Second French Republic wikiboxes

[galileo-034]

A like just reminded me of a thread on Napoléon III dying before 1848 and the consequences.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ffects-for-france-and-the-wider-world.334633/

I just decided to do some wikiboxes to explore this ATL, but I don't intend to do much more than a couple.

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After the Revolution, social agitation leading up to the June Days discredited the early progressive Republican government and led to a takeover by more moderate and conservative politicians known as the Party of Order, led by former Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers.

As the constituent assembly, borrowing some elements from the American republic, settles for a direct election of a President of the Republic, the Party of Order under Adolphe Thiers throws it weight behind General Cavaignac, the main architect of the repression of the june Days Uprising and Acting Prime Minister.
Meanwhile, the discontented progressive voters and workers vote rallies around the candidacy of Alexandre Ledru-Rollin.

General Cavaignac is elected on the first round with over 57% of votes, but his Democratic Socialist opponent gather almost a third of the votes.


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Author's notes :

• The name Democratic Socialist is actual, and under the 2nd Republic was used to refer those who sat on the Left, "the Mountain" being their other name (by reference to the First Republic).
• The numbers are a rough assessment, based on the fact that a very restrictive electoral law voted later in 1850 by conservatives to silence the Left electorate deprived about one third of the electorate of its voting rights, a measure that would IOTL open the way for Napoléon III's coup. As for other candidates, I expand the share of other candidate to nearly 10% instead of barely 6% .
• For intel on June Days : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_Days_uprising .

 

[Yanez de Gomera]

Lovely! What would Cavaignac stance on Italy be? I mean, would an expedition be mounted as iotl to crush the Roman Republic? I think it is likely, given tge weight of rural catholic voters, but maybe it could be avoided, leaving Austria to do the heavy lifting there too, which could lead to interesting divergences.

 

[galileo-034]

I'm not certain, but it appears that Jules Bastide, Foreign Minister in Cavaignac government from July to December was against an intervention in Italy, and voted against it in 1849. That "neutrality" seems for the moderate Republican Cavaignac is said to be a better choice than anything else, as an intervention for either side would unavoidably translate into serious troubles on the domestic front, between clerical right and democratic socialist left.
Anyway, no French intervention would only delay the fall of the Roman Republic as the Austrians (along Napolitan and Spanish contingents) are free to invade after decisively defeating Piedmont, which they were actually doing when the French took Rome.

I will maybe make an infobox on a "siege of Rome" by Austro-Napolitan armies.

 

[galileo-034]

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After the presidential election and the vote of the constitution, the main business of the National constituent Assembly had been to vote Organic laws that set up the form of public administrations. Achieving that, the constituent Assembly disbanded itself to organize the election for the first legislature of the Second Republic.
Despite winning an overall majority in popular vote, the Republicans were unable to translate it into a majority in the National Assembly due to divisions and rivalries between different Republican lists, moderate, democratic-socialists or socialists.
Opposed parties, or rather proto-parties since they are not yet political parties in the modern sense, are headed and coordinated by committees. Comité de la Rue Poitiers (Poitiers Street Committee) for the Party of Order and Solidarité Républicaine (Republican Solidarity), originally founded to support Ledru-Rollin presidential run, for the Democratic-Socialists are made of the leading members, the barons, of their parties. As for Moderates, they regroup around their support to Cavaignac's government headed by Jules Bastide.

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Author's notes :

• Since Cavaignac has been elected instead of Louis-Napoléon, he doesn't press for an early dissolution of the constituent assembly like did the government of Odilon Barrot. The objective was primarily to preempt the left by quick elections before they can prepare, and the government indeed cracked down on left wing aligned political organizations, eventually leading to the Party of Order getting over 450 seats out of 705. Here, I push back the date by 4 months and I amputate their number by 77 seats and 10% of popular vote to reflect better preparation of Republicans who still suffer from interal divisions. I gave 60 of these to Moderates and 17 to Democ-Socs, guessing that Moderate would be in a better position to take on conservative voters.
• The constitution plans for a 750 members assembly, but it appears multiple candidacies only allowed to fill 705 of the seats. I decided to keep it the same but I shall take it to 750 the next time, which is 1852 since the assembly is on a three year term.
• https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_du_4_novembre_1848

 

[galileo-034]

Some asked about the fate of Rome.
There an infobox with numbers and names taken from French and Italian pages on wikipedia.
With the French out of the picture, the Roman Republic last a few months more than IOTL.

