It was now the turn of the Republic,
and it was proclaimed by Lamartine in the name of the provisional
government elected by the Chamber under the pressure of the mob.
This provisional government with Dupont de l'Eure as its president,
consisted of Lamartine for foreign affairs, Crémieux for justice,
Ledru-Rollin for the interior, Carnot for public instruction,
Gondchaux for finance, Arago for the navy, and Bedeau for war.
Garnier-Pages was mayor of Paris.
But, as in 1830, the republican-socialist party had set up a rival
government at the Hotel de Ville, including L Blanc, A Marrast,
Flocon, and the workman Albert, which bid fair to involve discord
and civil war. But this time the Palais Bourbon was not victorious
over the Hotel de Ville. It had to consent to a fusion of the two
bodies, in which, however, the predominating elements were the
moderate republicans. It was doubtful what would eventually be the
policy of the new government.
One party, seeing that in spite of
the changes in the last sixty years of all political institutions,
the position of the people had not been improved, demanded a reform
of society itself, the abolition of the privileged position of
property, the only obstacle to equality, and as an emblem hoisted
the red flag. The other party wished to maintain society on the
basis of its ancient institutions, and rallied round the tricolore.
The first collision took place as to the form which the revolution
of 1848 was to take. Were they to remain faithful to their original
principles, as Lamartine wished, and accept the decision of the
country as supreme, or were they, as the revolutionaries under
Ledru-Rollin claimed, to declare the republic of Paris superior to
the universal suffrage of an insufficiently educated people?
On the March 5 the government,
under the pressure of the Parisian clubs, decided in favour of an
immediate reference to the people, and direct universal suffrage,
and adjourned it till April 26. In this fateful and unexpected
decision, which instead of adding to the electorate the educated
classes, refused by Guizot, admitted to it the unqualified masses,
originated the Constituent Assembly of May 4, 1848.
The provisional government having
resigned, the republican and anti-socialist majority on the 9th of
May entrusted the supreme power to an executive. The commission
consisting of five members: Arago, Executive Marie, Garnier-Pages,
Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin. Conimis. But the spell was already
broken.
This revolution which had been
peacefully effected with the most generous aspirations, in the hope
of abolishing poverty by organizing industry on other bases than
those of competition and capitalism, and which had at once aroused
the fraternal sympathy of the nations, was doomed to be abortive.
The result of the general election, the return of a constituent
assembly predominantly moderate if not monarchical, dashed the hopes
of those who had looked for the establishment, by a peaceful
revolution, of their ideal socialist state; but they were not
prepared to yield without a struggle, and in Paris itself they
commanded a formidable force. In spite of the preponderance of the
"tricolour" party in the provisional government, so long
as the voice of France had not spoken, the socialists, supported by
the Parisian proletariat, had exercised an influence on policy out
of all proportion to their relative numbers or personal weight.
By the decree of February 24, the
provisional government had solemnly accepted the principle of the
"right to work," and decided to establish "national
workshops" for the unemployed; at the same time a sort of
industrial parliament was established at the Luxembourg Palace,
under the presidency of Louis Blanc, with the object of preparing a
scheme for the organization of labour; and, lastly, by the decree of
March 8, the property qualification for enrolment in the National
Guard had been abolished and the workmen were supplied with arms.
The socialists thus formed, in some
sort, a state within the state, with a government, an organization
and an armed force.
In the circumstances a conflict was inevitable; and on May 15, an
armed mob, headed by Raspail, Blanqui and Barbès, and assisted by
the proletariat Guard, attempted to overwhelm the Assembly. They
were defeated by the bourgeois battalions of the National Guard; but
the situation none the less remained highly critical.
The national workshops were
producing the results that might have been foreseen. It was
impossible to provide remunerative work even for the genuine
unemployed, and of the thousands who applied the greater number were
employed in perfectly useless digging and refilling; soon even this
expedient failed, and those for whom work could not be invented were
given a half wage of 1 franc a day.
Even this pitiful dole, with no
obligation to work, proved attractive, and all over France workmen
threw up their jobs and streamed to Paris, where they swelled the
ranks of the army under the red flag. It was soon clear that the
continuance of this experiment would mean financial ruin; it had
been proved by the émeute of May 15, that it constituted a
perpetual menace to the state; and the government decided to end it.
The method chosen was scarcely a happy one.
On June 21, M. de Falloux decided in the name of the parliamentary
commission on labour that the workmen should be discharged within
three days and such as were able-bodied should be forced to enlist.
