Revolutions - 7.28- Prince President Bonaparte

Episode Date: February 26, 2018

In Dec 1848, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte was elected president of France. 

Hello, and welcome to Revolutions. Episode 7.28, Prince President Bonaparte. We have reached a milestone here at the Revolutions podcast. With this, our 28th episode in the series on 1848, means that the series on 1848 has now passed Spanish-American independence as the second longest-running series of the show. Give yourselves a hand. But fear not, we will not be making a play at passing the record,

which is the French Revolution's 55 total episodes, that is never going to happen. And back here in 1848, there is now a light at the end of the tunnel. After you are finished with this episode, there will only be four episodes left for the 1848 series. Then I will take a break to gear up for our next installment, which is going to be another short mini-series, like I did for 1830, covering the Paris Commune. I am now committed to acquiring the complete set of French Revolutions. After the Paris Commune, we will hop back across the Atlantic to Mexico. And when we arrive, we will fill in the gaps on the independence and reconquest of New Spain,

and then get caught in the winds that swept Mexico between 1910 and 1920. The Mexican Revolution plays out more or less like the year of the four emperors, except it goes on for a whole decade. Then we will gear up for the big run through Russia. The Russian Revolution will take up all of 2019, so you can just block that out right now. but before we get to that, there are going to be some other fun developments I'll get to tell you about as the details get finalized. Because during the book tour, I was asked a lot about whether I was going to do another fundraiser so that people who hadn't had the opportunity yet could get some revolution swag. And also, when am I restarting the history of Rome and revolution's European tours?

So pay attention for news on both those fronts. And also pay attention for news about book number two, because we did such a good job with book number number. Number one, that they're letting me write a whole other one. But for the time being, let us return to 1848 the year that feels like it will never end, but is in fact about to end. We returned this week to France for the first time since episode 7.19, and since it's been a while, let's just remember where we're at. After the opposition banquet campaign, liberals, radicals, artisans, and workers joined forces in February of 1848 to overthrow the July monarchy. This had led to a provisional government, the declaration of a republic, and democratic

elections to a national assembly, whose job it would be to write a new constitution for Republican France. In the meantime, an executive commission had been set up with Alphonse de la Martin as its president. But then what happened? That's right. The more radical left-wing workers, students, and socialists protested the closure of the national workshops. That led to a great confrontation in June, wherein the liberals joined with the forces of order to halt the advance of anything resembling a second revolution. Now, though the June insurrection had failed, it was enough of a crisis that it brought down the executive commission. As the barricades were going up around Paris, the National Assembly voted to give General Louis Eugène Cavaniac near dictatorial powers to pacify the capital. Cavaniac was chosen in part because he was the best available general for the job,

and also because his Republican credentials were unimpeachable. He was the son of a member of the old national convention, the one that had voted to behead the king. He was also the brother of a once prominent but now deceased radical Republican. But Kavanaugh's Republican scruples were not in conflict with his belief in order over the anarchism being promised by the leftist rabble. So when Kavignac pacified Paris in June 1848, he did not spare the grape shot. Thousands lay dead. But even after the smoke cleared, Cavaniac stayed on the job, now joined by a small temporary

emergency ministry who would continue to wield broad executive authority until the Constitution was completed, and Paris itself was technically under martial law until the end of October. Cavaniac and his ministry closed seditious political clubs, shut down 11 newspapers, dissolve suspect national guard companies, and purged most of the prefects and administrators that former minister of the interior, Ledru Hollande, had appointed. The Kavanaugh government also brought a decisive end to the national workshops. They were not coming back. So everywhere you looked, the forces of order were clamping down on any and all remaining threats from the left.

This attack on the left found broad support across France. After June, public opinion turned decidedly conservative. The threat of a second revolution, a social revolution. galvanized people from all different stripes to join together in a shared defense of the existing order. Subsequent by-elections to replace members of the National Assembly, and then local elections for any number of posts, showed a marked propensity to return conservative candidates. Inside the Chamber of Deputies, a working coalition of conservative deputies was eventually dubbed, unofficially at least, the Party of Order.

