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Second French Empire

Second French Empire

The Second French Empire or Second Empire was the imperial Bonapartist regime of Napoleon III from 1852 to 1870, between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, in France.

Rule of Napoleon III

Although the machinery of government was almost the same under the Second Empire as it had been under the First, its founding principles were different. The function of the Empire, as he loved to repeat, was to guide the people internally towards justice and externally towards perpetual peace. Holding his power by universal suffrage, and having frequently, from his prison or in exile, reproached former oligarchical governments with neglecting social questions, he set out to solve them by organising a system of government based on the principles of the "Napoleonic Idea", i.e. of the emperor, the elect of the people as the representative of the democracy, and as such supreme; and of himself, the representative of the great Napoleon I of France, "who had sprung armed from the French Revolution like Minerva from the head of Jove," as the guardian of the social gains of the revolutionary period. The anti-parliamentary constitution instituted by Napoleon III on January 14, 1852 was largely a repetition of that of the year 1848. All executive power was entrusted to the emperor, who, as head of state, was solely responsible to the people. The people of the Empire, now powerless to exercise any of their rights, had to rely on the benevolence of the emperor. He was to nominate the members of the council of state, whose duty it was to prepare the laws, and of the senate, a body permanently established as a constituent part of the empire. One innovation was made, namely, that the Legislative Body was elected by universal suffrage, but it had no right of initiative, all laws being proposed by the executive power. This new political change was rapidly followed by the same consequence as had attended that of Brumaire. On December 2, 1852, France, still under the effect of the "Napoleonic virus", and the fear of anarchy, conferred almost unanimously by a plebiscite the supreme power, with the title of emperor, upon Napoleon III. Napoleon III soon proved that social justice did not mean liberty. He acted in such a way that the principles of 1848 which he had preserved became a mere sham. He paralysed all those active national forces which create public spirit, such as parliament, universal suffrage, the press, education and associations. The Legislative Body was not allowed to elect its own president or to regulate its own procedure, or to propose a law or an amendment, or to vote on the budget in detail, or to make its deliberations public. Similarly, universal suffrage was supervised and controlled by means of official candidature, by forbidding free speech and action in electoral matters to the Opposition, and by a skilful adjustment of the electoral districts in such a way as to overwhelm the Liberal vote in the mass of the rural population. The press was subjected to a system of cautionnements, i.e. "caution money", deposited as a guarantee of good behaviour, and avertissements, i.e. requests by the authorities to cease publication of certain articles, under pain of suspension or suppression; while books were subject to a censorship. In order to counteract the opposition of individuals, a surveillance of suspects was instituted. Felice Orsini's attack on the emperor in 1858, though purely Italian in its motive, served as a pretext for increasing the severity of this régime by the law of general security (sûreté générale) which authorised the internment, exile or deportation of any suspect without trial. In the same way public instruction was strictly supervised, the teaching of philosophy was suppressed in the lycées, and the disciplinary powers of the administration were increased. For seven years France had no political life. The Empire governed by a series of plebiscites. Up to 1857 the Opposition did not exist; from then till 1860 it was reduced to five members: Darimon, Emile Ollivier, Hénon, Jules Favre and Ernest Picard. The royalists waited inactive after the new and unsuccessful attempt made at Frohsdorf in 1853, by a combination of the legitimists and Orleanists, to re-create a living monarchy out of the ruin of two royal families.

History

Origins

Decline

Napoleon III's joy was at its height after the Crimean War owing to the signature of a peace which excluded Russia from the Black Sea, and to the birth of Eugene Bonaparte, which ensured the continuation of his dynasty, thought that the time had arrived to make a beginning in applying his system. He then lead France to war with Austria over Italy. France was victorious, and gained Savoy and Nice, but the unification of Italy 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 Catholic Maronites, who were being persecuted by the Druses. On the other hand, the commercial treaty with the United Kingdom which was signed in January 1860, and which ratified the free trade policy of Richard Cobden and Michel Chevalier, had brought upon French industry the sudden shock of foreign competition. Thus both Catholics and protectionists made the discovery that moral absolutism may be an excellent thing when it serves their ambitions or interests, but a bad thing when it is exercised at their expense. But Napoleon, in order to restore the prestige of the Empire before the newly-awakened hostility of public opinion, tried to gain from the Left the support which he had lost from the Right. After the return from Italy the general amnesty of August 16, 1859 had marked the evolution of the absolutist empire towards the liberal, and later parliamentary empire, which was to last for ten years. 1859

Freedom of the press

Napoleon began by removing the gag which was keeping the country in silence. On November 24, 1860, - by a coup d'etat matured during his solitary meditations, like a conspirator in his love of hiding his mysterious thoughts even from his ministers, 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 practised 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, aggravated by the American Civil War; and above all, the restless spirit of the emperor, who had annoyed his opponents in 1860 by insisting on an alliance with the United Kingdom in order forcibly to open the Chinese ports for trade, in 1863 by his ill-fated attempt of a military intervention in Mexico to set up a Latin empire in favour of the archduke Maximilian of Austria, and from 1861 to 1863 by embarking on colonising experiments in Cochin China and Annam. Similar inconsistencies occurred in the emperor's European policies. The support which he had given to the Italian cause had aroused the eager hopes of other nations. The proclamation of the kingdom of Italy on February 18, 1861 after the rapid annexation of Tuscany and the kingdom of Naples had proved the danger of half-measures. But when a concession, however narrow, had been made to the liberty of one nation, it could hardly be refused to the no less legitimate aspirations of the rest. In 1863 these "new rights" again clamoured loudly for recognition: in Poland, in Schleswig and Holstein, in Italy, now indeed united, but with neither frontiers nor capital, and in the Danubian principalities. In order to extricate himself from the Polish impasse, the emperor again had recourse to his expedient - always fruitless because always inopportune - of a congress. He was again unsuccessful: England refused even to admit the principle of a congress, while Austria, Prussia and Russia gave their adhesion only on conditions which rendered it futile, i.e. they reserved the vital questions of Venetia and Poland.

The Union libérale Thus Napoleon had yet again to disappoint the hopes of Italy, let Poland be crushed, and allow Germany to triumph over Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein question. These inconsistencies resulted in a combination of the opposition parties, Catholic, Liberal and Republican, in the Union libérale. The elections of May-June 1863 gained the Opposition forty seats and a leader, Adolphe Thiers, who at once urgently gave voice to its demand for "the necessary liberties". It would have been difficult for the emperor to mistake the importance of this manifestation of French opinion, and in view of his international failures, impossible to repress it. The sacrifice of Persigny, minister of the interior, who was responsible for the elections, the substitution for the ministers without portfolio of a sort of presidency of the council filled by Eugène Rouher, the "Vice-Emperor", and the nomination of Jean Victor Duruy, an anti-clerical, as minister of public instruction, in reply to those attacks of the Church which were to culminate in the Syllabus of 1864, all indicated a distinct rapprochement between the emperor and the Left. But though the opposition represented by Thiers was rather constitutional than dynastic, there was another and irreconcilable opposition, that of the amnestied or voluntarily exiled republicans, of whom Victor Hugo was the eloquent mouthpiece. Thus those who had formerly constituted the governing classes were again showing signs of their ambition to govern. There appeared to be some risk that this movement among the bourgeoisie might spread to the people. As Antaeus recruited his strength by touching the earth, so Napoleon believed that he would consolidate his menaced power by again turning to the labouring masses, by whom that power had been established. Assured of support, the emperor, through Rouher, a supporter of the absolutist régime, refused all fresh claims on the part of the Liberals. He was aided by the cessation of the industrial crisis as the American Civil War came to an end, by the apparent closing of the Roman question by the convention of September 15, which guaranteed to the papal states the protection of Italy, and finally by the treaty of October 30, 1864, which temporarily put an end to the crisis of the Schleswig-Holstein question.

