was foreseen even by those who desired the greatest possible limitation of the franchise is doubtful; it is certain that many who supported it believed, in their ignorance of the practical working of electoral laws, that they were excluding from the franchise only the vagabond and worthless cla.s.s which has no real place within the body politic. When the electoral lists drawn up in pursuance of the measure appeared, they astounded all parties alike. Three out of the ten millions of voters in France were disfranchised. Not only the inhabitants of whole quarters in the great cities but the poorer cla.s.ses among the peasantry throughout France had disappeared from the electoral body. The a.s.sembly had at one blow converted into enemies the entire ma.s.s of the population that lived by the wages of bodily labour. It had committed an act of political suicide, and had given to a man so little troubled with scruples of honour as Louis Napoleon the fatal opportunity of appealing to France as the champion of national sovereignty and the vindicator of universal suffrage against an a.s.sembly which had mutilated it in the interests of cla.s.s. [454]

[Prospects of Louis Napoleon.]

The duration of the Presidency was fixed by the Const.i.tution of 1848 at four years, and it was enacted that the President should not be re-eligible to his dignity. By the operation of certain laws imperfectly adjusted to one another, the tenure of office by Louis Napoleon expired on the 8th of May, 1852, while the date for the dissolution of the a.s.sembly fell within a few weeks of this day. France was therefore threatened with the dangers attending the almost simultaneous extinction of all authority. The perils of 1852 loomed only too visibly before the country, and Louis Napoleon addressed willing hearers when, in the summer of 1850, he began to hint at the necessity of a prolongation of his own power. The Parliamentary recess was employed by the President in two journeys through the Departments; the first through those of the south-east, where Socialism was most active, and where his appearance served at once to prove his own confidence and to invigorate the friends of authority; the second through Normandy, where the prevailing feeling was strongly in favour of firm government, and utterances could safely be made by the President which would have brought him into some risk at Paris. In suggesting that France required his own continued presence at the head of the State Louis Napoleon was not necessarily suggesting a violation of the law. It was provided by the Statutes of 1848 that the a.s.sembly by a vote of three-fourths might order a revision of the Const.i.tution; and in favour of this revision pet.i.tions were already being drawn up throughout the country. Were the clause forbidding the re-election of the President removed from the Const.i.tution, Louis Napoleon might fairly believe that an immense majority of the French people would re-invest him with power. He would probably have been content with a legal re-election had this been rendered possible; but the a.s.sembly showed little sign of a desire to smooth his way, and it therefore became necessary for him to seek the means of realising his aims in violation of the law. He had persuaded himself that his mission, his destiny, was to rule France; in other words, he had made up his mind to run such risks and to sanction such crimes as might be necessary to win him sovereign power.

With the loftier impulses of ambition, motives of a meaner kind stimulated him to acts of energy. Never wealthy, the father of a family though unmarried, he had exhausted his means, and would have returned to private life a dest.i.tute man, if not laden with debt. When his own resolution flagged, there were those about him too deeply interested in his fortunes to allow him to draw back.

[Louis Napoleon and the army.]

[Dismissal of Changarnier, Jan., 1851.]

It was by means of the army that Louis Napoleon intended in the last resort to make himself master of France, and the army had therefore to be won over to his personal cause. The generals who had gained distinction either in the Algerian wars or in the suppression of insurrection in France were without exception Orleanists or Republicans. Not a single officer of eminence was as yet included in the Bonapartist band. The President himself had never seen service except in a Swiss camp of exercise; beyond his name he possessed nothing that could possibly touch the imagination of a soldier. The heroic element not being discoverable in his person or his career, it remained to work by more material methods. Louis Napoleon had learnt many things in England, and had perhaps observed in the English elections of that period how much may be effected by the simple means of money-bribes and strong drink. The saviour of society was not ashamed to order the garrison of Paris double rations of brandy and to distribute innumerable doles of half a franc or less. Military banquets were given, in which the sergeant and the corporal sat side by side with the higher officers. Promotion was skilfully offered or withheld. As the generals of the highest position were hostile to Bonaparte, it was the easier to tempt their subordinates with the prospect of their places. In the acclamations which greeted the President at the reviews held at Paris in the autumn of 1850, in the behaviour both of officers and men in certain regiments, it was seen how successful had been the emissaries of Bonapartism. The Committee which represented the absent Chamber in vain called the Minister of War to account for these irregularities. It was in vain that Changarnier, who, as commander both of the National Guard of Paris and of the first military division, seemed to hold the arbitrament between President and a.s.sembly in his hands, openly declared at the beginning of 1851 in favour of the Const.i.tution. He was dismissed from his post; and although a vote of censure which followed this dismissal led to the resignation of the Ministry, the a.s.sembly was unable to reinstate Changarnier in his command, and helplessly witnessed the authority which he had held pa.s.s into hostile or untrustworthy hands.

