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Full text of "The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte"

THE 

EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE 



OF 



LOUIS BONAPARTE 






TRANSLATED BY 

DANIEL DE LEON 




CHICAGO 

CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 
1907 



/\! 



PUBLISHER S NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. 

The first edition of this translation was published by The International 
Library Publishing Company of New York City, toward the end of 1807. A few 
years later the unsold copies together with the plates and copyright were trans 
ferred to the Standard Publishing Company of Terre Haute, Indiana, and our 
co-operative publishing house has recently purchased all rights in the book. 
We are reprinting it, including the translator s preface, with no change, except 
that we are correcting the curious slip on page 8 in which the Latin sentence 
was translated "Here is the ro?e, now dance." The allusion of Marx \v:is very 
obviously to Aesop s fable of the boasting traveler. This traveler related many 
interesting tales of his own exploits, one det:il of which was that while visiting 
the island of Rhodes, whose, inhabitants were celebrated for their expertness 
in leaping, he surpassed all of them. One of his hearers accordingly suggested 
that he suppose the place in which he was then standing to be Rhodes and give 
an exhibition of his leaping: "Hie Rhodus, hie salta." Here is Rhodes, leap here. 

Chicago, March 1, 1907. C. II. K. 



PRESS OP 

JOUN F. IIIGGINS 
CHICAGO 



TRANSLATOR S PREFACE. 



"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" is one of Karl Marx most 
profound and most brilliant monographs. It may be considered the best work 
extant on the philosophy of history, with an eye especially upon the history of 
the Movement of the Proletariat, together with the bourgeois and other mani 
festations that accompany the same, and the tactics that such conditions dic 
tate. 

The recent populist uprising; the more recent "Debs Movement"; the thou 
sand and one Utopian and chimerical notions that are flaring up; the capitalist 
manoeuvres; the hopeless, helpless grasping after straws, that characterize the 
conduct of the bulk of the working class; all of these, together with the empty- 
headed, ominous figures that are springing into notoriety for a time and have 
their day, mark the present period of the Labor Movement in the nation a 
critical one. The best information acquirable, the best mental training ob 
tainable are requisite to steer through the existing chaos that the death- 
tainted social system of to-day creates all around us. To aid in this needed in 
formation and mental training, this instructive work is now made accessible to 
English readers, and is commended to the serious study of the serious. 

The teachings contained in this work are Jiung on an episode in recent 
French history. With some this fact may detract of its value. A pedantic, 
supercilious notion is extensively abroad among us that we are an "Anglo- 
Saxon" nation; and an equally pedantic, supercilious habit causes many to look 
to England for inspiration, as from a racial birthplace. Nevertheless, for weal 
or for woe, there is no such thing extant as "Anglo-Saxon" of all nations, 
said to be "Anglo-Saxon," in the United States least. What we still have from 
England, much as appearances may seem to point the other way, is not of our , 

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

*^t 

tions." We are no more English on account of them than we are Chinese be 
cause we all drink tea. 

Of all European nations, France is the one to which we come nearest. Be 
sides its republican form of government, the directness of its history, the unity 
of its actions, the sharpness that marks its internal development, are all char 
acteristics that find their parallel here best, and vice versa. In all essentials the 
study of modern French history, particularly when sketched by such a master- 
hand as Marx", is the most valuable one for the acquisition of that historic, 



social and biologic insight that our country stands particularly in need of, and 
that will be inestimable during the approaching critical days. 

For the assistance of those who, unfamiliar with the history of France, may 
be confused by some of the terms used by Marx, the following explanations may 
prove aidful. 

On the 18th Brumaire (Nov. 9th), the post-revolutionary development of 
affairs in France enabled the first Napoleon to take a step that led with inevit 
able certainty to the imperial throne. The circumstance that fifty and odd 
years later similar events aided his nephew, Louis Bonaparte, to take a similar 
step with a similar result, gives the name to this work "The Eighteenth Bru 
maire of Louis Bonaparte." 

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

Upon the overthrow of the first Napoleon came the restoration of the 
Bourbon throne (Louis XVIII, succeeded by Charles X). In July, 1830, an up 
rising of the upper tier of the bourgeoisie, or capitalist class the aristocracy of 
finance , overthrew the Bourbon throne, or landed aristocracy, and set up the 
throne of Orleans, a younger branch of the house of Bourbon, with Louis Phil 
ippe as king. From the month in which this revolution occurred, Louis Phil 
ippe s monarchy is called the "July Monarchy." In February, 1848, a revolt of 
a lower tier of the capitalist class the industrial bourgeoisie , against the 
aristocracy of finance, in turn dethroned Louis Philippe. This affair, also 
named from the month in which it took place, is the "February Revolution." 
The "Eighteenth Brumaire" starts with that event. 

Despite the inapplicableness to our own affairs of the political names and 
political leadership herein described, both these names and leaderships are to 
such an extent the products of an economic-social development that has here 
too taken place with even greater sharpness, and they have their present or 
threatened counterparts here so completely, that, by the light of this work of 
Marx , we are best enabled to understand our own history, to know whence we I 
come, whither we_ajft going-, and how to conduct themselves. 

New York, Sept. 12, 1897. 3. D. L. 



THE EIGHTEENTH BRUMAIRE 

OP 

LOUIS BONAPARTE. 



By KARL 



I. 

Hegel says somewhere that all great historic facts and personages recur 
twice. He forgot to add: "Once as tragedy, and again as farce." Caussidiere 
for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the "Mountain" of 1848-51 for the. 
"Mountain" of 1793-95, the Nephew for the Uncle. The identical caricature 
marks also the conditions under which the second edition of the eighteenth 
Brumaire is issued. 

his own history, but he does not make it out qf the whole 
jnit or conditions chosen by himself, but out of such, 



_ 

JLS he finds close at hand. The tradition or an past generations weighs like an 
alp upon the brain of the living. At the very time when men appear engaged, 
in revolutionizing things and themselves, in bringing about what never was 
before, at such very epochs of revolutionary crises do they anxiously conjure 
up into their service the spirits of the past, assume their names, their battle % 
cries, their costumes to enact a new historic scene in such time-honored dis 
guise and with such borrowed language. Thus did Luther masquerade as the* 
Apostle Paul; thus did the revolution of 1789-1814 drape itself alternately as 
Roman Republic and as Roman Empire ; Sior did the revolution of 1848 know 
what better to do than to parody. at one time the year J7B9, at another the.rax- 
olutionary traditions of 1793-95, , Thus does the beginner, who has acquired a 
new language, keep on translating it back into his own mother tongue; only 
then has he grasped the spirit of the new language and is able freely to ex 
press himself therewith when he moves in it without recollections of old, and 
has forgotten in its use his own hereditary tongue. 

When these historic conjurations of the dead past are closely observed a 
striking difference is forthwith noticeable. Camille Desmoulins, Danton, 
Robespierre, St. Juste, Napoleon, the heroes as well as the parties and the 
masses of the old French revolution, achieved in Roman costumes and with 
Roman phrases the task of their time: the emancipation and the establishment 
of modern bourgeois society. One set knocked to pieces the old feudal ground 
work and mowed down the feudal heads that had grown upon it; Napoleon /. 
brought about, within France, the conditions under which alone free compe-. 
tition could develop, the partitioned lands be exploited, the nation s un- \/ 



shackled powers of industrial production be utilized; while, beyond the French 
^.-frontier, he swept away everywhere the establishments of feudality, so far as 

* requisite, to furnish the bourgeois social system of France with fit sur- 

rouadings of the European continent, and such as were in keeping with the 
v< times. Once the new social establishment was set on foot, the antediluvian 

giants vanished, and, along with them, the resuscitated Roman world the 
Brutuses, Gracchi, Publicolas, the Tribunes, the Senators, and Caesar himself. 

In its sober reality, bourgeois society had produced its own true interpreters 
-in the Says, Cousins, Royer-Collards, Benjamin Constants and Guizots; its real 

generals sat behind the office desks; and the mutton-head of Louis XVIII. 
";was its political head. Wholly absorbed in the production of wealth and in the 
v peaceful fight of competition, this society could no longer understand that the 
.ghosts of the days of Rome had watched over its cradle. And yet, lacking in 

horoism as bourgeois society is, it nevertheless had stood in need of heroism, of 
self-sacrifice, of terror, of civil war, and of bloody battle fields to bring it into the 
world. Its gladiators found in the stern classic traditions of the Roman re- 

public the ideals and the form, the self-deceptions, that they needed in order to 
conceal from themselves the narrow bourgeois substance of their own strug- 

* gles, and to keep their passion up to the height of a great historic tragedy. 
Thus, at another stage of development, a century before, did Cromwell and the 
English people draw from the Old Testament the language, passions and illu- 

"sions for their own bourgeois revolution. When the real goal was reached, 
. when the remodeling of English society was accomplished, Locke supplanted 
Habakuk. 

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

* pose of glorifying the new struggles, not j pi parodying ..the_ld; it serve^ the 
purpose of exaggerating to the imagination the given task, not to recoil before 

* its practical solution; it served the purpose of rekindling the revolutionary 
"spirit"" not to trot out its ghost. 

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

the "Republicain en gaunts jaunes,"* who disguised himself in old Bailly, down 

to the adventurer, who hid his repulsively trivial features under the iron death 

tnask of Napoleon. A whole people, that imagines it has imparted to itself 

* accelerated powers of motion through a revolution, suddenly finds itself trans- 
.ferred back to a dead epoch, and, lest there be any mistake possible on this 

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

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

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

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

he is living in the days of the Pharaohs, and daily laments the hard work that 

he must do in the Ethiopian mines as gold digger, immured in a subterranean 

prison, with a dim lamp fastened on his head, behind him the slave overseer 

with a long whip, and, at the mouths of the mine a mob of barbarous camp serv 
ants who understand neither the convicts in the mines nor one another, be- 

* Silk-stocking republican. 



rj 

cause they do not speak a common language. "And all this," cries the crazy 
Englishman, "is demanded of me, the free-born Englishman, in order to make 
gold for old Pharaoh." "In order to pay off the debts of the- Bonaparte family" 
sobs the French nation. The Englishman, so long as he was in his senses, 
could not rid himself of the rooted thought of making gold. The Frenchmen,! 
so long as they were busy with a revolution, could not rid themselves of the 1 
Napoleonic memory, as the election of December 10th proved. They longed j 
to escape from the dangers of revolution back to the flesh pots of Egypt; the 
2d of December, 1851, was the answer. They have not merely the caricature 
of the old Napoleon, but the old Napoleon himself caricatured as he needs 
must appear in the middle of tlae r.ineteenth century. 

The social revolution of the nineteenth century can not draw its poetry 
from the past, it can draw that only from the future. It cannot start upon its 
work before it has stricken off all superstition concerning the past. Former revo- 
Itftipns required historic reminfscences in jarder to intoxicate themselves with 
their qwnlssues. The revolutiflaiflilSSTn^^Seteeatli^cenfuryjmu^st let the dead 
bury their dead in order to reach its issue. ^ With the former, the phrase sur- / 
Pja_sses the substance ; with this oneTtnTrsubstance surpasses~ffie phrase. J 

The February revolution was a surprisal; old society was taken unawares; 
and the people proclaimed this political stroke a great historic act where 
by the new era was opened. On the 2d of December, the February revolution 
is jockeyed by the trick of a false player, and what seems to be overthrown 
is no longer the monarchy, but the liberal concessions which had been wrung 
from it by centuries of struggles. Instead of society itself having conquered 
a new point, only the State appears to have returned to its oldest form, to the 
simply brazen rule of the sword and the club. Thus, upon the "coup de main" 
of February, 1848, comes the response of the "coup de tete" of December, 1851. 
So won, so lost. Meanwhile, the interval did not go by unutilized. During the ( 
years 1848-1851, French society retrieved in abbreviated, because revolutionary, 
method the lessons and teachings, which if it was to be more than a dis 
turbance of the surface should* have preceded the February revolution, had 
it developed in regular order, by rule, so to say. Now French society seems to 
have receded behind its point of departure; in fact, however, it was compelled 
to first produce its own revolutionary point of departure, the situation, cir 
cumstances, conditions, under which alone the modern revolution is in 
earnest. 

Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the eighteenth century, rush onward 
rapidly from success to success. _their slase^ffeets_outbid one_anotheivmen and 
t^be-seTm"flaming brilliants, ecstasy js..fHiIpr_evaiimg spirit; but 
are short-lived, they reacE"~th"eTr cTmiax speedily^ then society relapses 
into a jong7fLt-o-nenz:Qu^j^eaction before it learns how to appropriate the fruits 
of its period of feverish excitement. Proletarian revolutions, on the con.traFy, 
such as those, of the nine.te.enth century, criticizethemselyes constantly^ con 
stantly interrupt themselves in their own "course; come back to what seems 
to havebee n accomplished. In order to atarfover anew; scorn with crueTthor- 
ougliness the half measures, weaknesses and meannesses of their first at- 



tempts; seem to throw down their adversary only in order to enable him to 
draw fresh strength from the earth, and again to rise up against them in more 
gigantic stature; constantly recoil in fear before the undefined monster mag 
nitude of their own objects until finally that situation is created which renders 
all retreat impossible, and the conditions themselves cry out: 

"Hie Rhodus, hie salta!" 
"Here is Rhodes, leap here." 

\ Every observer of average intelligence, even if he failed to follow step by 
step the course of French development, must have anticipated that an unheard 
of fiasco was in store for the revolution. It was enough to hear the self-satis 
fied yelpings of victory wherewith the Messieurs Democrats mutually congrat 
ulated one another upon the pardons of May 2d, 1852. Indeed, May 2d had be 
come a fixed idea in their heads; it had become a dogma with them something 
like the day on which Christ was to reappear and the Millennium to begin had 
become in the heads of the Chiliasts. Weakness had, as it ever does, taken 
refuge in the wonderful; it believed the enemy was overcome if, in its imagina 
tion, it hocus-pocused him away; and it lost all sense of the present in the 
imaginary apotheosis of the future, that was at hand, and of the deeds, that it 
had "in petto," but which it did not yet want to bring to the scratch. The. 
heroes, who ever seek to refute their established incompetence by mutually be 
stowing their sympathy upon one another and by pulling together, had packed 
their satchels, taken their laurels in advance payments, and were just engaged 
in the work of getting discounted "in partibus," on the stock exchange, the 
republics for which, in the silence of their unassuming dispositions, they 
had carefully organized the government personel. The 2d of December 
struck them like a bolt from a clear sky; and the peoples, who, in periods 
of timid despondency, gladly allow their hidden fears to be drowned by the 
loudest screamers, will perhaps have become convinced that the days are 
gone by when the cackling of geese could save the Capitol. 

The constitution, the national assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and 
the red republicans, the heroes from Africa, the thunder from the tribune, 
the flash-lightnings from the daily press, the whole literature, the political 
names and the intellectual celebrities, the civil and the criminal law, the "li- 
berte, egalite, fraternite," together with the 2d of May, 1852, all vanished like 
a phantasmagoria before the ban of one man, whom his enemies themselves do 
not pronounce an adept at witchcraft. Universal suffrage seems to have sur 
vived only foi a moment, to the end that, before the eyes of the whole world, it 
should make its own testament with its own hands, and, in the name of the 
people, declare: "All that exists deserves to perish." 

It is not enough to say, as the Frenchmen do, that their nation was taken 
by surprise. A nation, no more than a woman, is excused for the unguarded 
hour when the first adventurer who comes along can do violence to her. The 
riddle is not solved by such shifts, it is only formulated in other words. There 
remains to be explained how a nation of thirty-six millions can be surprised 
by three swindlers, and taken to prison without resistance. 



Let us recapitulate in general outlines the phases which the French revo 
lution of February 24th, 1848, to December, 1851, ran through. 

Three main periods are unmistakable: 

First The February period; 

Second The period of constituting the republic, or of the constitutive 
national assembly (May 4, 1848 to May 29th, 1849); 

\y Third The period of the constitutional republic, or of the legislative na 
tional assembly (May 29, 1849, to December 2, 1851). 

The first period, from February 24, or the downfall of Louis Philippe, to 
May 4, 1848, the date of the assembling of the constitutive assembly the 
February period proper may be designated as the prologue of the revolution. 
It officially expressed its own character in this, that the government which it 
improvised declared itself "provisional;" and, like the government, everything 
that was broached, attempted or uttered, pronounced itself provisional. No 
body and nothing dared to assume the right of permanent existence and of an 
actual fact, f&ll the elements that had prepared or determined the revolution 
dynastic opposition, republican bourgeoisie, democratic-republican small 
traders class, social-democratic labor element all found "provisionally" their 
ulace in the February government. 

v x x lt could not be otherwise. The February days contemplated originally a re- t 
form of the suffrage laws, whereby the area of the politically privileged among 
the property-holding class was to be extended, while the exclusive rule of the 
aristocracy of finance was to be overthrown.! When, however, it came to a 
real conflict, when the people mounted the barricades, when the National 
Guard stood passive, when the army offered no serious resistance, and the <^, 
kingdom ran away, then the republic seemed self-understood. Each party in 
terpreted it in its own sense. Won, arms in hand, by the proletariat, they put 
upon it the stamp of their own class, and proclaimed the SOCIAL REPUBLIC. I 
/Thus the general purpose of modern revolutions was indicated, a purpose, 
however, that stood in most singular contradiction to every thing that, with 
the material at hand, with the stage of enlightenment that the masses had 
reached, and under the existing circumstances and conditions, could be im 
mediately used. On the other hand, the claims of all the other elements, that 
had co-operated in the revolution of February, were recognized by the lion s 
share that they received in the government.^ Hence, in no period do we find 
t a more motley mixture of high-sounding phrases together with actual doubt 

!and helplessness; of more enthusiastic reform aspirations, together with a 
more slavish adherance to the old routine; more seeming harmony permeating 
\\ the whole of society together with a deeper alienation of its several elements. 
While the Parisian proletariat was still gloating over the sight of the great 
[perspective that had disclosed itself to their view, and was indulging in seri- 
fously meant discussions over the social problems, the old powers of society 
had grouped themselves, had gathered together, had deliberated and found _ 
an unexpected support in the mass of the nation the peasants and small p 
traders all of whom threw themselves on a sudden upon the political stage, 
after the barriers of the July monarchy had fallen down. I/ 



10 

^y The second period, from May 4, 1848, to the end of May, 1849, is the period 
.of the constitution, of the founding of the bourgeois republic. Immediately 
after the February days, not only was the dynastic opposition surprised by the 
republicans, and the republicans by the Socialists, but all France was sur 
prised by Paris. The national assembly, that met on May 4, 1848, to frame a con 
stitution, was the outcome of the national elections; it represented the nation. 
It was a living protest against the assumption of the February days, and it was 
intended to bring the results of the revolution back to the bourgeois measure. 
In vain did the proletariat of Paris, which forthwith understood the character 
of this national assembly, endeavor, a few days after its meeting, on May 15, 
to deny its existence by force, to dissolve it, to disperse the organic apparition, 
in which the reacting spirit of the nation was threatening them, and thus re 
duce it back to its separate component parts. As is known, the 15th of May 
had no other result than that of removing Blanqui and his associates, i. e., the 
real leaders of the proletarian party, irom the public scene for the whole 
Y/ period of the cycle which we are here considering. 

Upn the frurgeis monarchy f Luis Philifpe, nly the bourgeois repub 

lic could follow; that is to say, a limited portion of the bourgeoisie, having 

puled under the name of the king, now the whole bourgeoisie was to rule under 

the name of the people. The demands of the Parisian proletariat are Utopian 

torn-fooleries that have to be done away with. To this declaration of the con- 

stitutional national assembly, the Paris proletariat answers with the June 
insurrection, the most colossal event in the history of European civil wars. 

l The bourgeois republic won. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the 
industrial bourgeoisie; the middle class; the small traders class; the army; 
the slums, organized as Guarde Mobile; the intellectual celebrities, the parsons 
class, and the rural population. On the side of the Parisian proletariat stood 
but itself. Over 3,000 insurgents were massacred, after the victory 15,000 
transported without trial. With this defeat, the proletariat steps to the 
background on the revolutionary stage. It always seeks to crowd forward, so 
soon as the movement seems to acquire new impetus, but with ever weaker 
effort and ever smaller results. So soon as any of the above lying layers of 
society gets into revolutionary fermentation, it enters into alliance therewith 
and thus shares all the defeats which the several parties successively suffer. 
But these succeeding blows become ever weaker the more generally they are 
distributed over the whole surface of society. The more important leaders of 
the Proletariat, in its councils, and the press, fall one after another victims of 
the courts, and ever more questionable figures step to the front. ( IT PARTLY 
THROWS ITSELF UPON DOCTRINAIRE EXPERIMENTS, "CO-OPERATIVE 
BANKING" AND "LABOR EXCHANGE" SCHEMES: IN OTHER WORDS, IT 
GOES INTO MOVEMENTS, IN WHICH IT GIVES UP THE TASK OF REVO 
LUTIONIZING THE OLD WORLD WITH ITS OWN LARGE COLLECTIVE 
WEAPONS, AND. ON THE CONTRARY, SEEKS TO BRING ABOUT ITS 
EMANCIPATION, BEHIND THE BACK OF SOCIETY, IN PRIVATE WAYS, 
WITHIN THE NARROW BOUNDS OF ITS OWN CLASS CONDITIONS, AND, 
CONSEQUENTLY, INEVITABLY FAILS. \ The proletariat seems to be 



S. \ Th 
\S 



able neither to find again the revolutionary magnitude within itself nor to 
draw new energy from the newly formed alliances until ALL THE CLASSES, 
with whom it contended in June, shall lie prostrate along with itself. But in 
all these defeats, the proletariat succumbs at least with the honor that at 
taches to great historic struggles; not France alone, all Europe trembles before 
the June earthquake, while the successive defeats inflicted upon the higher 
classes are bought so easily that they need the brazen exaggeration of the vic 
torious party itself to be at all able to pass muster as an event; and these de 
feats become more disgraceful the further removed the defeated party stands 
from the proletariat. ^/ 

True enough, the defeat of the June insurgents prepared, leveled the 
ground, upon which the bourgeois republic could be founded and erected; but 
it, at the same time, showed that there are in Europe other issues besides that 
of "Republic or Monarchy." It revealed the fact that here the BOURGEOIS RE 
PUBLIC meant the unbridled despotism of one class over another. It proved 
that, with nations enjoying an older civilization, having developed class dis 
tinctions, modern conditions of production, an intellectual consciousness, 
wherein all traditions of old have been dissolved through the work of centuries, 
that with such countries the republic means only the POLITICAL REVOLU 
TIONARY FORM OF BOURGEOIS SOCIETY, not its CONSERVATIVE FORM 
Cr 1 EXISTENCE, as is the case in the United States of America, where, true 
enough, the classes already exist, but have not yet acquired permanent char 
acter, are in constant flux and reflux, constantly changing their elements and 
yielding them up to one another; where the modern means of production, in 
stead of coinciding with a stagnant population, rather compensate for the rela 
tive scarcity of heads and hands; and, finally, where the feverishly youthful life 
of material production, which has to appropriate a new world to itself, has so 
far left neither time nor opportunity to abolish the illusions of old.* 

v/"All classes and parties joined hands in the June days in a "PARTY OF OR 
DER" against the class of the proletariat, which was designated as the 

PARTY OF ANARCHY," of Socialism, of Communism. They claimed to 
have "saved" society against the "enemies of society." They gave out the 
slogans of the old social order "Property, Family, Religion, Order" as 
the pass-words for their army, and cried out to the counter-revolutionary 
crusaders: "In this sign thou wilt conquer!" From that moment on, so 
soon as any of the numerous parties, which had marshalled themselves 
under this sign against the June insurgents, tries, in turn, to take the revolu 
tionary field in the interest of its own class, it goes down in its turn before 
the cry: "Property, Family, Religion, Order." Thus it happens that "society 
is saved" as often as the circle of its ruling class is narrowed, as often as 
a more exclusive interest asserts itself over the general. Every demand for 
the most simple bourgeois financial reform, for the most ordinary liberalism, for 
the most commonplace republicanism, for the flattest democracy, is forthwith 
punished as an "assault upon society," and is branded as "Socialism." Finally 

* This was written at the beginning of 1852. 



12 

the High Priests of "Religion and Order" themselves are kicked off their 
, tripods; are fetched out of their beds in the dark, hurried into patrol wagons, 
Kjrthrust into jail or sent into exile; their temple is razed to the ground, their 
iXj (mouths are sealed, their pen is broken, their law torn to pieces in the name 
of Religion, of Family, of Property, and of Order. Bourgeois, fanatic on 
the point of "Order," are shot down on their own balconies by drunken sol 
diers, forfeit their family property, and their houses are bombarded for pas 
time all in the name of Property, of Family, of Religion, and of Order. 
Finally, the refuse of bourgeois society constitutes the "holy phalanx of Or 
der," and the hero Crapulinsky makes his entry into the Tuileries as the 
"Savior of Society." 



II. 

Let us resume the thread of events. 

The history of the Constitutional National Assembly, from the June days 
on, is the history of the supremacy and dissolution of the republican bourgeois 
party, the party which is known under the several names of "Tricolor Repub 
lican," "True Republican," "Political Republican," "Formal Republican," etc., 
etc. 

