THE SECOND EMPIRE This new 18th Brumaire resulted naturally in a new "constitu tion of the year VIII." It restored the consular dictatorship and the same political institutions. The sole innovation was the elec tion of the corps legislatif by universal suffrage. This new political change had rapidly the same consequences as that of Brumaire. A year later, on Dec. 2, 1852, Louis-Napoleon re-established the hereditary empire and took the title of Napoleon III., acclaimed by an almost unanimous plebiscite.
The Crimean War (q.v.) was the prototype of his other wars. Begun without any definite military objective, it was waged with irresolution. After the long and costly siege of Sevastopol, the tsar was thrust back far from Constantinople by the terms of peace; and did not forget the injury. Intoxicated by his triumph and assured of a dynasty by the birth of the Prince Imperial (1856) Napoleon thought that he had wiped out the disgrace of 184o. He requested the congress of Paris (1856) to take into consideration the questions in which he was most interested, Poland and the Roman question, but England refused. Sea-law apart, the sole benefit of the congress was to permit Cavour to bring the Italian question to the notice of Europe.
It was not his attempted assassination by Orsini that recalled the question to Napoleon. He had never f orgot4 en the days of his youth. He believed that the hour had come for him to execute his chosen mission. Torn between the empress, a fanatical Catho lic who was opposed to everything that might menace the papacy, and the prince Napoleon, who, as brother-in-law of Victor Em manuel, took the side of Piedmont, he hoped to please both by the creation of an Italian federation presided over by Pius IX. At Plombieres Napoleon offered to Cavour the sword of France that had been invoked by Orsini on the steps of the scaffold. By fighting Austria after the tsar, Napoleon carried out another clause in the Liberal programme. On May 3, 18S9, he proclaimed his intention of making Italy "free from the Alps to the Adriatic." As f our years earlier, so now he raised limitless hopes without counting the cost ; hence, two months after the hardly-won vic tories of Magenta and Solferino, Napoleon signed with Francis Joseph the patched-up armistice of Villafranca. Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon by whom it was handed over to Victor Emmanuel. But Modena and Tuscany were restored to their respective dukes and the Romagna to the Pope, as the president of an Italian federation. The war with Austria had thus mis carried. A yet disunited Italy spoke of French treason, and from that time believed the emperor too highly rewarded by the cession of Nice and Savoy (May 24, 186o). But the war had also raised the Roman question. To refuse Rome to Italy was to violate the principle of nationalities and to arouse the resentment of the French Liberals. To give it to Italy was to alienate the French Catholics who, since the coup d'etat, had always supported Napo leon. He was only able to reconcile dynastic interests with those of nationality by a provisional solution—which would hold good only so long as he himself remained master of the situation. A powerful Catholic and Protectionist opposition quickly arose. The French clericals were greatly incensed by the Italian revolution aries, who sought to make an end to the temporal power of the pope. The Syrian expedition of 186o, in aid of the Maronite Catholics persecuted by the Druses, did nothing to disarm this opposition. On the other hand the emperor who, to satisfy Eng land, had already dismissed his minister of foreign affairs, Walew ski, signed with that country on Jan. 23, 186o a commercial treaty by which the duties in England upon French agricultural produce, and in France upon English manufactured goods, were lowered. By this free trade policy French industry, though accustomed to protection, was suddenly exposed to foreign competition. Now indeed the Catholics and the Protectionists perceived dangers in the absolutism that they had admired for just so long as it served their ambitions and their interests. To restore the empire to its balance, Napoleon sought that support from the Left which he was losing on the Right ; a general amnesty proclaimed after his return from Italy marked a stage (which lasted for ten years) in the evolution of the autocratic into the liberal and finally the parliamentary empire.
