Second empire - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

The Second Empire was the mode Bonapartist of Napoleon III of 1852 with 1870, between the Deuxième and the Third Republic, in France. Whereas he is president of the French and in opposition with the preserving assembly, soon Louis-Napoleon organizes the Coup d'etat of December 2nd, 1851, which enables him to impose a news Constitution, and to impose the French Empire. The first half of this “Second Empire” is known as authoritative Empire, while the second period is known as liberal Empire. It is finally the war against Prussia, war badly prepared by France, and vis-a-vis the rising power and Bismarckienne of Europe, which sounds the end of this Second French Empire.

The emergence of the Empire

The Constitution of January 14th, 1852 instituted by Napoleon III was largely inspired by that of year VIII. If the male vote for all is restored, all the executive powers are not concentrated of it in the hands of the Head of the State. It could name the members of the Council of State, whose task was to prepare the laws, and of the Sénat, an established body in a permanent way as a part constituent of the Empire. The legislative body was again elected with the male vote for all but it did not have any right to take initiatives, all the laws were proposed by the executive power (but voted by the Parlement). This political change had the same consequences quickly as that of the 18 Brumaire.

It is by Plébiscite that the November 21st 1852, the French approve by 7 824 000 yes against 253 000 not (and 2 million abstentions) the Senatus consult restoring imperial dignity with the profit of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, from now on the Emperor Napoleon III.

Political parties under the Second Empire

Authoritative Empire

The constitution, mechanisms imperial and their evolution

Even if the governmental mechanism were almost the same one under the Second Empire as under the First Empire, its principles founders were different. The function of the Empire, as Napoleon III enjoyed to repeat it, was to guide the people inside towards the Justice and outside towards a perpetual Paix. Holding its capacities of the male vote for all and having frequently, since its prison or in exile, reproached the preceding oligarchical governments for having neglected the social questions, it solved to treat them by organizing a system of government based on the principles of the “Napoleonean ideas”, i.e. those of the Emperor - the elected official of the people, representative of the people, the Démocratie - and of itself, the representative of large the Napoleon i, hero of the French revolution, and thus guard of the revolutionary heritage.

Napoleon III showed quickly that social justice did not mean the Liberté. It acts so that the principles of 1848 which it had preserved become a simple frontage. He paralyzed all the national forces guarantors of the public spirit, such as the Parlement, the male vote for all (which he nevertheless had restored in 1852 after his suppression by the Parliament), the press, education and associations. The legislative body was authorized neither to elect its president, neither to vote on the budget in detail, nor to make public deliberations. In a similar way, the male vote for all was supervised and controlled by the official candidatures, the prohibition of the free expression and skilful adjustments of the electoral districts in order to drown the vote Libéral in the mass of the rural population. The press was subjugated with a system of guarantee , in the form of money, deposited as guarantee of good behavior, and warnings , i.e. of requests by the authorities to cease the publication of certain articles, under the threat of the suspension or the suppression, while the books were prone to the Censure.

To counter the opposition of the individuals, a monitoring of the suspects was instituted. The attack of the emperor by Felice Orsini in 1858, although moved only by the Italian policy, served as a preserving pretext for the elements of the Bonapartist to bring an increase in the severity of this Régime with the law of general security, decided by the Espinasse General with the moderate support of the emperor, who authorized the internment, the exile or the deportation of any suspect without lawsuit. Same manner, the state education was strictly supervised, the teaching of the Philosophie and the history was removed with the Lycée and the disciplinary powers of the administration were increased.

During the first seven years of the Empire, France did not have any political life. The empire was carried by a series of plebiscites. Until 1857, the opposition did not exist then, until in 1860, it was reduced to five members: Louis Darimon, Emile Olivier, Jacques Hénon, Jules Favre and Picardy Ernest. The royalists awaited, inactive after the made unfruitful attempt with Frohsdorf in 1853, by an alliance of the Légitimiste S and Orléaniste S, to rebuild a life monarchist on the ruins of two royal families.

Prosperity and culture

The success of imperial prosperity rested on a certain number of elements (festivities, development of capitalism…) in order to avoid any resurrection of the revolutionary spectrum . Thus, Napoleon III sought the support of the Clergé, large financial, the industrial tycoons and the landowners.

