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4
Liberalisation
From 1860 the context for political activity was again to be gradually transformed.
Although, contrary to the periodisation commonly employed by historians, it is difficult to agree that a genuinely ‘liberal’ empire existed before May 1869 when most of the restrictions on the right to hold public meetings as well as on the press were finally lifted, significant steps had already been taken towards the creation of a parliamentary regime. A decree on 24 November 1860 conceded to the Corps législatif the right to discuss the address from the throne outlining government policy at the beginning of each parliamentary session. The Emperor further
announced his attention to nominate ministers without portfolio (initially Magne, Billault and Baroche) and, in 1863, a minister of state (Billault then Rouher) to explain and defend government policy before parliament. Moreover,
parliamentary debates were now to be reproduced in full in the official Moniteur and might be reprinted in other newspapers. Publicity would provide the essential stimulus to debate. In December 1861, the Emperor responded to anxiety in
conservative financial circles about the growth of the national debt and the unconventional arrangements made by Haussmann, as Prefect of the department of the Seine, for financing the massive public works programme which was
transforming the capital. He conceded greater parliamentary control over the budget. This would provide the essential means for the extension of parliamentary influence in every sphere of policy. Throughout the decade too, although
repressive legislation remained intact, much greater tolerance was displayed towards the press and public meetings, partly because of the adverse public 39
reaction to the loi de sûreté générale. The introduction of more permissive legislation in 1868 would be seen by conservatives as the final opening of the flood gates.
Reasons for liberalisation
Why did this process of liberalisation occur? It seems likely that once social order had been secured, the Emperor had always intended to proceed with measures of reconciliation directed at liberals and republicans. He was encouraged in this, to varying degrees, by his half-brother Morny and by his cousins Walewski – the illegitimate son of Napoléon I – and the Prince Napoléon-Jérôme and he chose to ignore the misgivings of his more authoritarian ministers – Baroche, Fould and Rouher. He was anxious, given his own deteriorating health and the youth of his heir, the Prince-Imperial (born in 1856), to create a regime less dependent upon his own survival. It seems likely that he also realised that authoritarian government was becoming an obstacle to the maintenance of the business confidence so vital to the achievement of the economic and social modernisation he believed were
essential both to internal stabilisation and the retention of France’s great power status. Initially, at least, liberalisation probably represented confidence in the strength and stability of the regime and in its ability to control the process of change. However, the diverse series of ambitious decisions taken from 1859 and affecting both internal and foreign policy had complex and often contradictory effects. These included an amnesty for republicans; alliance with Piedmont-Savoy in support of a ‘Europe of the nationalities’ and as a further stage in the rejection of the humiliating peace imposed on France at Vienna in 1815; a loosening of the alliance between church and state established during the Second Republic in reaction against rampant clericalism; the path-breaking 1860 commercial treaty with Britain and subsequently with other major trading partners which
substantially reduced tariff protection, as a means of intensifying competitive pressures and forcing the pace of modernisation, of opening up new markets, and of improving diplomatic relations with Britain; the growing role accorded to the Corps législatif; and the legalisation of strikes in 1864. The sense of grievance aroused by these policies among a wide range of social groups, together with the growing awareness that the regime was unlikely again to resort to brute force against its opponents, encouraged increasingly open and vocal criticism,
especially from those clericals and liberals who were reminded by the Italian and 40
free trade policies that the Emperor was capable of using his prerogative powers to develop personal policies which might damage their own particular interests.
Thus, they were encouraged to demand even greater parliamentary control over policy and a range of political reforms intended to increase their own influence.
The growing vitality of this liberal opposition, and increasingly also of the republicans, soon made it clear that the Emperor had failed to achieve his objective of securing some sort of national reconciliation. In this situation, Napoléon III, unlike his predecessors, was prepared to adapt. Liberalisation became primarily a means of assuring the elites upon whose cooperation the regime inescapably
depended, by means of the restoration of at least some of the political power they had possessed during the July Monarchy. The prolonged and apparently grudging character of the process, however, would ensure that these socially conservative liberals would be less grateful than they might otherwise have been. Management of the process by which an authoritarian regime liberalised itself was fraught with all manner of difficulties. Once expectations had been aroused it would prove increasingly difficult to satisfy them. The Emperor’s motives were always
suspect. Certainly considerable suspicion would be aroused by his openings to the left. These involved conciliatory overtures to workers initiated by a discussion group established in the Palais Royale in Paris in 1861 by the ‘republican’ prince, Napoléon-Jérôme; the dispatch of a workers’ delegation to the 1862 London
International Exposition; the legalisation of strikes in 1864 which was combined with the growing toleration of technically illegal workers’ organisations; and the ending of the inequality enshrined in legislation which had accepted the
employers’ word in preference to the workers’ in case of dispute. Ultimately, this attempt to reduce the regime’s dependence on the old elites failed. It could never have had more than a marginal impact on the conduct of government even if it had succeeded in reinforcing the regime’s electoral strength. In practice, there was little alternative to the continued dependence on the traditional conservative and liberal political elites. In consequence, as support from all quarters declined, liberalisation increasingly came to represent a response to pressure. It constituted a sort of holding action against the apparently unending growth of opposition.