Under the bourgeois monarchy of Louis Philippe, this party had consti 
tuted the OFFICIAL REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION, and consequently had been 
a recognized element in the then political world. It had its representatives in 
the Chambers, and commanded considerable influence in the press. Its Pari 
sian organ, the "National," passed, in its way, for as respectable a paper as 
the "Journal des Debats." This position in the constitutional monarchy cor 
responded to its character. The party was not a fraction of the bourgeoisie, 
held together by great and common interests, and marked by special business 
requirements. It was a coterie of bourgeois with republican ideas writers, 
lawyers, officers and civil employees, whose influence rested upon the per 
sonal antipathies of the country for Louis Philippe, upon reminiscences of the 
old Republic, upon the republican faith of a number of enthusiasts, and, above 
all, upon the spirit of French patriotism, whose hatred of the treaties of Vienna 
and of the alliance with England kept them perpetually on the alert. The "Nat 
ional" owed a large portion of its following under Louis Philippe to this covert 
imperialism, that, later, under the republic, could stand up against it as a 
deadly competitor in the person of Louis Bonaparte. The paper fought the aris 
tocracy of finance just the same as did the rest of the bourgeois opposi 
tion. The polemic against the budget, which, in France, was closely connected 
with the opposition to the aristocracy of finance, furnished too cheap a popular 
ity and too rich a material for Puritanical leading articles, not to be ex 
ploited. The industrial bourgeoisie was thankful to it for its servile defence 
of the French tariff system, which, however, the paper had taken up more out 
of patriotic than economic reasons; the v/hole bourgeois class was thankful to 
it for its vicious denunciations of Communism and Socialism. For the rest, 
the party of the "National" was PURELY REPUBLICAN, i. e., it demanded a 



13 

republican instead of a monarchic form of bourgeois government; above all, it 
demanded for the bourgeoisie the lion s share of the government. As to how 
this transformation was to be accomplished, the party was far from being clear. 
What, however, was clear as day to it and was openly declared at the reform 
banquets during the last days of Louis Philippe s reign, was its -unpopularity 
with the democratic middle class, especially with the revolutionary proletariat. 
These pure republicans, as pure republicans go, were at first on the very point 
of contenting themselves with the regency of the Duchess of Orleans, when the 
February revolution broke out, and when it gave their best known representa 
tives a place in the provisional government. Of course, they enjoyed from the 
start the confidence of the bourgeoisie and of the majority of the Constitutional 
National Assembly. The Socialist elements of the Provisional Government 
were promptly excluded from the Executive Committee, which the Assembly had 
elected upon its convening, and the party of the "National" subsequently util 
ized the outbreak of the June insurrection to dismiss this Executive Commit 
tee also, and thus rid itself of its nearest rivals the SMALL TRADERS CLASS 
or DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANS (Ledru-Rollin, etc.). Cavaignac, the General 
of the bourgeois republican party, who commanded at the battle of June, 
stepped into the place of the Executive Committee with a sort of dictatorial 
power. Marrast, former editor-in-chief of the "National," became permanent 
President of the Constitutional National Assembly; and the Secretaryship of 
State, together with all the other important posts, devolved upon the pure re 
publicans. 

The republican bourgeois party, which since long had looked upon itself as 
the legitimate heir of the July monarchy, thus found itself surpassed in its own 

B. 4 -^ ideal; but it came into power, not as it had dreamed under Louis Philippe, 
^through a liberal revolt of the bourgeoisie against the throne, but through 

c" a grape-shot-and-canistered mutiny of the proletariat against Capital. That 
which" It Imagined to be the MUkTFRE VOLUTION ARY, came about as the 
MOST COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY event. The fruit fell into its lap, but it 
fell from the Tree of Knowledge, not from the Tree of Life. 

The exclusive power of the bourgeois republicans lasted only from June 
24 to the 10th of December, 1848. It is summed up in the FRAMING OF A 
REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION and in THE STATE OF SIEGE OF PARIS. 

The new Constitution was in substance only a republicanized edition of the 
constitutional charter of 1830. The limited suffrage of the July monarchy, 
which excluded even a large portion of the bourgeoisie from political power, 
was irreconcilable with the existence of the bourgeois republic. The February 
revolution had forthwith proclaimed direct and universal suffrage in the place 
of the old law. The bourgeois republicans could not annul this act. They had 
to content themselves with tacking to it the limitation of a six months resi 
dence. The old organization of the administrative law, of municipal govern 
ment, of court procedures, of the army, etc., remained untouched, or, where the 
constitution did change them, the change affected their index, not their sub 
ject; their name, not their substance. 

The inevitable "General Staff" of the "freedoms" of 1848 personal free- 



14 

dom, freedom of the press, of speech, of association and of assemblage, freedom 
of instruction, of religion, etc. received a constitutional uniform that rendered 
them invulnerable. Each of these freedoms is proclaimed the absolute right of 
the French citizen, but always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only 
as it be not curtailed by the "equal rights of others," and by the "public safety," 
or by the "laws," which are intended to effect this harmony. For instance: 

"Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed assem 
blage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through the press or 
otherwise. THE ENJOYMENT OF THESE RIGHTS HAS NO LIMITATION 
OTHER THAN THE EQUAL RIGHTS OF OTHERS AND THE PUBLIC 
SAFETY." (Chap. II. of the French Constitution, Section 8.) 

"Education is free. The freedom of education shall be ENJOYED under the 
conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State." (Sec 
tion 9.) 

"The domicile of the citizen is inviolable, except under the forms prescribed 
by law." (Chap. I., Section 3), etc., etc. 

The Constitution, it will be noticed, constantly alludes to future organic 
laws, that are to carry out the glosses, and are intended to regulate the enjoy 
ment of these unabridged freedoms, to the end that they collide neither with 
one another nor with the public safety. Later on, the organic laws are called 
into existence by the "Friends of Order," and all the above named freedoms are 
so regulated that, in their enjoyment, the bourgeoisie encounter no opposition 
from the like rights of the other classes. Wherever the bourgeoisie wholly in 
terdicted these rights to "others," or allowed them their enjoyment under con 
ditions that were but so many police snares, it was always done only in the in 
terest of the "public safety," i. e., of the bourgeoisie, as required by the Consti 
tution. 

Hence it comes that both sides the "Friends of Order," who abolished all 
those freedoms, as well as the democrats, who had demanded them all appeal 
with full right to the Constitution: Each paragraph of the Constitution con 
tains its own antithesis, its own Upper and Lower House freedom as a gen 
eralization, the abolition of freedom as a specification. Accordingly, so long as 
the NAME of freedom was respected, and only its real enforcement was pre 
vented in a legal way, of course the constitutional existence of freedom re 
mained uninjured, untouched, however completely its COMMON existence 
might be extinguished. 

This Constitution, so ingeniously made invulnerable, was, however, like 
Achilles, vulnerable at one point: not in its heel, but in its head, or rather, in 
the two heads into which it ran out the Legislative Assembly, on the one hand, 
and the President on the other. Run through the Constitution and it will be 
found that only those paragraphs wherein the relation of the President to the 
Legislative Assembly is defined, are absolute, positive, uncontradictory, undis- 
tortable. Here the bourgeois republicans were concerned in securing their own 
position. Articles 45-70 of the Constitution are so framed that the National 
Assembly can constitutionally remove the President, but the President can set 
aside the National Assembly only unconstitutionally, he can set it aside only 



15 

.**-;* y 

by setting aside the Constitution itself. Accordingly, by these provisions, the 
National Assembly challenges its own violent destruction. It not only conse 
crates, like the charter of 1830, the division of powers, but it extends this fea 
ture to an unbearably contradictory extreme. The "play of constitutional 
powers," as Guizot styled the clapper-clawings between the legislative and the 
executive powers, plays permanent "vabanque" in the Constitution of 1848. On, 
the one side, 750 representatives of the people, elected and qualified for re-elec 
tion by universal suffrage, who constitute an uncontrolable, indissoluble, indi 
visible National Assembly, a National Assembly that enjoys legislative omnipo 
tence, that decides in the last instance over war, peace and commercial treaties, 
that alone has the power to grant amnesties, and that, through its perpetuity, 
continually maintains the foreground on the stage; on the other, a President, 
clad with all the attributes of royalty, with the right to appoint and remove his 
ministers independently from the national assembly, biding in his hands^ alj. 
the means of executive.jp.qwer, the dispenser of all posts, and thereby the arbiter 
of at least one and a half million existences in France, so many being dependent 
upon the 500,000 civil employe s and upon the officers of all grades. He has the 
whole armed power behind him. He enjoys the privilege of granting pardons 
to individual criminals; suspending the National Guards; of removing with the 
consent of the Council of State the general, cantonal and municipal Council 
men, elected by the citizens themselves. The initiative and direction of all* 
negotiations with foreign countries are reserved to him. While the Assembly 
itself is constantly acting upon the stage, and is exposed to the critically 
vulgar light of day, he leads a hidden life in the Elysian fields, only with Article 
45 of the Constitution before his eyes and in his heart daily calling out to him: 
"Frfire, il faut mourir!* Your power expires on the second Sunday of the 
beautiful month of May, in the fourth year after your election! The glory is 
then at an end; the play is not performed twice; and, if you have any debts, see 
to it betimes that you pay them off with the 600,000 francs that the Constitution 
has set aside for you, unless, perchance, you should prefer traveling to Clichyj- 
on the second Monday of the beautiful month of May." 

While the Constitution thus clothes the President with actual power, it 
seeks to secure the moral power to the National Assembly. Apart from the cir- 
oumstance that it is impossible to create a moral power through legislative 
paragraphs, the Constitution again neutralizes itself in that it causes the Presi 
dent to be chosen by all the Frenchmen through direct suffrage. While the 
votes of France are splintered to pieces upon the 750 members of the National 
Assembly, they are here, on the contrary, concentrated upon ONE individual. 
While each separate Representative represents only this or that party, this or 
that city, this or that dunghill, or possibly only the necessity of electing some 
one Seven-hundred-and-fiftieth or other, with whom neither the issue nor the 
man is closely considered, that ONE, the President, on the contrary, is the elect 
of the nation, and the act of his election is the trump card, that the sovereign 

* Brother, you must die! 
t The debtors prison. 



16 

people plays out once every four years. The elected National Assembly stands 
in a metaphysical, but the elected President in a personal relation to tlie 
nation. True enough, the National Assembly presents in its several Represents 
tives the various sides of the national spirit, but, in the President, this spirit is 
incarnated. As against the National Assembly, the President possesses a sort 
of divine right, he is by the grace of the people. 

Thetis, the sea-goddess, had prophesied to Achilles that he would die in the 
bloom of youth. The Constitution, which had its weak spot, like Achilles, had 
also, like Achilles, the presentiment that it would depart by premature death. 
It was enough for the pure republicans, engaged at the work of framing a con 
stitution, to cast a glance from the misty heights of their ideal republic down 
upon the profane world in order to realize how the arrogance of the royalists, 
of the Bonapartists, of the democrats, of the Communists, rose daily, together 
with their own discredit, and in the same measure as they approached the com 
pletion of their legislative work of art, without Thetis having for this purpose 
to leave the sea and impart the secret to them. They sought to outwit fate by 
means of constitutional artifice, through Section 111 of the Constitution, ac 
cording to which every motion to revise the Constitution had to be discussed 
three successive times, between each of which a full month was to elapse, and 
required at least a three-fourths majority, with the additional proviso that not 
less than 500 members of the National Assembly voted. They thereby only 
made the impotent attempt, still to exercise as a parliamentary minority, to 
which in their mind s eye they prophetically saw themselves reduced, a power, 
that, at this very time, when they still disposed over the parliamentary majority 
and over all the machinery of government, was daily slipping from their weak 
hands. 

Finally, the Constitution entrusts itself for safe keeping, in a melodramatic 
paragraph, "to the watchfulness and patriotism of the whole French people, and 
of each individual Frenchman," after having just before, in another paragraph, 
entrusted the "watchful" and the "patriotic" themselves to the tender, in 
quisitorial attention of the High Court, instituted by itself. 

That was the Constitution of 1848, which, on the 2d of December, 1851, was 
not overthrown, by one head, but tumbled down at the touch of a mere hat; 
though, true enough, that hat was a three-cornered Napoleon hat. 

While the bourgeois republicans were engaged in the Assembly with the 
work of splicing this Constitution, of discussing and voting, Cavaignac, on the 
outside, maintained the state of siege of Paris. The state of siege of Paris was 
the midwife of the constitutional assembly, during its republican pains of 
travail. When the constitution is later on swept off the earth by the bayonet, 
it should not be forgotten that it was by the bayonet, likewise and the 
bayonet turned against the people, at that that it had to be protected in its 
mother s womb, and that by the bayonet it had to be planted on earth. The 
ancestors of these "honest republicans" had caused their symbol, the tricolor, 
to make the tour of Europe. These, in their turn also made a discovery, which, 
all of itself, found its way over the whole continent, but, with ever renewed love, 
came back to France, until, by this time, it had acquired the right of citizen- 



17 



ship in one-half of her Departments the STATE OF SIEGE. A wondrous dis 
covery this was, periodically applied at each succeeding crisis in the course of 
the French revolution. But the barrack and the bivouac, thus periodically laid 
on the head of French society, to compress her brain and reduce her to quiet; 
the sabre and the musket, periodically made to perform the functions of judges 
and of administrators, of guardians and of censors, of police officers and of 
watchmen; the military moustache and the soldier s jacket, periodically heralded 
as the highest wisdom and guiding stars of society; were not all of these, the 
barrack and the bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the mustache and the 
soldier s jacket bound, in the end, to hit upon the idea that they might as well 
save society once for all, by proclaiming their own regime as supreme, and re 
lieve bourgeois society wholly of the care of ruling itself? The barrack and 
the bivouac, the sabre and the musket, the moustache and the soldier s jacket 
were all the more bound to hit upon this idea, seeing that they could then also 
expect better cash payment for their increased deserts, while at the merely 
periodic states of siege and the transitory savings of society at the behest of 
this or that bourgeois faction, very little solid matter fell to them except some 
dead and wounded, besides some friendly bourgeois grimaces. Should not the 
military, finally, in and for its own interest, play the game of "state of siege," 
and simultaneously besiege the bourgeois exchanges? Moreover, it must not be 
forgotten, and be it observed in passing, that COL. BERNARD, the same Presi 
dent of the Military Committee, who, under Cavaignac, helped to deport 15,000 
insurgents without trial, moves at this period again at the head of the Military 
Committees now active in Paris. 

Although the honest, the pure republicans built with the state of siege the 
nursery in which the Praetorian guards of December 2, 1851, were to be reared, 
they, on the other hand, deserve praise in that, instead of exaggerating the 
feeling of patriotism, as under Louis Philippe, now that they themselves are in 
command of the national power, they crawl before foreign powers; instead of 
making Italy free, they allow her to be reconquered by Austrians and Neapol 
itans. The election of Louis Bonaparte for President on December 10, 1848, put 
an end to the dictatorship of Cavaignac and to the constitutional assembly. 

In Article 44 of the Constitution it is said: "The President of the French 
Republic must never have lost his quality of French citizen." The first Presi 
dent of the French Republic, L. N. Bonaparte, had not only lost his quality of 
French citizen, had not only been an English special constable, but was even a 
naturalized Swiss citizen. 

In the previous chapter I have explained the meaning of the election of 
December 10. I shall not here return to it. Suffice it here to say that it was a 
REACTION OF THE FARMERS CLASS, who had been expected to pay the 
costs of the February revolution, against the other classes of the nation: it was . 
a REACTION OF THE COUNTRY AGAINST THE CITY. It met with great 
favor among the soldiers, to whom the republicans of the "National" had 
brought neither fame nor funds; among the great bourgeoisie, who hailed Bon 
aparte as a bridge to the monarchy; and among the proletarians and small 



1 8 
J. O 

traders, who hailed him as a scourge to Cavaignac. I shall later have occasion 
to enter closer into the relation of the farmers to the French revolution. 

The epoch between December 20, 1848, and the dissolution of the constitu 
tional assembly in May, 1849, embraces the history of the downfall of the bour- 
.geois republicans. After they had founded a republic for the bourgeoisie, had 
driven the revolutionary proletariat from the field, and had meanwhile 
silenced the democratic middle class, they are themselves shoved aside by the 
mass of the bourgeoisie, who justly appropriate this republic as their property. 
This bourgeois mass was ROYALIST, however. A part thereof, the large 
landed proprietors, had ruled under the restoration, hence, was LEGITIMIST; 
the other part, the aristocrats of finance and the large industrial 
capitalists, had ruled under the July monarchy, hence, was ORLEAN- 
IST. The high functionaries of the Army, of the University, of the 
Church, in the civil service, of the Academy and of the press, divided them 
selves on both sides, although in unequal parts. Here, in the bourgeois republic, 
that bore neither the name of BOURBON, nor of ORLEANS, but the name of 
CAPITAL, they had found the form of government under which they could all 
rule in common. Already the June insurrection had united them all into a 
"Party of Order." The next thing to do was to remove the bourgeois repub 
licans, who still held the seats in the National Assembly. As brutally as these 
pure republicans had abused their own physical power against the people, so 
cowardly, low-spirited, disheartened, broken, powerless did they yield, now 
when the issue was the maintenance of their own republicanism and their own 
legislative rights against the Executive power and the royalists. I need not 
here narrate the shameful history of their dissolution. It was not a downfall, 
It was extinction. Their history is at an end for all time. In the period that 
follows, they figure, whether within or without the Assembly, only as mem 
ories memories that seem again to come to life so soon as the question is 
again only about the word "Republic," and as often as the revolutionary conflict 
threatens to sink down to the lowest level. In passing, I might observe that 
the journal which gave to this party its name, the "National," goes over to 
Socialism during the following period. 

Before we close this period, we must cast a look back upon the two powers, 
one of which destroys the other on December 2, 1851, while, from December 20, 
1848, down to the departure of the constitutional assembly, they live in marital 
relations. We mean Louis Bonaparte, on the one hand, and, on the other, the 
party of the allied royalists, of Order, and of the large bourgeoisie. 

At. the inauguration of his presidency, Bonaparte forthwith framed a min 
istry out of the party of Order, at whose head he placed Odillon Barrot, be it 
noted, the old leader of the liberal wing of the parliamentary bourgeoisie. Mr. 
Barrot had finally hunted down a seat in the ministry, the spook of which had 
been pursuing him since 1830; and, what is more, he had the chairmanship in 
this ministry, although not, as he had imagined under Louis Philippe, the pro 
moted leader of the parliamentary opposition, but with the commission to kill 
a parliament, and, moreover, as an ally of all his arch enemies, the Jesuits and 



1 Q 
j. sy 

the Legitimists.., Finally he leads the bride home, but only after she has been 
prostituted. /As to Bonaparte, he seemed to eclipse himself completely. The 
party of Ordfer acted for him. 

Immediately at the first session of the ministry the expedition to Rome was 
decided upon, which, it was there agreed, was to be carried out behind the back 
of the National Assembly, and the funds for which, it was equally agreed, were 
to be wrung from the Assembly under false pretences. Thus the start was 
made with a swindle on the National Assembly, together with a secret con 
spiracy with the absolute foreign powers against the revolutionary Roman re 
public. In the same way, and with a similar maneuver, did Bonaparte prepare 
his stroke of December 2 against the royalist legislature and its constitutional 
republic. Let it not be forgotten that the same party, which, on December 20, 
1848, constituted Bonaparte s ministry, constituted also, on December 2, 1851, 
the majority of the legislative National Assembly. 

In August, the constitutive assembly decided not to dissolve until it had 
prepared and promulgated a whole series of organic laws, intended to supple 
ment the Constitution. The party of Order proposed to the assembly, through 
Representative Rateau, on January 6, 1849, to let the organic laws go, and rather 
to order its own dissolution. Not the ministry alcme, with Mr. Odillon Barrot 
at its head, but all the royalist members of the National Assembly were also at 
this time hectoring to it that its dissolution was necessary for the restoration, 
of the public credit, for the consolidation of order, to put an end to the existing 
uncertain and provisional, and establish a definite state of things; they claimed 
that its continued existence hindered the effectiveness of the new Government, 
that it sought to prolong its life out of pure malice, and that the country was 
tired of it. Bonaparte took notice of all these invectives hurled at the legis 
lative power, he learned them by heart, and, on December 21, 1851, he showed 
the parliamentary royalists that he had learned from them. He repeated their 
own slogans against themselves. 

The Barrot ministry and the party of Order went further. They called all 
over France for petitions to the National Assembly in which that body was 
politely requested to disappear. Thus they led the people s unorganic masses 
to the fray against the National Assembly, i. e., against the constitutionally 
organized expression of the people itself. { They taught Bonaparte to appeal from 
the parliamentary body to the people. Finally, on January 29, 1849, the day 
arrived when the constitutional assembly was to decide about its own dissolu 
tion. On that day the body found its building occupied by the military; Chan- 
garnier, the General of the party of Order, in whose hands was joined the su 
preme command of both the National Guards and the regulars, held that day a 
great military review, as though a battle were imminent; and the coalized 
royalists declared threateningly to the constitutional assembly that force would 
be applied if it did not act willingly. It was willing, and chaffered only for a 
very short respite. What else was the 29th of January, 1849, than the "coup d 
etat" of December 2, 1851, only executed by the royalists with Napoleon s aid 
against the republican National Assembly? These gentlemen did not notice, or 



20 

did not want to notice, that Napoleon utilized the 29th of -January, 1849, to 
cause a part of the troops to file before him in front of the Tuileries, and that he 
seized with avidity this very first open exercise of the military against the 
parliamentary power in order to hint at Caligula. The allied royalists saw only 
their own Changarnier. 

Another reason that particularly moved the party of Order forcibly to 
shorten the term of the constitutional assembly were the organic laws, the laws 
that were to supplement the Constitution, as, for instance, the laws on educa 
tion, on religion, etc. The allied royalists had every interest in framing 
these laws themselves, and not allowing them to be framed by the already sus 
picious republicans. Among these organic laws, there was, however, one on the 
responsibility of the President of the republic. In 1851 the Legislature was 
just engaged in framing such a law when Bonaparte forestalled that political 
stroke by his own of December 2. What all would not, the coalized royalists have 
given in their winter parliamentary campaign of 1851, had they but found this 
"Responsibility law" ready made, and framed at that, by the suspicious, the 
vicious republican Assembly! 

After, on January 29, 1849, the constitutive assembly had itself broken 
its last weapon, the Barrot ministry, and the "Friends of Order" harrassed it to 
death, left nothing undone to humilitate it, and wrung from its weakness, dis- 
pairing of itself, laws that cost it the last vestige of respect with the public. 
Bonaparte, occupied with his own fixed Napoleonic idea, was audacious enough 
openly to exploit this degradation of the parliamentary power: When the 
National Assembly, on May 8, 1849, passed a vote of censure upon the Ministry 
on account of the occupation of Civita-Vecchia by Oudinot, and ordered that the 
Roman expedition be brought back to its alleged purpose, Bonaparte published 
that same evening in the "Moniteur" a letter to Oudinot, in which he congrat 
ulated him on his heroic feats, and already, in contrast with the quill-pushing 
parliamentarians, posed as the generous protector of the Army. The royalists 
smiled at this. They took him simply for their dupe. Finally, as Marnst, the 
President of the constitutional assembly, believed on a certain occasion the 
safety of the body to be in danger, and, resting on the Constitution, made a 
requisition upon a colonel, together with his regiment, the Colonel refused 
obedience, took refuge behind the "discipline," and referred Marrast to Chan 
garnier, who scornfully sent him off with the remark that he did not like 
"bayonettes intelligentes."* In November, 1851, as the coalized royalists 
wanted to begin the decisive struggle with Bonaparte, they sought, by means of 
their notorious "Questors Bill," to enforce the principle of the right of the 
President of the National Assembly to issue direct requisitions for troops. One 
of their Generals, Leflo, supported the motion. In vain did Changarnier vote for 
it, or did Thiers render homage to the cautious wisdom of the late constitu 
tional assembly. The Minister of War, St. Arnaud, answered him as Chan 
garnier had answered Marrast and he did so amidst the plaudits of the 
Mountain. 

* Intelligent bayonets. 



. 

21 

Thus did the party of Order itself, when as yet it was not the National As 
sembly, when as yet it was only a Ministry, brand the parliamentary regime. 
And yet this party objects vociferously when the 2d of December, 1851, banishes 
that regime from France! 

We wish it a happy journey. 



III. 

On May 29, 1849, the legislative National Assembly convened. On Decem 
ber 2, 1851, it was broken up. This period embraces the term of life of the 
CONSTITUTIONAL or PARLIAMENTARY REPUBLIC. 

In the first French revolution, upon the reign of the CONSTITUTIONAL 
ISTS succeeds that of the GIRONDINS; and upon the reign of the GIRONDINS 
follows that of the JACOBINS. Each of these parties in succession rests upon its 
more advanced element. So soon as it has carried the revolution far enough 
not to be able to keep pace with, much less march ahead of it, it is shoved 
aside by its more daring allies, who stand behind it, and it is sent to the 
guillotine. Thus the revolution moves along an upward line. 

Just the reverse in 1848. The proletarian party appears as an appendage to 
the small traders or democratic party; it is betrayed by the latter and allowed 
to fall on April 16, May 15, and in the June days. In its turn, the democratic 
party leans upon the shoulders of the bourgeois republicans; barely do the 
bourgeois republicans believe themselves firmly in power, than they shake off 
these troublesome associates for the purpose of themselves leaning upon the 
shoulders of the party of Order. The party of Order draws in its shoulders, lets 
the bourgeois republicans tumble down heels over head, and throws itself upon 
the shoulders of the armed power. Finally, still of the mind that it is sus 
tained by the shoulders of the armed power, the party of Order notices one fine 
morning that these shoulders have turned into bayonets. Each party kicks 
backward at those that are pushing forward, and leans forward upon those that 
are crowding backward; no wonder that, in this ludicrous posture, each loses its 
balance, and, after having cut the unavoidable grimaces, breaks down amid 
singular somersaults. Accordingly, the revolution moves along a downward 
line. It finds itself in this retreating motion before the last February-barricade 
is cleared away, and the first governmental authority of the revolution has been 
constituted. 

