The man called the state

At the dawn of modernity France, in the period from the Great French Revolution (1789–1799) to the Paris Commune (1871), that country changed its form of government several times: the monarchy was overthrown three times and a republic was proclaimed three times, the kingdom was restored once and even the presidents of the republic proclaimed the empire twice.

When the kingdom of Louis Philippe was overthrown in the revolution of 1848, the so-called Second Republic was proclaimed, and in the elections for its first president, on December 10 of the same year, the candidate who was given the least chance, alongside well-known and experienced statesmen, such as Generals Caveniac, Lamartine, Ledry-Roland and Raspay, won. That new president of France was called Louis Bonaparte, he had just arrived from the wars for the unification of Italy, also known as the "little nephew of the great uncle", without any political career, which is why even the largest party, the "Party of Order", was happy about the election of "this hollowhead", believing that it would easily lead him to achieve his goals. The peasantry gave him the greatest support (3,5 million votes).

By the middle of 1849, the new president had removed all political enemies or generally unfit people from the National Guard, the military leadership, the National Assembly and the entire bureaucratic apparatus, and he constantly increased his powers as president of the republic through parliamentary laws. At the same time, he did not have any ideology or program, he himself was not an intellectual or a particularly well-read person, but took "a little bit of everything". In the elections for the Legislative (National) Assembly in 1849, he still won a convincing majority and with it began to rule the country more comfortably. In the autumn, he already formed his party "The Society of the Tenth of December" (in honor of the date of victory in the presidential elections), which was joined by a large number of politicians from the former regime, and he gained supporters among the numerous peasants, workers and petty citizens, and even among a part of the monarchists who considered themselves "Bonapartists" and not supporters of the former royal dynasty ("Orleanists" or "Bourbonists").

During 1850 and 1851, the president of the republic, who allowed himself to be addressed as "Prince Napoleon", traveled the whole country holding political meetings where he often repeated the slogan: "My friends do not live in palaces, but in small houses". There were also frequent military parades in his honor, and when one of them chanted: "Long live Napoleon! Long live the emperor!", the commander of Paris made a sharp protest and criticized the soldiers, but the next day he was dismissed and regretted.

Eight days before the end of the three-year mandate, on December 2, 1851, the National Assembly extended the President of the Republic's mandate to as many as ten years, and introduced the universal right to vote, which also included foreigners with a short stay in France. The president himself started with the formation of special armed squads that ostensibly maintain order, but in fact terrorize all their political opponents. Finally, on December 2, 1852, the president staged a coup and proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III, and France became an empire again (the Second French Empire).

The Second Empire (1852–1870) was a time of profound transformation in France. On the one hand, the country went through an economic revolution, which disrupted the relations of social classes and forces, demolishing hierarchies based on origin, family environment and ability to replace them with monetary criteria and material success, all "until it divided the country into two great opposing classes".

Political freedoms were suspended as early as 1851, the republican and democratic opposition were completely crushed, the working class was getting poorer and broken into fictitious unions, and the big bourgeoisie (entrepreneurs and manufacturers) and the owners of large land holdings, which were getting bigger, advocated the rule of a firm hand. The conditions for the official introduction of the dictatorship were more than favorable.

The political system was based on the revised Constitution of the Second Republic (1848), which is why the parliament represented only the facade of the regime, the assembly had no control over the government and the work of the emperor himself, it did not even have the right to enact and repeal laws, not even to propose them - it only had the right to debate the legislative proposals submitted by the government and make "good faith remarks". She did not appoint ministers, nor were they accountable to her, she did not elect (her) President of the Assembly either, he was also appointed by the Tsar, and the MPs did not even have the right of interpellation (explanation from the government). The emperor bribed the deputies with large salaries and it was profitable for them to sit and practically do nothing, and many did not even come to the sessions regularly. The tsar promised the good obedient MPs an extension of their mandate through all legal frameworks, through a new party or similar. The Assembly did not even question the declaration of war or peace, and the emperor often referred to himself as "supreme commander" even in peace, when there was no war.

With the French army, the largest (after the Russian) and the most modern in Europe, he continued the wars for the unification of Italy and helped the Italian king Vittorio Emanuele II to win the decisive battles of Madienta and Solferino in 1859 against Austria, during which Lombardy (Milan), Tuscany (Florence), Sicily (Palermo) and southern Italy (Naples) were liberated, but he stopped during the campaign against Venice and suddenly concluded peace in Villafranchi with the Austrian emperor Francis Joseph I. In return, he charged Italy for help by taking Nice and Savoy (home of the Italian king) from it and annexing them to France. Because of his good relations with the Pope, he strove to preserve the Papal State with its capital in Rome, so the Italian capital moved from Turin only to Florence, but it could not go to Rome and central Italy, it was still ruled by the papal chair.

Napoleon III nevertheless returned to Paris as a great war winner, with unlimited power. He threatened the Kingdom of Prussia (Berlin) for expanding too much at the expense of small German states and striving for the unification of Germany, warning, as the first politician in Europe, of the danger that threatens European stability from a large united Germany. Prussian King Wilhelm I and his chancellor Bismarck did not think so, so they provoked France to war for ten years.