The Party of Order brought together legitimists, that is, people who still supported the return to the bourbons, orleanists who had been orphaned by the fall of the July monarchy, Gisot-style liberal conservatives, members of the old dynastic left, like Odilion Barreau, who, you'll remember, was once a time the principal opposition leader to Gizot and Louis Philippe. There was also a gaggle of center-left independence like Adolf Tierra and Alexei de Tocqueville, who had their own idiosyncratic beliefs, but who now rallied to the forces of order over the forces of further revolution. With the party of order acquiring a lion's share of the power in the summer and fall of 1848,

the French left was reeling. Most of their leaders were either dead, imprisoned, or exiled. Their clubs were being shut down, their newspapers couldn't publish, they were under constant surveillance, they couldn't organize demonstrations. The remaining left-wing leaders tried to keep alive the notion that the February Revolution had fundamentally been a People's Revolution, that the June insurrection was an attempt to fulfill the promises of February, and the government's violent response was a betrayal of the February Revolution, not a defense of it. But not very many were listening at this particular moment. The left was able to organize some banquets, and they raised funds for their imprisoned comrades.

But after June 1848, the French left was a tree that was pruned back not to its trunk, but to its roots. Caught in between the rising party of order and the broken left were the committed political radicals. If one man could be considered their leader, it was Ledru-Roulin, trying to regain his political footing. As Minister of the Interior of the Provisional Government, on May the 15th, he had called out the National Guard to face a parade of demonstrators, not to defend them, but to stop them. This incident exposed Le Droulalan as, yes, a committed Democrat, but socially, on. the side of the party of order. But that said, he was a committed Democrat, and he sincerely believed that the arrival of a representative Democratic Republic

had been the point to the February Revolution. Now, out of government, Ledre Hollande returned to his more familiar opposition work. He hammered the Cavaniac government for their turn against civil liberties, and then also hammered them for their unwillingness to support fellow revolutionaries across Europe, who were fighting for the same ideals that the French had allegedly won back in February. And that segues us nicely into a brief discussion of the Second Republic's foreign policy. Now, France had kick-started all these revolutions back in February, so what is their opinion of the explosions in Germany and Austria, Hungary, and Italy? Would the Second Republic follow in the footsteps

of the First Republic and export the revolution at the end of a bayonet? The answer was a resounding No. Remember, Alphonse de la Martín had issued that declaration to the people of Europe, wherein he said that France would support the aspirations of other downtroddenations, while also signaling to the crown heads of Central Europe through diplomatic channels that France had no ability or interest in intervening abroad. The further explosions in Central Europe over the summer tested France's policy of non-intervention. Now, the French government had, for example, tolerated German radicals, hopping back and forth across the border, and even allowed that patriotic poet, Georg Herveg,

to form a legion in the lead-up to Friedrich Hecker's uprising. But there were limits to French patients. They did not actively support any of the German revolutionaries, and when the defeated Friedrich Hekhar lingered too long in Strasbourg, the government prodded him to move along. This is what prompted his final emigration to the United States. The government also did not do much to support the polls in their struggle. against the Prussians, though they had offered a very slight boost at the very beginning of

their struggle. Remember, there had been a lot of exiled revolutionary Poles living in Paris at the beginning of 1848. When the greater Polish uprising got going, the French government put all those revolutionaries on a train and shipped them back east to Poland. If nothing else, their uprising would distract Prussia and Austria from worrying about the newborn and still very wobbly second French Republic. But when that Polish uprising started to collapse in May, the French government offered no assistance. As 1848 war on, Italy then became a central focus. It's only natural that the mood in France was supportive of the Italians, throwing off the shackles of the hapsburgs, and there were lots of people who wanted France to sail to Italy to help

liberate the Italians and roll back the forces of reactionary absolutism. But now you're talking about war with Austria. And remember, the guys in the French government knew the history of the French Revolution like the back of their hand. It was hanging over everything, the specter of the French Revolution. And here they were again, just like in the first French Revolution, facing the possibility of war with Austria. And all kinds of red warning bells were going off saying, don't go to war with Austria. The issue would finally come to ahead in August, though. After the withdrawal of Piedmont from Lumberty Venetia, emissaries from Venice arrived in Paris to plead the case of their city. We are a republic just like you.