The period we now have before us embraces the motliest jumble of 
ing contradictions: constitutionalists, who openly conspire against the Consti 
tution; revolutionists, who admittedly are constitutional; a National Assembly, 
that wishes to be omnipotent, yet ever remains parliamentary; a Mountain, 
that finds its occupation in submission, and that parries its present defeats 
with prophecies of future victories; royalists, who constitute the "patres con- 
scripti" of the republic, and are compelled by the situation to uphold abroad 
the hostile monarchic houses, whose adherents they are, while in France 
they support the republic, that they hate; an Executive power that finds its 
strength in its very weakness, and its dignity in the contempt that it inspires; 



cry- 
insti- I 



oo 

- 

a republic, that is nothing else than the combined infamy of two monarchies 
the Restoration and the July Monarchy with an imperial label; unions, whose 
first clause is disunion; struggles, whose first law is indecision; in the name of 
peace, barren and hollow agitation; in the name of the revolution, solemn 
sermonizings on peace; passions without truth; truths without passion; heroes 
without heroism; history without events; development, whose only moving 
force seems to be the calendar, and tiresome by the constant iteration of the 
same tensions and relaxes; contrasts, that seem to intensify themselves peri 
odically, only in order to wear themselves off and collapse without a solution; 
pretentious efforts made for show, and bourgeois frights at the danger of the 
destruction of the world, simultaneous with the carrying on of the pettiest in 
trigues and the performance of court comedies by the world s saviours, who, in 
their "laisser aller," recall the Day of Judgment not so much as the days of the 
Fronde; the official collective genius of France brought to shame by the artful 
stupidity of a single individual; the collective will of the nation, as often as it 
speaks through the general suffrage, seeking its true expression in the pre- 
scriptive enemies of the public interests until it finally finds it in the arbitrary 
will of a filibuster. If ever a slice from history is drawn black upon black, it is 
this. Men and events appear as reversed "Schlemihls,"* as shadows, the 
bodies of which have been lost. The revolution itself paralyzes its own 
apostles, and equips only its adversaries with passionate violence. When the 
"Red Spectre," constantly conjured up and exorcised by the counter-revo 
lutionists, finally does appear, it does not appear with the Anarchist Phrygian 
cap on its head, but in the uniform of Order, in the RED BREECHES OF THE 
FRENCH SOLDIER. 

We saw that the Ministry, which Bonaparte installed on December 20, 1849, 
the day of his "Ascension," was a Ministry of the party of Order, of the Legit 
imist and Orleanist coalition. The Barrot-Falloux Ministry had weathered the 
republican constitutive convention, whose term of life it had shortened with 
more or less violence, and found itself still at the helm. Changarnier, the 
General of the allied royalists, continued to unite in his person the command- 
in-chief of the First Military Division and of the Parisian National Guard. 
Finally, the general elections had secured the large majority in the National 
Assembly to the party of Order. Here the Deputies and Peers of Louis Philippe 
met a saintly crowd of Legitimists, for whose benefit numerous ballots of the 
nation had been converted into admission tickets to the political stage. The 
Bonapartist representatives were too thinly sowed to be able to build an inde 
pendent parliamentary party. They appeared only as "mauvaise queue"-}- 
played upon the party of Order. Thus the party of Order was in possession of 
the Government, of the Army, and of the legislative body, in short, of the total 
power of the State, morally strengthened by the general elections, that 
caused their sovereignty to appear as the will of the people, and by the sim 
ultaneous victory of the counter-revolution on the whole continent of Europe. 

* The hero in Chamisso s "Peter Schlemihl," who loses his own shadow. 
1 Practical joke. 



Never did party open its campaign with larger means at its disposal and 
under more favorable auspices. 

The shipwrecked pure republicans found themselves in the legislative 
National Assembly melted down to a clique of fifty men, with the African Gen 
erals Cavaignac, Lamorciere and Bedeau at its head. The great OPPOSITION 
party was, however, formed by the Mountain. This parliamentary bap 
tismal name was given to itself by the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC party. It dis 
posed of more than two hundred votes out of the seven hundred and fifty in the 
National Assembly, and, hence, was at least just as powerful as any one of the 
three factions of the party of Order. Its relative minority to the total 
royalist coalition seemed counterbalanced by special circumstances: Not only 
did the Departmental election retu.rns show that it had gained a considerable 
following among the rural population, but, furthermore, it numbered almost " 
all the Paris Deputies in its camp; the Army had, by the election of three under- 
officers, made a confession of democratic faith; and the leader of the Mountain, 
Ledru-Rollin, had, in contrast to all the representatives of the party of 
Order, been raised to the rank of the "parliamentary nobility" by five De 
partments, who combined their suffrages upon him. Accordingly, in view of the 
inevitable collisions of the royalists among themselves, on the one hand, and of 
the whole party of Order with Bonaparte, on the other, the Mountain seemed, on 
May 29, 1849, to have before it all the elements of success. A fortnight later, 
it had lost everything, its honor included. 

Before we follow this parliamentary history any further, a few observa 
tions are necessary, in order to avoid certain common deceptions concerning 
the whole character of the epoch that lies before us. According to the view of 
the democrats, the issue, during the period of the legislative National Assembly, 
was, the same as during the period of the constitutive assembly, simply the 
struggle between republicans and royalists; the movement itself was 
summed up by them in the catch-word REACTION night, in which 
all cats are grey, and allows them to drawl out their drowsy common 
places. Indeed, at first sight, the party of ORDER presents the appearance of 
a tangle of royalist factions, that, not only intrigue against each other, each 
aiming to raise its own Pretender to the throne, and exclude the Pretender of 
the opposite party, but also are all united in a common hatred for and common 
attacks against the "Republic." On its side, the MOUNTAIN appears, in counter- 
distinction to the royalist conspiracy, as the representative of the "Republic." 
The party of ORDER seems constantly engaged in a "Reaction," which, neither 1 
more nor less than in Prussia, is directed against the press, the right of as-f 
sociation and the like, and is enforced by brutal police interventions on the 
part of the bureaucracy, the police and the public prosecutor just as in 
Prussia; the MOUNTAIN, on the contrary, is engaged with equal assiduity in 
parrying these attacks, and thus in defending the "eternal rights of man" as 
every so-called people s party has more or less done for the last hundred and 
fifty years. At a closer inspection, however, of the situation and of the parties, 
this superficial appearance, which veils the CLASS STRUGGLE, together with 
the peculiar physiognomy of this period, vanishes wholly. 



24 

.- Legitimists and Orleanists constituted, as said before, the two large fac 
tions of the party of Order. What held these two factions to their respective 
Pretenders, and inversely kept them apart from each other, what else was it 
but the lily and the tricolor, the House of Bourbon and the House of Orleans, 
different shades of royalty? Under the Bourbons, LARGE LANDED PROP 
ERTY ruled together with its parsons and lackeys; under the Orleanist, it was 
the high finance, large industry, large commerce, i. e., CAPITAL, with its 
retinue of lawyers, professors and orators. The Legitimate kingdom was but 
the political expression for the hereditary rule of the landlords, as the July 
monarchy was but the political expression for the usurped rule of the bour 
geois upstarts. What, accordingly, kept these two factions apart was no so- 
called set of principles, it was their material conditions for life two different 
sorts of property ; it was the old antagonism of the City and the Country, 
\ the rivalry between Capital and Landed property. That simultaneously old 
recollections; personal animosities, fears and hopes ; prejudices and 
illusions; sympathies and antipathies; convictions, faith and principles 
bound these factions to one House or the other, who denies it? 
Upon the several forms of property, upon the social conditions of exist- 
ence, a whole superstructure is reared of various and peculiarly shaped feelings, 
| illusions, habits of thought and conceptions of life. The whole class pro- 
Iduces and shapes these out of its material foundation and out of the corres- 
iponding social conditions. The individual unit to whom they flow through 
tradition and education, may fancy that they constitute the true reasons for 
and premises of his conduct. Although Orleanists and Legitimists, each of 
these factions, sought to make itself and the other believe that what kept the 
two apart was the attachment of each to its respective royal House, neverthe 
less, facts proved later that it rather was their divided interests that forbade 
the union of the two royal Houses. As, in private life, the distinction is made 
i between what a man thinks of himself and says, and that which he really is 
I and does, so, all the more, must the phrases and notions of parties in historic 
struggles be distinguished from their real organism, and their real interests, 
their notions and their reality. Orleanists and Legitimists found themselves in 
the republic beside each other with equal claims. Each side wishing, in op 
position to the other, to carry out the restoration of its own royal House, meant 
nothing else than that each of the two great INTERESTS into which the bour 
geoisie is divided Land and Capital sought to restore its own supremacy 
and the subordinacy of the other. We speak of two bourgeois interests because 
large landed property, despite its feudal coquetry and pride of race, has become 
completely bourgeois through the development of modern society. Thus did 
the Tories of England long fancy that they were enthusiastic for the King 
dom, the Church and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the 
day of danger wrung fromythem the admission that their enthusiasm was only 
^ for C ROUND-RENT. J \/ 

{The coalized royalists carried on their intrigues against each other in the 
press, in Ems, in Clarmont outside of the parliament. Behind the scenes, 
they don again their old Orleanist and Legitimist liveries, and conduct their 



25 

old tourneys; on the public stage, however, in their public acts, as a great 
parliamentary party, they dispose of their respective royal Houses with mere 
courtesies, adjourn "in infiinitum" the restoration of the monarchy. Their real 
business is transacted as PARTY OF ORDER, i. e., under a SOCIAL, not a 
POLITICAL title; as representatives of the bourgeois social-system; not as 
knights of traveling princesses, but as the bourgeois class against the other 
classes; not as royalists against republicans. Indeed, as party of Order they 
exercised a more unlimited and harder dominion over the other classes of so 
ciety than ever before either under the restoration or the July monarchy a 
thing possible only under the form of a parliamentary republic, because under 
this form alone could the two large divisions of the French bourgeoisie be 
united; in other words, only under this form could they place on the order of 
business the sovereignty of their class, in lieu of the regime of a privileged fac 
tion of the same. If, this notwithstanding, they are seen as the party of Order 
to insult the republic and express their antipathy for it, it happened not out of 
royalist traditions only: Instinct taught them that while, indeed, the republic 
completes their authority, it at the same time undermined their social 
foundation, in that, without intermediary, without the mask of the crown, 
without being able to turn aside the national interest by means of its subor 
dinate struggles among its own conflicting elements and with the crown, the 
republic is compelled to stand up sharp against the subjugated classes, and 
wrestle with them. It was a sense of weakness that caused them to recoil be 
fore the unqualified demands of their own class rule, and to retreat to the less 
complete, less developed, and, for that very reason, less dangerous forms of 
the same. As often, on the contrary, as the allied royalists come into con 
flict with the Pretender who stands before them with Bonaparte , as often 
as they believe their parliamentary omnipotence to be endangered by the Ex 
ecutive, in other words, as often as they must trot out the political title of their 
authority, they step up as REPUBLICANS, not as ROYALISTS and this is 
done from the Orleanist Thiers, who warns the National Assembly that the re 
public divides them least, down to Legitimist Berryer, who, on December 2, 
1851, the scarf of the tricolor around him, harangues the people assembled be 
fore the Mayor s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, as a tribune in the 
name of the Republic; the echo, however, derisively answering back to him: 
"Henry V.! Henry V.!"* 

However, against the allied bourgeois, a coalition was made between the 
small traders and the workingmen the so-called SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC 
party. The small traders found themselves ill rewarded after the June days of 
1848; they saw their material interests endangered, and the democratic guar 
antees, that were to uphold their interests, made doubtful. Hence, they drew 
closer to the workingmen. On the other hand, their parliamentary representa 
tives the MOUNTAIN , after being shoved aside during the dictatorship of 
the bourgeois republicans, had, during the last half of the term of the consti 
tutive convention, regained their lost popularity through the struggle with 

* The candidate of the Bourbons, or Legitimists, for the throne. 



(1 



26 

Bonaparte and the royalist ministers. They had made an alliance with the 
Socialist leaders. During February, 1849, reconciliation banquets were held. 
A common program was drafted, joint election committees were empaneled, 
and fusion candidates were set up. The revolution,ary point was thereby broken 
off from the social demands of the proletariat, and a democratic turn given to 
them; while, from the democratic claims of the small tracers class, the mere 
political form was rubbed off and the Socialist point was pushed forward. 
Thus came the SOCIAL DEMOCRACY about. The new MOUNTAIN, the re 
sult of this combination, contained, with the exception of some figures from 
the working class and some Socialist sectarians, the identical elements of the 
old Mountain, only numerically stronger. In the course of events it had, how 
ever, changed, together with the class that it represented. The peculiar char 
acter of the Social Democracy is summed up in this: that democratic-repub 
lican institutions are demanded as the means, not to remove the two extremes 
Capital and Wage-slavery , but in order to weaken their antagonism and 
transform them into a harmonious whole. However different the methods may 
be that are proposed for the accomplishment of this object, however much the 
object itself may be festooned with more or less revolutionary fancies, the sub 
stance remains the same. This substance is the transformation of society upon 
democratic lines, but a transformation within the boundaries of the small 
traders class. No one must run away with the narrow notion that the small 
traders class means on principle to enforce a selfish class interest. It believes 
rather that the special conditions for its own emancipation are the general con 
ditions under which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle 
avoided. Likewise must we avoid running away with the notion that the Dem 
ocratic Representatives are all "shopkeepers," or enthuse for these. They may 
by education and individual standing be as distant from them as heaven is 
from earth. That which makes them representatives of the small traders class 
is that they do not intellectually leap the bounds which that class itself does 
not leap in practical life; that, consequently, they are theoretically driven ito 
the same problems and solutions, to which material interests and social stand 
ing practically drive the latter. Such, in fact, is at all times the relation of the 
"political" and the "literary" representatives of a class to the class they rep 
resent. 

After the foregoing explanations, it goes without saying that, while the 
Mountain is constantly wrestling for the republic and the so-called "rights of 
man," neither the republic nor the "rights of man" is its real goal, as little as 
an army, whose weapons it is sought to deprive it of and that defends itself, 
steps on the field of battle simply in order to remain in possession of its imple 
ments of warfare. 

The party of Order provoked the Mountain immediately upon the convening 
of the assembly. The bourgeoisie now felt the necessity of disposing of the 
democratic small traders class, just as a year before it had understood the 
necessity of putting an end to the revolutionary proletariat. 

But the position of the foe had changed. The strength of the proletarian 
party was on the streets; that of the small traders class was in the National 



27 

Assembly itself. The point was, accordingly, to wheedle them out of the 
National Assembly into the street, and to have them break their parliamentary 
power themselves, before time and opportunity could consolidate them. The 
Mountain jumped with loose reins into the J.rap^ 

The bombardment of Rome by the French troops was the bait thrown at 
the Mountain. It violated Article V. of the Constitution, which forbade the 
French republic to use its forces against the liberties of other nations; besides, 
Article IV, forbade all declaration of war by the Executive without the con 
sent of the National Assembly; furthermore, the constitutive assembly had 
censured the Roman expedition by its resolution of May 8. Upon these 
grounds, Ledru-Rollin submitted on June 11, 1849, a motion impeaching Bona 
parte and his Ministers. Instigated by the wasp-stings of Thiers, he even 
allowed himself to be carried away to the point of threatening to defend the 
Constitution by all means, even arms in hand. The Mountain rose as one man, 
and repeated the challenge. On June 12, the National Assembly rejected the 
motion to impeach, and the Mountain left the parliament. The events of June 
13 are known: the proclamation by a part of the Mountain pronouncing Napol 
eon and his Ministers "outside the pale of the Constitution"; the street parades 
of the democratic National Guards, who, unarmed as they were, flew apart at 
contact with the troops of Changarnier; etc., etc. Part of the Mountain fled 
abroad, another part was assigned to the High Court of Bourges, and a parlia 
mentary regulation placed the rest undej^the school-master supervision of the 
President of the National Assembly, j Paris, was again put under a state of 
siege; and the democratic portion of tlre Tsfational Guards was disbanded. Thus 
the influence of the Mountain in parliamen^ was broken, together with the 
power of the small traders class in Paris. \ 

Lyons, where the 13th of June had givn the signal to a bloody labor up 
rising, was, together with the five surrounding Departments, likewise pro 
nounced in state of siege, a condition that continues down to this moment.f 

The bulk of the Mountain had left its vanguard in the lurch by refusing 
their signatures to the proclamation; the press had deserted: only two papers 
dared to publish the pronunciamento; the small traders had betrayed their 
Representatives: the National Guards stayed away, or, where they did turn up, 
hindered the raising of barricades; the Representatives had duped the small 
traders: nowhere were the alleged affiliated members from the Army to be 
seen; finally, instead of gathering strength from them, the democratic party 
had infected the proletariat with its own weakness, and, as usual with demo 
cratic feats, the leaders had the satisfaction of charging "their people" with 
desertion, and the people had the satisfaction of charging their leaders with 
fraud. 

Seldom was an act announced with greater noise than the campaign con 
templated by the Mountain; seldom was an event trumpeted ahead with more 
certainty and longer beforehand than the "inevitable victory of the democ 
racy." This is evident: the democrats believe in the trombones before whose 

t January, 1852. 



28 

blasts the walls of Jericho fall together; as often as they stand before the walls 
of despotism, they seek to imitate the miracle. If the Mountain wished to win 
in parliament, it should not appeal to arms; if it called to arms in parliament, 
it should not conduct itself parliamentarily on the street; if the friendly demon 
stration was meant seriously, it was silly not to foresee that it would meet 
with a warlike reception; if it was intended for actual war, it was rather 
original to lay aside the weapons with which war had to be conducted. But the 
revolutionary threats of the middle class and of their democratic representa 
tives are mere attempts to frighten an adversary; when they have run them 
selves into a blind alley, when they have sufficiently compromised themselves 
and are compelled to execute their threats, the thing is done in a hesitating 
manner that avoids nothing so much as the means to the end, and catches at 
pretexts to succumb. The bray of the overture, that announces the fray, is lost 
in a timid growl so soon as this is to start; the actors cease to take themselves 
seriously, and the performance falls flat like an inflated balloon that is pricked 
with a needle. 

No party exaggerates to itself the means at its disposal more than the 
democratic, none deceives itself with greater heedlessness on the situation. A 
part of the Army voted for it, thereupon the Mountain is of the opinion that the 
Army would revolt in its favor. And by what occasion? By an occasion, that, 
from the standpoint of the troops, meant nothing else than that the revolution 
ary soldiers should take the part of the soldiers of Rome against French soldiers; 
On the other hand, the memory of June, 1848, was still too fresh not to keep 
alive a deep aversion on the part of the proletariat towards the National Guard, 
and a strong feeling of mistrust on the part of the leaders of the secret so 
cieties for the democratic leaders. In order to balance these differences, great 
common interests at stake were needed. The violation of an abstract consti 
tutional paragraph could not supply such interests. Had not the constitution 
been repeatedly violated, according to the assurances of the democrats them 
selves? Had not the most popular papers branded them as a counter-revolu 
tionary artifice? But the democrat by reason of his representing the middle 
class, that is to say, a TRANSITION CLASS, in which the interests of two 
other classes are mutually dulled , imagines himself above all class con 
trast. The democrats grant that opposed to them stands a privileged class, 
but they, together with the whole remaining mass of the nation, constitute the 
"PEOPLE." What they represent is the "people s rights"; their interests are 
the "people s mterests." Hence, they do not consider that, at an impending 
struggle, they need to examine the interests and attitude of the different 
classes. They need not too seriously weigh their own means. All they have to 
do is to give the signal in order to have the "people" fall upon 
the "oppressors" with all its inexhaustible resources. If, thereupon, in the 
execution, their interests turn out to be uninteresting, and their power to be 
impotence, it is ascribed either to depraved sophists, who split up the "un- 
divisible people" into several hostile camps; or to the army being too far 
brutalized and blinded to appreciate the pure aims of the democracy as its own 
best; or to some detail in the execution that wrecks the whole plan; or, finally. 



29 

to an unforeseen accident that spoiled the game this time. At all events, the 
democrat comes out of the disgraceful defeat as immaculate as he went in 
nocently into it, and with the refreshed conviction that he must win; not that 
he himself and his party must give up their old standpoint, but that, on the 
contrary, conditions must come to his aid. 

For all this, one must not picture to himself the decimated, broken, and, by 
the new parliamentary regulation, humbled Mountain altogether too unhappy. 
If June 13 removed its leaders, it, on the other hand, made room for new ones of 
inferior capacity, who are nattered by their new position. If their impotence in 
parliament could no longer be doubted, they were now justified to limit their 
activity to outbursts of moral indignation. If the party of Order pretended 
to see in them, as the last official representatives of the revolution, all the 
horrors of anarchy incarnated, they were free to appear all the more flat and 
modest in reality. Over June 13 they consoled themselves with the profound 
expression: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage . . . then . . . 
then we will show who we are!" Nous verrons.t 

As to the "Mountaineers," who had fled abroad, it suffices here to say that 
Ledru-Rollin he having accomplished the feat of hopelessly ruining, in barely 
a fortnight, the powerful party at whose head he stood , found himself called 
upon to build up a French government "in partibus;" that his figure, at a 
distance, removed from the field of action, seemed to gain in size in the 
measure that the level of the revolution sank and the official prominences of 
official France became more and more dwarfish; that he could figure as repub 
lican Pretender for 1852, and periodically issued to the Wallachians and 
other peoples circulars in which "despot of the continent," is threatened with 
the feats that he and his allies had in contemplation. Was Proudhon wholly 
wrong when he cried out to these gentlemen: "Vous n etes que des bla- 
queurs"?f 

The party of Order had, on June 13, not only broken up the Mountain, it 
had also established the SUBORDINATION OF THE CONSTITUTION TO 
THE MAJORITY DECISIONS OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY. So, in 
deed, did the republic understand it, to wit, that the bourgeoisie ruled here in 
parliamentary form, without, as in the monarchy, finding a check in the veto 
of the Executive power, or the liability of parliament to dissolution. It was a 
"parliamentary republic," as Thiers styled it. But if, on June 13, the bour 
geoisie secured its omnipotence within the parliament building, did it not also 
strike the parliament itself, as against the Executive and the people, with in 
curable weakness by excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous 
Deputies, without further ceremony, to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it 
abolished its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating regulation, 
that it subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of the republic in the 
same measure that it lowered the individual Representatives of the people. By 
branding an insurrection in defence of the Constitution as anarchy, and as a 

t We shall see. 

t You are all fakirs. 



30 

deed looking to the overthrow of society, it interdicted to itself all appeal to 
insurrection whenever the Executive should violate the Constitution against it. 
And, indeed, the irony of history wills it that the very General, who by order 
of Bonaparte bombarded Rome, and thus gave the immediate occasion to the 
constitutional riot of June 13, that OUDINOT, on December 2, 1851, is the one 
imploringly and vainly to be offered to the people by the party of Order as the 
General of the Constitution. Another hero of June 13, Vieyra, who earned 
praise from the tribune of the National Assembly for the brutalities that he 
had committed in the democratic newspaper offices at the head of a gang of 
National Guards in the hire of the high finance this identical Vieyra was In 
itiated in the conspiracy of Bonaparte, and contributed materially in cutting 
off all protection that could come to the National Assembly, in the hour of its 
agony, from the side of the National Guard. 

June 13 had still another meaning. The Mountain had wanted to place 
Bonaparte under charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct victory of 
Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic enemies. The 
party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed only to pocket it. He 
did so. On June 14, a proclamation was to be read on the walls of Paris 
wherein the President, as it were, without his connivance, against his will, 
driven by the mere force of circumstances, steps forward from his cloisterly 
seclusion like misjudged virtue, complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, 
and, while seeming to identify his own person with the cause of order, rather 
identifies the cause of order with his own person. Besides this, the National 
Assembly had subsequently approved the expedition against Rome; Bonaparte, 
however, had taken the initiative in the affair. After he had led the High 
Priest Samuel back into the Vatican, he could hope as King David to occupy 
the Tuileries. He had won the parson-interests over to himself. 

The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful street pro 
cession. There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from it. Nevertheless, 
in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party of Order converted this 
bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz. Tribune and press lauded the army 
as the power of order against the popular multitude, and the impotence of 
anarchy; and Changarnier as the "bulwark of society" a mystification that 
he finally believed in himself. Underhand, however, the corps that 
seemed doubtful were removed from Paris; the regiments whose suffrage had 
turned out most democratic were banished from France to Algiers; the rest 
less heads among the troops were consigned to penal quarters; finally, the 
shutting out of the press from the barracks, and of the barracks from contact 
with the citizens was systematically carried out. 

We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the French 
National Guard. In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the restoration. 
Under Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at which the National Guard stood on 
the side of the troops. When, in the February days of 1848, it showed itself 
passive against the uprising and doubtful towards Louis Philippe himself, he 
gave himself up for lost. Thus the conviction cast root that a revolution could 
not win without, nor the Army against the National Guard. This was the 



31 

superstitious faith of the Army in bourgeois omnipotence. The June days of 
1848, when the whole National Guard, jointly with the regular troops, threw 
down the insurrection, had confirmed the superstition. After the inauguration 
of Bonaparte s administration, the position of the National Guard sank some 
what through the unconstitutional joining of their command with the com 
mand of the First Military Division in the person of Changarnier. 

As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attri 
bute of the military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear only 
as an appendage of the regular troops. Finally, on June 13, the National 
Guard was broken up, not through its partial dissolution only, that from that 
date forward was periodically repeated at all points of France, leaving only J 
wrecks of its former self behind. The demonstration of June 13 was, abovev 
all, a demonstration of the National Guards. True, they had not carried their 
arms, but they had carried their uniforms against the Army and the talisman 
lay just in these uniforms. The Army then learned that this uniform was 
but a woolen rag, like any other. The spell was broken. In the June 
days of 1848, bourgeoisie and small traders were united as" TTatioriial 
GuardTwith "the "Army" against the proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the 
bourgeoisie has the small-traders National Guard broken up; on December 2, 
1851, the National Guard of the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte at 
tested the fact when he subsequently signed the decree for its disbandment. 
Thus the bourgeoisie had itself broken its last weapon against the army, from 
the moment when the small traders class no longer stood as a vassal behind, 
but as a rebel before it; indeed, it was bound to do so, as it was bound to 
destroy with its own hands all its means of defence against absolutism, so 
soon as itself was absolute. 

