Note (Back) — Chapter XV

322. From Republic to Empire.—December 10, 1848, Louis Napoleon, nephew of the first Napoleon, was chosen president by an overwhelming vote, and ten days later he assumed office. In May, 1849, an Assembly was elected, two-thirds of whose members were thoroughgoing monarchists; so that, as one writer has put it, both the president and the majority of the Assembly were, by reason of their very being, enemies of the constitution under which they had been elected.[440] The new order, furthermore, failed completely to strike root throughout the nation at large. In this state of things the collapse of the Republic was but a question of time. By an electoral law of May 31, 1850, requiring of the elector a fixed residence of three years instead of six months, the suffrage arrangements of 1849 were subverted and the electorate was reduced by three millions, or virtually one-third.[441] December 2, 1851, occurred a carefully planned coup d'état, on which occasion the Assembly was dissolved, the franchise law of 1849 was restored, and the people, gathered in primary assemblies, were called upon to intrust to the President power to revise the national constitution.[442] December 20, by a vote of 7,439,216 to 640,737, the people complied. Thereafter, though continuing officially through another year, the Republic was in reality dead. November 7, 1852, the veil was thrown off. A senatus-consulte decreed a re-establishment of the Empire,[443] and by a plebiscite of eleven days later the people, by a vote of 7,824,189 to 253,145, sanctioned what had been done. December 2, Napoleon III. was proclaimed Emperor of the French.