  The date is December 20, 1848, and. M. Marrast, President of the National Assembly, invites Citizen Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte to take the oath required by the Constitution on his election as President of the French Republic. The Citizen, in evening dress, with the riband of the LÉgion d’Honneur en sautoir, ascends the tribune, raises his right hand, and, with the slightest tremor in his voice, says, “I swear.” What is his record? 1836.—Deported to America for attempting to procure a military rising in his favour at Strasburg. 1840.—Sentenced to perpetual confinement in the fortress of Ham for a similar attempt at Boulogne. 1846.—“Broke prison” and reached London. In August, 1849, the Prince-President was at Tours, where he opened a new railway. Miss Howard was of the party, and was found lodgings at the residence of the Receiver-General, the PrÉfecture. That functionary was at “the waters” with his wife, and when he heard that the English lady—the Prince’s “favourite” for so many years—was actually staying under his Prefectorial roof-tree he “made trouble.” Louis Napoleon wrote on the subject to Odillon Barrot: Your brother has shown me a letter from a M. AndrÉ, to which I should disdain to reply did it not contain some false statements which it is right to refute. A lady in whom I take the highest interest, accompanied by one of her friends (a lady) and by two persons of my household, wished to see the carrousel at Saumur, and from there they came to Tours. But, fearing they might not find lodgings, they asked me to take steps to obtain them some. When I arrived at Tours I told a counsellor of the PrÉfecture he would oblige me by looking for an appartement for Comte Bacciochi and two ladies of my acquaintance. Chance, and their evil star, led them, it appears, to the house of M. AndrÉ, where—I know not why—it was thought that one of them bore the name of Bacciochi. She has never used that name, and if such a mistake has been committed it is by strangers, and unknown to me or to the lady in question. I should like to know why M. AndrÉ, without having taken the trouble to ascertain the truth of the matter, wishes to make me responsible for the use made of his house and for the false name attributed to one of the persons. Does a proprietor make a good use of hospitality whose first care is to scrutinize the past life of anybody whom he receives? How many women, a hundred times less pure, a hundred times less devoted, a hundred times less excusable than the lady who lodged at M. AndrÉ’s would have been received by him with all possible honours because they would have borne the name of their husbands to conceal their culpable liaisons! I detest this pedantic strictness, which badly conceals the Âme sÈche, indulgent for himself, inexorable for others. True religion is not intolerant. It does not seek to raise storms in a glass of water, to make a scandal for nothing, and to change into a crime a simple accident or an excusable mistake. M. AndrÉ, who I am told is a Puritan, has not To return to M. AndrÉ, if he believes, as he declares, his house to have been soiled by the presence of an unmarried woman, I beg you will let him know that, on my side, I greatly regret that a lady of a devotion so pure and of a character so elevated should have stumbled by chance into a house where, under the mask of religion, there remains but the ostentation of a formal virtue without Christian charity. Make whatever use you like of this letter. In November, 1851, the imminence of the coup d’État was talked about all over Paris as being necessary and anticipated. In the salons it was a topic of “chaff”; at the ElysÉe (the Prince-President’s abode) it was studied in detail; the Church hoped for it; the people expected it; the army reckoned upon it. The plan (says the pseudonymous Baron d’AmbÈs) was sketched at the end of October by Saint-Arnaud and Maupas, whom Louis Napoleon informed, about this time, of The “men of the coup d’État” were divided into three classes: First, Saint-Arnaud, Morny, and Maupas. Second, General Magnan, Persigny, and Fleury. Third, Baroche, Rouher, F. Barrot, De Parieu, Dumas, VÉron, Romieu, Fould, Magne, Drouyn de Lhuys, De Royer, Schneider, Fortoul, Espinasse, Billault, etc. The programme was carried out to the letter on December 1, and a year later the Prince-President had exchanged that title for the supreme one of Napoleon III., Emperor of the French. The Bonapartists’ excuse for the “coup” was that it was absolutely necessary to “sweep the board” of the President’s opponents in Parliament and out of it, and also in the army. There was sanguinary fighting in the streets, it is true, and the President was branded throughout the World as a perjurer and a criminal of the deepest dye, who had “waded through blood to a throne.” To many historians The new Constitution was promulgated on January 14, 1852. It confided the Government of the French Republic for ten years to “Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the present President of the Republic.” (Prince JÉrÔme, ex-King of Westphalia, was President of the Senate.) On November 4 the Prince sent a message to the Senate, saying that the nation had “loudly manifested its will to re-establish the Empire.” This message was dated from the Palace of St. Cloud. The Prince had now governed France for four years. A Committee of the Senate was appointed to draw up a report, and on November 6 it submitted to the Senate several resolutions, the series being known as “Senatus Consultum.” Article I declared that the “Imperial dynasty is re-established. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is Emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon III.” The imperial dignity was made hereditary from male to male, “to the perpetual exclusion of the females and their descendants.” The Senate passed and signed all the articles, and on Sunday, November 21, the voting “for the Empire” began, and lasted several days. On December 2, 1852, the anniversary of the coup d’État, in the afternoon, the Emperor, who had been “proclaimed” at St. Cloud the previous evening, made his official entry into his capital. It was wet and cold, and, although all Paris had turned out to see the military pageant, the enthusiasm might have been greater than it was. The Emperor, mounted on a showy charger, looked anything but bright. He MR. ALFRED AUSTIN was Special Correspondent of the Standard during the Franco-German War in 1870-71. His accounts of his interviews with Bismarck were everywhere read. Mr. Austin is one of the two English survivors of the campaign. His sonnet on the Prince Imperial, written a few days after the news of the tragedy in Zululand was received, is reproduced by the Poet Laureate’s special permission. The photograph of Mr. Austin, taken in 1870, was kindly lent by Mrs. Austin. did not once take off his General’s plumed tricorne, but contented himself with acknowledging the salutations of the crowd by occasionally touching his hat. By his own orders he rode alone; the escort, separated from his own by a considerable space, front and rear. This was an example of the pluck which he invariably displayed both as President and as Emperor. During his four years’ Presidency of the Republic he had been surrounded by open foes in France and by opponents who lay in ambush awaiting opportunities to strike. Foreign opinion, however, was less hostile prior to than it became after the coup d’État, which was the signal for an outburst of almost universal execration. Even Queen Victoria, who, some three years later, was entertaining, and was entertained by, the Emperor and Empress, condemned the act of December, 1851. Early in 1852 the Queen, in a letter to King Frederick William of Prussia, wrote: The political stratagem in Paris will have taken your Majesty back to the days of your youth.... Louis Napoleon had tried to freshen up the memories of all European Governments by the reintroduction of the eagle on the standards of the French army, and by allusions to changes of the boundaries, etc. In spite of this, I firmly believe in the maintenance of peace. But I am made much more anxious by the thought that those Continental Governments which have gone too far in their blind reaction, led astray by the Paris example, are of the erroneous opinion that a State is likely to last eternally which has been raised on the ruins of civil liberty with the blood of the middle classes of France, and that they may be encouraged to widen the breach between them and their peoples, and completely destroy the belief in the political morality of Governments in general. |
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