We are trying to fight a war against the forces of tyrannical absolutism. The Venetians asked the French for help. They needed money and supplies and arms, of course, but they also just wanted the French to intervene. Use your navy to clear the Austrian blockade. use your armies to fight the Austrians in northern Italy. Help us. The French ministry was actually divided 50-50 about whether or not to intervene in Italy on behalf of the Venetians. The deciding vote was cast by General Kavanaugh, who said no to war with Austria. This left the Venetians all on their own. So as you can see, though the French Revolution of February 1848 and the subsequent Second

Republic were an inspiration to the revolutionaries across Central Europe, those revolutionaries would find no support from the Second Republic. When a French army does intervene in Italy, it will be deployed in defense of the Pope, not the Republicans who had driven him out of Rome. And while all of this was going on, the National Assembly was also busy with its raison d'etre, writing a constitution for Republican France. Now, a committee had been formed way back on May the 17th, draft proposals for the final Constitution. But they had submitted their first draft of these proposals on June the 19th, which was just as Paris was seething its way into the June insurrection. The subsequent explosion had knocked everything backwards, and the National Assembly did not

come back to pick up the proposals for the Constitution until the end of August. The National Assembly then spent September and October of 1848 debating their new Constitution. They reviewed and approved the standard list of civil rights, freedom from arbitrary arrest, freedom of religion, freedom of association, freedom of the press, private property rights, all the stuff you can probably now recite by heart. Most of it was accepted as a matter of course, but radical members of the Assembly couldn't help but notice that their fellow delegates also voted to continue the existing press laws that had been written by like Gizzo and the Orleanists.

There was a prohibition on attacking the state or inciting sedition and insurrection, which could and did mean anything. So it appeared that the Second Republic was going to be long on lip service, but short on actual commitment to political liberty. There were also clashes over the legislative branch, specifically whether it should be one house or two. Now, there had always been an upper house and a lower house in French legislatures ever since Dermidor, because even now, More than 50 years later, a one-chamber system would always be associated with the reign of terror. Some men like Adolf Pierre, Odilien Barreau, and Alexé de Tocqueville said that a single chamber assembly was a revolutionary Pandora's box that we should not open, and we should stick with a two-chamber system. The counter-argument was that there was now no justifiable basis for an upper house.

In Europe, parliamentary upper houses were a relic of the old nobility. You know, the British had the House of Lords. it was literally a house of lords. But in France, the hereditary nobility had been abolished. Post-Termedorian constitutions had dealt with this by replacing the old nobility with a new hereditary purage system. But that too had now been abolished. So in this very democratic Second Republic, who exactly would sit in this theoretical upper house?

And on what basis would they make their claim to superiority? So the men debating the Constitution of 1848 ditched the upper house. They took a deep breath and they voted for a single chamber legislature. 750 members each elected to a five-year term with a fifth of the house turning over each year. Now, the guys voting for this single chamber assembly had some assurances that that assembly would not be able to run off and grab Madame La Guillotine because for the first time, France would also have. have a strong president. Having concluded that the monarchy would not be brought back, the men of the assembly rallied around the idea of a popularly elected president, something on the model of what was happening over the United States. That executive president would then be an

expression of the people's will, both in connection to and in opposition to that single chamber legislative assembly. So this is all like standard checks and balances stuff. Although the presidency was an idea that could not be stopped, Alexei de Tocqueville worried about it. Based on his own observations of the United States and France, he argued that the presidency worked in the United States because the office was relatively weak, and the Americans had a long history of decentralized collaborative government. France, on the other hand, had a tradition of a strong executive and a highly centralized authoritarian government, at least dating from the time of the Sun King.

If you give France a president, every man who runs for the office will have a notion to make that office into a throne. But the sense inside the assembly was that if the republic was going to work, it was going to need a popularly elected executive leader. Most of the guys in the National Assembly were honest to God Democrats who wanted the president to be elected by universal manhood suffrage. So that's what they wrote into the Constitution. and they would almost all live to regret it. The last thing I'll talk about in the Constitution of 1848 is the right to work. In mid-September, a debate opened up between de Tocqueville, Lédroulaire and Lémertyne about what the Constitution should say on the social question. De Tocqueville gave a defense of free markets.

