$3.00
THE
OF
By KARL MARX
This study of the events leading to the
coup d'etat of "Napoleon the Little" on
December 2, 1851, written within a few
weeks after the events described, con-
stitutes one of the first statements by Marx
of his interpretation of history and is a
classic in applied historical materialism.
It is one of three historical classics by
Marx on France. The other two are Class
Struggles in France, dealing with the revo-
lution of 1848, and The Civil War in
France, on the Paris Commune.
The Eighteenth Bmmaire was first pub-
lished in the United States in 1852 in
Die Revolution, a revolutionary publica-
tion in the German language. It first ap-
peared in book form in Germany in 1869.
The present translation is based on the
1869 edition, which was corrected by
Marx. The editors have added explanatory
notes and an index. Included are Marx's
preface to the second German edition and
Frederick Engels' preface to the third
German edition.
KANSAS CITY, MO. PUBLIC LIBRARY
KARL MAR
DATE DUE
1 -'
Durneo, Inc 38 293
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK
ALL RIGHTS RFSERVFD
1963, International Publishers Co., Inc.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
This translation of The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl
Marx is based on the second edition (Hamburg, 1869), which was corrected
by Karl Marx, and has been checked with the first edition (New York, 1852)
and with the third edition (Hamburg, 1885). The present edition has also
been checked with an earlier translation, edited by C. P. Dutt.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-23036
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Author's Preface to the Second Edition 7
F. Engels's Preface to the Third German Edition 13
I 15
II ... 27
III 42
IV 60
V 73
VI . , . 95
VII . . . . .118
MARX TO J. WEYDEMEYER Letter of March 5, 1852 . . 136
Notes 141
Biographical Index , . 151
8500994
(Sine 3eitfcfyrift in stoanglsfen tfeften.
t?oit
J.
18te fJoimatri ks
feoti
SJiffiam6tt Str. 191.
1852.
The title page of Die Revolution, the magazine that first
published The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
THE
OF
AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
My friend Joseph Weydemeyer* whose death was so
untimely, intended to publish a political weekly in New
York starting from January 1, 1852. He invited me to pro-
vide this weekly with a history of the coup d'etat. Down to
the middle of February, I accordingly wrote him weekly
articles under the title: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte. Meanwhile Weydemeyer's original plan had
fallen through. Instead, in the spring of 1852 he began to
publish a monthly, Die Revolution, the first number of
which consists of my Eighteenth Brumaire. A few hundred
copies of this found their way into Germany at that time,
without, however, getting into the actual book trade. A
German bookseller of extremely radical pretensions to
whom I offered the sale of my book was most virtuously
horrified at a "presumption" so "contrary to the times.'*
From the above facts it will be seen that the present
work took shape under the immediate pressure of events
and its historical material does not extend beyond the
month of February (1852). Its re-publication now is due
in part to the demand of the book trade, in part to the ur-
gent requests of my friends in Germany.
Of the writings dealing with the same subject approxi-
mately at the same time as mine, only two deserve notice:
Victor Hugo's Napoleon le Petit [Napoleon the Little] and
Proudhon's Coup d'Etat.
* Military commandant of the St. Louis district during the
American Civil War. [Note by Marx.]
Victor Hugo confines himself to bitter and witty invec-
tive against the responsible publisher of the coup d'etat.
The event itself appears in his work like a bolt from the
blue. He sees in it only the violent act of a single individ-
ual. He does not notice that he makes this individual great
instead of little by ascribing to him a personal power of
initiative such as would be without parallel in world his-
tory. Proudhon, for his part, seeks to represent the coup
d'etat as the result of an antecedent historical develop-
ment. Unnoticeably, however, his historical construction of
the coup d'etat becomes a historical apologia for its hero.
Thus he falls into the error of our so-called objective his-
torians. I, on the contrary, demonstrate how the class
struggle in France created circumstances and relation-
ships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to
play a hero's part.
A revision of the present work would have robbed it of
its peculiar colouring. Accordingly I have confined myself
to mere correction of printer's errors and to striking out
allusions now no longer intelligible.
The concluding words of my work: "But when the im-
perial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of Louis Bo-
naparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will crash from
the top of the Vendome Column," have already been ful-
filled.
Colonel Charras opened the attack on the Napoleon cult
in his work on the campaign of 1815. Subsequently, and
particularly in the last few years, French literature made
an end of the Napoleon legend with the weapons of his-
torical research, of criticism, of satire and of wit. Out-
side France this violent breach with the traditional popu-
lar belief, this tremendous mental revolution, has been
little noticed and still less understood.
Lastly, I hope that my work will contribute towards
eliminating the school-taught phrase now current, partic-
ularly in Germany, of so-called Caesaristn. In this super-
ficial historical analogy the main point is forgotten, name-
iy, that in ancient Rome the class struggle took place
only within a privileged minority, between the free rich
and the free poor, while the great productive mass of the
population, the slaves, formed the purely passive pedestal
for these combatants. People forget Sismondi's significant
saying: The Roman proletariat lived at the expense of so-
ciety, while modern society lives at the expense of the pro-
letariat. With so complete a difference between the ma-
terial, economic conditions of the ancient and the modern
class struggles, the political figures produced by them can
likewise have no more in common with one another than
the Archbishop of Canterbury has with the High Priest
Samuel.
KARL MARX
London, June 23, 1869
F. ENGELS'S PREFACE
TO THE THIRD GERMAN EDITION
The fact that a new edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire
has become necessary, thirty-three years after its first ap-
pearance, proves that even today this little book has lost
none of its value.
It was in truth a work of genius. Immediately after the
event that struck the whole political world like a thunder-
bolt from the blue, that was condemned by some with loud
cries of moral indignation and accepted by others as sal-
vation from the revolution and as punishment for its er-
rors, but was only wondered at by all and understood by
none immediately after this event Marx came out with a
concise, epigrammatic exposition that laid bare the whole
course of French history since the February days in its
inner interconnection, reduced the miracle of December 2
to a natural, necessary result of this interconnection and
in so doing did not even need to treat the hero of the coup
d'etat otherwise than with the contempt he so well deserved.
And the picture was drawn with such a master hand
that every fresh disclosure since made has only provid-
ed fresh proofs of how faithfully it reflected reality. This
eminent understanding of the living history of the day,
this clear-sighted appreciation of events at the moment of
happening, is indeed without parallel.
But for this, Marx's thorough knowledge of French his-
tory was needed. France is the land where, more than
anywhere else, the historical class struggles were each
time fought out to a decision, and where, consequently, the
changing political forms within which they move and in
IS
which their results are summarized have been stamped
in the sharpest outlines. The centre of feudalism in the
Middle Ages, the model country of unified monarchy, rest-
ing on estates, since the Renaissance, France demolished
feudalism in the Great Revolution and established the
unalloyed rule of the bourgeoisie in a classical purity un-
equalled by any other European land, And the struggle of
the upward-striving proletariat against the ruling bour-
geoisie appeared here in an acute form unknown else-
where. This was the reason why Marx not only studied the
past history of France with particular predilection, but
also followed her current history in every detail, stored
up the material for future use and, consequently, events
never took him by surprise.
In addition, however, there was still another circum-
stance. It was precisely Marx who had first discovered the
great law of motion of history, the law according to which
all historical struggles, whether they proceed in the po-
litical, religious, philosophical or some other ideological
domain, are in fact only the more or less clear expression
of struggles of social classes, and that the existence and
thereby the collisions, too, between these classes are in
turn conditioned by the degree of development of their
economic position, by the mode of their production and
of their exchange determined by it, This law, which has
the same significance for history as the law of the trans-
formation of energy has for natural science this law gave
him here, too, the key to an understanding of the history
of the Second French Republic. He put his law to the test
on these historical events, and even after thirty-three years
we must still say that it has stood the test brilliantly.
FREDERICK ENG ELS
Hegel remarks somewhere that all facts and personages
of great importance in world history occur, as it w r ere,
twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the sec-
ond as farce. Caussidiere for Danton, Louis Blanc for
Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 2 for the Mon-
tagne of 1793 to 1795, the Nephew for the Uncle. And the
same caricature occurs in the circumstances attending the
second edition of the eighteenth Brumaire! 3
Men make their own history, but they do not make it
just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances
chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The
tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a night-
mare on the brain of the living. And just when they seem
engaged in revolutionizing themselves and things, in creat-
ing something that has never yet existed, precisely in such
periods of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up
the spirits of the past to their service and borrow from
them names, battle cries and costumes in order to pre-
sent the new scene of world history in this time-honoured
disguise and this borrowed language. Thus Luther donned
the mask of the Apostle Paul, the Revolution of 1789 to
1814 draped itself alternately as the Roman republic and
the Roman empire, and the Revolution of 1848 knew
nothing better to do than to parody, now 1789, now the
revolutionary tradition of 1793 to 1795. In like manner a
beginner who has learnt a new language always trans-
lates it back into his mother tongue, but he has assimilated
the spirit of the new language and can freely express him-
15
self in It only when he finds his way in it without recalling
the old and forgets his native tongue in the use of the new.
Consideration of this conjuring up of the dead of world
history reveals at once a salient difference. Camille Des-
moulins, Danton, Robespierre, Saint-Just, Napoleon, the
heroes as well as the parties and the masses of the old
French Revolution, perfotnie41iielask of their time in Ro-
man costume and^with Roman phrases, the task of un-
chaining and setting" up modern 'bourgeois society. The
first ones knocked the feudalbasis to pieces and mowed off
the feudal heads which had growa on it, The other created
inside FrancelFe conditions under which alone^fjee Com-
petition could be developed,, parcelled landed property
exploited and "tKe" uncEairied industrial productive power
of the nation employee; and beyond the French borders he
everywhere swept the feudal institutions away, so far as
was necessary to furnish bourgeois society in France with
a suitable up-to-date environment on the European Conti-
nent. The new social formation once established, the ante-
diluvian Colossi disappeared and with them resurrected
Romanity the Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the tribunes,
the senators, and Caesar himself. Bourgeois society in its
sober reality had begotten its true interpreters and mouth-
pieces in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin
Constants and Guizots; its real military leaders sat behind
the office desks, and the hog-headed Louis XVIII was its
political chief. Wholly absorbed in the production of wealth
and in peaceful competitive struggle, it no longer com-
prehended that ghosts from the days of Rome had watched
over its cradle. But unheroic as bourgeois society is, it
nevertheless took heroism, sacrifice, terror, civil war and
battles of peoples to bring it into being. And in the clas-
sically austere traditions of the Roman republic its gladia-
tors found the ideals and the art forms, the self-deceptions
that they needed in order to conceal from themselves the
bourgeois limitations of the content of their struggles and
to keep their enthusiasm on the high plane of the great
16
historical tragedy. Similarly, at another stage of devel-
opment, a century earlier, Cromwell and the English peo-
ple had borrowed speech, passions and illusions from the
Old Testament for their bourgeois revolution. When the
real aim had been achieved, when the bourgeois transfor-
mation of English society had been accomplished, Locke
supplanted Habakkuk.
Thus the awakening of the dead in those revolutions
served the purpose of glorifying the new struggles, not
of parodying the old; of magnifying the given task in imag-
ination, not of fleeing from its solution in reality; of find-
ing once more the spirit of revolution, not of making its
ghost walk about again.
From 1848 to 1851 only the ghost of the old revolution
walked about, from Marrast, the republicain en gants
jaunes* who disguised himself as the old Bailly, down to the
adventurer, who hides his commonplace repulsive features
under the iron death mask of Napoleon. An entire people,
which had imagined that by means of a revolution it had
imparted to itself an accelerated power of motion, suddenly
finds itself set back into a defunct epoch and, in order that
no doubt as to the relapse may be possible, the old dates
arise again, the old chronology, the old names, the old
edicts, which had long become a subject of antiquarian
erudition, and the old minions of the law, who had seemed
long decayed. The nation feels like that mad Eng-
lishman in Bedlam who fancies that he lives in the times
of the ancient Pharaohs and daily bemoans the hard la-
bour that he must perform in the Ethiopian mines as a
gold digger, immured in this subterranean prison, a dimly
burning lamp fastened to his head, the overseer of the
slaves behind him with a long whip, and at the exits a
confused welter of barbarian mercenaries, who understand
neither the forced labourers in the mines nor one another,
since they speak no common language. "And all this is
* Republican in kid gloves. Ed.
17
expected of me," sighs the mad Englishman, "of me, a free-
born Briton, in order to make gold for the old Pharaohs."
"In order to pay the debts of the Bonaparte family," sighs
the French nation. The Englishman, so long as he was in
his right mind, could not get rid of the fixed idea of mak-
ing gold. The French, so long as they were engaged in
revolution, could not get rid of the memory of Napoleon,
as the election of December 10 4 proved. They hankered to
return from the perils of revolution to the fleshpots of
Egypt, 5 and December 2, 1851 was the answer. They have
not only a caricature of the old Napoleon, they have the
old Napoleon himself, caricatured as he must appear in
the middle of the nineteenth century.
The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot
draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future.
It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all
superstition in regard to the past. Earlier revolutions re-
quired recollections of past world history in order to drug
themselves concerning their own content. In order to arrive
at its own content, the revolution of the nineteenth century
must let the dead bury their dead. There the phrase went
beyond the content; here the content goes beyond the phrase,
The February Revolution was a surprise attack, a taking
of the old society unawares, and the people proclaimed
this unexpected stroke as a deed of world importance,
ushering in a new epoch. On December 2 the February
Revolution is conjured away by a cardsharper's trick, and
what seems overthrown is no longer the monarchy but the
liberal concessions that were wrung from it by centuries
of struggle. Instead of society having conquered a new
content for itself, it seems that the state only returned to
its oldest form, to the shamelessly simple domination of
the sabre and the cowl. This is the answer to the coup de
main* of February 1848, given by the coup de tete** of Dc-
* Coup de main: Unexpected stroke. Ed
** Coup de tete: Rash actEd.
18
cember 1851. Easy come, easy go. Meanwhile the interval
of time has not passed by unused. During the years 1848
to 1851 French society has made up, and that by an ab-
breviated because revolutionary method, for the studies
and experiences which, in a regular, so to speak, textbook
course of development would have had to precede the
February Revolution, if it was to be more than a ruffling
of the surface. Society now seems to have fallen back be-
hind its point of departure; it has in truth first to create
for itself the revolutionary point of departure, the situa-
tion, the relations, the conditions under w r hich alone mod-
ern revolution becomes serious.
Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth cen-
tury, storm swiftly from success to success; their dramat-
ic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in
sparkling brilliants; ecstasy is the everyday spirit; but
they are short-lived; soon they have attained their zenith,
and a long crapulent depression lays hold of society be-
fore it learns soberly to assimilate the results of its storm-
and-stress period. On the other hand, proletarian revolu-
tions, like those of the nineteenth century, criticize them-
selves constantly, interrupt themselves continually in their
own course, come back to the apparently accomplished in
order to begin it afresh, deride with unmerciful thorough-
ness the inadequacies, weaknesses and paltrinesses of their
first attempts, seem to throw down their adversary only
in order that he may draw new strength from the earth
and rise again, more gigantic, before them, recoil ever and
anon from the indefinite prodigiousness of their own
aims, until a situation has been created which makes all
turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves
cry out:
Hie Rhodus, hie salta!
Here is the rose, here danced
For the rest, every fairly competent observer, even if he
had not followed the course of French developments step
19
by step, must have had a presentiment that an unheard-
of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was enough to
hear the self-complacent howl of victory with which Mes-
sieurs the Democrats congratulated each other on the ex-
pected gracious consequences of the second Sunday in
May 1852. 7 In their minds the second Sunday in May 1852
had become a fixed idea, a dogma, like the day on which
Christ should reappear and the millennium begin, in the
minds of the Chiliasts. 8 As ever, weakness had taken ref-
uge in a belief in miracles, fancied the enemy overcome
when he was only conjured away in imagination, and it
lost all understanding of the present in a passive glori-
fication of the future that was in store for it and of the deeds
it had in petto but which it merely did not want to carry
out as yet. Those heroes who seek to disprove their demon-
strated incapacity by mutually offering each other their
sympathy and getting together in a crowd had tied up
their bundles, collected their laurel wreaths in advance
and were just then engaged in discounting on the exchange
market the republics in partibus g for which they had
already providently organized the government personnel
with all the calm of their unassuming disposition. Decem-
ber 2 struck them like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, and
the peoples that in periods of pusillanimous depression
gladly let their inward apprehension be drowned by the
loudest bawlers will perchance have convinced themselves
that the times are past when the cackle of geese could save
the Capitol.
The Constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic
parties, the blue and the red republicans, the heroes of Af-
rica, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of
the daily press, the entire literature, the political names
and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the pe-
nal code, the liberte, egalite, fraternite and the second
Sunday in May 1852 all has vanished like a phantasma-
goria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies
do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems
20
to have survived only for a moment, in order that with
its own hand it may make its last will and testament be-
fore the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of
the people itself: All that exists deserves to perish. 10
It is not enough to say, as the French do, that their na-
tion was taken unawares. A nation and a woman are not
forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer
that came along could violate them. The riddle is not solved
by such turns of speech, but merely formulated differ-
ently. It remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-
six millions can be surprised and delivered unresisting
into captivity by three chevaliers d'industrie.
Let us recapitulate in general outline the phases that
the French Revolution went through from February 24 ?
1848, to December 1851.
Three main periods are unmistakable: the February pe-
riod-, May 4, 1848, to May 28, 1849 11 : the period of the con-
stitution of the republic, or of the Constituent National As-
sembly, May 28, 1849, to December 2, 1851: the period of
the constitutional republic or of the Legislative National
Assembly.
The first period, from February 24, or the overthrow of
Louis Philippe, to May 4, 1848, the meeting of the Con-
stituent Assembly, the February period proper, may be de-
scribed as the prologue to the revolution. Its character was
officially expressed in the fact that the government impro-
vised by it itself declared that it was provisional and, like
the government, everything that was mooted, attempted
or enunciated during this period proclaimed itself to be
only provisional. Nothing and nobody ventured to lay
claim to the right of existence and of real action. All the
elements that had prepared or determined the revolution,
the dynastic opposition, 12 the republican bourgeoisie, the
democratic-republican petty bourgeoisie and the social-
democratic workers, provisionally found their place in the
February government.
It could not be otherwise, The February days originally
21
intended an electoral reform, by which the circle of the
politically privileged among the possessing class itself
was to be widened and the exclusive domination of the
aristocracy of finance overthrown. When it came to the
actual conflict, however, when the people mounted the bar-
ricades, the National Guard maintained a passive attitude,
the army offered no serious resistance and the monarchy
ran away, the republic appeared to be a matter of course.
Every party construed it in its own way. Having secured
it arms in hand, the proletariat impressed its stamp upon
it and proclaimed it to be a social republic. There was
thus indicated the general content of the modern revolu-
tion, a content which was in most singular contradiction
to everything that, with the material available, with the
degree of education attained by the masses, under the giv-
en circumstances and relations, could be immediately real-
ized in practice. On the other hand, the claims of all the
remaining elements that had collaborated in the February
Revolution were recognized by the lion's share that they
obtained in the government. In no period do we, therefore,
find a more confused mixture of high-flown phrases and
actual uncertainty and clumsiness, of more enthusiastic
striving for innovation and more deeply-rooted domina-
tion of the old routine, of more apparent harmony of the
whole of society and more profound estrangement of its
elements. While the Paris proletariat still revelled in the
vision of the wide prospects that had opened before it and
indulged in seriously-meant discussions on social prob-
lems, the old powers of society had grouped themselves,
assembled, reflected and found unexpected support in the
mass of the nation, the peasants and petty bourgeois, who
all at once stormed on to the political stage, after the bar-
riers of the July Monarchy had fallen.
The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May
1849, is the period of the constitution, the foundation, of
the bourgeois republic. Directly after the February days
23
not only had the dynastic opposition been surprised by the
republicans and the republicans by the Socialists, but all
France by Paris. The National Assembly, which met on
May 4, 1848, had emerged from the national elections and
represented the nation. It was a living protest against the
pretensions of the February days and was to reduce the
results of the revolution to the bourgeois scale. In vain
the Paris proletariat, which immediately grasped the char-
acter of this National Assembly, attempted on May 15,
a few days after it met, forcibly to negate its existence,
to dissolve it, to disintegrate again into its constituent
parts the organic form in which the proletariat was threat-
ened by the reacting spirit of the nation. As is known,
May 15 had no other result save that of removing Blanqui
and his comrades, that is, the real leaders of the proleta-
rian party, from the public stage for the entire duration of
the cycle we are considering.
The bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe can be fol-
lowed only by a bourgeois republic, that is to say, whereas
a limited section of the bourgeoisie ruled in the name of
the king, the whole of the bourgeoisie will now rule in the
name of the people. The demands of the Paris proletariat
are Utopian nonsense, to which an end must be put. To this
declaration of the Constituent National Assembly the Paris
proletariat replied with the June Insurrection, the most
colossal event in the history of European civil wars. The
bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aris-
tocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle
class, the petty bourgeois, the army, the lumpenproletariat
organized as the Mobile Guard, the intellectual lights, the
clergy and the rural population. On the side of the Paris
proletariat stood none but itself. More than three thousand
insurgents were butchered after the victory, and fifteen
thousand were transported without trial. With this defeat
the proletariat passes into the background of the revolu-
tionary stage. It attempts to press forward again on every
occasion, as soon as the movement appears to make a
29
fresh start, but with ever decreased expenditure of strength
and always slighter results. As soon as one of the social
strata situated above it gets into revolutionary ferment,
the proletariat enters into an alliance with it and so shares
all the defeats that the different parties suffer, one after
another. But these subsequent blows become the weaker,
the greater the surface of society over which they are dis-
tributed. The more important leaders of the proletariat in
the Assembly and in the press successively fall victims to
the courts, and ever more equivocal figures come to head
it. In part it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, ex-
change banks and workers' associations, hence into a move-
ment in which it renounces the revolutionizing of the old
world by means of the tatter's own great, combined re-
sources, and seeks, rather, to achieve its salvation behind
society's back, in private fashion, within its limited con-
ditions of existence, and hence necessarily suffers ship-
wreck. It seems to be unable either to rediscover revolu-
tionary greatness in itself or to win new energy from the
connections newly entered into, until alt classes with
which it contended in June themselves lie prostrate beside
it. But at least it succumbs with the honours of the great,
world-historic struggle; not only France, but all Europe
trembles at the June earthquake, while the ensuing defeats
of the upper classes are so cheaply bought that they re-
quire bare-faced exaggeration by the victorious party to
be able to pass for events at all, and become the more
ignominous the further the defeated party is removed from
the proletarian party.
The defeat of the June insurgents, to be sure, had now
prepared, had levelled the ground on which the bourgeois
republic could be founded and built up, but it had shown at
the same time that in Europe the questions at issue are
other than that of "republic or monarchy." It had revealed
that here bourgeois republic signifies the unlimited despot-
ism of ..one class over,fttligr_classes. It had proved that in
countries with an old civilizatr<5n7with a developed forma-
tion of classes, with modern conditions of production and
with an intellectual consciousness in which all traditional
ideas have been dissolved by the work of centuries, the
republic signifies in general only the political form of revo-
lution of bourgeois society and not its conservative form of
life, as, for example, in the United States of North Amer-
ica, where, though classes already exist, they have not yet
become fixed, but continually change and interchange their
elements in constant flux, where the modern means of pro-
duction, instead of coinciding with a stagnant surplus popu-
lation, rather compensate for the relative deficiency of
heads and hands, and where, finally, the feverish, youthful
movement of material production, which has to make a
new world its own, has left neither time nor opportunity
for abolishing, thfi^djspirit world.
During the June dayVirTTcIasses and parties had united
in the party of Order against the proletarian class as the
party of Anarchy, of Socialism, of Communism. They had
"saved" society from "the enemies of society!' They had
given out the watchwords of the old society, "property,
family, religion, order" to their army as passwords and
had proclaimed to the counter-revolutionary crusaders:
"In this sign thou shalt conquer!" From that moment, as
soon as one of the numerous parties which had gathered
under this sign against the June insurgents seeks to hold
the revolutionary battlefield in its own class interest, it
goes down before the cry: "Property, family, religion, or-
der." Society is saved just as often as the circle of its rul-
ers contracts, as a more exclusive interest is maintained
against a wider one. Every demand of the simplest bour-
geois financial reform, of the most ordinary liberalism, of
the most formal republicanism, of the most shallow de-
mocracy, is simultaneously castigated as an "attempt on
society" and stigmatized as "Socialism." And, finally, the
high priests of "the religion and order" themselves are
driven with kicks from their Pythian tripods, hauled out
of their beds in the darkness of night, put in prison-vans f
35
thrown into dungeons or sent into exile; their temple is
razed to the ground, their mouths are sealed, their pens
broken, their law torn to pieces in the name of religion, of
property, of the family, of order. Bourgeois fanatics for
order are shot down on their balconies by mobs of drunk-
en soldiers, their domestic sanctuaries profaned, their
houses bombarded for amusement in the name of proper-
ty, of the family, of religion and of order. Finally, the scum
of bourgeois society forms the holy phalanx of order and
the hero Crapulinski 13 installs himself in the Tuileries as
the "saviour of society. 11
II
Let us pick up the threads of the development once more.
The history of the Constituent National Assembly since
the June days is the history of the domination and the dis-
integration of the republican faction of the bourgeoisie, of
that faction which is known by the names of tricolour, re-
publicans, pure republicans, politicaFrepublicans, formal-
ist republicans, etc.
Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe it had
formed the official republican opposition and consequently
a recognized component part of the political world of the
day. It had its representatives in the Chambers and a con-
siderable sphere of influence in the press. Its Paris organ,
the National,^ was considered just as respectable in its
way as the Journal des Debats.^ Its character correspond-
ed to this position under the constitutional monarchy. It
was not a faction of the bourgeoisie held together by great
common interests and marked off by specific conditions
of production. It was a clique of republican-minded bour-
geois, writers, lawyers, officers and officials that owed its
influence to the personal antipathies of the country against
Louis Philippe, to memories of the old republic, to the re-
publican faith of a number of enthusiasts, above all, how-
ever, to French nationalism, whose hatred of the Vienna
treaties and of the alliance with England it stirred up
perpetually. A large part of the following that the Nation-
al had. under Louis Philippe was due to this concealed
imperialism, which could consequently confront it later,
under the republic, as a deadly rival in the person of Louis
27
Bonaparte. It fought the aristocracy of finance, as did all
the rest of the bourgeois opposition. Polemics against the
budget, which were closely connected in France with fight-
ing the aristocracy of finance, procured popularity too
cheaply and material for puritanical leading articles too
plentifully, not to be exploited. The industrial bourgeoisie
was grateful to it for its slavish defence of the French pro-
tectionist system, which it accepted, however, more on na-
tional grounds than on grounds. .of national economy; the
bourgeoisie as a whole, for its vicious denunciation of
Communism and Socialism. For the rest, the party of the
National was purely republican, that is, it demanded a
republican instead of a monarchist jorm of bourgeois rule
and, above all, the lion's share of this rule. Concerning the
conditions of this transformation it was by no means clear
in its own mind. On the other hand, what was clear as
daylight to it and was publicly acknowledged at the re-
form banquets in the last days of Louis Philippe, was its
unpopularity with the democratic petty bourgeois and, in
particular, with the revolutionary proletariat. These pure
republicans, as is, indeed, the way with pure republicans,
were already on the point of contenting themselves in the
first instance with a regency of the Duchess of Orleans,
when the February Revolution broke out and assigned
their best-known representatives a place in the Provisional
Government. From the start, they naturally had the con-
fidence of the bourgeoisie and a majority in the Consti-
tuent National Assembly. The socialist elements of the
Provisional Government were excluded forthwith from the
Executive Commission which the National Assembly formed
when it met, and the party of the National took ad-
vantage of the outbreak of the June insurrection to dis-
charge the Executive Commission also, and therewith to
get rid of its closest rivals, the petty-bourgeois, or demo-
cratic, republicans (Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the
general of the bourgeois-republican party who commanded
the June massacre, took the place of the Executive Corn-
28
mission with a sort of dictatorial power. Marrast, former
editor-in-chief of the National, became the perpetual presi-
dent of the Constituent National Assembly, and the
ministries, as well as all other important posts, fell to the
portion of the pure republicans.
The republican bourgeois faction, which had long regard-
ed itself as the legitimate heir of the July Monarchy, thus
found its fondest hopes exceeded; it attained power, how-
ever, not as it had dreamed under Louis Philippe, through
a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the throne, but
through a rising of the proletariat against capital, a rising
laid low with grape-shot. What it had conceived as the
most revolutionary event turned out in reality to be the
most counter-revolutionary. The fruit fell into its lap, but
it fell from the tree of knowledge, not from the tree of
life.
The exclusive rule of the bourgeois republicans lasted
only from June 24 to December 10, 1848. It is summed up
in the drafting of a republican constitution and in the state
of siege of Paris.
The new Constitution was at bottom only the republic-
anized edition of the constitutional Charter of 1830. 16 The
narrow electoral qualification of the July Monarchy, which
excluded even a large part of the bourgeoisie from polit-
ical rule, was incompatible with the existence of the bour-
geois republic. In lieu of this qualification, the February
Revolution had at once proclaimed direct universal suf-
frage. The bourgeois republicans could not undo this event.
They had to content themselves with adding the limiting
proviso of a six months' residence in the constituency. The
old organization of the administration, of the municipal
system, of the judicial system, of the army, etc., continued
to exist inviolate, or, where the Constitution changed
them, the change concerned the table of contents, not the
contents; the name, not the subject matter.
The inevitable general staff of the liberties of 1848, per-
sonal liberty, liberty of the press, of speech, of association,
29
of assembly, of education and religion, etc., received a
constitutional uniform, which made them invulnerable.
For each of these liberties is proclaimed as the absolute
right of the French citoyen, but always with the marginal
note that it is unlimited so far as it is not limited by the
"equal rights of others and the public safety" or by "laws"
which are intended to mediate just this harmony of the in-
dividual liberties with one another and with the public
safety. For example: "The citizens have the right of as-
sociation, of peaceful and unarmed assembly, of petition
and of expressing their opinions, whether in the press or
in any other way. The enjoyment of these rights has no
limit save the equal rights of others and the public safety: 3
(Chapter II of the French Constitution, 8.) "Education
is free. Freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the
conditions fixed by law and under the supreme control of
the state." (Ibidem, 9,) "The home of every citizen is
inviolable except in the forms prescribed by law." (Chap-
ter II, 3.) Etc., etc. The Constitution, therefore, con-
stantly refers to future organic laws which are to put into
effect those marginal notes and regulate the enjoyment
of these unrestricted liberties in such manner that they
will collide neither with one another nor with the public
safety. And later, these organic laws were brought into
being by the friends of order and all those liberties regu-
lated in such manner that the bourgeoisie in its enjoyment
of them finds itself unhindered by the equal rights of the
other classes. Where it forbids these liberties entirely to
"the others" or permits enjoyment of them under condi-
tions that are just so many police traps, this always hap-
pens solely in the interest of "public safety'' that is, the
safety of the .bourgeoisie, as the Constitution prescribes.^
In the sequel, both sides accordingly appeal with complete
justice to the Constitution: the friends of order, who ab-
rogated all these liberties, as well as the democrats, who
demanded all of them. For each paragraph of the Consti-
tution contains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower
30
House, namely, liberty in the general phrase, abroga-
tion of liberty in the marginal note. Thus, so long as the
name of freedom was respected and only its actual realiza-
tion prevented, of course in a legal way, the constitutional
existence of liberty remained intact, inviolate, however
mortal the blows dealt to its existence in actual life.
