Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/659

THE SECOND EMPIRE.] FRANCE G23 led to the first empire. Outbursts of despairing resistance in Paris were sternly put down, with brutal severities, which aimed at striking terror into the capital ; the men round Louis Bonaparte did not want for vigour; they had won power by conspiracy, and did not hesitate to keep it by a massacre. The new constitution was accepted by an over whelming majority; it seemed as if the Napoleonic idea was omnipotent in France. The new government was, like that of the great Napoleon, the union of strong and arbitrary rule with an appeal to the ignorant passions of the populace. The burgher world acceded to it, because it was strong, and promised order and hopes of material prosperity, and because it was scared and puzzled by the fitful appearances of the " red spectre " of eastern Paris. Little trouble did the successful party take about the re- [II. maining step. The high tide of the popularity of Louis Bonaparte was still running up in flood ; and in November 1852 an almost unanimous vote (7,824,129 against 253,149) accepted him as hereditary emperor of the French under the name of Napoleon III. Before the end of the year he made solemn entry into Paris. IX. THE SECOND EMPIRE. The second empire lasted from November 4, 1852, to September 4, 1870, a period of nearly 18 ysars. It was openly modelled on the first empire, and Napoleon III. never forgot that he was his uncle s nephew. His mother, the ex-queen of Holland, was Hortense Eugenie de Beau- harnais, daughter of the empress Josephine by her first hus band, the viscount Alexandre de Beauharnais ; the emperor married her to his brother Louis Bonaparte in 1802 ; and her son Louis was born in 1808. He was now forty-four years of age, a man of no dignity of moral character, ambi tious and unscrupulous, but somewhat wanting in nerve ; far better than the adventurers who surrounded him ; a man of very considerable clearness of vision, who did his utmost to develop the home-prosperity of France, by sweeping away the barriers which wrong-headed Governments had placed on commerce, and by introducing the new doctrines, strange to French ears, of free trade, which he had learnt to admire by seeing their applications in England. His government was frequently, almost incessantly, involved in wars ; yet the emperor himself was doubtless sincere in pro claiming his wish for peace. " The empire," he said, " menaces no one ; it desires to develop in peace and full independence the vast resources it has received from heaven." It is but one of the inevitable results of a bad tradition that he, like his predecessors, hoped to succeed in securing prosperity to France by constant interference, and by making the nation feel the presence at its head of an irresponsible yet beneficent master. At the same time this ostentatious activity assured labour to the restless arti sans of the great cities ; towns were half rebuilt ; Paris especially felt this malign benevolence, which, while it fed the workman, made him destroy his own means of re sistance to government, for the rebuilding of Paris by Haussmann was planned so as to drive great and straight military roads through all the disaffected quarters of the north and east. Kail ways, canals, harbours, public build ings, above all, new churches and old, owned the imperial hand. If, as must be granted, this lower empire was based on popular ignorance and plentiful bloodshed and terrorism, both in Paris and in the provinces, it must also be conceded that the emperor himself, dreamer as he was, was heartily anxious for the welfare of France. He was unfortunate HI his associates, and perhaps also in the beautiful lady he chose as empress. When the second empire began, the sovereigns of Europe thought that republicanism was gone for ever ; they recog nized the new government of France with some cordiality. 1852-54. England came first for in England the unmistakable expression of the popular will was regarded just as the re sult of a general election at home might have been; the vote of the people had expressed their wishes clearly, and England was ready to accept their views as to their own affairs. It was noticed that Prussia was unfriendly towards the new government ; and when the emperor, anxious to secure the hereditary succession promised to him by France, looked round him for a wife, his proposal to wed a Ilohen- zollern princess met with a marked rebuff. He had before Marriagti failed to win a Swedish princess; he finally chose for himself of tlie the handsome Eugdnie de Tdba, a Spanish lady, who had eni l )eror - already been conspicuous for her beauty at his couit. France was divided in mind respecting her: her appearance won men s hearts ; the national vanity was vexed at the rebuffs, while it was pleased to say that the emperor had disdained royal and formal alliances in order to choose the lady after his own heart ; and lastly, there were not a few who grumbled that he ought not to have slighted the ladies of France by selecting a Spaniard. Anyhow, the young empress bore him a son, the prince imperial, on whom rested all the hopes of the new dynasty. For the rest, her extravagant and frivolous tastes in dress and habits set a very bad example to a nation far too willing to copy it ; and her influence and advice were invariably on the unlucky side. She was a devoted Catholic, and to her counsels are due some of the worst mishaps of the reign. In 1854 began the first war of the second empire, the The first denial to the famous utterance of Bordeaux in 1852, C rimean " L empire, c est la paix," which had enlisted the warm war - partisanship of commerce and finance, The large and am bitious schemes of the czar Nicholas against Turkey, " the sick man " of that day, alarmed all Europe ; the dispute between Russia and the Porte as to the holy places was re ferred to a conference at Vienna, which proposed to solve the difficulty on the lines of the treaty or 1841, which had placed Turkey under the guarantee of the five great powers. Before diplomacy had got to work the Russians had invaded the Turkish territory ; the Anglo-French fleet had moved up to Besika Bay, to be within call of Constantinople, and the Russian fleet (30th November 1853) had destroyed the Turkish ships at Sinope. War, however, did not openly break out till the next spring. In April a treaty of alliance was signed between France and England, who were after wards joined by the king of Sardinia, while Austria and Prussia also guaranteed the possessions of each other ; the imperial guard was re-established, and an army of 60,000 men, one-third English, two-thirds French, set sail for the Black Sea. After halting first at GalHpoli, then at Varna, the allied fleets and armies set sail for the Crimea, and landed under protection of the ships near the mouth of the river Alma. Thence they marched along the coast towards Sebastopol, and came on the Russians strongly posted on the left bank of the Alma ; on the 20th of September 1854 the allies defeated the Russians there and took their posi tion. Mentschikoff, who commanded them, withdrew into Sebastopol, round which the allies marched, taking up their quarters not far from Balaclava, to the south-east of the great fortress. Then began a siege which lasted through the winter ; on October 25 the Russians were re pulsed at Balaclava itself, by the wild charge of the English cavalry ; on November 5 the allied armies won the battle of Inkermann, in which the English, who were defending the points attacked, bore the chief brunt of the fighting. It was not till June that the bombardment of the allies was effectual in producing the fall of some of the outworks. Sebastopol eventually fell on the 10th of September, in con sequence of the storm of the Malakoff tower by the French troops. The French and Russians had now done enough, and