In fact, while trying to compass the destruction of the republican movement of the Left, he was taking careful steps to gain over all classes. “Prince, altesse, monsieur, monseigneur, citoyen” (he was called by all these names indifferently at the Elysée), he appeared as the candidate of the most incompatible interests, flattering the clergy by his compliments and formal visits, distributing cigars and sausages to the soldiers, promising the prosperous bourgeoisie “order in the street” and business, while he posed as the “father of the workers,” and won the hearts of the peasants. At his side were his accomplices, men ready for anything, whose only hopes were bound up with his fortunes, such as Morny and Rouher; his paid publicists, such as Romieu the originator of the “red spectre”; his cudgel-bearers, the “Ratapoils” immortalized by Daumier, who terrorized the republicans. From the Elysée by means of the mass of officials whom they had at their command, the conspirators extended their activities throughout the whole country.
He next entered upon that struggle with the Assembly, now discredited, which was to reveal to all the necessity for a change, and a change in his favour. In January 1851 he deprived Changarnier of his command of the garrison of Paris. “The Empire has come,” said Thiers. The pretender would have preferred, however, that it should be brought about legally, the first step being his re-election in 1852. The Constitution forbade his re-election; therefore the Constitution must be revised. On the 19th of July the Assembly threw out the proposal for revision, thus signing its own death-warrant, and the coup d’état was resolved upon. He prepared for it systematically. The cabinet of the 26th of October 1851 gave the ministry for war to his creature Saint-Arnaud. All the conspirators were at their posts—Maupas at the prefecture of police, Magnan at the head of the troops in Paris. At the Elysée, Morny, adulterine son of Hortense, a hero of the Bourse and successful gambler, supported his half-brother by his energy and counsels. The ministry proposed to abrogate the electoral law of 1850, and restore universal suffrage; the Assembly by refusing made itself still more unpopular. By proposing to allow the president of the Assembly to call in armed force, the questors revealed the Assembly’s plans for defence, and gave the Elysée a weapon against it (“donnent barre contre elle a l’Elysée”). The proposition was rejected (November 17), but Louis-Napoleon saw that it was time to act. On the 2nd of December he carried out his coup d’état.
But affairs developed in a way which disappointed him. By dismissing the Assembly, by offering the people “a strong government,” and re-establishing “a France regenerated by the Revolution of '89 and organized by the emperor,” he had hoped for universal applause. But both in Paris and the provinces he met with the resistance of the Republicans, who had reorganized in view of the elections of 1852. He struck at them by mixed commissions, deportations and the whole range of police measures. The décrets-lois of the year 1852 enabled him to prepare the way for the new institutions. On the 1st of December 1852 he became in name what he was already in deed, and was proclaimed Emperor of the French. He was then 44 years old. “The impassibility of his face and his lifeless glance” showed observers that he was still the obstinate dreamer that he had been in youth, absorbed in his Idea. His unshaken conviction of his mission made him conscious of the responsibility which rested on him, but hid from him the hopeless defect in the coup d’état. To carry out his conviction, he had still only a timid will, working through petty expedients; but here again his confidence in the future made him bold. In a people politically decimated and wearied, he was able to develop freely all the Napoleonic ideals. Rarely has a man been able to carry out his system so completely, though perhaps in these first years he had to take more disciplinary measures than he had intended against the Reds, and granted more favours than was fitting to the Catholics, his allies in December 1848 and December 1858.
The aim which the emperor had in view was, by a concentration of power which should make him “the beneficent motive force of the whole social order” (constitution of the 14th of January 1852; administrative centralization; subordination of the elected assemblies; control of the machinery of universal suffrage) to unite all classes in “one great national party” attached to the dynasty. His success, from 1852 to 1856, was almost complete. The nation was submissive, and a few scattered- plots alone showed that republican ideas persisted among the masses. As “restorer of the overthrown altars,” he won over the “men in black,” among them Veuillot, editor-in-chief of l’Univers, and allowed them to get the University into their hands. By the aid of former Orleanists, such as Billault, Fould and Morny, and Saint-Simonians such as Talabot and the Pereires, he satisfied the industrial classes, extended credit, developed means of communication, and gave a strong impetus to the business of the nation. By various measures, such as subsidies, charitable gifts and foundations, he endeavoured to show that “the idea of improving the lot of those who suffer and struggle against the difficulties of life was constantly present in his mind.” His was the government of cheap bread, great public works and holidays. The imperial court was brilliant. The emperor, having failed to obtain the hand of a Vasa or Hohenzollern, married, on the 29th of January 1853, Eugénie de Montijo, comtesse de Teba, aged twenty-six and at the height of her beauty.
France was “satisfied” in the midst of order, prosperity and peace. But a glorious peace was required; it must not be said that “France is bored,” as Lamartine had said when the Napoleonic legend began to spread. The foreign policy of the Catholic party, by the question of the Holy Places and the Crimean War (1853–1856), gave him the opportunity of winning the glory which he desired, and the British alliance enabled him to take advantage of it. In the spring of 1855, as a definite success was still slow to come, he contemplated for a time taking the lead of the expedition in person, but his advisers dissuaded him from doing so, for fear of a revolution. In January 1856 he had the good fortune to win a diplomatic triumph over the new tsar, Alexander II. It was at Paris (February 25–March 30) that the conditions of peace were settled.
The emperor was now at the height of his power. He appeared to the people as the avenger of 1840 and 1815, and the birth to him of a son, Eugène Louis Jean Joseph, on the 16th of March 1856, assured the future of the dynasty. It was then that, strong in “the esteem and admiration with which he was surrounded,” and “foreseeing a future full of hope for France,” he dreamed of realizing the Napoleonic ideal in its entirety. This disciple of the German philologists, this crowned Carbonaro, the friend of the archaeologists and historians who were to help him to write the Histoire de César, dreamed of developing the policy of nationalism, and of assisting the peoples of all countries to enfranchise themselves.
From 1856 to 1858 he devoted his attention to the Rumanian nationality, and supported Alexander Cuza. But it was above all the deliverance of Italy which haunted his imagination. By this enterprise, which his whole tradition imposed upon him, he reckoned to flatter the amour-propre of his subjects, and rally to him the liberals and even the republicans, with their passion for propagandism. But the Catholics feared that the Italian national movement, when once started, would entail the downfall of the papacy; and in opposition to the emperor’s Italian advisers, Arese and Prince Jerome Napoleon, they pitted the empress, who was frivolous and capricious, but an ardent Catholic. Napoleon III. was under his wife’s influence, and could not openly combat her resistance. It was the Italian Orsini who, by attempting to assassinate him as a traitor to the Italian nation on the 14th of January 1858, gave him an opportunity to impose his will indirectly by convincing his wife that in the interests of his own security he must “do something for Italy.” Events followed each other in quick succession, and now began the difficulties in which the Empire was to be irrevocably involved. Not only did the Italian enterprise lead to strained relations with Great Britain, the alliance with whom had been the emperor’s chief support in Europe, and compromised its credit; but the claims of parties and classes again began to be heard at home.