The growth of opposition
This growth was clearly evident in the gradual collapse of the system of official candidature beginning during the 1863 election campaign. The system was
41
challenged in the first place by the simple increase in the number of opposition candidates and, consequently, in the scale of electoral agitation, and by the willingness of some former official candidates with powerful local bases to criticise government policy, even if this meant the loss of the administration’s support in elections. Influential figures like the Marquises d’Andelarre and de Gramont, both of them landowners and deputies for the Haute-Saône, together with the textile entrepreneur Kolb-Bernard from the Nord and 45 other clerical and protectionist deputies, expressed their concern about the consequences of the Emperor’s Italian policy for the temporal power and spiritual independence of the Papacy and of his free-trade policies for cereal prices and the viability of the metallurgical and textiles industries. Threateningly, in industrial centres like Reims and Saint-Etienne, it was not the established mercantile elite but the younger up-and-coming generation of businessmen, impatient at their exclusion from political power, who supported the liberal opposition, and who would
provide by 1868–69 the funds required to establish newspapers like the Saint-Etienne L’Eclaireur and L’Indépendence Rémois. Significantly too, the political outlook of Orleanists of the older generation was evolving during the 1860s towards a liberalism more compatible wi
th the system of manhood suffrage.
As elite commitment to the regime declined, effective electoral management
became increasingly difficult. Reports from prefects and state prosecutors
revealed that resentment of official interference with the ‘dignity’ and
‘independence’ of voters was accumulating. Even by many government
supporters the full range of official pressure was felt to have become outmoded since the threat of revolution seemed to have disappeared. There appeared to be a growing risk that official advice to the electorate might simply be rejected, which inevitably called the whole system into question. In 1863, prefects had already begun to behave with noticeably greater circumspection, particularly in
departments like the Nord in which so many notables already had been alienated by the regime’s economic, foreign and religious policies. The call for the defence of vital local interests was a powerful means of reinforcing the influence of regional elites. In most parts of northern and central France, the majority of textile, metallurgical and mining entrepreneurs opposed the reduction in customs tariffs, exaggerated the likely impact of British competition, and mobilised substantial support through professional organisations, chambers of commerce, elected
councils and the local press. From 1861 these views were represented in the Corps législatif by the influential deputies Kolb-Bernard, Plichon and Brame as well as 42
by Thiers acting as the paid spokesman of the Anzin mining company. They
tended to blame almost every economic ill upon the commercial treaty with
Britain, despite the vagaries of the economic cycle and the disruptive impact of the American Civil War on the textiles and export industries. Additional targets were excessive government expenditure on the army and upon the embellishment of
Paris and other cities, and such overseas adventures as the attempt to create a client state under the rule of the Habsburg Archduke Maximillian in Mexico. In the 1860s, Thiers once again assumed the role of the most effective parliamentary critic of the regime.
The results of the May 1863 elections registered the growth of opposition.
Aware of their continued relative weakness, in some circumstances opposition groups were prepared to collaborate – a factor contributing to the election of eight republicans and Thiers in Paris and to that of the moderate republican Marie together with the eminent Legitimist lawyer Berryer in Marseille. However, such cooperation between extremes was talked about more often than effected. Of
much greater significance was the tendency in constituencies where only one opposition candidate stood for opponents of the regime to concentrate their votes on him. Significantly, once the results were known, Persigny – a symbol of the authoritarian approach and responsible for the conduct of the elections as Minister of the Interior – was dismissed. Another consequence was the formation of an extremely heterogeneous parliamentary opposition which included some of the growing number of Legitimists prepared to ignore the Comte de Chambord’s
injunctions to abstain, irreconcilable Orleanist notables like Rémusat and Auguste Casimir-Perier, independent liberals and moderate republicans. In the short term, the most significant development was to be the emergence of a Third Party ( tiers parti) made up of both monarchist and Bonapartist proponents of conservative, liberal reform. Although only 32 advocates of outright opposition to the regime had been successful (including 17 republicans and democratic liberals and 15
independents, i.e. conservative and essentially monarchist liberals and clericals), the fact that most large towns and, above all, Paris, the capital city of the Empire, had supported them was cause for considerable alarm. Moreover, if in most areas republican intervention had been rather tentative, the increasingly open and widespread expression of republican ideals gave considerable encouragement to still hesitant potential supporters.