He ressuscita on his own account “enriches it us” by 1840. Under the influence of the Saint-Simon iens and business men, great finance companies were instituted and of large building sites were launched: the Building and loan association of France, the Loan on personal property, the conversion of the railroad into six large companies between 1852 and 1857. Passion for the speculation was reinforced by the arrival of the Or Californian and Australian and consumption was supported by a general fall of the prices between 1856 and 1860, which had with the economic revolution which exceeded the tariff barriers quickly, as that had already been the case with the the United Kingdom. Thus the French activity was flourishing between 1852 and 1857 and was hardly temporarily affected by the crisis of 1857.

The World Fair (1855) was its culminating point. Great enthusiasm for the romantic period was finished; philosophy became skeptic and the diverting literature. The festivities of the Court with Compiegne defined the fashion for the Bourgeoisie, satisfied by this energetic government which preserved their financial balances so well.

If the Empire were strong, the Emperor was weak. Strong-head and dreamer, it was full with plans. Plans which its irresolution often prevented from succeeding. For him, the artificial work of the Congrès of Vienna, which devoted the fall of its family and France, was to be destroyed, and the Europe should be organized in a whole of great industrial states, linked by communities of interests and bound between them by commercial treaties, and expressing their bonds by periodic congresses chaired by itself, and World Fairs. In this way it could reconcile the revolutionary principles of the supremacy of the people with the historical tradition, a thing that neither the Restauration neither the Monarchie of July nor the Second Republic were capable to make. The male vote for all, the organization of the nations of Romania, the Italy and the Germany and the freedom of trade, it was to be the work of the Revolution.

A new place in Europe

See also: French International policy under the Second Empire

Napoleon III, in the Napoleonean tradition, wants a politics foreign ambitious. He directs it itself, shorting-circuit the circuits of the French diplomacy sometimes. Since 1815, France is relegated diplomatically to the countries second-rate. The primary goal of Napoleon III is to then give again to him a role in Europe in search of a new organization under the pressure of the Nationalisme. The Crimean War gives the opportunity of it to him.

The Crimean War

The Italian question

It is not the attack of Orsini of the January 14th 1858 which influenced Napoleon III on the question of the Italian unification. Old carbonaro, the victory of its armies in the Crimea gave him the scale necessary to achieve this mission which was due to him in heart. Napoleon III is combined with the Piedmont-Sardinia, power réunificatrice. It Marie her cousin with Clothilde, the girl of the king of Piedmont in January 1859. In July 1858, a secret agreement was signed with Cavour with Plombières. The sympathy of all Europe was with Italy, divided since centuries between so many Masters; Russia of Alexandre II of Russia gained since a maintenance with Stuttgart by the generosity of the Emperor rather than by the armed force, did not offer any opposition to this act of justice while the United Kingdom, forces liberal, applauds. In France, the mediums of businesses and the Christians are reticent.

When Austria declares the war in Piedmont, in May 1859, France engages. Napoleon III takes the head of the army and gains the victories of Magenta and Solférino June 4th and 24th 1859, but at the price of strong losses. The prospect for an alliance austro-Prussian in the war stops Napoleon III who signs the peace of Villafranca in July 1859. The Austrian presence in Italy is maintained. The Italians are furious because they could not complete the reunification. Under the terms of the agreement of Plombières, France receives the county of Nice and Savoy, attached after plebiscite in April 1860.

Liberal Empire

A delicate social situation

The industrial policy was designed as much by reasons for interest as by the sympathy of Napoleon III, beyond the opposition to the middle-class which had the ambition to control or which wished its ousting. The way was easy because it had for only policy to exploit the damages of the working classes. They always underwent the Loi the Hatter of 1791, which by prohibiting any professional association placed them at the thank you of their employers. Moreover, the limitation of the male vote for all had conferred on the middle-class a political monopoly which had placed it out of reach law. Lastly, with each time the working classes had left their position of rigid insulation to save the charter or the male vote for all, the triumphing middle-class had as well as possible rewarded them with negligence. The silence of the public opinion under the Empire and the prosperous state of the businesses had completed to separate the party from the workers of the political parties. The visit of a delegation of the workers elected and paid with the World Fair of 1862 to London gave to the Emperor an opportunity to restore relations with the workmen, and these relations were in its completely advantageous opinion, since the workers, while refusing to associate their social and industrial complaints with the ambitions of the middle-class, maintained an attitude neutral between the parties, and thus could, if necessary, to divide them, while, by their criticism of the company, they awoke the preserving instincts of the middle-class and thus moderated their enthusiasm for freedom.