Rise of Prussia

Things went badly, however, when Prussia defeated Austria in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and emerged as the dominant power in Germany. Confidence in the excellence of imperial régime vanished. Thiers and Jules Favre as representatives of the Opposition denounced the blunders of 1866. Emile Ollivier split the official majority by the amendment of the 45, and made it understood that a reconciliation with the Empire would be impossible until the emperor granted entire liberty. The recall of French troops from Rome, in accordance with the convention of 1864, led to further attacks by the Ultramontane party, who were alarmed for the papacy. Napoleon III felt the necessity for developing "the great act of 1860" by the decree January 19, 1867. In spite of Rouher, by a secret agreement with Ollivier, the right of interpellation was restored to the Chambers. Reforms in press supervision and the right of holding meetings were promised. In vain did Rouher try to meet the Liberal opposition by organising a party for the defence of the Empire, the Union dynastique. The rapid succession of international reverses prevented him from effecting anything. The emperor was abandoned by men and disappointed by events. He had hoped that, though by granting the freedom of the press and authorising meetings, he had conceded the right of speech, he would retain the right of action; but he had played into the hands of his enemies. Victor Hugo's Châtiments, Rochefort's Lanterne, the subscription for the monument to Baudin, the deputy killed at the barricades in 1851, followed by Léon Gambetta's speech against the Empire on the occasion of the trial of Delescluze, soon showed that the republican party was irreconcilable.

Mobilisation of the working classes

On the other hand, the Ultramontane party were becoming discontented, while the industries formerly protected were dissatisfied with free trade reform. The working classes had abandoned their political neutrality, which had brought them nothing but unpopularity, and gone over to the enemy. Despising Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's impassioned attack on the slavery of 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. At these Labour congresses, the fame of which was only increased by the fact that they were forbidden, it had been affirmed 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. The Empire, taken by surprise, sought to curb both the middle classes and the labouring classes, and forced them both into revolutionary actions. There were multiple strikes. The elections of May 1869, which took place during these disturbances, inflicted upon the Empire a serious moral defeat. In spite of the revival by the government of the cry of the "red terror", Ollivier, the advocate of conciliation, was rejected by Paris, while 40 irreconcilables and 116 members of the Third Party were elected. Concessions had to be made to these, so by the senatus-consulte of September 8, 1869 a parliamentary monarchy was substituted for personal government. On January 2, 1870 Ollivier was placed at the head of the first homogeneous, united and responsible ministry.

Plebiscite of 1870

But the republican party, unlike the country, which hailed this reconciliation of liberty and order, refused to be content with the liberties they had won; they refused all compromise, declaring themselves more than ever decided upon the overthrow of the Empire. The murder of the journalist Victor Noir by Pierre Bonaparte, a member of the imperial family, gave the revolutionaries their long desired opportunity (January 10). But the émeute ended in a failure, and the emperor was able to answer the personal threats against him by the overwhelming victory of the plebiscite of May 8, 1870. This success, which should have consolidated the Empire, determined its downfall. It was thought that a diplomatic success would make the country forget liberty in favour of glory. It was in vain that after the parliamentary revolution of January 2, 1870, Comte Daru revived, through Lord Clarendon, Count Beust's plan of disarmament after the Battle of Königgratz. He met with a refusal from Prussia and from the imperial entourage. The Empress Eugénie was credited with the remark, "If there is no war, my son will never be emperor." France, Empire 2 France, Empire 2 Category:History of France Empire 2 ja:フランス第二帝政

Bonapartist

In French political history, Bonapartists were monarchists who desired a French Empire under the House of Bonaparte, the Corsican family of Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon I of France) and his nephew Louis (Napoleon III of France). Bonapartism had its followers from 1815 forward among those who never accepted the defeat at Waterloo or the Congress of Vienna. Napoleon I's death in exile on Saint Helena in 1821 only transferred the allegiance of many of these persons to other members of his family; however, particularly after the death of Napoleon's son, the Duke of Reichstadt (known to Bonapartists as Napoleon II), there were several different members of the family in which the Bonapartist hopes rested. The disturbances of 1848 gave this group hope. Bonapartists were essential in the election of Napoleon I's nephew Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President of the Second Republic, and gave him the political support necessary for his 1852 discarding of the constitution and proclaiming the Second Empire. In 1870, Napoleon III led France to a disastrous defeat at the hands of Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War, and he subsequently abdicated. Afterwards, Bonapartists continued to aspire and to agitate for another member of the family to be placed on the throne. However, from 1871 forward, they competed with monarchist groups that favoured the restoration of the family of Louis-Philippe, King of the French (1830-1848) (the Orleanists), and with those who favoured the restoration of the House of Bourbon, the traditional French royal family (Legitimists). The strength of these three monarchist factions combined was almost undoubtedly greater than that of the Republicans of the era, but as the three proved to be irreconcilable on the choice of who should be the new French monarch, monarchist fervor eventually waned and the French Republic became more or less a permanent facet of French life; Bonapartism was slowly relegated to being the civic faith of a few romantics as more of a hobby than a practical political philosophy. The final death knell for Bonapartism was probably sounded when Eugene Bonaparte, the only son of Napoleon III, was killed in action while serving as a British Army officer in Zululand in 1879. The current head of the family is the prince Napoleon (Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, born 1950), great-great-grandson of Napoleon I's brother Jérôme Bonaparte by his second marriage; he has a son Jean (born 1986) and a brother, Jérôme Bonaparte, born 1957), unmarried. There are no remaining descendants in male line from any other of Napoleon's brothers, and no serious political movement that aims to restore any of these men to the imperial throne of France. The honey bee was a prominent political symbol in the empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, representing the Bonapartist bureacratic and political system.

