wires extending their tentacles across the landscape and creating new opportunities for enrichment, but within a far more competitive environment. More than ever before, people were on the move in search of a better life. What were the
relationships between economic and social change, the ‘formal’ establishment of manhood suffrage, and the evolution of local and national political cultures?
Certainly, historically-based expectations conditioned individual political behaviour to a large degree. The Second Empire is of particular interest, however, because in a relatively short time radical changes in economic structures and political institutions forced people to adapt their life strategies.
Sources
The sources for this study are many and varied, and all of them have their
shortcomings. In preparation for a much more substantial volume on the Second Empire currently being written, an effort has been made to consult as wide a range of sources as possible, including private papers, memoirs, administrative reports, official and private economic and social enquiries, and the newspaper press. As always, the directly expressed views of the masses are greatly under-represented.
Much of the surviving information on them is derived from the observations of members of other social groups and is inevitably distorted by their particular concerns and prejudices. Reporters from the social elites tended to focus in particular on novelty and whatever appeared to be threatening to their interests.
Government officials frequently told their superiors what it was presumed they wanted to hear in the hope of enhancing their career prospects. Newspaper reports were rarely unbiased. The quality of reporting obviously varied according to individual skills and commitment. A massive amount of information was gathered by more or less zealous and competent officials operating within the various established administrative hierarchies (especially those reporting to the Ministers of the Interior, Justice and War) to be interpreted, passed upwards and incorporated in ever more general situation reports. Complaints about the quality of reports were frequent, especially about the unwillingness of those at the bottom of the hierarchy
– mayors, justices of the peace and gendarmes – to spare the time and effort.
Experience suggests that the recruitment, training and professional concerns of the judicial administration (particularly the state prosecutors – the procureurs généraux) resulted in more objective and frequently more comprehensive reports than those emanating from the parallel prefectoral hierarchy. Election results 7
distorted by governmental and also elite social pressures are similarly difficult to interpret, particularly in the absence of formal organised parties. ‘Parties’ were little more than informal associations of individuals with shared aspirations and ideas. Voting decisions were informed by the competing influence of government officials, local notables and the clergy, as well as by shifting mass perceptions of what was at issue and the relevance of particular policies to their own needs. The candidates for election were invariably chosen either by ministers and prefects or by self-selected committees adhering to one or another political persuasion. They were selected from among those mature adult males judged to possess the personal, educational and rhetorical qualities believed necessary for serious participants in public life. By definition, the mass of the population – women as well as the poorly educated lower middle classes, workers and peasants – was judged to be unsuitable and this, in general, by their own kind as well as the upper classes.
Phases of development
Events were profoundly marked by the personality of the Emperor. An initial assessment of the character and abilities of this nephew of the great Napoléon is clearly necessary. In his 1869 preface to The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Marx observed that his purpose was to ‘demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part’ (Marx 1962: 244). The accession to power of an individual widely regarded by his contemporaries as lacking ability and principles inevitably caused surprise and disquiet. Alexis de Tocqueville, who would serve briefly as foreign minister following Bonaparte’s election to the presidency, recognised his courage and determination, but was hardly less
scathing, pointing out that ‘a dwarf on the summit of a great wave is able to scale a high cliff which a giant placed on dry ground at the base would not be able to climb’
(Price 1972: 323–4). It was the intense mid-century crisis which had created an opportunity for the Bonapartist pretender.
These were negative judgements of an adventurer who, in terms of background, education and experience, did not fit into conventional moulds. Another well-connected politician, Charles de Rémusat, pointed out that ‘He lacks all the qualities of an ordinary man of merit, judgement, instruction, conversation, experience, all of these things are so lacking that one is tempted to assume that he is beneath contempt. But this idiot is endowed with a rare and powerful faculty –
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that of placing himself at the centre of human affairs . . . His presence has changed the course of history . . . Whoever is able to intervene in the affairs of the world and impose and produce or modify events according to his will possesses I don’t know what gift of daring or strength which sets him apart from the crowd and places him amongst the rank of historical personalities’ (Rémusat 1962: 359–60). Personality is at least as much the product of private as of public experience. As a result of his family background and upbringing, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte possessed an
intense sense of personal destiny and faith in his historical mission. In his determination to become guardian of the Napoleonic tradition, he combined the outlook of a romantic mystic with the instincts of a political opportunist.
Understanding him is not easy and requires the close analysis of his writings and speeches as well as of the views of those few relations and collaborators who managed to get close to this very private person. His friend from childhood, Mme.
Cornu, in conversation with the
