Peace or War

Written about March 8, 1859.

From the English.

["New-York Daily Tribune" No. 5593, March 25, 1859, leading article]

In another column we publish the article recently appeared in the Moniteur, which oracularly disclaims any intention on the part of its master and inspirer Louis Napoleon to plunge Europe into a war—an article which has apparently forced up the stock exchange quotations and half dispelled the apprehensions of the Old World. Whoever, however, reads this article attentively will find in it little warrant for the hopes it has raised. Apart from the simple assertion that the Emperor’s obligations toward the King of Sardinia go no further than promises of assistance against an Austrian aggression—promises which Victor Emmanuel by no means needed, since it was his troops that were sent to reinforce the French and English army before Sebastopol—we see in this manifesto nothing but a fresh mockery of public opinion. Practically, it calls upon the world, in the interest of the French usurper, to forget that it was he and not the newspapers who disquieted and shook Europe on the first day of this year with an arbitrary and boastful threat addressed to Austria through its ambassador, that his press, his pamphleteers, his cousin <Joseph-Charles-Paul Bonaparte>, his armaments and purchases of matériel have heightened and spread the war panic intentionally aroused by himself. This article contains no line, no sentence from which a lessening of his pretensions or his intrigues in Italy or in Moldo-Wallachia can be deduced. He may have resolved to retreat before the public opinion of Europe (Italy excepted, France not excepted), but he may also have resolved to feign the language of peace and moderation in order to cover up colossal stock-exchange speculations or to lull those whom he intends to fall upon into a deceptive and fatal security. His new manifesto does not hint in a single word that any moderation in the attitude of Austria, any clearing of the diplomatic sky, has occasioned and justified this change, which is shown more in tone than in attitude. And whoever thinks it improbable that a person who intends soon to hurl his thunderbolts should come forward with such assurances of peace, we must remind that it is the same Louis Napoleon who, immediately before his treasonable assassination of the French Republic, complained to a republican about the cynicism of considering him capable of intending such an infamy. We therefore regard this manifesto of Napoleon’s as “a resolution by which nothing is resolved.” It is only a white heap, which may turn out to be harmless flour or a floury tomcat; but this can be decided only by time.

What the commentaries of the London Times indicate by conscious reticence is still more significant than what they openly pronounce. Louis Napoleon can never again become the demigod of the Stock Exchange and the bourgeois. Henceforth he rules solely by the sword.