The Bonapartist claimants

The "Law of Succession" Napoleon I established on becoming Emperor in 1804 provided that the Bonapartist claim to the throne should pass firstly to Napoleon's own legitimate male descendents through the male line. At at that time he had no legitimate sons, and it seemed unlikely he would have any due to the age of his wife Josephine. His eventual response, was the unacceptable path, in Catholic eyes, of engineering a dubious annulment, without papal approval, of his marriage to Josephine and undertaking a second marriage to the younger Marie Louise), with whom he had one son. The law of succession provided that if Napoleon's own direct line died out, the cliam past first to his older brother Joseph and his legitimate male descendants through the male line, then to his younger brother Louis and his legitimate male descendants through the male line. His other brothers, Lucien and Jerome, and their descendants, were omitted from the succession (even though Lucien was older than Louis) because they had either politically opposed the Emperor or made marriages of which he disaproved. By Marie Louise Napoleon had one son, in whose favour he abdicated after his final defeat in 1815. Although the Bonapartes were now deposed and the old Bourbon monarchy restored, Bonapartists recognised this child as Napoleon II. However, he was sickly, virtually imprisoned in Austria, and died young and unmarried, without leaving any further direct descendants of Napoleon I. When the Bonaparte Empire was restored to power in France in 1852, the Emperor was Napoleon III, Louis Bonaparte's only living legitimate son (Joseph having died in 1844 without ever having had a legitimate son, only daughters). In 1852, Napoleon III, having restored the Bonapartes to power in France, enacted a new decree on Succession. The claim first went to his own male legitimate descendants in the male line (though at that time he had none; he would later have one legitimate son, Eugene Bonaparte, who would be recognised by Bonapartists as "Napoleon IV" before dying young and unmarried). If his own line died out, the new decree allowed the claim to pass to Jerome, Napoleon's youngest brother who had previously been excluded, and his male descendants by Princess Catherina of Wurrtemburg in the male line (but not his descendents by his original marriage to the American commoner Elizabeth Patterson, which Napoleon I had greatly disapproved and had which he had had annuled by "the complaisant ecclesiastical authorities of the archdiocese of Paris" (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1911), despite Pope Pius VII's previously refusing to give such an annulment). The only remaining Bonapartist claimants since 1879, and today, have been the descendants of Jerome and Catherine of Wurrtemburg in the male line. In their willingness to ignore primogeniture (the exclusion of Lucien Bonaparte and his descendants) and their cavalier approach to the Catholic belief in the indissolubility of marriage and to the Pope's rights as final arbiter on the validity of marriages, the Bonapartist laws of succession were far from traditional; but then, the whole claim of the Bonaparte family to rule France was far from traditional. The follwing are the list of Bonapartist claimants to the Imperial throne. Those who actually ruled are in bold:
- Napoleon I, ruled 1804-15, abdicated 1815, died 1821.
- Napoleon, Duke of Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I, styled Napoleon II by Bonapartists. Briefly reigned as Emperor in France for a fortnight in June-July 1815, after his father's abdication following the defeat at Waterloo. After the deposition and exile of the Bonaparte family in July 1815, or at least from Napoleon I's death in 1821, he was Bonapartist claimant to the throne until 1832. Died 1832, unmarried, no children.
- Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon I's oldest brother, former King of Spain, claimant 1832-44. Died 1844, two daughters but no legitimate male children.
- Louis Bonaparte, Napoleon I's second youngest brother, former King of Holland, claimant 1844-46. Died 1846.
- Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, the only living legitimate child of Louis Bonaparte (though some have questioned whether he was Louis' biological son - his mother Hortense was notorious for her infidelity). Claimant 1846-73. He was President of France 1849-52, and under the name Napoleon III actually ruled as Emperor 1852-70.
- Eugene Bonaparte, the only legitimate child of Napoleon III. Claimant 1873-79. Styled "Napoleon IV" by his supporters. Died 1879, unmarried, no children.
- Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, nicknamed 'Plon-plon', the only male child of Jerome Bonaparte, Napoleon I's youngest brother, with Catherina of Wurrtemberg (though Jerome had had another son earlier with Elizabeth Patterson). Claimant 1879-91. Died 1891.
- Napoleon Victor Jerome Frederic Bonaparte, eldest son of 'Plon-plon', claimant 1891-26 (though many Bonapartists preferred his younger brother Louis). Died 1926.
- Napoleon Louis Bonaparte, son of Napoleon Victor, claimant 1926-97. Died 1997.
- Napoleon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, the son of Napoleon Louis, claimant since 1997.

'Bonapartist' as a Marxist epithet

Karl Marx was a student of Jacobinism and the French Revolution as well as a contemporary critic of the Second Republic and Second Empire. He used the term Bonapartism to refer to a situation in which counterrevolutionary military officers seize power from revolutionaries, and then use selective reformism to co-opt the radicalism of the popular classes. In the process, Marx argued, Bonapartists preserve and mask the power of a narrower ruling class. He saw Napoleon I and Napoleon III as having both corrupted revolutions in France in this way. Marx offered this definition of and analysis of Bonapartism in "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," written in 1852. In this document, he drew attention to what he calls the phenomenon's repetitive history with one of his most quoted lines: "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce." Many modern-day Trotskyists and other leftists use the phrase left Bonapartist to describe those like Stalin and Mao who controlled 20th century bureaucratic socialist regimes. Category:History of France ja:ボナパルティズム

1852

1852 was a leap year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar).

Events


- January 14 - President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte proclaims a new constitution for the French Second Republic.
- January 17 - United Kingdom recognizes independence of the Transvaal
- Devil's Island penal colony opens
- February 11 - First British public toilet for women opens in Bedford Street, London
- February 15 - Great Ormond St Hospital for Sick Children, London, admits first patient
- February 16 - Studebaker Brothers wagon company, precursor of the automobile manufacturer, is established
- February 19 - The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity is founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania
- March 1 - Archibald William Montgomerie, 13th Earl of Eglinton appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
- April 1 - Start of Second Burmese War
- September 24 - French engineer Henri Giffard makes the first airship trip from Paris to Trappes
- October 6 - In Mexico, French settlers under Count Gaston Raousset-Boulbon occupy the city of Hermosillo and declare the Republic of Sonora. The attempt falters when the count contracts dysentery
- November 2 - Democrat Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire defeats Whig Winfield Scott of Virginia in the U.S. presidential election
- November 4 - Count Cavour becomes Piedmont prime minister
- November 11 - New Palace of Westminster opened in Britain
- November 21/November 22 New French Empire confirmed by plebiscite: 7,824,000 for, 253,000 against
- December 2 - Napoleon III becomes Emperor of France.
- French replace semaphores with Morse telegraphs
- Justin Perkins, an American Presbyterian missionary, produces the first translation of the Bible in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic, which is published with the parallel text of the Syriac Peshitta by the American Bible Society
- Uncle Tom's Cabin published

Births


- March 1 - Théophile Delcassé, French statesman (d. 1923)
- April 1 - Edwin Austin Abbey, American painter (d. 1911)
- April 13 - F.W. Woolworth, American merchant and businessman (d. 1919)
- April 22 - Guillaume IV, Grand Duke of Luxembourg (d. 1912)
- May 1 - Santiago Ramón y Cajal, Spanish histologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1934)
- May 4 - Alice Pleasance Liddell, inspiration for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (d. 1934)
- May 31 - Julius Richard Petri, German bacteriologist (d. 1921)
- July 12 - Hipólito Yrigoyen, President of Argentina (d. 1933)
- August 30 - Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, Dutch chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1911)
- September 12 - Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (d. 1928)
- September 28 - Henri Moissan, French chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1907)
- October 2 - William Ramsay, Scottish chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1916)
- October 9 - Hermann Emil Fischer, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1919)
- November 1 - Eugene W. Chafin, American politician (d. 1920)
- November 3 - Mutsuhito of Japan, Meiji Emperor (d. 1912)
- November 11 - Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, Austro-Hungarian field marshal (d. 1925)
- November 22 - Paul-Henri-Benjamin d'Estournelles de Constant, French diplomat, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (d. 1924)
- December 15 - Henri Becquerel, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1908)
- December 19 - Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)

