“When is Gérard the lion-killer to. be named Minister of Public 
Instruction?” Such is the cant phrase current in the faubourgs of 
Paris since the appointment of Gen. Espinasse of Dobrudja 
memory *” as Minister of the Interior and Public Safety. In Russia, 
it is well known, a general of cavalry presides over the Holy 
Synod.* Why not Espinasse over the French Home-Ministry, since 
France has become the home of Pretorians only?*”’ By such 
apparent incongruities the rule of the naked sword 1s proclaimed 
in most unmistakable terms, and Bonaparte wants France to 
clearly understand that the imperial rule does rest not on her will 
but on 600,000 bayonets. Hence the Pretorian addresses cut out by 
the colonels of the different regiments, after a pattern supplied 
from the Tuileries—addresses in which the slightest allusion to 
the so-called “will of the people” is anxiously shunned; hence the 
parceling out of France into five pashalics*”’; hence the transfor- 
mation of the Home-Ministry into an appendage of the Army. 
Here the change is not to stop. About 60 prefects are said to be on 
the eve of being disgraced, and to be replaced, for the most part, 
by military men. Prefectorial administration is to devolve upon 
half-pay colonels and lieutenant-colonels. The antagonism between 
the Army and the population is to,be organized as the guarantee 
of “Public Safety,’ viz: the safety of the hero of Satory*” and his 
dynasty. 

A great modern historian has told us that, disguise the fact as 
you like, France, since the days of the Great Revolution, has been 

always disposed of by the army. There have certainly ruled 
different classes under the Empire, the Restoration, Louis 
Philippe, and the Republic of 1848. Under the first the peasantry, 
the offspring of the revolution of 1789, predominated; under the 
second, the great landed property; under the third, the 
bourgeoisie; and the last, not in the intention of its founders but in 
fact, proved an abortive attempt at dividing dominion in equal 
shares among the men of the legitimate monarchy and the men of 
the monarchy of July. Still, all these regimes rested alike on the 
army. Has not even the Constitution of the Republic of 1848 been 
elaborated and proclaimed under a state of siege—that is, the rule 
of the bayonet? Was that Republic not personated by Gen. 
Cavaignac? Was it not saved by the army in June, 1848, and again 
saved in June, 1849, to be finally dropped by the same army in 
December, 1851? What then forms the novelty in the regime now 
openly inaugurated by. Louis Bonaparte? That he rules by the 
instrumentality of the army? So did all his predecessors since the 
days of Thermidor.*” Yet, if in all the bygone epochs the ruling 
class, the ascendency of which corresponded to a_ specific 
-development of French society, rested its ultima ratio* against its 
adversaries upon the army, it was nevertheless a specific social 
interest that predominated. Under the second Empire the interest 
of the army itself is to predominate. The army is no longer to 
maintain the rule of one part of the people over another part of 
the people. The army is to maintain its own rule, personated by its 
own dynasty, over the French people in general. 

It is to represent the State in antagonism to the society. It must 
not be imagined that Bonaparte is not aware of the dangerous 
character of the experiment he tries. In proclaiming himself the 
chief of the Pretorians, he declares every Pretorian chief his 
competitor. His own partisans, with Gen. Vaillant at their head, 
demurred against the division of the French Army into five 
Marshalships, saying that if it was good for the cause of order, it 
was not so for that of the Empire, and would one day end in civil 
war. The treacheries of Napoleon’s Marshals, with Berthier at 
their head, were ransacked by the Palais Royal,**° which feels 
extremely vexed at the new turn of Imperial policy. 

The future conduct of the five Marshals, who hate each other 
cordially, at a critical juncture, may be best judged from their 
past. Magnan betrayed Louis Philippe; Baraguay d’Hilliers be- 
trayed Napoleon; Bosquet betrayed the Republic, to which he owed 

his advancement, and to the principles of which he is known to be 
partial. Castellane has not'even awaited a real catastrophe to 
betray Louis Bonaparte himself. During the Russian War* a 
telegraphic dispatch reached him to this effect: “The Emperor is 
dead.” He instantly drew up a proclamation in favor of Henri V. 
and sent it to be printed. The Préfet of Lyons had received the 
real dispatch, which ran thus: ““The Emperor of Russia” is dead.” 
The proclamation was hushed, but the story got abroad. As to 
Canrobert, he may be an Imperialist, but then he is but a fraction, 
and, above all, lacks the capability of being a whole number. The 
five Marshals themselves, feeling the arduous task they were called 
upon to undertake, hesitated so considerably at accepting their 
respective commands that nothing could be settled with their 
consent; which seeing, Bonaparte wrote out himself the names of 
their separate destinations, gave the note to Mr. Fould to be filled 
up and sent to the Moniteur, and thus they were all gazetted at 
last, whether they would or not.“ Bonaparte, on the other hand, 
dared not complete his plan by Pelissier’s nomination of Marshal- 
General. Of his pentarchy of Marshals, we may say what Prince 
Jér6me Napoleon is stated to have answered to Fould, sent by 
Bonaparte to present his uncle with his nomination to the first 
place in the Council of Regency. After having declined the offer 
in most impolite terms, the ex-King of Westphalia, as Paris gossip 
has it, bowed Mr. Fould out with the words, “Du reste,“ your 
Council of Regency is so framed as for you all to have but one 
object; that, namely, of arresting each other as promptly as 
possible.” We repeat that it is impossible “to suppose Louis 
Bonaparte ignorant of the dangers with which his new-fangled 
system is fraught. But he has no choice left. He understands his 
own situation and the impatience of French society to get rid of 
him and his Imperial mummeries. He knows that the different 
parties have recovered from their paralysis, and that the material 
basis of his stock-jobbing regime has been blown up by the 
commercial earthquake. Consequently, he is not only preparing 
for war against French society, but loudly proclaims the fact. It 
tallies with his resolution to take up a warlike attitude against 
France that he confounds the most heterogeneous parties. Thus, 

1858, Le Moniteur universel, No. 45, February 14, 1858.— Ed. 

when Cassagnac, in the Constitutionnel,? denounced Mr. Villemain 
as a “provoker of hatred” to the Empire, and accused the Journal 
des Débats of “complicity” in the attentat “through its silence,” this 
was at first considered to be an act of foolish zeal on the part of 
the man whom Guizot has described as the roi des dréles.” Soon, 
however, it oozed out that the article had been imposed upon the — 
Constitutionnel by Mr. Rouland, the Minister of Public Instruction, 
who had himself corrected the proofs of it. This explanation, by 
the by, was given to Mr. De Sacy of the Débats by Mr. Mirés, the 
proprietor of the Constitutionnel, who did not choose to bear the 
responsibility of the article. The denunciation of all parties as his 
personal enemies enters, therefore, into the game of Bonaparte. It 
forms part of his system. He tells them, in so many words, that he 
indulges no delusion as to the general aversion his rule is the 
subject of, but that he is ready to encounter it with grape and 
musketry. . 

Written on February 22, 1858 Reproduced from the newspaper 

Daily Tribune, No. 5270, March 12, 1858