NAPOLEON III. 



395 



fair chance. Outside of France, nationalities whose 

 emancipation had been planned by Napoleon L, 

 sucli as Poland, looked to him to effect their long- 

 deferred liberty ( 1831 ). In France he was an out- 

 law, because a formidable rival to Legitimacy ; in 

 the struggle between the junior branch of the 

 Bourbon dynasty and the forces at work since the 

 Revolution, the Bonapartists had a permanent 

 power of intervention and might enlist as their 

 own partisans the masses of Frenchmen who were 

 lukewarm politicians. Moreover, Napoleon I.'s 

 litter failure as an international politician had in 

 no wise shaken the ornaiMtfaa he had given to 

 France ; his home legislation had become part and 

 parcel of the nation ; French law, French public 

 education, French military institutions, the joint 

 restoration of state and church stood forth as his 

 lasting work. 



Almost a stranger to France in nurture of thought 

 and tone of mind, an adventurer rather than a pre- 

 tender, a philosopher rather than a man of action, 

 taciturn, speculative, driven from within by a 

 set motive rooted in a fixed idea, absorbed with 

 German mysticism and Italian wiliness in a career 

 so fateful to his mind that moral bridling could not 

 avail at its turning-point, a philanthropist in some 

 of his dreams, an idealist in some of his deeds, the 

 heir of the French Cu-sar drifted to his destiny, 

 not without some vigour and brightness, a victim 

 to the alleged mission of his race, to which he was 

 enslaved as by hypnotic suggestion. He published 

 in 1832-36 his Reveries polituinea, Projet de Constitu- 

 tion, and Considerations politiqites et Milittr<:i . 

 la Sitisse. In ,1836, speculating on the instability 

 of Louls-Philippe's throne, the disaffection of some 

 of the middle classes, the general favour of his 

 semi socialistic theories with the advanced parties, 

 and the unspent prestige of Napoleon I., he put his 

 chances to a premature test by appearing among 

 the military at Strasburg, hoping to bribe them 

 into his service by the prospect of their resuming 

 the paramount iiosition which soldiers could not 

 but occupy in a Napoleonic state. The rash young 

 man was easily overpowered and conveyed to 

 America, without being brought to trial. Being 

 nnder no pledge to stay in America, Louis Napoleon 

 returned to Europe on hearing of his mother's ill- 

 ness. He found her dying; two months later he 

 received her lost sighs ( 3d Octoler 1837 ): Although 

 the affair of Strasburg hod naturally enough caused 

 many people to doubt the talent and the judg- 

 ment of Louis Napoleon, still Louis-Philippe, 

 who was politically an extremely timid monarch, 

 dreaded some new conspiracy ; the French govern- 

 ment demanded of Swit/erland the expulsion of the 

 obnoxious, prince, M. Mole actually enjoining the 

 French ambassador to demand his passports, in case 

 of a refusal. Switzerland hud neither the right nor 

 the wish to expel, and was on the point of going to 

 war for the distinguished refugee ( who was, in fact, 

 a Swiss citizen) when he resolved to prevent a 

 rupture by leaving his adopted country. He now 

 proceeded to England, and settled in London. 

 With certain members of the British aristocracy 

 he came to live on a footing of considerable in- 

 timacy, and he was also an object of languid 

 wonder and interest to the community generally, 

 but he impressed nobody with a lielief in his future 

 and his genius ; nay, Englishmen -erred so far as to 

 suppose that the 'silent man' was merely 'dull.' 

 In 1838 he published in London his Idees Napo- 

 lioniennes, which, read in the light of subsequent 

 events, are very significant. Ewtm generally 

 regarded them as idle dreams ; but in France the 

 l>o.ik went through numerous editions. In 1839 

 Louis Napoleon was in Scotland, and took part in 

 the celebrated Eglinton tournament. Next year 

 (1840) he made his second attempt on the throne 



of France at Boulogne. It was as grotesque a 

 failure as the one at Strasburg. Captured on the 

 shore, while endeavouring to make his escape to 

 the vessel that had brought him from England, 

 Louis Napoleon was now brought to trial, and 

 condemned to perpetual imprisonment in the for- 

 tress of Ham. Here he continued his Bonapartist 

 propaganda by writing A nx Manes de VEmpereur, 

 Fragments Historiyttes, Analyse de la Question de 

 la Suisse, Reponse a M. de Lamartine, Extinction 

 du Pauptrisme, &c. ; and actually took part in 

 editing the Dictionnaire de la Conversation, a 

 valuable French encyclopaedia. After an imprison- 

 ment of more than five years, spent in patient 

 meditation, he made his escape (25th May 1846), 

 by the help of Dr Conneau, in the disguise of a 

 workman, and gained the Belgian frontier, whence 

 he returned to England. 



The revolution of February (1848) was a victory 

 of the working-men to whom some of his political 

 theories were especially addressed ; he hurried 

 bock to France as a virtual nominee of the 

 Fourth Estate, or working-classes in town and 

 country an embarrassing iiosition, from the obli- 

 gations of which the smashing up of the Parisian 

 socialists by the forces of General Cavaignac 

 released the future emperor. Being elected deputy 

 for Paris and three other departments, he took 

 his seat in the Constituent Assembly, 13th June 

 1848. On the loth he resigned his seat and left 

 France. Recalled in the following September by 

 a quintuple election, he once more appeared in 

 the Assembly and commenced his candidature for 

 the presidency. The direct election of the head 

 of the state by the people, intended as a republican 

 institution, proved itself to lie a stepping-stone to 

 Cnesarism, as Louis Napoleon's peculiar conception 

 of a modern imperial democracy is called ; in the 

 constitutional history of the second empire such 

 appeals to universal suffrage bear the name of 

 plebiscites. Out of seven and a half million of 

 votes 5,562,834 were recorded for Prince Louis 

 Napoleon ; General Cavaignac, his genuine repub- 

 lican competitor, obtaining only 1,469,166. 



On the 20th December he took the oath of allegi- 

 ance to the Republic. For a few days concord 

 seemed established between the different political 

 parties in the Assembly ; but the Ix-ginning of the 

 year 1849 witnessed the commencement of a series 

 of struggles lietween the president and his friends 

 on the one side and the majority of the Assembly 

 on the other the latter being justly penetrated 

 with the conviction that Louis Napoleon was not 

 devoted to the interests of the ItepuMic, but to his 

 own. He liecaine practically a traitor to his repub- 

 lican oath when, in league with monarchical Austria 

 and the king of Naples, he put down the republican 

 movement in Rome. Then he committed the com- 

 mand of the army to hands devoted to him, he estab- 

 lished his iiersonal supporters in posts of honour and 

 influence, he gained by frequent visits the favour of 

 the provincial towns, and by acts of Hl>erality and 

 clemency kept that of the people. He paVaded 

 as a protector of popular rights and of national 

 prosperity, laying to the door of the Assembly the 

 deficiencies in his government. Resolved to trans- 

 form his tenure of power by periodical election into 

 a life-long one, he was hampered by the National 

 Assembly ; anil, with the example of his uncle's coup 

 d'etat (18th Brumaire 1799) before him, he deliber- 

 ately threw off the mask of a constitutional presi- 

 dent, forswore his formal oath, and became a traitor 

 to all society. From that moment a perpetual 

 misunderstanding, badly cloaked by material pros- 

 perity and military glory, underlay Napoleon's 

 relation to the French and to Europe generally. 

 His methods f government belonged to no acknow- 

 ledged regime. 