Deaths


- January 6 - Louis Braille, French teacher of the blind (b. 1809)
- March 4 - Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer (b. 1809)
- June 29 - Henry Clay, American Senator (b. 1777)
- July 22 - Auguste Marmont, French marshal (b. 1774)
- September 4 - William MacGillivray, Scottish naturalist and ornithologist (b. 1796)
- September 14 - Augustus Pugin, English architect (b. 1812)
- September 14 - Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, British general and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1769)
- September 20 - Philander Chase, American founder of Kenyon College (b. 1775)
- October 24 - Daniel Webster, American statesman (b. 1782)
- November 27 - Augusta Ada King (neé Byron), Countess of Lovelace, early English computer pioneer (b. 1815)
- November 30 - Junius Brutus Booth, English-born actor (b. 1796) Category:1852 ko:1852년 ms:1852 simple:1852 th:พ.ศ. 2395

1870

1870 was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar).

Events

January - April


- January 1 - Plans for the Brooklyn Bridge are done.
- January 2 - Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge begins.
- January 6 - The inauguration of the Musikverein (Vienna).
- January 10 - John D. Rockefeller incorporates Standard Oil
- January 15 - A political cartoon for the first time symbolizes the United States Democratic Party with a donkey ("A Live Jackass Kicking a Dead Lion" by Thomas Nast for Harper's Weekly).
- January 26 - American Civil War: Virginia rejoins the Union
- January 27 - First college sorority, Kappa Alpha Theta, is formed at DePauw University
- February - Vrain Denis-Lucas in sentenced for two years in prison for multiple forgery in Paris
- February 2 - It is revealed that the famed Cardiff Giant was just carved gypsum and not the petrified remains of a human.
- February 3 - The 15th Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed
- February 10 - Anaheim, California is incorporated.
- February 10 - The YWCA is founded (New York City)
- February 12 - Women gain the right to vote in Utah Territory.
- February 23 - Military control of Mississippi ends and it is readmitted to the Union.
- February 25 - Hiram Rhoades Revels, a Republican from Mississippi, is sworn into the United States Senate, becoming the first African American ever to sit in the U.S. Congress
- February 26 - In New York City, the first pneumatic-subway is opened.
- February 28 - The Bulgarian Exarchate is established by decree of Sultan Abd-ul-Aziz of the Ottoman Empire.
- March 2 - Francisco Solano López' last troops cornered by Triple Alliance troops at Cerro Cora. López refuses to surrender and is killed. Fighting ends in Paraguay - the War of the Triple Alliance is over
- March 30 - Texas is readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction.
- April 11 - Irish peer Lord Muncaster and his entourage kidnapped in Greece
- April 22 - Vladimir Lenin is born

May - August


- May 12 - The Canadian province of Manitoba is created in response to Louis Riel's Red River Rebellion
- May 14 - First rugby match to be played in New Zealand, between the Nelson Football Club and Nelson College.
- May 24 - The Port Adelaide Football Club play their first match of Australian rules football at Buck's Flat, Glanville, South Australia.
- June 22 - U.S. Congress created the Department of Justice.
- June 26 - Christmas is declared a federal holiday in the United States
- July 13 - The Emser Depesche serves as a reason for a war between Prussia and France
- July 15 - Reconstruction: Georgia becomes the last former Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union, and the CSA is dissoluted.
- July 19 - Franco-Prussian War: France declares war on Prussia.

September - December


- September 2 - Franco-Prussian War: Battle of Sedan - Prussian forces defeat the French armies and take emperor Napoleon III and 100,000 of his soldiers prisoner at Sedan.
- September 4 - Emperor Napoleon III of France is deposed and the Third Republic is declared. Empress Eugenie flees to England with her children.
- September 6 - Louisa Ann Swain of Laramie, Wyoming, votes in the morning, becoming the first woman in the United States to cast a vote legally after 1807.
- September 20 - With Bersaglieri soldiers entering Rome at Porta Pia, the unification of Italy is completed. End of the temporal power of Papacy.
- October 2 – Referendum in Rome supports joining the Italy with 133681 against 1500. Decision is made official October 6. Rome becomes the capital of unified Italy
- October 8 - Leon Michel Gambetta escapes the besieged Paris in a hot-air balloon
- November 1 - In the United States, the newly-created Weather Bureau (later renamed the National Weather Service) makes its first official meteorological forecast: "High winds at Chicago and Milwaukee... and along the Lakes".
- November 16 - Spanish Cortes proclaims Amadeo de Saboya as king Amadeus I of Spain.
- December – Assassination of Juan Prim, Prime minister of Spain

Unknown date


- Franco-Prussian War
- Term "economics" first used, by Alfred Marshall
- In England, the Forfeiture Act was passed, abolishing the punishment of hanging, drawing and quartering.

Births


- January 2 - Ernst Barlach, German sculptor, graphic artist, and poet (d. 1938)
- January 8 - Miguel Primo de Rivera, dictator of Spain (d. 1930)
- February 7 - Alfred Adler, Austrian psychologist (d. 1937)
- March 5 - Frank Norris, American writer (d. 1902)
- March 17 - Horace Donisthorpe, English entomologist (d. 1951)
- March 20 - Paul Erich von Lettow-Vorbeck, German general (d. 1964)
- April 22 - Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary, first leader of the Soviet Union (d. 1924)
- April 30 - Franz Lehár, Austrian composer (d. 1948)
- May 19 - Albert Fish, American serial killer (d. 1936)
- June 13 - Jules Bordet, Belgian immunologist and microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1961)
- July 3 - Richard Bedford Bennett, eleventh Prime Minister of Canada (d. 1947)
- July 12 - Louis II of Monaco (d. 1949)
- July 29 - George Dixon, Canadian boxer (d. 1909)
- August 11 - Tom Richardson English cricketer (d. 1912)
- August 31 - Maria Montessori, Italian educator (d. 1952)
- September 26 - King Christian X of Denmark (d. 1947)
- September 30 - Jean Baptiste Perrin, French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1942)
- October 10 - Ivan Alekseyevich Bunin, Russian writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1953)
- November 21 - Sigfrid Edström, Swedish sports official (d. 1964)
- November 27 - Juho Kusti Paasikivi, Prime Minister and President of Finland (d. 1956)
- December 5 - Vítězslav Novák, Czech composer (d. 1949)
- December 12 - Walter Benona Sharp, American oil pioneer (d. 1912)
- December 18 - Saki, English writer (d. 1918)