This Constitution, made inviolable in so ingenious a
manner, was nevertheless, like Achilles, vulnerable in one
point, not in the heel, but in the head, or rather in the two
heads in which it wound up the Legislative Assembly, on
the one hand, the President, on the other. Glance through
the Constitution and you will find that only the para-
graphs in which the relationship of the President to the
Legislative Assembly is defined are absolute, positive, non-
contradictory, and cannot be distorted. For here it was a
question of the bourgeois republicans safeguarding them-
selves. 45-70 of the Constitution are so worded that the
National Assembly can remove the President constitu-
tionally, whereas the President can remove the National
Assembly only unconstitutionally, only by setting aside
the Constitution itself. Here, therefore, it challenges its
forcible destruction. It not only sanctifies the division of
powers, like the Charter of 1830, it widens it into an intol-
erable contradiction. The play of the constitutional pow-
ers, as Guizot termed the parliamentary squabble between
the legislative and executive power, is in the Constitution
of 1848 continually played va-banque* On one side are
seven hundred and fifty representatives of the people,
elected by universal suffrage and eligible for re-election;
they form an uncontrollable, indissoluble, indivisible Na-
tional Assembly, a National Assembly that enjoys legis-
lative omnipotence, decides in the last instance on war,
peace and commercial treaties, alone possesses the right
of amnesty and, by its permanence, perpetually holds the
front of the stage. On the other side is the President, with
* Va-banque: Staking one's M.Ed
31
all the attributes of royal power, with authority to appoint
and dismiss his ministers independently of the National
Assembly, with all the resources of the executive power in
his hands, bestowing all posts and disposing thereby in
France of the livelihoods of at least a million and a half
people, for so many depend on the five hundred thousand
officials and officers of every rank. He has the whole of the
armed forces behind him. He enjoys the privilege of par-
doning individual criminals, of suspending National
Guards, of discharging, with the concurrence of the Coun-
cil of State, general, cantonal and municipal councils
elected by the citizens themselves. Initiative and direction
are reserved to him in all treaties with foreign countries,
While the Assembly constantly performs on the boards and
is exposed to daily public criticism, he leads a secluded
life in the Elysian Fields, and that with Article 45 of the
Constitution before his eyes and in his heart, crying to him
daily: "Frere, il faut mourirl"^ 1 Your power ceases on the
second Sunday of the lovely month of May in the fourth
year after your election! Then your glory is at an end,
the piece is not played twice and if you have debts, look
to it betimes that you pay them off with the six hundred
thousand francs granted you by the Constitution, unless,
perchance, you should prefer to go to Clichy 18 on the sec-
ond Monday of the lovely month of May! Thus, whereas
the Constitution assigns actual power to the President, it
seeks to secure moral power for the National Assembly.
Apart from the fact that it is impossible to create a moral
power by paragraphs of law, the Constitution here abro-
gates itself once more by having the President elected by
all Frenchmen through direct suffrage. While the votes
of France are split up among the seven hundred and fifty
members of the National Assembly, they are here, on the
contrary, concentrated on a single individual. While each
separate representative of the people represents only this
or that party, this or that town, this or that bridgehead,
or even only the mere necessity of electing some one as
32
the seven hundred and fiftieth, without examining too
closely either the cause or the man, he is the elect of the
nation and the act of his election is the trump that the sov-
ereign people plays once every four years. The elected
National Assembly stands in a metaphysical relation, but
the elected President in a personal relation, to the nation.
The National Assembly, indeed, exhibits in its individual
representatives the manifold aspects of the national spirit,
but in the President this national spirit finds its incarna-
tion. As against the Assembly, he possesses a sort of divine
right; he is President 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, like Achilles, had its weak spot, had also, like
Achilles, its presentiment that it must go to an early
death. It was sufficient for the constitution-making pure
republicans to cast a glance from the lofty heaven of their
ideal republic at the profane world to perceive how the
arrogance of the royalists, the Bonapartists, the Demo-
crats, the Communists as well as their own discredit grew
daily in the same measure as they approached the com-
pletion of their great legislative work of art, without Thetis
on this account having to leave the sea and communicate
the secret to them. They sought to cheat destiny by a catch
in the Constitution, through 111 of it, according to which
every motion for a revision of the Constitution must be
supported by at least three-quarters of the votes, cast in
three successive debates between which an entire month
must always lie, with the added proviso that not less
than five hundred members of the National Assembly
must vote. Thereby they merely made the impotent at-
tempt still to exercise a power when only a parliament-
ary minority, as which they already saw themselves pro-
phetically in their mind's eye a power which at the pres-
ent time, when they commanded a parliamentary major-
ity and all the resources of governmental authority, was
slipping daily more and more from their feeble hands.
33
Finally the Constitution, in a melodramatic paragraph,
entrusts itself "to the vigilance and the patriotism^! the
whole French people and every single Frenchman/' after
it had previously entrusted in another paragraph the
"vigilant" and "patriotic" to the tender, most painstaking
care of the High Court of Justice, the "haute cour" in-
vented by it for the purpose.
Such was the Constitution of 1848, which on December
2, 1851, was not overthrown by a head, but fell down at
the touch of a mere hat; this hat, to be sure, was a three-
cornered Napoleonic hat.
While the bourgeois republicans in the Assembly were
busy devising, discussing and voting this Constitution,
Cavaignac outside the Assembly maintained the state of
siege of Paris. The state of siege of Paris was the midwife
of the Constituent Assembly in its travail of republican
creation. If the Constitution is subsequently put out of
existence by bayonets, it must not be forgotten that it was
likewise by bayonets, and these turned against the people,
that it had to be protected in its mother's womb and by
bayonets that it had to be brought into existence. The fore-
fathers of the "respectable republicans" had sent their
symbol, the tricolour, on a tour round Europe. They them-
selves in turn produced an invention that of itself made
its way over the whole Continent, but returned to France
with ever renewed love until it has now become natural-
ized in half her Departments the state of siege. A splendid
invention, periodically employed in every ensuing crisis
in the course of the French Revolution. But barrack and
bivouac, which were thus periodically laid on French so-
ciety's head to compress its brain and render it quiet;
sabre and musket, which were periodically allowed to act
as judges and administrators, as guardians and censors,
to play policeman and do night watchman's duty; mous-
tache and uniform, which were periodically trumpeted
forth as the highest wisdom of society and as its rector-
were not barrack and bivouac, sabre and musket, rnous-
34
tache and uniform finally bound to hit upon the idea of rath-
er saving society once and for all by proclaiming their
own regime as the highest and freeing civil society com-
pletely from the trouble of governing itself? Barrack and
bivouac, sabre and musket, moustache and uniform were
bound to hit upon this idea all the more as they might
then also expect better cash payment for their higher serv-
ices, whereas from the merely periodical state of siege
and the transient rescues of society at the bidding of this
or that bourgeois faction little of substance was gleaned
save some killed and wounded and some friendly bourgeois
grimaces. Should not the military at last one day play
state of siege in their own interest and for their own
benefit, and at the same time besiege the citizens' purses?
Moreover, be it noted in passing, one must not forget that
Colonel Bernard, the same military commission presi-
dent who under Cavaignac had 15,000 insurgents deported
without trial, is at this moment again at the head of the
military commissions active in Paris.
Whereas, with the state of siege in Paris, the respect-
able, the pure republicans planted the nursery in which
the praetorians 19 of December 2, 1851 were to grow up,
they on the other hand deserve praise for the reason that,
instead of exaggerating the national sentiment as under
Louis Philippe, they now, when they had command of the
national power, crawled before foreign countries, and, in-
stead of setting Italy free, let her be reconquered by
Austrians and Neapolitans. 20 Louis Bonaparte's election
as President on December 10, 1848, put an end to the dic-
tatorship of Cavaignac and to the Constituent Assem-
bly.
In 44 of the Constitution it is stated: "The President
of the French Republic must never have lost his status of
a French citizen." The first President of the French republic,
L. N. Bonaparte, had not merely lost his status of a
French citizen, had not only been an English special con-
stable, he was even a naturalized Swiss. 21
35
I have worked out elsewhere the significance of the elec-
tion of December 10. 22 I will not revert to it here. It is suf-
ficient to remark here that it was a reaction of the peas-
ants, who had had to pay the costs of the February Revo-
lution, against the remaining classes of the nation, a
reaction^ J&e,CQuafry -against the town. It met with great
approval in the army, for which the republicans of the
National had provided neither glory nor additional pay,
among the big bourgeoisie, which hailed Bonaparte as a
bridge to monarchy, among the proletarians and petty
bourgeois, who hailed him as a scourge for Cavaignac. I
shall have an opportunity later of going more closely into
the relationship of the peasants to the French Revolution.
The period from December 20, 1848, until the dissolu-
tion of the Constituent Assembly, in May 1849, comprises
the history of the downfall of the bourgeois republicans.
After having founded a republic for the bourgeoisie,
driven the revolutionary proletariat out of the field and
reduced the democratic petty bourgeoisie to silence for
the time being, they are themselves thrust aside by the
mass of the bourgeoisie, which justly impounds this repub-
lic as its property. This bourgeois mass was, however,
royalist One section of it, the large landowners, had ruled
during the Restoration and was accordingly Legitimist.
The other, the aristocrats of finance and big industrialists,
had ruled during th&Juljc Monarchy and was consequent-
ly OrleanisL^'T^e high dignitaries* oftlie army, the uni-
versity, the church, the bar, the academy and of the press
were to be found on either side, though in various propor-
tions. Here, in the bourgeois republic, which bore neither
the name Bourbon nor the name Orleans, but the name
Capital, they had found the form of state in which they
could rule conjointly. The June Insurrection had already
united them in the "party of Order." 24 Now it was neces-
sary, in the first place, to remove the coterie of bourgeois
republicans who still occupied the seats of the National
Assembly. Just as brutal as these pure republicans had
36
been in their jnisu&e.oLphysical force against the^people,
just as cowardly, .mealy-mouthed, broken-spirited and in-
capable of fighting were they now in their retreat, when it
was a question of maintaining their republicanism and
their legislative rights against the executive power and
the royalists. I need not relate here the ignominious his-
tory of their dissolution. They did not succumb; they passed
out of existence. Their history has come to an end forever,
and, both irjfii^and outside the Assembly, th^y figure in
the following periocT only as memories, memories that
seem to regain life whenever the mer^jigjafiujQf-JiepuWiP, * s
once more the issue and as often as the revolutionary con-
flict threateng^^gl^k- dowji to the lowest level. I may re-
mark in passing that the journal which gave its name to
this party, the National, was converted to Socialism in
the following period.
Before we finish with this period we must still cast a
retrospective glance at the two powers, one of which anni-
hilated the other on December 2, 1851, whereas from De-
cember 20, 1848, until the exit of the Constituent Assem-
bly, they had lived in conjugal relations. We mean Louis
Bonaparte, on the one hand, and the,jg,ity^f the poale^sced
royalists, the party of Order, of the big, bourgeoisie, on the
oth^er. On acceding io the presidency, Bonaparte at once
formed a ministry of the party of Order, at the head of
which he "placed Odilon Barrpt, the old, le^ej;, npta bene,
of the most I ibera faction of the parliamentary bourgeoi-
sie. M. Barrot had at last secured the ministerial portfolio,
the spectre of which had haunted him since 1830, and what
is more, the premiership in the ministry; but not, as he had
imagined under Louis Philippe, as the most advanced
leader of the parliamentary opposition, but with the task
of putting a parliament to death, and as the confederate
of all his arch-enemies, Jesuits and Legitimists. He
brought the bride home at last, but only after she had
been prostituted. Bonaparte seemed to efface himself com-
pletely. This party acted for him.
87
The very first meeting of the council of ministers re-
solved on the expedition to Rome, which, it was agreed,
should be undertaken behind the back of the National As-
sembly and the means for which were to be wrested from
it by false pretences. Thus they began by swindling the
National Assembly and secretly conspiring with the ab-
solutist powers abroad against the revolutionary Roman
republic. In the same manner and with the same manoeu-
vres Bonaparte prepared his coup of December 2 against
the royalist Legislative Assembly and its constitutional
republic. Let us not forget that the same party which
formed Bonaparte's ministry on December 20, 1848,
formed the majority of the Legislative National Assem-
bly on December 2, 1851.
In August the Constituent Assembly had decided to dis-
solve only after it had worked out and promulgated a
whole series of organic laws that were to supplement the
Constitution. On January 6, 1849, the party of Order had a
deputy named Rateau move that the Assembly should let
the organic laws go and rather decide on its own dissolu-
tion. Not only the ministry, with Odilon Barrot at its head,
but all the royalist members of the National Assembly told
it in bullying accents then that its dissolution was neces-
sary for the restoration of credit, for the consolidation of
order, for putting an end to the indefinite provisional ar-
rangements and for establishing a definitive state of
affairs; that it hampered the productivity of the new gov-
ernment and sought to prolong its existence merely out
of malice; that the country was tired of it. Bonaparte took
note of all this invective against the legislative power,
learnt it by heart and proved to the parliamentary royal-
ists, on December 2, 1851, that he had learnt from them.
He reiterated their own catchwords against them.
The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went fur-
ther. They caused petitions to the National Assembly to be
made throughout France, in which this body was politely
requested to decamp. They thus led the unorganized popu-
38
lar masses into the fire of battle against the National As-
sembly, the constitutionally organized expression of the
people. They taught Bonaparte to appeal against the par-
liamentary assemblies to the people. At length, on Janua-
ry 29, 1849, the day had come on which the Constituent
Assembly was to decide concerning its own dissolution.
The National Assembly found the building where its ses-
sions were held occupied by the military; Changarnier, the
general of the party of Order, in whose hands the supreme
command of the National Guard and troops of the line had
been united, held a great military review in Paris, as if a
battle were impending, and the royalists in coalition
threateningly declared to the Constituent Assembly that
force would be employed if it should prove unwilling. It
was willing, and only bargained for a very short extra
term of life. What was January 29 but the coup d'etat of
December 2, 1851, only carried out by the royalists with
Bonaparte against the republican National Assembly? The
gentlemen did not observe, or did not wish to observe, that
Bonaparte availed himself of January 29, 1849, to have
a portion of the troops march past him in front of the Tui-
leries, and seized with avidity on just this first public sum-
moning of the military power against the parliamentary
power to foreshadow Caligula. 25 They, to be sure, saw only
their Changarnier.
A motive that particularly actuated the party of Order
in forcibly cutting short the duration of the Constituent
Assembly's life was the organic laws supplementing the
Constitution, such as the education law, the law on relig-
ious worship, etc. To the royalists in coalition it was
most important that they themselves should make these
laws and not let them be made by the republicans, who
had grown mistrustful. Among these organic laws, how-
ever, was also a law on the responsibility of the President
of the republic. In 1851 the Legislative Assembly was oc-
cupied with the drafting of just such a law, when Bona-
parte anticipated this coup with the coup of December 2.
89
What would the royalists in coalition not have given in
their parliamentary winter campaign of 1851 to have
found the Responsibility Law ready to hand, and drawn
up, at that, by a mistrustful, hostile, republican Assem-
bly!
After the Constituent Assembly had itself shattered its
last weapon on January 29, 1849, the Barrot ministry and
the friends of order hounded it to death, left nothing un-
done that could humiliate it and wrested from the impo-
tent, self-despairing Assembly laws that cost it the last
remnant of respect in the eyes of the public. Bonaparte,
occupied with his fixed Napoleonic idea, was brazen
enough to exploit publicly thia .degradatioa.of. thej>arlia-
mentary power. For when on May 8, 1849, the National
Assembly passed a vote of censure of the ministry because
of the occupation of Civitavecchia by Oudinot, and or-
dered it to bring back the Roman expedition to its alleged
purpose, 26 Bonaparte published the same evening in the
Moniteur^ a letter to Oudinot, in which he congratulated
him on his heroic exploits and, in contrast to the ink-sling-
ing parliamentarians, already posed as the generous pro-
tector of the army. The royalists smiled at this. They re-
garded him simply as their dupe. Finally, when Marrast,
the President of the Constituent Assembly, believed for a
moment that the safety of the National Assembly was en-
dangered and, relying on the Constitution, requisitioned a
colonel and his regiment, the colonel declined, cited dis-
cipline in his support and referred Marrast to Changar-
nier, who scornfully refused him with the remark that he
did not like balonnettes intelligentes* In November 1851,
when the royalists in coalition wanted to begin the deci-
sive struggle with Bonaparte, they sought to put through
in their notorious Quaestors' Bill? the principle of the di-
rect requisition of troops by the President of the National
Assembly. One of their generals, Le F16, had signed the
Intellectual bayonets. Ed.
40
bill. In vain did Changarnier vote for it and Thiers pay
homage to the far-sighted wisdom of the former Constit-
uent Assembly. The War Minister, Saint-Arnaud, an-
swered him as Changarnier had answered Marrast and to
the acclamation of the Montagnel
Thus the party of Order, when it was not yet the Nation-
al Assembly, when it was still only the ministry, had it-
self stigmatized the parliamentary regime. And it makes
an outcry when December 2, 1851 banished this regime
from France!
We wish it a happy journey.
Ill
On May 28, 1849, the Legislative National Assembly
met. On December 2, 1851, it was dispersed. This period
covers the span of life of the constitutional, or parliamen-
tary, republic.
In the first French Revolution the rule of the Constitu-
tionalists is followed by the rule of the Girondists and the
rule of the Girondists by the rule of the Jacobins. Each of
these parties relies on the more progressive party for sup-
port. As soon as it has brought the revolution far enough
to be unable to follow it further, still less to go ahead of it,
it is thrust aside by the bolder ally that stands behind it
and sent to the guillotine. The revolution thus moves
along an ascending line.
It is the reverse with the Revolution of 1848. The prole-
tarian party appears as an appendage of the petty-bour-
geois-democratic party. It is betrayed and dropped by the
latter on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. The dem-
ocratic party, in its turn, leans on the shoulders of the
bourgeois-republican party. The bourgeois republicans no
sooner believe themselves well established than they shake
off the troublesome comrade and support themselves on
the shoulders of the party of Order. The party of Order
hunches its shoulders, lets the bourgeois republicans tum-
ble and throws itself on the shoulders of armed force. It
fancies it is still sitting on its shoulders whe7 one fine
morning, it perceives that the shoulders have transformed
themselves into bayonets. Each party kicks from behind at
42
that driving forward and in front leans over towards the
party which presses backwards. No wonder that in this
ridiculous posture it loses its balance and, having made
the inevitable grimaces, collapses with curious capers. The
revolution thus moves in a descending line. It finds itself
in this state of retrogressive motion before the last Feb-
ruary barricade has been cleared away and the first revo-
lutionary authority constituted.
The period that we have before us comprises the most
motley mixture of crying contradictions: constitutionalists
who conspire openly against the Constitution; revolution-
ists who are confessedly constitutional; a National Assem-
bly that wants to be omnipotent and always remains par-
liamentary; a Montagne that finds its vocation in patience
and counters its present defeats by prophesying future vic-
tories; royalists who form the patres conscripti* of the
republic and are forced by the situation to keep the hostile
royal houses, to which they adhere, abroad, and the re-
public, which they hate, in France; an executive power
that finds its strength in its very weakness and its respect-
ability in the contempt that it calls forth; a republic that
is nothing but the combined infamy of two monarchies, the
Restoration and the July Monarchy, with an imperial label
alliances whose first proviso is separation; struggles
whose first law is indecision; wild, inane agitation in the
name of tranquillity, most solemn preaching of tranquillity
in the name of revolution; passions without truth, truths
without passion; heroes without heroic deeds, history with-
out events; development, whose sole driving force seems
to be the calendar, wearying with constant repetition of
the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that period-
ically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to
lose their sharpness and fall away without being able to
resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded exertions and
philistine terror at the danger of the world coming to an
Patres conscripti: Senators. Ed.
43
end, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court
comedies played by the world redeemers, who in their lais-
ser alter* remind us less of the Day of Judgment than of
the times of the Fronde the official collective genius of
France brought to naught by the artful stupidity of a sin-
gle individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as
it speaks through universal suffrage, seeking its appro-
priate expression through the inveterate enemies of the
interests of the masses, until, at length, it finds it in the
sglf-will of a filibuster. If any section of history has been
painted grey "ori grey, it is this. Men and events appear
as inverted Schlemihls, 29 as shadows that have lost their
bodies. The revolution itself paralyzes its own bearers and
endows only its adversaries with passionate forcefulness.
When the "red spectre," continually conjured up and exor-
cised by the counter-revolutionaries, finally appears, it ap-
pears not with the Phrygian cap of anarchy on its head,
but in the uniform of order, in red breeches.
We have seen that the ministry which Bonaparte in-
stalled on December 20, 1848, on his Ascension Day, was a
ministry of the party of Order, of the Legitimist and Or-
leanist coalition. This Barrot-Falloux ministry had out-
lived the republican Constituent Assembly, whose term of
life it had more or less violently cut short, and found it-
self still at the helm. Changarnier, the general of the al-
lied royalists, continued to unite in his person the general
command of the First Army Division and of the National
Guard of Paris. Finally, the general elections had secured
the party of Order a large majority in the National As-
sembly. Here the deputies and peers of Louis Philippe en-
countered a hallowed host of Legitimists, for whom many
of the nation's ballots had become transformed into ad-
mission cards to the political stage. The Bonapartist rep-
resentatives of the people were too sparse to be able to
form an independent parliamentary party. They appeared
* Laisser oiler: Letting things take their course. Ed,
44
merely as the mauvaise queue* of the party of Order. Thus
the party of Order was in possession of the governmental
power, the army and the legislative body, in short, of the
whole of the state power; it had been morally strengthened
by the general elections, which made its rule appear as
the will of the people, and by the simultaneous triumph of
the counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe.
Never did a party open its campaign with greater re-
sources or under more favourable auspices.
The shipwrecked pure republicans found that they had
melted down to a clique of about fifty men in the Legis-
lative National Assembly, the African generals Cavaignac,
Lamoriciere and Bedeau at their head. The great opposi-
tion party, however, was formed by the Montagne. The
social-democratic party had given itself this parliamentary
baptismal name. It commanded more than two hundred of
the seven hundred and fifty votes of the National Assem-
bly and was consequently at least as powerful as any one
of the three factions of the party of Order taken by itself.
Its numerical inferiority compared with the entire royalist
coalition seemed compensated by special circumstances.
Not only did the elections in the Departments show that
it had gained a considerable following among the rural
population. It counted in its ranks almost all the deputies
from Paris; the army had made a confession of democratic
faith by the election of three non-commissioned officers,
and the leader of the Montagne, Ledru-Rollin, in contra-
distinction to all the representatives of the party of Order,
had been raised to the parliamentary peerage by five De-
partments, which had pooled their votes for him. In view
of the inevitable clashes of the royalists among themselves
and of the whole party of Order with Bonaparte, the Man-
tagne thus seemed to have all the elements of success be-
fore it on May 28, 1849. A fortnight later it had lost every-
thing, honour included.
* Mauvaise queue: Evil appendage. Ed.
45
Before we pursue parliamentary history further, some
remarks are necessary to avoid common misconceptions
regarding the whole character of the epoch that lies be-
fore us. Looked at with the eyes of democrats, the period
of the Legislative National Assembly is concerned with
what the period of the Constituent Assembly was concerned
with: the simple struggle between republicans and
royalists. The movement itself, however, they sum up in
the one shibboleth: '"reaction" night, in which all cats are
grey and which permits them to reel off their night watch-
man's commonplaces. And, to be sure, at first sight the
party of Order reveals a maze of different royalist fac-
tions, which not only intrigue against each other each
seeking to elevate its own pretender to the throne and
exclude the pretender of the opposing faction but also all
unite in common hatred of, and common onslaughts on,
the "republic/' In opposition to this royalist conspiracy
the Montague, for its part, appears as the representative
of the "republic." The party of Order appears to be per-
petually engaged in a "reaction," directed against press,
association and the like, neither more nor less than in
Prussia, and which, as in Prussia, is carried out in the
form of brutal police intervention by the bureaucracy, the
gendarmerie and the law courts. The "Montagne," for its
part, is just as continually occupied in warding off these
attacks and thus defending the "eternal rights of man" as
every so-called people's party has done, more or less, for
a century and a half. If one looks at the situation and the
parties more closely, however, this superficial appearance,
which veils the class struggle and the peculiar physiogno-
my of this period, disappears.
Legitimists and Orleanists, as we have said, formed the
two great factions of the party of Order. Was that which
held these factions fast to their pretenders and kept them
apart from one another nothing but lily and tricolour,
House of Bourbon and House of Orleans, different shades
of royalism, was it at all the confession of faith of royal-
46
ism? Under the Bourbons, big landed property had gov-
erned, with its priests and lackeys; under the Orleans, high
finance, large-scale industry, large-scale trade, that is,
capital, with its retinue of lawyers, professors and smooth-
tongued orators. The Legitimate Monarchy was merely
the political expression of the hereditary rule of the lords
of the soil, as the July Monarchy was only the political
expression of the usurped rule of the bourgeois parvenus.
What kept the two factions apart, therefore, was not any
so-called principles, it was their material conditions of
existence, two different kinds of property, it was the old
contrast between town .and country, the rivalry between
capital^ and landed property. That at the same time old
memories, personal enmities, fears and hopes, prejudices
and illusions, sympathies and antipathies, convictions, ar-
ticles of faith and principles bound them to one or the
other royal house, who denies this? Upon the different
forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence,
rises an entire superstructure of distinct and peculiarly
formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views
of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its
material foundations and out of the corresponding social
relations. The single individual, who derives them through
tradition and upbringing, may imagine that they form the
real motives and the starting point of his activity. While
Orleanists and Legitimists, while each faction sought to
make itself and the other believe that it was loyalty to
their two royal houses which separated them, facts later
proved that it was rather their divided interests which
forbade the uniting of the two royal houses. And as
in private life one differentiates between what a man
thinks and says of himself and what he really is and does,
so in historical struggles one must distinguish still more
the phrases and fancies of parties from their real organ-
ism and their real interests, their conception of themselves,
from their reality. Orleanists and Legitimists found
themselves side by side in the republic, with equal claims.
47
If each side wished to effect the restoration of its own
royal house against the other, that merely signified that
each of the two great interests into which the bourgeoisie
is split landed property and capital sought to restore
its own supremacy and the subordination of the other. We
speak of two interests of the bourgeoisie, for large landed
property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has
been rendered thoroughly bourgeois by the development
of modern society. Thus the Tories in England long imag-
ined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the
church and the beauties of the old English Constitution,
until the day of danger wrung from them the confession
that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.
The royalists in coalition carried on their intrigues
against one another in the press, in Ems, in Claremont, 30
outside parliament. Behind the scenes they donned their
old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries again and once more
engaged in their old tourneys. But on the public stage, in
their grand performances of state, as a great parliamenta-
ry party, they put off their respective royal houses with
mere obeisances and adjourn the restoration of the mon-
archy in infinitum* They do their real business as the party
of Order, that is, under a social, not under a political title;
as representatives of the bourgeois world-order, not as
knights of errant princesses; as the bourgeois class against
other classes, not as royalists against the republicans.
And as the party of Order they exercised more unrestricted
and sterner domination over the other classes of society
than ever previously under the Restoration or under the
July Monarchy, a domination which, in general, was only
possible under the form of the parliamentary republic, for
only under this form could the two great divisions of the
French bourgeoisie unite, and thus put the rule of their
class instead of the regime of a privileged faction of it on
the order of the day. If, nevertheless, they, as the party of
* To infinity. Ed.
48
Order, also insulted the republic and expressed their re-
pugnance to it, this happened not merely from royalist
memories. Instinct taught them that the republic, true
enough, makes their political rule complete, but at the
same time undermines its social foundation, since they
must now confront the subjugated classes and contend
against them without mediation, without the concealment
afforded by the crown, without being able to divert the na-
tional interest by their subordinate struggles among them-
selves and with the monarchy. It was a feeling of weakness
that caused them to recoil from the pure conditions of their
own class rule and to yearn for the former more incom-
plete, more undeveloped and precisely on that account less
dangerous forms of this rule. On the other hand, every
time the royalists in coalition come in conflict with the pre-
tender that confronts them, with Bonaparte, every time
they believe their parliamentary omnipotence endangered
by the executive power, every time, therefore, that they must
produce their political title to their rule, they come for-
ward as republicans and not as royalists, from the Orlean-
ist Thiers, who warns the National Assembly that the re-
public divides them least, to the Legitimist Berryer, who,
on December 2, 1851, as a tribune swathed in a tricoloured
sash, harangues the people assembled before the town hall
of the tenth arrondissement in the name of the republic.
To be sure, a mocking echo calls back to him: Henry V!
Henry V!
As against the coalesced bourgeoisie, a coalition be-
tween petty bourgeois and workers had been formed, the
so-called social-democratic party. The petty bourgeois saw
that they were badly rewarded after the June days of 1848,
that their material interests were imperilled and that the
democratic guarantees which were to ensure the effectua-
tion of these interests were called in question by the coun-
ter-revolution. Accordingly, they came closer to the work-
ers. On the other hand, their parliamentary representa-
tion, the Montagne, thrust aside during the dictatorship
49
of the bourgeois republicans, had in the last half of the
life of the Constituent Assembly reconquered its lost pop-
ularity through the struggle with Bonaparte and the
royalist ministers. It had concluded an alliance with the
socialist leaders. In February 1849, banquets celebrated
the reconciliation. A joint program was drafted, joint elec-
tion committees were set up and joint candidates put for-
ward. From the social demands of the proletariat the rev-
olutionary point was broken off and a democratic turn
given to them; from the democratic claims of the petty
bourgeoisie the purely political form was stripped off and
their socialist point thrust forward. Thus arose the Social-
Democracy. The new Montagne, the result of this combi-
nation, contained, apart from some supernumeraries from
the working class and some socialist sectarians, the same
elements as the old Montague, only numerically stronger.
However, in the course .of development, it had changed
with the class that it represented. The peculiar character
of the Social-Democracy is epitomized in the fact that dem-
ocratic-republican institutions are demanded as a means,
not of doing away with two extremes, capital and wage
labour, but of weakening their antagonism and transform-
ing it into harmony. However different the means pro-
posed for the attainment of this end may be, however much
it may be trimmed with more or less revolutionary no-
tions, the content remains the same. This content is the
transformation of society in a democratic way, but a trans-
formation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie. Only
one must not form the narrow-minded notion that the petty
bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic
class interest. Rather, it believes that the special condi-
tions of its emancipation are the general conditions within
the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and
the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine
that the democratic representatives are indeed all shop-
keepers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. Accord-
ing to their education and their individual position they
50
may be as far apart as heaven from earth. What makes
them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie Is the fact
that In their minds they do not get beyond the limits
which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are
consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems
and solutions to which material interest and social posi-
tion drive the latter practically. This Is, In general, the
relationship between the political and literary representa-
tives of a class and the class they represent.
After the analysis given, it Is obvious that if the Mon-
tagne continually contends with the party of Order for the
republic and the so-called rights of man, neither the re-
public nor the rights of man are its final end, any more
than an army which one wants to deprive of its weapons
and which resists has taken the field in order to remain
In possession of its own weapons.
Immediately, as soon as the National Assembly met, the
party of Order provoked the Montagne. The bourgeoisie
now felt the necessity of making an end of the democratic
petty bourgeois, just as a year before it had realized the
necessity of settling with the revolutionary proletariat.
Only the situation of the adversary was different. The
strength of the proletarian party lay in the streets, that of
the petty bourgeois in the National Assembly itself. It was
therefore a question of decoying them out of the National
Assembly into the streets and causing them to smash their
parliamentary power themselves, before time and cir-
cumstances could consolidate it. The Montagne rushed
headlong into the trap.
The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the
bait that was thrown to it. It violated Article V of the
Constitution 31 which forbids the French republic to employ
its military forces against the freedom of another people.
