The clergy, by their tactics, hastened the conversion.
After gaining the landlords of the new town to their side, they even succeeded in convincing the little retail-dealers of the old quarter.
From that time the reactionary movement obtained complete possession of the town.

All opinions were represented in this reaction; such a mixture of embittered Liberals, Legitimists, Orleanists, Bonapartists, and Clericals had never before been seen.

It mattered little, however, at that time.

The sole object was to kill the Republic; and the Republic was at the point of death.

Only a fraction of the people--a thousand workmen at most, out of the ten thousand souls in the town--still saluted the tree of liberty planted in the middle of the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture.
The shrewdest politicians of Plassans, those who led the reactionary movement, did not scent the approach of the Empire until very much later.