In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power 
that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in 1849, it 
be found again through invectives against the republic and the Constitution; * 
through the malediction of all future, present and past revolutions, that one in- - 
eluded which its own leaders had made; and, finally, in U.ws by which the press / 
was gagged, the right of 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 it had appointed a Per 
manent Committee for the period of its absence. During these vacations, the 
Legitimists intrigued with Ems; the Orleanists with Claremont; Bonaparte 
through princely excursions; the Departmental Councilmen in conferences 
over the revision of the Constitution; occurrences, all of which recurred regu- 
Inrly at the periodical vacations of the National Assembly, and upon which I 
shall not enter until they have matured into events. Be it here only observed 
that the National Assembly was impolitic in vanishing from the stage for long 
intervals, and leaving in view, at the head of the republic, only one, however 
sorry, figure Louis Bonaparte s , while, to the public scandal, the party of 
Order broke up into its own royalist component parts, that pursued their con 
flicting aspirations after the restoration. As often as, during these vacations, 
the confusing noise of the parliament was hushed, and its body was dissolved 



32 



in the nation, it was unmistakably shown that only one thing was still want 
ing to complete the true figure of the republic: to make the vacation of the Nat 
ional Assembly permanent, and substitute its inscription "Liberty, Equality, 
Fraternity" by the unequivocal words, "Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery!" 



IV. 

The National Assembly reconvened in the middle of October. On Novem 
ber 1, Bonaparte surprised it with a message, in which he announced the 
dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry, and the framing of a new. Never 
have lackeys been" chased from service with less ceremony than Bonaparte did 
his ministers. The kicks, that were eventually destined for the National As 
sembly, Barrot & Company received in the meantime. 

The Barrot Ministry was, as we have seen, composed of Legitimists and 
Orleanists; it was a Ministry of the party of Order. Bonaparte needed that 
Ministry in order to dissolve the republican constituent assembly, to effect the 
expedition against Rome, and to break up the democratic party. He had 
seemingly eclipsed himself behind this Ministry, yielded the reins to the 
hands of the party of Order, and assumed the modest mask, which, under Louis 
Philippe, had been worn by the responsible overseer of the newspapers the 
mask of "homme de paille."* Now he threw off the mask, it being no longer 
the light curtain behind which he could conceal, but the Iron Mask, which pre 
vented him from revealing his own physiognomy. He had instituted the Barrot 
Ministry in order to break up the republican National Assembly in the name 
of the party of Order; he now dir_iissed it in order to declare his own name 
independent of the parliament of the party of Order. 

There v/as no want of plausible pretexts for this dismissal. The Barrot 
Ministry hac neglected even the forms of decency that would have allowed the 
President cf the republic M appear as a power along with the National As 
sembly. For instance, during the vacation of the National Assembly, Bona 
parte published a letter to Edgar Ney, in which he seemed to disapprove the 
liberal attitude of the Pope, just as, in opposition to the constitutive assembly, 
he had published a letter, in which he praised Oudinot for his attack upon the 
Roman republic; when the National Assembly came to vote on the budget for 
the Roman expedition, Victor Hu^o, out of pretended liberalism, brought up 
that letter for discussion; the party of Order drowned this notion of Bona 
parte s under exclamations of contempt and incredulity, as though notions of 
Bonaparte could not possibly have any political weight; and none of the Min 
isters took up the gauntlet for him. On another occasion, Barrot, with his 
well-known hollow pathos, dropped, from the speakers tribune in the As 
sembly, words of indignation upon the "abominable machinations," which, ac 
cording to him, went on in the immediate vicinity of the President. Finally, 

* Man of straw. 



33 

while the Ministry obtained from the National Assembly a widow s pension for 
the Duchess of Orleans, it denied every motion to raise the Presidential civil 
list; and, in Bonaparte, be it always remembered, the Imperial Pretender 
was so closely blended with the impecunious adventurer, that the great idea 
of his being destined to restore the Empire was ever supplemented by that 
other, to wit, that the French people was destined to pay his debts. 

The Barrot-Falloux Ministry was the first and last parliamentary Min- . 
istry that Bonaparte called into life. Its dismissal marks, accordingly, a de 
cisive period. With the Ministry, the party of Order lost, never to regain, 
an indispensable post to the maintenance of the parliamentary regime, 
the handle to the Executive power. It is readily understood that, in 
a country like France, where the Executive disposes over an army of more 
than half a million office-holders, and, consequently, keeps permanently a 
large_ mass of interests and existences in the completest dependence upon 
itseK; where the Government surrounds, controls, regulates, supervises and 
guards society, from its mightiest acts of national life, down to its most in 
significant motions: from its common life, down to the private life of each in 
dividual; where, due to such extraordinary centralization, this body of par 
asites acquires a ubiquity and omniscience, a quickened capacity for motion 
and rapidity that finds an analogon only in the helpless lack of self-reliance, 
in the unstrung weakness of the body social itself; that in such a country the 
National Assembly lost, with the control of the ministerial posts, all real in 
fluence, unless it simultaneously simplified the administration; if possible, re 
duced the army of office-holders; and, finally, allowed society and public 
opinion to establish its own organs, independent of government censorship. 

*" But the MATERIAL INTEREST of the French bourgeoisie is most intimate 
ly bound up in maintenance of just such a large and extensively ramified govern 
mental machine. There the bourgeoisie provides for its own superfluous 
membership; and supplies, in the shape of government salaries, what it can 
not pocket in the form of profit, interest, rent and fees. On the other hand, its 

- POLITICAL INTERESTS daily compel it to increase the power of repression, 
i. e., the means and the personnel of the government; it is at the same time 
forced to conduct an uninterrupted warfare against public opinion, and, full 
of suspicion, to hamstring and lame the independent organs of society when 
ever it does not succeed in amputating them wholly. Thus the bourgeoisie of 
France was forced by its own class attitude, on the one hand, to destroy the 
conditions for all parliamentary power, its own included, and, on the other, to 
render irresistible the Executive power that stood hostile to it. 

The new Ministry was called the d Hautpoul Ministry. Not that General 
d Hautpoul had gained the rank of Ministerial President. Along with Barrot, 
Bonaparte abolished this dignity, which, it must be granted, condemned the 
President of the republic to the legal nothingness of a constitutional king, of 
a constitutional king at that, without throne and crown, without sceptre and 
without sword, without irresponsibility, without the imperishable possession of 
the highest dignity in the State, and, what was most untoward of all without 
a civil list. The d Hautpoul Ministry numbered only one man of parliamentary 



34 

reputation, the Jew Fould, one of the most notorious members of the high 
finance. To him fell the portfolio of finance. Turn to the Paris stock quota 
tions, and it will be found that from November 1, 1849, French stocks fall and 
rise with the falling and rising of the Bonapartist shares. While Bonaparte 
had thus found his ally in the Bourse, he at the same time took possession of 
the Police through the appointment of Carlier as Prefect of Police. 

But the consequences of the change of Ministry could reveal themselves 
only in the course of events. So far, Bonaparte had taken only one step for 
ward, to be all the more glaringly driven back. Upon his harsh message, fol 
lowed the most servile declarations of submissiveness to the National As 
sembly. As often as the Ministers made timid attempts to introduce his 
own personal hobbies as bills, they themselves seemed unwilling and com 
pelled only by their position to run the comic errands, of whose futility they 
were convinced in advance. As often as Bonaparte blabbed out his plans be 
hind the backs of his Ministers, and sported his "idees napoleoniennes,"f his 
own Ministers disavowed him from the speakers tribune in the National As 
sembly. His aspirations after usurpation seemed to become audible only to 
the end that the ironical laughter of his adversaries should not die out. He 
deported himself like an unappreciated genius, whom the whole world takes 
for a simpleton. Never did he enjoy in fuller measure the contempt of all 
classes than at this period. Never did the bourgeoisie rule more absolutely; 
never did it more boastfully display the insignia of sovereignty. 

It is not here my purpose to write the history of its legislative activity, 
which is summed up in two laws passed during this period: the law re-estab 
lishing the duty on wine, and the laws on education, to suppress infidelity. 
While the drinking of wine was made difficult to the Frenchmen, all the more 
bounteously was the water of pure life poured out to them. Although in the 
law on the duty on wine the bourgeoisie declares the old hated French tariff 
system to be inviolable, it sought, by means of the laws on education, to secure 
the old good will of the masses that made the former bearable. One wonders 
to see the Orleanists, the liberal bourgeois, these old apostles of Voltairianism 
and of eclectic philosophy, entrust the supervision of the French intellect to 
their hereditary enemies, the Jesuits. But, while Orleanists and Legitimists 
could part company on the question of the Pretender to the crown, they under 
stood full well that their joint reign dictated the joining of the means of op 
pression of two distinct epochs: that the means of subjugation of the July 
monarchy had to be supplemented with and strengthened by the means of 
subjugationji the restoration. 

The ^rmej>, deceived in all their expectations, more than ever ground 
down by the low scale of the price of corn, on the one hand, and, on the other, 
by the growing load of taxation and mortgages, began to stir in the Depart 
ments. They were answered by the systematic baiting of the school masters, 
whom the Government subjected to the clergy; by the systematic baiting of 
the Mayors, whom it subjected to the Prefects; and by a system of spionage to 

t Napoleonic ideas. 



35 

which all were subjected. In Paris and the large towns, the reaction itself 
carries the physiognomy of its own epoch: it irritates more than it cows; in the 
country, it becomes low, mean, petty, tiresome, vexatious, in a word, it be 
comes "gensdarme." It is easily understood how three years of the gensdarme 
regime, sanctified by the regime of the clergyman, was bound to demoralize un 
ripe masses. 

Whatever the mass of passion and declamation, that the party of Order 
expended from the speakers tribune in the National Assembly against the 
minority, its speech remained monosyllabic, like that of the Christian, whose 
speech was to be "Aye, aye; nay, nay." It was monosyllabic, whether from the 
tribune or the press; dull as a conundrum, whose solution is known before 
hand. Whether the question was the right of petition or the duty on wine, the 
liberty of the press or free trade, clubs or municipal laws, protection of in 
dividual freedom or the regulation of national economy, the slogan returns 
ever again, the theme is monotonously the same, the verdict is ever ready and 
unchanged: SOCIALISM! Even bourgeois liberalism is pronounced social 
istic; socialistic, alike, is pronounced popular education; and, likewise, social 
istic national financial reform. It was socialistic to build a railroad where 
already a canal was; and it was socialistic to defend oneself with a stick when 
attacked with a sword. 

This was not a mere form of speech, a fashion, nor yet party tactics. The | 
bourgeoisie perceives correctly that all the weapons, which it forged against 
feudalism, turn their edges against itself; that all the means of education, 
which it brought forth, rebel against its own civilization; that all the gods, 
which it made, have fallen away from it. It understands that all its so-called 
citizens rights and progressive organs assail and menace its class rule, both 
in its social foundation and its political superstructure consequently, have 
become "socialistic." It justly scents in this menace and assault the secret of 
SOCIALISM, whose meaning and tendency it estimates more correctly than 
the spurious, so-called Socialism, is capable of estimating itself, and which, 
consequently, is unable to understand how it is that the bourgeoisie obdurately 
shuts up its ears to it, alike whether it sentimentally whines about the suffer 
ings of humanity; or announces in Christian style the millennium and uni 
versal brotherhood; or twaddles humanistically about the soul, culture and 
freedom; or doctrinally hatches out a system of harmony and wellbeing for all 
classes. What, however, the bourgeoisie does not understand is the conse 
quence that its own parliamentary regime, its own political reign, is also of 
necessity bound to fall under the general ban of "socialistic." So long as the 
rule of the bourgeoisie is not fully organized, has not acquired its purely po 
litical character, the contrast with the other classes cannot come into view in 
all its sharpness; and, where it does come into view, it cannot 
take that dangerous turn that converts every conflict with the Gov 
ernment into a conflict with Capital. When, however, the French 
bourgeoisie began to realize in every pulsation of society a menace to 
"peace," how could it, at the head of society, pretend to uphold the regime of 



16 

unrest, its own regime, the parliamentary regime, which, according to the ex 
pression of one of its own orators, lives in struggle, and through struggle? The 
parliamentary regime lives on discussion, how can it forbid discussion? Every 
single interest, every single social institution is there converted into general 
thoughts, is treated as a thought, how could any interest or institution claim 
to be above thought, and impose itself as an article of faith? The orators con 
flict in the tribune calls forth the conflict of the rowdies in the press; the debat 
ing club in parliament is necessarily supplemented by debating clubs in the 
salons and the bar-rooms; the representatives, who are constantly appealing 
to popular opinion, justify popular opinion in expressing its real opinion in 
petitions. The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of 
majorities/ how can the large majorities beyond parliament be expected not 
to wish to decide? If, from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is 
to be expected than that those below should dance? 
./ Accordingly, by now persecuting as SOCIALIST what formerly it had 

i celebrated as LIBERAL, the bourgeoisie admits that its own interest orders 
it to raise itself above the danger of self government; that, in order to restore 
j rest to the land, its own bourgeois parliament must, before all, be brought to 
\ rest; that, in order to preserve its social power unhurt, its political power must 
be broken; that the private bourgeois can continue to exploit the other classes 
and rejoice in "property," "family," "religion" and "order" only under the con 
dition that his own class be condemned to the same political nullity of the 
other classes; that, in order to save their purse, the crown must be knocked off 
their heads, and the sword, that was to shield them, must at the same time be 
hung over their heads as a sword of Damocles. 

In the domain of general bourgeois interests, the National Assembly 
proved itself so barren, that, for instance, the discussion over the Paris- 
Avignon railroad, opened in the winter of 1850, was not yet ripe for a vote on 
December 2, 1851. Wherever it did not oppress or was reactionary, the bour 
geoisie was smitten with incurable barrenness. 

While Bonaparte s Ministry either sought to take the initiative of laws in 
the spirit of the party of Order, or even exaggerated their severity in their en 
forcement and administration, he, on his part, sought to win popularity by 
means of childishly silly propositions, to exhibit the contrast between himself 
and the National Assembly, and to hint at a secret plan, held in reserve and 
only throxigh circumstances temporarily prevented from disclosing its hidden 
treasures to the French people. Of this nature was the proposition to decree 
a daily extra pay of four sous to the under-officers; so, likewise, the proposi 
tion for a "word of honor" loan bank for workingmen. To have money given 
and money borrowed that was the perspective that he hoped to cajole the 
.masses with. Presents and loans to that was limited the financial wisdom of 
the slums, the high as well as the low; to that were limited the springs which 
Bonaparte knew how to set in motion. Never did Pretender speculate more 
dully upon the dullness of the masses. 

Again and again did the National Assembly fly into a passion at these un 
mistakable attempts to win popularity at its expense, and at the growing 



37 

danger that this adventurer, lashed on by debts and unrestrained by reputa 
tion, might venture upon some desperate act. The strained relations between, 
the party of Order and the President had taken on a threatening aspect, when 
an unforeseen event threw him back, rueful, into its arms. We mean the sup 
plementary elections of March, 1850. These elections took place to fill the 
vacancies created in the National Assembly, after June 13, by imprisonment 
and exile. Paris elected only Social-Democratic candidates; it even united the . 
largest vote upon one of the insurgents of June, 1848, Deflotte. In this way I 
the small traders world of Paris, now allied with the proletariat, revenged itself I 
for the defeat of June 13, 1849. It seemed to have disappeared from the field of " 
battle at the hour of danger only to step on it again at a more favorable op- 1 
portunity, with increased forces for the fray, and with a bolder war cry. A 
circumstance seemed to heighten the danger of this electoral victory. The 
Army voted in Paris for a June insurgent against Lahitte, a Minister of 
Bonaparte s, and, in the Departments, mostly for the candidates of the Moun 
tain, who, there also, although not as decisively as in Paris, maintained the 
upper hand over their adversaries. 

Bonaparte suddenly saw himself again face to face with the revolution. As 
on January 29, 1849, as on June 13, 1849, on May 10, 1850, he vanished again 
behind the party of Order. He bent low; he timidly apologized; he offered to 
appoint any Ministry whatever at the behest of the parliamentary majority; he 
even implored the Orleanist and Legitimist party leaders the Thiers, Berry- 
ers, Broglies, Moles, in short, the so-called burgraves to take hold of the 
helm of State in person. The party of Order did not know how to utilize this 
opportunity, that was never to return. Instead of boldly taking possession of 
the proffered power, it did not even force Bonaparte to restore the Ministry, 
dismissed on November 1; it contented itself with humiliating him with its 
pardon, and with affiliating Mr. Baroche to the d Hautpoul Ministry. This 
Baroche had, as Public Prosecutor, stormed before the High Court at Bourges, 
once against the revolutionists of May 15, another time against the Democrats 
of June 13, both times on the charge of "attentats" against the National As 
sembly. None of Bonaparte s Ministers contributed later more towards the 
degradation of the National Assembly; and, after December 2, 1851, we meet 
him again as the comfortably stalled and dearly paid Vice-President of the 
Senate. He had spat into the soup of the revolutionists for Bonaparte to eat it. 

On its part, the Social Democratic party seemed only to look for pretexts in 
order to make its own victory doubtful, and to dull its edge. Vidal, one of the 
newly elected Paris representatives, was returned for Strassburg also. He was 
induced to decline the seat for Paris and accept the one for Strassburg. Thus, 
instead of giving a definite character to their victory at the hustings, and 
thereby compel the party of Order forthwith to contest it in parliament; instead 
of thus driving the foe to battle at the season of popular enthusiasm and of a 
favorable temper in the Army, the democratic party tired out Paris with a new 
campaign during the months of March and April; it allowed the excited pop 
ular passions to wear themselves out in this second provisional electoral play; 
it allowed the revolutionary vigor to satiate itself with constitutional sue- 



38 

- cesses, and lose its breath in petty intrigues, hollow declamation and sham 
moves; it gave the bourgeoisie time to collect itself and make its preparations; 
finally, it allowed the significance of the March elections to find a sentiment 
ally weakening commentary at the subsequent April election in the victory of 
Eugene Sue. In one word, it turned the 10th of March into an April Fool. 

The parliamentary majority perceived the weakness of its adversary. Its 
seventeen burgraves Bonaparte had left to it the direction of and responsi 
bility for the attack , framed a new election law, the moving of which was 
entrusted to Mr. Faucher, who had applied for the honor. On May 8, he intro 
duced the new law, whereby universal suffrage was abolished; a three years 
residence in the election district imposed as a condition for voting; and, finally, 
the proof of this residence made dependent, for the workingman, upon the 
testimony of his employer. 

As revolutionarily as the democrats had agitated and stormed during the 
constitutional struggles, so constitutionally did they, now, when it was im- 
perative to attest, arms in hand, the earnestness of their late electoral victories, 
I preach order, "majestic calmness," lawful conduct, i. e., blind submission to 
the will of the counter-revolution, which revealed itself as law. During the 
debate, the Mountain put the party of Order to shame by maintaining the pas 
sionless attitude of the law-abiding burger, who upholds the principle of law 
against revolutionary passions; and by twitting the party of Order with 
the fearful reproach of proceeding in a revolutionary manner. Even the newly 
elected deputies took pains to prove by their decent and thoughtful deport 
ment what an act of misjudgment it was to decry them as anarchists, or ex 
plain their election as a victory of the revolution. The new election law was 
passed on May 31. The Mountain contented itself with smuggling a protest 
into the pockets of the President of the Assembly. To the election law fol 
lowed a new press law, whereby the revolutionary newspaper press was com 
pletely done away with. It had deserved its fate. The "National" and the 
"Presse," two bourgeois organs, remained after this deluge the extreme out 
posts of the revolution. 

We have seen how, during March and April, the democratic leaders did 
everything to involve the people of Paris in a sham battle, and how, after May 
8, they did everything to keep it away from a real battle. We may not here 
forget that the year 1850 was one of the most brilliant years of industrial and 
^ commercial prosperity; consequently, that the Parisian proletariat was com- 
9 pletely employed. But the election law of May 31, 1850, excluded them from 
all participation in political power; it cut the field of battle itself from under 
them; it threw the workingmen back into the state of pariahs, which they had 
occupied before the February revolution. In allowing themselves, in sight of 
such an occurrence, to be lead by the democrats, and in forgetting the revolu 
tionary interests of their class through temporary comfort, the workingmen 
abdicated the honor of being a conquering power; they submitted to their fate; 
they proved that the defeat of June, 1848, had incapacitated them from resist 
ance for many a year to come; finally, that the historic process must again, for 
the time being, proceed over their heads. As to the small traders democracy, 



which, on June 13, had cried out: "If they but dare to assail universal suffrage 
. . . then . . . then we will show who we are!" they now consoled 
themselves with the thought that the counter-revolutionary blow, which had 
struck them, was no blow at all, and that the law of May 31 was no law. On 
May 2, 1852, according to them, every Frenchman would appear at the hust 
ings, in one hand the ballot, in the other the sword. With this prophecy they 
set their hearts at ease. Finally, the Army was punished by its superiors for 
the elections of May and April, 1850, as it was punished for the election of May 
29, 1849. This time, however, it said to itself determinately: "The revolution 
shall not cheat us a third time." 

The law of May 31, 1850, was the "coup d etat" of the bourgeoisie. All its 
previous conquests over the revolution had only a temporary character: They 
became uncertain the moment the National Assembly stepped off the stage; they 
depended upon the accident of general elections, and the history of the elec 
tions since 1848 proved irrefutably that, in the same measure as the actual 
reign of the bourgeoisie gathered strength, its moral reign over the masses 
wore off. Universal suffrage pronounced itself on May 10 pointedly against 
the reign bourgeoisie; the bourgeoisie answered with the banishment of uni 
versal suffrage. The law of May 31 was, accordingly, one of the necessities of 
the class struggle. On the other hand, the constitution required a minimum of 
two million votes for the valid election of the President of the republic. If 
none of the Presidential candidates polled this minimum, then the National 
Assembly was to elect the President out of the three candidates polling the 
highest votes. At the time that the constitutive body made this law, ten million 
voters were registered on the election rolls. In its opinion, accordingly, one-fifth 
of the qualified voters sufficed to make a choice for President valid. The law 
of May 31 struck at least three million voters off the rolls, reduced the number 
of qualified voters to seven millions, and yet, notwithstanding, it kept the law 
ful minimum at two millions for the election of a President. Accordingly, it 
raised the lawful minimum from a fifth to almost a third of the qualified voters, 
i. e., it did all it could to smuggle the Presidential election out of the hands of 
the people into those of the National Assembly. Thus, by the election law of 
May 31, the party of Order seemed to have doubly secured its empire, in that it 
placed the election of both the National Assembly and the President of the re 
public in the keeping of the stable portion of society. 



I 



V. 

The strife immediately broke out again between the National Assembly 
and Bonaparte, so soon as the revolutionary crisis was weathered, and uni 
versal suffrage was abolished. 

The Constitution had fixed the salary of Bonaparte at 600,000 francs. Barely 
half a year after his installation, he succeeded in raising this sum to its 
double: Odillon Barrot had wrung from the constitutive assembly a yearly al- 



40 

lowance of 600,000 francs for so-called representation expenses. After June 13, 
Bonaparte hinted at similar solicitations, to which, however, Barrot then 
turned a deaf ear. Now, after May 31, he forthwith utilized the favorable mo 
ment, and caused his ministers to move a civil list of three millions in the 
National Assembly. A long adventurous, vagabond career had gifted him with 
the best developed antennae for feeling out the weak moments when he could 
venture upon squeezing money from his bourgeois. He carried on regular black 
mail. The National Assembly had maimed the sovereignty of the people with 
his aid and his knowledge: he now threatened to denounce its crime to the tri 
bunal of the people, if it did not pull out its purse and buy his silence with three 
millions annually. It had robbed three million Frenchmen of the suffrage: 
for every Frenchmen thrown "out of circulation," he demanded a franc "in 
circulation." He, the elect of six million, demanded indemnity for the votes 
he had been subsequently cheated of. The Committee of the National Assem 
bly turned the importunate fellow away. The Bonapartist press threatened: 
Could the National Assembly break with the President of the republic at a 
time when it had broken definitely and on principle with the mass of the na 
tion? It rejected the annual civil list, but granted, for this once, an allow 
ance of 2,160,000 francs. Thus it made itself guilty of the double weakness of 
granting the money, and, at the same time, showing by its anger that it 
did so only unwillingly. We shall presently see to what use Bonaparte put 
the money. After this aggravating after-play, that followed upon the heels of 
the abolition of universal suffrage, and in which Bonaparte exchanged his 
humble attitude of the days of the crisis of March and April for one of defiant 
impudence towards the usurping parliament, the National Assembly adjourned 
for three months, from August 11, to November 11. It left behind in its place 
a Permanent Committee of 18 members that contained no Bonapartist, but did 
contain a few moderate republicans. The Permanent Committee of the year 
1849 had numbered only men of order and Bonapartists. At that time, how 
ever, the party of Order declared itself in permanence against the revolution; 
now the parliamentary republic declared itself in permanence against the Pres 
ident. After the law of May 31, only this rival still confronted the party of 
Order. 

When the National Assembly reconvened in November, 1850, instead of its 
former petty skirmishes with the President, a great headlong struggle, a 
struggle for life between the two powers seemed to have become inevitable. 