In addition to this, Article 54 prohibited any declaration
of war on the part of the executive power without the as-
sent of the National Assembly, and by its resolution of
May 8, the Constituent Assembly had disapproved of the
51
Roman expedition. On these grounds Ledru-Rollin brought
in a bill of impeachment against Bonaparte and his minis-
ters on June 11, 1849. Exasperated by the wasp stings of
Thiers, he actually let himself be carried away to the point
of threatening that he would defend the Constitution by
every means, even with arms in hand. The Montagne rose
to a man and repeated this call to arms. On June 12, the
National Assembly rejected the bill of impeachment, and
the Montagne left the parliament. The events of June 13
are known: the proclamation issued by a section of the
Montagne, declaring Bonaparte and his ministers "outside
the Constitution"; the street procession of the democratic
National Guards, who, unarmed as they were, dispersed
on encountering the troops of Changarnier, etc., etc. A
part of the Montagne fled abroad; another part was ar-
raigned before the High Court at Bourges, and a parlia-
mentary regulation subjected the remainder to the school-
masterly surveillance of the President of the National
Assembly. Paris was again declared in a state of siege and
the democratic part of its National Guard dissolved. Thus
the influence of the Montagne in parliament and the power
of the petty bourgeois in Paris were broken.
Lyons, where June 13 had given the signal for a bloody
insurrection of the workers, was, along with the five sur-
rounding Departments, likewise declared in a state of siege,
a condition that has continued up to the present moment.
The bulk of the Montagne had left its vanguard in the
lurch, having refused to subscribe to its proclamation. The
press had deserted, only two journals having dared to pub-
lish the pronunciamento. The petty bourgeois betrayed
their representatives, in that the National Guards either
stayed away or, where they appeared, hindered the erec-
tion of barricades. The representatives had duped the petty
bourgeois, in that the alleged allies from the army were
nowhere to be seen. Finally, instead of gaining an acces-
sion of strength from it, the democratic party had infected
the proletariat with its own weakness and, as is usual
52
with the great deeds of democrats, the leaders had the
satisfaction of being able to charge their "people' 1 with
desertion, and the people the satisfaction of being able to
charge its leaders with humbugging it.
Seldom had an action been announced with more noise
than the impending campaign of the Montagne, seldom
had an event been trumpeted with greater certainty or
longer in advance than the inevitable victory of the de-
mocracy. Most assuredly, the democrats believe in the
trumpets before whose blasts the walls of Jericho fell
down. And as often as they stand before the ramparts of
despotism, they seek to imitate the miracle. If the Mon~
tagne wished to triumph in parliament, it should not have
called to arms. If it called to arms in parliament, It should
not have acted in parliamentary fashion in the streets. Jlf
the peaceful demonstration was meant seriously, then it
was folly not to foresee that it would be given a war-like
reception. If 4 real struggle was intended, then it was a
queer idea to lay down the weapons with which it would
have to be waged. But the revolutionary threats of the
petty bourgeois and their democratic representatives are
mere attempts to intimidate the antagonist. And when they
have run into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently
compromised themselves to make it necessary to give effect
to their threats, then this is done in an ambiguous fashion
that avoids nothing so much as the means to the end and
tries to find excuses for succumbing. The blaring overture
that announced the contest dies away in a pusillanimous
snarl as soon as the struggle has to begin, the actors
cease to take themselves au serieax, and the action col-
lapses completely, like a pricked bubble.
No party exaggerates its means more than the demo-
cratic, none deludes itself more light-mindedly over the sit-
uation. Since a section of the army had voted for it, the
Montagne was now convinced that the army would revolt
for it. And on what occasion? On an occasion which, from
the standpoint of the troops, had no other meaning than
53
that the revolutionists took the side of the Roman soldiers
against the French soldiers. On the other hand, the
recollections of June 1848 were still too fresh to allow of
anything but a profound aversion on the part of the pro-
letariat towards the National Guard and a thorough-going
mistrust of the democratic chiefs on the part of the chiefs
of the secret societies. To iron out these differences, it was
necessary for great, common interests to be at stake. The
violation of an abstract paragraph of the Constitution could
not provide these interests. Had not the Constitution been
repeatedly violated, according to the assurance of the dem-
ocrats themselves? Had not the most popular journals
branded it as counter-revolutionary botch-work? But the
democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie,
that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two
classes are simultaneously mutually blunted, imagines
himself elevated above class antagonism generally. The
democrats concede that a privileged class confronts them,
but they, along with all the rest of the nation, form the
people. What they represent is the people's rights', what
interests them is the people's interests. Accordingly, when
a struggle is impending, they do not need to examine the
interests and positions of the different classes. They do not
need to weigh their own resources too critically. They have
merely to give the signal and the people, with all its inex-
haustible resources, will fall upon the oppressors. Now, if
in the performance their interests prove to be uninterest-
ing and their potency impotence, then either the fault lies
with pernicious sophists, who split the indivisible people
into different hostile camps, or the army was too brutalized
and blinded to comprehend that the pure aims of democra-
cy are the best thing for it itself, or the whole thing has
been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an un-
foreseen accident has this time spoilt the game. In any
case, the democrat comes out of the most disgraceful de-
feat just as immaculate as he was innocent when he went
into it, with the newly-won conviction that he is bound to
54
win, not that he himself and his party have to give up
the old standpoint, but, on the contrary, that conditions
have to ripen to suit him.
Accordingly, one must not imagine the Montagne, dec-
imated and broken though it was, and humiliated by the
new parliamentary regulation, as being particularly mis-
erable. If June 13 had removed its chiefs, it made room,
on the other hand, for men of lesser calibre, whom this
new position flattered. If their impotence in parliament
could no longer be doubted, they were entitled now to
confine their actions to outbursts of moral indignation and
blustering declamation. If the party of Order affected to
see embodied in them, as the last official representatives
of the revolution, all the terrors of anarchy, they could
in reality be all the more insipid and modest. They con-
soled themselves, however, for June 13 with the profound
utterance: But if they dare to attack universal suffrage,
well then then we'll show them what we are made of!
Nous verrons!*
So far as the Montagnards who fled abroad are con-
cerned, it is sufficient to remark here that Ledru-Rollin,
because in barely a fortnight he had succeeded in ruining
irretrievably the powerful party at whose head he stood,
now found himself called upon to form a French govern-
ment in partibus;** that to the extent that the level of the
revolution sank and the official bigwigs of official France
became more dwarf-like, his figure in the distance, re-
moved from the scene of action, seemed to grow in stature;
that he could figure as the republican pretender for 1852,
and that he issued periodical circulars to the Wallachians
and other peoples, in which the despots of the Continent
are threatened with the deeds of himself and his confeder-
ates. Was Proudhon altogether wrong when he cried to
these gentlemen: "Vous n'etes que des btagueurs"?***
* We shall see! Ed.
** Purely nominal. Ed.
*** Y OU are nothing but windbags." Ed
55
On June 13, the party of Order had not only broken the
Montagne, it had effected the subordination of the Con-
stitution to the majority decisions of the National Assembly.
And it understood the republic thus: that the bourgeoisie
rules here in parliamentary forms, without, as in a mon-
archy, encountering any barrier such as the veto power
of the executive or the right to dissolve parliament. This
was a parliamentary republic, as Thiers termed it. But
whereas on June 13 the bourgeoisie secured its omnipo-
tence within the house of parliament, did it not afflict par-
liament itself, as against the executive authority and the
people, with incurable weakness by expelling its most
popular part? By surrendering numerous deputies without
further ado on the demand of the courts, it abolished its
own parliamentary immunity. The humiliating regulations
to which it subjected the Montagne exalted the President
of the republic in the same measure as it degraded the
individual representatives of the people. By branding an
insurrection for the protection of the constitutional charter
an anarchic act aiming at the subversion of society, it pre-
cluded the possibility of its appealing to insurrection
should the executive authority violate the Constitution in
relation to it. And by the irony of history, the general who
on Bonaparte's instructions bombarded Rome and thus
provided the immediate occasion for the constitutional re-
volt of June 13, that Oudinot had to be the man offered by
the party of Order imploringly and unavailingly to the
people as general on behalf of the Constitution against
Bonaparte on December 2, 1851. Another hero of June 13,
Vieyra, who was lauded 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 Na-
tional Guards belonging to high finance circles this same
Vieyra had been initiated into Bonaparte's conspiracy and
he essentially contributed to depriving the National As-
sembly in the hour of its death of any protection by the
National Guard.
56
June 13 had still another meaning. The Montagne had
wanted to force the impeachment of Bonaparte. Its defeat
was therefore a direct victory for Bonaparte, his personal
triumph over his democratic enemies. The party of Order
gained the victory; Bonaparte had only to cash in on it.
He did so. On June 14 a proclamation could be read on the
walls of Paris in which the President, reluctantly, against
his will, as it were, compelled by the sheer force of events,
comes forth from his cloistered seclusion and, posing as
misunderstood virtue, complains of the calumnies of his
opponents and, while ne seems to identify his person with
the cause of order, rather identifies the cause of order with
his person. Moreover, the National Assembly had, it is
true, subsequently approved the expedition against Rome,
but Bonaparte had taken the initiative in the matter. After
having re-installed the High Priest Samuel in the Vati-
can, he could hope to enter the Tuileries as King David. 32
He had won the priests over to his side.
The revolt of June 13 was confined, as we have seen, to
a peaceful street procession. No war laurels were, there-
fore, to be won against it. Nevertheless, at a time as poor as
this in heroes and events, the party of Order transformed
this bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz. Platform and
press praised the army as the power of order, in contrast
to the popular masses, representing the impotence of
anarchy, and extolled Changarnier as the "bulwark of so-
ciety," a deception in which he himself finally came to be-
lieve. Surrepticiously, however, the corps that seemed
doubtful were transferred from Paris, the regiments which
had shown at the elections the most democratical senti-
ments were banished from France to Algiers, the turbu-
lent spirits among the troops were relegated to penal de-
tachments, and finally the isolation of the press from the
barracks and of the barracks from bourgeois society was
systematically carried out.
Here we have reached the decisive turning point in the
history of the French National Guard. In 1830 it was de-
57
cisive In the overthrow of the Restoration. Under Louis
Philippe every rebellion miscarried in which the National
Guard stood on the side of the troops. When in the Feb-
ruary days of 1848 it evinced a passive attitude towards
the insurrection and an equivocal one towards Louis Phi-
lippe, he gave himseif up for lost and actually was lost.
Thus the conviction took root that the revolution could not
be victorious without the National Guard, nor the army
against it. This was the superstition of the army in re-
gard to civilian omnipotence. The June days of 1848, when
the entire National Guard, with the troops of the line, put
down the insurrection, had strengthened the superstition,
After Bonaparte's assumption of office, the position of the
National Guard was to some extent weakened by the un-
constitutional union, in the person of Changarnier, of the
command of its forces with the command of the First Army
Division.
Just as the command of the National Guard appeared
here as an attribute of the military commander-in-chief, so
the National Guard itself appeared as only an appendage
of the troops of the line. Finally, on June 13 its power was
broken, and not only by its partial disbandment, which
from this time on was periodically repeated all over France,
until mere fragments of it were left behind. The dem-
onstration of June 13 was, above all, a demonstration of
the democratic National Guards. They had not, to be sure,
borne their arms, but worn their uniforms against the ar-
my; precisely in this uniform, however, lay the talisman.
The army convinced itself that this uniform was a piece of
woollen cloth like any other. The spell was broken. In the
June days of 1848, bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie had
united as the National Guard with the army against the
proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie let the petty-
bourgeois National Guard be dispersed by the army; on
December 2, 1851, the National Guard of the bourgeoisie
itself had vanished, and Bonaparte merely registered this
fact when he subsequently signed the decree for its dis-
55
bandment Thus the bourgeoisie had Itself smashed its last
weapon against the army, the moment the petty bourgeoi-
sie no longer stood behind it as a vassal, but before it as
a rebel, it had to smash it as in general it was bound to
destroy all its means of defence against absolutism with
its own hand as soon as it had itself become absolute.
Meanwhile, the party of Order celebrated the reconquest
of a power that seemed lost in 1848 only to be found again,
freed from its restraints, in 1849, celebrated by means of
invectives against the republic and the Constitution, of
curses on all future, present and past revolutions, includ-
ing that which its own leaders had made, and in laws by
which the press was muzzled, association destroyed and
the state of siege regulated as an organic institution. The
National Assembly then adjourned from the middle of
August to the middle of October, after having appointed a
permanent commission for the period of its absence. Dur-
ing this recess the Legitimists intrigued with Ems, the
Orleanists with Claremont, Bonaparte by means of
princely tours, and the Departmental Councils in deliber-
ations on a revision of the Constitution: incidents which
regularly recur in the periodic recesses of the National As-
sembly and which I propose to discuss only when they be-
come events. Here it may merely be remarked, in addition,
that it was impolitic for the National Assembly to disap-
pear for considerable intervals from the stage and leave
only a single, albeit a sorry, figure to be seen at the head
of the republic, that of Louis Bonaparte, while to the scan-
dal of the public the party of Order fell asunder into its
royalist component parts and followed its conflicting de-
sires for Restoration. As often as the confused noise of par-
liament grew silent during these recesses and its body dis-
solved in the nation, it became unmistakably clear that
only one thing was still wanting to complete the true form
of this republic: to make the former's recess permanent and
replace the tatter's inscription: Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite
by the unambiguous words: Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery!
59
IV
In the middle of October 1849, the National Assembly
met once more. On November 1, Bonaparte surprised it
with a message in which he announced the dismissal of
the Barrot-Falloux ministry and the formation of a new
ministry. No one has ever sacked lackeys with less cer-
emony than Bonaparte his ministers. The kicks that were
intended for the National Assembly were given in the
meantime to Barrot and Co.
The Barrot ministry, as we have seen, had been com-
posed of Legitimists and Orleanists, a ministry of the
party of Order. Bonaparte had needed it to dissolve the
republican Constituent Assembly, to bring about the expe-
dition against Rome and to break the democratic party.
Behind this ministry he had seemingly effaced himself, sur-
rendered governmental power into the hands of the party
of Order and donned the modest character mask that the
responsible editor of a newspaper wore under Louis Phi-
lippe, the mask of the homme de paille.* He now threw off
a mask which was no longer the light veil behind which he
could hide his physiognomy, but an iron mask which pre-
vented him from displaying a physiognomy of his own. He
had appointed the Barrot ministry in order to blast the re-
publican National Assembly in the name of the party of
Order; he dismissed it in order to declare his own name
independent of the National Assembly of the party of Or-
der.
* Homme de paille: Man of straw. Ed
60
Plausible pretexts for this dismissal were not lacking.
The Barrot ministry neglected even the decencies that
would have let the President of the republic appear as a
power side by side with the National Assembly. During
the recess of the National Assembly Bonaparte published
a letter to Edgar Ney in which he seemed to disapprove of
the illiberal attitude of the Pope,* just as in opposition
to the Constituent Assembly he had published a letter in
which he commended Oudinot for the attack on the Roman
republic. When the National Assembly now voted the budg-
et for the Roman expedition, Victor Hugo, out of alleged
liberalism, brought up this letter for discussion. The party
of Order with scornfully incredulous outcries stifled the
idea that Bonaparte's ideas could have any political Im-
portance. Not one of the ministers took up the gauntlet for
him. On another occasion Barrot, with his well-known hol-
low rhetoric, let fall from the platform words of indigna-
tion concerning the "abominable intrigues" that, accord-
ing to his assertion, went on in the immediate entourage of
the President. Finally, while the ministry obtained from
the National Assembly a widow's pension for the Duch-
ess of Orleans it rejected any proposal to increase the Civ-
il List of the President. And in Bonaparte the imperial
pretender was so intimately bound up with the adventurer
down on his luck that the one great idea, that he was called
to restore the empire, was always supplemented by the
other, that it was the mission of the French people to pay
his debts.
The Barrot-Falloux ministry was the first and last par-
liamentary ministry that Bonaparte brought into being. Its
dismissal forms, accordingly, a decisive turning-point.
With it the party of Order lost, never to reconquer it, an
indispensable post for the maintenance of the parliamen-
tary regime, the lever of executive power. It is immediate-
ly obvious that in a country like France, where the execu-
** Pius IX. Ed.
61
tive power commands an army of officials numbering
more than half a million individuals and therefore con-
stantly maintains an immense mass of interests and liveli-
hoods in the most absolute dependence; where the state
enmeshes, controls, regulates, superintends and tutors
civil society from its most comprehensive manifestations
of life down to its most insignificant stirrings, from its
most general modes of being to the private existence of in-
dividuals; where through the most extraordinary centrali-
zation this parasitic body acquires a ubiquity, an omnis-
cience, a capacity for accelerated mobility and an elasti-
city which finds a counterpart only in the helpless depend-
ence, in the loose shapelessness of the actual body politic
it is obvious that in such a country the National Assem-
bly forfeits all real influence when it loses command of the
ministerial posts, if it does not at the same time simplify
the administration of the state, reduce the army of offi-
cials as far as possible and, finally, let civil society and
public opinion create organs of their own, independent of
the governmental power. But it is precisely with the main-
tenance of that extensive state machine in its numerous
ramifications that the material interests of the French
bourgeoisie are interwoven in the closest fashion. Here it
finds posts for its surplus population and makes up in the
form of state salaries for what it cannot pocket in the form
of profit, interest, rents and honorariums. On the other
hand, its political interests compelled it to increase daily
the repressive measures and therefore the resources and
the personnel of the state power, while at the same time it
had to wage an uninterrupted war against public opinion
and mistrustfully mutilate, cripple, the independent or-
gans of the social movement, where it did not succeed in
amputating them entirely. Thus the French bourgeoisie
was compelled by its class position to annihilate, on the
one hand, the vital conditions of all parliamentary power,
and therefore, likewise, of its own, and to render irresisti-
ble, on the other hand, the executive power hostile to it.
62
The new ministry was called the cTHaiitpoui ministry.
iMot in the sense that General d'Hautpoul had received the
rank of Prime Minister. Rather, simultaneously with Bar-
rot's dismissal, Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which,
true enough, condemned the President oi the republic to
the status of the legal nonentity of a constitutional mon-
arch, but of a constitutional monarch without throne or
crown, without scepter or sword, without irresponsibility,
without imprescriptible possession of the highest state
dignity, and, worst of all, without a Civil List. The d'Haut-
poui ministry contained only one man of parliamentary
standing, the moneylender Fould, one of the most noto-
rious of the high financiers. To his lot fell the ministry of
finance. Look up the quotations on the Paris bourse and
you will find that from November 1, 1849, onwards the
French fonds* rise and fall with the rise and fall of Bo-
napartist stocks. While Bonaparte had thus found his ally
in the bourse, he at the same time took possession of the
police by appointing Carlier Police Prefect of Paris.
Only in the course of development, however, could the
consequences of the change of ministers come to light. To
begin with, Bonaparte had taken a step forward only to be
driven backward all the more conspicuously. His brusque
message was followed by the most servile declaration of
allegiance to the National Assembly. As often as the min-
isters dared to make a diffident attempt to introduce his
personal fads as legislative proposals, they themselves
seemed to carry out, against their will only and compelled
by their position, comical commissions of whose fruitless-
ness they were persuaded in advance. As often as Bona-
parte blurted out his intentions behind the ministers'
backs and played with his "idees napoteoniennes"^ his
own ministers disavowed him from the tribune of the Na-
tional Assembly. His usurpatory longings seemed to make
themselves heard only in order that the malicious laugh-
* Fonds- Government securities. Ed
63
ter of his opponents might not be muted. He behaved like
an unrecognized genius, whom all the world takes for a
simpleton. Never did he enjoy the contempt of all classes
in fuller measure than during this period. Never did the
bqurgeoisie rule more absolutely, never, did, it43^1ay,more
ostentatiously the insignia of domination.
I have not here to write the history of its legislative ac-
tivity, which is summarized during this period in two laws:
in the law re-establishing the wine tax and the education
law abolishing unbelief. If wine drinking was made harder
for the French, they were presented all the more plenti-
fully with the water of true life. If in the law on the wine
tax the bourgeoisie declared the old, hateful French tax
system to be inviolable, it sought through the education
law to ensure among the masses the old state of mind that
put up with the tax system. One is astonished to see the
Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of
Voltairianism and eclectic philosophy, entrust to their he-
reditary enemies, the Jesuits, the superintendence of the
French mind. However, in regard to the pretenders to the
throne, Orleanists and Legitimists could part company,
they understood that to secure their united rule necessi-
tated the uniting of the means of repression of two epochs,
that the means of subjugation of the July Monarchy had
to be supplemented and strengthened by the means of sub-
jugation of the Restoration.
The peasants, disappointed in all their hopes, crushed
more than ever by the low level of grain prices on the one
hand, and by the growing burden of taxes and mortgage
debts on the other, began to bestir themselves in the De-
partments. They were answered by a drive against the
schoolmasters, who were made subject to the clergy, by a
drive against the maires* who were made subject to the
prefects, and by a system of espionage, to which all were
made subject. In Paris and the large towns reaction itself
* Maires: Mayors. Ed.
64
has the physiognomy of its epoch and challenges more
than it strikes down. In the countryside it becomes dull,
coarse, petty, tiresome and vexatious, in a word, the gen-
darme. One comprehends how three years of the regime of
the gendarme, consecrated by the regime of the priest,
were bound to demoralize immature masses.
Whatever amount of passion and declamation might be
employed by the party of Order against the minority from
the tribune of the National Assembly, its speech remained
as monosyllabic as that of the Christians, whose words
were to be: Yea, yea; nay, nay! As monosyllabic on the
platform as in the press. Flat as a riddle whose answer Is
known in advance. Whether it was a question of the right
of petition or the tax on wine, freedom of the press or free
trade, the clubs or the municipal charter, protection of
personal liberty or regulation of the state budget, the
watchword constantly recurs, the theme remains always
the same, the verdict is ever ready and invariably reads:
"Socialismi" Even bourgeois liberalism is declared social-
istic, bourgeois enlightenment socialistic, bourgeois finan-
cial reform socialistic. It was socialistic to build a railway,
where a canal already existed, and it was socialistic to de-
fend oneself with a cane when one was attacked with a rapier.
This was not merely a figure of speech, fashion or party
tactics. The bourgeoisie had a true insight into the fact
that all the weapons which it had forged against feudal-
ism turned their points against itself, that all the means
of education which it had produced rebelled against its
own civilization, that all the gods which it had created
had fallen away from it. It understood that all the so-called
bourgeois liberties and organs of progress attacked
and menaced its class rule at its social foundation and its
political summit simultaneously, and had therefore be-
come "socialistic" In this menace and this attack it right-
ly discerned the secret of Socialism, whose import and
tendency it judges more correctly than so-called Socialism
knows how to judge itself; the latter can, accordingly, not
65
comprehend why the bourgeoisie callously hardens its
heart against it, whether it sentimentally bewails the suf-
ferings of mankind, or in Christian spirit prophesies the
millennium and universal brotherly love, or in humanistic
style twaddles about mind, education and freedom, or in
doctrinaire fashion excogitates a system for the concilia-
tion and welfare of all classes. What the bourgeoisie did
not grasp, however, was the logical conclusion that its
own parliamentary regime, that its political rule in gener-
al, was now also bound to meet with the general verdict
of condemnation as being socialistic. As long as the rule
of the bourgeois class had not been organized completely,
as long as it had not acquired its pure political expression,
the antagonism of the other classes, likewise, could not ap-
pear in its pure form, and where it did appear could not
take the dangerous turn that transforms every struggle
against the state power into a struggle against capital.
If in every stirring of life in society it saw "tranquillity"
imperilled, how could it want to maintain at the head of
society a regime of unrest, its own regime, the parliamen-
tary regime, this regime that, according to the expression
of one of its spokesmen, lives in struggle and by struggle?
The parliamentary regime lives by discussion; how shall
it forbid discussion? Every interest, every social institu-
tion, is here transformed into general ideas, debated as
ideas; how shall any interest, any institution, sustain it-
self above thought and impose itself as an article of faith?
The struggle of the orators on the platform evokes the
struggle of the scribblers of the press; the debating club
in parliament is necessarily supplemented by debating clubs
in the salons and the pothouses; the representatives, who
constantly appeal to public opinion, give public opinion the
right to speak its real mind in petitions. The parliamentary
regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities; how
shall the great majorities outside parliament not want to
decide? When you play the fiddle at the top of the state, what
else is to be expected but that those down below dance?
66
Thus, by now stigmatizing as "socialistic" what it had
previously extolled as "liberal" the bourgeoisie confesses
that its own interests dictate that it should be delivered
from the danger of its own rule; that, in order to restore
tranquillity in the country, its bourgeois parliament must,
first of all, be given its quietus; that in order to preserve
its social power intact, its political power must be broken;
that the individual bourgeois can continue to exploit the
other classes and to enjoy undisturbed property, family,
religion and order only on condition that their class be
condemned along with the other classes to like political
nullity; that in order to save its purse, it must forfeit the
crown, and the sword that is to safeguard it must at the
same time be hung over its own head as a sword of Dam-
ocles.
In the domain of the interests of the general citizenry,
the National Assembly showed itself so unproductive that,
for example, the discussions on the Paris-Avignon rail-
way, which began in the winter of 1850, were still not ripe
for conclusion on December 2, 1851. Where it did not re-
press or pursue a reactionary course it was stricken with
incurable barrenness.
While Bonaparte's ministry partly took the initiative in
framing laws in the spirit of the party of Order, and
partly even outdid that party's harshness in their execu-
tion and administration, he, on the other hand, by child-
ishly silly proposals sought to win popularity, to bring out
his opposition to the National Assembly, and to hint at
a secret reserve that was only temporarily prevented by
conditions from making its hidden treasures available to
the French people. Such was the proposal to decree an in-
crease in pay of four sous a day to the non-commissioned
officers. Such was the proposal of an honour system loan
bank for the workers. Money as a gift and money as a
loan, it was with prospects such as these that he hoped to
allure the masses. Donations and loans the financial
science of the tumpenproletariat, whether of high degree
67
or low, is restricted to this. Such were the only springs
which Bonaparte knew how to set in action. Never has a
pretender speculated more stupidly on the stupidity of the
masses.
The National Assembly flared up repeatedly over these
unmistakable attempts to gain popularity at its expense,
over the growing danger that this adventurer, whom his
debts spurred on and no established reputation held back,
would venture a desperate coup. The discord between the
party of Order and the President had taken on a threaten-
ing character when an unexpected event threw him back
repentant into its arms. We mean the by-elections of
March 10, 1850. These elections were held for the purpose
of filling the representatives' seats that after June 13 had
been rendered vacant by imprisonment or exile. Paris
elected only social-democratic candidates. It even concen-
trated most of the votes on an insurgent of June 1848, on
Deflotte. Thus did the Parisian petty bourgeoisie, in alli-
ance with the proletariat, revenge itself for its defeat on
June 13, 1849. It seemed to have disappeared from the
battlefield at the moment of danger only to reappear there
on a more propitious occasion with more numerous
fighting forces and with a bolder battle cry. One circum-
stance seemed to heighten the peril of this election victory.
The army voted in Paris for the June insurgent against
La Hitte, a minister of Bonaparte's, and in the Depart-
ments largely for the Montagnards, who here, too, though
indeed not so decisively as in Paris, maintained the ascend-
ancy over their adversaries.
Bonaparte saw himself suddenly confronted with revolu-
tion once more. As on January 29, 1849, as on June 13,
1849, so on March 10, 1850, he disappeared behind the
party of Order. He made obeisance, he pusillanimously
begged pardon, he offered to appoint any ministry it
pleased at the behest of the parliamentary majority, he
even implored the Orleanist and Legitimist party leaders,
the Thiers, the Berryers, the Broglies, the Moles, in brief,
68
the so-called burgraves, 34 to take the helm of state them-
selves. The party of Order proved unable to take advan-
tage of this opportunity that would never return. Instead
of boldly possessing itself of the power offered, it did not
even compel Bonaparte to reinstate the ministry dis-
missed on November 1; it contented itself with humiliat-
ing him by its forgiveness and adjoining M. Baroche to
the d'Hautpoul ministry. As public prosecutor this Baroche
had stormed and raged before the High Court at Bour-
ges, the first time against the revolutionists of May 15, the
second time against the democrats of June 13, both times
because of an attempt on the life of the National Assem-
bly. None of Bonaparte's ministers subsequently contri-
buted more to the degradation of the National Assembly,
and after December 2, 1851, we meet him once more as the
comfortably installed and highly paid Vice-President of
the Senate. He had spat in the revolutionists' soup in or-
der that Bonaparte might eat it up.
The social-democratic party, for its part, seemed only
to try to find pretexts for putting its own victory once
again in doubt and for blunting its point. Vidal, one of the
newly elected representatives of Paris, had been elected
simultaneously in Strasbourg. He was induced to decline
the election for Paris and accept it for Strasbourg. And
so, instead of making its victory at the polls conclusive
and thereby compelling the party of Order at once to con-
test it in parliament, instead of thus forcing the adver-
sary to fight at the moment of popular enthusiasm and fa-
vourable mood in the army, the democratic party wearied
Paris during the months of March and April with a new
election campaign, let the aroused popular passions wear
themselves out in this repeated provisional election game,
let the revolutionary energy satiate itself with constitu-
tional successes, dissipate itself in petty intrigues, hollow
declamations and sham movements, let the bourgeoisie
rally and make its preparations, and, lastly, weakened the
significance of the March elections by a sentimental com-
69
mentary in the April by-election, the election of Eugene
Sue. In a word, it made an April Fool of March 10.
The parliamentary majority understood the weakness
of its antagonist. Its seventeen burgraves -for Bonaparte
had left to it the direction of and responsibility for the
attack drew up a new electoral law, the introduction of
which was entrusted to M. Faucher, who solicited this hon-
our for himself. On May 8 he introduced the law by which
universal suffrage was to be abolished, a residence of three
years in the locality of the election to be imposed as a
condition on the electors and, finally, the proof of this resi-
dence made dependent in the case of workers on a certifi-
cate from their employers.
Just as the democrats had, in revolutionary fashion,
agitated the minds and raged during the constitutional
election contest, so now, when it was requisite to prove the
serious nature of that victory arms in hand, did they in
constitutional fashion preach order, majestic calm (calme
majestueux), lawful action, that is to say, blind subjection
to the will of the counter-revolution, which imposed itself
as the law. During the debate the Mountain put the party
of Order to shame by asserting, against the latter's revo-
lutionary passionateness, the dispassionate attitude of the
philistine who keeps within the law, and by felling that
party to earth with the fearful reproach that it proceeded
in a revolutionary manner. Even the newly elected depu-
ties were at pains to prove by their decorous and discreet
action what a misconception it was to decry them as anar-
chists and construe their election as a victory for revolu-
tion. On May 31, the new electoral law went through. The
Montague contented itself with smuggling a protest into
the pocket of the President. The electoral law was followed
by a new press law, by which the revolutionary newspa-
per press was entirely suppressed. 35 It had deserved its
fate. The National and La Pressed two bourgeois organs,
were left behind after this deluge as the most advanced
outposts of the revolution.
70
We have seen how during March and April the dem-
ocratic leaders had done everything to embroil the people
of Paris in a sham fight, how after May 8 they did every-
thing to restrain them from a real fight. In addition to this,
we must not forget that the year 1850 was one of the most
splendid years of industrial and commercial prosperity,
ancl the Paris proletariat was therefore fully employed.
But the election law of May 31, 1850, excluded it from any
participation in political power. It cut it off from the very
arena of the struggle. It threw the workers back into the
position of pariahs which they had occupied before the
February Revolution. By letting themselves be led by the
democrats in face of such an event and forgetting the rev-
olutionary interests of their class for momentary ease and
comfort, they renounced the honour of being a conquering
power, surrendered to their fate, proved that the defeat
of June 1848 had put them out of the fight for years and
that the historical process would for the present again
have to go on over their heads. So far as the petty-bour-
geois democracy is concerned, which on June 13 had cried:
"But if once universal suffrage is attacked, then we'll show
them!", it now consoled itself with the contention that the
counter-revolutionary blow which had struck it was no
blow and the law of May 31 no law. On the second Sunday
in May 1852, every Frenchman would appear at the pol-
ling place with ballot in one hand and sword in the other.