He said that state support or intervention into the economy would lead directly to communism, which was illiberal, undemocratic, and illogical. Ledru-Lelan, trying to heal his rift with the left, said that the right to work traced its theoretical and moral roots back to the heart of the original French Revolution, and it had been renewed by blood at the barricades of February, and even during the tragedy of the June uprising. More to the point, the right to work was just good policy. Le Martin then stood up and argued that even if the right to work didn't need to be in the Constitution,

there did need to be some statement about services for the unemployed, the disabled, the widowed, and orphaned, at least on humanitarian grounds, because surely we can all agree that people have a right not to starve to death. I mean, what was the February Revolution all about, if not the people? And if the people aren't being taken care of, then what's the point of all this? All we've done is recreate the hated governments of Francois Guiseau. But the conservative turn of French politics by the end of 1848 meant that the right to work was not, in fact, going to be recognized as a right. So by now we're into September of 1848, and a new round of by-elections were coming up.

These elections were meant to replace and reshuffle members of the National Assembly as delegates came and went over the course of the year. Topping the list of the new incoming delegates is the man we must turn our attention to. He was short, not quite five foot six inches tall. He was cartoonish. He had a silly head that was too big for his body, a silly oversized mustache, and a silly pointed goatee. He was not a great speaker. He spoke French with a slight German accent.

He had the air and mannerisms of an English gentleman. He was almost a self-created caricature of himself. This is Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who was about to become the most popular politician in France and then used that popularity to destroy popular government. Now, we talked a bit about Louis Napoleon when we were discussing the politics of the July monarchy, but that was a long time ago. This is like episode 7.2 stuff. So let's recap. Louis Napoleon was born in 1808. He was the son of Louis Bonaparte, one of Napoleon's brothers. He was, however, only seven years old when Uncle Napoleon abdicated, and young Louis Napoleon

wound up in exile with his mother in Switzerland. Born and bred into heavy, doses of Bonapartist and Napoleonic myths, the young Louis Napoleon grew up with a powerful sense of his family's destiny. This led to a ready willingness to follow in the footsteps of his uncle and use popular revolutionary energy to fulfill what he now believed was his destiny. In the early 1830s, he had temporarily joined an Italian Carbonari lodge and was forced to flee the peninsula in the wake of one of the various failed Italian revolutions. Then after the July monarchy entrenched itself, Louis Napoleon staged a failed coup in Strasbourg in 1836. He managed to escape from that failed coup, though, and spent the next couple of years in exile in Brazil, New York City,

and then finally London. In 1837, he inherited a fortune from his mother and bided his time for four years as a roguish foreign charmer in London High Society. Then in 1840, he got it into his head that the people of France were just awaiting his glorious return. So he bought some guns, he hired some boats, and he landed on the northern coast of France with about 60 men. They were planning to overthrow the government and were instead surrounded and arrested in about two and a half minutes. This second failed coup by the mad nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte made him an object of ridicule and scorn rather than fear. When it came time to sentence him for his treason, one newspaper argued against execution saying one doesn't kill crazy people, one just locks them up.

So Louis Napoleon was locked up. Specifically, he was locked up in the fortress of Ham in northern France. That would be his home for the next six years. It was not an unpleasant confinement, though, and he had two sons by a mistress. He spent most of his time writing, though. As the heir to the bonaparts, he had always studied political economy diligently, and over the course of his life he had written various tracks, treaties, and books. This included a manual on artillery, thoughts on the political system of Switzerland, and then in 1839, a book called Napoleonic Ideas that expounded, a political philosophy that boiled down to a popular form of enlightened despotism. Louis Napoleon believed in popular sovereignty, but also believed that the people should elect a leader

who should then rule with a free hand. So he advocated this weird form of democratic authoritarian, But for Louis Napoleon, the authoritarianism had to be of an enlightened variety. It had to serve the people. It had to advance the national interest. Now imprisoned in what he jokingly referred to as the University of Ham, Louis Napoleon continued his studies in political economy and published articles and pamphlets and books that soon made him a popular figure in opposition circles during the 1840s. Most famously, he wrote a popular book called The Extinction of poverty, which provided all kinds of technocratic-minded solutions to all the social problems of the day. This humanitarian expression of democratic, enlightened despotism, made him popular on the left. Louis Napoleon was actually addressing their issues, rather than what they usually got, which is politicians saying, ah, don't worry, it'll just work itself out. But though his time in captivity was fine, Louis Napoleon was not very happy as a prisoner, and in 1848 he staged a jailbreak.

