fully dispersed. The conspirators had failed, and the danger was past for the moment, but it is easy to imagine the alarm of the whole city at this evidence of the weakness of the government and of the power which organization and discipline were giving to the working classes.

The next crisis came on the 16th of April. The events in Paris appear to have caused uneasiness in the country, and the reports came that the elections for the National Guard in the provinces and for the National Assembly were likely to turn in favor of the conservative and richer element. The revolutionary leaders, therefore, determined to organize a new manifestation to demand of the government a postponement of the elections, and with the further purpose of deposing the actual government and substituting a smaller number of the more radical members, and even of placing a dictatorship in the hands of Ledru-Rollin, whose influence, and that of Louis Blanc, had been greatly increased by the 17th of March. The division in the government, therefore, had reached the point of hostile preparation. Between two and three o'clock on the 16th, an immense crowd of workmen started on its march to the Hôtel de Ville. They were met on the Quai du Louvre by two legions of the National Guard, who surrounded them, and separating them into groups escorted them to their destination. The delegates were coldly received by officials of the government, and in spite of the appeals of Louis Blanc for a free passage of the procession the National Guards kept it in separate groups till it had finally dispersed. This victory was, however, followed by increasing demands of the richer class for arrests and prosecutions, thus embittering the spirit of conflict.

The same evening of these events Louis Blanc and his adherents determined to repair this check by assuming the offensive. Though the revolutionary party was

unable to prevent the meeting of the Assembly, it was resolved not to be ruled by it. In the clubs increasing declamation maintained that the people, meaning thereby the populace of Paris, was always above its representatives. Every day crowds filled the streets and squares and occupied the approaches to the Assembly. The pretext for the 15th of May was the cause of Poland. The Assembly was in regular session, and an orator in the tribune was making a droning speech upon Poland, when a cry arose from the outside so terrible that De Tocqueville says he could not have imagined it to proceed from human voices.1 One of the officers of the Assembly, mounting the tribune and pushing the orator aside, announced that the general of the National Guard, contrary to orders, had directed his men not to oppose the crowd. Soon after it began to swarm in. Amid intolerable heat and dust the deputies maintained their seats. Barbès, making his way to the tribune, demanded the immediate despatch of an army to Poland, an impost of $200,000,000 upon the rich, the removal of the troops. from Paris, and a prohibition to sound the drum-call of the National Guard; failing which the Assembly would be declared traitors to the country.

If he could have commanded silence enough to enforce a vote, the situation of the Assembly would have been dangerous. It was saved by the inextinguishable clamor and confusion. After this had lasted for a considerable time, a drum was heard sounding the well-known pas de charge. A body of some forty of the young gardes mobiles came cleaving the crowd like a wedge, followed by a column of the National Guard. As they hurled the

1 I regret that considerations of space prevent the quotation of the whole of De Tocqueville's vivid account of that eventful day. Merely as a word-picture by an eye-witness it is well worth the attention of the student of modern French history.

five or six orators from the tribune a panic seized the crowd, and they escaped by the doors and windows. The Assembly shortly afterwards resumed its session and proceeded with orders for arrest and prosecution.

The steady march of anarchy and the conflict of classes was brought to a crisis by the closing of the workshops. In those days of June the insurgents fought as men fight only for ideas, and when they have never been accustomed to see them prevail in any other way. With regard to that conflict only one passage from De Tocqueville is essential for the present purpose.

By all the roads which the insurgents did not control there entered at that time thousands of men hastening from all parts of France to our assistance. Thanks to the railroads, some of them came already from a distance of fifty leagues, although the combat had only begun the evening before. Some came from a hundred and two hundred leagues on the morrow and the days following. These men belonged without distinction to all classes of society. There were among them many peasants, many bourgeois, many great proprietors and nobles, all mingled and confounded in the same ranks. They were armed in an irregular and insufficient manner, but they rushed into Paris with unequalled ardor: a spectacle as strange and as new in our revolutionary annals as that offered by the insurrection itself. It was evident from that time that we should finally triumph, because the insurgents did not receive fresh troops while we had as reserve the whole of France.1

Universal suffrage had begun to do its work. The country was brought together in a common purpose to defend the government which all had helped to create. How far this spirit, under proper guidance, might have led to a better future it is impossible to say. That future was hidden under the ghastly pall of the Second Empire, to end in another and still fiercer battle with the Paris Commune before the country could again establish its will.

The victory of June had been won through the sur

1 "Souvenirs," p. 235.

render of power both by the Assembly and the executive commission to the military dictatorship of General Cavaignac, the Minister of War. After the insurrection had been suppressed, his friend Jules Bastide, Minister of Foreign Affairs and a man of the highest character, sought the general at his house and found him seated alone with his mother, and bowed with grief at the terrible work which he had been compelled to perform. He had done his duty heroically, and saved France from calamities like those of 1870, but his victory filled him with horror. Knowing that France was at his feet, Bastide besought him to assume a temporary dictatorship, and give France permanent republican institutions. "My dear friend," said the general, "if I did what you demand, I should authorize in future any ambitious adventurer to stir up a riot and to get power intrusted to him to repress it, and then to keep this power indefinitely under the pretext of public safety. I will give such a pretext to nobody."

There were no visible elements for the construction of a new society to which an honest man could appeal. It was left to a second Bonaparte to organize chaos by force and corruption for his own selfish purposes.

THE

CHAPTER XII

THE SECOND EMPIRE

The

HE three years following June, 1848, are not of much import in the constitutional history of France. weak beginnings of popular government were overwhelmed by contending forces too powerful for resistance.

The Republic of 1848, like that of 1793, was the attempt of a small minority to force its creed upon France, and the result in both cases was anarchy, passing by reaction into despotism. The Democrats and Socialists of 1848, like the Jacobins of 1793, did not hesitate to attempt to coerce the nation in the name of the Republic. The commissioners of Ledru-Rollin were the Democratic representatives of those of the Convention, and May 15 and June 13, 1848, were correspondent to June 2, 1793. The measures and the issue were different, but the principle was the same; it was that which was formulated by the Democrats themselves—the Republic is above universal suffrage. But the opposition which met the modern Jacobins was very different from that which had been faced by their predecessors. The Royalists of the Second Republic were not gathered in arms on the frontier backed by the forces of Austria. They sat in the Chamber of Deputies and formed the majority there, a majority, however, which was split into three irreconcilable parties, impotent, therefore, for positive measures and powerful only for negation. The result was anarchy none the less real that it was concealed under constitutional forms. Every one was waiting to destroy the Republic which every one had sworn to defend. The Republic which had been founded by violence, violence was bound to destroy, and February 24 already contained the germ of December 2.1

The three factions, Legitimists, Orleanists, and Bonapartists, were equally eager to establish their supremacy at the cost of the Republic. It was evident to all that 1Revolution and Reaction in France," p. 218.