With this prophecy it rested content. Lastly, the army was
disciplined by its superior officers for the elections of
March and April 1850, just as it had been disciplined for
those of May 28, 1849. This time, however, it said decided-
ly: 'The revolution shall not dupe us a third time."
The law of May 31, 1850, was the coup d'etat of the
bourgeoisie. All its conquests over the revolution hitherto
had only a provisional character. They were endangered
as soon as the existing National Assembly retired from the
stage. They depended on the hazards of a new general
election, and the history of elections since 1848 Irrefutably
71
proved that the bourgeoisie's moral sway over the mass of
the people was lost in the same measure as its actual dom-
ination developed. On March 10, universal suffrage de-
clared itself directly against the domination of the bour-
geoisie; the bourgeoisie answered by outlawing universal
suffrage. The law of May 31 was, therefore, one of the ne-
cessities of the class struggle. On the other hand, the Con-
stitution required a minimum of two million votes to make
an election of the President of the republic valid. If none
of the candidates for the presidency received this mini-
mum, the National Assembly was to choose the President
from among the three candidates to whom the largest
number of votes would fall. At the time when the Constit-
uent Assembly made this law, ten million electors were
registered on the rolls of voters. In its view, therefore, a
fifth of the people entitled to vote was sufficient to make
the presidential election valid. The law of May 31 struck
at least three million votes off the electoral rolls, reduced
the number of people entitled to vote to seven million and,
nevertheless, retained the legal minimum of two million
for the presidential election. It therefore raised the legal
minimum from a fifth to nearly a third of the effective
votes, that is, it did everything to smuggle the election of
the President out of the hands of the people a fid into the
hands of the National Assembly. Thus through the electo-
ral law of May 31 the party of Order seemed to have made
its rule doubly secure, by surrendering the election of the
National Assembly and that of the President of the repub-
lic to the stationary section of society.
V
As soon as the revolutionary crisis had been weathered
and universal suffrage abolished, the struggle between the
National Assembly and Bonaparte broke out again.
The Constitution had fixed Bonaparte's salary at 600,000
francs. Barely six months after his installation he suc-
ceeded in increasing this sum to twice as much, for Odilon
Barrot wrung from the Constituent National Assembly an
extra allowance of 600,000 francs a year for so-called rep-
resentation moneys. After June 13, Bonaparte had caused
similar requests to be voiced, this time without eliciting
response from Barrot. Now, after May 31, he at once
availed himself of the favourable moment and caused his
ministers to propose a Civil List of three millions in the
National Assembly. A long life of adventurous vagabond-
age had endowed him with the most developed antennae
for feeling out the weak moments when he might squeeze
money from his bourgeois. He practised regular chan-
tage* The National Assembly had violated the sovereign-
ty of the people with his assistance and his cognizance.
He threatened to denounce its crime to the tribunal of the
people unless it loosened its purse strings and purchased
his silence with three million a year. It had robbed three
million Frenchmen of their franchise, He demanded, for
every Frenchman out of circulation, a franc in circulation,
precisely three million francs. He, the elect of six millions,
claimed damages for the votes out of which he said he had
retrospectively been cheated. The Commission of the Na-
* Chantage: Blackmail. Ed.
73
tional Assembly refused the importunate one. The Bona-
partist press threatened. Could the National Assembly
break with the President of the republic at a moment when
in principle it had definitely broken with the mass of the
nation? It rejected the annual Civil List, it is true, but it
granted, for this once, an extra allowance of two million
one hundred and sixty thousand francs. It thus rendered
itself guilty of the double weakness of granting the money
and of showing at the same time by its vexation that it
granted it unwillingly. We shall see later for what pur-
pose Bonaparte needed the money. After this vexatious af-
termath, which followed on the heels of the abolition of
universal suffrage and in which Bonaparte exchanged his
humble attitude during the crisis of March and April for
challenging impudence to the usurpatory parliament, the
National Assembly adjourned for three months, from
August 11 to November 11. In its place it left behind a
Permanent Commission of twenty-eight members, which
contained no Bonapartists, but did contain some moderate
republicans. The Permanent Commission of 1849 had in-
cluded only Order men and Bonapartists. But at that time
the party of Order declared itself in permanence against
the revolution. This time the parliamentary republic de-
clared itself in permanence against the President. After the
law of May 31, this was the only rival that still confronted
the party of Order.
When the National Assembly met once more in Novem-
ber 1850, it seemed that, instead of the petty skirmishes it
had hitherto had with the President, a great and ruthless
struggle, a life-and-death struggle between the two pow-
ers, had become inevitable.
As in 1849 so during this year's parliamentary recess,
the party of Order had broken up into its separate fac-
tions, each occupied with its own Restoration intrigues,
which had obtained fresh nutriment through the death of
Louis Philippe. The Legitimist king, Henry V, had even
nominated a formal ministry which resided in Paris and
74
in which members of the Permanent Commission held
seats. Bonaparte, in his turn, was therefore entitled to
make tours of the French Departments, and according to the
disposition of the town that he favoured with his presence,
now more or less covertly, no\v more or les^ overtly, to di-
vulge his own restoration plans and canvass votes for
himself. On these processions, which the great official
Moniteur and the little private Monitetirs of Bonaparte nat-
urally had to celebrate as triumphal processions, he was
constantly accompanied by persons affiliated with the So-
ciety of December 10. This society dates from the year
1849. On the pretext of founding j benevolent society, the
lumpenproletariat of Paris had been organized into secret
sections, each section being led by Bonapartist agents,
with a Bonapartist general at the head of the whole.
Alongside decayed roues with dubious means of subsist-
ence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventu-
rous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, were vagabonds, dis-
charged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley
slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, tazzaroni, pickpockets,
tricksters, gamblers, maquereaus* brothel keepers, porters,
literati, organ-grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers,
beggars in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated
mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French term la
boheme\ from this kindred element Bonaparte formed the
core of the Society of December 10. A "benevolent socie-
tyin so far as, "like Bonaparte, all its members felt the
need of benefiting themselves at the expense of the labour-
ing nation. This Bonaparte, who constitutes himself chief
of the lumpenproletariat, who here alone rediscovers in
mass form the interests which he personally pursues, who
recognizes in this scurn, offal, refuse of all classes the
only class upon which he can base himself unconditional-
ly, is the real Bonaparte, the Bonaparte sans phrase. An
old crafty roue, he conceives the historical life of the na-
Maquereaus: Procurers. Ed
75
tions and their performances of state as comedy in the
most vulgar sense, as a masquerade where the grand cos*
tumes, words and postures merely serve to mask the pet-
tiest knavery. Thus on his expedition to Strasbourg, where
a trained Swiss vulture had played the part of the Napo-
leonic eagle. For his irruption into Boulogne he puts some
London lackeys into French uniforms. They represent the
army. 37 In his Society of December 10, he assembles ten
thousand rascally fellows, who are to play the part of the
people, as Nick Bottom that of the lion. At a moment when
the bourgeoisie itself played the most complete comedy,
but in the most serious manner in the world, without in-
fringing any of the pedantic conditions of French dramat-
ic etiquette, and was itself half deceived, half convinced of
the solemnity of its own performance of state, the adven-
turer, who took the comedy as plain comedy, was bound to
win. Only when he has eliminated his solemn opponent,
when he himself now takes his imperial role seriously and
under the Napoleonic mask imagines he is the real Napo-
leon, does he become the victim of his own conception of
the world, the serious buffoon who no longer takes world
history for a comedy but his comedy for world history.
What the national ateliers were for the socialist workers,
what the Gardes mobiles were for the bourgeois republic-
ans, the Society of December 10 was for Bonaparte, the
party fighting force peculiar to him. On his journeys the
detachments of this society packing the railways had to
improvise a public for him, stage public enthusiasm, roar
vive VEmpereur, insult and thrash republicans, of course,
under the protection of the police. On his return journeys
to Paris they had to form the advance guard, forestall
counter-demonstrations or disperse them. The Society of
December 10 belonged to him, it was his work, his very
own idea. Whatever else he appropriates is put into his
hands by the force of circumstances; whatever else he does,
the circumstances do for him or he is content to copy from
the deeds of others. But Bonaparte with official phrases
76
about order, religion, family and property in public, before
the citizens, and with the secret society of the Schufterles
and Spiegelbergs, 38 the society of disorder, prostitution
and theft, behind him that is Bonaparte himself as orig-
inal author, and the history of the Society of December
10 is his own history.
Now it had happened by way of exception that people's
representatives belonging to the party of Order came un-
der the cudgels of the Decembrists. Still more. Yon, the
Police Commissioner assigned to the National Assembly
and charged with watching over its safety, acting on the
deposition of a certain Alais, advised the Permanent Com-
mission that a section of the Decembrists had decided to
assassinate General Changarnier and Dupin, the Presi-
dent of the National Assembly, and had already designated
the individuals who were to perpetrate the deed. One com-
prehends the terror of M. Dupin. A parliamentary enquiry
into the Society of December 10, that is, the profanation of
the Bonapartist secret world, seemed inevitable. Just be-
fore the meeting of the National Assembly Bonaparte prov-
idently disbanded his society, naturally only on paper,
for in a detailed memoir at the end of 1851 Police Prefect
Carlier still sought in vain to move him to really break up
the Decembrists.
The Society of December 10 was to remain the private
army of Bonaparte until he succeeded in transforming the
public army into a Society of December 10. Bonaparte
made the first attempt at this shortly after the adjourn-
ment of the National Assembly, and precisely with the
money just wrested from it. As a fatalist, he lives in the
conviction that there are certain higher powers which man,
and the soldier in particular, cannot withstand. Among
these powers he counts, first and foremost, cigars and
champagne, cold poultry and garlic sausage. According-
ly, to begin with, he treats officers and non-commissioned
officers in his Elysee apartments to cigars and champagne,
to cold poultry and garlic sausage. On October 3 he
77
repeats this manoeuvre with the mass of the troops at the
St. Maur review, and on October 10 the same manoeuvre
on a still larger scale at the Satory army parade. The Un-
cle remembered the campaigns of Alexander in Asia, the
Nephew the triumphal marches of Bacchus in the same
land. Alexander was a demigod, to be sure, but Bacchus
was a god and moreover the tutelary deity of the Society
of December 10.
After the review of October 3, the Permanent Commis-
sion summoned War Minister d'Hautpoul. He promised
that these breaches of discipline should not recur. We
know how on October 10 Bonaparte kept d'Hautpoul's
word. As Commander-in-Chief of the Paris army, Chan-
garnier had commanded at both reviews. He, at once a
member of the Permanent Commission, chief of the Na-
tional Guard, the "saviour" of January 29 and June 13, the
"bulwark of society/' the candidate of the party of Order
for presidential honours, the suspected Monk of two mon-
archies, had hitherto never acknowledged himself as the
subordinate of the War Minister, had always openly de-
rided the republican Constitution and had pursued Bona-
parte with an ambiguous lordly protection. Now he was
consumed with zeal for discipline against the War Minis-
ter and for the Constitution against Bonaparte. While on
October 10 a section of the cavalry raised the shout:
"Vive Napoleon! Vivent les saucissonsl"* Changarnier ar-
ranged that at least the infantry marching past under the
command of his friend Neumayer should preserve an icy
silence. As a punishment, the War Minister relieved Gener-
al Neumayer of his post in Paris at Bonaparte's insti-
gation, on the pretext of appointing him commanding gen-
eral of the fourteenth and fifteenth military divisions.
Neumayer refused this exchange of posts and so had to re-
sign. Changarnier, for his part, published an order of the
day on November 2, in which he forbade the troops to in-
* "Hurrah for Napoleon! Hurrah for the sausagesP' tf.
78
dulge in political outcries or demonstrations of any kind
while under arms. The Elysee newspapers 39 attacked Chan-
garnier; the papers of the party of Order attacked Bona-
parte; the Permanent Commission held repeated secret
sessions in which it was repeatedly proposed to declare
the country in danger; the army seemed divided into two
hostile camps, with two hostile general staffs, one in the
Elysee, where Bonaparte resided, the other in the Tuile-
ries, the quarters of Changarnier. It seemed that only the
meeting of the National Assembly was needed to give the
signal for battle. The French public judged this friction
between Bonaparte and Changarnier like that English
journalist who characterized it in the following words:
"The political housemaids of France are sweeping away the glow
ing lava of the revolution with old brooms and wrangle with one
another while they do their work "
Meanwhile, Bonaparte hastened to remove the War Min-
ister, d'Hautpoul, to pack him off in all haste to Algiers
and to appoint General Schramm War Minister in his
place. On November 12, he sent to the National Assembly
a message of American prolixity, overloaded with detail,
redolent of order, desirous of reconciliation, constitution-
ally acquiescent, treating of all and sundry, but not of
the questions brutantes* of the moment. As if in passing,
he made the remark that according to the express provi-
sions of the Constitution the President alone could dispose
of the army. The message closed with the following words
of great solemnity:
"Above all things, France demands tranquillity. . . . But bound by
an oath, I shall keep within the narrow limits that it has set for me ...
As far as I am concerned, elected by the people and owing my power
to it alone, I shall always bow to its lawfully expressed will. Should
you resolve at this session on a revision of the Constitution, a Con-
stituent Assembly will regulate the position of the executive power. If
not, then the people will solemnly pronounce its decision in 1852. But
whatever the solutions of the future may be, let us come to an under-
* Questions brutantes: Burning questions. Ed,
79
standing, so that passion, surprise or violence may ne\er decide the
destiny of a great nation.. . What occupies my attention, above all,
is not who will rule France in 1852, but how to employ the time which
remains at my disposal so that the intervening period may pass by
without agitation or disturbance. I have opened my heart to you with
sincerity; you will answer my frankness with your trust, my good
endeavours with your cooperation, and God will do the rest."
The respectable, hypocritically moderate, virtuously
commonplace language of the bourgeoisie reveals its deep-
est meaning in the mouth of the autocrat of the Society of
December 10 and the picnic hero of St. Maur and Satory.
The burgraves of the party of Order did not delude
themselves for a moment concerning the trust that this
opening of the heart deserved. About oaths they had long
been blase] they numbered in their midst veterans and
virtuosos of political perjury. Nor had they failed to hear
the passage about the army. They observed with annoy-
ance that in its discursive enumeration of lately enact-
ed laws the message passed over the most important law,
the electoral law, in studied silence, and, moreover, in the
event of there being no revision of the Constitution, left
the election of the President in 1852 to the people. The elec-
toral law was the leaden ball chained to the feet of the
party of Order, which prevented it from walking and so
much the more from storming forward! Moreover, by the
official disbandrnent of the Society of December 10 and
the dismissal of the War Minister d'Hautpoul, Bonaparte
had with his own hand sacrificed the scapegoats on the
altar of the country. He had blunted the edge of the ex-
pected collision. Finally, the party of Order itself anx-
iously sought to avoid, to mitigate, to gloss over any deci-
sive conflict with the executive power. For fear of losing
their conquests over the revolution, they allowed their ri-
val to carry off the fruits thereof. "Above all things, France
demands tranquillity." This was what the party of Order
had cried to the revolution since February,* this was what
* 1848. d.
80
Bonaparte's message cried to the partv of Order. "Above
all things, France demands tranquillity." Bonaparte com-
mitted acts that aimed at usurpation, but the party of
Order committed "unrest" If it raised a row about these
acts and construed them hypochondriacally. The sausages
of Satory were quiet as mice when no one spoke of them.
"Above all things, France demands tranquillity." Bona-
parte demanded, therefore, that he be left in peace to do
as he liked and the parliamentary party was paralyzed by
a double fear, by the fear of again evoking revolutionary
unrest and by the fear of itself appearing as the instigator
of unrest in the eyes of its own class, in the eyes of the
bourgeoisie. Consequently, since France demanded tran-
quillity above all things, the party of Order dared not an-
swer "war" after Bonaparte had talked "peace" in his mes-
sage. The public, which had anticipated scenes of great
scandal at the opening of the National Assembly, was
cheated of its expectations. The opposition deputies, who
demanded the submission of the Permanent Commission's
minutes on the October events, were outvoted by the ma-
jority. On principle, all debates that might cause excite-
ment were eschewed. The proceedings of the National As-
sembly during November and December 1850 were without
interest.
At last, towards the end of December, guerilla warfare
began over a number of prerogatives of parliament. The
movement got bogged in petty squabbles regarding the
prerogatives of the two powers, since the bourgeoisie had
done away with the class struggle for the moment by abol-
ishing universal suffrage.
A judgment for debt had been obtained from the court
against Mauguin, one of the People's Representatives. In
answer to the enquiry of the President of the Court, the
Minister of Justice, Rouher, declared that a capias should
be issued against the debtor without further ado. Mauguin
was thus thrown into the debtors' jail. The National As-
sembly flared up when it learned of the assault. Not only
81
did it order his immediate release, but it even had him
fetched forcibly from Clichy the same evening, by its gref-
fter.* In order, however, to confirm its faith in the sanctity
of private property and with the idea at the back of its
mind of opening, in case of need, .an asylum for Montagn-
ards who had become troublesome, it declared imprison-
ment of People's Representatives for debt permissible after
previously obtaining its consent. It forgot to decree that
the President might also be locked up for debt. It de-
stroyed the last semblance of the immunity that enveloped
the members of its own body.
It will be remembered that, acting on the information
given by a certain Alais, Police Commissioner Yon had
denounced a section of the Decembrists for planning the
murder of Dupin and Changarnier. In reference to this, at
the very first sitting the quaestors made the proposal that
parliament should form a police force of its own, paid
out of the private budget of the National Assembly and
absolutely independent of the police prefect. The Minister
of the Interior, Baroche, protested against this invasion of
his domain. A miserable compromise on this matter was
concluded, according to which, true, the police commis-
sioner of the Assembly was to be paid out of its private
budget and to be appointed and dismissed by its quaestors,
but only after previous agreement with the Minister of the
Interior. Meanwhile criminal proceedings had been taken
by the government against Alais, and here it was easy to
represent his information as a hoax and through the mouth
of the public prosecutor to cast ridicule upon Dupin, Chan-
garnier, Yon and the whole National Assembly. Thereupon,
on December 29, Minister Baroche writes a letter to Dupin
in which he demands Yon's dismissal. The Bureau of the
National Assembly decides to retain Yon in his position,
but the National Assembly, alarmed by its violence in the
Mauguin affair and accustomed when it has ventured a
* Greffier: Clerk. Ed.
82
blo\v at the executive power to receive two blows from
it in return, does not sanction this decision. It dismisses
Yon ^ as a reward for his official zeal and robs itself of a
parliamentary prerogative indispensable against a man
who does not decide by night in order to execute by day,
but who decides by day and executes by night.
We have seen how on great and striking occasions
during the months of November and December the Nation-
al Assembly avoided or quashed the struggle with the
executive power. Now we see it compelled to take it up
on the pettiest occasions. In the Mauguin affair it con-
firms the principle of imprisoning People's Representatives
for debt, but reserves the right to have it applied only to
representatives obnoxious to itself and wrangles over this
infamous privilege with the Minister of Justice. Instead of
availing itself of the alleged murder plot to decree an en-
quiry into the Society of December 10 and irredeemably
unmasking Bonaparte before France and Europe in his
true character of chief of the Paris lump enproletar tat t it
lets the conflict be degraded to a point where the only
issue between it and the Minister of the Interior is which
of them has the authority to appoint and dismiss a police
commissioner. Thus, during the whole of this period, we
see the party of Order compelled by its equivocal position
to dissipate and disintegrate its struggle with the execu-
tive power in petty jurisdictional squabbles, petty-foggery,
legalistic hairsplitting, and delimitational disputes, and to
make the most ridiculous matters of form the substance of
its activity. It does not dare to take up the conflict at the
moment when this has significance from the standpoint of
principle, when the executive power has really exposed it-
self and the cause of the National Assembly would be the
cause of the nation. By so doing it would give the nation
its marching orders, and it fears nothing more than that
the nation should move. On such occasions it accordingly
rejects the motions of the Montague and proceeds to the
order of the day. The question at issue in its larger as-
83
pects having thus been dropped, the executive power calm-
ly bides the time when it can again take up the same ques-
tion on petty and insignificant occasions, when this is, so
to speak, of only local parliamentary interest. Then the
repressed rage of the party of Order breaks out, then it
tears away the curtain from the coulisses, then it denounces
the President, then it declares the republic in danger,
but then, also, its fervour appears absurd and the occasion
for the struggle seems a hypocritical pretext or altogeth-
er not worth fighting about. The parliamentary storm be-
comes a storm in a teacup, the fight becomes an intrigue,
the conflict a scandal. While the revolutionary classes
gloat with malicious joy over the humiliation of the Na-
tional Assembly, for they are just as enthusiastic about the
parliamentary prerogatives of this Assembly as the latter
is about the public liberties, the bourgeoisie outside par-
liament does not understand how the bourgeoisie inside
parliament can waste time over such petty squabbles and
imperil tranquillity by such pitiful rivalries with the Presi-
dent. It becomes confused by a strategy that makes peace
at the moment when all the world is expecting battles,
and attacks at the moment when all the world believes
peace has been made.
On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Min-
ister of the Interior concerning the Gold Bars Lottery.
This lottery was a "daughter of Elysium." 40 Bonaparte
with his faithful followers had brought her into the world
and Police Prefect Carlier had placed her under his offi-
cial protection, although French law forbids all lotteries
with the exception of raffles for charitable purposes. Seven
million lottery tickets at a franc apiece, the profits osten-
sibly to be devoted to shipping Parisian vagabonds to Cal-
ifornia. On the one hand, golden dreams were to supplant
the socialist dreams of the Paris proletariat; the seductive
prospect of the first prize, the doctrinaire right to work.
Naturally, the Paris workers did not recognize in the glit-
ter of the California gold bars the inconspicuous francs
84
that were enticed out of their pockets. In the main, how-
ever, the matter was nothing short of a downright swindle.
The vagabonds who wanted to open California gold mines
without troubling to leave Paris were Bonaparte himself
and his debt-ridden Round Table. The three millions voted
by the National Assembly had been squandered in riotous
living; in one way or another the coffers had to be re-
plenished. In vain had Bonaparte opened a national sub-
scription for the building of so-called cites ouvrieres* and
figured at the head of the list himself with a considerable
sum. The hardhearted bourgeois waited mistrustfully for
him to pay up his share and since this, naturally, did not
ensue, the speculation in socialist castles in the air fell
straightway to the ground. The gold bars proved a better
draw. Bonaparte & Co. were not content to pocket part
of the excess of the seven millions over the bars to be allot-
ted in prizes; they manufactured false lottery tickets; they
issued ten, fifteen and even twenty tickets with the same
number a financial operation in the spirit of the Society
of December 10! Here the National Assembly was con-
fronted not with the fictitious President of the republic,
but with Bonaparte in the flesh. Here it could catch him in
the act, in conflict not with the Constitution but with the
Code penal. If on Duprat's interpellation it proceeded to
the order of the day, this did not happen merely because
Girardin's motion that it should declare itself "satisfaif
reminded the party of Order of its own systematic corrup-
tion. The bourgeois and, above all, the bourgeois inflated
into a statesman, supplements his practical meanness by
theoretical extravagance. As a statesman he becomes, like
the state power that confronts him, a higher being that
can only be fought in a higher, consecrated fashion.
Bonaparte, who precisely because he was a Bohemian,
a princely lumpenproletarian, had the advantage over a
rascally bourgeois in that he could conduct the struggle
* Cites ouvrieres: Workers' settlements.^.
85
meanly, now saw, after the Assembly had itself guided
him with its own hand across the slippery ground of the
military banquets, the reviews, the Society of December 10,
and, finally, the Code penal, that the moment had come
when he could pass from an apparent defensive to the of-
fensive. The minor defeats meanwhile sustained by the Min-
ister of Justice, the Minister of War, the Minister of the
Navy and the Minister of Finance, through which the Na-
tional Assembly signified its snarling displeasure, troubled
him little. He not only prevented the ministers from re-
signing and thus recognizing the sovereignty of parlia-
ment over the executive power, but could now consummate
what he had begun during the recess of the National As-
sembly: the severance of the military power from parlia-
ment, the removal of Changarnier.
An Elysee paper published an order of the day alleged
to have been addressed during the month of May to the
First Military Division, and therefore proceeding from
Changarnier, in which the officers were recommended, in
the event of an insurrection, to give no quarter to the
traitors in their own ranks, but to shoot them immediately
and refuse the National Assembly the troops, should it
requisition them. On January 3, 1851, the Cabinet was in-
terpellated concerning this order of the day. For the in-
vestigation of this matter it requests a breathing space,
first of three months, then of a week, finally of only twen-
ty-four hours. The Assembly insists on an immediate ex-
planation. Changarnier rises and declares that there never
was such an order of the day. He adds that he will always
hasten to comply with the demands of the National As-
sembly and that in case of a clash it can count on him. It
receives his declaration with indescribable applause and
passes a vote of confidence in him. It abdicates, it decrees
its own impotence and the omnipotence of the army by
placing itself under the private protection of a general;
but the general deceives himself when he puts at its com-
mand against Bonaparte a power that he only holds as
86
a fief from the same Bonaparte and when, in his turn, he
expects to be protected by this parliament, by his own
protege in need of protection. Changarnier, however, be-
lieves in the mysterious power with which the bourgeoisie
has endowed him since January 29, 1849. He considers
himself the third power, existing side by side with both
the other state powers. He shares the fate of the rest of
this epoch's heroes, or rather saints, whose greatness con-
sists precisely in the biassed great opinion of them that
their party creates in its own interests and who shrink to
everyday figures as soon as circumstances call on them to
perform miracles. Unbelief is, in general, the mortal ene-
my of these reputed heroes and real saints. Hence their
majestically moral indignation at the dearth of enthusiasm
displayed by wits and scoffers.
The same evening, the ministers were summoned to the
Elysee; Bonaparte insists on the dismissal of Changar-
nier; five ministers refuse to sign it; the Moniteur an-
nounces a ministerial crisis, and the press of the party of
Order threatens to form a parliamentary army under Chan-
garnier's command. The party of Order had constitutional
authority to take this step. It merely had to appoint Chan-
gamier President of the National Assembly and requisi-
tion any number of troops it pleased for its protection. It
could do so all the more safely as Changarnier still ac-
tually stood at the head of the army and the Paris Nation-
al Guard and was only waiting to be requisitioned to-
gether with the army. The Bonapartist press did not as
yet even dare to question the right of the National Assem-
bly directly to requisition troops, a legal scruple that in
the given circumstances did not promise any success. That
the army would have obeyed the orders of the National
Assembly is probable when one bears in mind that Bona-
parte had to search all Paris for eight days in order, final-
ly, to find two generals Baraguay d'Hilliers and Saint-
Jean d'Angely who declared themselves ready to counter-
sign Changarnier's dismissal. That the party of Order,
87
however, would have found in its own ranks and in par-
liament the necessary number of votes for such a resolu-
tion is more than doubtful, when one considers that eight
days later two hundred and eighty-six votes detached
themselves from the party and that in December 1851, at
the last hour for decision, the Montagne still rejected a sim-
ilar proposal. Nevertheless, the burgraves might, per-
haps, still have succeeded in spurring the mass of their
party to a heroism that consisted in feeling themselves
secure behind a forest of bayonets and accepting the serv-
ices of an army that had deserted to their camp. Instead
of this, on the evening of January 6, Messrs, the Burgraves
betook themselves to the Elysee in order to make Bo-
naparte desist from dismissing Changarnier by using
statesmanlike phrases and urging considerations of state.
Whomever one seeks to persuade, one acknowledges as
master of the situation. On January 12, Bonaparte, assured
by this step, appoints a new ministry in which the lead-
ers of the old ministry, Fould and Baroche, remain. Saint-
Jean d'Angely becomes War Minister, the Moniteur pub-
lishes the decree dismissing Changarnier, and his command
is divided between Baraguay d'Hilliers, who receives the
First Army Division, and Perrot, who receives the Nation-
al Guard. The bulwark of society has been discharged,
and while this does not cause any tiles to fall from the
roofs, quotations on the bourse are, on the other hand,
going up.
By repulsing the army, which places itself in the per-
son of Changarnier at its disposal, and so surrendering
the army irrevocably to the President, the party of Order
declares that the bourgeoisie has forfeited its vocation to
rule. A parliamentary ministry no longer existed. Having
now indeed lost its grip on the army and National Guard,
what forcible means remained to it with which simulta-
neously to maintain the usurped authority of parliament
over the people and its constitutional authority against
the President? None. Only the appeal to forceless prin-
ciples remained to it now, to principles that it had itself
always interpreted merely as general rules, which one
prescribes for others in order to be able to move all the
more freely oneself. The dismissal of Changarnier and the
falling of the military power into Bonaparte's hands closes
the first part of the period we are considering, the pe-
riod of struggle between the party of Order and the exec-
utive power. War between the two powers has now been
openly declared, is openly waged, but only after the party
of Order has lost both arms and soldiers. Without the min-
istry, without the army, without the people, without pub-
lic opinion, .after its Electoral Law of May 31 no longer
the representative of the sovereign nation, sans eyes, sans
ears, sans teeth, sans everything, the National Assembly
had undergone a gradual transformation into an ancient
French Parliament^ 1 that has to leave action to the govern-
ment and content itself with growling remonstrances post
festum*
The party of Order receives the new ministry with a
storm of indignation. General Bedeau recalls to mind the
mildness of the Permanent Commission during the recess,
and the excessive consideration it had shown by waiving
the publication of its minutes. The Minister of the Interior
now himself insists on the publication of these minutes,
which by this time have naturally become as dull as ditch-
water, disclose no fresh facts and have not the slightest
effect on the blase public. Upon Remusat's proposal the
National Assembly retires into its bureaux and appoints
a "Committee for Extraordinary Measures/* Paris departs
the less from the rut of its everyday routine, since at this
moment trade is prosperous, manufactories are busy, corn
prices low, foodstuffs overflowing and the savings banks
receive fresh deposits daily. The "extraordinary measures"
that parliament has announced with so much noise fizzle
out on January 18 in a no-confidence vote against the min-
* Post festum: After the feast, that is, belatedly. Ed.
istry without General Changarnier even being mentioned.
The party of Order had been forced to frame its motion
in this way in order to secure the votes of the republicans,
as, of all the measures of the ministry, Changarnier's dis-
missal is precisely the only one which the republicans ap-
prove of, while the party of Order is in fact not in a po-
sition to censure the other ministerial acts, which it had
itself dictated.
The no-confidence vote of January 18 was passed by
four hundred and fifteen votes to two hundred and eighty-
six. Thus, it was carried only by a coalition of the extreme
Legitimists and Orleanists with the pure republicans and
the Montagne. Thus it proved that the party of Order had
lost in conflicts with Bonaparte not only the ministry, not
only the army, but also its independent parliamentary
majority, that a squad of representatives had deserted
from its camp, out of fanaticism for conciliation, out of
fear of the struggle, out of lassitude, out of family regard
for the state salaries so near and dear to them, out of
speculation on ministerial posts becoming vacant (Odilon
Barrot), out of sheer egoism, which makes the ordinary
bourgeois always inclined to sacrifice the general interest
of his class for this or that private motive. From the first,
the Bonapartist representatives adhered to the party of
Order only in the struggle against revolution. The leader
of the Catholic party, Montalembert, had already at that
time thrown his influence into the Bonapartist scale, since
he despaired of the parliamentary party's prospects of life.