As in the year 1849, the party of Order had, during this year s vacation, 
dissolved into its two separate factions, each occupied with its own restoration 
intrigues, which had received new impetus from the death of Louis Philippe. 
The Legitimist King, Henry V, had even appointed a regular Ministry, that 
resided in Paris, and in which sat members of the Permanent Committee. 
Hence, Bonaparte was, on his part, justified in making tours through the French 
Departments, and according to the disposition of the towns that he happened 
to be gladdening with his presence some times covertly, other times more 
openly blabbing out his own restoration plans, and gaining votes for himself. 
On these excursions, which the large official "Moniteur" and the small private 



41 

"Moniteurs" of Bonaparte were, of course, bound to celebrate as triumphal 
marches, he was constantly accompanied by affiliated members of the "Society 
of December 10." This society dated from the year 1849. Under the pretext 
of founding a benevolent association, the slum-proletariat of Paris was organ 
ized into secret sections, each section led by Bonapartist agents, with a Bona- 
partist General at the head of all. Along with ruined roue s of questionable 
means of support and questionable antecedents, along with the foul and ad 
ventures-seeking dregs of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, dismissed 
soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, sharpers, jugglers, lazza- 
roni, pickpockets, sleight-of-hand performers, gamblers, procurers, keepers of 
disorderly houses, porters, literati, organ grinders, rag pickers, scissors grind 
ers, tinkers, beggars in short, that whole undefined, dissolute, kicked-about 
mass that the Frenchmen style "la Boheme." With this kindred element, Bo 
naparte formed the stock of the "Society of December 10," a "benevolent asso 
ciation," in so far as, like Bonaparte himself, all its members felt the need of 
being benevolent to themselves at the expense of the toiling nation. The Bona 
parte, who here constitutes himself CHIEF OF THE SLUM-PROLETARIAT; 
who only here finds again in plenteous form the interests which he personally 
pursues; who, in this refuse, offal and wreck of all classes, recognizes the 
only class upon which he can depend unconditionally; this is the real Bona 
parte, the Bonaparte without qualification. An old and crafty roue 1 , he looks 
upon the historic life of nations, upon their great and public acts, as comedies 
in the ordinary sense, as a carnival, where the great costumes, words and 
postures serve only as masks for the pettiest chicaneries. So, on the occasion 
of his expedition against Strassburg when a trained Swiss vulture imperson 
ated the Napoleonic eagle; so, again, on the occasion of his raid upon Boulogne, 
when he stuck a few London lackeys into French uniform: they impersonated 
the army*; and so now, in his "Society of December 10," he collects 10,000 loafers 
who are to impersonate the people as Snug the Joiner does the lion. At a 
period when the bourgeoisie itself is playing the sheerest comedy, but in the 
most solemn manner in the world, without doing violence to any of the pe 
dantic requirements of French dramatic etiquette, and is itself partly deceived 
by, partly convinced of, the solemnity of its own public acts, the adventurer, 
who took the comedy for simple comedy, was bound to win. Only after he has 
removed his solemn opponent, when he himself takes seriously his own role 
of emperor, and, with the Napoleonic mask on, imagines he impersonates the *" 
real Napoleon, only then does he become the victim of his own peculiar concep 
tion of history the serious clown, who no longer takes history for a comedy, 
but a comedy for history. What the national work-shops were to the socialist 
workingmen, what the "Gardes mobiles" were to the bourgeois republicans, 
that was to Bonaparte the "Society of December 10," a force for partisan war-* 
fare peculiar to himself. On his journeys, the divisions of the Society, packed 
away on the railroads, improvised an audience for him, performed public en- 

* Under the reign of Louis Philippe, Bonaparte made two attempts to restore the 
throne of Napoleon: one in October, 1836, in an expedition from Switzerland upo Strass 
burg; and one in August, 1840, iu an expedition from England upon Boulogne. 



49 

Jt** 

thusiasm, shouted "vive 1 Empereur," insulted and clubbed the republicans, 
all, of course, under the protection of the police. On his return stages to Paris, 
this rabble constituted his vanguard, it forestalled or dispersed counter-demon 
strations. The "Society of December 10" belonged to him, it was his own 
handiwork, his own thought. Whatever else he appropriates, the power of cir 
cumstances places in his hands; whatever else he does, either circumstances 
do for him, or he is content to copy from the deeds of others; but he, posing 
before the citizens with the official phrases about "Order," "Religion," "Fam 
ily," "Property," and, behind him, the secret society of skipjacks and pica 
roons, the society of disorder, of prostitution, and of theft, that is Bonaparte 
himself as the original author; and the history of the "Society of December 
10" is his own history. Now, then, it happened that Representatives belong 
ing to the party of order occasionally got under the clubs of the Decembrists. 
Nay, more. Police Commissioner Yon, who had been assigned to the National 
Assembly, and was charged with the guardianship of its safety, reported to 
the Permanent Committee upon the testimony of one Alais, that a Section of 
the Decembrists had decided on the murder of General Changarnier and of 
Dupin, the President of the National Assembly, and had already settled upon 
the men to execute the decree. One can imagine the fright of Mr. Dupin. 
A parliamentary inquest over the "Society of December 10," i. e., the profana 
tion of the Bonapartist secret world, now seemed inevitable. Just before the 
reconvening of the National Assembly, Bonaparte circumspectly dissolved his 
Society, of course, on paper only. As late as the end of 1851, Police Prefect 
Carlier vainly sought, in an exhaustive memorial, to move him to the real dis 
solution of tne Decembrists. 

The "Society of December 10" was to remain the private army of Bona 
parte until he should have succeeded in converting the public Army into a 
"Society of December 10." Bonaparte made the first attempt in this direction 
shortly after the adjournment of the National Assembly, and he did so with 
the money which he had just wrung from it. As a fatalist, he lives devoted 
to the conviction that there are certain Higher Powers, whom man, particularly 
the soldier, cannot resist. First among these Powers he numbers cigars and 
champagne, cold poultry and garlic-sausage. Accordingly, in the apartments 
of the Elysee ; he treated first the officers and under-officers to cigars and cham 
pagne, to cold poultry and garlic-sausage. On October 3, he repeats this 
manoeuvre with the rank and file of the troops by the review of St. Maur; and, 
on October 10, the same manoeuvre again, upon a larger scale, at the army 
parade of Satory. The Uncle bore in remembrance the campaigns of Alex 
ander in Asia; the Nephew bore in remembrance the triumphal marches of 
Bacchus in the same country. Alexander was, indeed, a demi-god; but Bac 
chus was a full-fledged god, and the patron deity, at that, of the "Society of De 
cember 10." 

After the review of October 3, the Permanent Committee summoned the 
Minister of War, d Hautpoul, before it. He promised that such breaches of dis 
cipline should not recur. We have seen how, on October 10th, Bonaparte kept 
d Hautpoul s word. At both reviews Changarnier had commanded as Com- 



43 

mander-in-chief of the Army of Paris. He, at once member of the Permanent 
Committee, Chief of the National Guard, the "Savior" of January 29, and June 
13, the "Bulwark of Society," candidate of the Party of Order for the office of 
President, the suspected Monk of two monarchies, he had never acknowl 
edged his subordination to the Minister of War, had ever openly scoffed at the 
republican Constitution, and had pursued Bonaparte with a protection that 
was ambiguously distinguished. Now he became zealous for the discipline in 
opposition to Bonaparte. While, on October 10, a part of the cavalry cried: 
"Vive Napol6on! Vivent les saucissons;"| Changarnier saw to it that at least 
the infantry, which filed by under the command of his friend Neumeyer, 
should observe an icy silence. In punishment, the Minister of War, at the 
instigation of Bonaparte, deposed General Neumeyer from his post in Paris, 
under the pretext of providing for him as Commander-in-chief of the Four 
teenth and Fifteenth Military Divisions. Neumeyer declined the exchange, 
and had, in consequence, to give his resignation. On his part, Changarnier 
published on November 2, an order, wherein he forbade the troops to indulge, 
while under arms, in any sort of political cries or demonstrations. The papers 
devoted to the Elysee interests attacked Changarnier; the papers of the party 
of Order attacked Bonaparte; the Permanent Committee held frequent secret 
sessions, at which it was repeatedly proposed to declare the fatherland in dan 
ger; the Army seemed divided into two hostile camps, with two hostile staffs: 
one at the Elysee, where Bonaparte, the other at the Tuileries, where Chan 
garnier resided. All that seemed wanting for the signal of battle to sound was 
the convening of the National Assembly. The French public looked upon the 
friction between Bonaparte and Changarnier in the light of the English journal 
ist, who characterized it in these words: "The political servant girls of France 
are mopping away the glowing lava of the revolution with old mops, and they 
scold each other while doing their work." 

Meanwhile Bonaparte hastened to depose the Minister of War, d Hautpoul; 
to expedite him heels over head to Algiers; and to appoint in his place General 
Schramm as Minister of War. On November 12, he sent to the National As 
sembly a message of American excursiveness, overloaded with details, redolent 
of order, athirst for conciliation, resignful to the Constitution, dealing with all 
and everything, only not with the burning questions of the moment. As if 
in passing, he dropped the words that according to the express provisions of 
the Constitution, the President alone disposes over the Army. The message 
closed with the following high-sounding protestations: 

"France demands, above all things, peace .... Alone bound by an oath, 
I shall keep myself within the narrow bounds marked out by it to me ... As to 
me, elected by the people, and owing my power to it alone, I shall always 
submit to its lawfully expressed will. Should you at this session decide upon 
the revision of the Constitution, a Constitutional Convention will regulate the 
position of the Executive power. If you do not, then, the people will, in 1852, 
solemnly announce its decision. But, whatever the solution may be that the 

t Long live Napoleon! Long live the sausages! 



44 

future has in store, let us arrive at an understanding to the end that never 
may passion, surprise or violence decide over the fate of a great nation . . . 
That which, above all, bespeaks my attention is, not who will, in 1852, rule 
over France, but to so devote the time at my disposal that the interval may 
pass by without agitation and disturbance. I have straightforwardly opened 
my heart to you, you will answer my frankness with your confidence, my 
good efforts with your co-operation. God will do the rest." 

The honnete, hypocritically temperate, commonplace-virtuous language of 
the bourgeoisie reveals its deep meaning in the mouth of the self-appointed 
ruler of the "Society of December 10," and of the picnic-hero of St. Maur and 
Satory. 

The burgraves of the party of Order did not for a moment deceive them 
selves on the confidence that this unbosoming deserved. They were long 
blase on oaths; they numbered among themselves veterans and virtuosi of 
perjury. The passage about the army did not, however, escape them. They 
observed with annoyance that the message, despite its prolix enumeration of 
the lately enacted laws, passed, with affected silence, over the most important 
of all, the election law, and, moreover, in case no revision of the Constitu 
tion was held, left the choice of the President, in 1852, with the people. The 
election law was the ball-and-chain to the feet of the party of Order, that 
hindered them from walking, and now assuredly from storming. Further 
more, by the official disbandment of the "Society of December 10," and the 
dismissal of the Minister of War, d Hautpoul, Bonaparte had, with his own 
hands, sacrificed the scape-goats on the altar of the fatherland. He had 
turned off the expected collision. Finally, the party of Order itself anxi 
ously sought to avoid every decisive conflict with the Executive, to weaken 
and to blur it over. Fearing to lose its conquests over the revolution, it let 
its rival gather the fruits thereof. "France demands, above all things, peace," 
with this language had the party of Order been apostrophizing the revolution, 
since February; with this language did Bonaparte s message now apostrophize 
the party of Order: "France demands, above all things, peace." Bonaparte 
committed acts that aimed at usurpation, but the party of Order committed 
a "disturbance of the peace," if it raised the hue and cry, and explained them 
hypochondriacally. The sausages of Satory were mouse-still when nobody 
talked about them; "France demands, above all things, peace." Accordingly, 
Bonaparte demanded that he be let alone; and the parliamentary party was 
lamed with a double fear: the fear of re-conjuring up the revolutionary dis 
turbance of the peace, and the fear of itself appearing as the disturber of the 
peace in the eyes of its own class, of the bourgeoisie. Seeing that, above all 
things, France demanded peace, the party of Order did not dare, after Bona 
parte had said "peace" in his message, to answer "war." The public, who 
had promised to itself the pleasure of seeing great scenes of scandal at the 
opening of the National Assembly, was cheated out of its expectations. The 
opposition deputies, who demanded the submission of the minutes of the Per 
manent Committee over the October occurrences, were outvoted. All debate 



45 

that might excite was fled from on principle. The labors of the National 
Assembly during November and December, 1850, were without interest. 

Finally, toward the end of December, began a guerilla warfare about cer 
tain prerogatives of the parliament. The movement sank into the mire of 
petty chicaneries on the prerogative of the two powers, since, with the aboli 
tion of universal suffrage, the bourgeoisie had done away with the class 
struggle. 

A judgment for debt had been secured against Mauguin, one of the Rep 
resentatives. Upon Inquiry by the President of the Court, the Minister of 
Justice, Rouher, declared that an order of arrest should be made out without 
delay. Mauguin was, accordingly, cast into the debtors prison. The Na 
tional Assembly bristled up when it learned of the "attentat." It not only 
ordered his immediate release, but had him forcibly taken out of Clichy the 
same evening by its own greffier. In order, nevertheless, to shield its belief 
in the "sacredness of private property," and also with the ulterior thought of 
opening, in case of need, an asylum for troublesome Mountainers, it declared 
the imprisonment of a Representative for debt to be permissible upon its pre 
vious consent. It forgot to decree that the President also could be locked up 
for debt. By its act, it wiped out the last semblance of inviolability that 
surrounded the members of its own body. 

It will be remembered that, upon the testimony of one Allais, Police Com 
missioner Yon had charged a Section of Decembrists with a plan to murder 
Dupin and Changarnier. With an eye upon that, the questors proposed at 
the very first session, that the parliament organize a police force of its own, 
paid for out of the private budget of the National Assembly itself, and wholly 
independent of the Police Prefects. The Minister of the Interior, Baroche, pro 
tested against this trespass on his preserves. A miserable compromise fol 
lowed, according to which the Police Commissioner of the Assembly was to be 
paid out of its own private budget and was to be subject to the appointment 
and dismissal of its own questors, but only upon previous agreement with 
the Minister of the Interior. In the meantime Allais had been prosecuted 
by the Government. It was an easy thing, in Court, to present his testimony 
in the light of a mystification, and, through the mouth of the Public Pros 
ecutor, to throw Dupin, Changarnier, Yon, together with the whole National 
Assembly, into a ridiculous light. Thereupon, on December 29, Minister Ba 
roche writes a letter to Dupin, in which he demands the dismissal of Yon. 
The Committee of the National Assembly decides to keep Yon in office; never 
theless, the National Asssembly, frightened by its own violence in the affair 
of Mauguin, and accustomed, every time it has shied a blow at the Executive, to 
receive back from it two in exchange, does not sanction this decision. It dis 
misses Yon in reward for his zeal in office, and robs itself of a parliamentary 
prerogative, indispensable against a person who does not decide by night to 
execute by day, but decides by day and executes by night. 

We have seen how, during the months of November and December, un 
der great and severe provocations, the National Assembly evaded and refused 
the combat with the Executive power. Now we see it compelled to accept it 



4G 

on the smallest occasions. In the affair of Mauguin, it confirms in principle 
the liability of a Representative to imprisonment for debt, but to itself re 
serves the power of allowing the principle to be applied only to the Repre 
sentatives whom it dislikes, and for this infamous privilege we see it wrang 
ling with the Minister of Justice. Instead of utilizing the alleged murder plan 
to the end of fastening an inquest upon the "Society of December 10," and of 
exposing Bonaparte beyond redemption before France and Europe in his true 
I figure, as the head of the slum-proletariat of Paris, it allows the collision to 
sink to a point where the only issue between itself and the Minister of the 
Interior is, Who has jurisdiction over the appointment and dismissal of a 
Police Commissioner? Thus we see the party of Order, during this whole pe 
riod, compelled by its ambiguous position to wear out and fritter away its 
conflict with the Executive power in small quarrels about jurisdiction, in 
chicaneries, in pettifogging, in boundary disputes, and to turn the stalest ques- 
4ions of form into the very substance of its activity. It dares not accept the 
collision at the moment when it involves a principle, when the Executive 
power has really given itself a blank, and when the cause of the National 
Assembly would be the cause of the nation. It would thereby have issued to 
the nation an order of march; and it feared nothing so much as that the 
nation should move. Hence, on these occasions, it rejects the motions of the 
Mountain, and proceeds to the order of the day. After the issue has in this 
way lost all magnitude, the Executive power quietly awaits the moment when 
it can take it up again upon small and insignificant occasions; when, so to 
say, the issue offers only a parliamentary local interest. Then does the repressed 
valor of the party of Order break forth, then it tears away the curtain from 
the scene, then it denounces the President, then it declares the republic to 
be in danger, but then all its pathos appears stale, and the occasion for the 
quarrel a hypocritical pretext, or not at all worth the effort. The parliamen 
tary tempest becomes a tempest in a tea-pot, the struggle an intrigue, the 
collision a scandal. "While the revolutionary classes gloat with sardonic 
laughter over the humiliation of the National Assembly they, of course, be 
ing as enthusiastic for the prerogatives of the parliament as that body is for 
public freedom the bourgeoisie, outside of the parliament, does not under 
stand how the bourgeoisie, inside of the parliament, can squander its time 
with such petty bickerings, and can endanger peace by such wretched rival 
ries with the President. It is puzzled at a strategy that makes peace the very 
moment everybody expects battles, and that attacks the very moment every 
body believes peace has been concluded. 

On December 20, Pascal Duprat interpellated the Minister of the Interior on 
the "Goldbar Lottery." This lottery was a "Daughter from Elysium"; Bona 
parte, together with his faithful, had given her birth; and Police Prefect Carlier 
had placed her under his official protection, although the French law forbade 
all lotteries, with the exception of raffles for benevolent purposes. Seven million 
tickets, a franc a piece, and the profit ostensibly destined to the shipping of 
Parisian vagabonds to California. Golden dreams were to displace the Socialist 
dreams of the Parisian proletariat; the tempting prospect of a prize was to dis- 



I 



47 - 

place the doctrinal right to labor. Of course, the workingmen of Paris did not 
recognize in the lustre of the Californian gold bars the lack-lustre francs that 
had been wheedled out of their pockets. In the main, however, the scheme WD.J 
an unmitigated swindle. The vagabonds, who meant to open Californian gold 
mines without taking the pains to leave Paris, were Bonaparte himself and his 
Round Table of desperate insolvents. The three millions granted by the Na 
tional Assembly were rioted away; the Treasury had to be refilled somehow 
or another. In vain did Bonaparte open a national subscription, at the 
head of which he himself figured with a large sum, for the establishment of 
so-called "cites ouvrieres".* The hard-hearted bourgeois waited, distrustful, for 
the payment of his own shares; and, as this, of course, never took place, the 
speculation in Socialist castles in the air fell flat. The gold bars drew better. 
Bonaparte and his associates did not content themselves with putting into their 
own pockets part of the surplus of the seven millions over and above the 
bars that were to be drawn; they manufactured false tickets; they sold, of 
Number 10 alone, fifteen to twenty lots a financial operation fully in the 
spirit of the "Society of December 10"! The National Assembly did not here 
have before it the fictitious President of the Republic, but Bonaparte him 
self in flesh and blood. Here it could catch him in the act, not in conflict with 
the Constitution, but with the penal code. When, upon Duprat s interpella 
tion, the National Assembly went over to the order of the day, this did not 
happen simply because Girardin s motion to declare itself "satisfied" reminded 
the party of Order of its own systematic corruption: the bourgeois, above 
all the bourgeois who has been inflated into a statesman, supplements his 
practical meanness with theoretical pompousness. As statesman, he becomes, 
like the Government facing him, a superior being, who can be fought only in 
a higher, more exalted manner. 

Bonaparte who, for the very reason of his being a "bohemian," a princely 
slum-proletarian, had over the scampish bourgeois the advantage that he could 
carry on the fight after the Assembly itself had carried him with its own hands 
over the slippery ground of the military banquets, of the reviews, of the "Society 
of December 10," and, finally, of the penal code now saw that the moment 
had arrived when he could move from the seemingly defensive to the offensive. 
He was but little troubled by the intermediate and trifling defeats of the Min 
ister of Justice, of the Minister of War, of the Minister of the Navy, of the 
Minister of Finance, whereby the National Assembly indicated its growling 
displeasure. Not only did he prevent the Ministers from resigning, and thus 
recognizing the subordination of the executive power to the Parliament; he 
could now accomplish what during the vacation of the National Assembly he 

had commenced, the separation of the military power from the Assembly 

the DEPOSITION OF CHANGARNIER. 

An Elysee paper published an order, issued during the month of May, 
ostensibly to the First Military Division, and, hence, proceeding from Chan- 
garnier, wherein the officers were recommended, in case of an uprising, to 

* Work cities. 



48 

give no quarter to the traitors in their own ranks, to shoot them down on the 
spot, and to refuse troops to the National Assembly, should it make a requi 
sition for such. On January 3, 1851, the Cabinet was interpellated on this 
order. The Cabinet demands for the examination of the affair at first three 
months, then one week, finally only twenty-four hours time. The Assembly 
orders an immediate explanation. Changarnier rises and declares that this 
order never existed; he adds that he would ever hasten to respond to the calls 
of the National Assembly, and that, in case of a collision, they could count 
upon him. The Assembly receives his utterances with inexpressible applause, 
and decrees a vote of confidence to him. It thereby resigns its own powers; it 
decrees its own impotence and the omnipotence of the Army by committing it 
self to the private protection of a general. But the general, in turn, deceives him 
self when he places at the Assembly s disposal and against Bonaparte a power 
that he holds only as a fief from that same Bonaparte, and when, on his part, 
he expects protection from this Parliament, from his protege, itself needful 
cf protection. But Changarnier has faith in the mysterious power with which 
since Januarj r , 1849, he had been clad by the bourgeoisie. He takes himself for 
the Third Power, standing beside the other Powers of Government. He 
shares the faith of all the other heroes, or rather saints, of this epoch, whose 
greatness consists but in the interested good opinion that their own party holds 
of them, and who shrink into every-day figures so soon as circumstances 
invite them to perform miracles. Infidelity is, indeed, the deadly enemy of 
these supposed heroes and real saints. Hence their virtuously proud indig 
nation at the unenthusiastic wits and scoffers. 

That same evening the Ministers were summoned to the Elysee; Bona 
parte presses the removal of Changarnier; five Ministers refuse to sign the 
order; the "Moniteur" announces a Ministerial crisis; and the party of Order 
threatens the formation of a Parliamentary army under the command of 
Changarnier. The party of Order had the constitutional power hereto. It 
needed only to elect Changarnier President of the National Assembly in order 
to make a requisition for whatever military forces it needed for its own safety. 
It could do this all the more safely, seeing that Changarnier still stood at the 
head of the Army and of the Parisian National Guard, and only lay in wait to 
be summoned, together with the Army. The Bonapartist press did not even 
dare to question the right of the National Assembly to issue a direct requisi 
tion for troops; a legal scruple, that, under the given circumstances, did 
not promise success. That the Army would have obeyed the orders of the Na 
tional Assembly is probable, when it is considered that Bonaparte had to look 
eight days all over Paris to find two generals Baraguay d Hilliers and St. 
Jean d Angley who declared themselves ready to countersign the order cash- V 
iering Changarnier. That, however, the party of Order would have found in I 
its own ranks and in the parliament the requisite vote for such a decision is 
more than doubtful, when it is considered that, eight days later, 286 votes 
pulled away from it, and that, as late as December, 1851, at the last decisive 
hour, the Mountain rejected a similar proposition. Nevertheless, the burgraves 
might still have succeeded in driving the mass of their party to an act of hero- 



ism, consisting in feeling safe behind a forest of bayonets, and in accepting 
the services of the Army, which found itself deserted in its camp. Instead of 
this, the Messieurs Burgraves betook themselves to the Elysee on the even 
ing of January 6, with the view of inducing Bonaparte, by means of politic 
words and considerations, to drop the removal of Changarnier. Him whom 
we must convince we recognize as the master of the situation. Bonaparte, 
made to feel secure by this step, appoints on January 12 a new Ministry, 
in which the leaders of the old, Fould and Baroche, are retained. St. Jean 
d Angley becomes Minister of War; the "Moniteur" announces the decree 
cashiering Changarnier; his command is divided up between Baraguay d Hill- 
iers, who receives the First Division, and Perrot, who is placed over the Na 
tional Guard. The "Bulwark of Society" is turned down; and, although no 
dog barks over the event, in the Bourses the stock quotations rise. 

By repelling the Army, that, in Changarnier s person, put itself at its dis 
posal, and thus irrevocably stood up against the President, the party of Order 
declares that the bourgeoisie has lost its vocation to reign. Already there was 
no parliamentary Ministry. By losing, furthermore, the handle to the Army and 
to the National Guard, what instrument of force was there left to the National 
Assembly in order to maintain both the usurped power of the parliament over 
the people, and its constitutional power over the President? None. All that 
was left to it was the appeal to peaceful principles, that itself had always ex 
plained as "general rules" merely, to be prescribed to third parties, and only in. 
order to enable itself to move all the more freely. With the removal of Changar 
nier, with the transfer of the military power to Bonaparte, closes the first part 
of the period that we are considering, the period of the struggle between the 
party of Order and the Executive power. The war between the two powers is 
now openly declared; it is conducted openly; but only after the party of Order 
has lost both arms and soldiers. Without a Ministry, without an army, without 
a people, without the support of public opinion; since its election law of May 31, 
no longer the representative of the sovereign nation; sans eyes, sans ears, sans 
teeth, sans everything, the National Assembly had gradually converted itself 
into a French Parliament of olden days, that must leave all action to the Gov 
ernment, and content itself with growling remonstrances "post festum."* 

The party of Order receives the new Ministry with a storm of indignation. 
General Bedeau calls to mind the mildness of the Permanent Committee during 
the vacation, and the excessive prudence with which it had renounced the privi 
lege of disclosing its minutes. Now, the Minister of the Interior himself insists 
upon the disclosure of these minutes, that have now, of course, become dull as 
stagnant waters, reveal no new facts, and fall without making the slightest 
effect upon the blase public. Upon Remusat s proposition, the National As 
sembly retreats into its Committees, and appoints a "Committee on Extra 
ordinary Measures." Paris steps all the less out of the ruts of its daily routine, 
seeing that business is prosperous at the time, the manufactories busy, the 
prices of cereals low, provisions abundant, the savings banks receiving daily 

* After the act is done; after -.he feast. 



50 

new deposits. The "extraordinary measures." that the parliament so noisily 
announced, fizzle out on January IS in a vote of lack of confidence against the 
Ministry, without General Changarnier s name being even mentioned. The 
party of Order was forced to frame its motion in that way so as to secure the 
votes of the republicans, because, of all the acts of the Ministry, Changarnier s 
dismissal only was the very one they approved, while the party of Order can 
not, in fact, condemn the other Ministerial acts which it had itself dictated. 