Deaths


- January 29 - Leopold II, Grand Duke of Tuscany (b. 1797)
- February 7 - Sylvain Salnave a Hatian president
- February 19 - Nathaniel de Rothschild, French wine grower (b. 1812)
- March 28 - George Henry Thomas, American general (b. 1816)
- May 6 - Sir James Young Simpson, Scottish physician and researcher (b. 1811)
- June 9 - Charles Dickens, British novelist (b. 1812)
- July 20 - Jules Alfred Huot de Goncourt, French writer and publisher (b. 1822)
- September 12 - Fitz Hugh Ludlow, American author and explorer (b. 1836)
- September 23 - Prosper Mérimée, French writer (b. 1803)
- October 12 - Robert E. Lee, American Confederate general (b. 1807)
- November 24 - Comte de Lautreamont, French poet and writer (b. 1846)
- November 28 - Frédéric Bazille, French painter (b. 1841)
- December 5 - Alexandre Dumas, père, French author (b. 1802)
- December 27 - General Prim, Spanish dictator (b. 1814) Category:1870 ko:1870년 ms:1870 simple:1870 th:พ.ศ. 2413

French Third Republic

The French Third Republic, (in French, La Troisième République, sometimes written as La IIIe République) (1870/75-10 July 1940) was the governing body of France between the Second French Empire and the Fourth Republic. It was a republican parliamentary democracy that was created on September 4, 1870 following the collapse of the Empire of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War. It survived until the invasion of France by the German Third Reich in 1940. One of its most surprising aspects is that the first long-term stable republic in France, and the first to win the majority of the French to 'republicanism', was never intended to be a long-term republic at all. Napoleon III had become the second Emperor of France in 1852, following in the footsteps of his uncle Napoleon I. However, the French Second Empire lasted only eighteen years because of the emergence of another world power, one that was to profoundly transform the balance of power in Europe: the German Empire. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Prussia, who sought to bring his state to ascendancy in Germany, realized that if a unified German state was to be created, some unifying force was needed to bring this about - a nationalist war with France seemed the perfect force to bring the other German states into line with Prussia. A resulting German defeat of France would firmly establish the new Germany on the world stage within secure borders. Through clever manipulation of the Ems Dispatch, Bismarck and French public opinion goaded France into declaring war on Prussia, beginning the Franco-Prussian War. After Napoleon's capture by the Prussians at Sedan, General Louis Jules Trochu and the politician Léon Gambetta overthrew the Second Empire and established the "Government of National Defence" which later became the conservative Third Republic. Its creation was overshadowed by the settlement of peace terms with Prussia and the subsequent revolution in Paris known as the Paris Commune, which maintained a radical regime for two months until its bloody suppression in May 1871. In the aftermath of the collapse of the regime of Napoleon III, the clear majority of French people and the overwhelming majority of the French National Assembly wished to return to a constitutional monarchy. There were two competing claimants to the throne, each supported by political groups. The Legitimists supported the heirs to Charles X, recognising as king his grandson, Henri, Comte de Chambord, alias Henry V. The Orleanists supported the heirs to Louis Philippe, recognising as king his son, Louis-Philippe, Comte de Paris. However the two groups came to a compromise, whereby the childless Comte de Chambord would be recognised as king, with the Comte de Paris recognised as his heir. Consequently in 1871, the throne was offered to the Comte de Chambord. In 1830 Charles X had abdicated in favour of Chambord, then a child, and Louis-Philippe had been recognised as king instead. In 1871 Chambord had no wish to be a constitutional monarch but a semi-absolutist one like his grandfather Charles X, or like the contemporary rulers of Prussia/Germany. Moreover, he refused to reign over a state that used the Tricolore that was associated with the Revolution of 1789 and the July Monarchy of the man who seized the throne from him in 1830, the citizen-king, Louis Philippe, King of the French. This became the ultimate reason the restoration never occurred. However, much as France wanted a restored monarchy, it was unwilling to surrender its popular tricolour. Instead a "temporary" republic was established, pending the death of the elderly childless Chambord and the succession of his more liberal heir, the Comte de Paris. In February 1875, a series of parliamentary Acts established the organic or constitutional laws of the new republic. At its apex was a President of the Republic. A two-chamber parliament was created, along with a ministry under a prime minister (named "President of the Council") who was nominally answerable to both the President of the Republic and parliament. Throughout the 1870s, the issue of monarchy versus republic dominated public debate. On May 16, 1877, with public opinion swinging heavily in favour of a republic, the President of the Republic, Patrice MacMahon, duc de Magenta, himself a monarchist, made one last desperate attempt to salvage the monarchical cause by dismissing the republic-minded prime minister Jules Simon and appointing the monarchist leader the Duc de Broglie to office. He then dissolved parliament and called a general election (October 1877). If his hope had been to halt the move towards republicanism, it backfired spectacularly, with the President being accused of having staged a constitutional coup d'etat, known as le seize Mai after the date on which it happened. Republicans returned triumphant, finally killing off the prospect of a restored French monarchy. MacMahon himself resigned on January 28, 1879, leaving a seriously weakened presidency, so weakened indeed that not until Charles de Gaulle eighty years later did another President of France unilaterally dissolve parliament. To mark the final end of French monarchism as a serious political force, in 1885 the French Crown Jewels were broken up and sold. Only a few crowns, their precious gems replaced by coloured glass, were kept. In 1889 France flirted briefly with the possibility of a dictatorship or a constitutional tyranny during the Boulanger crisis, but the republican leaders were able to avert the threat. Though France was clearly republican, it was not in love with its Third Republic. Governments collapsed with regularity, rarely lasting more than a couple of months, as radicals, socialists, liberals, conservatives, republicans and monarchists all fought for control. However others argue that the collapse of governments were a minor side effect of the Republic lacking strong political parties, resulting in coalitions of many parties that routinely lost and gained a few allies. Consequently the change of governments could be seen as little more than a series of ministerial reshuffles, with many individuals carrying forward from one government to the next, often in the same posts. In 1905 the government introduced a controversial series of anti-clerical laws, ostensibly separating church and state, but in fact banning religious involvement in education and dissolving many Catholic institutions and religious orders. The Third Republic survived the First World War, having found allies to support it against Germany. Some historians argue that this was the greatest success of the regime. Throughout its seventy-year history, the Third Republic stumbled from crisis to crisis, from collapsing governments to the appointment of a mentally ill president. It struggled through the German invasion of World War I and the inter-war years. When the Nazi invasion occurred in 1940, the Republic was so disliked by enemies on the right - who sought a powerful bulwark against Communism - and on the far left - where Communists initially followed their movement's international line of refusing to defend "bourgeois" regimes - that few had the stomach to fight for its survival, even if they disapproved of German occupation of northern France and the collaborationist Vichy regime established in the south. When France was finally liberated, few called for the restoration of the Third Republic, and a Constituent Assembly was established in 1946 to draft a constitution for a successor, established as the Fourth Republic that December. Adolphe Thiers, the first president of the Third Republic, called republicanism in the 1870s "the form of government that divides France least." France might have agreed about being a republic, but it never fully agreed with the Third Republic. France's longest lasting régime since before the 1789 revolution, the Third Republic was consigned to the history books, as unloved at the end as it had been when first created seventy years earlier. But its longevity showed that it was capable of weathering many a storm. France, Republic 3 Category:History of France Republic 3 ja:フランス第三共和政

First French Empire

The First French Empire, commonly known as the French Empire or the Napoleonic Empire, covers the period of the domination of France and much of continental Europe by Napoleon I of France. Constitutionally, it refers to the period of 1804 to 1814, from the Consulate to the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in the history of the French state. Also included are the Hundred Days of 1815, the last gasp of Napoleon's imperial dream. The First French Empire stands distinct from its imitator and would-be successor, the Second French Empire of Napoleon III (1852-1870).