Lastly, the leaders of this party, Thiers and Berryer, the
Orleanist and the Legitimist, were compelled openly to
proclaim themselves republicans, to confess that their
hearts were royalist but their heads republican, that the
parliamentary republic was the sole possible form for the
rule of the bourgeoisie as a whole. Thus they were com-
pelled, before the eyes of the bourgeois class itself, to stig-
matize the Restoration plans, which they continued inde-
90
fatigably to pursue behind parliament's back as an
intrigue as dangerous as it was brainless.
The no-confidence vote of January 18 hit the ministers
and not the President. But it was not the ministry, it was
the President who had dismissed Changarnier. Should the
party of Order impeach Bonaparte himself? On account of
his restoration desires? The latter merely supplemented
their own. On account of his conspiracy in connection with
the military reviews and the Society of December 10? They
had buried these themes long since under simple orders
of the day. On account of the dismissal of the hero of
January 29 and June 13, the man who in May 1850 threat-
ened to set fire to all four corners of Paris in the event of
a rising? Their allies of the Montague and Cavaignac did
not even allow them to raise the fallen bulwark of society
by means of an official attestation of sympathy. They them-
selves could not deny the President the constitutional au-
thority to dismiss a general. They only raged because he
made an unparliamentary use of his constitutional right.
Had they not continually made an unconstitutional use of
their parliamentary prerogative, particularly in regard to
the abolition of universal suffrage? They were therefore
reduced to moving within strictly parliamentary limits.
And it took that peculiar malady which since 1848 has
raged all over the Continent, parliamentary cretinism,
which holds those infected by it fast in an imaginary
world and robs them of all sense, all memory, all under-
standing of the rude external world it took this parlia-
mentary cretinism for those who had destroyed all the
conditions of parliamentary power with their own hands,
and were bound to destroy them in their struggle with the
other classes, still to regard their parliamentary victories
as victories and to believe they hit the President by strik-
ing at his ministers. They merely gave him the opportunity
to humiliate the National Assembly afresh in the eyes of
the nation. On January 20 the Moniteur announced that the
resignation of the entire ministry had been accepted. On
91
the pretext that no parliamentary party any longer had a
majority, as the vote of January 18, this fruit of the coali-
tion between Montagne and royalists, proved, and pending
the formation of a new majority, Bonaparte appointed a
so-called transition ministry, not one member of which
was a member of parliament, all being absolutely un-
known and insignificant individuals, a ministry of mere
clerks and copyists. The party of Order could now work
to exhaustion playing with these marionettes; the execu-
tive power no longer thought it worth while to be seriously
represented in the National Assembly. The more his min-
isters were pure dummies, the more manifestly Bona-
parte concentrated the whole executive power in his own
person and the more scope he had to exploit it for his
own ends.
In coalition with the Montagne, the party of Order re-
venged itself by rejecting the grant to the President of one
million eight hundred thousand francs, which the chief of
the Society of December 10 had compelled his ministerial
clerks to propose. This time a majority of only a hundred
and two votes decided the matter; thus twenty-seven fresh
votes had fallen away since January 18; the dissolution of
the party of Order was making progress. At the same time,
in order that there might not for a moment be any mistake
about the meaning of its coalition with the Montagne, it
scorned even to consider a proposal signed by a hundred
and eighty-nine members of the Montagne calling for a
general amnesty of political offenders. It sufficed for the
Minister of the Interior, a certain Vai'sse, to declare that
the tranquillity was only apparent, that in secret great
agitation prevailed, that in secret ubiquitous societies were
being organized, the democratic papers were preparing to
come out again, the reports from the Departments were
unfavourable, the Geneva refugees were directing a con-
spiracy spreading by way of Lyons over all the south of
France, France was on the verge of an industrial and com-
mercial crisis, the manufacturers of Roubaix had reduced
working hours, that the prisoners of Belle; Isle 42 were in
revolt it sufficed for even a mere Vaisse to conjure up
the red spectre and the party of Order rejected without
discussion a motion that would certainly have won the
National Assembly immense popularity and thrown Bo-
naparte back into its arrns. Instead of letting itself be in-
timidated by the executive power with the prospect of fresh
disturbances, it ought rather to have allowed the class
struggle a little elbowroom, so as to keep the executive
power dependent on itself. But it did not leel equal to the
task of playing with fire.
Meanwhile, the so-called transition mlaistry continued
to vegetate until the middle of April Bonaparte w r earied
and befooled the National Assembly with continual new
ministerial combinations. Now he seemed to want to form
a republican ministry with Lamartine and Billault, now a
parliamentary one with the inevitable Ddilon Barrot,
whose name may never be missing when a dupe is neces-
sary, then a Legitimist ministry with Vatimesnil and Be-
noit d'Azy, and then again an Orleanist one with Male-
ville. While he thus kept the different fractions of the party
of Order in tension against one another and alarmed them
as a whole by the prospect of a republican ministry and
the consequent inevitable restoration of univrsal suffrage,
he at the same time engendered in the bourgeoisie the con-
viction that his honest efforts to form a parliamentary min-
istry were being frustrated by the irreconcilability of the
royalist factions. The bourgeoisie, however, cried out all
the louder for a "strong government"; it found it all the
more unpardonable to leave France "withourt administra-
tion," the more a general commercial crisis seemed now
to be approaching and won recruits for Socialism in the
towns just as the ruinously low price of corn did in the
countryside. Trade became daily slacker, the unemployed
hands increased perceptibly, ten thousand workers, at
least, were breadless in Paris, innumerable factories stood
Idle in Rouen, Mulhouse, Lyons, Roubaix, TVmrcoing, St.
93
Etienne, Elbeuf, etc. Under these circumstances Bonaparte
could venture, on April 11, to restore the ministry of Jan-
uary 18: Messers. Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc., reinforced
by M. Leon Faucher, whom the Constituent Assembly
during its last days had, with the exception of five votes
cast by ministers, unanimously stigmatized by a vote of
no-confidence for sending out false telegrams. The Na-
tional Assembly had therefore gained a victory over the
ministry on January 18, had struggled with Bonaparte for
three months, only to have Fould and Baroche on April 11
admit the puritan Faucher as a third party into their min-
isterial alliance.
In November 1849, Bonaparte had contented himself
with an unparliamentary ministry, in January 1851 with
an extra-parliamentary one, and on April 11 he felt strong
enough to form an anti-parliamentary ministry, which
harmoniously combined in itself the no-confidence votes of
both Assemblies, the Constituent and the Legislative, the
republican and the royalist. This gradation of ministries
was the thermometer with which parliament could meas-
ure the decrease of its own vital heat. By the end of April
the latter had fallen so low that Persigny, in a personal in-
terview, could urge Changarnier to go over to the camp
of the President. Bonaparte, he assured him, regarded the
influence of the National Assembly as completely destroyed,
and the proclamation was already prepared that was to
be published after the coup d'etat, which was kept steadily
in view but was by chance again postponed. Changarnier
informed the leaders of the party of Order of the obituary
notice, but who believes that bedbug bites are fatal? And
parliament, stricken, disintegrated and death-tainted as
it was, could not prevail upon itself to see in its duel with
the grotesque chief of the Society of December 10 any-
thing but a duel with a bedbug. But Bonaparte answered
the party of Order as Agesilaus did King Agis:
"/ seem to thee an ant, but one day I shall be a
94
1
The coalition with the Montagne and the pure republic-
ans, to which the party of Order saw itself condemned in
its unavailing efforts to maintain possession of the mili-
tary power and to reconquer supreme control of the exec-
utive power, proved incontrovertibly that it had forfeited
its independent parliamentary majority. On May 28, the
mere power of the calendar, of the hour hand of the clock,
gave the signal for its complete disintegration. With
May 28, the last year of the life of the National Assembly
began. It had now to decide for continuing the Constitu-
tion unaltered or for revising it. But revision of the Con-
stitution, that implied not only rule of the bourgeoisie or
of the petty-bourgeois democracy, democracy or proleta-
rian anarchy, parliamentary republic or Bonaparte, it im-
plied at the same time Orleans or Bourbon! Thus fell in
the midst of parliament the apple of discord that was
bound to inflame openly the conflict of interests which
split the party of Order into hostile factions. The party of
Order was a combination of heterogeneous social sub-
stances. The question of revision generated a political tem-
perature at which the product again decomposed into its
original constituents.
The interest of the Bonapartists in a revision was sim-
ple. For them it was above all a question of abolishing
Article 45, which forbade Bonaparte's re-election and the
prolongation of his authority. No less simple appeared
the position of the republicans. They unconditionally re-
jected any revision; they saw in it a universal conspiracy
95
against the republic. Since they commanded more than a
quarter of the votes in the National Assembly and, accord-
ing to the Constitution, three-quarters of the votes were
required for a resolution for revision to be legally valid
and for the convocation of a revising Assembly, they only
needed to count their votes to be sure of victory. And they
were sure of victory.
As against these clear positions, the party of Order
found itself caught in inextricable contradictions. If it
should reject revision, it would imperil the status quo,
since it would leave Bonaparte only one way out, that of
force, and since on the second Sunday in May 1852, at
the decisive moment, it would be surrendering France to
revolutionary anarchy, with a President who had lost his
authority, with a parliament which for a long time had
not possessed it and with a people that meant to recon-
quer it. If it voted for constitutional revision, it knew that
it voted in vain and would be bound to fail constitution-
ally because of the veto of the republicans. If it unconsti-
tutionally declared a simple majority vote to be binding,
then it could hope to dominate the revolution only if it sub-
ordinated itself unconditionally to the sovereignty of the
executive power, then it would make Bonaparte master of
the Constitution, of its revision and of itself. Only a par-
tial revision which would prolong the authority of the
President would pave the way for imperial usurpation. A
general revision which would shorten the existence of the
republic would bring the dynastic claims into unavoidable
conflict, for the conditions of a Bourbon and the conditions
of an Orleanist Restoration were not only different, they
were mutually exclusive.
The parliamentary republic was more than the neutral
territory on which the two factions of the French bourgeoi-
sie, Legitimists and Orleanists, large landed property and
industry, could dwell side by side with equality of rights.
It was the unavoidable condition of their common rule, the
sole form of state in which their general class interest sub-
96
jected to itself at the same time both the claims of their
particular factions and all the remaining classes of so-
ciety. As royalists they fell back into their old antagonism,
into the struggle for the supremacy of landed property or
of money, and the highest expression of this antagonism,
its personification, was their kings themselves, their dy-
nasties. Hence the resistance of the party of Order to the
recall of the Bourbons.
The Orleanist and people's representative Creton had in
1849, 1850 and 1851 periodically introduced a motion for
the revocation of the decree exiling the royal families.
Just as regularly parliament presented the spectacle of
an Assembly of royalists that obdurately barred the gates
through which their exiled kings might return home. Rich-
ard III had murdered Henry VI, remarking that he was
too good for this world and belonged in heaven. They de-
clared France too bad to possess her kings again. Con-
strained by force of circumstances, they had become repub-
licans and repeatedly sanctioned the popular decision
that banished their kings from France.
A revision of the Constitution and circumstances com-
pelled taking it into consideration called in question,
along with the republic, the common rule of the two
bourgeois factions, and revived, with the possibility of a
monarchy, the rivalry of the interests which it had predom-
inantly represented by turns, the struggle for the suprem-
acy of one faction over the other. The diplomats of the
party of Order believed they could settle the struggle by
an amalgamation of the two dynasties, by a so-called
fusion of the royalist parties and their royal houses. The
real fusion of the Restoration and the July Monarchy was
the parliamentary republic, in which Orleanist and Legit-
imist colours were obliterated and the various species of
bourgeois disappeared in the bourgeois as such, in the
bourgeois genus. Now, however, Orleanist was to become
Legitimist and Legitimist Orleanist. Royalty, in which
their antagonism was personified, was to embody their
97
unity; the expression of their exclusive factional interests
was to become the expression of their common class In-
terest; the monarchy was to do that which only the aboli-
tion of two monarchies, the republic, could do and had
done. This was the philosopher's stone, to produce which
the doctors of the party of Order racked their brains. As if
the Legitimist monarchy could ever become the monarchy
of the industrial bourgeois or the bourgeois monarchy ever
become the monarchy of the hereditary landed aristocracy.
As if landed property and industry coulcl fraternize under
one crown, when the crown could only descend to one
head, the head of the elder brother or of the younger. As if
industry could come to terms with landed property at all,
so long as landed property does not decide itself to be-
come industrial. If Henry V should die tomorrow, the
Count of Paris would not on that account become the king
of the Legitimists unless he ceased to be the king of the
Orleanists. The philosophers of fusion, however, who be-
came more vociferous in proportion as the question of re-
vision came to the fore, who had provided themselves with
an official daily organ in the Assembtee Nationals^ and
who are again at work even at this very moment (Februa-
ry 1852) 9 considered the whole difficulty to be due to the
opposition and rivalry of the two dynasties. The attempts
to reconcile the Orleans family with Henry V, begun since
the death of Louis Philippe, but, like the dynastic intrigues
generally, played at only while the National Assembly
was in recess, during the entr'actes, behind the scenes,
sentimental coquetry with the old superstition rather than
seriously-meant business, now became grand perform-
ances of state, enacted by the party of Order on the public
stage, instead of in amateur theatricals, as hitherto. The
couriers sped from Paris to Venice, 45 from Venice to Cla-
remont, from Claremont to Paris. The Count of Chambord
issues a manifesto in which "with the help of all the mem-
bers of his family" he announces not his, but the "nation-
al" Restoration. The Orleanist Salvandy throws himself
98
at the feet of Henry V. The Legitimist chiefs, Berryer, Be-
noit d'Azy, Saint-Priest, travel to Claremont in order to
persuade the Orleans set, but in vain. The fusionists per-
ceive too late that the interests of the two bourgeois factions
neither lose exclusiveness nor gain pliancy when they be-
come accentuated in the form of family interests, the in-
terests of two royal houses. If Henry V were to recognize
the Count of Paris as his successor the sole success that
the fusion could achieve at best the House of Orleans
would not win any claim that the childlessness of Henry V
had not already secured to it, but it would lose all claims
that it had gained through the July Revolution. It would
waive its original claims, all the titles that it had wrested
from the older branch of the Bourbons in almost a hun-
dred years of struggle; it would barter away its historical
prerogative, the prerogative of the modern kingdom, for
the prerogative of its genealogical tree. The fusion, there-
fore, would be nothing but a voluntary abdication of the
House of Orleans, its resignation to Legitimacy, repentant
withdrawal from the Protestant state church into the Cath-
olic. A withdrawal, moreover, that would not even bring
it to the throne which it had lost, but to the throne's steps,
on which it had been born. The old Orleanist ministers,
Guizot, Duchatel, etc., who likewise hastened to Claremont
to advocate the fusion, in fact represented merely the Kat~
zenjammer* over the July Revolution, the despair felt in
regard to the bourgeois kingdom and the kingliness of the
bourgeois, the superstitious belief in Legitimacy as the last
charm against anarchy. Imagining themselves mediators
between Orleans and Bourbons, they were in reality merely
Orleanist renegades, and the prince of Joinville received
them as such. On the other hand, the viable, bellicose sec-
tion of the Orleanists, Thiers, Baze, etc., convinced Louis
Philippe's family all the more easily that if any directly
monarchist restoration presupposed the fusion of the two
* Katzenjammer: The "morning-after" feeling. Ed
99
dynasties and if am such fusion, however, presupposed
abdication of the House of Orleans, it was, on the contrary,
wholly In accord with the tradition of their forefathers to
recognize the republic for the moment and wait until
events permitted the conversion of the presidential chair
into a throne. Rumours of Joinville's candidature were cir-
culated, public curiosity was kept in suspense and, a few
months later, in September, after the rejection of revision,
his candidature was publicly proclaimed.
The attempt at a royalist fusion of Orleanists with Le-
gitimists had thus not only failed; it had destroyed their
parliamentary fusion, their common republican form, and
had broken up the party of Order into its original compo-
nent parts; but the more the estrangement between Clare-
mont and Venice grew, the more their settlement broke
down and the Joinville agitation gained ground, so much
the more eager and earnest became the negotiations be-
tween Bonaparte's minister Faucher and the Legitimists.
The disintegration of the party of Order did not stop
at its original elements. Each of the two great factions,
in its turn, underwent decomposition anew. It was as if
all the old nuances that had formerly fought and jostled
one another within each of the two circles, whether Legiti-
mist or Orleanist, had thawed out again like dry Infusoria
on contact with water, as if they had acquired anew suffi-
cient vital energy to form groups of their own and inde-
pendent antagonisms. The Legitimists dreamed that they
were back among the controversies between the Tuileries
and the Pavilion Marsan, between Villele and Polignac. 46
The Orleanists relived the golden days of the tourneys be-
tween Guizot, Mole, Broglie, Thiers and Odilon Barrot.
That part of the party of Order which was eager for re-
vision, but was divided again on the limits to revision, a
section composed of the Legitimists led by Berryer and
Falloux, on the one hand, and by La Rochejaquelein, on the
other, and of the conflict-weary Orleanists led by Mole,
Broglie, Montalembert and Odilon Barrot, agreed with the
100
Bonapartist representatives on the following indefinite
and broadly framed motion:
"With the object of restoring to the nation the full exercise of its
sovereignty, the undersigned Representatives move that the Constitu-
tion be revised."
At the same time, however, they unanimously declared
through their reporter Tocqueville that the National Assem-
bly had not the right to move the abolition of the republic,
that this right was vested solely in the Revising Chamber.
For the rest, the Constitution might be revised only in a
"legal" manner, hence only if the constitutionally pre-
scribed three-quarters of the number of votes were cast in
favour of revision. On July 19, after six days of stormy de-
bate, revision was rejected, as was to be anticipated. Four
hundred and forty-six votes were cast for it, but two hun-
dred and seventy-eight against. The extreme Orleanists,
Thiers, Changarnier, etc., voted with the republicans and
the Montagne.
Thus the majority of parliament declared against the
Constitution, but this Constitution itself declared for the
minority and that its vote was binding. But had not the
party of Order subordinated the Constitution to the par-
liamentary majority on May 31, 1850, and on June 13,
1849? Up to now, was not its whole policy based on the
subordination of the paragraphs of the Constitution to
the decisions of the parliamentary majority? Had it not
left to the democrats the antediluvian superstitious belief
in the letter of the law, and castigated the democrats for
it? At the present moment, however, revision of the Con-
stitution meant nothing but continuation of the presidential
authority, just as continuation of the Constitution meant
nothing but Bonaparte's deposition. Parliament had de-
clared for him, but the Constitution declared against par-
liament. He therefore acted in the sense of parliament
when he tore up the Constitution and he acted in the sense
of the Constitution when he dispersed parliament.
101
Parliament had declared the Constitution and, with the
latter, its own rule to be "beyond the majority"; by its vote
it had abolished the Constitution and prolonged the term
of presidential power, while declaring at the same time
that neither can the one die nor the other live so long as
it itself continues to exist. Those who'were to bury it were
standing at the door. While it debated on revision, Bona-
parte removed General Baraguay d'Hilliers, who had
proved irresolute, from the command of the First Army Di-
vision and appointed in his place General Magnan, the vic-
tor of Lyons, the hero of the December days, one of his
creatures, who under Louis Philippe had already com-
promised himself more or less in Bonaparte's favour on
the occasion of the Boulogne expedition.
The party of Order proved by its decision on revision
that it knew neither how to rule nor how to serve; neither
how to live nor how to die; neither how to suffer the repub-
lic nor how to overthrow it; neither how to uphold the
Constitution nor how to throw it overboard; neither how to
cooperate with the President nor how to break with him.
To whom, then, did it look for the solution of all the con-
tradictions? To the calendar, to the course of events. It
ceased to presume to sway the events. It therefore chal-
lenged the events to assume sway over it, and thereby
challenged the power to which in the struggle against the
people it had surrendered one attribute after another until
it itself stood impotent before this power. In order that the
head of the executive power might be able the more un-
disturbedly to draw up his plan of campaign against it,
strengthen his means of attack, select his tools and fortify
his positions, it resolved precisely at this critical moment
to retire from the stage and adjourn for three months,
from August 10 to November 4.
The parliamentary party was not only dissolved into its
two great factions, each of these factions was not only
split up within itself, but the party of Order in parliament
had fallen out with the party of Order outside parliament.
W2
The spokesmen and scribes of the bourgeoisie, its platform
and its press, in short, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie
and the bourgeoisie itself, the representatives and the rep-
resented, faced one another in estrangement and no longer
understood one another.
The Legitimists in the provinces, with their limited ho-
rizon and their unlimited enthusiasm, accused their par-
liamentary leaders, Berryer and Falloux, of deserting to
the Bonapartist camp and of defection from Henry V.
Their fleur-de-lis minds believed in the fall of man, but
not in diplomacy.
Far more fateful and decisive was the breach of the com-
mercial bourgeoisie with its politicians. It reproached
them, not as the Legitimists reproached theirs, with hav-
ing abandoned their principles, but, on the contrary, with
clinging to principles that had become useless.
I have already indicated above that since Fould's entry
into the ministry the section of the commercial bourgeoisie
which had held the lion's share of power under Louis Phi-
lippe, namely, the aristocracy of finance, had become Bona-
partist. Fould represented not only Bonaparte's interests
in the bourse, he represented at the same time the interests
of the bourse before Bonaparte. The position of the aris-
tocracy of finance is most strikingly depicted in a passage
from its European organ, the London Economist. In its
number of February 1, 1851, its Paris correspondent writes:
"Now we have It stated from numerous quarters that above all
things France demands tranquillity. The President declares it in his
message to the Legislative Assembly; it is echoed from the tribune; ^
is asserted in the journals; it is announced from the pulpit; it is demon-
strated 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 victorious."
In its issue of November 29, 1851, The Economist de-
clares in its own name:
"The President is the guardian of order, and is now recognized as
such on every Stock Exchange of Europe "
103
The aristocracy of finance, therefore, condemned the
parliamentary struggle of the party of Order with the ex-
ecutive power as a disturbance of order, and celebrated
every victory of the President over its ostensible represen-
tatives as a victory of order. By the aristocracy of finance
must here be understood not merely the great loan pro-
moters and speculators in public funds, in regard to whom
it is immediately obvious that their interests coincide with
the interests of the state power. All modern finance, the
whole of the banking business, is interwoven in the closest
fashion with public credit. A part of their business capital
is necessarily invested and put out at interest in quickly
convertible public funds. Their deposits, the capital placed
at their disposal and distributed by them among merchants
and industrialists, are partly derived from the dividends
of holders of government securities. If in every epoch the
stability of the state power signified Moses and the proph-
ets to the entire money market and to the priests of
this money market, why not all the more so today, when
every deluge threatens to sweep away the old states, and
the old state debts with them?
The industrial bourgeoisie, too, in its fanaticism for or-
der, was angered by the squabbles of the parliamentary
party of Order with the executive power. After their vote
of January 18 on the occasion of Changarnier's dismissal,
Thiers, Angles, Sainte-Beuve, etc., received from their con-
stituents, in precisely the industrial districts, public re-
proofs in which particularly their coalition with the Mon-
tagne was scourged as high treason to order. If, as we
have seen, the boastful taunts, the petty intrigues which
marked the struggle of the party of Order with the Pres-
ident merited no better reception, then, on the other hand,
this bourgeois party, which required its representatives to
allow the military power to pass from its own parliament
to an adventurous pretender without offering resistance,
was not even worth the intrigues that were squandered in
its interests. It proved that the struggle to maintain its
104
public interests, its own class interests, its political pow-
er, only troubled and upset it, as it was a disturbance of
private business.
With barely an exception, the bourgeois dignitaries of
the Departmental towns, the municipal authorities, the
judges of the Commercial Courts, etc., everywhere received
Bonaparte on his tours in the most servile manner, even
when, as in Dijon, he made an unrestrained attack on
the National Assembly, and especially on the party of Or-
der.
When trade was good, as it still was at the beginning
of 1851, the commercial bourgeoisie raged against any
parliamentary struggle, lest trade be put out of humour.
When trade was bad, as it continually was from the end
of February 1851, the commercial bourgeoisie accused the
parliamentary struggles of being the cause of stagnation
and cried out for them to stop in order that trade might
start again. The revision debates came on just in this bad
period. Since the question here was whether the existing
form of state was to be or not to be, the bourgeoisie felt
itself all the more justified in demanding from its Repre-
sentatives the ending of this torturous provisional arrange-
ment and at the same time the maintenance of the status
quo. There w r as no contradiction in this. By the end of the
provisional arrangement it understood precisely its conti-
nuation, the postponement to a distant future of the mo-
ment when a decision had to be reached. The status quo
could be maintained in only two ways: prolongation of
Bonaparte's authority or his constitutional retirement and
the election of Cavaignac. A section of the bourgeoisie de-
sired the latter solution and knew no better advice to give
its Representatives than to keep silent and leave the burn-
ing question untouched. They were of the opinion that if
their Representatives did not speak, Bonaparte would not
act. They wanted an ostrich parliament that would hide its
head in order to remain unseen. Another section of the
bourgeoisie desired, because Bonaparte was already in the
106
presidential chair, to leave him sitting in it, so that every-
thing might remain in the same old rut. They were indig-
nant because their parliament did not openly infringe the
Constitution and abdicate without ceremony.
The General Councils of the Departments, those provin-
cial representative bodies of the big bourgeoisie, which
met from August 25 on during the recess of the National
Assembly, declared almost unanimously for revision, and
thus against parliament and in favour of Bonaparte.
Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its
parliamentary representatives the bourgeoisie displayed
its wrath against its literary representatives, its own
press. The sentences to ruinous fines and shameless terms
of imprisonment, on the verdicts of bourgeois juries, for
every attack of bourgeois journalists on Bonaparte's usur-
pationist desires, for every attempt of the press to defend
the political rights of the bourgeoisie against the execu-
tive power, astonished not merely France, but all Europe.
While the parliamentary party of Order, by its clamour
for tranquillity, as ! have shown, committed itself to quies-
cence, while it declared the political rule of the bourgeoi-
sie to be incompatible with the safety and existence of the
bourgeoisie, by destroying with its own hands in the
struggle against the other classes of society all the condi-
tions for its own regime, the parliamentary regime, the
extra-parliamentary mass of the bourgeoisie, on the other
hand, by its servility towards the President, by its vilifica-
tion of parliament, by its brutal maltreatment of its own
press, invited Bonaparte to suppress and annihilate its
speaking and writing section, its politicians and its lite-
rati, its platform and its press, in order that it might then
be able to pursue its private affairs with full confidence in
the protection of a strong and unrestricted government. It
declared unequivocally that it longed to get rid of its own
political rule in order to get rid of the troubles and dan-
gers of ruling.
106
And this extra-parliamentary bourgeoisie, which had al-
ready rebelled against the purely parliamentary and liter-
ary struggle for the rule of its own class and betrayed
the leaders of this struggle, now dares after the event to
indict the proletariat for not having risen in a bloody
struggle, a life-and-death struggle on its behalf! This
bourgeoisie, which every moment sacrificed its general
class interests, that is, its political interests, to the nar-
rowest and most sordid private interests, and demanded
a similar sacrifice from its Representatives, now moans
that the proletariat has sacrificed its [the bourgeoisie's]
ideal political interests to its [the proletariat's] material
interests. It poses as a lovely being that has been mis-
understood and deserted in the decisive hour by the prole-
tariat misled by Socialists. And it finds a general echo in
the bourgeois world. Naturally, I do not speak here of
German shyster politicians and riffraff of the same persua-
sion. I refer, for example, to the already quoted Econo-
mist, which as late as November 29, 1851, that is, four
days prior to the coup d'etat, had declared Bonaparte to be
the "guardian of order," but the Thiers and Berryers to be
"anarchists," and on December 27, 1851, after Bonaparte
had quieted these anarchists, is already vociferous concern-
ing the treason to "the skill, knowledge, discipline, men-
tal influence, intellectual resources and moral weight of
the middle and upper ranks" committed by the masses of
"ignorant, untrained, and stupid protetaires" The stupid,
ignorant and vulgar mass was none other than the bour-
geois mass itself.
In the year 1851, France, to be sure, had passed through
a kind of minor trade crisis. The end of February showed
a decline in exports compared with 1850; in March trade
suffered and factories closed down; in April the position
of the industrial Departments appeared as desperate as
after the February days; in May business had still not re-
vived; as late as June 28 the holdings of the Bank of France
showed, by the enormous growth of deposits and the
107
equally great decrease in advances on bills of exchange,
that production was at a standstill, and it was not until
the middle of October that a progressive improvement of
business again set in. The French bourgeoisie attributed
this trade stagnation to purely political causes, to the
struggle between parliament and the executive power, to
the precariousness of a merely provisional form of state,
to the terrifying prospect of the second Sunday in May
1852. I will not deny that all these circumstances had a
depressing effect on some branches of industry in Paris
and the Departments. But in any case this influence of the
political conditions was only local and inconsiderable.
Does this require further proof than the fact that the im-
provement of trade set in towards the middle of October,
at the very moment when the political situation grew
worse, the political horizon darkened and a thunderbolt
from Elysium was expected at any moment? For the rest,
the French bourgeois, whose "skill, knowledge, spiritual
insight and intellectual resources" reach no further than
his nose, could throughout the period of the Industrial Ex-
hibition in London 47 have found the cause of his commer-
cial misery right under his nose. While in France factories
were closed down, in England commercial bankruptcies
broke out. While in April and May the industrial panic
reached a climax in France, in April and May the com-
mercial panic reached a climax in England. Like the
French woollen industry, so the English woollen industry
suffered, and as French silk manufacture, so did English
silk manufacture. True, the English cotton mills continued
working, but no longer at the same profits as in 1849 and
1850. The only difference was that the crisis in France was
industrial, in England commercial; that while in France
the factories stood idle, in England they extended opera-
tions, but under less favourable conditions than in preced-
ing years; that in France it was exports, in England im-
ports which were hardest hit. The common cause, which
is naturally not to be sought within the bounds of the
108
French political horizon, was obvious The years 1849 and
1850 were years of the greatest material prosperity and of
an overproduction that appeared as such only in 1851. At
the beginning of this year it was given a further special
impetus by the prospect of the Industrial Exhibition. In
addition there were the following special circumstances:
first, the partial failure of the cotton crop in 1850 and 1851,
then the certainty of a bigger cotton crop than had been
expected; first the rise, then the sudden fall, in short, the
fluctuations in the price of cotton. The crop of raw silk, in
France at least, had turned out to be even below the aver-
age yield. Woollen manufacture, finally, had expanded so
much since 1848 that the production of wool could not
keep pace with it and the price of raw wool rose out of all
proportion to the price of woollen manufactures. Here,
then, in the raw material of three industries for the world
market, we have already threefold material for a stagna-
tion in trade. Apart from these special circumstances, the
apparent crisis of 1851 was nothing else but the halt which
over-production and over-speculation invariably make In
describing the industrial cycle, before they summon all
their strength in order to rush feverishly through the final
phase of this cycle and arrive once more at their starting-
point, the general trade crisis. During such intervals in
the history of trade, commercial bankruptcies break out in
England, while in France industry itself is reduced to idle-
ness, being partly forced into retreat by the competition,
just then becoming intolerable, of the English in all mar-
kets, and being partly singled out for attack as a luxury
industry by every business stagnation. Thus, besides the
general crisis, France goes through national trade crises
of her own, which are nevertheless determined and condi-
tioned far more by the general state of the world market
than by French local influences. It will not be without in-
terest to contrast the judgment of the English bourgeois
with the prejudice of the French bourgeois. In its annual
109
trade report for 1851, one of the largest Liverpool houses
writes:
"Few years have more thoroughly belied the anticipations formed
at their commencement than the one just closed; instead of the great
prosperity which was almost unanimously looked for it has proved one
of the most discouraging that has been seen for the last quarter of a
century this, of course, refers to the mercantile, not to the manufac-
turing classes. And yet there certainly were grounds for anticipating
the reverse at the beginning of the year stocks of produce were
moderate, money was abundant, and food was cheap, a plentiful har-
vest well secured, unbroken peace on the Continent, and no political
or fiscal disturbances at home; indeed, the wings of commerce were
never more unfettered. ... To what source, then, is this disastrous re-
sult to be attributed? We believe to over-trading both in imports and
exports. (Unless our merchants will put more stringent limits to their
freedom of action, nothing but a triennial panic can keep us in
check." 48
Now picture to yourself the French bourgeois, how in
the throes of this business panic his trade-crazy brain is
tortured, set in a whirl and stunned by rumours of coups
d'etat and the restoration of universal suffrage, by the
struggle between parliament and the executive power, by
the Fronde war between Orleanists and Legitimists, by the
communist conspiracies in the south of France, by alleged
Jacqueries in the Departments of Nievre and Cher, by the
advertisements of the different candidates for the presi-
dency, by the cheapjack solutions offered by the journals,
by the threats of the republicans to uphold the Constitu-
tion and universal suffrage by force of arms, by the gospel-
preaching emigre heroes in partibus, who announced that
the world would come to an end on the second Sunday in
May 1852 think of all this and you will comprehend why
in this unspeakable, deafening chaos of fusion, revision,
prorogation, constitution, conspiration, coalition, emigra-
tion, usurpation and revolution, the bourgeois madly snorts
at his parliamentary republic: "Rather an end with terror
than terror without end!"
