[Napoleon the Little by Victor Hugo]@TWC D-Link book
Napoleon the Little

BOOK IV
35/39

That is all.
Twenty-seven departments rose in arms: the Ain, the Aude, the Cher, the Bouches du Rhone, the Cote d'Or, the Haute-Garonne, Lot-et-Garonne, the Loiret, the Marne, the Meurthe, the Nord, the Bas-Rhin, the Rhone, Seine-et-Marne, did their duty worthily; the Allier, the Basses-Alpes, the Aveyron, the Drome, the Gard, the Gers, the Herault, the Jura, the Nievre, the Puy-de-Dome, Saone-et-Loire, the Var and Vaucluse, did theirs fearlessly.

They succumbed, as did Paris.
The _coup d'etat_ was as ferocious there as at Paris.

We have cast a summary glance at its crimes.
So, then, it was this lawful, constitutional, virtuous resistance, this resistance in which heroism was on the side of the citizens, and atrocity on the side of the powers; it was this which the _coup d'etat_ called "Jacquerie." We repeat, a touch of red spectre was useful.
This Jacquerie had two aims; it served the policy of the Elysee in two ways; it offered a double advantage: first, to win votes for the "plebiscite;" to win these votes by the sword and in face of the spectre, to repress the intelligent, to alarm the credulous, compelling some by terror, others by fear, as we shall shortly explain; therein lies all the success and mystery of the vote of the 20th of December; secondly, it afforded a pretext for proscriptions.
The year 1852 in itself contained no actual danger.

The law of the 31st of May, morally extinct, was dead before the 2nd of December.

A new Assembly, a new President, the Constitution simply put in operation, elections,--and nothing more.
But it was necessary that M.Bonaparte should go.


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