[Proposed Revision of the Const.i.tution.]

[Revision of the Const.i.tution rejected, July 19.]

There now remained only one possible means of averting the attack upon the Const.i.tution which was so clearly threatened, and that was by subjecting the Const.i.tution itself to revision in order that Louis Napoleon might legally seek re-election at the end of his Presidency. An overwhelming current of public opinion pressed indeed in the direction of such a change.

However gross and undisguised the initiative of the local functionaries in preparing the pet.i.tions which showered upon the a.s.sembly, the national character of the demand could not be doubted. There was no other candidate whose name carried with it any genuine popularity or prestige, or around whom even the Parliamentary sections at enmity with the President could rally. The a.s.sembly was divided not very unevenly between Legitimists, Orleanists, and Republicans. Had indeed the two monarchical groups been able to act in accord, they might have had some hope of re-establis.h.i.+ng the throne; and an attempt had already been made to effect a union, on the understanding that the childless Comte de Chambord should recognise the grandson of Louis Philippe as his heir, the House of Orleans renouncing its claims during the lifetime of the chief of the elder line. These plans had been frustrated by the refusal of the Comte de Chambord to sanction any appeal to the popular vote, and the restoration of the monarchy was therefore hopeless for the present. It remained for the a.s.sembly to decide whether it would facilitate Louis Napoleon's re-election as President by a revision of the Const.i.tution or brave the risk of his violent usurpation of power. The position was a sad and even humiliating one for those who, while they could not disguise their real feeling towards the Prince, yet knew themselves unable to count on the support of the nation if they should resist him. The Legitimists, more sanguine in temper, kept in view an ultimate restoration of the monarchy, and lent themselves gladly to any policy which might weaken the const.i.tutional safeguards of the Republic.

The Republican minority alone determined to resist any proposal for revision, and to stake everything upon the maintenance of the const.i.tution in its existing form. Weak as the Republicans were as compared with the other groups in the a.s.sembly when united against them, they were yet strong enough to prevent the Ministry from securing that majority of three-fourths without which the revision of the Const.i.tution could not be undertaken.

Four hundred and fifty votes were given in favour of revision, two hundred and seventy against it (July 19th). The proposal therefore fell to the ground, and Louis Napoleon, who could already charge the a.s.sembly with having by its majority destroyed universal suffrage, could now charge it with having by its minority forbidden the nation to choose its own head.

Nothing more was needed by him. He had only to decide upon the time and the circ.u.mstances of the _coup d'etat_ which was to rid him of his adversaries and to make him master of France.

[Preparations for the _coup d'etat_.]

Louis Napoleon had few intimate confidants; the chief among these were his half-brother Morny, one of the illegitimate offspring of Queen Hortense, a man of fas.h.i.+on and speculator in the stocks; Fialin or Persigny, a person of humble origin who had proved himself a devoted follower of the Prince through good and evil; and Fleury, an officer at this time on a mission in Algiers. These were not men out of whom Louis Napoleon could form an administration, but they were useful to him in discovering and winning over soldiers and officials of sufficient standing to give to the execution of the conspiracy something of the appearance of an act of Government. A general was needed at the War Office who would go all lengths in illegality. Such a man had already been found in St. Arnaud, commander of a brigade in Algiers, a brilliant soldier who had redeemed a disreputable past by years of hard service, and who was known to be ready to treat his French fellow-citizens exactly as he would treat the Arabs. As St. Arnaud's name was not yet familiar in Paris, a campaign was arranged in the summer of 1851 for the purpose of winning him distinction. At the cost of some hundreds of lives St. Arnaud was pushed into sufficient fame; and after receiving congratulations proportioned to his exploits from the President's own hand, he was summoned to Paris, in order at the right moment to be made Minister of War. A troop of younger officers, many of whom gained a lamentable celebrity as the generals of 1870, were gradually brought over from Algiers and placed round the Minister in the capital. The command of the army of Paris was given to General Magnan, who, though he preferred not to share in the deliberations on the _coup d'etat_, had promised his cooperation when the moment should arrive. The support, or at least the acquiescence, of the army seemed thus to be a.s.sured. The National Guard, which, under Changarnier, would probably have rallied in defence of the a.s.sembly, had been placed under an officer pledged to keep it in inaction.

