Part 13 (1/2)
CHAPTER XVIII.
A revolution scarcely deserving the name had made France a second time a republic. The Second French Republic was the creation of no particular party. In fact, it seemed to have sprung into being spontaneously out of the soil of discontent.
Its immediate cause was the forbidding of a banquet which was arranged to take place in Paris on Was.h.i.+ngton's birthday, February 22d, 1848.
M. Guizot, who had succeeded M. Thiers as head of the ministry, knowing the political purpose for which it was intended, and that it was a part of an impending demonstration in the hands of dangerous agitators, would not permit the banquet to take place.
This was the signal for an insurrection by a Paris mob, which immediately led to a change in the form of government--a crisis which the nation had taken no part in inaugurating. Revolution had been written in French history in very large Roman capitals! But when the smoke from this smallest of revolutions had curled away, there stood Louis Napoleon--son of the great Bonaparte's brother Louis and Hortense de Beauharnais--who had been elected president by vote of the nation.
France did not know whether she was pleased or not. Inexperienced in the art of government, she only knew that she wanted prosperity, and conditions which would give opportunity to the genius of her people.
Any form of government, or any ruler who could produce these, would be accepted. She had suffered much, and was bewildered by fears of anarchy on one side and of tyranny on the other. If she looked doubtfully at this dark, mysterious, unmagnetic man, she remembered it was only for four years, and was as safe as any other experiment; and the author of those two ridiculous attempts at a restoration of the empire, made at Strasbourg and at Boulogne, was not a man to be feared.
The overthrow of monarchy in France had, however, been taken more seriously in other countries than at home. It had kindled anew the fires of republicanism all over Europe: Kossuth leading a revolution in Hungary, and Garibaldi and Mazzini in Italy, where Victor Emmanuel, the young King of Sardinia, was at the moment in deadly struggle with Austria over the possession of Milan, and dreaming of the day when a united Italy would be freed from the Austrian yoke.
The man at the head of the French Republic was surveying all these conditions with an intelligence, strong and even subtle, of which no one suspected him, and viewed with satisfaction the extinguishment of the revolutionary fires in Europe, which had been kindled by the one in France to which he owed his own elevation!
The a.s.sembly soon realized that in this prince-president it had no automaton to deal with. A deep antagonism grew, and the cunningly devised issue could not fail to secure popular support to Louis Napoleon. When an a.s.sembly is at war with the president because _it_ desires to restrict the suffrage, and _he_ to make it universal, can anyone doubt the result? He was safe in appealing to the people on such an issue, and sure of being sustained in his proclamation dissolving the a.s.sembly.
The a.s.sembly refused to be dissolved. Then, on the morning of December 2, 1851, there occurred the famous _coup d'etat_, when all the leading members were arrested at their homes, and Louis Napoleon, relying absolutely upon their suffrages, stood before the French nation, with a const.i.tution already prepared, which actually bestowed imperial powers upon himself. And the suddenness and the audacious spirit with which it was done really pleased a people wearied by incompetency in their rulers; and so, just one year later, in 1852, the nation ratified the _coup d'etat_ by voluntarily offering to Louis Napoleon the t.i.tle, Napoleon III., Emperor of the French.
His Mephistophelian face did not look as cla.s.sic under the laurel wreath as had his uncle's, nor had his work the blinding splendor nor the fineness of texture of his great model. But then, an imitation never has. It was a marble masterpiece, done in plaster! But what a clever reproduction it was! And how, by sheer audacity, it compelled recognition and homage, and at last even adulation in Europe!--and what a clever stroke it was, for this heavy, unsympathetic man to bring up to his throne from the people a radiant empress, who would capture romantic and aesthetic France!
It was a far cry from cheap lodgings in New York to a seat upon the imperial throne of France; but human ambition is not easily satisfied.
A Pelion always rises beyond an Ossa. It was not enough to feel that he had re-established the prosperity and prestige of France, that fresh glory had been added to the Napoleonic name. Was there not, after all, a certain irritating reserve in the homage paid him? was there not a touch of condescension in the friends.h.i.+p of his royal neighbors? And had he not always a Mordecai at his gate--while the _Faubourg St.
Germain_ stood aloof and disdainful, smiling at his brand-new aristocracy?
War is the thing to give solidity to empire and to reputation! So, when invited to join the allies in a war upon Russia in defence of Turkey, Louis Napoleon accepted with alacrity. France had no interests to serve in the Crimean War (1854-56); but the newly made emperor did not underestimate the value of this recognition by his royal neighbors, and French soldiers and French gun-boats largely contributed to the success of the allied forces in the East.
The little Kingdom of Sardinia, as the nucleus of the new Italy was called, had also joined the allies in this war; and thus a slender tie had been created between her and France at a time when Austria was savagely attacking her possessions in the north of Italy.
When Napoleon was privately sounded by Count Cavour, he named as his price for intervention in Italy two things: the cession to France of the Duchy of Savoy, and the marriage of his cousin, Jerome Bonaparte, with Clotilde, the young daughter of Victor Emmanuel. Savoy was the ancestral home of the king, and the only thing he loved more than Savoy was his daughter Clotilde, just fifteen years old. The terms were hard, but they were accepted.
When Louis Napoleon entered Italy with his army in 1859, it was as a liberator--dramatically declaring that he came to ”give Italy to herself”; that she was to be ”free, from the Alps to the Adriatic”!
The victory at Magenta was the first step toward the realization of this glorious promise; quickly followed by another at Solferino. Milan was restored, Lombardy was free, and as the news sped toward the south the Austrian dukes of Tuscany, Modena, and Parma fled in dismay, and these rejoicing states offered their allegiance, not to the King of Sardinia, now, but to the King of Italy. There were only two more states to be freed, only Venetia and the papal state of Rome, and a ”United Italy” would indeed be ”free from the Alps to the Adriatic.”
Then the unexpected happened. The dramatic pledge was not to be kept.
Venetia was not to be liberated. The Peace of Villafranca was signed.
Austria relinquished Lombardy, but was permitted to retain Venice.
Cavour, white with rage, said, ”Cut loose from the traitor! Refuse Lombardy!” But Victor Emmanuel saw more clearly the path of wisdom; and so, after only two months of warfare, Napoleon was taking back to France Savoy and Nice as trophies of his brilliant expedition.
This liberator of an Italy which was _not_ liberated, would have liked to restore the fleeing Austrian dukes to their respective thrones in Florence, Modena, and Parma; but he did what was more effectual and pleasing to the enemies of a united Italy: he garrisoned Rome with French troops, and promised Pius IX. any needed protection for the papal throne.
One can imagine how Garibaldi's heart was wrung when he exclaimed, ”That man has made me a foreigner in my own city!” And so might have said the king himself.
The emperor and the empire had been immensely strengthened by the Italian campaign. France was rejoicing in a phenomenal prosperity, reaching every part of the land. There was a new France and a new Paris; new boulevards were made, gardens and walks and drives laid out, and a renewed and magnificent city extended from the Bois de Vincennes on one side to the Bois de Boulogne on the other. With the building of public works there was occupation for all, resulting in the repose for which France had longed.