Origins

Bonaparte's march to empire began with the Constitution of the Year VIII (1799), which made Bonaparte First Consul, and its August 1802 amendment making him First Consul for life. Bonaparte attracted more power and gravitated towards imperial status, gathering support on the way for his internal rebuilding of France and its institutions. He gradually dampened opposition and Republican enthusiasm, using exile, systematic bureaucratic oppression, and constitutional means. The decision of the Senate on May 18, 1804, giving him the title of emperor, was the counterblast to the dread he had excited. Never did a harder master ordain more imperiously, nor understand better how to command obedience. "This was because," as Goethe said, "under his orders men were sure of accomplishing their ends. That is why they rallied round him, as one to inspire them with that kind of certainty." Goethe itself is shaded dark blue, with satellite states shaded paler.]] Indeed no man previously ever concentrated authority to such a point, nor showed mental abilities at all comparable to his: an extraordinary power of work, prodigious memory for details and fine judgment in selection; together with a luminous decision and a simple and rapid conception, all placed at the disposal of a sovereign will. No head of the state gave expression more imperiously to the popular passions of the French of that day: abhorrence for the emigrant nobility, fear of the ancien régime, dislike of foreigners, hatred of Great Britain, an appetite for conquest evoked by revolutionary propaganda, and the love of glory. In this Napoleon was a soldier of the people: because of this he judged and ruled his contemporaries. Having seen their actions in the stormy hours of the French Revolution, he despised them and looked upon them as incapable of disinterested conduct, conceited, and obsessed by the notion of equality. His genius, assisted by the impoverishment of two generations, was like the oak which admits beneath its shade none but the smallest of saplings. With the exception of Talleyrand, after 1808 he would have about him only mediocre people, without initiative, prostrate at his feet: a group of paltry, rapacious and embarrassing Corsicans; his admirably subservient generals; his selfish ministers, docile agents, apprehensive of the future, who for fourteen long years felt a prognostication of defeat and discounted the inevitable catastrophe.

From Consulate to empire

So First Empire France had no internal history outside the plans and transformations to which Napoleon subjected the institutions of the Consulate, and outside the after-effects of the Napoleonic Wars. Well knowing that his fortunes rested on the delighted acquiescence of France, Napoleon expected to continue indefinitely fashioning public opinion according to his desire. Being essentially a man of order, he loathed, as he said, all demagogic action, Jacobinism and visions of liberty. Nourished like Frederick II and Catherine the Great in 18th century maxims, he would not allow any liberal ideology to filter through into his rough but regular ordering of mankind. Thus the whole political system, being summed up in the Emperor, was bound to share his fall. ideology] Although an enemy of ideologues, Napoleon followed grandiose visions in his foreign policy. A condottiere of the Renaissance living in the 19th century, he used France, and all those nations annexed or attracted by the Revolution, to resuscitate the Roman conception of the idea of Empire for personal benefit. On the other hand, he was enslaved by the history and aggressive idealism of the National Convention, and of the republican propaganda under the Directory; they guided him quite as much as he guided them. Hence the immoderate extension given to French activity by his classical Latin spirit; hence also his conquests, leading on from one to another, and instead of being mutually helpful interfering with each other; hence, finally, his not entirely coherent policy, interrupted by hesitation and counter-attractions. This explains the retention of Italy, imposed on the Directory from 1796 onward, followed by his treatment of Venice, the foundation of the Cisalpine Republic - a foretaste of future annexations - the restoration of that republic after his return from Egypt, and in view of his as yet inchoate designs, the postponed solution of the Italian problem which the treaty of Lunéville had raised. The Battle of Marengo (June 14, 1800) inaugurated the political idea which was to continue its development until Napoleon's Moscow campaign. Napoleon dreamed as yet only of keeping the Duchy of Milan, setting aside Austria, and preparing some new enterprise in the East or in Egypt. The peace of Amiens, which cost him Egypt, could only seem to him a temporary truce; while he was gradually extending his authority in Italy by the union of Piedmont and by his tentative plans regarding Genoa, Parma, Tuscany and Naples. He wanted to make this his Cisalpine Gaul, laying siege to the Roman state on every hand, and preparing in the Concordat for the moral and material servitude of the pope. When he recognised his error in having raised the papacy from decadence by restoring its power over the churches, he tried in vain to correct it by the Articles Organiques (1802) wanting, like Charlemagne, to be the legal protector of the pope, and eventually master of the Roman Church. To conceal his plan he aroused French colonial aspirations against Britain, and also the memory of the spoliations of 1763 (Treaty of Paris), exasperating British jealousy of France, whose borders now extended to the Rhine, and laying hands on Hanover, Hamburg and Cuxhaven. By the "Recess" of 1803, which brought to his side Bavaria, Württemberg and Baden, he followed up the overwhelming tide of revolutionary ideas in Germany, to stem which Pitt, back in power, appealed once more to an Anglo-Austro-Russian coalition against Napoleon, who by mastering France, Italy and Germany, hoped to revive the empire of Charlemagne; who finally on December 2, 1804 placed the imperial crown upon his head, after receiving the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and made Pope Pius VII consecrate him in Notre-Dame de Paris. After this, in four campaigns, the Emperor transformed his Carolingian feudal and federal empire into one modelled on the Roman empire. The memories of imperial Rome were for a third time, after Julius Caesar, Trajan and Charlemagne, to modify the historical evolution of France. Though the vague plan for an invasion of England fell to the ground, the Battle of Ulm and the Battle of Austerlitz obliterated Trafalgar, and the camp at Boulogne put the best military resources he had ever commanded at Napoleon's disposal in the form of La Grande Armée.

Early victories

La Grande Armée In the first of these campaigns Bonaparte swept away the remnants of the old Holy Roman Empire, and out of its shattered fragments created in southern Germany the vassal states of Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, Hesse-Darmstadt and Saxony, which he attached to France under the name of the Confederation of the Rhine; but the treaty of Pressburg (26 December 1805) gave France nothing but the danger of a more centralised and less docile Germany. On the other hand, Napoleon's creation of the Kingdom of Italy, his annexation of Venetia and her ancient Adriatic Empire - wiping out the humiliation of 1797 - and the occupation of Ancona, marked a new stage in his progress towards his Roman Empire. His good fortune soon led him from conquest to spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea of the grand empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood-royal, and adding kingdom to kingdom. Joseph Bonaparte replaced the dispossessed Bourbons at Naples; Louis Bonaparte was installed on the throne of the newly formed kingdom of Holland carved out of the Dutch Batavian Republic; Joachim Murat became grand-duke of Berg, Jerome Bonaparte son-in-law to the king of Württemberg, and Eugène de Beauharnais to the king of Bavaria; while Stéphanie de Beauharnais married the son of the grand-duke of Baden. Meeting with less and less resistance, Napoleon went still further and would tolerate no neutral power. On August 6, 1806 he forced the Habsburgs, left with only the crown of Austria, to abdicate their title of Holy Roman Emperor. Prussia alone remained outside the Confederation of the Rhine, of which Napoleon was Protector, and to further her decision he offered her British Hanover. In a second campaign he destroyed at Jena both the army and the state of Frederick William III of Prussia, who could not make up his mind between the Napoleonic treaty of Schönbrunn and Russia's counter-proposal at Potsdam (14 October 1806). The butchery at Eylau and the vengeance taken at Friedland (14 June 1807) finally ruined Frederick the Great's work, and obliged Russia, the ally of Britain and Prussia, to allow the latter to be despoiled, and to join Napoleon against the maritime tyranny of the former.