Bonaparte understood this cry. His power of compre-
hension was sharpened by the growing turbulence of cre-
110
ditors who, with each sunset which brought settling day,
the second Sunday in May 1852, nearer, saw a movement
of the stars protesting their earthly bills of exchange. They
had become veritable astrologers. The National Assembly
had blighted Bonaparte's hopes of a constitutional prolon-
gation of his authority; the candidature of the Prince of
Joiriville forbade further vacillation.
If ever an event has, w r ell in advance of its coming, cast
its shadow before, it was Bonaparte's coup d'etat. As early
as January 29, 1849, barely a month after his election, he
had made a proposal about it to Changarnier. In the sum-
mer of 1849 his own Prime Minister, Odilon Barrot, had
covertly denounced the policy of coups d'etat] in the winter
of 1850 Thiers had openly done so. In May 1851, Persig-
ny had sought once more to w r in Changarnier for the
coup] the Messager de VAssemblee^ had published an ac-
count of these negotiations. During every parliamentary
storm, the Bonapartist journals threatened a coup d'etat,
and the nearer the crisis drew, the louder grew their tone.
In the orgies that Bonaparte kept up every night with men
and women of the "swell mob/' as soon as the hour of mid-
night approached and copious potations had loosened
tongues and fired imaginations, the coup d'etat was fixed
for the following morning. Swords were drawn, glasses
clinked, the Representatives were thrown out of the win-
dow, the imperial mantle fell upon Bonaparte's shoulders,
until the following morning banished the spook once more
and astonished Paris learned, from vestals of little reti-
cence and from indiscreet paladins, of the danger it had
once again escaped. During the months of September and
October rumours of a coup d'etat followed fast one after
the other. Simultaneously, the shadow took on colour, like
a variegated daguerreotype. Look up the September and
October copies of the organs of the European daily press
and you will find, word for word, intimations like the fol-
lowing: "Paris is full of rumours of a coup d'etat. The capi-
tal is to be filled with troops during the night, and the
next morning is to bring decrees which will dissolve the
National Assembly, declare the Department of the Seine in
a state of siege, restore universal suffrage and appeal to
the people. Bonaparte is said to be seeking ministers for
the execution of these illegal decrees." The letters that
bring these tidings always end with the fateful word
"postponed" The coup d'etat was ever the fixed idea of Bo-
naparte. With this idea he had again set foot on French
soil. He was so obsessed by it that he continually betrayed
it and blurted it out. He was so weak that, just as con-
tinually, he gave it up again. The shadow of the coup
d'etat bad become so familiar to the Parisians as a spec-
tre that they were not willing to believe in it when it final-
ly appeared in the flesh. What allowed the coup d'etat to
succeed was, therefore, neither the reticent reserve of the
chief of the Society of December 10 nor the fact that the
National Assembly was caught unawares. If it succeeded,
it succeeded despite his indiscretion and with its fore-
knowledge, a necessary, inevitable result of antecedent de-
velopments.
On October 10 Bonaparte announced to his ministers
his decision to restore universal suffrage; on the sixteenth
they handed in their resignations; on the twenty-sixth
Paris learned of the formation of the Thorigny ministry.
Police Prefect Carlier was simultaneously replaced by
Maupas; the head of the First Military Division, Magnan,
concentrated the most reliable regiments in the capital.
On November 4, the National Assembly resumed its sit-
tings. It had nothing better to do than to recapitulate in a
short, succinct form the course it had gone through and to
prove that it was buried only after it had died.
The first post that it forfeited in the struggle with the
executive power was the ministry. It had solemnly to ad-
mit this loss by accepting at full value the Thorigny min-
istry, a mere shadow cabinet. The Permanent Commis-
sion had received M. Giraud with laughter when he pre-
sented himself in the name of the new ministers. Such a
112
weak ministry for such strong measures as the restora-
tion of universal suffrage! Yet the precise object was to
get nothing through in parliament, but everything against
parliament.
On the very first day of its re-opening, the National As-
sembly received the message from Bonaparte in which he
demanded the restoration of universal suffrage and the
abolition of the law of May 31, 1850. The same day his min-
isters introduced a decree to this effect. The National As-
sembly at once rejected the ministry's motion of urgency
and rejected the law itself on November 13 by three
hundred and fifty-five votes to three hundred and forty-
eight. Thus, it tore up its mandate once more; it once more
confirmed the fact that it had transformed itself from the
freely elected representatives of the people into the usur-
patory parliament of a class; it acknowledged once more
that it had itself cut in two the muscles which connected
the parliamentary head with the body of the nation.
If by its motion to restore universal suffrage the execu-
tive power appealed from the National Assembly to the
people, the legislative power appealed by its Quaestors*
Bill from the people to the army. This Quaestors* Bill was
to establish its right of directly requisitioning troops, of
forming a parliamentary army. While it thus designated
the army as the arbitrator between itself and the people,
between itself and Bonaparte, while it recognized the
army as the decisive state power, it had to confirm, on the
other hand, the fact that it had long given up its claim to
dominate this power. By debating its right to requisition
troops, instead of requisitioning them at once, it betrayed
its doubts about its own powers. By rejecting the Quaes-
tors' Bill, it made public confession of its impotence. This
bill was defeated, its proponents lacking 108 votes of a
majority. The Montagne thus decided the issue. It found
itself in the position of Buridan's ass, not, indeed, between
two bundles of hay with the problem of deciding which
was the more attractive, but between two showers of blows
us
with the problem of deciding which was the harder. On the
one hand, there was the fear of Changarnier; on the other,
the fear of Bonaparte. It must be confessed that the posi-
tion was no heroic one.
On November 18, an amendment was moved to the law
on municipal elections introduced by the party of Order,
to the effect that instead of three years', one year's domi-
cile should suffice for municipal electors. The amendment
was lost by a single vote, but this one vote immediately
proved to be a mistake. By splitting up into its hostile fac-
tions, the party of Order had long ago forfeited its inde-
pendent parliamentary majority. It showed now that there
was no longer any majority at all in parliament. The Na-
tional Assembly had become incapable of transacting busi-
ness. Its atomic constituents were no longer held togeth-
er by any force of cohesion; it had drawn its last breath;
it was dead.
Finally, a few days before the catastrophe, the extra-
parliamentary mass of the bourgeoisie was solemnly to
confirm once more its breach with the bourgeoisie in par-
liament. Thiers, as a parliamentary hero infected more
than the rest with the incurable disease of parliamentary
cretinism, had, after the death of parliament, hatched out,
together with the Council of State, a new parliamentary
intrigue, a Responsibility Law by which the President was
to be firmly held within the limits of the Constitution. Just
as, on laying the foundation stone of the new market halls
in Paris on September 15, Bonaparte, like a second Masa-
niello, had enchanted the dames des halles, the fishwives
to be sure, one fishwife outweighed seventeen burgraves
in real power; just as after the introduction of the Quaes-
tors' Bill he enraptured the lieutenants he regaled in the
Elysee, so now, on November 25, he swept off their feet the
industrial bourgeoisie, which had gathered at the circus
to receive at his hands prize medals for the London In-
dustrial Exhibition. I shall give the significant portion of
his speech as reported in the Journal des Debats:
114
"With such unhoped-ior successes, 1 am justified in reiterating how
great the French republic would be if it were permitted to pursue its
real interests and reform its institutions, Instead of being constantly
disturbed by demagogues, on the one hand, and by monarchist hal-
lucinations, on the other. (Loud, stormy and repeated applause from
every part of the amphitheatre ) The monarchist hallucinations hinder
all progress and all important branches of industry. In place of pro-
gress nothing but struggle One sees men who were formerly the most
zealous supporters of the royal authority and prerogative become
partisans of a Convention merely in order to weaken the authority that
has sprung from universal suffrage. (Loud and repeated applause.) We
see men who have suffered most from the Revolution, and have
deplored it most, provoke a new one, and merely in order to fetter the
nation's will. . . I promise you tranquillity for the future, etc., etc.
(Bravo, bravo, a storm of bravos)."
Thus the industrial bourgeoisie applauds with servile
bravos the coup d'etat of December 2, the annihilation of
parliament, the downfall of its own rule, the dictatorship
of Bonaparte. The thunder of applause on November 25
had its answer in the thunder of cannon on December 4,
and it was on the house of Monsieur Sallandrouze, who
had clapped most, that they clapped most of the bombs.
Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, went
alone into its midst, drew out his watch in order that it
should not continue to exist a minute after the time limit
fixed by him, and drove out each one of the members of
parliament with hilariously humourous taunts. Napoleon,
smaller than his prototype, at least betook himself on the
eighteenth Brumaire to the legislative body and read out
to it, though in a faltering voice, its sentence of death. The
second Bonaparte, who, moreover, found himself in pos-
session of an executive power very different from that of
Cromwell or Napoleon, sought his model not in the annals
of world history, but in the annals of the Society of De-
cember 10, in the annals of the criminal courts, He robs
the Bank of France of twenty-five million francs, buys Gen-
eral Magnan with a million, the soldiers with fifteen
francs apiece and liquor, comes together with his accom-
plices secretly like a thief in the night, has the houses of
115
the most dangerous parliamentary leaders broken into and
Cavaignac, Lamoriciere, Le Flo, Changarnier, Charras,
Tfaiers, Baze, etc., dragged from their beds and put in pris-
on, the chief squares of Paris and the parliamentary build-
Ing occupied by troops, and cheap-Jack placards posted
early in the morning on all the walls, proclaiming the dis-
solution of the National Assembly and the Council of State,
the restoration of universal suffrage and the placing of the
Seine Department in a state of siege. In like manner, he
inserted a little later in the Moniteur a false document
which asserted that influential parliamentarians had
grouped themselves round him and formed a state consulta.
The rump parliament, assembled in the mairie building
of the tenth arrondissement and consisting mainly of Legit-
imists and Orleanists, votes the deposition of Bonaparte
amid repeated cries of "Long live the Republic," unavail-
ingly harangues the gaping crowds before the building
and is finally led off in the custody of African sharpshoot-
ers, first to the d'Orsay barracks, and later packed into
prison vans and transported to the prisons of Mazas, Hani
and Vincennes. Thus ended the party of Order, the Legis-
lative Assembly and the February Revolution. Before has-
tening to close, let us briefly summarize the latter's his-
tory:
I. First period. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. Feb-
ruary period. Prologue. Universal brotherhood swindle.
II. Second period. Period of constituting the republic
and of the Constituent National Assembly.
1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all 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. Proc-
lamation of a state of siege in Paris. The bourgeois dicta-
torship set aside on December 10 by the election of Bona-
parte as President.
116
3. December 20, 1848 to May 23, 1849. Struggle of the
Constituent Assembly with Bonaparte and with the party
of Order in alliance with him. Passing of the Constituent
Assembly. Fall of the republican bourgeoisie.
III. Third period. Period of the constitutional republic
and of the Legislative National Assembly.
1. May 28, 1849 to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the petty
bourgeoisie with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. De-
feat of the petty-bourgeois democracy.
2. June 13, 1849 to May 31, 1850. Parliamentary dictator-
ship of the party of Order. It completes its rule by abolish-
ing universal suffrage, but loses the parliamentary min-
istry.
3. May 31, 1850 to December 2, 1851. Struggle between
the parliamentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte.
(a) May 31, 1850 to January 12, 1851. Parliament loses
the supreme command of the army.
(b) January 12 to April 11, 1851. It is worsted in its at-
tempts to regain the administrative power. The party of
Order loses its independent parliamentary majority. Its
coalition with the republicans and the Montagne.
(c) April 11, 1851 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revi-
sion, fusion, prorogation. The party of Order decomposes
into its separate constituents. The breach between the
bourgeois parliament and press and the mass of the bour-
geoisie becomes definite.
(d) October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach be-
tween parliament and the executive power, Parliament per-
forms its dying act and succumbs, left in the lurch by its
own class, by the army and by all the remaining classes.
Passing of the parliamentary regime and of bourgeois
rule. Victory of Bonaparte. Parody of restoration of em-
pire,
VII
On the threshold of the February Revolution, the social
republic appeared as a phrase, as a prophecy. In the June
days of 1848, it was drowned in the blood of the Paris pro-
letariat, but it haunts the subsequent acts of the drama
like a ghost. The democratic republic announces its arriv-
al. On June 13, 1849, it is dissipated together with its
petty bourgeois, who have taken to their heels, but in its
flight it blows its own trumpet with redoubled boastful-
ness. The parliamentary republic, together with the bour-
geoisie, takes possession of the entire stage; it enjoys its
existence to the full, but December 2, 1851 buries it to the
accompaniment of the anguished cry of the royalists in
coalition: "Long live the Republic!"
The French bourgeoisie balked at the domination of the
working proletariat; it has brought the lumpenproletarlat
to domination, with the chief of the Society of December
10 at the head. The bourgeoisie kept France in breathless
fear of the future terrors of red anarchy; Bonaparte dis-
counted this future for it when, on December 4, he had the
eminent bourgeois of the Boulevard Montmartre and the
Boulevard des Italiens shot down at their windows by the
liquor-inspired army of order. It apotheosized the sword;
the sword rules it. It destroyed the revolutionary press; its
own press has been destroyed. It placed popular meetings
under police supervision; its salons are under the super-
vision of the police. It disbanded the democratic National
Guards; its own National Guard is disbanded. It imposed
U8
,a state of siege; a state of siege is imposed upon it. It sup-
planted the juries by military commissions; its juries are
supplanted by military commissions. It subjected public
education to the sway of the priests; the priests subject it
to their own education. It transported people without trial;
it is being transported without trial. It repressed every
stirring in society by means of the state power; every stir-
ring in its society is suppressed by means of the state pow-
er. Out of enthusiasm for its purse, it rebelled against
its own politicians and men of letters; its politicians and
men of letters are swept aside, but its purse is being plun-
dered now that its mouth has been gagged and its pen
broken. The bourgeoisie never wearied of crying out to the
revolution what Saint Arsenius cried out to the Christians:
"Fnge, tace, quiescel Flee, be silent, keep still!" Bonaparte
cries to the bourgeoisie: "Fuge, tace, quiescel Flee, be si-
lent, keep still!"
The French bourgeoisie had long ago found the solution
to Napoleon's dilemma: "Dans cinqtiante ans VEurope
sera republicaine on cosaque"* It had found the solution
to it in the "republique cosaque"** No Circe, by means
of black magic, has distorted that work of art, the bour-
geois republic, into a monstrous shape. Thaf republic has
lost nothing but the semblance of respectability. Present-
day France*** was contained in a finished state within the
parliamentary republic. It only required a bayonet thrust
for the bubble to burst and the monster to spring forth be-
fore our eyes.
Why did the Paris proletariat not rise in revolt after
December 2?
The overthrow of the bourgeoisie had as yet been only
decreed; the decree had not been carried out. Any serious
insurrection of the proletariat would at once have put fresh
* "In fifty years Europe will be republican or Cossack." Ed.
** "Cossack republic." #.
*** I.e., France after the coup d'etat of December 2, 1851. Ed.
119
life into the bourgeoisie, would have reconciled it with the
army and ensured a second June defeat for the workers.
On December 4 the proletariat was incited by bourgeois
and epicier to fight. On the evening of that day several le-
gions of the National Guard promised to appear, armed
and uniformed, on the scene of battle. For the bourgeois
and the epicier had got wind of the fact that in one of his
decrees of December 2 Bonaparte abolished the secret bal-
lot and enjoined them to record their "yes" or "no" in the
official registers after their names. The resistance of De-
cember 4 intimidated Bonaparte. During the night he
caused placards to be posted on all the street corners of
Paris, announcing the restoration of the secret ballot. The
bourgeois and the epicier believed that they had gained
their end. Those who failed to appear next morning were
the bourgeois and the epicier.
By a coup de main during the night of December 1 to 2,
Bonaparte had robbed the Paris proletariat of its leaders,
the barricade commanders. An army without officers,
averse to fighting under the banner of the Montagnards
because of the memories of June 1848 and 1849 and May
1850, it left to its vanguard, the secret societies, the task of
saving the insurrectionary honour of Paris, which the
bourgeoisie had so unresistingly surrendered to the sol-
diery that, later on, Bonaparte could sneeringly give as
his motive for disarming the National Guard his fear
that its arms would be turned against it itself by the
anarchists!
"C'est le triomphe complet et definitif du socialisme!"*
Thus Guizot characterized December 2. But if the over-
throw of the parliamentary republic contains within itself
the germ of the triumph of the proletarian revolution, its
immediate and palpable result was the victory of Bona-
parte over parliament, of the executive power over the
legislative power, of force without phrases over the force
* "This is the complete and final triumph of Socialism!" Ed.
120
of phrases. In parliament the nation made its general will
the la\v, that is, it made the law of the ruling class its gener-
al will. Before the executive power it renounces all will of
its own and submits to the superior command of an alien
will, to authority. The executive power, in contrast to the
legislative power, expresses the heteronomy of a nation, in
contrast to its autonomy. France, therefore, seems to have
escaped the despotism of a class -only to fall back beneath
the despotism of an individual, and, what is more, beneath
the authority of an individual without authority. The
struggle seems to be settled in such a way that all classes,
equally impotent and equally mute, fall on their knees
before the rifle butt.
But the revolution is thoroughgoing. It is still journey-
ing through purgatory. It does its work methodically. By
December 2, 1851, it had completed one half of its prepara-
tory work; it is now completing the other half. First it per-
fected the parliamentary power, in order to be able to
overthrow it. Now that it has attained this, it perfects the
executive power, reduces it to its purest expression, iso-
lates it, sets it up against itself as the sole target, in order
to concentrate all its forces of destruction against it. And
when it has done this second half of its preliminary work,
Europe will leap from its seat and exultantly exclaim:
Well grubbed, old mole! 50
This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic
and military organization, with its ingenious state machin-
ery, embracing wide strata, with a host of officials num-
bering half a million, besides an army of another half mil-
lion, this appalling parasitic body, which enmeshes the
body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores,
sprang up in the days of the absolute monarchy, with the
decay of the feudal system, which it helped to hasten. The
seignorial privileges of the landowners and towns became
transformed into so many attributes of the state power,
the feudal dignitaries into paid officials and the motley
pattern of conflicting medieval plenary powers into the
121
regulated plan of a state authority whose work is divided
and centralized as in a factory. The first French Revolu-
tion, with its task of breaking all separate local, territo-
rial, urban and provincial powers in order to create the
civil unity of the nation, was bound to develop what the
absolute monarchy had begun: centralization, but at the
same time the extent, the attributes and the agents of gov-
ernmental power. Napoleon perfected this state machin-
ery. The Legitimist Monarchy and the July Monarchy added
nothing but a greater division of labour, growing in the
same measure as the division of labour within bourgeois
society created new groups of interests j and, therefore,
new material for state administration. Every common in-
terest was straightway severed from society, counterposed
to it as a higher, general interest, snatched from the activ-
ity of society's members themselves and made an object
of government activity, from a bridge, a schoolhouse and
the communal property of a village community to the rail-
ways, the national wealth and the national university of
France. Finally, in its struggle against the revolution, the
parliamentary republic found itself compelled to strength-
en, along with the repressive measures, the resources and
centralization of governmental power. All revolutions per-
fected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties
that contended in turn for domination regarded the pos-
session of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of
the victor.
But under the absolute monarchy, during the first Rev-
olution, under Napoleon, bureaucracy was only the means
of preparing the class rule of the bourgeoisie. Under the
Restoration, under Louis Philippe, under the parliamen-
tary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling class,
however much it strove for power of its own.
Only under the second Bonaparte does the state seem
to have made itself completely independent. As against
civil society, the state machine has consolidated its posi-
tion so thoroughly that the chief of the Society of Decem-
122
her 10 suffices for its head, an adventurer blown In from
abroad, raised on the shield by a drunken soldiery, which
he has bought with liquor and sausages, and which he
must continually ply with sausage anew. Hence the down-
cast despair, the feeling of most dreadful humiliation and
degradation that oppresses the breast of France and makes
her catch her breath. She feels dishonoured.
And yet the state power is not suspended in midair. Bo-
naparte represents a class, and the most numerous class
of French society at that, the small-holding [Parzellen]
peasants.
Just as the Bourbons were the dynasty of big landed
property and just as the Orleans were the dynasty of mon-
ey, so the Bonapartes are the dynasty of the peasants,
that is, the mass of the French people. Not the Bonaparte
who submitted to the bourgeois parliament, but the Bona-
parte who dispersed the bourgeois parliament Is the cho-
sen of the peasantry. For three years the towns had suc-
ceeded in falsifying the meaning of the election of Decem-
ber 10 and in cheating the peasants out of the restoration
of the empire. The election of December 10, 1848, has
been consummated only by the coup d'etat of December 2,
1851.
The small-holding peasants form a vast mass, the mem-
bers of which live in similar conditions but without enter-
ing into manifold relations with one another. Their mode
of production isolates them from one another instead of
bringing them into mutual intercourse. The isolation is
increased by France's bad means of communication and
by the poverty of the peasants. Their field of production,
the small holding, admits of no division of labour in its
cultivation, no application of science and, therefore, no di-
versity of development, no variety of talent, no wealth of
social relationships. Each individual peasant family is al-
most self-sufficient; it itself directly produces the major
part of its consumption and thus acquires its means of life
more through exchange with nature than in intercourse
m
with society. A small holding, a peasant and his family;
alongside them another small holding, another peasant
and another family. A few score of these make up a vil-
lage, and a few score of villages make up a Department.
In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed
by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, much as
potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. In so far as
millions of families live under economic conditions of
existence that separate their mode of life, their interests
and their culture from those of the other classes, and put
them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class.
In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among
these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their in-
terests begets no community, no national bond and no po-
litical organization among them, they do not form a class.
They are consequently incapable of enforcing their class
interest in their own name, whether through a parliament
or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves,
they must be represented. Their representative must
at the same time appear as their master, as an authority
over them, as an unlimited governmental power that pro-
tects them against the other classes and sends them rain
and sunshine from above. The political influence of the
small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expres-
sion in the executive power subordinating society to itself.
Historical tradition gave rise to the belief of the French
peasants in the miracle that a man named Napoleon
would bring all the glory back to them. And an individual
turned up who gives himself out as the man because he
bears the name of Napoleon, inconsequence of the Code Na-
poleon, 51 which lays down that la recherche de la paternite
est interdite* After a vagabondage of twenty years and
after a series of grotesque adventures, the legend finds ful-
filment and the man becomes Emperor of the French. The
fixed idea of the Nephew was realized, because it coincided
* Enquiry into paternity is forbidden. Ed.
124
with the fixed idea of the most numerous class of the
French people.
But, it may be objected, what about the peasant risings
in half of France, the raids on the peasants by the army,
the mass incarceration and transportation of peasants?
Since Louis XIV, France has experienced no similar per-
secution of the peasants "on account of demagogic prac-
tices."
But let there be no misunderstanding. The Bonaparte
dynasty represents not the revolutionary, but the conser-
vative peasant; not the peasant that strikes out beyond the
condition of his social existence, the small holding, but
rather the peasant who wants to consolidate this holding,
not the country folk who, linked up with the towns, want
to overthrow the old order through their own energies, but
on the contrary those who, in stupefied seclusion within
this old order, want to see themselves and their small
holdings saved and favoured by the ghost of the empire.
It represents not the enlightenment, but the superstition
of the peasant; not his judgment, but his prejudice; not his
future, but his past; not his modern Cevennes, but his
modern Vendee. 52
The three years' rigorous rule of the parliamentary re-
public had freed a part of the French peasants from the
Napoleonic illusion and had revolutionized them, even if
only superficially; but the bourgeoisie violently repressed
them, as often as they set themselves in motion. Under the
parliamentary republic the modern and the traditional
consciousness of the French peasant contended for mas-
tery. This progress took the form of an incessant struggle
between the schoolmasters and the priests. The bourgeoi-
sie struck down the schoolmasters. For the first time the
peasants made efforts to behave independently in the face
of the activity of the government. This was shown in the
continual conflict between the maires and the prefects. The
bourgeoisie deposed the maires. Finally, during the period
of the parliamentary republic, the peasants of different lo-
calities rose against their own offspring, the army. The
bourgeoisie punished them with states of siege and puni-
tive expeditions. And this same bourgeoisie now cries out
about the stupidity of the masses, the vile multitude, that
has betrayed it to Bonaparte. It has itself forcibly strength-
ened the empire sentiments [Imperialismus] of the peas-
ant class, it conserved the conditions that form the birth-
place of this peasant religion. The bourgeoisie, to be sure,
is bound to fear the stupidity of the masses as long as they
remain conservative, and the insight of the masses as soon
as they become revolutionary.
In the risings after the coup d'etat, a part of the French
peasants protested, arms in hand, against their own vote
of December 10, 1848. The school they had gone through
since 1848 had sharpened their wits. But they had made
themselves over to the underworld of history; history held
them to their word, and the majority was still so preju-
diced that in precisely the reddest Departments the peas-
ant population voted openly for Bonaparte. In its view,
the National Assembly had hindered his progress. He had
now merely broken the fetters that the towns had imposed
on the will of the countryside. In some parts the peasants
even entertained the grotesque notion of a convention side
by side with Napoleon.
After the first revolution had transformed the peasants
from semi-villeins into freeholders, Napoleon confirmed
and regulated the conditions on which they could exploit
undisturbed the soil of France which had only just fallen
to their lot and slake their youthful passion for property.
But what is now causing the ruin of the French peasant is
his small holding itself, the division of the land, the form
of property which Napoleon consolidated in France. It is
precisely the material conditions which made the feudal
peasant a small-holding peasant and Napoleon an emper-
or. Two generations have sufficed to produce the inevita-
ble result: progressive deterioration of agriculture, pro-
gressive indebtedness of the agriculturist. The "Napoleonic"
126
form of property, which at the beginning of the nine-
teenth century was the condition for the liberation and en-
richment of the French country folk, has developed in the
course of this century into the law of their enslavement
and pauperization. And precisely this law is the first of the
"idees napoteoniennes" which the second Bonaparte has to
uphold. If he still shares with the peasants the illusion
that the cause of their ruin is to be sought, not in this small-
holding property Itself, but outside it, in the influence of
secondary circumstances, his experiments will burst like
soap bubbles when they come in contact with the relations
of production.
The economic development of small-holding property
has radically changed the relation of the peasants to the
other classes of society. Under Napoleon, the fragmenta-
tion of the land in the countryside supplemented free com-
petition and the beginning of big industry in the towns.
The peasant class was the ubiquitous protest against the
landed aristocracy which had just been overthrown. The
roots thai small-holding property struck in French soil
deprived feudalism of all nutriment. Its landmarks formed
the natural fortifications of the bourgeoisie against any
surprise attack on the part of its old overlords. But in the
course of the nineteenth century the feudal lords were re-
placed by urban usurers; the feudal obligation that went
with the land was replaced by the mortgage; aristocratic
landed property was replaced by bourgeois capital. The
smallholding of the peasant is now only the pretext that
allows the capitalist to draw profits, interest and rent from
the soil, while leaving it to the tiller of the soil himself to
see how he can extract his wages. The mortgage debt bur-
dening the soil of France imposes on the French peasant-
ry payment of an amount of interest equal to the annual
interest on the entire British national debt. Small-holding
property, in this enslavement by capital to which its devel-
opment inevitably pushes forward, has transformed the
mass of the French nation into troglodytes. Sixteen mil-
127
lion peasants (including women and children) dwell in
hovels, a large number of which have but one opening,
others only two and the most favoured only three. And
windows are to a house what the five senses are to the
head. The bourgeois order, which at the beginning of the
century set the state to stand guard over the newly arisen
small holding and manured it with laurels, has become a
vampire that sucks out its blood and brains and throws
it into the alchemistic cauldron of capital. The Code
Napoleon is now nothing but a codex of distraints, forced
sales and compulsory auctions. To the four million (in-
cluding children, etc.) officially recognized paupers, va-
gabonds, criminals and prostitutes in France must be
added five million who hover on the margin of existence
and either have their haunts in the countryside itself or,
with their rags and their children, continually desert the
countryside for the towns and the towns for the country-
side. The interests of the peasants, therefore, are no long-
er, as under Napoleon, in accord with, but in opposition
to the interests of the bourgeoisie, to capital. Hence the
peasants find their natural ally and leader in the urban
proletariat, whose task is the overthrow of the bourgeois
order. But strong and unlimited government and this is
the second "idee napoleonienne" which the second Napo-
leon has to carry out is called upon to defend this "ma-
terial" order by force. This lt ordre materiel" also serves as
the catchword in all of Bonaparte's proclamations against
the rebellious peasants.
Besides the mortgage which capital imposes on it, the
small holding is burdened by taxes. Taxes are the source
of life for the bureaucracy, the army, the priests and the
court, in short, for the whole apparatus of the executive
power. Strong government and heavy taxes are identical.
By its very nature, small-holding property forms a suita-
ble basis for an all-powerful and innumerable bureaucra-
cy. It creates a uniform level of relationships and persons
over the whole surface of the land. Hence it also permits
128
of uniform action from a supreme centre on all points of
this uniform mass. It annihilates the aristocratic interme-
diate grades between the mass of the people and the state
power. On all sides, therefore, it calls forth the direct in-
terference of this state power and the interposition of its
immediate organs. Finally, it produces an unemployed
surplus population for which there is no place either on the
land or in the towns, and which accordingly reaches out
for state offices as a sort of respectable alms, and provokes
the creation of state posts. By the new markets which
he opened at the point of the bayonet, by the plundering
of the Continent, Napoleon repaid the compulsory taxes
with interest. These taxes were a spur to the industry of
the peasant, whereas now they rob his industry of its last
resources and complete his inability to resist pauperism.
And an enormous bureaucracy, well-gallooned and well-
fed, is the "idee napoleonienne" which is most congenial
of all to the second Bonaparte. How could it be otherwise,
seeing that alongside the actual classes of society he is
forced to create an artificial caste, for which the mainte-
nance of his regime becomes a bread-and-butter question?
Accordingly, one of his first financial operations was the
raising of officials' salaries to their old level and the crea-
tion of new sinecures.
Another "idee napoleonienne" is the domination of the
priests as an instrument of government. But while in its
accord with society, in its dependence on natural forces
and its submission to the authority which protected it from
above, the small holding that had newly come into being
was naturally religious, the small holding that is ruined
by debts, at odds with society and authority, and driven
beyond its own limitations naturally becomes irreligious.