A law of the May 23rd 1863 gave to the workers the possibility, as in the United Kingdom, to save money by creating cooperative society. Another law, of the May 25th 1864, gave them the right to still require better work conditions by organizing Grève S. Plus, the Emperor made it possible to the workers to imitate their employers by creating trade unions for permanent protection their interests. And finally, when the workmen wanted to substitute for the reducing utilitarianism of the British trade unions a vision common to all the wage classes of the whole world, it did not put any obstacle on the way of the plan of their chief Tolain to found a International Société of the Workers, which it February 18th 1864 had written the Manifeste of the Sixty, asking for the participation of working candidates the elections. In same time he encouraged the provisions taken by employers for the saving and the improvement of the condition of the popular classes.

Ensured to be constant, the emperor, through Rouher, a defender of the absolutist mode, refused all the requests on behalf of the liberals.

Rise of the opposition

A catholic opposition criticizes set up, incarnated by the paper of Louis Veuillot the Univers , and was not even reduced to silence by forwarding in Syria of 1860 in favor of the catholics Maronite S, who were persecuted by the Druze S. On another side, the commercial treaty with the United Kingdom which had been signed in January 1860 and which ratified the policy of Libre-échange of Richard Cobden and Michel Chevalier, placed French industry vis-a-vis the sudden shock of the foreign competition. Thus, the catholics and the protectionists discovered that the moral absolutism could be an excellent thing when it served their ambitions or their interests but a bad thing when it was exerted with their costs.

But Napoleon III, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the new hostility of the Public opinion does not appear, tried to gain on the left what it had lost on the right. After the return of Italy, the general amnesty of the August 16th 1859 marked the evolution of the imperial absolutism towards the liberal empire then parliamentary which was to last ten years.

Napoleon started by withdrawing the muzzle which held the country with silence. The November 24th 1860, by a “coup d'etat” thought at the time of its solitary meditations, like a conspirator wanting to even hide his mysterious thoughts with its ministers, it gave to the Rooms the right to vote an annual apostrophe in response to the speech from the throne, and the press, the right to bring back the parliamentary debates. It counted to this measure to hold in failure the rising catholic opposition, which was more and more alarmed by the policy Leave-to make practiced by the Emperor in Italy.

The governmental majority showed signs of independence at once. The right to vote on the budget by section, granted by the Emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to its adversaries. All converged in their favor: anxiety of these ingenuous friends who pointed finger the defects of the budget, the commercial crisis worsened by the American Civil War of the United States and, over all, the obstinate spirit of the Emperor who aggravated his opponents while insisting to conclude an alliance with the the United Kingdom in order to force the opening of the Chinese ports to the trade.

This succession of misunderstood measurements resulted in an alliance from the parties from the opposition, catholics, liberals and republicans, in a liberal union . The elections from May-June 1863 gave to the opposition forty seats and a chief, Adolphe Thiers, which gave voice at the request of the necessary freedoms .

It would have been difficult for the Emperor to underestimate the importance of this manifestation of the French public opinion, and its failures with international made a policy of repression difficult, if as well is as it had wished it. The sacrifice of Victor Fialin, count de Persigny, Minister of Interior Department, which were responsible for the elections, the substitution of the ministers without portfolio by a kind of presidency of the council (?) given to Eugene Rouher, the “vice-emperor”, and the nomination of Victor Duruy, an anticlerical, to the post of minister of the state education, in answer to these attacks of the Church which were to culminate with the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a significant bringing together between the Emperor and the left.

But even if the opposition represented by Thiers were more constitutional that dynastic, there were another irreconcilable opposition, that of the republicans amnestied or exiled voluntarily, whose Victor Hugo was the eloquent speaking pipe. Those which had previously constituted the controlling classes then showed again signs of their ambition to control. It appeared the risk that this movement born within the Bourgeoisie could extend to the people. As Antée held its force by touching the ground, Napoleon believed that it could control his capacity threatened while again turning to the working masses of which it held his capacity.

