Written about March 18, 1859.

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune” No. 5598, March 31, 1859, leader]

When Louis Napoleon, emulating the less fortunate Marino Faliero of Venice, by perjury and treason, by midnight conspiracy and the arrest of the incorruptible members of the National Assembly in their beds, supported by an overwhelming deployment of troops in the streets of Paris, seized the throne, the ruling princes and nobility of Europe, the great landowners, manufacturers, rentiers, and stock-exchange speculators almost without exception exulted over his success as their own. “The acts of violence are on his account,” they chuckled into their fists, “but the fruits accrue to us. Louis Napoleon reigns in the Tuileries, while we reign more securely and despotically on our estates, in our factories, at the Stock Exchange, and in our counting-houses. Down with all socialism! Vive l’Empereur!”

Besides military force, the fortune-favoured usurper played all his arts to rally the rich and powerful, the businesslike and speculators, under his banner. “The Empire is peace,” he proclaimed, and the millionaires all but made a god of him. “Our very dear son in Jesus Christ,” Pope Pius IX lovingly called him, and the Roman Catholic clergy did him homage (pro tempore) with every sign of confidence and devotion. Shares rose, banks of the Crédit mobilier shot up like mushrooms and flourished; with a stroke of the pen millions in profits were made through new railways, new slave trade, and new speculations of every kind. The British aristocracy turned its back on the past, doffed its hat, and tendered its greetings to the new Bonaparte. He paid a family visit to Queen Victoria and was fêted by the City of London. The English Stock Exchange drank to the French one, the apostles of stock-exchange speculation congratulated each other and shook hands, and it was firmly believed that the Golden Calf had at last been raised to be the almighty god and that its Aaron was the new French autocrat.

Seven years have passed, and everything is changed. Napoleon III has uttered the word that can no longer be unsaid or made forgotten. Regardless of whether he plunges as blindly to his ruin as his predecessor did in Spain and Russia, or whether he is forced by the exasperated, general murmuring of the princely courts and bourgeoisies of Europe temporarily to bow to their will – the spell is broken for good. They had long known that he is a scoundrel, but they had considered him a useful, pliant, obedient, grateful scoundrel; yet now they realise their mistake and repent it. All along he has exploited them, while they believed they were exploiting him. He loves them exactly as he loves his food or his wine. Hitherto they have already served him in a certain way, and now they must serve him in another way as well or provoke his revenge. If henceforth “the Empire is peace,” it is a peace on the Mincio or on the Danube – a peace in which his eagles triumphantly flaunt themselves on the Po and on the Adige, if not even on the Rhine and also on the Elbe; it is a peace with the iron crown on the imperial head, with Italy as a French satrapy and with Great Britain, Prussia, and Austria as mere satellites orbiting the central star of France, the empire of Charlemagne, and receiving their light from it.

Naturally, there is gnashing of teeth in the royal palaces, but no less in the houses of the bankers and merchant princes. For the year 1859 began under favourable signs that held out the prospect of a restoration of the golden days of 1836 and 1856. The long-continued stagnation of industry had exhausted stocks of metals, commodities, and manufactured goods. The numerous bankruptcies had noticeably purged the atmosphere of trade. Ships again acquired a market value, warehouses were to be built and filled again. Shares rose, and the millionaires were in excellent spirits; in short, never had there been brighter trading prospects, never so serene and auspicious a sky.

And all that is changed by a word, and that word is spoken by the hero of the coup d’état – the chosen one of December – the saviour of society. It is uttered wantonly, impudently, with clear premeditation to M. Hübner, the Austrian ambassador, and unmistakably points to the settled design to pick a quarrel with Franz Joseph or to humiliate him by intimidation more disastrously than three lost battles could do. Although obviously intended to produce an immediate effect on the Stock Exchange in the interest of speculative stock-exchange operations, it betrayed the firm resolve to reshape the map of Europe. Austria must withdraw from all those nominally independent Italian states which it now, by virtue of treaties with their compliant rulers, practically occupies, or France and Sardinia would occupy Milan and threaten Mantua with an army such as General Bonaparte had never commanded in Italy. The Pope must abolish the abuses of clerical rule in his states – abuses hitherto defended by French arms – or follow the example of the petty despots of Tuscany, Parma, Modena, etc., in their headlong race to find protection in Vienna. The Rothschilds groan over the loss of their eleven million dollars, sustained through the depreciation of shares caused by the threat to Hübner, and are absolutely inconsolable. The manufacturers and merchants sadly recognise that the hoped-for harvest of 1859 will probably give way to a “harvest of death.” Everywhere apprehensions, discontent, and displeasure oppress the hearts of those upon whom the throne of the December man rested so securely only a few months ago.

And the overthrown, shattered idol can never again be set upon its pedestal. Louis Napoleon may indeed recoil before the storm he has kindled and once more receive the Pope’s blessing and the British Queen’s flatteries, but both will be mere lip-service. Now they too recognise what the peoples have long known: He is a conscienceless gambler, a reckless adventurer who would as soon dice with royal bones as with any others in any game that promises him gain. They know that, having waded through human blood to the crown like Macbeth, he finds it easier to advance on this path than to return to peace and honesty. From the hour he challenged Austria, the potentates have withdrawn from Louis Napoleon. The young Emperor of Russia may have reasons of his own for still appearing his friend, but this appearance is deceptive. The Napoleon I of 1813 was the prototype for Napoleon III of 1859. And the latter will probably plunge just as deeply to his doom as the former.