With the fortress of Ham undergoing reconstruction, workers came and went fluidly. On May the 25th, 1846, Louis Napoleon disguised himself as a worker and just walked out the door. One day later, he was back in London. He resumed his place in society, became the lover of a wealthy widow named Harriet Howard, who was happy to bankroll his future plans. Louis Napoleon was still in London when the February Revolution of 1848 exploded and he wasted no time going home. He departed on February the 27th and arrived in Paris just after Lamartin declared a republic. But it was feared that the presence of the heir of Bonaparte would upset everything,

and Lamartin begged Louis Napoleon to go back to London, at least until after the first elections have been run. wanting to prove his loyalty to the new regime beyond a shadow of a doubt, Louis Napoleon did not argue. He got on a boat and he went back to London. But that first round of elections showed just how much the name Bonaparte still meant something. Observing things from London, Louis Napoleon was delighted to see the election of three of his cousins. He was even more delighted to find that in a subsequent by-election on June the 4th, Louis-Napoleon himself was elected in four departments.

and was in the top five of the candidates in Paris. His election should not be surprising. He owned the most famous name in France, and was at that moment well known in radical and socialist and worker circles for the extinction of poverty more than anything else. But Lamartin and his allies continued to fear letting Louis Napoleon into the country, and so they worked inside the National Assembly to reject his election. This was a man who had been twice guilty of treasonous rebellion.

can we let him into the National Assembly? Never quite addressing that La Martine himself was guilty of at least one time treasonous rebellion. So there was a confrontation brewing between the defenders of democracy and a guy who had been elected by the people, but again, Louis Napoleon played it cool. He didn't want anyone to be afraid of him, so at the end of June, he voluntarily declined to take the seat he had been elected to. This turned out to be a fortuitous masterstroke of the highest order, because it meant that Louis Napoleon was not in France for the entire summer of 1848. Each further day and week and month only seemed to discredit the Second Republic even further. But Louis Napoleon was untouched by all of that, and he could now

position himself exactly where he wanted to be, exactly where he believed his destiny pointed him, to be the savior of France. With Louis Napoleon winning election in September, his return to France was now inevitable. He would not be denied. Louis Napoleon had been the candidate in 13 departments and elected in five. In Paris, he had won 110,000 of 247,000 votes, by far the largest of anyone, and it wasn't particularly close. So this time, Louis Napoleon left London and arrived in Paris on September the 24th, and this time he was here to stay. He set up a headquarters in the Place von Dome, which if you've been to Paris, you know that it centers around a large Napoleonic column celebrating the victory at Austerlitz, just in case Louis Napoleon thought

anybody was missing the point. So members of the National Assembly rustled at Louis Napoleon's appearance, his credentials, and his popular standing. Here they were about to create the first presidency in French history, and the heir to the authoritarian Bonaparte is clearly aiming to be the first president. Louis Napoleon rarely attended the National Assembly. He spoke less and voted hardly at all. His eye was on the presidency. Now, since electing a Bonaparte president did not sit well with many in the assembly, there was a last-minute push to have the assembly itself elect the president. But again, the creation of and commitment to democratic elections was what the February Revolution was supposed to have been about. So most of the guys

in the National Assembly thought that they had to stick to their guns. Otherwise, again, they were no better than Giesel. But this commitment to democratic principles turned out to be the stone by which they were all sunk. So guys like Lamartin, they did stick to their guns. They said, let the people decide. But as Lamartin argued in favor of the popular presidency, he also got language inserted into the final draft of the Constitution, saying, after the president's four-year term was up, he could not run for re-election. So even if Louis-Napoleon Bonapart was the first president of France, it's not like he could serve longer than four years, that would be unconstitutional. So with that all buttoned up, on November 4th, 1848, the National Assembly voted to adopt the Constitution, which meant that it was now

time for the first presidential election in French history. The election turned out to be a six-way race, and I want to briefly go through each candidate because they represented a good cross-section of French politics as France transitions from all these emergency provisional governments into what they hope will be the permanent forms of the Second Republic. So out on the furthest fringes of the right, we get General Chaghanier, who was running as a full-on legitimist. He supported the bourbon claim to the throne, and he advocated for their return after the fall of the July monarchy. This is a pretty interesting platform for a man running to be the president of a republic. So de Tocqueville warned of a man trying to make the office a throne for himself, Chaginier was doing it clearly on

behalf of someone else. Then on the fringes of the far left, we have the socialist candidate, Francois-Fassant-Rospay. Running from prison, because he had been arrested after the May 15 uprising, he was a member of the inner circle of the socialist left. But, as discussed, the left was now broken. Everyone else had been in prison, exiled, or stifled, Respai himself was in jail, and after the June insurrection, socialism brought associations with the new reign of terror. So, Respai is going to fare very badly. There just weren't enough socialists at the time to begin with, and the ones who were going to vote were throwing their weight to Louis Napoleon for reasons we're going to talk about here in a second.