For the management of the police Louis Napoleon had fixed upon M. Maupas, Prefet of the Haute Garonne. This person, to whose shamelessness we owe the most authentic information that exists on the _coup d'etat_, had, while in an inferior station, made it his business to ingratiate himself with the President by sending to him personally police reports which ought to have been sent to the Ministers. The objects and the character of M.

Maupas were soon enough understood by Louis Napoleon. He promoted him to high office; sheltered him from the censure of his superiors; and, when the _coup d'etat_ was drawing nigh, called him to Paris, in the full and well-grounded confidence that, whatever the most perfidious ingenuity could contrive in turning the guardians of the law against the law itself, that M. Maupas, as Prefet of Police, might be relied upon to accomplish.

[The _coup d'etat_ fixed for December.]

Preparations for the _coup d'etat_ had been so far advanced in September that a majority of the conspirators had then urged Louis Napoleon to strike the blow without delay, while the members of the a.s.sembly were still dispersed over France in the vacation. St. Arnaud, however, refused his a.s.sent, declaring that the deputies, if left free, would a.s.semble at a distance from Paris, summon to them the generals loyal to the Const.i.tution, and commence a civil war. He urged that, in order to avoid greater subsequent risks, it would be necessary to seize all the leading representatives and generals from whom resistance might be expected, and to hold them under durance until the crisis should be over. This simultaneous arrest of all the foremost public men in France could only be effected at a time when the a.s.sembly was sitting. St. Arnaud therefore demanded that the _coup d'etat_ should be postponed till the winter. Another reason made for delay. Little as the populace of Paris loved the reactionary a.s.sembly, Louis Napoleon was not altogether a.s.sured that it would quietly witness his own usurpation of power. In waiting until the Chamber should again be in session, he saw the opportunity of exhibiting his cause as that of the ma.s.ses themselves, and of justifying his action as the sole means of enforcing popular rights against a legislature obstinately bent on denying them. Louis Napoleon's own Ministers had overthrown universal suffrage.

This might indeed be matter for comment on the part of the censorious, but it was not a circ.u.mstance to stand in the way of the execution of a great design. Accordingly Louis Napoleon determined to demand from the a.s.sembly at the opening of the winter session the repeal of the electoral law of May 31st, and to make its refusal, on which he could confidently reckon, the occasion of its destruction.

[Louis Napoleon demands repeal of Law of May 31.]

[The a.s.sembly refuses.]

The conspirators were up to this time conspirators and nothing more. A Ministry still subsisted which was not initiated in the President's designs nor altogether at his command. On his requiring that the repeal of the law of May 31st should be proposed to the a.s.sembly, the Cabinet resigned. The way to the highest functions of State was thus finally opened for the agents of the _coup d'etat_. St. Arnaud was placed at the War Office, Maupas at the Prefecture of Police. The colleagues a.s.signed to them were too insignificant to exercise any control over their actions. At the reopening of the a.s.sembly on the 4th of November an energetic message from the President was read. On the one hand he denounced a vast and perilous combination of all the most dangerous elements of society which threatened to overwhelm France in the following year; on the other hand he demanded, with certain undefined safeguards, the re-establishment of universal suffrage. The middle cla.s.ses were scared with the prospect of a Socialist revolution; the a.s.sembly was divided against itself, and the democracy of Paris flattered by the homage paid to the popular vote. With very little delay a measure repealing the Law of May 31st was introduced into the a.s.sembly. It was supported by the Republicans and by many members of the other groups; but the majority of the a.s.sembly, while anxious to devise some compromise, refused to condemn its own work in the unqualified form on which the President insisted. The Bill was thrown out by seven votes.

