Unit Essay - The question for the unit essay is "What are the challenges to building a democracy?"
Biography - Louis-Philippe - The "Citizen King"
Louis-Philippe was born to a French noble family in 1773 and was part of the royal family. His family, while part of the nobility, was greatly influenced by the Enlightenment and was considered liberal. When the French Revolution began in 1789, Louis-Philippe was among the nobles who supported the revolution and he joined the Jacobins in 1790. When the Revolutionary French government went to war in 1792, Louis-Philippe joined the army as an officer and fought in the Battle of Valmy, in which the French army drove back the invading Austrians. However, in 1793 as France fell into the Reign of Terror, Louis-Philippe found himself in a difficult position as his commanding officer was accused of being a traitor. Fearing for his life, Louis-Philippe fled to Switzerland. Later that year, his father was arrested and executed by the Revolutionary government. As a exile, Louis-Philippe traveled to the United States and then lived in England.
Louis-Philippe returned to France in 1814, after the defeat of Napoleon and the restoration of Louis XVIII as king. However, Louis-Philippe was not a supporter of the king and put himself in the liberal opposition. After Louis XVIII death, Louis-Philippe got on well with the next king Charles X. But in 1830, Charles X’s repressive policies caused a popular uprising, Louis-Philippe took advantage of the situation to gain power. Louis-Philippe was popular with both the radicals of Paris and the middle class and they supported him to become king. The decision to make him king is seen as victory of the middle class over the nobles and aristocracy. When he was crowned king, Louis-Philippe took the title "King of the French", which linked the king to the people (the traditional title was "King of France").
As King, Louis-Philippe's rule tried to follow a path between the conflicting groups in French society - the conservative monarchist and the republicans and supporters of Napoleon. Supporting liberal ideas, he did allow for freedom of the press and trial by jury. He also made the tri-color, the flag of Revolutionary France, the official French flag. In general, his policies favored the wealthy non-noble upper class who gained voting power. The middle class and workers did not benefit as much and resented not having any say in the government. As his reign continued he became more repressive in response to several rebellions and assassination attempts.
A combination of a financial crisis and poor harvests in 1846 caused widespread popular discontent against Louis-Philippe. This anger grew into a political reform movement that demanded the right to vote for the middle and lower classes. Louis-Philippe ignored this popular anger and it grew into a rebellion in the spring of 1848. When the people of Paris rose in rebellion against him, Louis-Philippe abdicated and France became an republic. Louis-Philippe and went into exile in England, where he died two years later.
Biography - Louis Napoleon or Napoleon III - Nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte
Louis Napoleon was born in France in 1808. He lived in France for only a few years until his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte, was defeated. After that, he grew up in various European countries. As a young man, Louis Napoleon wanted to be the leader of France, like his uncle. He attempted several military takeovers of France but they all failed, which resulted in him being thrown out of France or being put in prison, from which he escaped and fled to England. Louis Napoleon returned to France after the Second Republic was declared in 1848. He was elected president of the new Republic because many hoped that he would return France to the glory of Napoleon Bonaparte. He was elected with more than 75 percent of the vote. As president, Napoleon wanted to enact major economic and political changes in France. However, many in the government opposed his plans. Napoleon dealt with this problem by overthrowing the government and making himself a dictator in 1851. The next year he held an election in France in which the majority of people gave him the title of emperor. At this point, he took the name Napoleon III and France became the French Empire.
As the emperor of France, Napoleon III was always careful to rule with the support of the people of France. He said that he would "take the initiative to do everything useful for the prosperity and the greatness of France.” He did this by building railroads, industrial factories and improving farms. He also oversaw the rebuilding of the city of Paris into a modern city with parks and beautiful buildings. He also began to slowly give more rights and power to the French people, including freedom of the press and freedom to assemble. While many of these changes happened toward the end of his rule, they are important because they were used to organize the next democratic government in France, the Third Republic.
Napoleon III lost power when he went to war against the country of Prussia (later Germany) in 1870. Napoleon III did not have the military talents that his uncle had. In the first major battle of the war, Napoleon was defeated and captured by the Prussians. Without Napoleon III’s leadership, the government of France continued the war, but was finally defeated the next year. Napoleon III lived the rest of his life in England.
