Early in July an open-air mass in memory of the victims was solemnized at the foot of the obelisk, but it did not mean that peace was established, and for a few months more the country quarreled on under the provisional government until Louis Napoleon was elected president of the Republic in December, 1848.
CHAPTER XXI
PARIS OF LOUIS NAPOLEON
LOUIS NAPOLEON[8] was the son of Hortense, Josephine’s daughter, who had been forced to marry Napoleon I’s brother, Louis, who disliked her as much as she did him. By the time of Napoleon’s downfall they were divorced and young Louis’ life from his sixth to his twenty-first year was one of constant change as he traveled from one place to another with his mother who was not welcomed as a resident of their towns by many small officials afraid of their political heads. This long period spent out of the country of his birth gave Louis the accent which provoked the passage at arms with Bismarck. Wishing to be polite to the great German he remarked blandly, “I never have heard a stranger speak French as you do;” to which Bismarck promptly responded, “I never have heard a Frenchman speak French as you do.”
When a man grown Louis Napoleon became a soldier of fortune. He fought against the pope; he tried to get up a revolution for his own benefit in the garrison at Strasburg; he entered France from the sea near Boulogne, again with no success; he was captured and imprisoned for six years, escaping in the clothes of a workman. It was only after the abdication of Louis Philippe that he dared to appear in Paris. While he was made a member of the Constituent Assembly, and was wire-pulling to secure his election to the presidency he was so poor that a street vender, a woman well-known because of her skill in getting about on two wooden legs, offered him money from her savings. When his star was in the ascendant he offered her an annuity. She refused it, saying that he wouldn’t take her money and so she wouldn’t take his. Béranger, the “people’s poet,” and Victor Hugo believed in Bonaparte and used their influence in his behalf.
The election in 1848 put an end to Louis’ poverty but his appetite for power grew by what it fed on. The new constitution decreed that a president could not be a candidate for reëlection until four years had elapsed after his first term of office. This arrangement did not suit Louis’s ambition and in 1851 he followed the great Napoleon’s example in executing a coup d’état. It meant more barricades and more slaughter in the Paris streets, but it disposed of his enemies and left him free to secure yet another constitution which lengthened the president’s term to ten years. As with the great Napoleon, the people elected him emperor for life only a year later. He took the title of Napoleon III.
The cholera ravaged France for many months during the early part of Louis Napoleon’s presidency. On one day there were six hundred and eighty deaths in Paris alone. Yet neither the epidemic nor republican simplicity prevented many elaborate public functions. In the autumn of 1848 the Palais Bourbon was the scene of many balls with a somewhat motley array of guests. It was currently reported in the city that before every ball there was such a washing and starching as never had been known before in the northern and eastern parts of the city, and that the tradesmen of those sections were accustomed to say with an air of pride, “No, we have nothing in ladies’ white kid gloves to-day except in small sizes—seven and under.”
In 1849 on the anniversary of the great Napoleon’s death, a memorial mass was solemnized at the Invalides, the old uniforms of the veterans adding their pathos to the impressive scene as the officers knelt while Louis visited the tomb of his illustrious predecessor. On the first anniversary of Louis’ election a splendid banquet at the Hôtel de Ville expressed the people’s satisfaction. Three years later, on New Year’s Day, the guns of the Invalides fired ten shots for every million of votes that assured Louis’ position for ten years more. A Te Deum of gratitude was sung at Notre Dame, the choir chanting “Domine, salvum fac praesidentem nostrum Napoleonem.” The religious celebration was followed by a ball given by the Prefect of the Seine at the Hôtel de Ville.
Realizing that the chances of success in Paris upheavals usually were with the side which the army favored Louis did his best to make himself popular with the soldiers. In the spring of this same year a series of brilliant festivals gave them recognition—a distribution of flags on the Field of Mars, a ball in honor of the army, a banquet at the Tuileries to the officers, and a banquet of twenty-four hundred covers to the students of the Military School.
The proclamation of the empire was hailed in Paris with enthusiastic demonstrations. The citizens gave Bonaparte an almost solid support (208,615 votes out of 270,710), decorated the city with such inscriptions as “Ave Cæsar Imperator,” and with elaborate illuminations. Napoleon’s entry into the city was a spectacle such as the Parisians always have loved. Heading a splendid array of soldiers he rode into town from Saint Cloud, ten miles out, and, hailed by the guns of all Paris, he entered the city under the Arc de Triumphe de l’Étoile, and then went down the Champs Élysées to the Tuileries. The new emperor’s decision to have no formal coronation but to give its cost, $50,000, to hospitals and orphanages throughout France, warmly endeared him to his subjects.
The Exposition of 1855 was a drawing card for Paris. By the side of the monumental affairs into which these exhibits have grown the arrangements seem simplicity itself. Yet Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and the royal children spent a happy week visiting the Palais de l’Industrie and being entertained by plays at Saint Cloud, fireworks and a ball at Versailles, a ball at the City Hall, a review of troops on the Field of Mars. When the queen drove to visit Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle the decorated streets were lined with enthusiastic crowds.