Forthwith the rumour of an impending _coup d'etat_ spread through Paris. The Questors, or members charged with the safeguarding of the a.s.sembly, moved the resolutions necessary to enable them to secure sufficient military aid. Even now prompt action might perhaps have saved the Chamber. But the Republican deputies, incensed by their defeat on the question of universal suffrage, plunged headlong into the snare set for them by the President, and combined with his open or secret partisans to reject the proposition of the Questors. Changarnier had blindly vouched for the fidelity of the army; one Republican deputy, more imaginative than his colleagues, bade the a.s.sembly confide in their invisible sentinel, the people. Thus the majority of the Chamber, with the clearest warning of danger, insisted on giving the aggressor every possible advantage. If the imbecility of opponents is the best augury of success in a bold enterprise, the President had indeed little reason to antic.i.p.ate failure.

[The _coup d'etat_, Dec. 2.]

The execution of the _coup d'etat_ was fixed for the early morning of December 2nd. On the previous evening Louis Napoleon held a public reception at the Elysee, his quiet self-possessed manner indicating nothing of the struggle at hand. Before the guests dispersed the President withdrew to his study. There the last council of the conspirators was held, and they parted, each to the execution of the work a.s.signed to him. The central element in the plan was the arrest of Cavaignac, of Changarnier and three other generals who were members of the a.s.sembly, of eleven civilian deputies including M. Thiers, and of sixty-two other politicians of influence. Maupas summoned to the Prefecture of Police in the dead of night a sufficient number of his trusted agents, received each of them on his arrival in a separate room, and charged each with the arrest of one of the victims. The arrests were accomplished before dawn, and the leading soldiers and citizens of France met one another in the prison of Mazas. The Palais Bourbon, the meeting-place of the a.s.sembly, was occupied by troops.

The national printing establishment was seized by gendarmes, and the proclamations of Louis Napoleon, distributed sentence by sentence to different compositors, were set in type before the workmen knew upon what they were engaged. When day broke the Parisians found the soldiers in the streets, and the walls placarded with manifestoes of Louis Napoleon. The first of these was a decree which announced in the name of the French people that the National a.s.sembly and the Council of State were dissolved, that universal suffrage was restored, and that the nation was convoked in its electoral colleges from the 14th to the 21st of December. The second was a proclamation to the people, in which Louis Napoleon denounced at once the monarchical conspirators within the a.s.sembly and the anarchists who sought to overthrow all government. His duty called upon him to save the Republic by an appeal to the nation. He proposed the establishment of a decennial executive authority, with a Senate, a Council of State, a Legislative Body, and other inst.i.tutions borrowed from the Consulate of 1799. If the nation refused him a majority of its votes he would summon a new a.s.sembly and resign his powers; if the nation believed in the cause of which his name was the symbol, in France regenerated by the Revolution and organised by the Emperor, it would prove this by ratifying his authority. A third proclamation was addressed to the army. In 1830 and in 1848 the army had been treated as the conquered, but its voice was now to be heard.

Common glories and sorrows united the soldiers of France with Napoleon's heir, and the future would unite them in common devotion to the repose and greatness of their country.

[Paris on Dec. 2.]

The full meaning of these manifestoes was not at first understood by the groups who read them. The a.s.sembly was so unpopular that the announcement of its dissolution, with the restoration of universal suffrage, pleased rather than alarmed the democratic quarters of Paris. It was not until some hours had pa.s.sed that the arrests became generally known, and that the first symptoms of resistance appeared. Groups of deputies a.s.sembled at the houses of the Parliamentary leaders; a body of fifty even succeeded in entering the Palais Bourbon and in commencing a debate: they were, however, soon dispersed by soldiers. Later in the day above two hundred members a.s.sembled at the Mairie of the Tenth Arrondiss.e.m.e.nt. There they pa.s.sed resolutions declaring the President removed from his office, and appointing a commander of the troops at Paris. The first officers who were sent to clear the Mairie flinched in the execution of their work, and withdrew for further orders. The Magistrates of the High Court, whose duty it was to order the impeachment of the President in case of the violation of his oath to the Const.i.tution, a.s.sembled, and commenced the necessary proceedings; but before they could sign a warrant, soldiers forced their way into the hall and drove the judges from the Bench. In due course General Forey appeared with a strong body of troops at the Mairie, where the two hundred deputies were a.s.sembled. Refusing to disperse, they were one and all arrested, and conducted as prisoners between files of troops to the Barracks of the Quai d'Orsay. The National Guard, whose drums had been removed by their commander in view of any spontaneous movement to arms, remained invisible. Louis Napoleon rode out amidst the acclamations of the soldiery; and when the day closed it seemed as if Paris had resolved to accept the change of Government and the overthrow of the Const.i.tution without a struggle.