Biography - Victor Hugo - French Writer
Hugo published his first book of poems in 1824 which was widely read and resulted in king Louis XVIII awarding Hugo a royal pension. This allowed Hugo to spend his time working on his writing and he continued to write poetry, but also began to write more realistic novels. In 1829, he published his first novel, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, based on the real life story of a murderer. The novel follows the thoughts of a prisoner in his final hours before his execution and was critical of the public executions that were common at the time. He followed this up with The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1831 which became popular across Europe and made Notre Dame cathedral at the center of Paris a tourist attraction.
Beginning in the 1820's, Hugo began to turn against the monarchy after the government of king Charles X censored and banned some of his plays. Hugo became more moderate in his political views after witnessing the Revolt of 1830, which brought Louis Philippe, the citizen-king, to power. Hugo had been in Paris during the Revolt and witness the fighting, but was not clear in his public support for the revolutionaries. Hugo was opposed to the potential chaos of democracy and instead began to write in praise of the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had brought order to France after the Revolution. During this time, while Hugo enjoyed the support of Louis Philippe, he began to and become more involved in politics and supported France becoming a republic, opposed to the death penalty and advocated for the freedom of the press.
Following the Revolts of 1830, Hugo began to work on his most important work, Les Misérables or "The Miserable Ones". The book described the brutal lives of the poor people of France and the social, and legal, injustices they faced. The book is centered on the life of a former convict who becomes the mayor of a town and successful businessman who is unjustly pursued by the legal system. The book tied the personal struggles of the characters to larger social conflicts in France during this period. It took Hugo seventeen years to write the book and it was only published in 1862. While the book is set in the years 1807 to 1832 and describes the fighting in the Revolt of 1830, the subject matter of the book was greatly influenced by later events, such as the Revolts of 1848.
Hugo supported the 1848 revolution against Louis Philippe and was elected to the Legislative Assembly and the Constitutional Assembly. However, this revolt divided French society, and shortly after the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly, the workers of Paris rose up in rebellion against the new government. Hugo opposed this rebellion, but he was also against the violence the government used to suppress the rebellion. During this rebellion, Hugo walked the streets of Paris actively trying, but failing, to stop the fighting between the workers and government soldiers. Hugo would draw on this experience in describing the scenes of street fighting in Les Misérables.
Hugo was a supporter of Louis Napoleon and felt that he should become the president of the new republic. Hugo hoped that Louis Napoleon would be able to bring stability and order to France. However, within a year of Louis-Napoleon's election, Hugo was criticizing the new government for its repressive policies and for doing little to relieve poverty. After Louis-Napoleon declared himself emperor Napoleon III in 1851, Hugo helped organize a rebellion against him. This failed and Hugo had to flee the country and live in exile. While in exile, he wrote Napoleon the Little, a pamphlet attacking the emperor, which was banned in France.
In 1859, Napoleon III granted amnesty to all political exiles. However, Hugo refused to return to France until 1870, when Napoleon III was defeated and the Third Republic was established. Hugo was appointed to the National Assembly and was elected to the Senate in 1876. Hugo died on 22 May 1885, at the age of 83.
Source # 1 - Painting of the Revolt of 1830
Source # 2 - Painting "Liberty Leading the People" (1830) by Eugène Delacroix, showing the Revolt of 1830
Source # 3 - Print of the fighting between the army and the workers during the revolts of 1848
Source # 4 - Scenes from the Movie Les Misérables. based on Victor Hugo's book.
Video # 1 - Scene of the city streets of Paris and speech by the radical Marius - click here
Video # 2 - Scene of the rebellion and street battle - click here
Source # 5 - Excerpts from Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo, describing the fighting in the streets of Paris.
Excerpt # 1 - Chapter - A Burial; an Occasion to be born again
In the spring of 1832, although the cholera had been chilling
all minds for the last three months and had cast over their agitation an
indescribable and gloomy pacification, Paris had already long been ripe for
commotion. As we have said, the great city resembles a piece of artillery; when
it is loaded, it suffices for a spark to fall, and the shot is discharged. In
June, 1832, the spark was the death of General Lamarque.
