Coup of 1851 On 2 December 1851,
Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who had been elected President of the Republic in 1848,
staged a coup d'état by dissolving the
National Assembly without having the constitutional right to do so. He thus became sole ruler of France, and re-established universal male suffrage, previously abolished by the Assembly. His decisions were popularly endorsed by
a referendum later that month that attracted 92 percent support. At that same referendum, a
new constitution was approved. Formally enacted in January 1852, the new document made Louis-Napoléon president for 10 years, with no restrictions on re-election. It concentrated virtually all governing power in his hands. However, Louis-Napoléon was not content with merely being an authoritarian president. Almost as soon as he signed the new document into law, he set about restoring the empire. In response to officially inspired requests for the return of the empire, the Senate scheduled a
second referendum in November, which passed with 97 percent support. As with the December 1851 referendum, most of the "yes" votes were manufactured out of thin air. The empire was formally re-established by the
Senate on 2 December 1852, and the Prince-President became "Napoléon III, Emperor of the French". The constitution had already concentrated so much power in his hands that the only substantive changes were to replace the word "president" with the word "emperor" and to make the post hereditary. The popular referendum became a distinct sign of
Bonapartism, which
Charles de Gaulle would later use. The financial soundness for all six companies was solidified by government guarantees. Although France had started late, by 1870 it had an excellent railway system, supported as well by good roads, canals and ports. Napoleon, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly awakened hostility of public opinion, tried to gain the support from the Left that he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy, the general amnesty of 16 August 1859 had marked the evolution of the absolutist or authoritarian empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary empire, which was to last for ten years.
Religion The idea of
Italian unification, which would inevitably end the
temporal power of the popes, outraged French Catholics, who had been the leading supporters of the Empire. A keen Catholic opposition sprang up, voiced in
Louis Veuillot's paper the
Univers, and was not silenced even by the Syrian expedition (1860) in favour of the
Maronite Catholic side of the
1860 civil conflict in Mount Lebanon and Damascus. Although the Second Empire strongly favoured Catholicism, the official state religion, it tolerated Protestants and Jews, with no persecutions or pogroms. The state dealt with the small Protestant community of Calvinist and Lutheran churches, whose members included many prominent businessmen who supported the regime. The emperor's Decree Law of 26 March 1852 led to greater government interference in Protestant church affairs, thus reducing self-regulation in favor of Catholic bureaucrats who misunderstood and mistrusted Protestant doctrine. Their administration affected not only church-state relations but also the internal lives of Protestant communities.
Police Napoleon III manipulated a range of politicised police powers to censor the media and suppress opposition. Legally he had broad powers but in practice he was limited by legal, customary and moral deterrents. By 1851 political police had a centralised administrative hierarchy and were largely immune from public control. The Second Empire continued the system; proposed innovations were stalled by officials. Typically political roles were part of routine administrative duties. Although police forces were indeed strengthened, opponents exaggerated the increase of secret police activity and the imperial police lacked the omnipotence seen in later totalitarian states.
Freedom of the press Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in silence. On 24 November 1860, he granted to the Chambers the right to vote an address annually in answer to the speech from the throne, and to the press the right of reporting parliamentary debates. He counted on the latter concession to hold in check the growing Catholic opposition, which was becoming more and more alarmed by the policy of
laissez-faire practiced by the emperor in Italy. The government majority already showed some signs of independence. The right of voting on the budget by sections, granted by the emperor in 1861, was a new weapon given to his adversaries. Everything conspired in their favour: the anxiety of those candid friends who were calling attention to the defective budget, the commercial crisis and foreign troubles.
Mobilisation of the working classes The ultramontane party grumbled, while the industries formerly protected were dissatisfied with
free trade reform. The working classes had abandoned their political neutrality. Disregarding
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's impassioned attack on
communism, they had gradually been won over by the
collectivist theories of
Karl Marx and the revolutionary theories of
Mikhail Bakunin, as set forth at the congresses of the
International. These labour congresses defied official proscriptions, and proclaimed that the social emancipation of the worker was inseparable from his political emancipation. The union between the internationalists and the republican bourgeois became an accomplished fact. ==Foreign policy==