Heaven was quite a pleasing accession to the narrow
strip of land just won, more particularly as it makes the
weather; it becomes an insult as soon as it is thrust for-
ward as substitute for the small holding. The priest then
appears as only the anointed bloodhound of the earthly
129
police another "idee napoleonienne." On the next occa-
sion, the expedition against Rome will take place in France
Itself, but in a sense opposite to that of M. de Montal-
embert.
Lastly, the culminating point of the "idees napoleonien-
nes" is the preponderance of the army. The army was the
point d'honneur* of the small-holding peasants, it was they
themselves transformed into heroes, defending their new
possessions against the outer world, glorifying their re-
cently won nationhood, plundering and revolutionizing the
world. The uniform was their own state dress; war was
their poetry; the small holding, extended and rounded off
in imagination, was their fatherland, and patriotism the
ideal form of the sense of property. But the enemies against
whom the French peasant has now to defend his property
are not the Cossacks; they are the huissiers** and the tax
collectors. The small holding lies no longer in the so-called
fatherland, but in the register of mortgages. The army
itself is no longer the flower of the peasant youth; it is
the swamp-flower of the peasant lumpenproletariat. It con-
sists in large measure of remplagants, of substitutes, just
as the second Bonaparte is himself only a remplagant, the
substitute for Napoleon. It now performs its deeds of val-
our by hounding the peasants in masses like chamois, by
doing gendarme duty, and if the internal contradictions
of his system chase the chief of the Society of December 10
over the French border, his army, after some acts of brig-
andage, will reap, not laurels, but thrashings.
One sees: all "idees napoleoniennes" are ideas of the
undeveloped small holding in the freshness of its youth;
for the small holding that has outlived its day they are
an absurdity. They are only the hallucinations of its death
struggle, words that are transformed into phrases, spirits
transformed into ghosts. But the parody of the empire [des
* Matter of honour, a point of special touch. Ed
** Huissiers: Bailiffs. Ed.
130
Imperialismus] was necessary to free the mass of the
French nation from the weight of tradition and to work out
in pure form the opposition between the state power and
society. With the progressive undermining of small-hold-
ing property, the state structure erected upon It collapses.
The centralization of the state that modern society re-
quires arises only on the ruins of the military-bureaucratic
government machinery which was forged in opposition to
feudalism. 53
The condition of the French peasants provides us with
the answer to the riddle of the general elections of Decem-
ber 20 and 21, which bore the second Bonaparte up Mount
Sinai, not to receive laws, but to give them.
Manifestly, the bourgeoisie had now no choice but to
elect Bonaparte. When the puritans at the Council of Con-
stance 54 complained of the dissolute lives of the popes and
wailed about the necessity of moral reform, Cardinal
Pierre d'Ailly thundered at them: "Only the devil in person
can still save the Catholic Church, and you ask for angels."
In like manner, after the coup d'etat, the French bourgeoi-
sie cried: Only the chief of the Society of December 10 can
still save bourgeois society! Only theft can still save prop-
erty; only perjury, religion; bastardy, the family; disor-
der, order!
As the executive authority which has made itself an in-
dependent power, Bonaparte feels it to be his mission to
safeguard '"bourgeois order." But the strength of this bour-
geois order lies in the middle class. He looks on himself,
therefore, as the representative of the middle class and is-
sues decrees in this sense. Nevertheless, he is somebody
solely due to the fact that he has broken the political pow-
er of this middle class and daily breaks it anew. Con-
sequently, he looks on himself as the adversary of the po-
litical and literary power of the middle class. But by pro-
tecting its material power, he generates its political pow-
er anew. The cause must accordingly be kept alive; but
the effect, where it manifests itself, must be done away
131
with. But this cannot pass off without slight confusions of
cause and effect, since in their interaction both lose their
distinguishing features. New decrees that obliterate the
border line. As against the bourgeoisie, Bonaparte looks
on himself, at the same time, as the representative of the
peasants and of the people in general, who wants to make
the lower classes of the people happy within the frame of
bourgeois society. New decrees that cheat the "True Social-
ists" 55 of their statecraft in advance. But, above all, Bo-
naparte looks on himself as the chief of the Society of De-
cember 10, as the representative of the lumpenproletariat
to which he himself, his entourage, his government and his
army belong, and whose prime consideration is to benefit
itself and draw California lottery prizes from the state
treasury. And he vindicates his position as chief of the
Society of December 10 with decrees, without decrees and
despite decrees.
This contradictory task of the man explains the contra-
dictions of his government, the confused groping about
which seeks now to win, now to humiliate first one class
and then another and arrays all of them uniformly against
him, w r hose practical uncertainty forms a highly comical
contrast to the imperious, categorical style of the govern-
ment decrees, a style which is faithfully copied from the
Uncle.
Industry and trade, hence the business affairs of the
middle class, are to prosper in hothouse fashion under the
strong government. The grant of innumerable railway con-
cessions. But the Bonapartist lumpenproletariat is to en-
rich itself. The initiated play tripotage* on the bourse with
the railway concessions. But no capital is forthcoming for
the railways. Obligation of the Bank to make advances on
railway shares. But, at the same time, the Bank is to be
exploited for personal ends and therefore must be cajoled.
Release of the Bank from the obligation to publish its re-
Tripotage: Hanky-panky.- d.
132
port weekly. Leonine agreement of the Bank with the gov-
ernment. The people are to be given employment. Initia-
tion of public works. But the public works increase the
obligations of the people in respect of taxes. Hence reduc-
tion of the taxes by an onslaught on the rentiers, by con-
version of the five per cent bonds to four-and-a-half
per cent. But, once more, the middle class must receive a
douceur* Therefore doubling of the wine tax for the peo-
ple, who buy it en detail** and halving of the wine tax for
the middle class, who drink it en gros.*** Dissolution of
the actual workers* associations, but promises of miracles
of association in the future. The peasants are to be helped.
Mortgage banks that expedite their getting into debt and
accelerate the concentration of property. But these banks
are to be used to make money out of the confiscated estates
of the House of Orleans. No capitalist wants to agree to
this condition, which is not in the decree, and the mort-
gage bank remains a mere decree, etc., etc.
Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal ben-
efactor of all classes. But he cannot give to one class
without taking from another. Just as at the time of the
Fronde it was said of the Duke of Guise that he was the
most obligeant man in France because he had turned all
his estates into his partisans' obligations to him, so Bo-
naparte would fain be the most obligeant man in France
and turn all the property, all the labour of France into a
personal obligation to himself. He would like to steal the
whole of France in order to be able to make a present of
her to France or, rather, in order to be able to buy France
anew with French money, for as the chief of the Society
of December 10 he must needs buy what ought to belong
to him. And all the state institutions, the Senate, the Coun-
cil of State, the legislative body, the Legion of Honour,
the soldiers' medals, the washhouses, the public works,
* Douceur: Sop.Ed.
** En detail By retail Ed.
*** En gros- Wholesale. d.
133
the railways, the etat major* of the National Guard to the
exclusion of privates ? and the confiscated estates of the
House of Orleans all become parts of the institution of
purchase. Every place in the army and in the government
machine becomes a means of purchase. But the most im-
portant feature of this process, whereby France is taken in
order to give to her, is the percentages that find their way
into the pockets of the head and the members of the So-
ciety of December 10 during the turnover. The witticism
with which Countess L., the mistress of M. de Moray, charac-
terized the confiscation of the Orleans estates: "C'est
le premier vol** de t'aigle"*** is applicable to every flight
of this eagle, which is more like a raven. He himself and
his adherents call out to one another daily like that Ita-
lian Carthusian admonishing the miser who, with boast-
ful display, counted up the goods on which he could yet
live for years to come: "Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna
prima far il conto sopra gli anni"**** Lest they make a mis-
take in the years, they count the minutes. A bunch of blokes
push their way forward to the court, into the ministries,
to the head of the administration and the army, a crowd
of the best of whom it must be said that no one knows
whence he comes, a noisy, disreputable, rapacious boheme
that crawls into gallooned coats with the same grotesque
dignity as the high dignitaries of Soulouque. One can visua-
lize clearly this upper stratum of the Society of Decem-
ber 10, if one reflects that V6ron-Crevet***** is its preacher
of morals and Granier de Cassagnac its thinker. When Gui-
zot. at the time of his ministry, utilized this Granier on a
* Etat major: General Staff.-~d
** Vol means flights and theft. [Note by Marx]
*** "It is the first flight (theft) of the eagle/' Ed.
**** "Thou cotmtest thy goods, thou shouldst first count thy years/'
[Note by Marx.]
***** In his work, Cotisine Bette, Balzac delineates the thoroughly dis-
solute Parisian philistine in Crevel, a character which he draws after
the model of Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the Constitutionnel. m [Note
by Marx.]
134
hole-and-corner newspaper against the dynastic opposi-
tion, he used to boast of him with the quip; "Cest le rot
des drolcs," "he is the king of buffoons." One would do
wrong to recall the Regency 57 or Louis XV in connection
with Louis Bonaparte's court and clique. For "often al-
ready, France has experienced a government of mistresses;
but never before a government of hommes entrete-
nus"*
Driven by the contradictory demands of his situation
and being at the same time, like a conjurer, under the ne-
cessity of keeping the public gaze fixed on himself, as Na-
poleon's substitute, by springing constant surprises, that
is to say, under the necessity of executing a coup d'etat en
miniature every day, Bonaparte throws the entire bour-
geois economy into confusion, violates everything that
seemed inviolable to the Revolution of 1848, makes some
tolerant of revolution, others desirous of revolution, and
produces actual anarchy in the name of order, while at the
same time stripping its halo from the entire state machine,
profanes it and makes it at once loathsome and ridiculous.
The cult of the Holy Tunic of Treves 58 he duplicates at
Paris in the cult of the Napoleonic imperial mantle. But
when the imperial mantle finally falls on the shoulders of
Louis Bonaparte, the bronze statue of Napoleon will crash
from the top of the Vendome Column.
* The words quoted are those of Madame Girardin. \Note by Marx.]
Hommes eniretenus: Kept men. Ed.
135
MARX TO J. WEYDEMEYER
London, March 5, 1852
Dear Wejwy,
I'm afraid things got mixed up a bit because, having
misunderstood thy last letter, I addressed the last two
packets as follows: "Office of the Revolution, 7, Chamber-
street, Box 1817." That confounded "Box 1817" was what
caused the mix-up, as you wrote to me to add this appen-
dix to the "old address" without differentiating the first
address from the second. But I hope the matter is cleared
up before this letter arrives, the more so since last Friday's
letter contains the very detailed No. V of my article.* I
was prevented from finishing No. VI, the concluding in-
stalment, this week. If your newspaper has appeared again
this delay cannot cause any stoppage as you are well pro-
vided with material.
Your article against Heinzen, which Engels unfortunate-
ly sent me too late, is very good, both coarse and fine a
combination which should be found in any polemic worthy
of the name. I showed this article to Ernest Jones, and en-
closed you will find a communication to you from him in-
tended for publication. As Jones writes very illegibly, with
abbreviations, and as I assume that you are not an out-
and-out Englishman as yet, I am sending you together
with the original a copy made by my wife, and at the same
time the German translation, as you must have them
both printed side by side, original and translation. To the
letter from Jones you can make the following addendum:
* K Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. (See
present edition pp. 7-135.) Ed.
f36
With regard to George Julian Harney, who Is aiso one of
Herr Heinzen's authorities, he published our Communist
Manifesto in English in his Red Republican* with a mar-
ginal note saying that it was "the most revolutionary doc-
ument ever given to the world/' and in his Democratic
Review he translated the articles I wrote in the Revue of
the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 60 on the French Revolution,*
that work of wisdom "killed" by Heinzen. In an article
on Louis Blanc he refers his readers to these articles as the
"true criticism" of the French affair. For the rest, in Eng-
land there is no need to refer only to the "extremists." If
a Member of Parliament in England becomes a Minister
he has to be re-elected, so Disraeli, the new Chancellor of
the Exchequer, writes to his constituents on March 1:
"We shall endeavour to terminate that strife of classes
which of late years has exercised so pernicious an influence
over the welfare of this kingdom."
On which The Times comments on March 2:
". . . if anything would ever divide classes in this coun-
try beyond reconciliation, and leave no chance of a just
and honourable peace, it would be a tax on foreign corn."
And in case an ignorant "man of character" like Hein-
zen should imagine that the aristocracy is for and the
bourgeoisie against corn laws, because the former wants
"monopoly" and the latter "freedom" a worthy of this
sort can tell opposites only in this ideological form it is
to be noted that in the eighteenth century the English
aristocracy was for "freedom" (of trade) and the bour-
geoisie for "monopoly" the same relative position that we
find at this very moment between these two classes in
"Prussia" with regard to "corn laws." The Neue Preupi-
sche Zeitung Qi is the most violent freetrader.
Finally, in your place I should in general remark to the
democratic gentlemen that they would do better first to
* The reference is to Marx's The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to
1850.
137
acquaint themselves with bourgeois literature before they
presume to yap at the opponents of it. For instance, these
gentlemen should study the historical works of Thierry,
Guizot, John Wade, and others in order to enlighten them-
selves as to the past "history of classes." Before they try
to criticize the critique of political economy they should
acquaint themselves with the fundamentals of political eco-
nomy. One has only to open Ricardo's great opus, for
example, to find these opening words of his Preface on the
first page:
"The produce of the earth all that is derived from its
surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and
capital is divided among three classes of the community;
namely, the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock
or capital necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers
by whose industry it is cultivated. 1 '*
How far bourgeois society in the United States still is
from being mature enough to make the class struggle ob-
vious and comprehensible is most strikingly proved by
C. H. Carey (of Philadelphia), the only American econo-
mist of importance. He attacks Ricardo, the most classic
representative (interpreter) of the bourgeoisie and the
most stoical adversary of the proletariat, as a man whose
works are an arsenal for Anarchists, Socialists, and all the
enemies of the bourgeois order of society. He reproaches
not only him but Malthus, Mill, Say, Torrens, Wake-
field, McCulloch, Senior, Whately, R. Jones, and others,
the leading economists of Europe, with rending society
asunder and preparing civil war because they show that
the economic bases of the different classes are bound to
give rise to a necessary and ever-growing antagonism
among them. He tried to refute them, not indeed like the
fatuous Heinzen by connecting the existence of classes
with the existence of political privileges and monopolies,
but by attempting to make out that economic conditions
* David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy and Taxation,
Preface. tf.
138
rent (landed property), profit (capital), and wages
(wage labour) instead of being conditions of struggle and
antagonism are rather conditions of association and har-
mony. All he proves, of course, is that he is taking the
"undeveloped" conditions of the United States for "normal
conditions."
And now as to myself, no credit is due to me for dis-
covering the existence of classes in modern society or the
struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois histo-
rians had described the historical development of this class
struggle and bourgeois economists the economic anatomy
of the classes. What I did that was new was to prove:
1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with par-
ticular historical phases in the development of production,
2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dicta-
torship of the proletariat, 3) that this dictatorship itself
only constitutes the transition to the abolition of alt
classes and to a classless society. Ignorant louts like Hein-
zen, who deny not merely the class struggle but even the
existence of classes, only prove that, despite all their
blood-curdling yelps and the humanitarian airs they give
themselves, they regard the social conditions under which
the bourgeoisie rules as the final product, the non plus ul-
tra* of history, and that they are only the servitors of the
bourgeoisie. And the less these louts realize the greatness
and transient necessity of the bourgeois regime itself the
more disgusting is their servitude.
From the above notes take anything you think suitable.
For the rest, Heinzen has adopted "centralization" from
us in place of his "federative republic," etc. When the
views which we are now spreading about the classes be-
come platitudes and part of the equipment of the "individ-
ual with common sense," then that rogue will announce
them with a lot of noise as the latest product of "his own
penetration" and start barking against our developing the
Highest point attainable d
139
point further. So by a his own penetration" he yelped
against the Hegelian philosophy as long as it was pro-
gressive. Now he is helping himself to the stale crumbs of
it which have been spewed out undigested by Ruge.
You are getting herewith the end of the Hungarian cor-
respondence. You must try to pick something from it if
your newspaper exists the more so since Szemere, the
"former Prime Minister of Hungary, promised me when he
was in Paris to write a lengthy article for you over his
own signature.
If you have managed to get out your paper send more
copies so that they can be distributed more widely.
Yours,
K. MARX
NOTES
1 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Is one of the mast-
erpieces of Marxism. In this important work Marx analysed the events
of the Revolution of 1848-51 in France and on the basis of this
analysis elaborated further the fundamental tenets of historical ma-
terialism, the theory of the class struggle and the proletarian revolu-
tion and of the' dictatorship of the proletariat. For the first time Marx
advanced here the proposition that the victorious proletariat must
necessarily smash the .houcgeofe state .machine. The idea of an alli-
ance between the working class and the peasantry was further ex-
pounded in this work and Marx drew the conclusion that in bour-
geois society irreconcilable contradictions develop between the inter-
ests of the peasants and the interests of capital, hence only the
urban proletariat-can be the na.tural,,ally and leader, ol ,the peasantry.
Marx wrote the book from December 1851 to March 1852, hot on the
heels of the events. While working on The Eighteenth Brumaire of
Louis Bonaparte Marx maintained a constant exchange of opinion with
Engels on the French events. In addition to the press and official docu-
ments, Marx used also private reports from Paris as source material.
At first it was intended to publish The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte as a series of articles in the journal Die Revolution, a
weekly which J. Weydemeyer a friend of Marx and Engels and a
member of the Communist League planned to issue in the USA. Wey-
demeyer, however, succeeded in publishing but two numbers of the
journal (in January 1852), before financial difficulties forced him to
discontinue publication. Marx's articles arrived too late and were
therefore not published in this periodical. Al Marx's suggestion Wey-
demeyer had the work printed as a separate book in May 1852 form-
ing the first (and only) issue of the non-periodical journal Die
Revolution. He changed the title of the book to The Eighteenth Bru-
maire of Louis Napoleon (instead of Louis Bonaparte). Weydemeyer
who was then in straitened circumstances was unable to purchase
from the owner of the printing-house the greater part of this first
edition and only very few copies reached Europe. Efforts to reprint
the book in Germany or England (in an English translation) proved
unsuccessful. The second -edition of the book came out only in
141
1869. Marx again went over the text to prepare it for this publica-
tion. In his preface to the 1869 edition Marx described the editorial
\vork carried out by him in the following way: "A revision of the
present work would have robbed it of its peculiar colouring. Accord-
ingly I have confined myself to mere correction of printer's errors
and to striking out allusions now no longer intelligible." The third
edition of the book was edited by Engels and was published in 1885
in accordance with the text of the 1869 edition. 7.
2 Montagnein the French Constituent and Legislative Assem-
blies of 1848-51 a group representing the party of the petty-bour-
geois democrats and republicans headed by Ledru-Rollin, who ranged
themselves around the newspaper Reforme; petty-bourgeois Social-
ists led by Louis Blanc joined this party. 15.
3 The Eighteenth Brumaire (November 9, 1799) the coup d'etat,
which took place on this day, completed the bourgeois counter-revo-
lutionary development in France and resulted in the establishment
of Napoleon Bonaparte's military dictatorship. 15.
4 On December 10, 1848, Louis Bonaparte was elected president
of the French Republic by universal ballot.- 18.
5 During the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt the hardships of
the journey and hunger caused, according to the Bible, the faint-
hearted among them longingly to think of the days of captivity
when at least they had enough to eat. The phrase "to long for the
fleshpots of Egypt" has become a proverb 18
6 Hie Rhodus, hie saltal (Here is Rhodes, leap here!) these
words (from Aesop's fable the Swaggerer), addressed to a swag-
gerer claiming that he had made a remarkable leap in Rhodes, mean
"show right here what you can do!"
Here is the rose, here dancel this paraphrase of the preceding
quotation is used by Hegel in the prefaco to his work Grundlinien
der Philosophic des Rechts (Principals of the Philosophy of Right).
In Greek Rhodes, the name of the island, means also "rose." 19.
7 In May 1852 Louis Bonaparte's term of office as president ex-
pired. According to the French Constitution of 1848 presidential elec-
tions had to take place every four years on the second Sunday in
May. 20.
8 Chiliasm (from the Greek word clutias, a thousand) a mys-
tical religious doctrine of the second coming of Christ and the es-
tablishment of the millennium, when justice, universal equality and
142
prosperity will be triumphant. Chlliastic beliefs arose In the period
of decaying slave society; they were based on the unbearable oppres-
sion and suffering of the working people who sought a release in
fantastic dreams of deliverance. These beliefs were widespread in
early Christian times and later on they were constantly revived in
the teachings of various mediaeval sects 20.
9 In partibus infideliumin the country of the infidels (added to
the title of Catholic bishops appointed to a purely nominal diocese
in non-Christian countries), that is non-existent in reality. 20.
10 "...Den alles, was entsteht, ist wert, dafi es zu Grande geht '*
Goethe, Faust, Erster Teil, Studierzimmer, Zeilen 1339-40 (Goethe,
Faust, Part One, Lines 1339-40) 21.
11 In the German edition of 1869 and also in those of 1852 and
1885 the date for the opening of the Legislative Assembly is given
erroneously as May 29, 184921.
12 Dynastic opposition a group, led by Odilon Barrot, in the
French Chamber of Deputies during the July Monarchy. The represen-
tatives of this group, voicing the sentiments of the liberal circles of
the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, advocated a moderate
electoral reform as a means of averting the revolution and preserv-
ing the Orleans dynasty. 21.
13 Crapulinski the hero of Heine's poem, Zwei Ritter (Two
Knights), a spendthrift Polish nobleman; the name Crapulinski
comes from the French word crapule intemperance, gluttony, drunk-
enness, and also loafer, scoundrel
Here Marx alludes to Louis Bonaparte. 26.
14 Le National a French daily, published In Paris from 1830 to
1851; the organ of the moderate bourgeois republicans 27.
15 Journal des Debats abbreviated form of the French bourgeois
daily Journal des Debats politiques et litteraires, founded in Paris
in 1789. During the July Monarchy a government paper, the organ
of the pro-Orleans bourgeoisie. During the Revolution of 1848 the
newspaper expressed the views of the counter-revolutionary bour-
geoisie, the so-called party of Order. 27.
16 The Constitutional Charter adopted after the bourgeois Revolu-
tion of 1830 in France, was the basic law of the July Monarchy. Nom-
inally the Charter proclaimed the sovereign rights of the nation and
somewhat restricted the king's power. At the same time, however, it
143
left untouched the police and bureaucratic machinery and the severe
laws against the labour and democratic movement 29.
17 "Ften>, // faut mown'/"/" ("Brother, death is near!"]--with these
words members of the Roman Catholic monastic Order of Trappists
greet each other. The Trappist Order, which originated In 1664, is
distinguished by the strictness of its rules and the ascetic life led by
its members. 32.
M Chchyhorn 1826 to 1867 a debtor's prison in Paris 32.
10 Praetorians in ancient Rome the life-guards of the general or
emperor, maintained by him and enjoying various privileges 35.
20 From May to July 1849 the Kingdom of Naples took part in
the intervention against the Republic of Rome.
The Constituent Assembly of Rome, elected on the basis of uni-
versal suffrage, abolished the secular power of the Pope and pro-
claimed the republic on February 9, 1849. The executive power of the
Roman Republic was concentrated in the hands of a triumvirate
headed by Mazzini. While the Republic was in existence a number of
bourgeois-democratic reforms were carried out. However, the limited
class character of the Republic affected its agrarian policy the re-
fusal to hand over the landlords* estates to the peasants as their
property deprived the Republic of valuable allies in its fight against
the counter-revolution. The intervention of France, Austria and Na-
ples led to the fall of the Republic on July 3, 1849. 35.
21 Marx alludes to the following events in Louis Bonaparte's life:
in 1832 Louis Bonaparte became a Swiss citizen in the canton Thur-
gau; in 1848 during his stay in Britain he voluntarily joined the
special constabulary who together with the police took part in ac-
tions against the workers' demonstration, organized by the Chartists
on April 10, 1848. 35.
22 This refers to the analysis of the election of December 10, 1848
given by Marx in his work Die Klassenkampfe in Frankreich 1848 bis
1850 (The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850}. (See K Marx and
F. Engels, Selected Works, Vol. I, Moscow 1958, pp. 173-75.) 36.
23 Legitimists supporters of the "legitimate" Bourbon dynasty
that ruled France till 1792, and also during the Restoration (1814-30).
Orleanists supporters of the House of Orleans that came to pow-
er during the July Revolution of 1830 and was overthrown by the
Revolution of 1848. 36.
144
24 Party of Order a coalition of the two French munarcnist fac-
tions, the Legitimists and Grleanists. This paity of the conservati\e
big bourgeoisie came into being in 1848; from 1849 till the coup
d'etat of December 2, 1851 it held the leading position in the Legis-
lative Assembly of the Second Republic. Tue moral bankruptcy of
its policy directed against the people was utilized by the Louts Bo-
naparte clique for its own Bonapartist aims. 36.
25 Caligula, the Roman emperor (A. D. 37-41) was enthroned by
the Praetorian guard. 39.
26 The French Government obtained an appropriation from the
Constituent Assembly for the dispatch of an expeditionary corps to
Italy in April 1849, on the pretext of giving support to Piedmont in
its fight against Austria and protecting the Roman Republic. How-
ever, the true purpose of the expedition was intervention against the
Republic of Rome and restoration of the Pope's secular power. 40.
27 Moniteur short for Le Montteur universe!, French daily, offi-
cial organ of the government; under this name it was published in
Paris from 1789 to 186940.
28 This refers to the bill tabled on November 6, 1851, by the royal-
ists Le Flo, Baze and Panat, the quaestors of the Legislative As-
sembly (charged by the Assembly with handling economic and finan-
cial matters and safeguarding its security) which was, after a heat-
ed debate, rejected on November 17. During the ballot the Montagm
supported the Bonapartists, as it saw in the royalists the main
danger. 40.
29 Peter SchlemihtlhQ hero of Charnisso's fairy-tale Peter Schle-
miht, who exchanged his shadow for a magic purse 44.
so ms S p a j n Germany. In August 1849 a Legitimist conference
was held here; it was attended by the Count of Chambord, the pre-
tender to the French throne under the name of Henry V.
Ctarernont a castle near London, Louis Philippe's residence after
his escape from France. 48.
31 Article V belongs to the introductory part of the French Con-
stitution of 1848; for articles in the main body of the Constitution
Arabic numerals are used. 51.
32 An allusion to Louis Bonaparte's plans, who expected that
Pope Pius IX would place the French crown on his head. According
to biblical tradition David, the King of Israel, was anointed king by
the prophet Samuel 57.
145
33 An allusion to Louis Bonaparte's Book Des idees napoleoniennes,
published in Paris in 1839. (A T apo/t?on-Louis Bonaparte, Des idees
napoleoniennes, Paris, 1839.) 63.
34 Burgraves was the name given to the 17 leading Orleanists
and Legitimists, who were members of the Legislative Assembly's
committee for draughting a new electoral law, for their un-
warranted claim to power and their reactionary aspirations.
The name has been taken from the title of Victor Hugo's historical
drama. Its action is set in mediaeval Germany where a Burg-Graf
was the ruler of a "Burg" a fortified town or castle appointed by
the emperor. 69.
35 The press law passed by the Legislative Assembly in July 1850
considerably increased the deposits which the publishers of newspa-
pers had to pay, and introduced a stamp duty which applied to
pamphlets as well. The new law continued the reactionary measures
which meant that in practice freedom of the press was abolished in
France.~-70.
36 La Presse a bourgeois daily, published in Paris since 1836;
in 1848 and 1849 it was the organ of the bourgeois republicans, after-
wards a Bonapartist paper. 70.
37 This passage refers to the efforts Louis Bonaparte made dur-
ing the July Monarchy to carry out a coup d'etat by means of a mil-
itary insurrection. On September 30, 1836, he succeeded in rousing
two artillery regiments of the Strasbourg garrison with the aid of a
few pro-Bonapartist officers, but within a few hours the insurgents
were disarmed. Louis Bonaparte was arrested and deported to Amer-
ica. Taking advantage of a certain revival of Bonapartist feelings in
France, he landed with a handful of conspirators in Boulogne on
August 6, 1840, and attempted to instigate a rebellion among the
troops of the local garrison. But this attempt too proved to be an
utter failure. Bonaparte was sentenced to life imprisonment, but in
1846 he escaped to England. 76.
38 Schufterle and Splegelberg characters in Schiller's drama
Die Rauber (The Robbers), who plunder and murder unimpeded by
any moral scruples. 77.
39 Elysee newspapers those of a Bonapartist trend; the name is
taken from the Elysee palace, the Paris residence of Louis Bonaparte
while president. 79.
40 For his play on words Marx utilizes here a line from Schiller's
Lied an die Freude (Ode to Joy), in which the poet sings of joy as
146
the "daughter of Elysium." In classical mythology Elysium or Elyslac
fields is equivalent to paradise. Champs Elysee (Elysian Fields) was
the name of the Paris avenue, where Louis Bonaparte's residence
stood. 84.
41 Parliaments in France before the Bourgeois Revolution of
1789 parliaments were high judicial bodies. They existed in a number
of towns throughout the country. The most important was the Paris
Parliament, which registered the royal decrees and possessed the right
of remonstrance as it was called, i.e., the right to protest against de-
crees which infringed the customs and the legislation of the country.
However, the parliamentary opposition was in fact powerless* since the
personal appearance of the king at the session made registration of
the decrees obligatory, 89.
42 Belle Isle an island in the Bay of Biscay; from 1849 to 1857 it
served as a place of detention for political prisoners; in particular
the workers who took part in the Paris uprising of June 1848 were im-
prisoned there. 93
43 Marx paraphrases here a story which the Greek writer Athenaeus
recounts (2nd-3rd century A. D.) in his book Deipnosophistae (Dinner-
Table Philosophers}. The Egyptian Pharaoh Tachos alluding to the
small stature of the Spartan King Agesilaus who had come with his
troops to the Pharaoh's assistance, said: "The mountain was in labour.
Zeus was scared. But the mountain has brought forth a mouse."
Agesilaus replied: "I seem to thee a mouse, but the time will come
when I will appear to thee as a lion." 94.
44 Assembles Nationals a monarchist daily published in Paris from
1848 to 1857. 98.
45 In the fifties of the 19th century the Count of Chambord, the Le-
gitimist pretender to the French throne lived in Venice. 98.
46 This refers to tactical disagreements in the Legitimist camp dur-
ing the Restoration period. Louis XVIII and Villele favoured a more
cautious introduction of reactionary measures, while the Count d'Artols
(from 1824 King Charles X) and Polignac completely ignored condi-
tions in France and advocated the unqualified restoration of the pre-
revolutionary regime.
During the Restoration period the Palace of the Tuileries was Louis
XVIII's residence; the Count d'Artois lived in the Pavilion Marsan,
one of the Palace's wings. 100.
47 The first international trade and industrial exhibition was held
in London from May to October 1851. 108.
147
48 The Economist, January 10, 1852, pp. 29-30. 110.
49 Le Messager de VAssemblee French anti-Bonapartist daily;
published in Paris from February 16 to December 2, 1851111.
50 A paraphrase from Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5. 121.
51 Code Napoleon a civil code, published by Napoleon in 1804, it
was also introduced in the parts of West and South-West Germany
that were conquered by the French, in the Rhine Province it remained
in force after the latter had been incorporated in Prussia. Engels
called It the "classic law code of bourgeois society.'* 124.
52 Cevennesa mountainous region in the Languedoc, South-East
France where from 1702 to 1705 an uprising of peasants (the so-called
Camisards) took place. The revolt, which began as a protest against
the persecution of Protestants, became strongly anti-feudal in charac-
ter. Separate outbreaks of the uprising continued to occur till 1715.
Vendee Western Department of France, during the French Bour-
geois Revolution of the end of the eighteenth century the scene of a
counter-revolutionary peasant revolt, led by the nobility and
clergy. 125.