Adjacent to the rump of the socialist was the tottering radical wing, led by their candidate Ledru-Roulon. As I said, he was trying to regain his footing after his support for the provisional government left his name mud in many circles. But he still had support amongst those who believed in liberal liberty and who wanted truly democratic institutions up and down the board to not just be a mere republic. Supported by skilled artisans, shopkeepers, small town lawyers, and citizens of provincial cities, leduloulogne campaign for what he thought was the point to the February Revolution, a democratic republic. But he was attacked from both the right as being a frothing revolutionary and from the left as a stooge of the party of order. By the fall of 1848, Led Lulalan was trying to make inroads with the left by preaching the right to work,

and though that played in some circles, mostly he just stank with the stench of the now loath provisional government, and no matter how many times he washed his suit, he wasn't going to get the stench out. Now, no one stank harder with the stench of the provisional government than the fourth candidate on the ballot Alphonse de la Martín. Alphonse de Le Martín is the poster child for life comes at you fast. During the banquet days, Lamartin was the most celebrated poet and historian in France, and he had used his academic and literary celebrity to launch a political career. In early 1848, he was the most popular opposition leader in France. He was independent-minded, with strong democratic sympathies, and a powerful writer and speaker.

During the February Revolution, he had seized the bull by the horns. He had been the one to declare the provisional government. He guided its first marathon meetings. He was the one who proclaimed a republic. When he ran for office in the first election after the February Revolution, Lamartin got 1.2 million votes from voters in more than a dozen departments, by far the most of any man in the nation. He was then the foreign minister and the head of the executive commission, and all in all,

a symbol of what the provisional government stood for, which was now hanging like a stone around his neck, and Lamartin's reputation was sinking fast. His support for Ladul-Lalan had alienated conservatives, and then the events of May and June had soured him to the left. His unity and harmony schick stopped playing after June, which had shattered the myth of unity and harmony. Le Martin was still influential inside the assembly. He was a leader among that group that had all arrived at the beginning of the National Assembly. But outside the halls, his alienation from both the right and the left would leave Le Martin without a chair when the music stopped.

The presidential election of 1848 really then came down to two men, General Cavaniac and Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. The somewhat depressed writer George Sand then wrote that this was a choice between the bloody saber of Algeria and the rusty sword of empire. With Lamartin now friendless and Ledru-Alan clearly drumming up votes out in the far-left fringes, the candidate of the establishment Republicans became General Kavanaugh. As I said, he was a dedicated Republican, but he was now hated by the left, who considered him nothing less than a butcher. So he could obviously expect no support whatsoever from that quarter,

which meant that if he was going to get more votes, he was going to have to appeal to the party of the order, get them to come around on him. But they were already turning in a different direction. They were all turning to Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. And in fact, almost everyone was turning to Louis-Napolian Bonaparte. He was a blank slate, and he became all things to all people. First and foremost, he was the heir of the glorious Napoleonic Empire. When France was not just great, it was always.

well-run. The Napoleonic Code, the promotion of arts and sciences, well-run administrations. The people of France were more or less forgetting the horrors of Napoleonic War, and Bonapartism now meant competent government at a time when such a thing seemed impossible. He was also, as we've seen, legitimately popular in left-wing circles, thanks to his work, the abolition of poverty. During the campaign, he would speak of work for the unemployed and old-age pensions, progressive labor laws for the working man, and shared prosperity for everyone. So, for the left, Louis Napoleon was a candidate that represented social progress, if not social revolution. Meanwhile, over on the right, the party of order had seen through Louis Napoleon's

rhetoric about the poor, and had determined that he was really one of them. Because he often spoke of the importance of security, the Catholic Church, the family, private property, and his authoritarian roots would surely allow him to brook no radical uprisings. So, when he announced his candidacy for president, Louis Napoleon drew support from the left, the center, and the right. But the most important thing about his candidacy is that he had simply not been around for the entirety of 1848. Every other candidate for president was tainted in some way by what had happened since February. Louis Napoleon was not. So if you were a voter and you were mad at the direction of France since February, Louis Napoleon was your manned. If nothing else, he was a protest vote.