 

[galileo-034]

The First Legislature of the Second Republic has been eventful.

The main topic has been the electoral law passed in March 1851 by the conservative majority of the Assembly in spite of President Cavaignac's opposition [1]. It restricted the electoral body by imposing the condition of a fixed adress for 3 years, thus excluding nearly a third of the electors, workers and itinerant laborers, even though a few of them were conservatives. The debate surrounding this law almost brought the country on brink of civil war. The opponents denounced a violation of the constitution, citing Article 25, but with no way of appealing to any court on its constitutionality. Finally, Democratic-Socialist deputy Napoléon-Joseph Bonaparte proposed to organize a constitutional referendum, interpretating Article 110 of the Constitution which "entrusted the deposit of the present Constitution [...] to the guard and patriotism of the French people" as sanctioning the use of referendum [2]. Though the proposition was ultimately rejected, it scared enough conservatives with the potential precedent it could set that, given the mitigated opinions within even the Party of Order, they decided to repeal the law in June 1852, before it could even be applied to elections.
In spite of the controversy, the conservatives enlarged their majority in the elections thanks to being able to field candidates for every seats, and in a lesser extent, taking advantage of divisions between Democ-Socs and Moderates.

On another topic, education, Cavaignac's Education Minister, Hyppolite Carnot, passed in 1850 a law, the Loi Carnot, creating free and mandatory education for children in low age [3].

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Author's notes :

[1] : The constitution of the 2nd Republic didn't such thing as a veto right as in the United States. Instead, the president has the right to ask the Assembly to proceed to another round of debates and another vote before being forced to sign application decrees. T

[2] : The idea of a referendum, it's based on my free interpretation of the Article 110, section X, which I believe a man with republican bonapartist convictions such as Prince Napoléon could think possibly justifying of the referendum. https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_du_4_novembre_1848#Chapitre_X

[3] : IOTL, an education law, Loi Falloux, was passed by conservatives and it was much more lenient towards Church role. Here, the project of Carnot, which is based on an OTL project, amounts to Ferry later law but without the requirement of being secular. It's neutral enough to get Conservative votes for it, though I guess Democ-Socs would want secularism (but ùoderates would vote it anyway).
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As for the vote, I used number of the election of 1852, passed under Napoléon III's constitution, but without voting restrictions, and with a turnout of 69.51% out of 9,836,043 registered voters, or 6 more points than IOTL at the same time.

 

[Yanez de Gomera]

Hurray for Victor Hugo Prime Minister! I like your interpretation of Referenda as a way of constitutional scrutiny of legislation. It seems something a Bonapartist would like (and is clearly something very negative for the development of constitutional jurisprudence, but in France it was a long time before actual judicial constitutional review of legislation would become commonplace, am I right?

 

[galileo-034]

Actually, I went through the entire text of the constitution, available online, and though there is provisos on the way the constitution can be amended, I didn't find any case of an instance entrusted with that constitutional review, like the Supreme Court would do in the USA, and Article 110 is the only reference to such a thing, and it's rather evasive to entrust its guard to the people. I though the Council of State could do that, as it is kind of a superior administrative court, but the constitution says nothing on its power to review legislation or block it.

 

[galileo-034]

Hi,

I will maybe post another couple updates about the presidential election of 1852 and elections of 1856, if you want me to continue this thread.
I just have to precise that having read through the constitution of 1848, I had noticed that the presidential election of 1852 should have happened in May 1852, before the legislative election, so I will have to update and possibly change the order in posts, but later.

 

[Anarch King of Dipsodes]

Hi,

I will maybe post another couple updates about the presidential election of 1852 and elections of 1856, if you want me to continue this thread.
I just have to precise that having read through the constitution of 1848, I had noticed that the presidential election of 1852 should have happened in May 1852, before the legislative election, so I will have to update and possibly change the order in posts, but later.

Go wild... I'm interested.

 

[Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)]

Please, go on. I'm loving it. Surviving 2nd French Republic is even more interesting for me than Bonapartist restoration, or eternal Orléanist or Bourbon regimes.

 

[Pempelune]

I concur. This looks very interesting. I want to see what you can imagine for this 2nd Republic