At the crossroads

After the Treaties of Tilsit, however (July 1807), instead of trying to reconcile Europe to his grandeur, Napoleon had but one thought: to make use of his success to destroy Britain and complete his Italian dominion. It was from Berlin, on 21 November 1806, that he had dated the first decree of a continental blockade, a conception intended to paralyze his inveterate rival, but which on the contrary caused his own fall by its immoderate extension of the Empire. To the coalition of the northern powers he added the league of the Baltic and Mediterranean ports, and to the bombardment of Copenhagen by a Royal Navy fleet he responded by a second decree of blockade, dated from Milan on 17 December 1807. But the application of the Concordat and the taking of Naples led to the first of those struggles with the pope in which were formulated two antagonistic doctrines: Napoleon declaring himself Roman emperor, and Pius VII renewing the theocratic affirmations of Pope Gregory VII. The Emperor's Roman ambition was made more and more plainly visible by the occupation of the kingdom of Naples and of the Marches, and by the entry of Miollis into Rome; while Junot invaded Portugal, Radet laid hands on the pope himself, and Joachim Murat took possession of formerly Roman Spain, whither Joseph Bonaparte transferred afterwards. (See main article on the Peninsular War) But Napoleon little knew the flame he was kindling. No more far-seeing than the Directory or the men of the year III, he thought that, with energy and execution, he might succeed in the Peninsula as he had succeeded in Italy in 1796 and 1797, in Egypt, and in Hesse, and that he might cut into Spanish granite as into Italian mosaic or "that big cake, Germany". The Spanish were resiliant, however; and the trap of Bayonne, together with the enthroning of Joseph Bonaparte, made the contemptible prince of the Asturias the elect of popular sentiment, the representative of religion and country. Napoleon thought he had Spain within his grasp, and now suddenly everything started slipping from him. The Peninsula became the grave of whole armies and a battlefield against Britain. Dupont capitulated at Bailen into the hands of Castaños, and Junot at the Cintra, Portugal to Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington; while Europe trembled at this first check to the hitherto invincible imperial armies. To reduce Spanish resistance Napoleon had in his turn to come to terms with the Tsar Alexander I of Russia at Erfurt; so that, abandoning his designs in the East, he could make the Grand Army evacuate Prussia and return in force to Madrid. Thus Spain swallowed up the soldiers who were wanted for Napoleon's other fields of battle, and they had to be replaced by forced levies. Europe had only to wait, and he would eventually be found disarmed in face of a last coalition; but Spanish heroism infected Austria, and showed the force of national resistance. The provocations of Talleyrand and Britain strengthened the illusion: Why should not the Austrians emulate the Spaniards? The campaign of 1809, however, was but a pale copy of the Spanish insurrection. After a short and decisive action in Bavaria, Napoleon opened up the road to Vienna for a second time; and after the two days' battle at Essling, the stubborn fight at Wagram, the failure of a patriotic insurrection in northern Germany and of the British expedition against Antwerp, the Treaty of Vienna (14 December 1809), with the annexation of the Illyrian provinces, completed the colossal Empire. Napoleon profited, in fact, by this campaign which had been planned for his overthrow. The pope was deported to Savona beneath the eyes of an indifferent Europe, and his domains were incorporated in the Empire; the senate's decision on 17 February 1810 created the title of king of Rome, and made Rome the capital of Italy. The pope banished, it was now desirable to send away those to whom Italy had been more or less promised. Eugene de Beauharnais, Napoleon's stepson, was transferred to Frankfurt, and Murat carefully watched until the time should come to take him to Russia and install him as King of Poland. Between 1810 and 1812 Napoleon's divorce of Josephine, and his marriage with Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria, followed by the birth of the king of Rome, shed a brilliant light upon his future policy. He renounced a federation in which his brothers were not sufficiently docile; he gradually withdrew power from them; he concentrated all his affection and ambition on the son who was the guarantee of the continuance of his dynasty. This was the apogee of his reign.

Intrigues, unrest and corruption

But undermining forces already impinged: the faults inherent in his unwieldy achievement. Britain, his chief enemy, was persistently active; and rebellion both of the governing and of the governed broke out everywhere. Napoleon felt his impotence in coping with the Spanish Uprising, which he underrated, while yet unable to suppress it altogether. Men like Stein, Hardenberg and Scharnhorst had secretly started preparing Prussia's retaliation. Napoleon's formidable material power could not stand against the moral force of the pope, now a prisoner at Fontainebleau; and this he did not realise. The alliance arranged at Tilsit was seriously shaken by the Austrian marriage, the threat of a Polish restoration, and the unfriendly policy of Napoleon at Constantinople. The very persons whom he had placed in power were counteracting his plans: after four years' experience Napoleon found himself obliged to treat his Corsican dynasties like those of the ancien régime, and all his relations were betraying him. Caroline Bonaparte conspired against her brother and against her husband Murat; the hypochondriac Louis, now Dutch in his sympathies, found the supervision of the blockade taken from him, and also the defence of the Scheldt, which he had refused to ensure; Jerome Bonaparte, idling in his [http://wiktionary.org/wiki/Harem harem], lost that of the North Sea shores; and Joseph, who was attempting the moral conquest of Spain, was continually insulted at Madrid. The very nature of things was against the new dynasties, as it had been against the old. After national insurrections and family recriminations came treachery from Napoleon's ministers. Talleyrand betrayed his designs to Metternich and suffered dismissal; Fouché corresponded with Austria in 1809 and 1810, entered into an understanding with Louis, and also with Britain; while Bourrienne was convicted of peculation. By a natural consequence of the spirit of conquest Napoleon had aroused, all these parvenus, having tasted victory, dreamed of sovereign power: Bernadotte, who had helped him to the Consulate, played Napoleon false to win the crown of Sweden; Soult, like Murat, coveted the Spanish throne after that of Portugal, thus anticipating the treason of 1813 and the defection of 1814; many persons hoped for "an accident" which might resemble the tragic ends of Alexander the Great and of Julius Caesar. The country itself, besides, though flattered by conquests, was tired of self-sacrifice. It had become satiated; "the cry of the mothers rose threateningly" against "the Ogre" and his intolerable imposition of wholesale conscription. The soldiers themselves, discontented after Austerlitz, cried out for peace after Eylau. Finally, amidst profound silence from the press and the Assemblies, a protest was raised against imperial despotism by the literary world, against the excommunicated sovereign by Catholicism, and against the author of the continental blockade by the discontented bourgeoisie, ruined by the crisis of 1811. Napoleon himself was no longer the "General Bonaparte" of his campaign in Italy. He was already showing signs of physical decay; the Roman medallion profile had coarsened, the obese body was often lymphatic. Mental degeneration, too, betrayed itself in an unwonted irresolution. At Eylau, at Wagram, and later at Waterloo, his method of acting by enormous masses of infantry, artillery and cavalry, in a mad passion for conquest, and his misuse of his military resources, were all signs of his moral and technical decline; and this at the precise moment when, instead of the armies and governments of the old system, which had hitherto reigned supreme, the nations of Europe themselves were rising against France, and the events of 1792 were being avenged upon her. The three campaigns of two years (1812-1814) would bring the final catastrophe.

