More Incredibly Obvious Lessons from 1848 that We Still Haven't Learned
“So this is how liberty dies ... with thunderous applause” - Padmé Amidala, Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, 2005.
What does it mean to be a democracy? What does it mean to be a republic? Can a republic sacrifice democracy to save itself?
The provisional government attempted to deal with the rampant unemployment (remember that whole economy in a ditch thing?) by establishing national workshops. Only some thousands managed to get accepted, and they mostly were assigned meaningless menial labor like digging then filling holes. A sorry excuse for an employment program. Those accepted to the program who weren’t even assigned meaningless tasks were given a Franc a day. Keep an eye on these workshops though, they’re gonna become important. At least the new government tried. Remember Guizot? Lesson four: Never tell the people that you’re not gonna help them. You’d have figured that government leaders would have learned their lesson after the famous “let them eat cake” (which Marie Antoinette never actually said) PR disaster, but clearly the sharpest tool in Louis Phillippe’s shed was still quite dull. It doesn’t stop with Guizot either, a certain president of a certain nuclear superpower told his citizens to put sweaters on and save energy to deal with the energy crisis. Take a wild guess as to whether President Carter got re-elected after that.
Blah blah provisional government transitioned to a legitimate republic with elections for the Legislative Assembly held. Blah blah socialists have an insurrection in May and fail. The Republic faced a much more serious threat in June. The pathetic national workshops were forced to shut down because the Republic had no more money. (Shocker) The masses of industrial workers rioted. Lesson five: Institutions carry symbolic weight. I would compare the success of the workshops to the New York Jets except that’s an insult to the Jets. However, them commies (the French Communist Party wouldn’t be founded until 1920) socialists placed great symbolic importance upon the workshops because it represented a core belief of French socialists at the time that everyone deserves the right to work.
The industrial sector of Paris took up arms and sought to take the regime down. The Assembly panicked and gave dictatorial powers to a moderate Republican named Louis-Eugène Cavaignac. Lesson six: Emergencies require a strong executive. The Republic feared both the return of monarchy and the usurpation of the revolution by a strongman so intentionally tried to have a weak executive and almost paid the price. I personally believe that the Republic would have been better served to have a strong executive whose powers in an emergency have clear constitutional restraints rather than what ended up happening, which was to pretend there is no need for a strong executive and the hope and pray a Cincinnatus (yes the city in Ohio is named after him) saves the day. The Republic happened to roll a nat 20 saving throw and live to see another day. Cavaignac suppressed the uprising with undeniable competence. A distinguished veteran commander of the invasion of Algeria before being voted into the Assembly, Cavaignac didn’t bother calling up the National Guard, whose loyalty as proven fickle, and did not hesitate to bring in necessary reinforcements or bombard barricades with cannons. Even more impressive though was the fact that he gave up his dictatorial powers once the crisis was over. Those who voluntarily give up supreme power in history are rare, and all deserve our respect. For his service the Assembly made him the Chief Executive nonetheless, and Cavaignac’s government banned numerous left-wing publications for supposedly inciting the uprising while making some genuine progress in alleviating underlying frustrations of the industrial working class.
The varying perceptions different segments of French society had on the June Days Uprising is also worth examining. Cavaignac and his moderate Republicans patted themselves on the back for saving the Republic while continuing their reforms, but everyone else didn’t see it that way. Alexis de Tocqueville, a prominent contemporary politician and historian, as well as Karl Marx both viewed the Uprising as an instance of class warfare. This meant that people acted according to their socio-economic status and clashed with those of different socio-economic statuses. That sounded convoluted, because it’s not simply a rich vs poor situation. It was the industrial workers of Paris against literally everyone else. Lesson seven: Everyone becomes your enemy when you start smashing windows. The moderates recognized the need for better conditions for the industrial working class and continued to enact legislation to try to make it better such as direct financial relief for the unemployed and setting maximum working hours. Yet the workers rioted anyways. Without the support of moderates, June turned out a lot different than February. The Republican moderates reacted to the uprising by becoming increasingly distrustful of the left. The working class of Paris likewise grew resentful of the moderates and never forgave Cavaignac for crushing the uprising. The rest of the nation looked to Paris with disgust. The countryside, both the rich landowners and the poor peasantry, saw that the Republic brought nothing but chaos.
Fig. 1, Delafosse, Jean-Baptiste, Louis-Eugène Cavaignac, Oil on Canvas, 1848, (Musée de l’Armée), https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Louis_Eug%C3%A8ne_Cavaignac_MdesA_2014.jpg.