53 In place of the last two sentences of this paragraph the iollow-
ing lines were printed in the 1852 edition: "The demolition of the state
machine will not endanger centralization. Bureaucracy is only the low
and brutal form of a centralization that is still afflicted with its oppo-
site, with feudalism. When he is disappointed in the Napoleonic Res-
toration, the French peasant will part with his belief in his small hold-
ing, the entire state edifice erected on this small holding will fall to
the ground and the proletarian revolution will obtain that chorus with-
out which its solo song becomes the swan song in all peasant coun-
tries." 131.
54 The Council of Constance (1414-18) was convened for the pur-
pose of strengthening the position of the Roman CathoMc Church which
had been weakened by the rising Reformation movement. The Council
condemned the teachings of John Wycliffe and Jan Hus, the leaders
of the Reformation. It healed the schism in the Catholic Church by
electing a new Pope in place of the three pretenders who had been con-
tending with each other for the papal tiara. 131.
55 A reference to the German or ''True" Socialism a reactionary
trend which became widespread chiefly among petty-bourgeois intellec-
tuals in Germany during the forties of the last century. The represent-
atives of 'True Socialism" Karl Grim, Moses Hess, Hermann Kriege,
etc. replaced socialist ideas by sentimental sermons on love and
148
brotherhood and denied the necessity of a bourgeois-democratic revo-
lution in Germany. Marx's and Engels's criticism of this trend can be
found in the following of their works: Deutsche Ideologic (The Ger-
man Ideology), "Der Volkstribun" {The People's Tribune], Edited B
Hermann Kriege, Deutscher Sozialismus in Versen und Prosa (Get man
Socialism in Verse and Prose) , Das Manifest der Kommunistischen
Partei (Manifesto of the Communist Party) .132.
56 Le Constitutional a French bourgeois daily, published in Paris
from 1815 to 1870; in the forties it was the newspaper of the moder-
ate wing of the Orleanists; during the Revolution of 1848 it expressed
the views of the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie centred around
Thiers; after the coup d'etat of December 1851 it became a Bonapartist
paper. 134.
57 A reference to Philippe d'Orleans's regency during the infancy
of Louis XV from 1715 to 1723. 135.
58 The Holy Tunic of Trevesa Catholic relic preserved in the
Treves Cathedral, alleged to be a holy vestment taken from Christ
while he was suffering death. It was regarded by pilgrims as an object
of veneration. 135.
59 The Red Republican a Chartist weekly published by G. J. Harney
from July to November 1850. The first English translation of the Com-
munist Manifesto was published in this weekly. 137.
60 Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Politisch-okonomische Revue (New
Rhenish Gazette. Political and Economic Review) a journal founded
by Marx and Engels in December 1849 and issued by them till Novem-
ber 1850. The journal was the theoretical and political organ of the
Communist League and a continuation of Neue Rheinische Zeitung pub-
lished by Marx and Engels during the Revolution of 1848-49. In all
six numbers of the journal came out from March to November 1850,
including one double issue (5-6), It was edited in London and printed
in Hamburg. New York was also mentioned on the cover, for Marx
and Engels expected that the journal would also be distributed among
the German emigrants in America. The by far greater part of the ma-
terial printed (articles, surveys, reviews) was written by Marx and
Engels, who also encouraged their supporters Wilhelm Wolff, Joseph
Weydemeyer, J. G. Eccarius to send contributions. Among the works
of the founders of Marxism published in the journal are Die Ktassen-
kampfe in Frankreich 1848 bis 1850 (The Class Struggles in France,
1848 to 1850) by Marx and Die deutsche Reichsverfassungskampagne
(Campaign for a Constitution of the German Empire) and Der deutsche
Bauernkrieg (The Peasant War in Germany) by Engels. The papers
149
published in the journal summed up the results of the Re\olution oi
1848-49 and further elaborated the theory and the tactics of the rev-
olutionary proletarian party. The periodical ceased publication be-
cause of the political oppression in Germany and lack of funds 137
M Xeue Preussische Zeitung (\'ew Prussian Gazette)* German
daily which began to appear in Berlin in June 1848; it was the organ
of the counter-revolutionary camarilla at the Prussian court and of
the Prussian Junkers. The paper was also known as Kreuz-Zettung
(Cross Gazette), because of the cross in its heading. 137.
BIOGRAPHICAL INDEX
Aesop (6th cent. B. C ) semi-
legendary Greek fabulist. 19.
Agesitaus If (c 442 c 358
B, C.)-King of Sparta
(c 399-c, 358 B. C.) 94.
Aitty, Pierre d' (1350-14*20 or
1425) French cardinal, well-
known theologian; played an
important part at the Council
of Constance. 131.
Alexander of Macedon (356-323
B. C.). 78.
Alais, Louis Pierre Constant
(born c 1821) French police
agent. 77, 82.
Angles, Frangois Ernest (1807-
1861) French landowner, dep-
uty to the Legislative As-
sembly (1850-51), representing
the party of Order 104,
B
Bailly, Jean Sylvain (1736-1793)
French astronomer, took an
active part in the French Bour-
geois Revolution of the end
of the 18th century, one of the
leaders of the liberal consti-
tutionalist bourgeoisie. 17.
Balzac, Honor e de (1799-1850)
134.
Baraguay d'Hittiers, Achille
( 1 795-1878) French general
since 1854 marshal, during
the Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies, in 1851 com-
mander of the Paris garrison;
Bonapartist 87, 88, 102.
Baroche, Pierre Jules (1802-
1870) French politician, law-
yer, during the Second Re-
public deputy to the Constit-
uent and Legislative Assem-
blies, represented the party of
Order; in 1849 General Procu-
rator of the Court of Ap-
peal; Bonapartist, member of
several Cabinets before and
after the coup d'etat of De-
cember 2, 185169, 82, 88, 94.
Barrot, Odilon ( 179<1-1 873)
French bourgeois politician, up
to February 184$ leader of the
liberal monarchist opposition;
from December 1848 to Octo-
757
ber 1849 headed the govern-
ment, which relied on the sup-
port of the counter-revolution-
ary monarchist bloc. 37, 38,
40, 44, 60, 61, 63, 73, 90, 93,
100, 111.
Baze t Jean Didier (1800-1881)
French lawyer and politician,
during the Second Republic
deputy to the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies; Or-
leanist 99, 116.
Bedeau, Marie Alphonse (1804-
1863) French general and
politician, moderate bourgeois
republican; during the Second
Republic Vice-president of the
Constituent and Legislative
Assemblies. 45, 9.
Benoit d'Azy, Denis (1796-1880)
French politician, financier
and industrialist; Vice-Presi-
dent of the Legislative Assem-
bly (1849-51), Legitimist 93,
99,
Bernard French colonel, who
headed the military commis-
sions which inflicted punish-
ment on the participants of
the Paris uprising of June
1848; after the coup d'etat of
December 2, 1861 was one of
the organizers of judicial pro-
secutions against the anti-
Bonapartist republicans. 34.-
Berry er, Pierre Antoine (1790-
1868) French lawyer and po-
litician, during the Second Re-
public deputy to the Constit-
uent and Legislative Assem-
blies, Legitimist. 49, 68, 90,
99, 100, 107.
Billault, Augusts Adolphe Marie
(1805-1863) French politi-
cian, lawyer, Orleanist, mem-
ber of the Constituent Assem-
bly (1848-49); after 1849 Bo-
napartist, Minister of Interior
(1854-58). 93.
Blanc , Louis (1811-1882)
French petty-bourgeois Social-
ist, historian, in 1848 member
of the Provisional Government
and Chairman of the Luxem-
bourg Commission "a gov-
ernment commission on the
labour question," which acted
as a mediator between work-
ers and employers, took up a
conciliatory attitude towards
the bourgeoisie; in August
1848 emigrated to England
and was a leader of the petty-
bourgeois emigres in London
15, 137.
Blanqui, Louis August e (1805-
1881) French revolutionary,
Utopian Communist, advocated
conspiratorial methods and
was the leader of the secret
society, Societe des saisons,
and organizer of the revolt of
May 12, 1839; during the Rev-
olution of 1848 stood on the
extreme Left wing of the dem-
ocratic and proletarian move-
ment in France; was many
times sentenced to terms of
imprisonment. 22.
Bonaparte, Louis See Napo-
leon III.
Bourbon royal dynasty which
reigned in France from 1589 to
1792, 1814-15 and 1815-30.
36, 46, 47, 95, 97, 99, 123.
Broglie, Achille Charles Leonce
Victor, duke (1785-1870)
French statesman, Prime Min-
ister (1835-36), deputy to the
Legislative Assembly (1849-
51), Orleanist.68, 100.
152
Btutus, Marcus Junius (c. 85-42
B. C ) Roman politician, one
of the leaders of the aristoc-
ratic republican conspiracy
against Julius Caesar. 16.
Caesar, Gains Julius (c. 100-44
B. C) 16.
Caligula, Gaius Caesar (12-41
A D.) Roman emperor (37-
41) 38.
Carey, Henry Charles (1793-
1879) American bourgeois
economist, propounded the
theory of class harmony. 138.
Carller, Pierre (1799-1858) Pre-
fect of the Paris police (1849-
51), Bonapartist 63, 77, 84,
112.
Caussldiere, Marc (1808-1861)
French petty-bourgeois dem-
ocrat, participated in the
Lyons insurrection of 1834;
during the July Monarchy an
organizer of secret revolution-
ary societies; after the Feb-
ruary Revolution of 184-8 Pre-
fect of the Paris police, deputy
to the Constituent Assem-
bly, in June 1848 emigrated to
England. 15.
Cavalgnac, Louis Eugene (1802-
1857) French general and
politician, moderate bourgeois
republican; took part in the
conquest of Algeria, after the
February Revolution of 1848
governor of Algeria, during
the war he distinguished him-
self by the use of barbarous
methods; since May 1848
French War Minister, he put
down the June uprising of the
Paris proletariat with the
utmost cruelty; head of the
executive power from June to
December 1848, 28, 34, 35, 36,
45, 91, 105, 116.
Chambord, Henri Charles, Count
(1820- 1883) the last repre-
sentative of the older branch
of the Bourbon dynasty,
grandson of Charles X, pre-
tender to the French throne un-
der the name of Henry V, 98.
Chamisso, Adelbert von (1781-
1838) German romantic poet,
came out against feudal reac-
tion. 43
Changarnier, Nicolas Anne Theo-
dule (1793- 1877) French gen-
eral and bourgeois politician,
monarchist; during the Second
Republic deputy to the Con-
stituent and Legislative As-
semblies; after June 1848 com-
mander of the Paris garrison
and the National Guard, took
part in dispersing the Paris
demonstration of June 13,
1849. 39, 41, 44, 52, 57, 58,
77-79, 82, 86-91, 94, 101, 104,
111, 114, 116.
Charras, lean Baptlste Adolphe
(1810-1865) French soldier
and politician, moderate bour-
geois republican; took part in
quelling the uprising of Paris
workers in June 1848; during
the Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies, opponent of
Louis Bonaparte; after the
coup d'etat of December 2,
1851 he was deported 8, 116.
Constant, Benjamin (1767-1830)
French liberal bourgeois
153
politician, publicist and writer.
16
Cousin, Victor (1792-1867)
French idealist philosopher,
eclectic.- 16
Cretan, Nicolas Joseph (1798-
1864 1 ) French lawyer; during
the Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies, Orleanist
97.
Cromwell, Oliver (1599-1658)
17, 115
D
Danton, Georges Jacques (1759-
1794) an outstanding figure
of the French Bourgeois Rev-
olution of the end of the 18th
century, leader of the Right
wing of the Jacobins 15, 16.
David (end of nth-first half of
10th century B. C.) King of
Israel, biblical character. 56.
DefLotte, Paul (1817-1860)
French naval officer, democrat
and Socialist, follower of
Blanqui, took an active part
in the events of May 15 and
the uprising of June 1848 in
Paris, deputy to the Legisla-
tive Assembly (1850-51). 68
Desmoulins, Camilla (1760-1794)
French publicist, played an
active part during the Bour-
geois Revolution of the end
of the 18th century, Right-
wing Jacobin 16.
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of
Beaconsfield (1804-1881)
137
Duchatt-'t, Charles (1803-1867)
French statesman, Orleanist,
Minister of Interior (1839-40,
1840-February 1848.) 99.
Dupin, Andre Marie Jean Jacques
(1783-1865) French lawyer
and politician, Orleanist, dep-
uty to the Constituent Assem-
bly (1848-49) and President of
the Legislative Assembly
(1849-51); later Bonapartist
77, 82.
Duprat, Pascal (1815-1885)
French politician, journalist,
bourgeois republican; during
the Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies, opponent of
Louis Bonaparte. 84, 85.
Engels, Frederick (1820-1895)
136
Faltoux, Alfred (1811-1886)
French politician and writer,
Legitimist and Clerical, in
1848 he initiated the dissolu-
tion of the national ateliers
and inspired the crushing of
the June insurrection in Paris,
during the Second Republic
deputy to the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies, Minis-
ter of Education (1848-49).
44, 60.
Faucher, Leon (1803-1854)--
French bourgeois publicist and
politician, Orleanist, Malthu-
sian economist, Minister of In-
terior (December 1848-May
1849, 1851), later Bonapartist
70, 94, 100.
J54
Fould, Achille (1800-1867)
French banker and politician,
Orleanist, later Bonapartist,
between 1849 and 1867 he was
several times Minister of Fi-
nance. 63, 88, 94, 103
Girardin, Delphine, de (1804-
1855) French writer, wife of
Emile de Girardin 135,
Girardin, Emile de (1806-1881)
French bourgeois publicist
and politician, from 1830's to
1860's edited, with several in-
terruptions, the newspaper La
Presse, in politics distin-
guished himself by his com-
plete lack of principles; before
the Revolution of 1848 he
opposed the Guizot govern-
ment, during the Revolution
a bourgeois republican, depu-
ty to the Legislative Assembly
(1850-51); subsequently a Bo-
napartist. 85.
Giraud, Charles Joseph Bar-
thelemy ( 1 802- 1 88 1 ) French
lawyer, monarchist, Minister
of Education (1851). 112.
Gracchus, Gains Semprontus
(153-121 B. C.) Roman trib-
une (123-122 B. C ), fought for
the introduction of agrarian
laws in the interests of the
peasantry; brother of Tiberius
Gracchus. 16.
Gracchus, Tiberius Sempronius
(163-133 B. C) Roman trib-
une (133 B C.), fought for
the introduction of agrarian
laws in the interests of the
peasants. -16.
Granur de Cassagnac, Adolphc
(1806-1880) French journal-
ist, unscrupulous politician,
before the Revolution of 1848
Orleanist, later Bonapartist,
during the Second Empire
member of the Legislative
Corps.-134.
Guize, Henri II de Lorraine,
duke (1614-1661) took part
in the Fronde a social move-
ment against absolutism in
France from 1648 to 1633
133.
Guizot , Francois Pierre Quit-
laume (1787-1874) French
bourgeois historian and states-
man, from 1840 up to the
February Revolution of 1848
he in fact directed the domestic
and foreign policy, voicing
the interests of the big inance
bourgeoisie 16, 31, 99, 100,
120, 134, 138.
H
Harney, George Julian (1817-
1897) outstanding figure in
the English labour movement,
one of the Left-wing leaders
of the Chartist movement;
editor of the Northern Star,
friend of Marx and Engels.
137.
Hautpoul, Alphonse Henri d'
(1789-1865) French general,
Legitimist, later Bonapartist;
deputy to the Legislative
Assembly (1849-51), War
Minister (1849-50). 63, 69,
78-80.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
(1770-1831) outstanding rep-
155
resentative of German classic
philosophy, he propounded an
objective idealism and has
most comprehensively elabo-
rated idealist dialectics. 15.
Heine, Heinrich (1797-1856)
25.
Heinzen, Karl (1809-1880)
German radical publicist,
petty-bourgeois democrat, an
opponent of Marx and Engels;
in 1849 he participated in the
uprising in Baden and the
Palatinate, then he emigrated
to Switzerland and subse-
quently to England; in the au-
tumn of 1850 he finally settled
in the U.S A. 136, 137, 138,
139.
Henry V see Chambord, Henri
Charles.
Henry VI (1421-1471) King of
England (1422-146 1). 97.
Hugo, Victor Marie (1802-1885).
7, 61
Joinville, de, Frangots Ferdinand
Philippe Louis Marie d'Orle-
ans, prince (181 8- 1900) son
of Louis Philippe, emigrated
to England after the Revolu-
tion of If 48. 99, 100, 111.
Jones, Ernest Charles (1819-
1869) outstanding figure of
the English labour movement,
proletarian poet and publicist,
a leader of the Left wing of
Chartism, one of the editors
of the Northern Star, editor of
the Notes to the People and
People's Paper; friend of Marx
and Enp-els 136.
Jones, Richard (1790-1855)
English economist. 338.
La Hitte, Jean Ernest (1789
1878) French general, Bona-
partist, deputy to the Legisla-
tive Assembly (1850-51),
Foreign Minister (1849-51).
68.
Lamartine, Alphonse (1790-
1869) French poet, historian
and politician, in the l40's
bourgeois republican, in 148
Foreign Minister and actual
head of the Provisional Gov-
ernment 93.
Lamoriciere, Louis Christophe
Leon ( 1 806- 1 865) French
general and politician, moder-
ate bourgeois republican, in
1848 he took an active part
in crushing the June uprising,
later War Minister in the
Cavaignac government (June
to December 1848), during the
Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies. 45, 116
La Roche'] aquelein, Henri
Auguste Georges, marquis
(1805-1867) French politician,
member of the Chamber of
Peers, one of the leaders of
the Legitimist party, during
the Second Republic deputy
to the Constituent and Legis-
lative Assemblies; later Sena-
tor in the Second Empire.
100.
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandra Auguste
(1807-1874) French publicist
and politician, one of the
leaders of the petty-bourgeois
democrats, editor of the news-
paper Reforme; in 1848 mem-
ber of the Provisional Govern-
ment, deputy to the Constit-
156
uent and Legislative Assem-
blies, where he led the
Alontagne, after the demon-
stration of June 13, 1849 emi-
grated to England. 28, 45,
52, 55.
Le Fid, Adolphe Emmanuel
Charles ( 1 804- 1 887) French
general, politician and dip-
lomat; representative of the
party of Order, during the
Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies; War Minister
in the "Government of Nation-
al Defence" (1870-71) 40,
116.
Locke, John (1632- 1704). 17.
Louis XIV (1638-1715) King
of France (1643-1715). 125
Louis XV (1710-1774) King of
France (1715-74). 135.
Louis XVIII (1755-1824) King
of France (1814-15 and 1815-
24). 16.
Louis Philippe (1773-1850)
Duke of Orleans, King of
France (1830-48). 21, 23, 27,
28, 29, 35, 37, 44, 58, 60, 74,
98, 99, 102, 103, 122.
Louis Philippe Albert, Duke of
Orleans, Count of Paris (1838-
1894) grandson of King
Louis Philippe, pretender to
the French throne. 90.
Luther, Martin (1483-1546)
outstanding figure of the
Reformation, founder of the
Protestant (Lutheran) Church
in Germany; ideologist of the
German middle class; in 1525
during the Peasant War he
sided with the princes and
publicly denounced the insur-
gent peasants and urban poor.
15.
M
McCulloch, John Ramsay (1789-
1864) English bourgeois
economist, representative of
vulgar pol tical economy, 138.
Magnan, Bernard Pierre (1791-
1865) French general, since
December 1851 marshal, Bona-
partist; took part in suppres-
sing the workers' insurrections
in Lyons (1831 and 1849),
Lille and Roubaix (1845) and
the Paris uprising of June
1848, deputy to the Legisla-
tive Assembly (1849-51), one
of the organizers of the coup
d'etat of December 2, 1851.
302, 112, 115.
Maleville, Leon (1803-1879)
French politician, Orleanist,
during the Second Republic
deputy to the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies, Minis-
ter of Interior (second half
of December 1848). 93.
Malthas, Thomas Robert (1766-
1834) English clergyman,
bourgeois economist, ideolo-
gist of the land aristocracy
that has become bourgeois, put
forward a reactionary theory
of population. 138.
Marrast, Armand (1801-1852)
French publicist and politician,
a leader of the moderate
bourgeois republicans, editor
of the newspaper Le National-,
in 1848 member of the Pro-
visional Government and
mayor of Paris, President of
the Constituent Assembly
(1848-49). 17, 29, 40, 41.
Marx, Karl (1818-1883). 7, 13,
14, 136.
157
Masaniello (original name Tom-
maso Aniello) (1620-1647)
fisherman, leader of the pop-
ular uprising at Naples in 1647
against Spanish dominion
114.
Maugtdn, Frangois (1785-1854)
French lawyer and politi-
cian, up to 1848 one of the
leaders of the liberal monarch-
ist opposition; during the
Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies, sided with the
Right-wing deputies, 81, 82,
83.
Maupas, Charlemagne Emile
( 1 8 1 8-1 888) French lawyer,
Bonapartist, Prefect of the
Paris police (1851), one of the
organizers of the coup d'etat
of December 2, 1851, Police
Minister (1852-53). 112.
Mill, James (1773-1836)
English philosopher, historian
and economist. 138.
Mole, Louis Mattrieu, count
(178 1-1855) French states-
man, Orleanist, Prime Minis-
ter (1836-37, 1837-39), dur-
ing the Second Republic
deputy to the Constituent and
Legislative Assemblies. 68,
100.
Monk, George ( 1 608- 1 670)
English general, took an active
part in the English Bourgeois
Revolution of the 17th century;
in 1660 he helped to restore
the monarchy in England. 78.
Montalemhert, Charles (1810-
1870) French politician and
writer, during the Second
Republic deputy to the Con-
stituent and Legislative
Assemblies, Orleanist, leader
of Catholic circles, supported
Louis Bonaparte during the
couo d'etat of December 2,
185190, 100, 130.
Morny, Charles An gust e Louis
Joseph, count (1811-1865)
French politician, Bonapartist,
deputy to the Legislative
Assembly (1849-51), one of
the organizers of the coup
d'etat of December 2, 1851,
Minister of Interior (Decem-
ber 1851-January 1852). 134
N
Napoleon I (Bonaparte) (1769-
1821) Emperor of the French
(1804-14 and 1815) 7, 16, 17,
18, 76, 115, 119, 122, 124, 125,
126, 127, 128, 135.
Napoleon III (Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte) (1808-1873)
nephew of Napoleon I, Presi-
dent of the Second Republic
(1848-51), Emperor of the
French (1852-70). 7, 8, 18,
26, 27, 35, 37, 38, 39, 40, 44,
45, 49, 50, 52, 56-59, 60, 61, 63,
67-70, 73-81, 83-94, 95, 96, 100-
103, 105-107, 110-117, 120, 122-
127, 128-138, 135.
Neumayer, Maximitien Georges
Joseph ( 1 789- 1 866) French
general, sided with the party
of Order, commander of the
Paris troops (1848-50). 78.
Ney, Edgar (1812-1882)
French officer, Bonapartist,
adjutant of President Louis
Bonaparte, deputy to the Leg-
islative Assembly (1850-51)
6L
158
o
Orleans French royal dynasty
(1830-1848). 36, 46, 47, 60, 98,
99, 123, 133, 134.
Orleans, Helene, nee Mecklen-
burg-Schwerin, duchess (1-814-
1858) widow of Ferdinand,
King Louis Philippe's elder
son, mother of the Count of
Paris, the pretender to the
French throne. 28, 61.
Oudinot, Nicolas Charles Victor
( 1 79 1 - 1 863) French general ,
Orleanist, during the Second
Republic deputy to the Con-
stituent and Legislative As-
semblies, in 1849 he command-
ed the troops dispatched
against the Republic of Rome,
tried to organize resistance to
the coup d'etat of December 2,
1851. 40, 56, 61.
Paris, count see Louis Philippe
Albert, Duke of Orleans.
Perrot, Benjamin Pierre (1791-
1865) French general, took
part in quelling the Paris
uprising of June 1848, in 1849
commander of the Paris
National Guard. 8.
Persigny, Jean Gilbert Victor,
count ( 1 808- 1 872) French
statesman, Bonapartist, deputy
to the Legislative Assembly
(1849-51), one of the organ-
izers of the coup d'etat of
December 2, 1851, Minister of
Interior (1852-54 and 1860-63).
94. 111.
Polignac, Auguste Jules Arrnand
Marie, prince (1780-1847)-
French statesman of the
Restoration period, Legitimist
and Clerical, Foreign Minister
and head of the Cabinet (1829-
30) .100.
Proudhon, Pierre Joseph (1809-
1865) French writer, econo-
mist and sociologist, ideolo-
gist of the petty bourgeoisie,
one of the originators of an-
archism, in 1848 member of the
Constituent Assembly. 7, 55.
Publicola, Publius Valerius
(d. 503 B.C.) semi-legendary
Roman statesman. 16
Rateau t Jean Pierre (1800-1887)
French lawyer, during the
Second Republic deputy to
the Constituent and Legisla-
tive Assemblies, Bonapartist.
38.
Regnault de Saint- Jean d'An-
gely, Auguste Michel Etienne,
count ( 1 794- 1 870 ) French
general, Bonapartist, during
the Second Republic deputy
to the Constituent and Legi-
slative Assemblies, War Min-
ister (January 1851). 87, 88.
Remusat, Charles Frangois Ma-
rie, count (1797-1875) French
statesman and writer, Orlean-
ist, Minister of Interior
(1840), during the Second
Republic deputy to the Con-
stituent and Legislative As-
semblies, Foreign Minister
(1871-73). 89.
Ricardo, David (1772-1823).
138.
159
Richard III (1452-1485) King
of England (1483-85). 97.
Robespierre, Maximilten (1758-
1794) outstanding figure of
the French Bourgeois Revolu-
tion of the end of the 18th
century, leader of the Jacobins,
head of the revolutionary
government (1793-94). 15, 16.
Rouher, Eugene (1814-1884)
French statesman, Bonapart-
ist, during the Second Repub-
lic deputy to the Constituent
and Legislative Assemblies,
Minister of Justice (1849-52,
with interruptions); occupied
various government posts in
the Second Empire. 81, 94.
Royer-Collard, Pierre Paul
(1763-1845) French philos-
opher and politician, support-
er of constitutional monarchy.
16.
Ruge, Arnold (1802-1880)
German publicist, young He-
gelian; bourgeois radical, in
1848 deputy to the Frankfort
National Assembly, belonging
to its Left wing; in the fifties
one of the leaders of the
German petty-bourgeois em-
igration in England; after
1866 National Liberal 140.
Saint- Arnaud, Armand Jacques
Leroy de (1801-1854) French
general, since 1852 marshal,
Bonapartist; War Minister
(1851-54), one of the organ-
izers of the coup d'etat of De-
cember 2, 1851, in 1854 Com-
mander-in-Chief of the French
army in the Crimea. 40.
Sainte-Beuve, Pierre Henri
(1819-1855) French manu-
facturer and landowner, sup-
porter of free-trade policy,
representative of the party of
Order; in the Second Republic
member of the Constituent
and Legislative Assemblies,
104.
Saint- Jean d'Angely see Reg-
nault de Saint-Jean d'Angrely.
Saint-Just, Louis Antoine (1767-
1794) outstanding figure in
the French Bourgeois Revolu-
tion of the end of the 18th
century, one of the Jacobin
leaders. 16
Saint-Priest, Emmanuel Louis
Marie, viscount (1789-1881)
French general and diplomat,
Legitimist, deputy to the Leg-
islative Assembly (1849-51).
99
Sallandrouze, Charles Jean
(1808-1867) French indus-
trialist, deputv to the Con-
stituent Assembly (1848-49);
supported Louis Bonaparte
during the coup 4'etat of De-
cember 2, 1851. 115.
Salvandy, Narcisse Achille, count
(1795-18:6) French writer
and statesman, Orleanist,
Minister of Education (1837-
39 and 1845-48). 98.
Say, Jean Baptiste (1767-1832)
French bourgeois econo-
mist, a representative of vul-
gar political economy. 15, 138.
Schiller, Friedrich von (1759-
1805). 77, 84.
Schramm, Jean Paul Adam de
(1789-1884) French general
and politician, Bonapartist,
War Minister (1850-51). 79.
160
Senior, Nassau William (1790-
1864) English bourgeois vul-
gar economist. 138.
Shakespeare, William (1564-
1616). 121.
Sismondi, Jean Charles Leonard
Simonde de (1773-1842)
Swiss economist, criticized
capitalism from petty-bour-
geois positions. 9.
Soulouque, Faust in (c. 1782-
1867) President of the Negro
Republic of Haiti, in 1849 he
proclaimed himself emperor,
assuming the name of Faustin
I. 134.
Sue, Eugene (1804-1857)
French writer, author of novels
on social themes, deputy to
the Legislative Assembly
(1850-51). 70.
Szemere, Barthelemy (1812-
1869) Hungarian politician
and publicist; in 1849 Prime
Minister of the Hungarian
Revolutionary Government;
after the defeat of the Hunga-
rian Revolution he emigrated
140.
Thierry, August in (1795-1856)
French liberal historian. 138.
Thiers, Louis Adolphe (1797-
1877) French bourgeois his-
torian and statesman, Prime
Minister (1836, 1840); in the
Second Republic deputy to the
Constituent and Legislative
Assemblies, Orleanist; Presi-
dent of the Republic (1871-
73), hangman of the Paris
Commune. 40, 49, 52, 56, 68,
90, 99, 100, 101, 104, 107, 111,
114, 116.
Thorigny, Pierre Francois Elisa-
beth ( 1 798- 1 869) French
lawyer, Bonapartist, Minister
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Tocqueville, Alexis (1805-1859)
French bourgeois historian
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October 1849). 101.
Vaisse, Claude Marius (1799-
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(January-April 1851 ) .92.
Vatimesnil, Antoine Francois
Henri (1789-1860) French
politician, Legitimist, Minister
of Education (1828-30), deputy
to the Legislative Assembly
(1849-51). 93.
Veron, Louis Desire (1798-1867)
French journalist and poli-
tician, up to 1848 Orleanist,
then Bonapartist; the proprie-
tor of the newspaper Constitu-
tionnel. 134.
Vidal, Frangois (1814-1872)
French economist, petty-bour-
geois Socialist, in 1848 Secreta-
ry of the Luxemburg Com-
mission, deputy to the Legi-
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69.
Vieyra French colonel, in 1851
chief of the general staff of
the national Guard; Bonapart-
ist, participated in the coup
d'etat of December 2, 1851.
56.
161
Villite, Joseph (1773-1854)
French politician of the Resto-
ration period, extreme
monarchist. 100
W
Wade, John (1788-1875)
English, economist, historian
and publicist, 138.
Wakefietd, Edward Gibbon
(1796-1862) English econom-
ist and colonial statesman
138.
Weydemeyer, Joseph (1818-1866)
German revolutionary, Com-
munist, friend of Marx; emi-
grated to America in 1851.
7, 136.
Whately, Richard (1787-1863)
English archbishop, professor
of political economy at Drum-
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Yon French Police Commis-
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Two Companion Works on France
THE
IN
by KARL MARX
This work on the revolutionary events
in France in 1848-50 was written while
the events analyzed were in progress.
Frederick Engels says this "was Marx's
first attempt, with the aid of the materialist
conception, to explain a section of con-
t^i::rary history from the given eco-
nomic situation." Engels' Introduction in
unexpurgated form is Included; the volume
waseditedbyC.P.Dutt.
$1.50
IN
by KARL MARX
This is the complete edition of Marx's
three addresses dealing with the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870-71, ard with the
heroic defense of Paris by 1 Le Commune.
Included are Marx's fame is letters to ~'Jr.
Kugelmann on the P^r.s Commune an
introduction by Fredt ,iek Engels, and ex-
planatory notes.
Paperback, 85c
ice
5744
