Okay. I know that this looks weird, but I was thinking of it for multiple reasons:
- Bonapartism can not be considered as a clear ideology. It was composed of multiple movements, including a right clerical faction and a left anticlerical faction...
- Napoleon III, even if I think that this is mere propaganda or a simple misconception of the word declared to be himself a "socialist"
- After loosing the support of the church (because of his Italian policy), Napoleon III searched new support in the workers' camp and enacted some social reforms
- The Second republic and the republicans had shot on the workers in June 1848, and in fact, the workers were open for other alternatives and many of them elected Napoleon in the "free" elections of 1848
Possible POD: During the June Days Uprising, Napoleon publishes an imprudent message in which he, although with some reserve, supports the workers against the "treason of their so-called representatives" and claims that "only a democratic government[1] can protect the people against the aristocratic greed". Even if the uprising is quickly repressed, the members of the National assembly get scared of a popular, authoritarian coalition of peasants, workers and bonapartist romanticists and, by a law, forbid him to run for any office in France and eventually send him into exile.
[1] That is, in Napoleon's tongue, an autocratic regime lead by one person.
While the republic elects a republican president (like Cavaignac), a majority of the French population is disillusioned by the republic and hopes for a bonapartist restoration. Napoleon III adapts his ideology to the claims of his supporters (little peasantry and the growing mass of workers) and prepares an uprising/coup d'etat to seize power in France...
What do you think of it?
- Bonapartism can not be considered as a clear ideology. It was composed of multiple movements, including a right clerical faction and a left anticlerical faction...
- Napoleon III, even if I think that this is mere propaganda or a simple misconception of the word declared to be himself a "socialist"
- After loosing the support of the church (because of his Italian policy), Napoleon III searched new support in the workers' camp and enacted some social reforms
- The Second republic and the republicans had shot on the workers in June 1848, and in fact, the workers were open for other alternatives and many of them elected Napoleon in the "free" elections of 1848
Possible POD: During the June Days Uprising, Napoleon publishes an imprudent message in which he, although with some reserve, supports the workers against the "treason of their so-called representatives" and claims that "only a democratic government[1] can protect the people against the aristocratic greed". Even if the uprising is quickly repressed, the members of the National assembly get scared of a popular, authoritarian coalition of peasants, workers and bonapartist romanticists and, by a law, forbid him to run for any office in France and eventually send him into exile.
[1] That is, in Napoleon's tongue, an autocratic regime lead by one person.
While the republic elects a republican president (like Cavaignac), a majority of the French population is disillusioned by the republic and hopes for a bonapartist restoration. Napoleon III adapts his ideology to the claims of his supporters (little peasantry and the growing mass of workers) and prepares an uprising/coup d'etat to seize power in France...
What do you think of it?