The January 18 vote of lack of confidence was decided by 415 ayes against 
286 nays. It was, accordingly, put through by a coalition of the uncompromi 
sing Legitimists and Orleanists with the pure republicans and the Mountain. 

i Thus it revealed the fact that, in its conflicts with Bonaparte, the party of Order 
had lost, not only the Ministry, not only the Army, but also its independent 
parliamentary majority; that a troop of Representatives had deserted its camp 
out of a fanatic zeal for harmony, out of fear of fight, out of lassitude, out of 
family considerations for the salaries of relatives in office, out of speculations 
on vacancies in the Ministry (Odillon Barrot), or out of that unmitigated selfish 
ness that causes the average bourgeois to be ever inclined to sacrifice the in 
terests of his class to this or that private motive. The Bonapartist Representa 
tives belonged from the start to the party of Order only in the struggle against 
the revolution. The leader of the Catholic party, Montalembert, already then 
threw his influence in the scale of Bonaparte, since he despaired of the vitality 
of the parliamentary party. Finally, the leaders of this party itself, Thiers and 
Berryer the Orleanist and the Legitimist were compelled to proclaim them 
selves openly as republicans; to admit that their heart favored royalty, but their 
head the republic; that their parliamentary republic was the only possible form 
i for the rule of the bourgeoisie. Thus were they compelled to brand, before the 
eyes of the bourgeois class itself, as an intrigue as dangerous as it was sense- 

v less the restoration plans, which they continued to pursue indefatigably be 
hind the back of the parliament. 

The January 18 vote of lack of confidence struck the Ministers, not the 
President. But it was not the Ministry, it was the President who had deposed 
Changarnier. Should the party of Order place Bonaparte himself under 
charges? On account of his restoration hankerings? These only supple 
mented their own. On account of his conspiracy at the military reviews and of 
the "Society of December 10"? They had long since buried these subjects under 
simple order? of business. On account of the discharge of the hero of January 
29 and June 13, of the man who, in May, 1850, threatened, in case of a riot, to set 
Paris on fire at all its four corners? Their allies of the Mountain and Cavaignac 
did not even allow them to console the fallen "Bulwark of Society" with an 
official testimony of their sympathy. They themselves could not deny the con 
stitutional right of the President to remove a General. They stormed only be 
cause he made an unparliamentary use of his constitutional right. Had they 
not themselves constantly made an unconstitutional use of their parliamentary 
prerogative, notably by the abolition of universal suffrage? Consequently they 
were reminded to move exclusively within parliamentary bounds. Indeed, it re- 



51 

quired that peculiar disease, a disease that, since 1848, has raged over the whole 
continent, "Parliamentary Idiocy," that fetters those whom it infects to an 
imaginary world, and robs them of all sense, all remembrance, all understand 
ing of the rude outside world; it required this "Parliamentary Idiocy" in order 
that the party of Order, which had, with its own hands, destroyed all the con 
ditions for parliamentary power, and, in its struggle with the other classes, was 
obliged to destroy them, still to consider its parliamentary victories as victories, 
and to imagine it hit the President by striking his Ministers. They only 
afforded him an opportunity to humble the National Assembly anew in the eyes 
of the nation. On January 20, the "Moniteur" announced that the dismissal of 
the whole Ministry was accepted. Under the pretext that none of the parliament 
ary parties had any longer the majority as proved by the January 18 vote, that 
fruit of the coalition between Mountain and royalists , and, in order to await 
the re-formation of a majority, Bonaparte appointed a so-called transition Min 
istry, of whom no member belonged to the parliament altogether wholly un 
known and insignificant individuals; a Ministry of mere clerks and secretaries. 
The party of Order could now wear itself out in the game with these puppets; 
the Executive power no longer considered it worth the while to be seriously rep 
resented in the National Assembly. By this act Bonaparte concentrated the 
whole executive power all the more securely in his own person; he had all the 
freer elbow-room to exploit the same to his own ends, the more his Ministers 
became mere supernumeraries. 

The party of Order, now allied with the Mountain, revenged itself by re 
jecting the Presidential endowment project of 1,800,000 francs, which the chief 
of the "Society of December 10" had compelled his Ministerial clerks to present 
to the Assembly. This time a majority of only 102 votes carried the day; ac 
cordingly, since January 18, 27 more votes had fallen off; the dissolution of the 
party of Order was making progress. Lest any one might for a moment be de 
ceived touching the meaning of its coalition with the Mountain, the party of 
Order simultaneously scorned even to consider a motion, signed by 189 members 
of the Mountain, for a general amnesty to political criminals. It was enough that 
the Minister of the Interior, one Baisse, declared that the national tranquility 
was only in appearance, in secret there reigned deep agitation, in secret ubiqui 
tous societies were organized, the democratic papers were preparing to re-appear, 
the reports from the Departments were unfavorable, the fugitives of Geneva 
conducted a conspiracy via Lyon through the whole of Southern France, France 
stood on the verge of an industrial and commercial crisis, the manufacturers of 
Roubaix were working shorter hours, the prisoners of Belle Isle had mutinied; 
it was enough that even a mere Baisse should conjure up the "Red Spectre" for 
the party of Order to reject without discussion a motion that would have 
gained for the National Assembly a tremendous popularity, and thrown Bona 
parte back into its arms. Instead of allowing itself to be intimidated by the 
Executive power with the perspective of fresh disturbances, the party of Order 
should rather have allowed a little elbow-room to the class struggle, in order 
to secure the dependence of the Excutive upon itself. But it did not feel itself 
equal to the task of playing with fire. 



52 

Meanwhile, the so-called transition Ministry vegetated along until the 
middle of April. Bonaparte tired out and fooled the National Assembly with 
constantly new Ministerial combinations. Now he seemed to intend construct 
ing a republican Ministry, with Lamartine and Billault; then, a parliamentary 
one, with the inevitable Odillon Barrot, whose name must never be absent when 
a dupe is needed; then again, a Legitimist, with Batismenil and Benoist d Azy; 
and yet again, an Orleanist, with Malleville. While thus throwing the several 
factions of the party of Order into strained relations with one another, and 
alarming them all with the prospect of a republican Ministry, together with 
the thereupon inevitable restoration of universal suffrage, Bonaparte simultan 
eously raises in the bourgeoisie the conviction that his sincere efforts for a 
parliamentary Ministry are wrecked upon the irreconcilable antagonism of the 
royalist factions. All the while the bourgeoisie was clamoring louder and 
louder for a "strong Government," and was finding it less and less pardonable to 
leave France "without an administration," in proportion as a general com 
mercial crisis seemed to be under way and making recruits for Socialism in the 
cities, as did the ruinously low price of grain in the rural districts. Trade be 
came daily duller; the unemployed hands increased perceptibly; in Paris, at 
least 10,000 workingmen were without bread; in Rouen, Muehlhausen, Lyons, 
Roubaix, Tourcoign, St. Etienne, Elbeuf, etc., numerous factories stood idle. 
Under these circumstances Bonaparte could venture to restore, on April 11, the 
Ministry of January 18: Messieurs Rouher, Fould, Baroche, etc., reinforced by 
Mr. Leon Faucher, whom the constitutive assembly had, during its last days, 
unanimously, with the exception of five Ministerial votes, branded with a vote 
of censure for circulating false telegraphic dispatches. Accordingly, the Nat 
ional Assembly had won a victory on January 18 over the Ministry, it had, for 
the period of three months, been battling with Bonaparte, and all this merely 
to the end that, on April 11, Fould and Baroche should be able to take up the 
Puritan Faucher as third in their ministerial league. 

In November, 1849, Bonaparte had satisfied himself with an UNPARLIA 
MENTARY, in January, 1851, with an OUTSIDE PARLIAMENTARY, on April 
11, he felt strong enough to form an ANTI-PARLIAMENTARY Ministry, that 
harmoniously combined within itself the votes of lack of confidence of both as 
semblies the constitutive and the legislative, the republican and the royalist. 
This ministerial progression was a thermometer by which the parliament could 
measure the ebbing temperature of its own life. This had sunk so low by the 
end of April, that, at a personal interview, Persigny could invite Changarnier 
to go over to the camp of the President. Bonaparte, he assured Changarnier, 
considered the influence of the National Assembly to be wholly annihilated, 
and already the proclamation was ready, that was to be published after the 
steadily contemplated, but again accidentally postponed "coup d e tat." Chan 
garnier communicated this announcement of its death to the leaders of the party 
of Order; but who was there to believe a bed-bug bite could kill? The parlia 
ment, however beaten, however dissolved, however death-tainted it was, could 
not persuade itself to see, in the duel with the grotesque chief of the "Society 



53 ~- 

of December 10," anything but a duel with a bed-bug. But Bonaparte answered 
the party of Order as Agesilaus did King Agis: "I seem to you an ant; but shall 
one day be a lion." 



VI 

The coalition with the Mountain and the pure republicans, to which the 
party of Order found itself condemned in its fruitless efforts to keep possession 
of the military and to reconquer supreme control over the Executive power, 
proved conclusively that it had forfeited its independent parliamentary major 
ity. The calendar and clock merely gave, on May 29, the signal for its com 
plete dissolution. With May 29 commenced the last year of the life of the- " 
National Assembly. It now had to decide for the unchanged continuance or 
the revision of the Constitution. But a revision of the Constitution meant not 
only the definitive supremacy of either the bourgeoisie or the small traders 
democracy, of either democracy or proletarian anarchy, of either a parlia 
mentary republic or Bonaparte, it meant also either Orleans or Bourbon! Thus 
fell into the very midst of the parliament the apple of discord, around which 
the conflict of interests, that cut up the party of Order into hostile factions, 
was to kindle into an open conflagration. The party of Order was a combina 
tion of heterogeneous social substances. The question of revision raised a 
political temperature, in which the product was reduced to its original com 
ponents. 

The interest of the Bonapartists in the revision was simple: they were 
above all concerned in the abolition of Article 45, which forbade Bonaparte s 
re-election and the prolongation of his term. Not less simple seemed to be the 
position of the republicans: they rejected all revision, seeing in that only a 
general conspiracy against the republic; as they disposed over more than one- 
fourth of the votes in the National Assembly, and, according to the Constitu 
tion, a three-fourths majority was requisite to revise and to call a revisory 
convention, they needed only to count their own votes to be certain of victory. 
Indeed, they were certain of it. 

Over and against these clear-cut positions, the party of Order found itself 
tangled in inextricable contradictions. If it voted against the revision, it en 
dangered the "status quo," by leaving to Bonaparte only one expedient that 
of violence and handing France over, on May 2, 1852, at the very time of elec 
tion, a prey to revolutionary anarchy, with a President whose authority 
was at an end, with a parliament that the party had long ceased to 
own, and with a people that it meant to reconquer. If it voted con 
stitutionally for a revision, it knew that it voted in vain, and would constitu 
tionally have to go under before the veto of the republicans. If, unconstitution 
ally, it pronounced a simple majority binding, it could hope to control the 
revolution only in case it surrendered unconditionally to the domination of the 
Executive power: it then made Bonaparte master of the Constitution, of the 



54 

revision and of itself. A merely partial revision, prolonging the term of the 
President, opened the way to imperial usurpation; a general revision, shorten 
ing the existence of the republic, threw the dynastic claims into an inevitable 
conflict: the conditions for a Bourbon and those for an Orleanist restoration 
were not only different, they mutually excluded each other. 

The parliamentary republic was more than a neutral ground on which the 
two factions of the French bourgeoisie Legitimists and Orleanists, large 
landed property and manufacture could lodge together with equal rights. It 
was the indispensable condition for their common reign, the only form of gov 
ernment in which their common class interest could dominate both the claims 
of their separate factions and all the other classes of society. As royalists, 
they relapsed into their old antagonism: into the struggle for the overlordship 
of either landed property or of money; and the highest expression of this an 
tagonism, its personification, were the two kings themselves, their dynasties. 
Hence the resistance of the party of Order to the recall of the Bourbons. 

The Orleanist Representative Creton moved periodically in 1849, 1850 and 
1851 the repeal of the decree of banishment against theroyal families; as period 
ically did the parliament present the spectacle of an Assembly of royalists who 
stubbornly shut to their banished kings the door through which they could 
return home. Richard III. murdered Henry VI. with the remark that he 
was too good for this world, and belonged in heaven. They declared France 
too bad to have her kings back again. Forced by the power of circumstances, 
they had become republicans, and repeatedly sanctioned the popular mandate 
that exiled their kings from France. 

The revision of the Constitution, and circumstances compelled its con 
sideration, at once made uncertain not only the republic itself, but alfo the 
joint reign of the two bourgeois factions; and it revived, with the possibility 
of the monarchy, both the rivalry of interests which these two factions had 
alternately allowed to preponderate, and the struggle for the supremacy of the 
one over the other. The diplomats of the party of Order believed they could 
allay the struggle by a combination of the two dynasties through a so-called 
fusion of the royalist parties and their respective royal houses. The true 
fusion of the restoration and the July monarchy was, however, the parlia 
mentary republic, in which the Orleanist and Legitimist colors were dissolved, 
and the bourgeois species vanished in the plain bourgeois, in the bourgeois 
genus. Now, however, the plan was to t irn the Orleanist Legitimist, and the 
Legitimist Orleanist. The kingship, in which their antagonism was person 
ified, was to incarnate their unity; the expression of their exclusive faction in 
terests was to become the expression of their common class interest; the mon 
archy was to accomplish what only the abolition of two monarchies the re 
public could and did accomplish. This was the philosophers stone, for the 
finding of which the doctors of the party of Order were breaking their heads. 
As though the Legitimate monarchy ever could be the monarchy of the in 
dustrial bourgeoisie, or the bourgeois monarchy the monarchy of the hereditary 
landed aristocracy! As though landed property and industry could fraternize 



55 

under one crown, where the crown could fall only upon one head, the head of 
the older or the younger brother! As though industry could at all deal upon 
a footing of equality with landed property, so long as landed property did not 
decide itself to become industrial. If Henry V. were to die to-morrow, the 
Count of Paris would not, therefore, become the king of the Legitimists, un 
less he ceased to be the King of the Orleanists. Nevertheless, the fusion phil 
osophers, who became louder in the measure that the question of revision 
stepped to the fore, who had provided themselves with a daily organ in the 
"Assemblee Nationale," who, even at this very moment (February, 1852) are 
again at work, explained the whole difficulty by the opposition and rivalries of 
the two dynasties. The attempts to reconcile the family of Orleans with 
Henry V., begun since the death of Louis Philippe, but, as all these dynastic 
intrigues, carried on only during the vacation of the National Assembly, be 
tween acts, behind the scenes, more as a sentimental coquetry with the old 
superstition than as a serious affair, were now raised by the party of Order to 
the dignity of a great State question, and were conducted upon the public 
stage, instead of, as heretofore, in the amateurs theater. Couriers flew from 
Paris to Venice, from Venice to Claremont, from Claremont to Paris. The 
Duke of Chambord issues a manifesto in which he announces, not his own, but 
the "national" restoration, "with the aid of all the members of his family." The 
Orleanist Salvandy throws himself at the feet of Henry V. The Legitimist 
leaders Berryer, Benoit d Azy, St. Priest travel to Claremont, to persuade the 
Orleans; but in vain. The fusionists learn too late that the interests of the two 
bourgeois factions neither lose in exclusiveness nor gain in pliancy where they 
sharpen to a point in the form of family interests, of the interests of the two 
royal houses. When Henry V. recognized the Count of Paris as his successor 
the only success that the fusion could at best score the house of Orleans 
acquired no claim that the childlessness of Henry V. had not already secured 
to it; but, on the other hand, it lost all the claims that it had conquered by the 
July revolution. It renounced its original claims, all the titles, that, during 
a struggle nearly one hundred years long, it had wrested from the older 
branch of the Bourbons; it bartered away its historic prerogative, the prerog 
ative of its family-tree. Fusion, accordingly, amounted to nothing else than the 
resignation of the house of Orleans, its Legitimist resignation, a repentful re 
turn from the Protestant State Church Into the Catholic; a return, at that, that 
did not even place it on the throne that it had lost, but on the steps of the 
throne on which it was born. The old Orleanist Ministers Guizot, Duchatel, 
etc., who likewise hastened to Claremont, to advocate the fusion, represented 
in fact only the nervous reaction of the July monarchy; despair, both in the 
citizen kingdom and the kingdom of citizens; the superstitious believe in legit 
imacy as the last amulet against anarchy. Mediators, in their imagination, be 
tween Orleans and Bourbon, they were in reality but apostate Orleanists, and 
as such were they received by the Prince of Joinville. The virile, bellicose 
part of the Orleanists, on the contrary Thiers, Baze, etc. , persuaded the 
family of Louis Philippe all the easier that, seeing every plan for the im- 



56 

mediate restoration of the monarchy presupposed the fusion of the two dyn 
asties, and every plan for fusion the resignation of the house of Orleans, it cor 
responded, on the contrary, wholly with the tradition of its ancestors to recog 
nize the republic for the time being, and to wait until circumstances permitted 
the conversion of the Presidential chair into a throne. Joinville s candidacy 
was set afloat as a rumor, public curiosity was held in suspense, and a few 
months later, after the revision was rejected, openly proclaimed in September. 
Accordingly, the essay of a royalist fusion between Orleanists and Legiti 
mists did not miscarry only, it broke up their parliamentary fusion, the repub 
lican form that they had adopted in common, and it decomposed the party of 
Order into its original components. But the wider the breach became between 
Venice and Claremont, the further they drifted away from each other, and the - 
greater the progress made by the Joinville agitation, all the more active and 
earnest became the negotiations between Faucher, the Minister of Bonaparte, 
and the Legitimists. 

The dissolution of the party of Order went beyond its original elements. 
Each of the two large factions fell in turn into new fragments. It was as if 
all the old political shades, that formerly fought and crowded one another 
within each of the two circles be it that of the Legitimists or that of the 
Orleanists , had been thawed out like dried infusoria by contact with water; 
as if they had recovered enough vitality to build their own groups and assert 
their own antagonisms. The Legitimists dreamed they were back amidst the 
quarrels between the Tuileries and the pavilion Marsan, between Villele and 
Polignac; the Orleanists lived anew through the golden period of the tourneys 
between Guizot, Mole, Broglie, Thiers, and Odillon Barrot. 

That portion of the party of Order eager for a revision of the Constitu 
tion but disagreed upon the extent of revision made up of the Legitimists 
under Berryer and Falloux and of those under Laroche Jaquelein, together with 
the tired-out Orleanists under Mole, Broglie, Montalembert and Odillon Barrot, 
united with the Bonapartist Representatives in the following indefinite and 
loosely drawn motion 

"The undersigned Representatives, with the end in view of restoring to 
the nation the full exercise of her sovereignty, move that the Constitution be 
revised." 

At the same time, however, they unanimously declared through their 
spokesman, Tocqueville, that the National Assembly had not the right to move 
the abolition of the republic, that right being vested only in a Constitutional 
Convention. For the rest, the Constitution could be revised only in a "legal" 
way, that is to say, only in case a three-fourths majority decided in favor of 
revision, as prescribed by the Constitution. After a six days stormy debate, 
the revision was rejected on July 19, as was to be foreseen. In its favor 446 
votes were cast, against it 278. The resolute Orleanists. Thiers, Changarnier, 
etc., voted with the republicans and the Mountain. 

Thus the majority of the parliament pronounced itself against the Con 
stitution, while the Constitution itself pronounced itself for the minority, and 




57 



its decision binding. But had not the party of Order on May 31, 1850, had it not 
on June 13, 1&49, subordinated the Constitution to the parliamentary majority? 
Did not the whole republic they had been hitherto having rest upon the 
subordination of the Constitutional clauses to the majority decisions of the 
parliament? Had they not left to the democrats the Old Testament super 
stitious belief in the letter of the law, and had they not chastised the demo 
crats therefor. At this moment, however, revision meant nothing else than the 
continuance of the Presidential power, as the continuance of the Constitution 
meant nothing else than the deposition of Bonaparte. The parliament had 
pronounced itself for him, but the Constitution pronounced itself against the 
parliament. Accordingly, he acted both in the sense of the parliament when 
he tore up the Constitution, and in the sense of the Constitution when he 
chased away the parliament. 

The parliament pronounced the Constitution, and, thereby, also, its own 
reign, "outside of the pale of the majority"; by its decision, it repealed the 
Constitution, and continued the Presidential power, and it at once declared 
that neither could the one live nor the other die so long as itself existed. The 
feet of those who were to bury it stood at the door. While it was debating the 
subject of revision, Bonaparte removed General Baraguay d Hilliers, who 
showed himself irresolute, from the command of the First Military Division, 
and appointed in his place General Magnan, the conqueror of Lyon, the hero of 
the December days, one of his own creatures, who, already under Louis 
Philippe, on the occasion of the Boulogne expedition, had somewhat compro 
mised himself in his favor. 

By its decision on the revision, the party of Order proved that it knew 
neither how to rule nor how to obey; neither how to live nor how to die; 
neither how to bear with the republic nor how to overthrow it; neither how to 
maintain the Constitution nor how to throw it overboard; neither how to co 
operate with the President nor how to break with him. From what quarter did 
it, then, look to for the solution of all the existing perplexities? From the 
calendar, from the course of events. It ceased to assume the control of events. 
It, accordingly, invited events to don its authority and also the power to which, 
in its struggle with the people, it had yielded one attribute after another 
until it finally stood powerless before the same. To the end that the Executive 
be able all the more freely to formulate his plan of campaign against it, 
strengthen his means of attack, choose his tools, fortify his positions, the party 
of Order decided, in the very midst of this critical moment, to step off the 
stage, and adjourn for three months, from August 10 to November 4. 

Not only was the parliamentary party dissolved into its two great frac 
tions, not only was each of these dissolved within itself, but the party of Order, 
inside of the parliament, was at odds with the party of Order, outside of the 
parliament. The learned speakers and writers of the bourgeoisie, their tri 
bunes and their press, in short, the ideologists of the bourgeoisie and the bour 
geoisie itself, the representatives and the represented, stood estranged from, 
and no longer understood one another. 



58 

The Legitimists in the provinces, with their cramped horizon and their 
boundless enthusiasm, charged their parliamentary leaders Berryer and Fal- 
loux with desertion to the Bonapartist camp, and with apostacy from Henry 
V. Their lily-mind* believed in the fall of man, but not in diplomacy. 

More fatal and completer, though different, was the breach between the 
commercial bourgeoisie and its politicians. It twitted them, not as the Legit 
imists did theirs, with having apostatized from their principle, but, on the 
contrary, with adhering to principles that had become useless. 

I have already indicated that, since the entry of Fould in the Ministry, 
that portion of the commercial bourgeoisie that had enjoyed the lion s share 
in Louis Philippe s reign, to wit, the aristocracy of finance, had become Bona 
partist. Fould not only represented Bonaparte s interests at the Bourse, he 
represented also the interests of the Bourse with Bonaparte. A passage from 
the London "Economist," the European organ of the aristocracy of finance, 
described most strikingly the attitude of this class. In its issue of February 1, 
1851, its Paris correspondent writes: "Now we have it stated from numerous 
quarters that France wishes above all things for repose. The President de 
clares it in his message to the Legislative Assembly; it is echoed from the tri 
bune; it is asserted in the journals; it is announced from the pulpit; it is 
demonstrated by the sensitiveness of the public funds at the least prospect of 
disturbance, and their firmness the instant it is made manifest that the Ex 
ecutive is far superior in wisdom and power to the factious ex-officials of all 
former governments." 

In its issue of November 29, 1851, the "Economist" declares editorially: 
"The President is now recognized as the guardian of order on every Stock Ex 
change of Europe." Accordingly, the ARISTOCRACY OF FINANCE con 
demned the parliamentary strife of the party of Order with the Executive as a 
"disturbance of order," and hailed every victory of the President over its re 
puted representatives as a "victory of order." Under "aristocracy of finance" 
must not, however, be understood merely the large bond negotiators and spec 
ulators in government securities, of whom it may be readily understood that 
their interests and the interests of the Government coincide. The whole mod 
ern money trade, the whole banking industry, is most intimately interwoven 
with the public credit. Part of their business capital requires to be invested in 
interest-bearing government securities that are promptly convertible into 
money; their deposits, i. e., the capital placed at their disposal and by them 
distributed among merchants and industrial establishments, flow partly out of 
the dividends on government securities. The whole money market, together 
with the priests of this market, is part and parcel of this "aristocracy of 
finance" at every epoch when the stability of the government is to them 
synonymous with "Moses and his prophets." This is so even before things 
have reached the present stage when every deluge threatens to carry away the 
old governments themselves. 

But the INDUSTRIAL BOURGEOISIE also, in its fanaticism for order, 



An allusion to the lilies of the Bourbon coat-of-arms. 



59 

was annoyed at the quarrels of the Parliamentary party of Order with the Ex 
ecutive. Thiers, Anglas, Sainte Beuve, etc., received, after their vote of Jan 
uary 18, on the occasion of the discharge of Changarnier, public reprimands 
from their constituencies, located in the industrial districts, branding their 
coalition with the Mountain as an act of high treason to the cause of order. 
Although, true enough, the boastful, vexatious and petty intrigues, through 
which the struggle of the party of Order with the President manifested it 
self, deserved no better reception, yet notwithstanding, this bourgeois party, 
that expects of its representatives to allow the military power to pass without 
resistance out of the hands of their own Parliament into those of an adventur 
ous Pretender, is not worth even the intrigues that were wasted in its behalf. 
It showed that the struggle for the maintenance of their public interests, of 
their class interests, of their political power only incommoded and displeased 
them, as a disturbance of their private business. 

The bourgeois dignitaries of the provincial towns, the magistrates, com 
mercial judges, etc., with hardly any exception, received Bonaparte everywhere ; 
on his excursions in the most servile manner, even when, as in Dijon, he at 
tacked the National Assembly and especially the party of Order without re 
serve. 

- Business being brisk, as still at the beginning of 1851, the commercial bour 
geoisie stormed against every Parliamentary strife, lest business be put out 
of temper. Business being dull, as from the end of February, 1851, on, the 
bourgeoisie accused the Parliamentary strifes as the cause of the stand-still, 
and clamored for quiet in order that business may revive. The debates on re 
vision fell just in the bad times. Seeing the question now was the to be or not to 
be of the existing form of government, the bourgeoisie felt itself all the more 
justified in demanding of its Representatives that they put an end to this tor 
menting provisional status, and preserve the "status quo." This was no 
contradiction. By putting an end to the provisional status, it understood its 
continuance, the indefinite putting off of the moment when a final decision 
had to be arrived at. The "status quo" could be preserved in only one of two""[ 
ways: either by the prolongation of Bonaparte s term of office or by his con- I 
stitutional withdrawal and the election of Cavaignac. A part of the bour-^ 
geoisie preferred the latter solution, and knew no better advice to give their 
Representatives than to be silent, to avoid the burning point. If their Rep 
resentatives did not speak, so argued they, Bonaparte would not act. They 
desired an ostrich Parliament that would hide its head, in order not to be seen. 
Another part of the bourgeoisie preferred that Bonaparte, being once in 
the Presidential chair, be left in the Presidential chair, in order that every 
thing might continue to run in the old ruts. They felt indignant that their 
Parliament did not openly break the Constitution and resign without further 
ado. 

