"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
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Portrait of Napoleon III by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1855 /zoom |
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.
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| "Alphonse Baudet, hero of the Republic" |
- Four hundred middle-class demonstrators are mowed down on the boulevards: Corpses lie exposed for days
"Forth day, victory" 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 :
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The new Babylon, starting sequence |
The Second Empire is known for bling, corruption and the exponential rise of inequality. Among its first acts: forbidding unions.
It has become fashionable to stress its modernity, but the Industrial Revolution would have brought that regardless of regime.
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By terrifying the privileged
and causing the poor to abandon
a republic that had betrayed them,
June explains the Second Empire.
End of this section.
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Next section,
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