The failure of the international policy

In the Années 1860, the Empire does not have any more will have it that it had at its beginnings. Its loss of power abroad comes mainly from its attempt missed reversing a republic and setting up a Latin empire at the Mexico in favor of the archduke Maximilien of Austria in 1863. The Empire embarks in experiments of colonization of 1861 with 1863 in Cochinchine and Annam. Similar inconsistencies were noticed in the European policy of the Emperor. The support which it had given to the Italian cause had caused the hopes of other nations. The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy the February 18th 1861 after the rapid annexation of the Tuscan and the kingdom of Naples had proven the danger of the half-measures. But when the concession, even limited, was made for the freedom of a nation, it could with difficulty be refused for the not less legitimate aspirations of the others.

In 1863 these “new rights” still required to be recognized: in Poland, Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, maintaining obviously plain but without border nor capital, and in the principalities of the the Danube. In order to be extracted from the Polish dead end, the Emperor still had recourse to dispatch congress. He was once again unfruitful, because inappropriate: the United Kingdom refused even principle of congress, while Austria, Prussia and Russia gave their adhesion only to conditions which made it futile, i.e. they reflect side the vital questions of Venezia and Poland.

Thus Napoleon was to still disappoint the hopes of the Italy, to let the Poland be made crush and allow the Germany to triumph over the Denmark in the question over the the Schleswig-Holstein.

He was helped by the end of the industrial crisis when the American civil war finished, by the apparent resolution of the Roman question by the convention of September 15th which guaranteed to the papal States the protection of the Italy, and finally by the treaty of the October 30th 1864 which put temporarily fine at the crisis of the question of the the Schleswig-Holstein.

After 1865 the temporary agreement which had linked the Austria and the Prussia for the administration of the conquered duchies gave place to a quiet antipathy. Even if the Guerre austro-Prussian of 1866 were unexpected, its early conclusion were a severe shock in France. The shortly after the triumphal plebiscite of 1869, Emile Olivier declared that “at any time, the maintenance of peace in Europe was not also assured”. But after July 3rd, 1866 and the battle of Sadowa, the Traité of Prague ended the secular competition between the Habsbourg and the Hohenzollern for hegemony on Germany, which was an occasion for France, and the Prussia was allowed to honor the claims with Napoleon while establishing between his confederation north-allemande and the states of the south an illusory border along the Main. The unfruitful efforts of the French emperor to obtain a “compensation” on left bank of the the Rhine in exchange of the States of Germany of the south, worsened the things. France realized with an unpleasant surprise that on its border east had appeared a military power by which its influence, if it is not its existence, was threatened; that in the name of the principle of sovereignty of the nations, Germany had been joined together under the cut of a dynasty per militarist and aggressive tradition, by enemy tradition of France: that this news and threatening power had destroyed the French influence in Italy which owed the acquisition of the Venezia with a Prussian alliance and Prussian weapons; and that all that was due to Napoleon III, handled each time since its first discussion with Otto von Bismarck with Biarritz in October 1865. This one, in order to return the reunification of final Germany needed a common enemy to weld the German people: it will be France.

The fall of the Empire

A good part of the confidence which the empire had capitalized until there disappears. Thiers and Jules Favre, as representatives of the opposition, denounced the errors of 1866. Emile Olivier divided the official majority by the amendment of article 45, and made understand that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible until the Emperor liberalizes really the mode. The recall of the French troops of Rome, in agreement with the convention of 1864, gave place to new attacks of the party Ultramontain, which was supported by papacy. Napoleon III felt the need for developing the large act of 1860 by the decree of the January 19th 1867. In spite of Rouher, by a secret agreement with Olivier, the right of interpellation was returned to the Rooms. The reforms in the supervision of the press and the right of meeting were promised. In vain, Rouher tried to meet the liberal opposition by organizing a party for the defense of the Empire, the Dynastic Union . The rapid succession of international reverses prevented it from doing anything.

The year 1867 was particularly disastrous for the Empire. In Mexico, the great idea of the reign ended in a retirement humiliating before the ultimatum of the the United States, while the Italy, cash on its new alliance with the Prussia and already forgetting its promises, mobilized the revolutionary forces to supplement its unit by conquering Rome. The “chassepots” of Mentana were necessary to hold in failure the Garibaldi ens. And the imperial diplomacy was ridiculed by its attempt to obtain victorious Bismarck of the territorial compensations on the Rhine, in Belgium and with the Luxembourg, which could have been obtained from him earlier with Biarritz, when Benedetti added the error to require of the bad moment, it had humiliation nothing to obtain.