The campaign got going in earnest after the passage of the Constitution in early November, but as early as October the 20th, De Tocqueville was already predicting that Bonaparte would win huge. Since his return to Paris, Louis Napoleon had charmed and converted as many members of the existing political elite as he could. And even if he didn't charm or convert them, plenty were willing to support him anyway. Adolf Thierre said Louis Napoleon was a cretan, but he also publicly voted for him. So too did the leader of the old dynastic left, Odilion Ballot, also the arch-conservative Chateaubriand, and the socialist Louis Blanc. Louis-Napolian was truly all things to all people. His well-financed campaign also allowed agents to spread out across the rest of France,

banging the Bonapartist drum. And if nothing else, name recognition alone was a huge factor in the election of 1848. Louis Napoleon bore the most famous name in France. And once it became clear that it was a two-man race between him and Cavaniac, Louis-Napolian gobbled up the votes from the anyone but Cavaniac left. But that said, they also just voted for him because he was pretty good on a lot of their issues. They voted for Louis-Napolian as much as they voted against Cavaniac. The voting was held on December the 10th and 11th, 1848. The weather was good. The two, the two, turnout was over 75% and the result was a landslide. The Legitimist General Schengunegh got 4,600 votes. That is 4,600 votes. Alphonse de LaMartin got 21,000 votes. The Socialist

Respai got 37,000 votes. The Radical Democrat, Leduo O'Anne, well, he got 375,000 votes, which, hey, that's a lot of votes. General Cavaniac, though, got 1.4 million. votes, which is also pretty dang good. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, though, received 5.5 million votes. He absolutely crushed his opposition. He obliterated the other candidates. Louis Napoleon won a majority in every department but four, and he walked home with a cool 75% of the total popular vote. In many ways, this election had been a referendum on the leadership of France since February, and the verdict was damning. Louis Napoleon was coming into the presidency with a huge popular mandate.

He was more popular than the entire existing political establishment. And you guys, he knew it. Now before we wrap this up, though, I do need to highlight the final humiliation of Lamartin. Now, back in April, he had gotten, remember, 1.2 million votes, more than any delegate into the National Assembly. Now, here we are, just over six months later, and he mustered 21,000. total. There was a department that in April had given him 129,000 votes. They had given him 99% of the votes in that department. This time, that same department gave him 2,286. I mean, that's got to hurt. And it did. La Martine did not even attend the session of the Assembly where

the results of the election were ratified, which was good, because there was audible snickering when his total was read. The presidential election of 1848 was the end of Lamarine's very brief political career. He returned to literature, he returned to poetry, and he never took up politics again. On December the 20th, 1848, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte took the oath of office in front of the National Assembly. Democracy had had its day. The people had spoken. They had voted overwhelmingly for this man to be president. And Louis Napoleon was already well on his way to using that popular mandate to undermine the very democratic system that had elevated him in the first place. An early signal of this is that Louis Napoleon would not be called president.

He requested that he be called Prince President. His first prime minister was the constitutional monarchist, Odilien Barreau. The legitimate candidate, General Schengenier, he was put in charge of the army garrison in Paris. As further appointments were made, the lack of men at all committed to this thing called the Second Republic, was getting pretty noticeable. And Louis Napoleon, while he was well on his way to completing his uncle's run through the end of the French Revolution, Louis Napoleon would be Prince President where his uncle had been first consul, but they would wind up at the same place.

They would both be the Emperor of France. And that is where we will leave France for good, at least for this series on the revolutions of 1848. Their revolution is now over. Louis Napoleon is going to make it just to the point where his presidential term is about to expire and he's supposedly barred from running for re-election. That's when he stages a coup and sets up the Second French Empire. But we'll be able to talk more about that when we're done with 1848, because we'll be picking up in Paris with the collapse of the Second Empire in 1870 and 1871. But for the rest of this series, we will now turn permanently back to Central Europe

for the final acts of the revolutions of 1848, acts that actually spilled out. into 1849. And next week, we will set up another new leader for the future of Europe, because his time too has come. It was time to bring a real emperor to the Austrian throne. And one of the most long-lasting effects of the revolutions of 1848 was the arrival of Emperor Franz Yosef.