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

authoritarianism towards a more liberal political system.

Recent experience in Eastern Europe has provided some insights into the

difficulties involved. A sense of expectancy builds up which is difficult to satisfy.

Latent tensions once again are openly displayed as pressure from above eases and as social and political groups feel able to compete for power. What had begun as a series of voluntary concessions made possible by the regime’s success against the menace of revolution, very rapidly turned into enforced concessions to pressure from the socio-political elites upon whose collaboration the regime depended.

Moreover, the impact of these reforms was always reduced by the Emperor’s

continued determination to pursue his personal policies at the expense of what 65

important business circles as well as the Church and its clerical supporters saw as their vital interests. Taken together with a succession of foreign policy failures, this ensured widening support for the reinforcement of parliamentary control over the errant monarch. Unable to win over the urban masses and faced with a gradual weakening in the loyalty of the rural population, the Emperor finally conceded a

‘liberal’ constitution which, while retaining much of his personal power especially in matters of defence and foreign policy, substantially reinforced the potential for parliamentary control. In spite of this substantial weakening of Napoléon’s personal power, and the accompanying decline in his prestige, the plebiscite in May 1870 had seemed to mark a new beginning. Even then, if war had been avoided a liberal empire still would have encountered considerable difficulty. However, this is mere speculation. The propensity for war was an integral part of Bonapartism as defined by Napoléon III. But success in waging war depended on military

efficiency and neither the organisation of the French army nor the quality of its leadership made it fit for war against Prussia. If, then, the experience of the Second Empire offers a lesson, it is simply that authoritarian government (while it might appear to offer an attractive solution in a moment of intense social crisis) is, due to the brutality of its origins, more likely to reinforce than reduce social and political divisions and, in the longer term, is likely to prove to be an extremely inefficient and dangerous method of conducting affairs.

66

Bibliography

Setting the context

Caron, F. La France des patriotes de 1851 à 1914 (1985).

Becker, J.-J. and Audoin-Rouzeau, S. La France, la Nation, la Guerre: 1850–1920 (1995).

Charle, C. A Social History of France in the Nineteenth Century (1994).

Gibson, R. A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789–1914 (1989).

McPhee, P. A Social History of France, 1780–1880 (1992).

Magraw, R. France, 1815–1914. The Bourgeois Century (1983).

Price, R. A Social History of Nineteenth Century France (1987).

—— ‘France: the search for stability’ in B. Waller (ed.) Themes in Modern European History, 1830–90 (1990).

Tombs, R. France, 1814–1914 (1996).

Weber, E. Peasants into Frenchmen (1976).

The presidency of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte

Agulhon, M. The Republican Experiment, 1848–52 (1983).

Apponyi, R. De la révolution au coup d’état, Geneva (1948).

Dansette, A. Louis Napoléon à la conquête du pouvoir (1961).

Lévêque, P. Société en crise. La Bourgogne de la Monarchie de Juillet au Second Empire, 2

vols, (1983).

Marx, K. ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ in Marx–Engels Selected Works, I, Moscow (1962).

Margadant, T. French Peasants in Revolt: the Insurrection of 1851 (1979).

Merriman, J.M. The Agony of the Republic: the Repression of the Left in Revolutionary France 1848–51 (1978).

Normanby, Lord Journal of the Year of Revolution, 2 vols, (1851).

67

Price, R. The French Second Republic. A Social History (1972).

—— (ed.) Revolution and Reaction: 1848 and the Second French Republic (1975).

de Rémusat, C. Mémoires de ma vie, IV, (1962).

Senior, N.W. Journals Kept in France and Italy from 1848 to 1852, 2 vols, (1871).

de Tocqueville, A. Recollections, J.P. Mayer (ed.) (1959).

Tudesq, A.J. L’Election présidentielle de Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte 10 décembre 1848

(1965).

General studies of the Second Empire

Campbell, S. The Second Empire Revisited: A Study in French Historiography (1978).

Echard, W. (ed.) Historical Dictionary of the French Second Empire (1985).

Girard, L. Napoléon III (1986).

McMillan, J. Napoleon III (1991).

Plessis, A. The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire 1852–71 (1985).

Senior, N.W. Conversations with M. Thiers, M. Guizot and other Distinguished Persons during the Second Empire, 2 vols, (1878).

Smith,W.H.C. Second Empire and Commune: France 1848–71 (1985).

—— Napoleon III. The Pursuit of Prestige (1991).

Tulard, J. Dictionnaire du Second Empire (1995).

Zeldin, T. The Political System of Napoleon III (1958).

More specialised studies

Anderson, R. Education in France 1848–70 (1971).

Aminzade, R. Ballots and Barricades. Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830–71 (1993).

Audoin-Rouzeau, S. 1870, La France dans la guerre (1989).

Bernard, M. ‘La réoganisation de la police sous le Second Empire’ in P. Vigier et al. (eds), Maintien de l’ordre et police en France et en Europe au 19e siècle (1987).

Bury, J. and Tombs, R. Thiers, 1797–1877. A political life (1986).

Case, L. French Opinion on War and Diplomacy during the Second Empire (1954).

Corbin, A. The Village of Cannibals: Rage and murder in France, 1870 (1992).

Delotel, A. et al. Aux origines de la Commune: le mouvement des réunions publiques à Paris, 1868–70 (1980).

Duveau, G. La Vie ouvrière en France sous le Second Empire (1946).

Echard,W. Napoleon III and the Concert of Europe (1983).

Emerit, M. (ed.) Lettres de Napoléon III à Madame Cornu (1937).

Girard, L. La Politique des travaux publics du Second Empire (1951).

—— (ed.) Les Elections de 1869 (1960).

Girard, L., Prost, A. and Gossez, R. Les Conseillers généraux en 1870: étude statistique d’un personnel politique (1967).

Gough, A. Paris and Rome: the Gallican Church and the Ultramontane Campaign 1848–53

(1986).

Gould,