The General Councils of the Departments, these provisional representative 
bodies of the large bourgeoisie, who had adjourned during the vacation of the 
National Assembly since August 25, pronounced almost unanimously for re 
vision, that is to say, against the Parliament and for Bonaparte. 



60 

Still more unequivocally than in its falling out with its Parliamentary Rep 
resentatives, did the bourgeoisie exhibit its wrath at its literary Representa 
tives, its own press. The verdicts of the bourgeois juries, inflicting excessive 
fines and shameless sentences of imprisonment for every attack of the bour 
geois press upon the usurping aspirations of Bonaparte, for every attempt 
of the press to defend the political rights of the bourgeoisie against the Ex 
ecutive power, threw, not France alone, but all Europe into amazement. 

While, on the one hand, as I have indicated, the Parliamentary party of 
Order ordered itself to keep the peace by screaming for peace; and while it 
pronounced the political rule of the bourgeoisie irreconcilable with the safety 
and the existence of the bourgeoisie, by destroying with its own hands in 
its struggle with the other classes of society all the conditions for its own, 
the Parliamentary, regime; on the other hand, the mass of the bourgeoisie, 
outside of the Parliament, urged Bonaparte by its servility towards the Pres 
ident, by its insults to the Parliament, by the brutal treatment of its own 
press to suppress and annihilate its speaking and writing organs, its politi 
cians and its literati, its orators tribune and its press, to the end that, under 
the protection of a strong and unhampered Government, it might ply its own 
private pursuits in safety. It declared unmistakably that it longed to be rid ! 
of its own political rule, in order to escape the troubles and dangers of ruling. 

And this bourgeoisie, that had rebelled against even the Parliamentary 
and literary contest for the supremacy of its own class, that had betrayed its 
leaders in this contest, it now has the effrontery to blame the proletariat for 
not having risen in its defence in a bloody struggle, in a struggle for life! 
Those bourgeois, who at every turn sacrificed their common class interests to 
narrow and dirty private interests, and who demanded a similar sacrifice 
from their own Representatives, now whine that the proletariat has sac 
rificed their ideal-political to its own material interests! This bourgeois 
class now strikes the attitude of a pure soul, misunderstood and abandoned, 
at a critical moment, by the proletariat, that has been misled by the Social 
ists. And its cry finds a general echo in the bourgeois world. Of course, I 
do not refer to German cross-road politicians and kindred blockheads. I re 
fer, for instance, to the "Economist," which, as late as November 29, 1851, 
that is to say, four days before the "coup d 6tat" pronounced Bonaparte the 
"Guardian of Order" and Thiers and Berryer "Anarchists," and as early as 
December 27. 1851, after Bonaparte had silenced those very Anarchists, cries 
out about the treason committed by "the ignorant, untrained and stupid pro- 
letaires against the skill, knowledge, discipline, mental influence, intellectual 
resources and moral weight of the middle and upper ranks." The stupid, ig 
norant and contemptible mass was none other than the bourgeoisie itself. 

France had, indeed, experienced a sort of commercial crisis in 1851. At 
the end of February, there was a falling off of exports as compared with 1850; 
in March, business languished and factories shut down; in April, the con 
dition of the industrial departments seemed as desperate as after the February 
days; in May, business did not yet pick up; as late as June 28, the reports of 



(j J_ 

the Bank of France revealed through a tremendous increase of deposits and 
an equal decrease of loans on exchange notes, the stand-still of production; not 
until the middle of October did a steady improvement of business set in. The 
French bourgeoisie accounted for this stagnation of business with purely po 
litical reasons; it imputed the dull times to the strife between the Parliament 
and the Executive power, to the uncertainty of a provisional form of govern 
ment, to the alarming prospects of May 2, 1852. I shall not deny that all these 
causes did depress some branches of industry in Paris and in the Depart 
ments. At any rate, this effect of political circumstances was only local 
and trifling. Is there any other proof needed than that the improvement in 
business set in at the very time when the political situation was growing 
worse, when the political horizon was growing darker, and when at every 
moment a stroke of lightning was expected out of the Elysee in the middle 
of October? The French bourgeois, whose "skill, knowledge, mental influ 
ence and intellectual resources" reach no further than his nose, could, more 
over, during the whole period of the Industrial Exposition in London, have 
struck with his nose the cause of his own business misery. At the same time 
that, in France, the factories were being closed, commercial failures broke 
out in England. While the industrial panic reached its height during April 
and May in France, in England the commercial panic reached its height in 
April and May. The same as the French, the English woolen industries 
suffered, and, as the French, so did the English silk manufacture. Though the 
English cotton factories went on working, it, nevertheless, was not with the 
same old profit of 1849 and 1850. The only difference was this: that in France, 
the crisis was an industrial, in England it was a commercial one; that while in 
France the factories stood still, they spread themselves in England, but un 
der less favorable circumstances than they had done during the years just 
previous; that, in France, the export, in England, the import trade suffered 
the heaviest blows. The common cause, which, as a matter of fact, is not to 
be looked for within the bounds of the French political horizon, was obvious. 
The years 1849 and 1850 were years of the greatest material prosperity, and of 
an overproduction that did not manifest itself until 1851. This was espe 
cially promoted at the beginning of 1851 by the prospect of the Industrial Ex 
position; and, as special causes, there were added, first, the failure of the cotton 
crop of 1850 and 1851; second, the certainty of a larger cotton crop than was ex 
pected; first, the rise, then the sudden drop; in short, the oscillations of the 
cotton market. The crop of raw silk in France had been below the aver 
age. Finally, the manufacture of woolen goods had received such an increment 
since 1849, that the production of wool could not keep step with it, and the price 
of the raw material rose greatly out of proportion to the price of the manufac 
tured goods. Accordingly, we have here in the raw material of three staple 
articles a threefold material for a commercial crisis. Apart from these 
special circumstances, the seeming crisis of the year 1851 was, after all, noth 
ing but the halt that overproduction and overspeculation make regularly in the 
course of the industrial cycle, before pulling all their forces together in order 
to rush feverishly over the last stretch, and arrive again at their point of de- 



G2 

parture the GENERAL COMMERCIAL CRISIS. At such intervals In the 
history of trade, commercial failures break out in England, while, in France, 
industry itself Is stopped, partly because it is compelled to retreat through the 
competition of the English, that, at such times becomes resistless in all mar 
kets, and partly because, as an industry of luxuries, it is affected with prefer 
ence by every stoppage in trade. Thus, besides the general crises, France ex 
periences her own national crises, which, however, are determined by and con 
ditioned upon the general state of the world s market much more than by local 
French influences. It will not be devoid of interest to contrast the prejudg- 
ment of the French bourgeois with the judgment of the English bourgeois. One 
of the largest Liverpool firms writes in its yearly report of trade for 1851: "Few 
years have more completely disappointed the expectations entertained at their 
beginning than the year that has just passed; instead of the great prosperity, 
that was unanimously looked forward to, it proved itself one of the most dis 
couraging years during the last quarter of a century. This applies, of course, 
only to the mercantile, not to the industrial classes. And yet, surely there were 
grounds at the beginning of the year from which to draw a contrary con 
clusion: the stock of products was scanty, capital was abundant, provisions 
cheap, a rich autumn was assured, there was uninterrupted peace on the conti 
nent and no political and financial disturbances at home; indeed, never were the 
wings of trade more unshackled. . . What is this unfavorable result to be as 
cribed to? We believe to excessive trade in imports as well as exports. If our 
merchants do not themselves rein in their activity, nothing can keep us going, 
except a panic every three years." 

Imagine now the French bourgeois, in the midst of this business panic, 
having his trade-sick brain tortured, buzzed at and deafened with rumors of a 
"coup d etat" and the restoration of universal suffrage; with the struggle be 
tween the Legislature and the Executive; with the Fronde warfare between 
Orleanists and Legitimists; with communistic conspiracies in southern France; 
with alleged Jacqueriesf in the Departments of Nievre and Cher; with the ad 
vertisements of the several candidates for President; with "social solutions" 
huckstered about by the journals; with the threats of the republicans to up 
hold, arm in hand, the Constitution and universal suffrage; with the gospels, ac 
cording to the emigrant heroes "in partibus," who announced the destruction of 
the world for May 2, imagine that, and one can understand how the bour 
geois, in this unspeakable and noisy confusion of fusion, revision, prorogation, 
constitution, conspiracy, coalition, emigration, usurpation and revolution, 
blurts out at his parliamentary republic: "RATHER AN END WITH FRIGHT, 
THAN A FRIGHT WITHOUT END!" 

Bonaparte understood this cry. His perspicacity was sharpened by the 
growing anxiety of the creditors class, who, with every sunset, that brought 
nearer the day of payment, the 2d of May, 1852, saw in the motion of the stars a 
protest against their earthly drafts. They had become regular astrologers. 
The National Assembly had cut off Bonaparte s hope of a constitutional pro- 

t Peasant revolts. 



63 

longation of his term; the candidature of the Prince of Joinville tolerated no 
further vacillation. 

If ever an event cast its shadow before it long before its occurrence, it was 
Bonaparte s "coup d 6tat." Already on January 29, 1849, barely a month after 
his election, he had made to Changarnier a proposition to that effect. His own 
Prime Minister, Odillon Barrot, had covertly, in 1849, and Thiers openly, in 
the winter of 1850, revealed the scheme of the "coup d Stat." In May, 1851, 
Persigny had again sought to win Changarnier over to the "coup," and the 
"Messager de 1 Assemblee" newspaper had published this conversation. At 
every parliamentary storm, the Bonapartist papers threatened a "coup," and 
the nearer the crisis approached, all the louder grew their tone. At the orgies, 
that Bonaparte celebrated every night with a swell mob of males and females, 
every time the hour of midnight drew nigh and plenteous libations had loos 
ened the tongues and heated the minds of the revelers, the "coup" was re 
solved upon for the next morning. Swords were then drawn, glasses clinked, 
the Representatives were thrown out at the windows, the imperial mantle fell 
upon the shoulders of Bonaparte, until the next morning again drove away the 
spook, and astonished Paris learned, from not very reserved Vestals and in 
discreet Paladins, the danger it had once more escaped. During the 
months of September and October, the rumors of a "coup d 6tat" tumbled close 
upon one another s heels. At the same time the shadow gathered color, like a 
confused daguerreotype. Follow the issues of the European daily press for the 
months of September and October, and items like this will be found literally: 

"Rumors of a coup fill Paris. The capital, it is said, is to be filled with 
troops by night, and the next morning decrees are to be issued dissolving the 
National Assembly, placing the Department of the Seine in state of siege, re 
storing universal suffrage, and appealing to the people. Bonaparte is rumored 
to be looking for Ministers to execute these illegal decrees." 

The newspaper correspondence that brought this news always close 
ominously with "postponed." The "coup" was ever the fixed idea of Bonaparte. 
With this idea he had stepped again upon French soil. It had such full pos 
session of him that he was constantly betraying and blabbing it out. He was 
so weak that he was as constantly giving it up again. The shadow of the "coup" 
had become so familiar a spectre to the Parisians, that they refused to believe 
it when it finally did appear in flesh and blood. Consequently, it was neither 
the reticent backwardness of the chief of the "Society of December 10," nor an 
unthought of surprise of the National Assembly that caused the success of the 
"coup." When it succeeded, it did so despite his indiscretion and with its an 
ticipation a necessary, unavoidable result of the development that had pre 
ceded. 

On October 10, Bonaparte announced to his Ministers his decision to restore 
universal suffrage; on the 16th they handed in their resignations; on the 26th 
Paris learned of the formation of the Thorigny Ministry. The Prefect of Po 
lice, Carlier, was simultaneously replaced by Maupas; and the chief of the 
First Military Division Magnan, concentrated the most reliable regiments in 



61 

the capital. On November 4, the National Assembly re-opened its sessions. 
There was nothing left for it to do but to repeat, in short recapitulation, the 
course it had traversed, and to prove that it had been buried only after it had 
expired. 

The first post that it had forfeited in the struggle with the Executive was 
the Ministry. It had solemnly to admit this loss by accepting as genuine the 
Thorigny Ministry, which was but a pretence. The Permanent Committee had 
received Mr. Giraud with laughter when he introduced himself in the name of 
the new Ministers. So weak a Ministry for so strong a measure as the restora 
tion of universal suffrage! The question, however, then was to do nothing IN, 
everything AGAINST the parliament. 

On the very day of its re-opening, the National Assembly received the 
message from Bonaparte demanding the restoration of universal suffrage and 
the repeal of the law of May 31, 1850. On the same day, his Ministers intro 
duced a decree to that effect. The Assembly promptly rejected the motion of 
urgency made by the Ministers, but repealed the law itself, on November 13, 
with 855 votes against 348. Thus it once more tore to pieces its own mandate, 
once more certified to the fact that it had transformed itself from a freely 
chosen representative body of the nation into the usurpatory parliament of a 
class; it once more admitted that it had itself severed the muscles that con 
nected the parliamentary head with the body of the nation. 

While the Executive power appealed from the National Assembly to the 
people by its motion for the restoration of universal suffrage, the Legislative 
power appealed from the people to the Army by its "Quaestors Bill." This bill 
was to establish its right to immediate requisitions for troops, to build up a par 
liamentary army. By thus appointing the Army umpire between itself and the 
people, between itself and Bonaparte; by thus recognizing the Army as the de 
cisive power in the State, the National Assembly was constrained to admit 
that it had long given up all claim to supremacy. By debating the right to make 
requisitions for troops, instead of forthwith collecting them, it betrayed its 
own doubts touching its own power. By subsequently rejecting the "Quaestors 
Bill," it publicly confessed its impotence. This bill fell through with a minority 
of 108 votes; the Mountain had, accordingly, thrown the casting vote. It now 
found itself in the predicament of Buridan s donkey, not, indeed, between two 
sacks of hay, forced to decide which of the two was the more attractive, but be 
tween two showers of blows, forced to decide which of the two was the harder: 
fear of Changarnier, on one side, fear of Bonaparte, on the other. It must be 
admitted the position was not a heroic one. 

On November 18, an amendment was moved to the Act, passed by the 
party of Order, on municipal elections to the effect that, instead of three years, 
a domicile of one year should suffice. The amendment was lost by a single vote 
but this vote, it soon transpired, was a mistake. Owing to the divisions 
within its own hostile factions, the party of Order had long since forfeited its 
independent parliamentary majority. If now showed that there was no longer 
any majority in the parliament. The National Assembly had become impotent 



65 

even to decide. Its atomic parts were na longer held together by any cohesive 
power; it had expended its last breath, it was dead. 

Finally, the mass of the bourgeoisie outside of the parliament, was once 
more solemnly to confirm its rupture with the bourgeoisie inside of the parlia 
ment a few days before the catastrophe. Thiers, as a parliamentary hero con 
spicuously smitten by that incurable disease Parliamentary Idiocy , had 
hatched out jointly with the Council of State, after the death of the parlia 
ment, a new parliamentary intrigue in the shape of a "Responsibility Law," 
that was intended to lock up the President within the walls of the Constitution. 
The same as, on September 15, Bonaparte bewitched the fishwives, like a second 
Massaniello, on the occasion of laying the corner-stone for the Market of Paris, 
though, it must be admitted, one fishwife was equal to seventeen Burgraves 
in real power ; the same as, after the introduction of the "Quaestors Bill," he 
enthused the lieutenants, who were being treated at the Elysee; so, likewise, 
did he now, on November 25, carry away with him the industrial bourgeoisie, 
assembled at the Circus, to receive from his hands the prize-medals that had 
been awarded at the London Industrial Exposition. I here reproduce the 
typical part of his speech, from the "Journal des Debats": 

"With such unhoped for successes, I am justified to repeat how great the 
French republic would be if she were only allowed to pursue her real interests, 
and reform her institutions, instead of being constantly disturbed in this by 
demagogues, on one side, and, on the other, by monarchic hallucinations. 
(Loud, stormy and continued applause from all parts of the amphitheater). The 
monarchic hallucinations hamper all progress and all serious departments of 
industry. Instead of progress, we have struggle only. Men, formerly the most 
zealous supporters of royal authority and prerogative, become the partisans of 
a convention that has no purpose other than to weaken an authority that is 
born of universal suffrage. (Loud and prolonged applause). We see men, who 
have suffered most from the revolution and complained bitterest of it, provok 
ing a new one for the sole purpose of putting fetters on the will of the nation. 
. . . I promise you peace for the future." (Bravo! Bravo! Stormy bravos). 

Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile "Bravo!" to the "Coup 
d etat" of December 2, to the destruction of the parliament, to the downfall of 
their own reign, to the dictatorship of Bonaparte. The roar of the applause of 
November 25 was responded to by the roar of cannon on December 4, and the 
house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been loudest in applauding, was the one 
demolished by most of the bombs. 

Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its 
midst, pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue to exist 
one minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove out each individual 
member with gay and humorous invectives. Napoleon, smaller than his proto 
type, at least went on the 18th Brumaire into the legislative body, and, though 
in a tremulous voice, read to it its sentence of death. The second Bonaparte, 
who, moreover, found himself in possession of an executive power very differ 
ent from that of either Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the 



annals of universal history, but in the annals of the "Society of December 10," 
in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. He robs the Bank of France of twenty- 
five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and the soldiers with 
fifteen francs and a drink a piece; comes secretly together with his accomplices 
like a thief by night; has the houses of the most dangerous leaders in the par 
liament broken into; Cavaignac, Lamorcifire, Leflo, Changarnier, Charras, 
Thiers, Baze, etc., taken out of their beds; the principal places of Paris, the 
building of the parliament included, occupied with troops; and, early the next 
morning, loud-sounding placards posted on all the walls proclaiming the dis 
solution of the National Assembly and of the Council of State, the restoration of 
universal suffrage, and the placing of the Department of the Seine under the 
state of siege. In the same way he shortly after sneaked into the "Moniteur" a 
false document, according to which influential parliamentary names had 
grouped themselves around him in a Committee of the Nation. 

Amidst cries of "Long live the Republic!", the rump-parliament, as 
sembled at the Mayor s building of the Tenth Arrondissement, and composed 
mainly of Legitimists and Orleanists, resolves to depose Bonaparte; it har 
angues in vain the gaping mass gathered before the building, and is finally 
dragged first, under the escort of African sharpshooters, to the barracks of 
Orsay, and then bundled into convicts wagons, and transported to the 
prisons of Mazas, Ham and Vincennes. Thus ended the party of Order, the 
Legislative Assembly and the February revolution. 

Before hastening to the end, let us sum up shortly the plan of its history: 

I. FIRST PERIOD. From February 24 to May 4, 1848. February period. 
Prologue. Universal fraternity swindle. 

II. SECOND PERIOD. Period in which the republic is constituted, and 
of the Constitutive National Assembly. 

1. May 4 to June 25, 1848. Struggle of all the classes against the 
proletariat. Defeat of the proletariat in the June days. 

2. June 25 to December 10, 1848. Dictatorship of the pure bour 
geois republicans. Drafting of the Constitution. The state of siege 
hangs over Paris. The bourgeois dictatorship set aside on December 
10 by the election of Bonaparte as President. 

3. December 20, 1848, to May 29, 1849. Struggle of the Constitutive 
Assembly with Bonaparte and with the united party of Order. Death 
of the Constitutive Assembly. Downfall of the republican bourgeoisie. 

III. THIRD PERIOD. Period of the constitutional republic and of the 
Legislative National Assembly. 

1. May 29 to June 13, 1849. Struggle of the small traders , middle 
class with the bourgeoisie and with Bonaparte. Defeat of the small 
traders democracy. 

2. June 13, 1849, to May, 1850. Parliamentary dictatorship of the 
party of Order. Completes its reign by the abolition of universal suf 
frage, but loses the parliamentary Ministry. 

3. May 31, 1850, to December 2, 1851. Struggle between the parlia 
mentary bourgeoisie and Bonaparte. 



67 

a. May 31, 1850, to January 12, 1851. The parliament loses the 
supreme command over the Army. 

b. January 12 to April 11, 1851. The parliament succumbs in the 
attempts to regain possession of the administrative power. The party 
of Order loses its independent parliamentary majority. Its coalition 
with the republicans and the Mountain. 

c. April 11 to October 9, 1851. Attempts at revision, fusion and 
prorogation. The party of Order dissolves into its component parts. 
The breach between tlie bourgeois parliament and the bourgeois press, 
on the one hand, and the bourgeois mass, on the other, becomes per 
manent. 

d. October 9 to December 2, 1851. Open breach between the par 
liament and the executive power. It draws up its own decree of death, 
and goes under, left in the lurch by its own class, by the Army, and 
by all the other classes. Downfall of the parliamentary regime and 
of the reign of the bourgeoisie. Bonaparte s triumph. Parody of the im 
perialist restoration. 




VII. 

The SOCIAL REPUBLIC appeared as a mere phrase, as a prophecy on 
the threshold of the February Revolution; it was smothered in the blood of the 
Parisian proletariat during the days of 1848; but it stalks about as a spectre 
throughout the following acts of the drama. The DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC 
next makes its bow; it goes out in a fizzle on June 13, 1849, with its run 
away small traders; but, on fleeing, it scatters behind it all the more brag 
ging announcements of what it means to do. The PARLIAMENTARY RE 
PUBLIC, together with the bourgeoisie, then appropriates the whole stage; 
it lives its life to the full extent of its being; but the 2d of December, 1851, 
buries it under the terror-stricken cry of the allied royalists: "Long live the 
Republic!" 

The French bourgeoisie_ .reared _up_aga_inst the reign of the working prole- 
tariat; it brought to power the slum- proletariat, with. th_cliief _ot ilie "So- 
cieTy^TDecernber 10 " at its head. It. kejrf FVannp. in hrp^t^iAgq f^r- n Y o r +V.Q. 
prn^ pp.ctivQ tor*"*** qf "r-o/q on^T-ohy" Bonaparte discounted the prospect when, 
on DSCe"mber~4, he ha<TThe leading citizens of the Boulevard Montmartre and 
the Boulevard des Italiens shot down from their windows by the grog-in 
spired "Army of Order." It made the apotheosis of the sabre; now the sabre 
rules it. It destroyed the revolutionary press; now its own press is anni 
hilated. It placed public meetings under police surveillance; now its own 
salons are subject to police inspection. It disbanded the democratic National 
Guards; now its own National Guard is disbanded. It instituted the state of 
siege; now itself is made subject thereto. It supplanted the jury by military 



68 

commissions; now military commissions supplant its own juries. It sub 
jected the education of the people to the parsons interests; the parsons 
interests now subject it to their own system. It ordered transportations with 
out trial; now itself is transported without trial. It suppressed every move 
ment of society with physical force; now every movement of its own class is 
suppressed by physical force. Out of enthusiasm for the gold bag, it rebelled 
against its own political leaders and writers; now, its political leaders and 
writers are set aside, but the gold bag is plundered, after the mouth of the 
bourgeoisie has been gagged and its pen broken. The bourgeoisie tirelessly 
shouted to the revolution, in the language of St. Orsenius to the Christians: 
"Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!" flee, be silent, submit! ; Bonaparte shouts to the 
bourgeoisie: "Fuge, Tace, Quiesce!" flee, be silent, submit! 

The French bourgeoisie had long since solved Napoleon s dilemma: "Dans 
cinquante ans 1 Europe sera republicaine ou cosaque."* It found the solution 
in the "republique cosaque. "f No Circe distorted with wicked charms the work 
of art of the bourgeois republic into a monstrosity. That republic lost 
nothing but the appearance of decency. The France of to-day was ready-made 
within the womb of the Parliamentary republic. All that was wanted was a 
bayonet thrust, in order that the bubble burst, and the monster leap forth 
to sight. 

Why did not the Parisian proletariat rise after the 2d of December? 

The downfall of the bourgeoisie was as yet merely decreed; the decree was 
not yet executed. Any earnest uprising of the proletariat would hnve forthwith 
revived this bourgeoisie, would have brought on its reconciliation with the 
army, and would have insured a second June rout to the workingmen. 

On December 4, the proletariat was incited to fight by Messrs. Bourgeois 
& Small-Trader. On the evening of that day, several legions of the National 
Guard promised to appear armed and uniformed on the place of battle. This 
arose from the circumstance that Messrs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader had got 
wind that, in one of his decrees of December 2, Bonaparte abolished the secret 
ballot, and ordered them to enter the v/ords "Yes" or "No" after their names in 
the official register. Bonaparte took alarm at the stand taken on December 4. 
During the night he caused placards to be posted on all the street, corners of 
Paris, announcing the restoration of the secret ballot. Messrs. Bourgeois & 
Small-Trader believed they had gained their point. The absentees, the next 
morning, wero Messieurs. Bourgeois & Small-Trader. 

During the night of December 1 and 2, the Parisian proletariat was robbed 
of its leaders and chiefs of barricades by a raid of Bonaparte s. An army with 
out officers, disinclined by the recollections of June, 1848 and 1849, and May, 
1850, to fight under the banner of the Montagnards, it left to its vanguard, the 
secret societies, the work of saving the insurrectionary honor of Paris, which 
the bourgeoisie had yielded to the soldiery so submissively that Bonaparte 
was later justified in disarming the National Guard upon the scornful ground 

* Within fifty years Europe will he either republican or Cossack. 
t Cossack republic. 



69 

that he feared their arms would be used against themselves by the Anarch 
ists! 

