abolished feudal titles, banished returned emigres and expropriated their
land. But the response to these 'generous' measures disappointed the
Emperor, and it gradually dawned on him that his only real way forward
was to promise to lead the Revolution in the direction it was headed when
halted by the reaction of Thermidor in 17 94. A great demonstration of
workers and ex-soldiers filed past him on 14 May, urging him to head a
war of liberation against all oppressors and to return to the principles of
17 93. This was not only unacceptable to his bourgeois supporters, who
wanted neither the ancien regime nor 1793 -and certainly not the levee en
masse -but also to him personally: 'I do not want to be king of the
Jacquerie,' he declared. This was shortsighted: he should have seized
the moment, especially since it was self-defeating folly to try to appease
the very faction (the bourgeoisie) that had ditched him in 18 14.
The consequence was that the new regime was soon threatening to
collapse under its own contradictions. The peasantry became disillu
sioned when it was a question of dipping into pockets to pay war taxes;
there were riots in Paris, Lyons, Dunkirk, Nantes, Marseilles and
elsewhere; while Carnot's purge of the prefects provoked a conservative
and clerical backlash. Napoleon also became aware that French cities were
forming federal pacts on the Swiss model, simply adding his name as a
legitimating device but making it clear where their real sympathies lay.
When he heard the details of the first such pact, between Nantes and
Rennes, he sighed and said: 'This is not good for me, but it may be good
for France.'
There was also great hostility to the Acte Additionel, promulgated on 22
April, by which Constant reformed the Constitution. Constant retained
the Council of State and the plebiscite based on universal suffrage; there
were guarantees of civil liberty, press freedom, an enlarged electoral
college, an hereditary upper house, a lower chamber based on a restricted
suffrage. But in the May plebiscite to confirm the Acte Additionel
Napoleon received just 1,532,527 'yeses' and 4, 802 'noes'- as compared
with the 3·7 million affirmative votes he had received in 1802 and the 3.6
million in 18 04. In the elections to the chamber only about a hundred of
the 629 legislators were fully committed to a war against the Allies.
Napoleon's constitutional reforms were a failure on just about every
front. It was a mistake for a ruler who professed liberal principles to
retain hereditary peers. It was a mistake to call the constitutional
refurbishment an 'Additional' Act, as this implied that the old unpopular
imperial system was still in being. It was also an error to reveal the
country hopelessly divided as in the past, with massive absentions in the
referendum from the south, west and the urban regions, and enthusiasm
marcin
(Marcin)
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