Napoleon III and the French Second Empire Roger Price (novels to read .txt) 📖

survive through the plebiscitory process and eventually, once social stability had been secured, through the gradual and partial re-establishment of parliamentary institutions. In the meantime, a senate made up of 180 senators was appointed, named for life, to include senior 25

officials and military officers, representatives of the Church and of business, together with the imperial princes and various other dignitaries. Its role was, through the mechanism of the senatus consultum, to interpret and amend the constitution. It was also supposed to serve as the guardian of liberty by ensuring that laws were not introduced contrary to the constitution, to religion, morality, individual liberty and equality, to the sanctity of property and the security of France. In theory, the Senate then possessed considerable power; in practice, composed as it was of aged pensioners of the regime, it would do little to oppose the wishes of the government. Of far greater importance was the Corps législatif.

With just over 260 members, elected by manhood suffrage, it had the right to vote on legislative and taxation proposals, but not to initiate legislation. Even during its most authoritarian phase the regime was never able to ignore entirely the opinions of a body, with potential power, made up of representatives of the social elite.

Careful selection of candidates was thus seen as essential. The responsibility for actually drafting laws and administrative regulations, and for discussing

amendments proposed by the Corps législatif rested with the 40 or 50 members, primarily jurists, of the Council of State ( Conseil d’Etat). This, the supreme administrative tribunal, now received considerable political power, although it could be held in check with comparative ease by a government which was able to dismiss its members at will from their lucrative positions. Furthermore, its powers were resented bitterly by those whose legislative efforts it criticised – ministers, civil servants and deputies.

The regime was fortunate in that it coincided with a worldwide period of

economic growth. Many of its ‘achievements’ might be regarded as simply

coincidental. However, it would probably be more accurate to accept that the impact of trends in the international economy were reinforced internally by substantial government-inspired efforts to increase infrastructure investment, especially in roads, railways and the electric telegraph, as the means of achieving a transport ‘revolution’. The railway network which had been composed of 3, 230

kilometres in discontinuous sections in 1851 had expanded to a network of 17, 200

kilometres by 1870. Furthermore, road links to railway stations had also been substantially improved. This, along with a marked reduction in tariff protection, secured through the negotiation of customs treaties with the country’s main trading partners, beginning with Britain in 1860, was intended to ensure the development of more integrated and increasingly competitive markets for both agricultural and manufactured goods. The aim was to create a business environment conducive to investment in modern technology, with capital provided by new investment banks 26

and investment facilitated by making it easier in law to establish joint stock companies with limited liability. Substantial capital was also to be mobilised in order to finance the creation of a capital city fit for the empire, with broad boulevards flanked by new commercial and residential buildings, allowing easy movement between the railway stations and facilitating, if necessary, the

maintenance of military control through strategically placed barracks, fewer obstacles to cavalry charges and clear fields of fire for artillery. Similar (if less ambitious) developments graced most provincial cities. Along with enhanced

opportunities for profit, it was hoped that large-scale investment would provide employment opportunities, greater security and improved rewards for the masses and, in so doing, contribute to the preservation of social stability. The objectives were clear, but economic and social modernisation takes time. Additionally, it was impossible to insulate the country against the vagaries of the international economic cycle or climatically induced harvest failures, as well as the confidence-sapping impact of international or internal political crises. As a result, these far-reaching economic and social objectives were attained only partially. Moreover, governmental intervention in economic affairs provoked considerable hostility from a variety of special interest groups; neither did it follow that the improved living conditions would automatically promote a greater sense of loyalty to the regime. Even so, the imperial years saw considerable progress in terms of

economic modernisation and the improvement of living standards. This was

symbolised by the virtual disappearance, as a consequence of market integration resulting from improved communications of the age-old subsistence crises, of the successive dearths which had caused so much misery and widespread popular

protest as recently as 1845–7 and again in 1853–6. The continuing improvements in agricultural productivity as well as increased migration to the cities had the effect of easing population pressure on the resources of the countryside. In contrast with the long period of price depression from 1817 to 1851, the prices paid to farmers for their produce rose almost continuously in response to growing urban demand.

However, if the various forms of farm income – profits, rents and wages – were all rising, this did not eliminate social tension in the countryside. Particularly in the 1860s, as the long established situation in which rising population densities had reinforced the power of the social elites who controlled access to scarce resources came towards an end, peasant farmers and even agricultural labourers clearly were developing a greater sense of independence. In the towns, too, the rapid growth of employment opportunities ensured that workers’ real incomes began to rise from the late 1850s for the first time since the end of the First Empire. Although the living 27

standards of the masses remained extremely poor by twentieth-century standards and harsh working and living conditions continued to result in widespread poor health, chronic insecurity and premature death, the Second Empire should still be seen as a period when the good years outnumbered the bad, when the France of Balzac was transformed into that described with equal literary brilliance by Emile Zola.

It was during the first decade, certainly until 1857, that the personal power of Napoléon III