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

proposals aroused massive opposition from the upper classes who would no longer be able to purchase exemption and the workers and peasants who had previously enjoyed the very real prospect of escaping from any kind of military obligation by drawing a bon numéro in the ballot. In the Corps législatif in December 1867, Thiers defended the principle of the professional army – well-trained and rigorously disciplined – which he claimed was more than a match for a poorly trained mass army. The left, in contrast, especially Favre and Simon, attacked the principle of permanent, repressive armies and looked back to the improvisation of 1792 for inspiration. In the face of massive parliamentary and popular opposition, faithfully reported by his own officials, Napoléon felt obliged to compromise. Those who were fortunate in the ballot would still be required to undergo some military training in a garde nationale mobile, but their obligations were much reduced. In practice, the disorders which resulted early in 1868 from efforts to convoke this formation for training led to the virtual abandonment of the 60

scheme. There is an obvious paradox between the strong attachment to memories of military glory and to the achievements of the Grande nation, reinforced by the growing nationalist sentiment enshrined in popular education, together with the public hostility towards Prussia and the widespread belief that war was inevitable and the unwillingness to meet either the financial or personal obligations necessary to strengthen the army.

The decision to engage in a hazardous war was nevertheless the Emperor’s

responsibility, although the role of public opinion should not be ignored. The crisis when it arose would be unexpected, short and intense. The conservative press responded in bellicose terms to the announcement on 3 July of the candidature of the Prussian Prince Leopold for the Spanish throne. Hohenzollern monarchs on the Rhine and Pyrenean frontiers appeared to threaten encirclement. Although the Emperor and Ollivier might have been willing to accept a simple Prussian

withdrawal of this candidature, conservatives in the Corps législatif demanded guarantees which the Prussian chancellor Bismarck refused in terms calculated to enflame the situation in the famous Ems telegram. Another humiliating foreign policy reversal and a possible parliamentary defeat would have thrown the bases of the revised constitution, and particularly the Emperor’s personal power, into doubt.

In these circumstances Napoléon and Ollivier appear to have weakly accepted the advice of the Empress, the foreign minister the Duc de Gramont, and the more authoritarian Bonapartists to opt for war in the hope that victory would further consolidate the regime. Military credits – in effect a declaration of war – were voted by the Corps législatif on 15 July: 245 deputies voted in favour, ten against and seven abstained revealing that many republicans and almost the entire liberal opposition had rallied. The initial public response was quite positive, throughout the country, and especially in the towns, although this was probably as much out of a sense of resignation rather than real enthusiasm. In Paris and frontier departments in the north-east, where people still remembered the cruelty of the Prussian occupiers in 1815, huge crowds gathered in the streets to see the troops leave for the front, singing patriotic songs, including – by special permission of the Interior Ministry – the republican hymn, the Marseillaise. With the exception of a small minority of revolutionary militants, even republicans felt obliged to rally to the cause of national defence. There was every confidence in the ability of the army to achieve rapid victory. Recently, historians have pointed to the development of an embryonic ‘Sacred Union’ in 1870 similar to that of 1914. Peasants appear to have become Frenchmen well before the Third Republic despite arguments to the

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contrary by the American historian, Eugen Weber. Only the extreme left, not represented in parliament and more then ever isolated in this situation, continued to manifest an irreconcilable opposition to both the regime and what they perceived to be its war. Even so, this apparent union concealed efforts by the various political groupings to improve their situation. Above all, in 1870 there were the efforts of the authoritarian Bonapartists, marginalised in the precious year’s elections, to reverse the liberalising trend and weaken the Ollivier government.

Reports of a French victory, in an insignificant engagement at Sarrebrück on 2

August, were greeted with great enthusiasm. The first defeats on 4 and 6 August were a massive shock. Rumours spread and with them panic. In Paris, Lyon and Marseille during the first two weeks of August demonstrators had already begun to call for the Republic as the only means of saving France. The Emperor’s response to the deepening military crisis was to replace the Ollivier ministry on 9 August with a government made up of authoritarian Bonapartists under General Cousin-Montauban. At the same time, efforts were made to mobilise more men and to re-establish popular morale. It was too late. The French army had gone to war

suffering from major structural weaknesses, compounded by the absence of

reform. One of the paradoxes of the situation was that the Emperor had been well aware of these deficiencies and still had chosen to risk war. The army was, in practice, better prepared to deal with internal security problems than with a major European campaign. In terms of its training and equipment, it was unprepared. Its mobilisation procedures resulted in chaos. It suffered from a catastrophic lack of central coordination and the Emperor’s presence with the armies and constant interference only made this worse. Certainly, he had not inherited his uncle’s military genius. Elan, frontal attacks and the spirit of improvisation, of muddling through, would cost the army dearly. The heroic efforts of its officers and men were no compensation for the high command’s inability to achieve the strategic

concentration of its forces which alone might have compensated for numerical inferiority.

In an effort to relieve the army of the Rhine which was encircled at Metz,

Napoléon and Marshal MacMahon