determination to preserve social order. So, too, did a wave of arrests of
revolutionary militants.
Indeed, for many social conservatives, including some moderate republicans, liberalisation had gone far enough. They had wanted the extension of
parliamentary government and increased freedom for the press, but really only for their own sort to enjoy. According to their conception, liberty was now being abused and needed to be regulated once again. The statements made in the press of the extreme left and at public meetings in Paris, given full publicity by conservative newspapers, together with their exaggerated description of every minor disorder, contributed to the re-creation of a red scare like those of 1848 and 1851. This had the further effect of deepening an economic depression caused both by fear of internal unrest and the anxiety aroused by an unstable international situation following Prussian victory over Austria in 1866. From as early as 1867, a process of political polarisation had been underway, similar to that of 1848, and as a result of which the republicans began to assume the role of the only whole-hearted opponents of the regime. Its liberal and clerical critics increasingly subordinated their particular viewpoints to the needs of a broadly-based conservative alliance in defence of the status quo. According to the police commissaire at the southern port of Toulon (Var), ‘everyone understands that the struggle which is beginning is a social conflict between those who possess and those who have nothing’. There increasingly appeared to be no alternative to support for the regime as the guarantor of social order and religion, a point reinforced by pro-government publicity during both the 1869 electoral and the 1870 plebiscite campaigns. The results of the plebiscite held on 8 May 1870 on the question concerning whether ‘the people approve the liberal reforms introduced since 1860’ gave some idea of the strength of this fear of social revolution.
The plebiscite campaign was relatively free of government interference,
although the regime possessed considerable advantages. The Minister of the
Interior, Chevandier de Valdrôme, instructed officials to employ a ‘devouring activity’ in support of the ‘yes’ vote, but not to use either pressure or threats. An unofficial comité central plébiscitaire presided over by the Duc d’Albufera, was established to organise the campaign. At local level, however, the habit of exerting pressure was frequently difficult to break and as always all kinds of promises of 55
favours like new schools, roads or railway stations or threats of their denial were deployed. Private individuals and organisations also contributed. The Est railway company, for example, sent each of its stationmasters a copy of the Emperor’s proclamation together with sufficient ‘yes’ ballot papers for all their staff. Typical of the official propaganda was the pro-’yes’ poster distributed in the eastern department of Bas-Rhin which portrayed a peasant brandishing a tricolour flag in the one hand and rejecting a red flag with the other. The slogan, widely professed, was ‘Emperor, Order and Liberty’. In general, it was the danger of revolution rather than the regime’s positive achievements and liberal reforms which were stressed.
Somewhat less enthusiastic, but nevertheless supporting an affirmative vote, were such newspapers as the clerical German language newspaper Der Elsässiche Volksbote (‘The Alsatian People’s Courier’) published in Rixheim, which insisted that its recommendation did not represent approval of all the regime’s past actions: We vote ‘yes’ because all the revolutionaries, all those who hate religion, all the oppressors of the people, all the freemasons, all the heroes of compulsory
education, recommend a ‘no’ vote or abstention. . . . Our ‘yes’ is to strengthen the Emperor against the reds.
In the Gers, the Conservateur (26 April 1870) similarly warned that the republic which would result from a negative vote would mean ‘disorder, insurrection and civil war . . . the re-establishment of the Terror . . . the 45 centime tax in permanence1
. . . the ruin of the countryside for the profit of the towns, where the right to work acclaimed by the socialists will lead to the re-opening of the National Workshops’.
Still potent memories of the revolutionary events of 1848 were thus deployed and with considerable effect.
The plebiscite was an overwhelming success for the regime. The state
prosecutor at Colmar saw it as giving ‘a new baptism to the Napoleonic dynasty’.
There can be little doubt, in spite of the ambiguities of the plebiscatory process, that the liberal empire corresponded to the wishes of most of the population, offering as it did greater political liberty, the repression of revolutionary republicanism and, particularly to peasant voters, the promise of renewed prosperity. If most of the support for the regime came from the propertied classes and rural population, it also gained substantial support from the urban middle and working classes so 1 A 45 per cent supplement to the land tax introduced by the republican Provisional Government in 1848.
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frequently classified among its opponents. There were a variety of reasons for this including, of course, pressure from officials or employers, but more positively because of an appreciation of improving living standards. In the case of the textile centre of Armentières in the industrial Nord, and in marked contrast with nearby Lille, there was the still attractive prospect of a ‘democratic caesarism’ among a working population made up largely of quite recent migrants from the countryside.
The influence of the Church should not be discounted either. Whatever their misgivings about the Emperor’s Italian policy, the bishops and most parish clergy felt bound to support a regime committed to social order and to protecting them from the republican menace which had spelled disaster in the past. Moreover, they had failed dismally in their efforts to attract mass support for the Papal cause. In the last analysis, although the representatives of the various conservative political groupings