Artwork located in the Army Museum, image accessed via Wikimedia
The Republicans were very worried about him. Many think that the return of a Bonaparte to the executive of France will subvert the republic like the first time. (They’re right) They were so worried that there were multiple attempts to change the rules of electing the president to prevent what seemed to be an inevitable Bonaparte candidacy from blowing out the competition. Which implied that under the original rules, which was universal male suffrage regardless of wealth, (one penis one vote I guess) Louis Napoleon would be guaranteed to win. Which means that everyone in the Legislative Assembly recognized how popular Louis Napoleon was. The Assembly was a raft of opposition in a sea of support for Bonaparte. How hypocritical then, is it that a government founded on bringing the right to vote to every Frenchman now feared those exact votes? This is lesson eight: Faustian bargains trading democratic principles for power must not be tolerated. I came across a quote from one of the sessions from when they were considering the rules of the election that brilliantly summarized the situation. It pains me that I can’t find it again. I think it was Alphonse de Lamartine who said something along the lines of “if we let Bonaparte win, he may destroy the Republic. But if we change the rules to stop him, then the Republic will be lost forever.” This recognizes the hypocrisy underlying the attempts to stop Louis Napoleon! What this quote means is that yes, Bonaparte (who by this time has begun openly campaigning for president) has all but explicitly stated his desire to become emperor, so allowing him to be elected will most likely result in him staging a coup. However! Those resisting the revenge of the Bonaparte can then rally in an alliance to restore the republic. (Disney please don’t sue me) Yet if the Assembly goes back on the promise of universal (male) suffrage that the Republic was founded on, then no election held by the Republic will ever be truly legitimate. By extension this taints the idea of republicanism and makes it much harder to ever restore confidence in a democratic experiment. Thus the Republic would be lost forever.
It’s also a terrible mistake to assume that Louis Napoleon was popular solely because of his name. I wrote a paper and the Wikipedia page for the French Presidential Election of 1848 trust me on this. Let’s start with the obvious and work our way there. Firstly, this is not just name familiarity. Historian Roger Price claims that a cult to Napoleon the first had existed in the countryside ever since the Empire fell. [1] (I can’t properly Chicago footnote on here I’ll try my best) Historian James McMillan also points out that in addition to the cult to the emperor himself there also existed a separate fondness of the Empire in general. [2] This meant that Louis Napoleon did not just carry a well known name, but a reminder of the good old days and a promise to many of making France great again. We’ve also touched on how Louis Napoleon wasn’t in France during the June Days Uprising. He briefly served as a constable in England, which he used to brand himself as the candidate for law and order, as opposed to the taint of civil unrest that tarnished any liberal candidate in the view of literally everybody who wasn’t in Paris. [3] Look back at lesson 7. Anyone who has anything they value are instinctively afraid of anarchy. Obviously. So any candidate that can not or will not condemn civil unrest is bound to seek out whoever stands for safety.
Far more important are the republicans’ self inflicted wounds. Both moderates and radicals understood that the Industrial Revolution was making society increasingly unequal and that poverty was increasingly an issue. But they were almost exclusively concerned only with urban poverty. [4] The burden of paying for the failed national workshops fell largely on France’s overwhelming rural population with the 45 centime (1/100th of a Franc) tax. The peasantry were also straddled with high mortgage rates owed, in no coincidence, often to government officials. [5] Louis Napoleon addressed both of these problems by promising cheap credit and lower taxes. The national workshops pretty much paid people to not work and didn’t benefit society in any way, unlike Louis Napoleon’s public works proposal which included efforts to improve communication and transportation like rail. [6] Bonaparte was very much a train enjoyer, and so are the peasants who voted for him because lower costs of transportation lowers the cost to sell their harvest. This is a reiteration of lesson 4, as the countryside felt, and honestly still feels, abandoned by the cities. The importance of highlighting the urban rural divide warrants this being its own rule though. So here is the ninth and final, most important lesson of 1848: The countryside refuses to pay for the experiments of the city. Ignore this at your own peril. Unless you’re Lenin, who’s willing to have your flag dyed with blood.
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte would go on to trounce the election with 74.33%, miles ahead of second-place Cavaignac’s 19.81%. A mere three years later he would overthrow a coup, and after a year finalizing a constitution would crown himself as Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Those words I cannot trace rings true; the spirit of republicanism lived on. Napoleon III felt compelled to justify his coup with referendums and a constitution. When his reign was ended by the birth of new Reich in Europe at the Hall of Mirrors, the French bowed not to another king, but made the Third Republic. France is on its Fifth Republic now so obviously there has been turmoil but La Marseillaise and the spirit of republicanism lives on.
Fig. 1, unknown artist, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, Medium unclear, 1852, (Léo Lespès, Histoire politique, anecdotique et philosophique de la ITemplate:Ere présidence, t. I, Paris, 1852.), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Louis-Napol%C3%A9on_Bonaparte_pr%C3%A9sident.JPG.
Image accessed via Wikimedia
1. Roger Price, Napoleon III and the Second Empire. London: Routledge, 1997, 1
2. James F. McMillan, Napoleon III. London: Longman, 1991, 18
3. Ibid., 28
4. George Fasel, “The Wrong Revolution: French Republicanism in 1848.” French Historical Studies 8, no. 4 (1974): 654–77, https://doi.org/10.2307/285857, 654
5. Ibid., 664
6. Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848-1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973, 512
Comments
Post a Comment