The French Revolution plunged France into chaos and political instability. After the Terror, the political regime of the Directory failed to impose itself. This fragility favors the coup d'etat of Napoleon's 18 Brumaire which proclaims the Empire. After the conquests and the glory, the emperor bowed to foreign coalitions and went into exile in Saint Helena.
Louis XVIII restored the Constitutional Monarchy. But Napoleon escapes and scares the king away. The defeat of Waterloo (1815) will sign the end of the Empire, which will have been restored 100 days. Louis XVIII returns to the throne, but his power is weakened. When he died, his cousin Charles X was crowned. He is very royalist and therefore less moderate. When he suppresses the newly acquired freedoms, such as the freedom of the press, this triggers three days of revolt, the "Trois Glorieuses" on July 27-28-29, 1830. These days sign his exile, punishing the king for having suppressed the constitutional charter which framed his powers.
The cousin of Charles X, Louis Philippe 1
st
, is then called to reign, in particular by the deputy Adolphe Thiers, who will become minister then president of the Council. If the beginning of the July Monarchy is moderate, the king surrounds himself little by little with a more conservative government. The prohibition of a banquet of Republicans, wishing to abolish the suffrage censitaire (the cens is a tax threshold beyond which citizens can vote, suffrage is therefore based on wealth), to favor universal suffrage masculine (where all men have the right to vote), triggers the revolution of February 1848. On February 14, the king abdicates and goes into exile. The Monarchy will never return to the throne of France, it is the birth of the Second Republic.
December 2, 1851
Characters
Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte known as Napoleon III
Adolphe Thiers (MP, Minister and President of the Council during the July Monarchy, 1 st President of the III th Republic)
Victor Hugo
Procedure
This new regime established universal male suffrage and responded to the social demands of a world in turmoil by expanding individual freedoms. If Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873) is in exile following the fall of his uncle Napoleon I
st
, he was nevertheless elected deputy in several departments. He thus acceded to the presidency of the Republic on December 10, 1848. But the Constitution of the Second
th
Republic forbids the president in place to run for a second term.
For this, he proposes to modify it, on July 19, 1851, in order to be able to stand again but does not obtain the necessary votes. Only a coup would keep him in power. Also, on the night of the 1
st
on December 2, while a reception was given at the Élysée, those close to Louis-Napoleon seized key positions and some parliamentarians, such as Thiers, were arrested. The people rose up, the repression was bloody, and there were many deportations to keep opponents of the regime away. The writer Victor Hugo, for example, who accused Napoleon III of high treason, went into exile in Belgium and then in the British Isles (Jersey, Gernsey). The author of the coup, who thought he could impose himself without clashes, asks the people for their opinion by universal male suffrage (plebiscite). This legalized, on December 20, 1851, the accession to power of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, who then became free to modify the Constitution, promulgated on January 14, 1852. It reinstated the Empire, the Second (1852-1870), consecrating Napoleon III Emperor.
Consequences
With Napoleon III at the head of the Second Empire, France experienced a period of relative political stability for almost twenty years.