The endgame

(see main articles on Napoleon's Invasion of Russia and the Sixth Coalition ) Napoleon had hardly succeeded in putting down the revolt in Germany when the tsar of Russia himself headed a European insurrection against the ruinous tyranny of the continental blockade. To put a stop to this, to ensure his own access to the Mediterranean and exclude his chief rival, Napoleon made a desperate effort in 1812 against a country as invincible as Russia. Despite his victorious advance, the taking of Smolensk, the victory on the Moskva, and the entry into Moscow, he was vanquished by Russian patriotism and religious fervour, by the country and the climate, and by Alexander's refusal to make terms. After this came the lamentable retreat, while all Europe was concentrating against him. Pushed back, as he had been in Spain, from bastion to bastion, after the action on the Berezina, Napoleon had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1809, and then - having refused the peace offered him by Austria at the congress of Prague, from a dread of losing Italy, where each of his victories had marked a stage in the accomplishment of his dream - on those of 1805, despite Lützen and Bautzen, and on those of 1802 after his defeat at Leipzig, when Bernadotte (now Crown Prince of Sweden) turned upon him, Jean Victor Moreau also joined the Allies, and the Saxons and Bavarians forsook him as well. Following his retreat from Russia came Napoleon's retreat from Germany. After the loss of Spain, reconquered by Wellington, the rising in the Netherlands preliminary to the invasion and the manifesto of Frankfurt which proclaimed it, he had to fall back upon the frontiers of 1795; and then later was driven yet farther back upon those of 1792 - despite the wonderful campaign of 1814 against the invaders, in which the old Bonaparte of 1796 seemed to have returned. Paris capitulated on 30 March 1814, and the Delenda Carthago, pronounced against Britain, was spoken of Napoleon. The great empire of East and West fell in ruins with the emperor's abdication at Fontainebleau. Only the Hundred Days revived the flame for a final flicker: France returned to a restored Bourbon monarchy in the person of Louis XVIII.

See also


- Napoleonic Era
- Napoleonic Wars

External links


- [http://web2.airmail.net/napoleon/index.html Napoleon, His Armies and Battles]

References


- France, Empire 1 Empire 1 Category:French Revolution ja:フランス第一帝政

Peace

The concept of peace ranks among the most controversial in our time. Peace undoubtedly carries a positive connotation; almost nobody admits to opposing peace; world peace is widely seen as one of the most noble goals of humanity. Various groups, however, differ sharply about what peace entails, how best to achieve peace, and whether peace is even truly possible.

What is peace?

Peace is many things: the meaning of the word peace changes with context. Peace may refer specifically to an agreement concluded to end a war, or to a lack of external warfare, or to a period when a country's armies are not fighting enemies. It can also refer more generally to quietude, such as that common at night or in remote areas, allowing for sleep or meditation. Peace can be an emotion or internal state. And finally, peace can be any combination of these definitions. A person's conception of "peace" is often the product of culture and upbringing. People of different cultures sometimes disagree about the meaning of the word, and so do people within any given culture. Peace is not a symbol, peace is a mindset.

Absence of war

A simple and narrow definition of peace entails the absence of war. (The ancient Romans defined peace, Pax, as Absentia Belli, the absence of war.) The maintenance of longstanding peace between nations ranks among the few great successes of the United Nations. Peace can be voluntary, where potential agitators choose to abstain from disturbance, or it can be enforced, by suppressing those who might otherwise cause such disturbance. A hard stance on neutrality has given Switzerland fame as a country for its long-lasting peace. Sweden, however, presently has the longest history of continuous peace. Since its 1814 invasion of Norway, the Swedish kingdom has not engaged in military-style external violence.

Absence of violence or of evil; presence of justice

Constraining the concept of peace strictly to the absence of international war masks internal genocide, terrorism, and other violence. Few would describe the Congolese genocide of the 1890s as an example of peace, even though it technically occurred within the personal domain of King Léopold of the Belgians. Some, therefore, define "peace" as an absence of violence: not merely the absence of war, but also of evil. Many believe that peace is more than the absence of certain societal maladies. From this perspective, peace requires not only the absence of violence but also the presence of justice, as articulated by Martin Luther King, Jr. In this conception, a society in which one group is oppressed by another lacks peace even in the absence of violence, because the oppression itself constitutes evil.

Plural peaces

Some "peace thinkers" choose to abandon the idea of one definition of peace; rather, they promote the idea of many peaces. They think that no singular, correct definition of peace can exist; peace, therefore, should be seen as a plurality. For example, in the Great Lakes region of Africa, the word for peace is kindoki, which refers to a harmonious balance between human beings, the rest of the natural world, and the cosmos. This is a much more broad vision of peace than a mere "absence of war" or even a "presence of justice" standard. Many of these same thinkers also critique the idea of peace as a hopeful or eventual end. They recognize that peace does not necessarily have to be something the humans might achieve "some day." They contend that peace exists, we can create and expand it in small ways in our everyday lives, and peace changes constantly. This view makes peace permeable and imperfect rather than static and utopian.

Peace and quiet

In some contexts, peace refers more generally to a state of quiet or tranquility--an absence of disturbance or agitation. Those who travel to remote, rural areas often notice the striking difference in the noise level between the cities and the countryside; hence the term "peace and quiet". Conflict that occurs in nature, however, often produces sounds. When animals fight, the surrounding forest can become even more silent, as the non-engaged animals warily await the outcome. After a conflict, the normal sounds and actions of the inhabitants eventually reappear.

Inner peace

One meaning of peace refers to inner peace; a state of mind, body and soul, which is said to take place within ourselves. People that experience inner peace say that the feeling is not dependent on time, people or place, asserting that an individual may experience inner peace even in the midst of war.

Environmental Peace

Many, if not most, environmentalists consider protecting the environment to be a form of peace, if not the main form, as destroying habitats is quite arguably a form of violence and an "evil".

Is violence necessary?

There is a wide spectrum of views about whether, and when, violence and war are necessary. Followers of Jainism, for example, go to great lengths to avoid harming even animals, and pacifists, such as Christian anarchists, see any sort of violence as self-perpetuating. Other groups take a wide variety of stances.

Historical examples and counter examples

Allied propaganda billed the Great War in Europe as the "war to end all wars." Although the Allies won the war, the resulting "peace" Treaty of Versailles only set the stage for the even bloodier World War II. Before the Allied victory, the Bolsheviks promised the Russian people "peace, land, and bread." Although Vladimir Lenin ended the disastrous war against the Central Powers, the ensuing civil war resulted in a loss of over a million people. These failures illustrate the problems of using war in an effort to attain peace. Proponents of the democratic peace theory claim that strong empirical evidence exists that