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

every economic ill upon the commercial treaty with

Britain, despite the vagaries of the economic cycle and the disruptive impact of the American Civil War on the textiles and export industries. Additional targets were excessive government expenditure on the army and upon the embellishment of

Paris and other cities, and such overseas adventures as the attempt to create a client state under the rule of the Habsburg Archduke Maximillian in Mexico. In the 1860s, Thiers once again assumed the role of the most effective parliamentary critic of the regime.

The results of the May 1863 elections registered the growth of opposition.

Aware of their continued relative weakness, in some circumstances opposition groups were prepared to collaborate – a factor contributing to the election of eight republicans and Thiers in Paris and to that of the moderate republican Marie together with the eminent Legitimist lawyer Berryer in Marseille. However, such cooperation between extremes was talked about more often than effected. Of

much greater significance was the tendency in constituencies where only one opposition candidate stood for opponents of the regime to concentrate their votes on him. Significantly, once the results were known, Persigny – a symbol of the authoritarian approach and responsible for the conduct of the elections as Minister of the Interior – was dismissed. Another consequence was the formation of an extremely heterogeneous parliamentary opposition which included some of the growing number of Legitimists prepared to ignore the Comte de Chambord’s

injunctions to abstain, irreconcilable Orleanist notables like Rémusat and Auguste Casimir-Perier, independent liberals and moderate republicans. In the short term, the most significant development was to be the emergence of a Third Party ( tiers parti) made up of both monarchist and Bonapartist proponents of conservative, liberal reform. Although only 32 advocates of outright opposition to the regime had been successful (including 17 republicans and democratic liberals and 15

independents, i.e. conservative and essentially monarchist liberals and clericals), the fact that most large towns and, above all, Paris, the capital city of the Empire, had supported them was cause for considerable alarm. Moreover, if in most areas republican intervention had been rather tentative, the increasingly open and widespread expression of republican ideals gave considerable encouragement to still hesitant potential supporters.

By 1869, when general elections were again due, even those candidates still prepared to accept the official nomination regarded the most blatant forms of 43

administrative pressure as counter-productive. There seemed to be a clear

incompatibility between the system of official candidature and the liberties accorded to the press and public meetings so recently in 1868. Once again these reforms had decisively transformed the political context. Acts of political opposition had become far less risky than before. Moreover, an expansive

economic and social environment had widened horizons and increased the sense of independence of many voters. Interest in politics was being renewed, ending the widespread indifference and apathy of the previous two decades. There was an immediate and spectacular revival in the number of newspapers and political meetings. The press law was especially important in the provinces where around 150 new newspapers were created in time for the 1869 election, with 120 of them hostile to the government (Zeldin 1958: 95). The maintenance of administrative surveillance and the slowness with which these reforms (promised in January 1867) were implemented as a result of the Emperor’s unwillingness to break with loyal authoritarians like Rouher, Baroche and Persigny, once again made them appear to be a grudging response to pressure. In reaction to this hesitation in Paris and in 46 constituencies, the candidates favoured by the government refused, or were advised by the administration not to accept, the official designation.

Furthermore, most of those who did accept the label felt obliged to distance themselves from the administration as well as to announce their support for the further extension of political liberties. The administration was certainly active in the election campaign, but far more discretely than ever before. Most prefects encouraged their candidates to become more self-reliant by establishing their own electoral committees and newspapers. This election, with its mass circulation newspapers of all political hues and its public meetings, was fought in an entirely different atmosphere from its predecessors. Moreover, in large part due to political uncertainty, the economic situation had remained depressed since 1865. The

results were a severe blow to the regime. If they are compared with the results of previous elections the rise of opposition and the deterioration of the government’s position become clear (see Table 4.1).

In total, 216 government supporters were elected, of whom only 180 were

official candidates and 98 were government liberals whose views differed little from those of opposition liberals. The precipitant decline in support for the government among the local elites who provided the vast majority of election candidates meant that it was now often forced to support men who appeared to be the least-bad alternative. Seventy-eight declared opponents of the regime were 44

Table 4. 1 Legislative election results

Votes for

Votes for

Registered voters

government

opposition

Abstentions

1852

9, 836, 000

5, 248, 000

810, 000

3, 613, 000

1857

9, 490, 000

5, 471, 000

665, 000

3, 372, 000

1863

9, 938, 000

5, 308, 000

1, 954, 000

2, 714, 000

1869

10, 417, 000

4, 438, 000

3, 355, 000

2, 291, 000

elected (49 liberals and 29 republicans), and although of these only the more radical republicans appear to have been irrevocably opposed to the Empire as such, for the government, controlling the Corps législatif clearly was going to be extremely difficult. The results in Paris in particular had exceeded all opposition hopes, with 234, 000 votes for their candidates against 77, 000 for official candidates and 76, 500 abstentions. It was the success of the republican

candidates in the capital and the mass demonstrations of hostility to the regime which followed, on successive nights between 9 and 12 June, which especially impressed contemporaries. Crowds demonstrated by singing the banned

Marseillaise, shouting Vive la République