By 1869, when general elections were again due, even those candidates still prepared to accept the official nomination regarded the most blatant forms of 43
administrative pressure as counter-productive. There seemed to be a clear
incompatibility between the system of official candidature and the liberties accorded to the press and public meetings so recently in 1868. Once again these reforms had decisively transformed the political context. Acts of political opposition had become far less risky than before. Moreover, an expansive
economic and social environment had widened horizons and increased the sense of independence of many voters. Interest in politics was being renewed, ending the widespread indifference and apathy of the previous two decades. There was an immediate and spectacular revival in the number of newspapers and political meetings. The press law was especially important in the provinces where around 150 new newspapers were created in time for the 1869 election, with 120 of them hostile to the government (Zeldin 1958: 95). The maintenance of administrative surveillance and the slowness with which these reforms (promised in January 1867) were implemented as a result of the Emperor’s unwillingness to break with loyal authoritarians like Rouher, Baroche and Persigny, once again made them appear to be a grudging response to pressure. In reaction to this hesitation in Paris and in 46 constituencies, the candidates favoured by the government refused, or were advised by the administration not to accept, the official designation.
Furthermore, most of those who did accept the label felt obliged to distance themselves from the administration as well as to announce their support for the further extension of political liberties. The administration was certainly active in the election campaign, but far more discretely than ever before. Most prefects encouraged their candidates to become more self-reliant by establishing their own electoral committees and newspapers. This election, with its mass circulation newspapers of all political hues and its public meetings, was fought in an entirely different atmosphere from its predecessors. Moreover, in large part due to political uncertainty, the economic situation had remained depressed since 1865. The
results were a severe blow to the regime. If they are compared with the results of previous elections the rise of opposition and the deterioration of the government’s position become clear (see Table 4.1).
In total, 216 government supporters were elected, of whom only 180 were
official candidates and 98 were government liberals whose views differed little from those of opposition liberals. The precipitant decline in support for the government among the local elites who provided the vast majority of election candidates meant that it was now often forced to support men who appeared to be the least-bad alternative. Seventy-eight declared opponents of the regime were 44
Table 4. 1 Legislative election results
Votes for
Votes for
Registered voters
government
opposition
Abstentions
1852
9, 836, 000
5, 248, 000
810, 000
3, 613, 000
1857
9, 490, 000
5, 471, 000
665, 000
3, 372, 000
1863
9, 938, 000
5, 308, 000
1, 954, 000
2, 714, 000
1869
10, 417, 000
4, 438, 000
3, 355, 000
2, 291, 000
elected (49 liberals and 29 republicans), and although of these only the more radical republicans appear to have been irrevocably opposed to the Empire as such, for the government, controlling the Corps législatif clearly was going to be extremely difficult. The results in Paris in particular had exceeded all opposition hopes, with 234, 000 votes for their candidates against 77, 000 for official candidates and 76, 500 abstentions. It was the success of the republican
candidates in the capital and the mass demonstrations of hostility to the regime which followed, on successive nights between 9 and 12 June, which especially impressed c
ontemporaries. Crowds demonstrated by singing the banned
Marseillaise, shouting Vive la République and smashing windows, and inevitably clashed with the police and cavalry called out to restore order. Some 500 arrests were made.
The rise of Republicanism
These developments, together with the belief that the final collapse of the imperial regime was inevitable and possibly their own political sympathies, have led many historians to exaggerate the strength of republican opposition. The results of the 1869 elections, if they say something about the support for avowed republicans, also suggest that there were definite limits to this. Moreover, it is not enough to explain these limits in terms of electoral manipulation by the regime or the political ignorance of the rural population – another old favourite. The precise nature of support for republicanism and the impact this might have had on wider political relationships need to be examined. The 1860s certainly had seen a considerable recovery from the depths of the early 1850s. With liberalisation, more of the 45
militants of 1848 had reentered the fray. Even though their ranks had been
considerably depleted by death, men whose reputations had been made during the struggles of the Second Republic like Bianchi and Testelain in Lille, and often too the family members who shared their reputations, continued to assume key
leadership roles. In Lille in 1870, one-third of the militants considered by the police to be dangerous were of the generation of 1848, and their influence was
substantially greater than this proportion would suggest. The social tension generated in rapidly developing industrial centres perhaps explains the militancy of many Lille political activists. In most provincial centres, as in Dijon, moderate bourgeois leaders, often from the professions and belonging to masonic lodges, appear to have dominated republican politics, although more radical and less solidly middle-class elements were pressing them hard by 1869. Apparently, this was a national trend and can be seen in the challenge to moderates of the older generation like Jules Favre, Hippolyte Carnot and Ernest Picard – men who had retained the vague religiosity of 1848 and who condemned violence and class conflict – coming from younger radicals like Gambetta, Allain-Targé and Vermorel whose formative experiences had been different and who were far more aggressive in their hostility to the regime, in their anti-clericalism and their demands for a measure of social reform.
Napoleon III and the French Second Empire Page 7