In parallel, France followed a policy of prestige which impressed all Europe. In Paris transformed by the Baron Haussmann into a modern, capital city of arts and culture, the opening of the World Fair of 1867 accommodated ten million visitors and sovereigns from all Europe. A success which was somewhat tarnished by the attempted murder of Berezowski on the tsar Alexandre II of Russia, and by the tragedy destiny of the unhappy Maximilien emperor in Mexico. Thiers, a little excessive, exclaimed that there were no more other errors to make. The Emperor made one moreover however of them. Old man and disabled person the emperor however managed to set up a constitutional empire, finding in the danger that such an option implied, more energy than he did not spend about it the twenty previous years. For as much, a great success intenational was necessary for him définitvement to reconquer an opinion which appreciated (as the plebiscite of 1870 shows it) the liberal turning of the mode. Enough badly advised, it believed to see in the war against Prussia the occasion not to be failed to stabilize the mode definitively.

Napoleon moved towards the war without making the preparations necessary. The Count Beust tried ressusciter without success, with the support of the Austrian government, the project given up by Napoleon since 1866 of a resolution on the basis of a status quo with reciprocal disarmament. Napoleon refused, on the council of the Colonel Stoffel, his military attach3e with Berlin, which indicated that Prussia would not accept by disarmament; but it was more anxious than it did not want to show it. A recasting of the military organization seemed necessary to him. The marshal Niel was unable to obtain it that it is opposition Bonapartist or republican opposition, which was reticent to reinforce that it described as " despote" . The two parts were made blind with the external dangers by the political interests.

The emperor was given up by the men and was disappointed by the events. He had vainly hoped that, even by giving freedom of the press and by authorizing the meetings, he would keep the liberty of action; but he had played the game of his enemies. the Punishments of Victor Hugo, the Lantern , newspaper of Rochefort, the subscription for the monument with Baudin, the deputy killed in the barricades in 1851, followed by the speech of Leon Gambetta against the Empire at the time of the lawsuit of Charles Delescluze, showed quickly that the Republican party was not reconcilable.

Other side, the party orleanist had become dissatisfied because formerly protected industries were not satisfied by the reform with free trade. The working class had given up its political neutrality which had brought anything to him, and had passed to the enemy. Being unaware of the dépassionnée attack of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon against the slavery of the Communism, it had been gradually gained by the theories collectivists of Karl Marx and the revolutionary theories of Bakounine, proposed at the congresses of the international Company of the workers. With these congresses, whose fame had been only increased by their prohibition, it had been confirmed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from his political emancipation. The union between the republican internationalists and middle-class men became an accomplished fact.

The Empire, taken by surprise, tried to thwart at the same time the middle-classes and the working classes, which involved them in revolutionary actions. There were many strikes. The elections of May 1869, which took place during these disorders, inflicted with the Empire an important moral defeat (40% for the opposition) even if the empire kept the essential support of the farming community. In spite of the revival of the government thanks to the red fear, Olivier, the lawyer of the conciliation, was rejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilable and 116 members of the Third party were elected. Concessions were to be to them made, thus by the “senatus consult” of the September 8th 1869 a parliamentary monarchy replaced the personal government. The January 2nd 1870 Olivier was placed at the head of the first homogeneous, linked and responsible ministry.

But the Republican party, contrary to the country which claimed the reconciliation of freedom and the order, refused to be satisfied with acquired freedoms; they refused very compromised, being declared decided more than ever to reverse the Empire. The murder of the journalist Black Victor by Pierre Bonaparte, a family member imperial, gave to the revolutionists the opportunity awaited so a long time (January 10th). But the riot ended in a failure and the emperor could answer the personal threats by a bright victory with the plebiscite of the May 8th 1870.

This success which should have consolidated the Empire involved its fall. It was supposed that a diplomatic success can make forget freedom in favor of glory. It is in vain that after the parliamentary revolution of the January 2nd 1870 the count Daru ressuscita, via Lord Clarendon, the plan of the Count Beust of disarmament after the Bataille of Sadowa (Königgratz). It met a refusal of Prussia and imperial entourage. The Eugenie Empress is credited with the remark “If there is no war, my son will be never emperor. ”

The Franco-German war

See too

French Constitutions

External bond

Second empire, 1852-1870 Texts.
history of the Second Empire
Summarized on the Second Empire
site devoted to the Second Empire

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