BOOKS.

THE STORY OF THE COUP D'ETAT.*

IT is almost possible to forgive M. Charlemagne de Maupas the part he played as Parisian Prefect of Police during the Coup d'Etat; except on one supposition, it is absolutely impossible to forgive him for writing its apologia. When "the crime of the Second December " was committed, M. de Maupas was on the active side of thirty-five. At that age, audacity is too fre- quently more esteemed than scruple, and career is more thought of than character. Besides, M. de Maupas was "caught early" by Louis Napoleon. A provincial prefect, in disgrace with his official superior for excess of zeal, he was suddenly asked by the Chief of the State if he would accept an important Ministerial portfolio, and was permitted to share with one other conspirator only his deepest and darkest confidences. It may be lamentable, but is it so very wonderful that at a time when almost every ambitions Frenchman was either politically demoralised or politically delirious, M. de Maupas's head should have been turned, that his heart should have been hardened, and that he should have sold his organising brain and his impatient courage to the Mahdi of Napoleonism? But that hideous carnival, the Second Empire, is a thing of the past. More than a decade has gone since the Man of December stood revealed in his true colours as the Man of Sedan, and the Imperialists were seen to be not a party, but, as M. Gambetta termed them, "a horde "of bankrupt adventurers. France has awakened from the dream of Napoleonism, which stood its heir and his brother conspirators in such good stead between 1848 and 1851—like M. Thiers him- self, whose powerful but then ill-directed literary genius induced that dream. M. de Maupas himself is not far off threescore-and- ten ; and years, one would think, should have brought the re- flective if not the repentant mind. But no ; M. de Maupas * The Story of the Coup d'Etat. By M. de Manpss (former Minister). Freely Translated, with Notes, by Albert D. Vandam. 2 vols. London J. S. Virtue and Co. 1884.

will not judge the regime he was instrumental in enthroning by its fruits. He reproduces the old mystical and mischievous jargon of the Prince-President about "peace" and "order," and "anarchy," and "religion, family institutions, and the interests of property—the three eternal bases of the social state," as if he believed it. In a fine but ludicrous phrenzy of partisan- ship, rendered in the English version of his work all the finer and more ludicrous by the peculiar "freedom" which his trans- lator allows himself, he exclaims :—

" Read those speeches, you who so bitterly lavish calumny and injury upon the memory of Napoleon III., and if there still remain within you one spark of justice, you will find your anger disarmed. Notwithstanding your determined hostility, you will be dazzled by the light of truth, of justice, and of goodness that shows through all these emanations of his thoughts. At every page you will see his love of country, his constant solicitude for the people you pretend to love so much, pierce through. Off with your hats before this noble figure, instead of loading it with injury !"

Yet M. de Maupas has but little to thank the Second Empire for. He admits in these " Memoirs " that neither De Moray nor Persigny loved him. It is scarcely too much to say, that if not his master, certainly his master's chief counsellors, tossed him aside when they had utilised him ; the Prefecture of Marseilles was a poor reward for the hero of Mazes, for the man who clapped Changarnier and Thiers into prison. His hero-worship is as melancholy an exhibition of the kind as we know ; but we are inclined to believe it genuine. At all events, M. de Maupas's story of the Coup d'Etat is either a magnificent effort of faith, or a magnificent effort of assurance, or a stupendous example of political colour-blindness.

If not of high political value, this, the first portion of If.. de Maupas's memoirs of the Second Empire, is an interesting contribution to the history of the famous .conspiracy of the last months of 1851,—possibly, indeed, the most interest- ing we can have till the publication of the memoirs of M. de Persigny, whom, rather happily, M. de Maupas terms "the apostle" of Napoleonism. The actual arrangements for the Second of December are given with mach more detail than they ever have been before. The first direct hint that M. de Maupas had from his master that a coup d'etat was in preparation was on September 19th. Some weeks previously, such a termination to the long struggle between the Prince.

