Surprisingly, republican militants made relatively little effort to appeal
specifically to the rural population, although of course it made up a majority of the electorate. Newspapers like the Rappel de la Provence (1869) – with its low price and short and simply written articles designed to appeal to the practical concerns of 52
the habitués of the chambrées of the Var – were rare. In attempting to appeal to peasants , republicans developed programmes similar to, but in many respects les s radical than, those of the démoc-socs in 1849. The condemnation of wasteful government expenditure and high taxes was retained and attacks on the regime’s military adventures and the growing burden of conscription were added.
Significantly, the more radical promise of cheap credit to allow peasants to purchase land had all but disappeared. Nevertheless, on this basis republicans were able to attract some support, especially in those areas in which a republican tradition had previously been established during the Second Republic or before, although on this occasion in the south-east rather than the centre and south-west, and nowhere on the same scale. Indeed, in some areas support seems to have melted away in the intervening years. In the Limousin, most notably, continued hostility towards traditional elites was combined now with support for the ‘Emperor of the Peasants and Masons’ who had brought prosperity to the countryside and work for those who depended on temporary migration to the burgeoning building sites of Paris and Lyon. In departments as diverse as the Basses-Alpes and Gers which had experienced large-scale insurrections in resistance to the coup d’état in 1851, the official candidates would be re-elected easily in 1869.Virtually the whole south-west in fact appears to have been won over to the regime. In a large number of departments there was almost no mass support for the opposition. Pessimistically, the liberal Prévost-Paradol described the regime as ‘an Imperial ruralocracy’ based upon ‘rural imbecility and provincial bestiality’, a view shared by the republican Allain-Targé who stressed the need for the future republic to educate the ‘thirty-five million brutes who compose the Nation to the rank of active citizens’.
Republicans habitually explained election defeat in terms of pressure from the administration, traditional elites and the clergy, combined with the sheer ignorance and susceptibility of the rural masses. It rarely seems to have been admitted that support for the Empire might represent a rational decision in favour of a regime which had brought order and prosperity. This option was reinforced by the
conservative propaganda which sought to re-create the threat from the so-called partageux, the communists who supposedly intended to seize the land. In the Paris basin, the west, north and much of the south-west, socially dominant landowners and large farmers, supported by the clergy, stimulated these fears. Thus, in the village of Moux in the Morvan, the mayor reminded the electorate that to vote for a republican candidate meant ‘a vote for revolution, for the red flag, for the guillotine’.
53
Establishment of the liberal Empire
If the regime had retained the bulk of its rural support, the results of the 1869
elections nevertheless revealed the accelerating deterioration in its position and the growing risk of isolation. A total of 116 deputies drawn from both the opposition and government liberals combined to demand a ministry responsible to the Corps législatif. Concessions urgently needed to be made if support for the regime among the social and political elites was to be maintained. It was therefore decided by the Emperor that parliament should be allowed much wider rights in the questioning of ministers and control of the budget. As a result, effective administration would depend in future on the ability of ministers to secure the approval of a majority of deputies, although constitutionally they would continue to remain responsible to the Emperor alone. The Journal de Roubaix (4 January 1870) was only one of the many opposition newspapers to report with glee that ‘the Empire of 2 December no longer exists’. These concessions were followed by a protracted effort to create a government anxious to promote reconciliation. This was eventually formed on 2
January and headed by the former moderate republican Emile Ollivier. It would enjoy both the confidence of the Emperor and support from a parliamentary
majority composed of adherents and recent liberal critics of the dynasty, including Guizot (the former Orleanist prime minister) and his erstwhile critics Barrot and Thiers. The latter, along with many liberals, might remain dissatisfied because of the retention of considerable personal, prerogative power by the Emperor
(including the right to appeal by dissolution of parliament or plebiscite directly to the electorate), but conservative and liberal deputies were anxious to ensure that the achievement of their objective of exerting closer control over government policy did not excessively weaken the executive’s ability to counter what was perceived to be the growing threat of revolution. The Party of Order of the Second Republic was already being re-established.
The early measures of the new Ollivier ministry were intended to satisfy its liberal critics. They included the final abandonment of the system of official candidature (23 February 1870), the dismissal of Haussmann (who had done so much to transform the centre of Paris) in order to appease conservative financial interests as well as that of the education minister, Duruy, to pacify the clerical critics of this advocate of secular instruction, together with plans for an enquiry into the impact of customs legislation. It was believed that this would represent the first step in a return to economic protectionism. Some of the most distinctive policies of the 54
regime as well as its chosen