These inconsistencies produced in France, under the name of the Union liberate, a coalition of all the discontented elements— the Catholics, the leaders of industry, and the anti-Napoleonic parties of the Monarchists and the Republicans. In the elections of 1863 the opposition won 4o seats and obtained a leader, Thiers, who in its name, instantly demanded "the necessary liberties." Industrial Policy.—Confronted with the constitutional oppo sition of Thiers and the irreconcilable opposition of the Republi cans, while the bourgeoisie grew daily more ambitious, Napoleon strove to reinforce his threatened authority by turning to the working classes from whom he had received it. Nothing seemed more easy of accomplishment than to exploit their old hatred of the capitalist ; Chapelier's law (1791) had denied them the right of combination, the limited suffrage had conferred a political monopoly on capital, and the workers remembered how the selfish bourgeoisie had called upon them to defend now the Charter, now universal suffrage, and had repaid them only with ingratitude, or with machine-guns. The silencing of public opinion under the Empire and the general prosperity had caused a cleavage between the Labour party and the other political parties. But the despatch of a Labour delegation to the London exhibition in 1862 had enabled them to resume contact. Henceforth the emperor put no obstacle in the way of consumers' co-operative societies, of the right to strike, or of the development of trade unions ; he did not even oppose Tolain's plan for the foundation of an international association of workers (see INTERNATIONAL), and even gave his patronage to employers' welfare and friendly societies which had for their object the betterment of the working man's lot. Thus secured in his rear, the emperor believed himself able to reject, through Rouher, every fresh demand of the liberals : always seek ing for a success abroad that would establish his dynasty, he returned to the policy of seeking "compensation." European Politics.—By the expedition to Mexico, Napoleon believed that he had diverted the thoughts of the French Catholics from Rome. He even hoped that, in return for the Mexican crown thus conferred on his brother Maximilian, the emperor, Francis Joseph, would peacefully yield Venetia to Italy. At Biarritz, in 1865, in return for vague promises of "compensation," he prom ised his neutrality to Bismarck, who wished to exclude Austria from Germany. Suddenly there came the news that the Austrian army had been defeated at Sadowa (July 4, 1866). The strength that till then Prussia had prudently concealed was laid bare. An intervention on behalf of Austria would deprive Napoleon of the reward for which he hoped. Moreover he could hardly have intervened, for want of the men and the money thrown away in Mexico. All over France there arose a feeling of surprised irrita tion against Prussia which, since the days of Frederick the Great, had persistently enjoyed the goodwill of France. By the Treaty of Prague, Prussia eliminated Austria from Germany, united, through the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein and Hanover, the hitherto scattered fragments of the Prussian monarchy, placed herself at the head of a great North German Confederation, and concluded military conventions with the South-German states from which this was only separated by the rubicon of the Main.
All confidence in the superiority of imperialism vanished at once. In the name of the opposition, Thiers and Faure denounced in the Corps Legislati f the blunders of 1866. Emile 011ivier broke up the official majority by forming a third party between the anti-dynastic opposition and the extreme Bonapartists, and gave it out that a reconciliation with the empire would be impossible until the emperor granted full political liberty. Undecided by nature, and rendered still more so by disease, the emperor during three years made concessions on the lines laid down by 011ivier, but destroyed their value by permitting Rouher to mutilate them by the way in which he put them into force. Meanwhile in his foreign policy Napoleon met with defeat after defeat.
This success, which should have consolidated the empire, de termined its downfall. A diplomatic triumph seemed essential to complete the success. To the empress was ascribed the saying : "Unless there is a war my son will never be emperor." On July 3, 187o the opportunity presented itself with the candidature of a Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain. To the French it seemed that Prussia, barely mistress of Germany, was reviving against France the traditional policy of the Habsburgs. 011ivier's liberal ministry was desirous of showing itself as jealous for the national honour as any of its absolutist predecessors. Carried away by the force of public opinion which it had itself set free, it accepted war as inevitable and prepared for it "d'un Coeur It was in vain that French diplomacy, aided by the uneasiness of Europe, secured the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candidature. This did not suit either the war-party in Paris, or Bismarck, who wanted the other side to declare war. To pre serve their popularity, 011ivier and Gramont, the minister for foreign affairs, sought to extort from King William one of those promises for the future which are humiliating, but never binding. Thus they afforded Prussia the desired pretext for returning a refusal, which Bismarck in the "edited" telegram from Ems trans formed into an insult. The Chamber, which was composed of government deputies, notwithstanding the desperate efforts of Thiers and Gambetta, and the th-hour offers of mediation on the part of England, fell into the trap and voted for war, which was declared on July 19, 187o.