President and the National Assembly had been projected ; but it fell through because General St. Arnaud, who was to have had the chief share in the carrying-out of the scheme, thought it was badly conceived, and had doubts as to the "firmness" and loyalty of M. Carlier, then Prefect of Police in Paris. A more resolute man was required for the work that had been intended for M. Culler. M. de Maupas had recommended him- self to Napoleon by the activity he had shown in suppressing a " demagokic " movement in Toulouse, where he held the position of Prefect. He had also himself written to his chief suggest- ing a coup d'etat. What M. de Maupas has to say on this sub- ject deserves quotation, if only by way of showing what we have already termed his political colour-blindness :—

"The 22nd July, on the morrow of the throwing out of the Bill for the revision of the Constitution, I pointed out to the Chief of the State the danger of respite. I impressed upon him the necessity for energetic and decisive action. I indicated in all details the only means to save the country. All parliamentary and strictly lawful methods were powerless : the country had to be appealed to directly, to be directly entrusted with the care of its own destiny. The Con- stitution of 1848 provided in its first article that 'the sovereign power is lodged in the collective body of the French citizens.' There- • fore it was the legal Sovereign that should be appealed to, to resolve this important question which preoccupied and agitated the whole of France. No doubt the Constitution did not give the President of the Republic the right to directly consult the country in this plebiscitary form ; but salvation lay in this method only ; and to apply it obstacles should be considered. The nation's vote should say whether she intended to absolve or condemn the enterprise."

On September 19th, Napoleon wrote in answer to this, saying,— " Your advice will receive a favourable solution very soon." A few days after, M. de Maupas was summoned to Paris by M. Leon Faucher, Minister of the Interior, who complained of his conduct in Toulouse, and said he should recommend his removal to Montpellier. M. de Maupas refused to go :—

" A different reception awaited me at St. Cloud. After dinner the Prince took me into the room next to the drawing-room. 'Have you seen Faucher I have just left him, Monseigneur.'—' Well, what did he say to you ?' asked the Prince, with a kind of bantering smile. I told him in a few words the conversation I had had with the Minister of the Interior; I alluded to the proposal he had made, and my reply to it.—' I have another proposal to make to you: resumed the Prince; will you take the portfolio of the Interior ?

M. de Maupas declined the Ministry, but became the in.

timate of his master. Louis Napoleon's only other con- fidant at this stage was General St. Arnaud ; but it was not part of his policy of mystery to confer with them together. M. de Maupas tells, indeed, a rather ludicrous story of St. Arnaud and himself returning from St. Cloud to Paris in the same carriage, yet without alluding to the matter

occupying the thoughts of both. On October 26th, a "Cabinet of action" was formed. M. de Maupas became Prefect of Police in Paris, and the preparations for the decisive hour were pushed forward. It has frequently been said that the Coup d'Etat might have been avoided if on November 17th the National Assembly had not rejected the "Bill of the Qurestors," or the measure giving its President authority to go to any of the French Generals and demand a force sufficient to protect the

Chamber. Certainly this vote was a blunder,—revealing, as it did, the hopeless jealousies of the sections opposed to the Prince-President. But it may be doubted if the passing of this measure would have been in time. The conspirators were ready for such a contingency. In the event of the Bill passing, half the Paris garrisons were to be called out and the Palais Bourbon surrounded. The representatives of the people were to be allowed to leave, but not to re-enter, the palace. The chief strategical points of Paris were to be occupied, the streets patrolled by cavalry, and popular gatherings dispersed by violence. The leading members of the anti-Napoleonic majority having been arrested at their homes, the Prince's decree dissolving the Assembly, and his appeals to the nation and the army, were then to be posted up. The con- espirators had even prepared for the possibility of General Changarnier, armed with authority from the Assembly, appeal- ing to the sohliers that should be sent to coerce it into dissolution. Only regiments ksown to be devoted to the Prince's cause were to surround the Palais Bourbon.