A furious insurrection at once broke out. Throughout the whole of
the 24th, 25th and 26th of June, the eastern industrial quarter of
Paris, led by Pujol, carried on a furious struggle against the
western quarter, led by Louis Eugène Cavaignac, who had been
appointed dictator. Vanquished and decimated, first by fighting and
afterwards by deportation, the socialist party was crushed. But they
dragged down the Republic in their ruin. This had already become
unpopular with the peasants, exasperated by the newland tax of 45
centimes imposed in order to fill the empty treasury, and with the
bourgeois, in terror of the power of the revolutionary clubs and
hard hit by the stagnation of business.
By the "massacres" of the
June Days the working classes were also alienated from it; and
abiding fear of the "Reds" did the rest.
"France," wrote the duke of Wellington at this time,
"needs a Napoleon! I cannot yet see him . . . Where is
he?" France indeed needed, or thought she needed, a Napoleon;
and the demand was soon to be supplied.
The granting of universal suffrage
to a society with Imperialist sympathies, and unfitted to reconcile
the principles of order with the consequences of liberty, was indeed
bound, now that the political balance in France was so radically
changed, to prove a formidable instrument of reaction; and this was
proved by the election of the president of the Republic.
On the November 4, 1848 was promulgated the new constitution,
obviously the work of inexperienced hands, proclaiming a democratic
republic, direct universal suffrage and the separation of powers;
there was to be a single permanent assembly of 750 members elected
for a term of three years by the scrutin de liste, which was to vote
on the laws prepared by a council of state elected by the Assembly
for six years; the executive power was delegated to a president
elected for four years by direct universal suffrage, i.e. on a
broader basis than that of the chamber, and not eligible for
re-election; he was to choose his ministers, who, like him, would be
responsible.
Finally, all revision was made
impossible since it involved obtaining three times in succession a
majority of three-quarters of the deputies in a special assembly. It
was in vain that M. Grévy, in the name of those who perceived the
obvious and inevitable risk of creating, under the name of a
president, a monarch and more than a king, proposed that the head of
the state should be no more than a removable president of the
ministerial council.
Lamartine, thinking that he was
sure to be the choice of the electors under universal suffrage, won
over the support of the Chamber, which did not even take the
precaution of rendering ineligible the members of families which had
reigned over France. It made the presidency an office dependent upon
popular acclamation.
The election was keenly contested; the socialists adopted as their
candidate Ledru-Rollin, the republicans Cavaignac, and the recently
reorganized Imperialist party Prince Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis
Napoleon, unknown in 1835, and forgotten or despised since 1840, had
in the last eight years advanced sufficiently in the public
estimation to be elected to the Constituent Assembly in 1848 by five
departments.
He owed this rapid increase of
popularity partly to blunders of the government of July, which had
unwisely aroused the memory of the country, filled as it was with
recollections of the Empire, and partly to Louis Napoleon’s
campaign carried on from his prison at Ham by means of pamphlets of
socialistic tendencies.
Moreover, the monarchists, led by
Thiers and the committee of the Rue de Poitiers, were no longer
content even with the safe dictatorship of the upright Cavaignac,
and joined forces with the Bonapartists. On December 10, the
peasants gave over 5,000,000 votes to a name: Napoleon, which stood
for order at all costs, against 1,400,000 for Cavaignac.
For three years there went on an indecisive struggle between the
heterogeneous Assembly and the prince who was silently awaiting his
opportunity. He chose as his ministers men but little inclined
towards republicanism, for preference Orleanists, the chief of whom
was Odilon Barrot. In order to strengthen his position, he
endeavoured to conciliate the reactionary parties, without
committing himself to any of them.
The chief instance of this was the
expedition to Rome, voted by the Catholics with the object of
restoring the papacy, which had been driven out by Garibaldi and
Mazzini. The prince-president was also in favour of it, as beginning
the work of European renovation and reconstruction which he already
looked upon as his mission.
General Oudinot's entry into Rome
provoked in Paris a foolish insurrection in favour of the Roman
republic, that of the Château d'Eau, which was crushed on June 13,
1849. On the other hand, when Pius IX, though only just restored,
began to yield to the general movement of reaction, the president
demanded that he should set up a Liberal government. The pope's
dilatory reply having been accepted by his ministry, the president
replaced it on November 1, by the Fould-Rouher cabinet.
