"SOCIETY SALUTED ITS LIBERATOR WITH UNANIMOUS ACCLAIM AND IN A TRANSPORT OF GRATITUDE GAVE HIM THE TASK OF LEADING IT, AND PRESERVING IT FROM NEW PERILS"
-- Daniel Stern
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-73), Napoleon's nephew, used his name to become President of the Second Republic, then seize power by a coup d'état. He named his regime the "Second Empire" and himself "Napoleon III" ( Napoleon's son had died).
Middle-class republicans try to persuade the poor to man the barricades again, but they refuse to defend a republic that has massacred them.
Middle-class republicans try to persuade the poor to man the barricades again, but they refuse to defend a republic that has massacred them.
- On the contrary, some run through the streets crying, "Poléon ! Poléon !"
- "We won't fight for your 25 francs a day," they say to deputies who try to mobilize them."This is how one dies for 25 francs a day," Jean-Baptiste Baudin answers, as he climbs onto a barricade and is shot.
- Four hundred middle-class demonstrators are mowed down on the boulevards: Corpses lie exposed for days.
La Victoire by Ernest Dargent / zoom
For once, Thiers has nothing to do with the massacre. As leader of the conservative opposition, he is under arrest.
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Pillars of the regime:
- The Church
- The army
- Notables
- Tycoons
- Upstarts enriched by corruption and speculation :
The New Babylon (Soviet movie, 1929)
The Second Empire is known for bling, corruption and the exponential rise of inequality. Immediate act: forbidding unions.
It has become fashionable to stress its modernity, but the Industrial Revolution would have brought that no matter what the regime.
.
By terrifying the privileged
and causing the poor to abandon
a republic that had betrayed them,
June brought the Second Empire.
End of this section.
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