It is not necessary to tell once more the ghastly and familiar story of the Coup d'Etat from the let to the 4th of December,

—the wholesale arrests, the dispersion of the Rump Assembly, the fight at the barricades, the death of Bandin,—the more especially as M. de Maupas does not excel as a descriptive writer. The novel points in M. de Maupas's narrative are his ac- count of his differences with his brother-conspirators,—Magnan, Saint-Arnaud, and, above all, De Morny,—" Ministerial back- endings," he terms their policy,—his maliciously comic descrip- tion of the arrest of Thiers, whose behaviour, according to him, was an alternation between poltroonery and braggadocio ; and

his" refutations " of previous narratives of the Coup d'Etat by X. Victor Hugo, M. Veron, and the writer who terms himself M. Claude. We think that M. de Maupas convicts M. Hugo of a certain amount of exaggeration as to the savagery of the officers and troops engaged in the Coup d'Etat ; and there is no evi- dence that personally M. de Maupas sought to overdo his brutal part. He further indignantly denies the stories of ". M. Claude" as to the sums given by Louis Napoleon on the night of December 1st to himself and De Morny, with a view to the

wholesale bribery of the persons to be engaged on the following day. Here is his account of what took place :—

" Before separating, the Prince insisted upon sharing with General de Saint-Arnaud the modest sum he had in his cash-box. This cash- box was none other than the right-hand drawer of his writing-table. The Prince lifted a tray which contained his petty cash, then, taking a small bag that was at the bottom of the receptacle, This is all my wealth,' he said gaily ; take half of it, General, you may want it to- morrow to bestow some gratifications.' The box contained 40,000 francs in bank-notes, and twenty rouleaux of gold of 1,000 francs each ; the General took ten of the latter, and the Prince kept the remainder of his modest treasure."

This is not incredible. Want of money, even more than thirst

for power, drove Napoleon and, his confederates to action as their last hope. Had the Assembly been less stingy towards

him, there might have been no Coup d'Etat.

The more clearly the political events that preceded the Coup d'Etat are revealed, the less there is to be said for the conduct both of Louis Napoleon and of his opponents. Both were guilty of

unconstitutionalism and strategical blundering. But the lion's share of the unconstitutionalism rests with Napoleon ; the lion's share of the blundering with the Assembly. There is no get- tine; over the fact that, when offering himself for the suffrages of his countrymen, Napoleon said :—

"I am moved by no ambition which dreams one day of the Empire

and war, the next of the application of subversive theories I shall devote myself wholly, without afterthought, to the consoli- dation of a Republic prudent through its laws, honest by its aims, great and strong from its deeds."

There were, no doubt, cabals against him in the Assembly.

General Changarnier, once his friend, was quite willing, if opportunity had offered, to accomplish a Royalist restoration, by an opposition coup d'glat. Bat the moment the General was superseded in his office of Commander-in-Chief in Paris, his chance was gone. After that, the Prince had no excuse for resorting to violence. Having the Army at his back, he ought to have allowed the nation to judge between him and the Assembly,—provided, that is to say, his Republican declara- tions were sincere. On the other hand, the conduct of the different Parties in the Assembly and of their leaders was folly itsel'. Their refusal to revise the Constitution, and, above all, to repeal the Act preventing the re-election of the President, con- verted him and his confederates into desperate gamblers, while their imposition of conditions upon universal suffrage made their enemy popular with the masses. Those who suffered by the Coup d'Etat had ample warning. Napoleon gave an adequate hint as to his intentions at Tours, M. de Maupas reminds us, two years before the crisis came. Even M. Thiers declared, in good time for the prevention of the Coup d'Etat,"L'Empire est fait." But, like the typical Frenchman he was, Thiers went to sleep on his mot. The anti-Napoleonic majority had no Gambetta. The best Parliamentaires were Orleanists, and therefore discredited. The Mountain, as M. de Maupas persists in terming the Republican Left, had no better leaders than Ledrn Rollin, who behaved like a fou fun sax, and Victor Hugo, who spoke like a frenzied poet, bent on, above all, making his hearers forget that he had been one of Louis Philippe's senators.

But little need be said of the style of this work. M. de Maupas writes likes pushing French attorney, converted by circumstances into a man of action and a hero-worshipper. Mr. Albert Vandam translates M. de Maupas " freely " into English which has a foreign look ; and occasionally the Bonapartism of his notes beats the Bonapartism of the author's text. But both M. de Manpas and his translator have done their best—even though it may be in one of the worst of causes. The book, though in no sense a great historical work, or even a remarkable revelation, is readable enough.