[December 3.]

[December 4.]

There were, however, a few resolute men at work in the workmen's quarters; and in the wealthier part of the city the outrage upon the National Representation gradually roused a spirit of resistance. On the morning of December 3rd the Deputy Baudin met with his death in attempting to defend a barricade which had been erected in the Faubourg St. Antoine. The artisans of eastern Paris showed, however, little inclination to take up arms on behalf of those who had crushed them in the Four Days of June; the agitation was strongest within the Boulevards, and spread westwards towards the stateliest district of Paris. The barricades erected on the south of the Boulevards were so numerous, the crowds so formidable, that towards the close of the day the troops were withdrawn, and it was determined that after a night of quiet they should make a general attack and end the struggle at one blow. At midday on December 4th divisions of the army converged from all directions upon the insurgent quarter. The barricades were captured or levelled by artillery, and with a loss on the part of the troops of twenty-eight killed, and a hundred and eighty wounded resistance was overcome. But the soldiers had been taught to regard the inhabitants of Paris as their enemies, and they bettered the instructions given them.

Maddened by drink or panic, they commenced indiscriminate firing in the Boulevards after the conflict was over, and slaughtered all who either in the street or at the windows of the houses came within range of their bullets. According to official admissions, the lives of sixteen civilians paid for every soldier slain; independent estimates place far higher the number of the victims of this ma.s.sacre. Two thousand arrests followed, and every Frenchman who appeared dangerous to Louis Napoleon's myrmidons, from Thiers and Victor Hugo down to the anarchist orators of the wineshops, was either transported, exiled, or lodged in prison. Thus was the Republic preserved and society saved.

[The Plebiscite, Dec. 20.]

[Napoleon III. Emperor, Dec. 2, 1852.]

France in general received the news of the _coup d'etat_ with indifference: where it excited popular movements these movements were of such a character that Louis Napoleon drew from them the utmost profit. A certain fierce, blind Socialism had spread among the poorest of the rural cla.s.ses in the centre and south of France. In these departments there were isolated risings, accompanied by acts of such murderous outrage and folly that a general terror seized the surrounding districts. In the course of a few days the predatory bands were dispersed, and an unsparing chastis.e.m.e.nt inflicted on all who were concerned in their misdeeds; but the reports sent to Paris were too serviceable to Louis Napoleon to be left in obscurity; and these brutish village-outbreaks, which collapsed at the first appearance of a handful of soldiers, were represented as the prelude to a vast Socialist revolution from which the _coup d'etat_, and that alone, had saved France. Terrified by the re-appearance of the Red Spectre, the French nation proceeded on the 20th of December to pa.s.s its judgment on the accomplished usurpation. The question submitted for the _plebiscite_ was, whether the people desired the maintenance of Louis Napoleon's authority and committed to him the necessary powers for establis.h.i.+ng a Const.i.tution on the basis laid down in his proclamation of December 2nd. Seven million votes answered this question in the affirmative, less than one-tenth of that number in the negative. The result was made known on the last day of the year 1851. On the first day of the new year Louis Napoleon attended a service of thanksgiving at Notre Dame, took possession of the Tuileries, and restored the eagle as the military emblem of France. He was now in all but name an absolute sovereign. The Church, the army, the ever-servile body of the civil administration, waited impatiently for the revival of the Imperial t.i.tle. Nor was the saviour of society the man to shrink from further responsibilities. Before the year closed the people was once more called upon to express its will. Seven millions of votes p.r.o.nounced for hereditary power; and on the anniversary of the _coup d'etat_ Napoleon III.

was proclaimed Emperor of the French.

CHAPTER XXI.