Lamarque was a man of renown and of action. He had had in
succession, under the Empire and under the Restoration, the sorts of bravery
requisite for the two epochs, the bravery of the battle-field and the bravery
of the tribune... ...Napoleon had died uttering the word army, Lamarque
uttering the word country.
His death, which was expected, was dreaded by the people as a
loss, and by the government as an occasion. This death was an affliction. Like
everything that is bitter, affliction may turn to revolt. This is what took
place.
On the preceding evening, and on the morning of the 5th of June,
the day appointed for Lamarque's burial, the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, which the
procession was to touch at, assumed a formidable aspect. This tumultuous
network of streets was filled with rumors. They armed themselves as best they
might. Joiners carried off door-weights of their establishment "to break
down doors." One of them had made himself a dagger of a stocking-weaver's
hook by breaking off the hook and sharpening the stump. Another, who was in a
fever "to attack," slept wholly dressed for three days. A carpenter
named Lombier met a comrade, who asked him: "Whither are you going?"
"Eh! well, I have no weapons." "What then?" "I'm going
to my timber-yard to get my compasses." "What for?" "I
don't know," said Lombier. A certain Jacqueline, an expeditious man,
accosted some passing artisans: "Come here, you!" He treated them to
ten sous' worth of wine and said: "Have you work?" "No."
"Go to Filspierre, between the Barriere Charonne and the Barriere
Montreuil, and you will find work." At Filspierre's they found cartridges
and arms. Certain well-known leaders were going the rounds, that is to say,
running from one house to another, to collect their men. At Barthelemy's, near
the Barriere du Trone, at Capel's, near the Petit-Chapeau, the drinkers
accosted each other with a grave air. They were heard to say: "Have you
your pistol?" "Under my blouse." "And you?"
"Under my shirt."
On the 5th of
June, accordingly, a day of mingled rain and sun, General Lamarque's funeral
procession traversed Paris with official military pomp, somewhat augmented
through precaution. Two battalions, with draped drums and reversed arms, ten
thousand National Guards, with their swords at their sides, escorted the
coffin. The hearse was drawn by young men. The officers of the Invalides came
immediately behind it, bearing laurel branches. Then came an innumerable,
strange, agitated multitude, the sectionaries of the Friends of the People, the
Law School, the Medical School, refugees of all nationalities, and Spanish,
Italian, German, and Polish flags, tricolored horizontal banners, every
possible sort of banner, children waving green boughs, stone-cutters and
carpenters who were on strike at the moment, printers who were recognizable by
their paper caps, marching two by two, three by three, uttering cries, nearly
all of them brandishing sticks, some brandishing sabres, without order and yet
with a single soul, now a tumultuous rout, again a column. Squads chose
themselves leaders; a man armed with a pair of pistols in full view, seemed to
pass the host in review, and the files separated before him. On the side alleys
of the boulevards, in the branches of the trees, on balconies, in windows, on
the roofs, swarmed the heads of men, women, and children; all eyes were filled
with anxiety. An armed throng was passing, and a terrified throng looked on.
The Government, on its side, was taking observations. It
observed with its hand on its sword. Four squadrons of carabineers could be
seen in the Place Louis XV. in their saddles, with their trumpets at their
head, cartridge-boxes filled and muskets loaded, all in readiness to march; in
the Latin country and at the Jardin des Plantes, the Municipal Guard echelonned
from street to street; at the Halle-aux-Vins, a squadron of dragoons; at the
Greve half of the 12th Light Infantry, the other half being at the Bastille;
the 6th Dragoons at the Celestins; and the courtyard of the Louvre full of
artillery. The remainder of the troops were confined to their barracks, without
reckoning the regiments of the environs of Paris. Power being uneasy, held
suspended over the menacing multitude twenty-four thousand soldiers in the city
and thirty thousand in the banlieue.