Within France, the rule of the conservative clique gathered around the "contradictory, indeterminate and mediocre personality" of one "Napoleon the Little" continued. The emperor, his ambitious and reactionary wife, the bigoted Spanish Catholic Eugenia, and their spoiled son and heir to the throne, along with a group of their closest associates, could do almost as they pleased. The emperor's wife was the emperor's main ideologue and the only person the emperor really listened to. They, at least that's how it seemed to contemporaries, created for themselves a "kingdom of heaven on earth". The emperor's collaborators were his old comrades from the Italian wars, Valeski, Drouin de Lis (before that he was consul in the Principality of Serbia, in the 50s of the XIX century), Persigny, Fleury, Kono and Mokar, full of war rhetoric and calls for new wars, it was a team of people who took the fate of the whole of France into their hands. Nevertheless, adds a contemporary, "none of these people, minister or official, leaves his role as a man who only gives advice or carries out orders: decisions are made by Napoleon III, from beginning to end it is the rule of one man", possibly "his wife".

The press was completely suppressed, newspapers were banned and their editors persecuted at the slightest sign of disobedience and independence.

On the other hand, the period of the Second Empire was marked by an extraordinarily rapid and dynamic development of the French economy. Traffic, the network of railway communications, the modernization of rural roads developed at a high speed, and the industry became increasingly mechanized. Paris itself has changed considerably in appearance. Its prefect (mayor) Baron Osman broke through dozens of kilometers of new "grand boulevards" demolishing entire neighborhoods in the old core of historic Paris, while the people demonstrated dissatisfaction and despair over such moves. At rallies in support of the general progress of the country, "kan-kan" was played and played, brought from the darkest taverns and brothels right in front of the redeemed people.

The increase in the wealth of the richest did not mean an increase in the well-being of all the inhabitants of France. Entire groups were completely impoverished because the purchasing power was less and less for the middle and lower classes. Then it was first heard that in France "the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer". Almost nothing has been done to improve the quality of life of the average citizen, except for a few cartoonish persuasions that they actually "live better".

The intellectual world was suppressed from the political life of the country. The opposition was decimated and forced into the deepest silence. During each election, the imperial government quite openly assumed the right to influence the vote by putting pressure on the voters. The police was given the authority to "indicate to the voters who are friends and who are enemies of the state" by all means. Until 1857, members of only one party sat in the Assembly, the "Party of the 1864th of December". That year, five opposition MPs were finally found, called the "group of five". It was not until 1869 that the Law on the right of workers to strike was passed, through the emperor's will. In May 116, the opposition finally won the elections, with a very narrow majority, with 115 to 7,5 deputies. The emperor decided to show generosity and entrusted the mandate to form the government to the leader of the opposition, Emile Olivier. At the same time, he organized a referendum on confidence in the emperor, in which, allegedly, 1,5 million people expressed their support for the "wise and statesmanlike moves" of the emperor, and only XNUMX million voters were still against the emperor and his regime. Napoleon III was happy, at large rallies he celebrated a new victory and the restoration of great popularity, and Prime Minister Olivier, who was an oppositionist until yesterday, declared: "We will ensure a happy old age for the emperor!".

photo: wikipedia

Then Prussian Chancellor Bismarck reappeared on the diplomatic stage, in correspondence with the French emperor, and told Napoleon III that Prussia, after the victory over Austria (1866), would now enter and unite the four southern German states, the largest of which was the Kingdom of Bavaria (Munich). He had already dealt with Austria by ordering it, as the defeated party in the Battle of Sadova (1866), to turn into the Dual Monarchy of Austria and Hungary (1867), i.e. Austria-Hungary, with two capitals, Vienna and Budapest. Bavaria will retain the same status as a kingdom, he promised, but within the framework of the Great German Empire ("Second Reich") with its capital in Berlin. Napoleon III was against it and declared war on Prussia. He asked his military minister: "Are we ready?", and he answered: "Not that we are ready, but arch-ready!". The secret weapon that the French army was counting on was the "machine gun", which would supposedly scatter the Germans and force them to flee. In September, the emperor rode to the fortress of Sedan, towards the German border, to command the army, but after only a few days he fell into German captivity. The Germans did not stop at Paris, where, in the Palace of Versailles, in January 1871, they proclaimed the Second German Empire, and their king Wilhelm I Hohenzollern as the German Emperor.

Against the background of the German occupation, the overthrow of the Second French Empire (1870) was proclaimed in Paris, while the emperor was behind German bars, and the proclamation of the Third French Republic.

To the south, in Italy, the army of King Vittorio Emanuele II finally marched into Rome and declared it the new capital of Italy in 1870, and the Papal State was reduced to just the Vatican Hill in Rome, around St. Peter's Church and the papal residences.

Already in the spring of 1871, a new revolution will break out in Paris that will proclaim the first workers' state in the world - the Paris Commune, extinguished in blood after only 72 days, but that is already a new story compared to the easy demise of the man who called himself a state.