England and France in 1851--Russia under Nicholas--The Hungarian Refugees--Dispute between France and Russia on the Holy Places--Nicholas and the British Amba.s.sador--Lord Stratford de Redcliffe--Menschikoff's Mission--Russian Troops enter the Danubian Princ.i.p.alities--Lord Aberdeen's Cabinet--Movements of the Fleets--The Vienna Note--The Fleets pa.s.s the Dardanelles--Turkish Squadron destroyed at Sinope--Declaration of War--Policy of Austria--Policy of Prussia--The Western Powers and the European Concert--Siege of Silistria--The Princ.i.p.alities evacuated--Further objects of the Western Powers--Invasion of the Crimea--Battle of the Alma--The Flank March--Balaclava--Inkermann--Winter in the Crimea--Death of Nicholas--Conference of Vienna--Austria--Progress of the Siege--Plans of Napoleon III.--Canrobert and Pelissier--Unsuccessful a.s.sault--Battle of the Tchernaya--Capture of the Malakoff--Fall of Sebastopol--Fall of Kars--Negotiations for Peace--The Conference of Paris--Treaty of Paris --The Danubian Princ.i.p.alities--Continued discord in the Ottoman Empire--Revision of the Treaty of Paris in 1871.

[England in 1851.]

The year 1851 was memorable in England as that of the Great Exhibition.

Thirty-six years of peace, marked by an enormous development of manufacturing industry, by the introduction of railroads, and by the victory of the principle of Free Trade, had culminated in a spectacle so impressive and so novel that to many it seemed the emblem and harbinger of a new epoch in the history of mankind, in which war should cease, and the rivalry of nations should at length find its true scope in the advancement of the arts of peace. The apostles of Free Trade had idealised the cause for which they contended. The unhappiness and the crimes of nations had, as they held, been due princ.i.p.ally to the action of governments, which plunged harmless millions into war for dynastic ends, and paralysed human energy by their own blind and senseless interference with the natural course of exchange. Compa.s.sion for the poor and the suffering, a just resentment against laws which in the supposed interest of a minority condemned the ma.s.s of the nation to a life of want, gave moral fervour and elevation to the teaching of Cobden and those who shared his spirit. Like others who have been constrained by a n.o.ble enthusiasm, they had their visions; and in their sense of the greatness of that new force which was ready to operate upon human life, they both forgot the incompleteness of their own doctrine, and under-estimated the influences which worked, and long must work, upon mankind in an opposite direction. In perfect sincerity the leader of English economical reform at the middle of this century looked forward to a reign of peace as the result of unfettered intercourse between the members of the European family. What the man of genius and conviction had proclaimed the charlatan repeated in his turn. Louis Napoleon appreciated the charm which schemes of commercial development exercised upon the trading cla.s.ses in France. He was ready to salute the Imperial eagles as objects of wors.h.i.+p and to invoke the memories of Napoleon's glory when addressing soldiers; when it concerned him to satisfy the commercial world, he was the very embodiment of peace and of peaceful industry. "Certain persons," he said, in an address at Bordeaux, shortly before a.s.suming the t.i.tle of Emperor, "say that the Empire is war. I say that the Empire is peace; for France desires peace, and when France is satisfied the world is tranquil. We have waste territories to cultivate, roads to open, harbours to dig, a system of railroads to complete; we have to bring all our great western ports into connection with the American continent by a rapidity of communication which we still want. We have ruins to restore, false G.o.ds to overthrow, truths to make triumphant. This is the sense that I attach to the Empire; these are the conquests which I contemplate." Never had the ideal of industrious peace been more impressively set before mankind than in the years which succeeded the convulsion of 1848. Yet the epoch on which Europe was then about to enter proved to be pre-eminently an epoch of war.

In the next quarter of a century there was not one of the Great Powers which was not engaged in an armed struggle with its rivals. Nor were the wars of this period in any sense the result of accident, or disconnected with the stream of political tendencies which makes the history of the age.

With one exception they left in their train great changes for which the time was ripe, changes which for more than a generation had been the recognised objects of national desire, but which persuasion and revolution had equally failed to bring into effect. The Crimean War alone was barren in positive results of a lasting nature, and may seem only to have postponed, at enormous cost of life, the fall of a doomed and outworn Power. But the time has not yet arrived when the real bearing of the overthrow of Russia in 1854 on the destiny of the Christian races of Turkey can be confidently expressed. The victory of the Sultan's protectors delayed the emanc.i.p.ation of these races for twenty years; the victory, or the unchecked aggression, of Russia in 1854 might possibly have closed to them for ever the ways to national independence.

[Russian policy under Nicholas.]