The procession
proceeded, with feverish slowness, from the house of the deceased, by way of
the boulevards as far as the Bastille. It rained from time to time; the rain
mattered nothing to that throng. Many incidents, the coffin borne round the
Vendome column, stones thrown at the Duc de Fitz-James, who was seen on a
balcony with his hat on his head, the Gallic cock torn from a popular flag and
dragged in the mire, a policeman wounded with a blow from a sword at the Porte
Saint-Martin, an officer of the 12th Light Infantry saying aloud: "I am a
Republican," the Polytechnic School coming up unexpectedly against orders
to remain at home, the shouts of: "Long live the Polytechnique! Long live
the Republic!" marked the passage of the funeral train. At the Bastille,
long files of curious and formidable people who descended from the Faubourg
Saint-Antoine, effected a junction with the procession, and a certain terrible
seething began to agitate the throng.
One man was heard to say to another: "Do you see that
fellow with a red beard, he's the one who will give the word when we are to
fire." It appears that this red beard was present, at another riot, the
Quenisset affair, entrusted with this same function.
The hearse passed the Bastille, traversed the small bridge, and
reached the esplanade of the bridge of Austerlitz. There it halted. The crowd,
surveyed at that moment with a bird'seye view, would have presented the aspect
of a comet whose head was on the esplanade and whose tail spread out over the
Quai Bourdon, covered the Bastille, and was prolonged on the boulevard as far
as the Porte Saint-Martin. A circle was traced around the hearse. The vast rout
held their peace. Lafayette spoke and bade Lamarque farewell. This was a
touching and august instant, all heads uncovered, all hearts beat high.
All at once, a man on horseback, clad in black, made his
appearance in the middle of the group with a red flag, others say, with a pike
surmounted with a red liberty-cap. Lafayette turned aside his head. Exelmans
quitted the procession.
This red flag raised a storm, and disappeared in the midst of
it. From the Boulevard Bourdon to the bridge of Austerlitz one of those clamors
which resemble billows stirred the multitude. Two prodigious shouts went up:
"Lamarque to the Pantheon!-- Lafayette to the Town-hall!" Some young
men, amid the declamations of the throng, harnessed themselves and began to
drag Lamarque in the hearse across the bridge of Austerlitz and Lafayette in a
hackney-coach along the Quai Morland.
In the meantime, the municipal cavalry on the left bank had been
set in motion, and came to bar the bridge, on the right bank the dragoons
emerged from the Celestins and deployed along the Quai Morland. The men who
were dragging Lafayette suddenly caught sight of them at the corner of the quay
and shouted: "The dragoons!" The dragoons advanced at a walk, in
silence, with their pistols in their holsters, their swords in their scabbards,
their guns slung in their leather sockets, with an air of gloomy expectation.
They halted two hundred paces from the little bridge. The
carriage in which sat Lafayette advanced to them, their ranks opened and
allowed it to pass, and then closed behind it. At that moment the dragoons and
the crowd touched. The women fled in terror. What took place during that fatal
minute? No one can say. It is the dark moment when two clouds come together.
Some declare that a blast of trumpets sounding the charge was heard in the
direction of the Arsenal others that a blow from a dagger was given by a child
to a dragoon. The fact is, that three shots were suddenly discharged: the first
killed Cholet, chief of the squadron, the second killed an old deaf woman who
was in the act of closing her window, the third singed the shoulder of an
officer; a woman screamed: "They are beginning too soon!" and all at
once, a squadron of dragoons which had remained in the barracks up to this
time, was seen to debouch at a gallop with bared swords, through the Rue
Bassompierre and the Boulevard Bourdon, sweeping all before them.
Then all is said, the tempest is loosed, stones rain down, a
fusillade breaks forth, many precipitate themselves to the bottom of the bank,
and pass the small arm of the Seine, now filled in, the timber-yards of the
Isle Louviers, that vast citadel ready to hand, bristle with combatants, stakes
are torn up, pistol-shots fired, a barricade begun, the young men who are
thrust back pass the Austerlitz bridge with the hearse at a run, and the
municipal guard, the carabineers rush up, the dragoons ply their swords, the
crowd disperses in all directions, a rumor of war flies to all four quarters of
Paris, men shout: "To arms!" they run, tumble down, flee, resist.
Wrath spreads abroad the riot as wind spreads a fire.
Excerpt # 2 - Chapter - The Heroes
All at once,
the drum beat the charge.