"C est le triomphe complet et definitif du Socialism !"J Thus did Guizot 
characterize the 2d of December. But, although the downfall of the parlia 
mentary republic carries with it the germ of the triumph of the proletarian 
revolution, its immediate and tangible result was the triumph of Bona 
parte over the parliament, of the Executive over the Legislative power, of 
force without phrases over the force of phrases. In the parliament, the nation 
raised its collective will to the dignity of law, i. e., it raised the law of the 
ruling class to the dignity of its collective will. Before the Executive power, 
the nation abdicates all will of its own, and submits to the orders of an out 
sider, of Authority. In contrast with the Legislative, the Executive power ex 
presses the heteronomy of the nation in contrast with its autonomy. Accord- 
, ingly, France seems to have escaped the despotism of a class only in order to 
fall under the despotism of an individual, under the authority, at that, of an 
individual without authority. The struggle seems to settle down to the point 
where all classes drop down on their knees, equally impotent and equally 
dumb. 

All the same, the revolution is thoroughgoing. It still is on its passage 
through purgatory. It does its work methodically. Down to December 
2, 1851, it had fulfilled one-half of its programme; it now fulfills 
the other half. It first ripens the power of the Legislature into 
fullest maturity in order to be able to overthrow it. Now that it 
has accomplished that, the revolution proceeds to ripen the power of 
the Executive into equal maturity; reduces this power to its purest expres 
sion; isolates it; places it before itself as the sole subject for reproof in order to 
concentrate against it all the revolutionary forces of destruction. When the 
revolution shall have accomplished this second part of its preliminary pro 
gramme, Europe will jump up from her seat to exclaim: "Well hast thou 
grubbed, old mole!" 

This Executive power, with its tremendous bureaucratic and military or- 
\ ganization; with its wide-spreading and artificial machinery of government 
an army of office-holders, half a million strong, together with a military force 
of another million men ; this fearful body of parasites, that coils itself like 
a snake around French society, stopping all its pores, originated at the time of 
the absolute monarchy, along with the decline of feudalism, which it helped 
to hasten. The princely privileges of the landed proprietors and cities were 
transformed into so many attributes of the Executive power; the feudal dig 
nitaries into paid office-holders; and the confusing design of conflicting med 
ieval seigniories, into the well regulated plan of a government, whose work is 
subdivided and centralized as in the factory. The first French revolution, 
having as a mission to sweep away all local, territorial, urban and provincial 
special privileges, with the object of establishing the civic unity of the nation, 
was bound to develop what the absolute monarchy had begun the work of 

} It is the complete and definite triumph of Socialism. 



70 

centralization, together with the range, the attributes and the menials of 
government. Napoleon completed this governmental machinery. The Legit 
imist and the July Monarchy contribute nothing thereto, except a greater 
subdivision of labor, that grew in the same measure as the division and sub 
division of labor within bourgeois society raised new groups and interests, 
i. e., new material for the administration of government. Each COMMON in 
terest was in turn forthwith removed from society, set up against it as a higher 
COLLECTIVE interest, wrested from the individual activity of the mem 
bers of society, and turned into a subject for governmental administration, 
from the bridges, the school house and the communal property cf a village 
community, up to the railroads, the national wealth and the national Univer 
sity of France. Finally, the parliamentary republic found itself, in its 
struggle against the revolution, compelled, with its repressive measures, to 
strengthen the means and the centralization of the government. Each over 
turn, instead of breaking up, carried this machine to higher perfection. The 
parties, that alternately wrestled for supremacy, looked upon the possession 
of this tremendous governmental structure as the principal spoils of their 
victory. 

Nevertheless, under the absolute monarchy, during the first revolution, 
and under Napoleon, the bureaucracy was only the means whereby to prepare 
the class rule of the bourgeoisie; under the restoration, under Louis Philippe, 
and under the parliamentary republic, it was the instrument of the ruling 
class, however eagerly this class strained after autocracy. Not before the 
advent of the second Bonaparte does the government seem to have made 
itself fully independent. The machinery of government has by this time so 
thoroughly fortified itself against society, that the chief of the "Society of 
December 10" is thought good enough to be at its head; a fortune-hunter, 
run in from abroad, is raised on its shield by a drunken soldiery, bought by 
himself with liquor and sausages, and whom he is forced ever again to throw 
sops to. Hence the timid despair, the sense of crushing humiliation and deg 
radation that oppresses the breast of France and makes her to choke. She 
feels dishonored. 

And yet the French Government does not float in the air. Bonaparte 
represents an economic class, and that the most numerous in the common 
weal of France the ALLOTMENT FARMER.** 

As the Bourbons are the dynasty of large landed property, as the Orleans 
are the dynasty of money, so are the Bonapartes the dynasty of the farmer, 
i._e .jo_the_French masses. Not the Bonaparte, who threw himself at the feet 
of the bourgeois parliament but the Bonaparte, who swept away the bour 
geois parliament, is the elect of this farmer class. For throe years the cities 
had succeeded in falsifying the meaning of the election of December 10, and 
in cheating the farmer out of the restoration of the Empire. The election of 

** The first French Revolution distributed the bulk of the territory of France, held at the 
time by the feudal lords, in suinl! patches among the, cultivators of the soiJ This allotment 
of lands created the French farmer class. 



71 

December 10, 1848, is not carried out until the "coup d etat" of December 2, 
1851. 

The allotment farmers are an immense mass, whose individual members 
live in identical conditions, without, however, entering into manifold rela 
tions with one another. Their method of production isolates them from one 
another, instead of drawing them into mutual intercourse. This isolation is 
promoted by the poor means of communication in France, together with the 
poverty of the farmers themselves. Their field of production, the small allot 
ment of land that each cultivates, allows no room for a division of labor, and 
no opportunity for the application of science; in other words, it shuts out 
rnanifoldness of development, diversity of talent, and the luxury of social 
relations. Every single farmer family is almost self-sufficient; itself produces 
directly the greater part of what it consumes; and it earns its livelihood more 
Ly means of an interchange with nature than by intercourse with society. 
Y7e have the allotted patch of land, the farmer and his family; alongside of 
that another allotted patch of land, another farmer and another family. A 
bunch of these makes up a village; a bunch of villages makes up a Depart 
ment. Thus the large mass of the French nation is constituted by the simple 
addition of equal magnitudes much as a bag with potatoes constitutes a 
potato-bag. (Th so far as millions of families live under economic conditions 
that separate their mode of life, their interests and their culture from those of 
the other classes, and that place them in an attitude hostile toward the latter, 
they constitute a class ;pn so far as there exists only a local connection among 
these farmers, a connection which the individuality and exclusiveness of their -i 
interests prevent from generating among them any unity of interest, national * 
connections, and political organization, they do not constitute a class. Con 
sequently, they are unable to assert their class interests in their own name, be 
it by a parliament or by convention) They can not represent one another, 
they must themselves be represented. Their representative must at the same 
time appear as their master, as an authority ovet_thnijisan unlimited gov-y 
ernmental power, that protects them from the other class, and that, fror/1 
above, bestows rain and sunshine upon them. Accordingly, the political in- \ 
fluence of the allotment farmer finds its ultimate expression in an Executive I 
power that subjugates the commonweal to its own autocratic will. J 

Historic tradition has given birth to the superstition among the French 
farmers that a man named Napoleon would restore to them all manner of 
glory. Now, then, an individual turns up, who gives himself out as that man 
because, obedient to the "Code Napoleon," which provides that "La recherche 
de la paternite est interdite,"* he carries the name of Napoleon.f After a 
vagabondage of twenty years, and a series of grotesque adventures, the myth 
is verified, and that man becomes the Emperor of the French. The rooted 
thought of the Nephew becomes a reality because it coincided with, the 
rooted thought of the most numerous class among the French. 

* The inquiry Into paternity is forbidden. 

t L. N. Bonaparte is said to have been an illegitimate son. 



72 

"But," I shall be objected to, "what about the farmers uprisings over 
half France, the raids of the Army upon the farmers, the wholesale im 
prisonment and transportation of farmers?" 

Indeed, since Louis XIV., France has not experienced such persecutions 
of the farmer on the ground of "demagogic machinations." 

But this should be well understood : The Bonaparte dynasty doss not 
represent the revolutionary, it represents the conservative farmer; it does 
not represent the farmer, who presses beyo:::i his ov/n economic conditions, 
his little allotment of land, it represents 1 t..i rat 1 : :r who would confirm these 
conditions; it does not represent the rural r, - il; .on, that, thanks to its own 
inherent energy, wishes, jointly with the i .-, to overthrow the old order, it 
represents, on the contrary, the rural populati.;.! that, hide-bound in the old 
order, seeks to see itself, together -with Its allotments, saved and favored by 
the ghost of the Empire; it represents, not the intelligence, but the super 
stition of the farmer; not his judgment, but his bias; not his future, but his 
past; not his modern Cevennes;J but his modern Vendee.** 

The three years severe rule of the parliamentary republic had freed a 
part of the French farmers from the Napoleonic illusion, and, though even 
only superficially, had revolutionized them. The bourgeoisie threw them, 
however, violently back every time that they set themselves in motion. 
Under the parliamentary republic, the modern wrestled with the traditional 
consciousness of the French farmer. The process went on in the form of a 
continuous struggle between the school teachers and the parsons; the bour 
geoisie knocked the school teachers down. For the first time, the farmer 
made an effort to take an independent stand in the government of the 
country; this manifested itself in the prolonged conflicts of the Mayors with 
the Prefects; the bourgeoisie deposed the Mayors. Finally, during the period 
of the parliamentary republic, the farmers of several localities rose against 
their own product, the Army; the bourgeoisie punished them with states of 
siege and executions. And this is the identical bourgeoisie, that now howls 
over the "stupidity of the masses," over the "vile multitude," which, it claims, 
betrayed it to Bonaparte. Itself has violently fortified the imperialism of the 
farmer class; it firmly maintained the conditions that constitute the birth 
place of this farmer-religion. Indeed, the bourgeoisie has every reason to 
fear the stupidity of the masses so long as they remain conservative; and 
their intelligence so soon as they become revolutionary. 

In the revolts that took place after the "coup d etat," a part of the 
French farmers protested, arms in hand, against their own vote of December 
10, 1848. The school house had, since 1848, sharpened their wits. But they had 
bound themselves over to the nether world of history, and history kept them to 
their word. Moreover, the majority of this population was still so full of preju 
dices that, just in the "reddest" Departments, it voted openly for Bonaparte. 

t The revenues -were the theater of the most numerous revolutionary uprisings of the 
farmer rlass. 

* La Veml6f> was the theater of protracted reactionary uprisings of the farmer class under 
he ttrst Revolution. 



73 

The National Assembly prevented, as it thought, this population from walk 
ing; the farmers now snapped the fetters which the cities had struck upon 
the will of the country districts. In some places they even indulged the gro 
tesque hallucination of a "Convention together with a Napoleon." 

After the first revolution had converted the serf farmers into freehold 
ers, Napoleon fixed and regulated the conditions under which, unmolested, 
they could exploit the soil of France, that had just fallen into their hands, 
and expiate the youthful passion for property. / But that which now bears 
the French farmer down is that very allotment of land; it is the partition of 
the soil, the form of ownership, which Napoleon had consolidated. These are 
the material conditions that turned the French feudal peasant into a small or 
allotment farmer, and Napoleon into an Emperor. Two generations have 
sufficed to produce the inevitable result: the progressive deterioration of 
agriculture, and the progressive encumbering of the agriculturist. I The 
"Napoleonic" form of ownership, which, at the beginning of the nine 
teenth century was the condition for the emancipation and enrich 
ment of the French rural population, has, in the course of the century, 
developed into the law of their enslavement and pauperism./ Now, then, this 
very law is the first of the "idees Napoleoniennes," which the second Bona 
parte must uphold. If he still shares with the farmers the illusion of seek 
ing, not in the system of the small allotment itself, but outside of that system, 
in the influence of secondary conditions, the cause of their ruin, his experiments 
are bound to burst like soap-bubbles against the modern system of produc 
tion. 

The economic development of the allotment system has turned bottom up 
ward the relation of the farmer to the other classes of society. Under Na 
poleon, the parceling out of the agricultural lands into small allotments 
supplemented in the country the free competition and the incipient large pro 
duction of the cities. The farmer class was the ubiquitous protest against 
the aristocracy^joUandJust then, overthrown. The roots that the system of 
small allotments cast into the soil of France, deprived feudalism of all nutri 
ment. Its boundary-posts constituted the natural buttress of the bourgeoisie 
against every stroke of the old overlords. But in the course of the nine 
teenth century, the City Usurer stepped into the shoes of the Feudal Lord, 
the Mortgage substituted the Feudal Duties formerly yielded by the soil, 
bourgeois Capital took the place of the aristocracy of Landed Property. The 
farmer allotments are now only a pretext that allows the capitalist class 
to draw profit, interest and rent from agricultural lands, and to leave to the 
farmer himself the task of seeing to it that he knock out his wages. The 
mortgage indebtedness that burdens the soil of France imposes upon the 
French farmer class the payment of an interest as great as the annual interest /" 
on the whole British national debt. In this slavery of capital, whither its \1 
development drives it irresistibly, the allotment system has transformed the 
mass of the French nation into troglodytes. Sixteen million farmers (women 
and children included), house in hovels most of which have only one opening, 

-/- 



74 

some two, and the few most favored ones three. Windows are to a house 
what the five senses are to the head. The bourgeois social order, which, at 
the beginning of the century, placed the State as a sentinel before the newly 
instituted allotment, and that manured this with laurels, has become a vam 
pire that sucks out its heart-blood and its very brain, and throws it into the 
alchemist s pot of capital. The "Code Napoleon" is now but the codex of 
execution, of sheriff s sales and of intensified taxation. To the four million 
(children, etc., included) official paupers, vagabonds, criminals and prosti 
tutes, that France numbers, must be added five million souls who hover over 
the precipice of life, and either sojourn in the country itself, or float with 
their rags and their children from the country to the cities, and from the 
cities back to the country. Accordingly, the interests of the farmers are no 
longer, as under Napoleon, in harmony but in conflict with the interests of 
* the bourgeoisie, i. e., with capital; they find their natural allies and leaders 
j among the urban proletariat, whose mission is the overthrow of the bourgeois 
social order. But the "strong and unlimited government" and this is the 
second of the idees Napoleoniennes," which the second Napoleon has to 
carry out , has for its mission the forcible defence of this very "material" 
social order, a "material order" that furnishes the slogan in Bonaparte s pro 
clamations against the farmers in revolt. 

. V Along with the mortgage, imposed by capital upon the farmer s allot- 
.vyinent, this is burdened by taxation. Taxation is the fountain of life to the 
/ bureaucracy, the Army, the parsons and the court, in short to the whole ap 
paratus of the Executive power. A strong government and heavy taxes are 
identical. The system of ownership, involved in the system of allotments, 
lends itself by nature for the groundwork of a powerful and num 
erous bureaucracy: it produces an even level of conditions and of persons 
over the whole surface of the country; it, therefore, allows the exercise of 
an even influence upon all parts of this even mass from a high central point 
downwards; it annihilates the aristocratic gradations between the popular 
masses and the Government; it, consequently, calls from all sides for the 
direct intervention of the Government and for the intervention of the latter s 
immediate organs; and, finally, it produces an unemployed excess of popula 
tion, that finds no room either in the country or in the cities, that, conse 
quently, snatches after public office as a sort of dignified alms, and provokes 
the creation of further offices. With the new markets, which he opened at 
the point of the bayonet, and with the plunder of the continent, Napoleon re 
turned to the farmer class with interest the taxes wrung from them. These 
taxes were then a goad to the industry of the farmer, while now, on the con 
trary, they rob his industry of its last source of support, and completely sap 
his power to resist poverty. Indeed, an enormous bureaucracy, richly gallooned 
and well fed is that "idee Napoleonienne" that above all others suits the re 
quirements of the second Bonaparte. How else should it be, seeing he is 
forced to raise alongside of the actual classes of society, an artificial class, to 
which the maintenance of his own regime must be a knife-and-fork question? 



1 



75 

One of his first financial operations was, accordingly, the raising of the sal 
aries of the government employe s to their former standard, and the creation 
of new sinecures. 

> Another "idee Napole"onlenne" Is the rule of the parsons as an instrument 
of government. But while the new-born allotment, in harmony with society, 
in its dependence upon the powers of nature, and in its subordination to the 
authority that protected it from above, was naturally religious, the debt- 
broken allotment, on the contrary, at odds with society and authority, and 
driven beyond its own narrow bounds, becomes as naturally irreligious. 
Heaven was quite a pretty gift thrown in with the narrow strip of land that 
had just been won, all the more as it makes the weather; it, however, becomes 
an insult from the moment it is forced upon the farmer as a substitute for 
his allotment. Then the parson appears merely as the anointed bloodhound *" 
of the earthly police, yet another "idge Napoleonienne." The expedition 
against Rome will next time take place in France, but in a reverse sense 
from that of M. de Montalembert. 

Finally, the culminating point of the "ide"es Napoleoniennes" is the pre 
ponderance of the Army. The Army was the "point of honor" with the allot 
ment farmers: it was themselves turned into masters, defending abroad their 
newly established property, glorifying their recently conquered nationality, 
plundering and revolutionizing the world. The uniform was their State 
costume; war was their poetry; the allotment, expanded and rounded up in 
their phantasy, was the fatherland; and patriotism became the ideal form of 
property. But the foe, against whom the French farmer must now defend 
his property, are not the Cossacks, they are the sheriffs and the tax collectors. 
The allotment no longer lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of 
mortgages. The Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the 
farmers, it is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer 
class. It consists of "remplagants," substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte 
himself is but a "remplagant," a substitute, for Napoleon. Its feats of heroism 
are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in the service of 
the police; and when the internal contradictions of his own system shall 
drive the chief of the "Society of December 10" across the French frontier, 
that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather no laurels but only hard 
knocks. 

It is evident that all the "ide"es Napoleoniennes" are the ideas of the un 
developed and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for the 
allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of its death 
struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to spooks. But this 
parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the mass of the French 
nation from the weight of tradition, and to elaborate sharply the contrast be 
tween Government and Society. Along with the progressive decay-^of the 
allotment, the governmental structure, reared upon it, breaks down. The 
centralization of Government, required by modern society, rises only upon the 



76 

vv.fr.o of t .ie military and bureaucratic governmental machinery that was forged 
in contrast to feudalism. 

The conditions of the French farmers class solve to us the riddle of the 
general elections of December 20 and 21, that led the second Bonaparte to the 
tcp of Cinai, not to receive, but to decree laws. 

_ The bourgeoisie had now, manifestly, no choice but to elect Bonaparte. 
TVhon, at the Council of Constance, the puritans complained of the sinful life 
of the Popes, and moaned about the need of a reform in morals, Cardinal 
d Ailly thundered into their faces: "Only the devil in his own person can now 
save the Catholic Church, and you demand angels." So, likewise, did the 
French bourgeoisie cry out after the "coup d etat": "Only the chief of the 
Society of December 10 can now save bourgeois society; only theft can save 
property, only perjury religion, only bastardy the family, only disorder 
order!" 

/ Eonaparte, as autocratic Executive power, fulfills his mission to se 
cure "bourgeois order." But the strength of this bourgeois order lies in the 
middle class. Ke feels himself the representative of the middle class, and 
issues his decrees in that sense. Nevertheless, he is something only because 
he has broken the political power of this class, and daily breaks it anew. 
Hence, he feels himself the adversary of the political and the literary power 
of the middle class. But, by protecting their material, he nourishes anew 
their political power. Consequently, the cause must be kept alive, but the 
result, wherever it manifests itself, swept out of existence. But this pro 
cedure is impossible without slight mistakings of causes and effects, seeing 
that both, in their mutual action and reaction, lose their distinctive marks. 
Thereupon, new decrees, that blur the line of distinction. Bonaparte, further- 
< is himself, as against the bourgeoisie, the representative of the 

er and the people in general, who, within bourgeois society, is to render 
the lower classes of society happy. To this end, new decrees, intended to ex 
ploit the "true Socialists," together with their governmental wisdom. But, 
above ?!!. Bonaparte feels himself the chief of the "Society of December 10," 
the representative of the slum-proletariat, to which he himself, his immedi 
ate surroundings, his Government, and his army alike belong, the main ob 
ject with all of whom is to be good to themselves, and draw Californian tickets 
out of the national treasury. And he affirms his chieftainship of the "Society 
of December 10" with decrees, without decrees, and despite decrees. 

This contradictory mission of the man explains the contradictions of his 
own Government, and that confused groping about, that now seeks to win, 
then to humiliate now this class and then that, and finishes by arraying 
against itself all the classes whose actual insecurity constitutes a highly 
comical contrast with the imperious, categoric style of the Government acts, 
copied closely from the Uncle. 

Industry and commerce, i. e., the business of the middle class, are to be 
made to blossom in hot-house style under the "strong Government." 
Loans for a number of railroad grants. But the Bonapartist slum- 



77 

proletariat is to enrich itself. Peculation is carried on with rail 
road concessions on the Bourse by the initiated; but no capital is forth 
coming for the railroads. The bank then pledges itself to make ad 
vances upon railroad stock; but the bank is itself to be exploited; hence, it 
must be cajoled; it is released of the obligation to publish its reports weekly. 
Then follows a leonine treaty between the bank and the Government. The 
people are to be occupied: public works are ordered; but the public works 
raise the tax rates upon the people; thereupon the taxes are reduced by an 
attack upon the national bond-holders through the conversion of the five per 
cent, "rentes"* into four-and-a-halves. Yet the middle class must again be 
tipped: to this end, the tax on wine is doubled for the people, who buy it at 
retail, and is reduced to one-half for the middle class, that drink it at whole 
sale. Genuine labor organizations are dissolved, but promises are made of ") 
future wonders to accrue from organization. The farmers are to be helped: 
mortgage-banks are set up that must promote the indebtedness of the farmer 
and the concentration of property; but again, these banks are to be utilized 
especially to the end of squeezing money out of the confiscated estates of the 
House of Orleans; no capitalist will listen to this scheme, which, moreover, is 
not mentioned in the decree; the mortgage bank remains a mere decree. Etc., 
etc. 

Bonaparte would like to appear as the patriarchal benefactor of all 
classes; but he can give to none without taking from the others. As was 
said of the Duke of Guise, at the time of the Fronde, that he was the most 
obliging man in France because he had converted all his estates into bonds 
upon himself for his Parisians, so would Napoleon like to be the most oblig 
ing man of France and convert all property and all labor of France into a 
personal bond upon himself. He would like to steal the whole of France to 
make a present thereof to France, or rather to be able to purchase France 
back again with French money; as chief of the "Society of December 10," 
he must purchase that which is to be his. All the State institutions, the 
Senate, the Council of State, the Legislature, the Legion of Honor, the 
Soldiers decorations, the public baths, the public buildings, the railroads, 
the General Staff of the National Guard, exclusive of the rank and file, the 
confiscated estates of the House of Orleans, all are converted into institu 
tions for purchase and sale. Every place in the Army and the machinery of 
Government becomes a purchasing power. The most important thing, how 
ever, in this process, whereby France is taken to be given back to herself, are 
the percentages that, in the transfer, drop into the hands of the chief and the 
members of the "Society of December 10." The witticism with which the 
Countess of L., the mistress of de Moray, characterized the confiscations of the 
Orleanist estates: "C est le premier vol de l aigle,"f fits every flight of the 
eagle that is rather a crow. He himself and his followers daily call out to 

* The name of the French national bonds. 

t "It is the first flight of the eagle." The French word "vol" means theft as well as flight. 



78 

themselves, like the Italian Carthusian monk in the legend does to the miser, 
who displayfully counted the goods on which he could live for many years to 
come: "Tu fai conto sopra i beni, bisogna prima far il conto sopra gli anni."$ 
In order not to make a mistake in the years, they count by minutes. A crowd 
of fellows, of the best among whom all that can be said is that one knows not 
whence he comes a noisy, restless "Boheme," greedy after plunder, that 
crawls about in gallooned frocks with the same grotesque dignity as Soulon- 
que s** Imperial dignitaries , thronged the court, crowded the ministries, 
and pressed upon the head of the Government and of the Army. One can 
picture to himself this upper crust of the "Society of December 10" by con 
sidering that Veron Crevelft is their preacher of morality, and Granier de 
Cassagnac their thinker. When Guizot, at the time he was Minister, employed 
this Granier on an obscure sheet against the dynastic opposition, he used to 
praise him with the term: "C est le roi des droles.JJ It were a mistake to re 
call the days of the Regency or of Louis XV. by the court and the kit of 
Louis Bonaparte s: "Often did France have a mistress-administration, but 
never yet an administration of kept men."*** 

Harassed by the contradictory demands of his situation, and compelled, 
like a sleight-of-hands performer, to keep, by means of constant surprises, 
the eyes of the public riveted upon himself as the substitute of Napoleon, com 
pelled, consequently, every day to accomplish a sort of "coup" on a small 
scale, Bonaparte throws the whole bourgeois social system into disorder; he 
broaches everything that seemed unbroachable by the revolution of 1848; he 
makes one set of people patient under the revolution, and another anxious for 
it; and he produces anarchy itself in the name of order, by rubbing off from the 
whole machinery of Government the veneer of sanctity, by profanating 
it, by rendering it at once nauseating and laughable. He rehearses in Paris 
the cult of the sacred coat of Trier with the cult of the Napoleonic Imperial 
mantle. But, when the Imperial mantle shall have finally fallen upon the 
shoulders of Louis Bonaparte, then will also the iron statue of Napoleon drop 
down from the top of the Vendome column.fff 

J "You count your property, you should rather count the years left to you." 
** Soulonque was the negro Emperor of the shortlived negro Empire of Hayti. 

ft Crevel Is a character of Balzac, drawn after Dr. Veron, the proprietor of the "Con 
stitutional" newspaper, as a type of the dissolute Parisian Philistine. 

Jt "He is the king of the clowns." 
*** Madame dc Girardin. 

ttt A prophecy that a few years later, after Bonaparte s coronation as Emperor, was liter 
ally fulfilled. By order of the Emperor Louis Napoleon, the military statue of the first 
Napoloon that originally surmounted the Vendome column, was taken down and replaced by 
one of first Napoleon iu imperial robes. 



[The End.] 



JAN 2 9 



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Marx, Karl 

The eighteenth Brumaire 
of Louis Bonaparte