Napoleon III and the French Second Empire, Roger Price [black books to read .TXT] 📗

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

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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 with 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