This looked like a declaration of war against the Catholic and
monarchist majority in the Legislative Assembly which had been
elected on May 28, in a moment of panic. But the prince-president
again pretended to be playing the game of the Orleanists, as he had
done in the case of the Constituent-Assembly.
The complementary elections of
March and April 1850 having resulted in an unexpected victory for
the republicans, which struck terror into the reactionary leaders,
Thiers, Berryer and Montalembert, the president gave his countenance
to a clerical campaign against the republicans at home.
The Church, which had failed in its
attempts to gain control of the university under Louis XVIII and
Charles X, aimed at setting up a rival establishment of its own. The
Loi Falloux of March 1x, 1850, under the pretext of establishing the
liberty of instruction promised by the charter, again placed the
teaching of the university under the direction of the Catholic
Church, as a measure of social safety, and, by the facilities which
it granted to the Church for propagating teaching in harmony with
its own dogmas, succeeded in obstructing for half a century the work
of intellectual enfranchisement effected by the men of the 18th
century and of the French Revolution.
The electoral law of May 31, was another class law directed against
subversive ideas. It required as a proof of Electors) three years'
domicile the entries in the record of direct taxes, thus cutting
down universal suffrage by taking away the vote from the industrial
population, which was not as a rule stationary.
The law of July 16, aggravated the
severity of the press restrictions by re-establishing the
"caution money" (cautionnement) deposited by proprietors
and editors of papers with the government as a guarantee of good
behaviour. Finally, a skilful interpretation of the law on clubs and
political societies suppressed about this time all the Republican
societies. It was now their turn to be crushed like the socialists.
But the president had only joined in Montalembert's cry of
"Down with the Republicans!" in the hope of effecting a
revision of the constitution without having recourse to a coup d'état.
His concessions only increased the boldness of the monarchists;
while they had only accepted Louis Napoleon as president in
opposition to the Republic and as a step in the direction of the
monarchy.
A conflict was now inevitable
between his personal policy and the majority of the Chamber, who
were moreover, divided into legitimists and Orleanists, in spite of
the death of Louis Philippe in August 1856.
Louis Napoleon skilfully exploited their projects for a restoration
of the monarchy, which he knew to be unpopular in the country, and
which gave him the opportunity of, furthering his own personal
ambitions.
From August 8, to November 12, 1850
he went about France stating the case for a revision of the
constitution in speeches which he varied according to each place; he
held reviews, at which cries of "Vive Napoleon" showed
that the army was with him; he superseded General Changarnier, on
whose arms the parliament relied for the projected monarchical coup
d'etat; he replaced his Orleanist ministry by obscure men devoted to
his own cause, such as Morny, Fleury and Persigny, and gathered
round him officers of the African army, broken men like General
Saint-Arnaud; in fact he practically declared open war.
His reply to the votes of censure passed by the Assembly, and their
refusal to increase his civil list was to hint at a vast communistic
plot in order to scare the bourgeoisie, and to denounce the
electoral law of May 31, in order to gain the support of the mass of
the people.
The Assembly retaliated by throwing
out the proposal for a partial reform of that article of the
constitution which prohibited the re-election of the president and
the re-establishment of universal suffrage (July). All hope of a
peaceful issue was at an end. When the questors called upon the
Chamber to have posted up in all barracks the decree of May 6, 1848
concerning the right of the Assembly to demand the support of the
troops if attacked, the Mountain, dreading a restoration of the
monarchy, voted with the Bonapartists against the measure, thus
disarming the legislative power.
Louis Napoleon saw his opportunity. On the night between December 1
and 2, 1851, the anniversary of Austerlitz, he dissolved the
Chamber, re-established universal suffrage, had all the party
leaders arrested, and summoned a new assembly to prolong his term of
office for ten years. The deputies who had met under Berryer at the
Maine of the 10th arrondissement to defend the constitution and
proclaim the deposition of Louis Napoleon were scattered by the
troops at Mazas and Mont Valérian.
The resistance organized by the
republicans within Paris under Victor Hugo was soon subdued by the
intoxicated soldiers. The more serious resistance in the départements
was crushed by declaring a state of siege and by the "mixed
commissions."
The plebiscite of the December 20,
ratified by a huge majority the coup d'état in favour of the
prince-president, who alone reaped the benefit of the excesses of
the Republicans and the reactionary passions of the monarchists.
The second attempt to revive the principle of 1789 only served as a
preface to the restoration of the Empire.
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