The attack was
a hurricane. On the evening before, in the darkness, the barricade had been
approached silently, as by a boa. Now, in broad daylight, in that widening
street, surprise was decidedly impossible, rude force had, moreover, been
unmasked, the cannon had begun the roar, the army hurled itself on the
barricade. Fury now became skill. A powerful detachment of infantry of the
line, broken at regular intervals, by the National Guard and the Municipal
Guard on foot, and supported by serried masses which could be heard though not
seen, debauched into the street at a run, with drums beating, trumpets braying,
bayonets levelled, the sappers at their head, and, imperturbable under the
projectiles, charged straight for the barricade with the weight of a brazen beam
against a wall.
The wall held
firm.
The insurgents
fired impetuously. The barricade once scaled had a mane of lightning flashes.
The assault was so furious, that for one moment, it was inundated with
assailants; but it shook off the soldiers as the lion shakes off the dogs, and
it was only covered with besiegers as the cliff is covered with foam, to
re-appear, a moment later, beetling, black and formidable.
The column,
forced to retreat, remained massed in the street, unprotected but terrible, and
replied to the redoubt with a terrible discharge of musketry. Any one who has
seen fireworks will recall the sheaf formed of interlacing lightnings which is
called a bouquet. Let the reader picture to himself this bouquet, no longer
vertical but horizontal, bearing a bullet, buck-shot or a biscaien at the tip
of each one of its jets of flame, and picking off dead men one after another
from its clusters of lightning. The barricade was underneath it.
On both sides,
the resolution was equal. The bravery exhibited there was almost barbarous and
was complicated with a sort of heroic ferocity which began by the sacrifice of
self.
This was the
epoch when a National Guardsman fought like a Zouave. The troop wished to make
an end of it, insurrection was desirous of fighting. The acceptance of the
death agony in the flower of youth and in the flush of health turns intrepidity
into frenzy. In this fray, each one underwent the broadening growth of the
death hour. The street was strewn with corpses....
...
The interior of the barricade was so strewn with torn cartridges that
one would have said that there had been a snowstorm.
The assailants
had numbers in their favor; the insurgents had position. They were at the top
of a wall, and they thundered point-blank upon the soldiers tripping over the
dead and wounded and entangled in the escarpment. This barricade, constructed
as it was and admirably buttressed, was really one of those situations where a
handful of men hold a legion in check. Nevertheless, the attacking column,
constantly recruited and enlarged under the shower of bullets, drew inexorably
nearer, and now, little by little, step by step, but surely, the army closed in
around the barricade as the vice grasps the wine-press.
One assault
followed another. The horror of the situation kept increasing.
Then there
burst forth on that heap of paving-stones, in that Rue de la Chanvrerie, a
battle worthy of a wall of Troy. These haggard, ragged, exhausted men, who had
had nothing to eat for four and twenty hours, who had not slept, who had but a
few more rounds to fire, who were fumbling in their pockets which had been
emptied of cartridges, nearly all of whom were wounded, with head or arm
bandaged with black and blood-stained linen, with holes in their clothes from
which the blood trickled, and who were hardly armed with poor guns and notched
swords, became Titans. The barricade was ten times attacked, approached,
assailed, scaled, and never captured.
They fought
hand to hand, foot to foot, with pistol shots, with blows of the sword, with
their fists, at a distance, close at hand, from above, from below, from
everywhere, from the roofs of the houses, from the windows of the wine-shop,
from the cellar windows, whither some had crawled. They were one against sixty.
The facade of
Corinthe, half demolished, was hideous. The window, tattooed with grape-shot, had
lost glass and frame and was nothing now but a shapeless hole, tumultuously
blocked with paving-stones.
Bossuet was
killed; Feuilly was killed; Courfeyrac was killed; Combeferre, transfixed by
three blows from a bayonet in the breast at the moment when he was lifting up a
wounded soldier, had only time to cast a glance to heaven when he expired.
Marius, still
fighting, was so riddled with wounds, particularly in the head, that his
countenance disappeared beneath the blood, and one would have said that his
face was covered with a red kerchief.
Enjolras alone
was not struck. When he had no longer any weapon, he reached out his hands to
right and left and an insurgent thrust some arm or other into his fist. All he
had left was the stumps of four swords....Source # 6 - Election Poster to Louis Napoleon
