2.3. Fundamentación Legal
2.3.2. Normas de Control Interno
In the wake of defeat and civil war, politicians, intellectuals, and writers of a variety of ideological stripes sought to determine the cause for France’s embarrassing defeat and
destructive civil war. These attempts were controversial – not least because many blamed the defeat not on German tactics, but on different groups or trends in French society. Some held the army responsible, while others charged only its generals or administrators. Others blamed Napoleon III, or the Second Empire, while some held the Government of National Defense at fault for the final devastation. Still others maintained that there was something deeply wrong with the French nation itself. Due in part to these wide differences in opinion, even by 1880 the French had not reached a clear consensus on the causes for defeat. But if these debates remained
unresolved, they nevertheless shaped the new ways that French intellectuals and politicians thought about the meaning and significance of “empire” and “republic” – even if they continued to disagree about the value and valence of both terms.
This debate over the political and national implications of French defeat took place in a number of different spheres – including newspapers, political pamphlets, almanacs, and
literature. These types of writing had different purposes and were often intended for different audiences: some were aimed at the highly educated, while others sought to have a more mass appeal.50 Some were intended to rally those who shared beliefs similar to those of the author, while others were intended to convince those who were politically on the fence. The writers themselves had different relationships to French politics: some were immersed in the political sphere, while others were not politicians at all. Although these different attempts to influence popular understandings of the Franco-Prussian War and its relationship to French politics thus did not operate in the same way and did not necessarily circulate among the same people, they all contributed to an uneven conversation about the nation’s past and its future.
This conversation also evolved over the 1870s as writers responded to each other’s arguments and reacted to political events. Between 1871 and 1873, the republic was particularly unstable. The Orleanist and Legitimist deputies who dominated the National Assembly openly worked together to restore the monarchy and crown the Comte de Chambord King of France.51
50 Martyn Lyons, Reading Culture and Writing Practices in Nineteenth-Century France (Toronto: UT Press, 2008), 48.
51 This attempt to restore the monarchy had been troubled since the beginning. The Legitimists did not command enough of a presence in the Assembly to install the Comte de Chambord without the support of the Orleanists. And while the Orleanists were willing to consider such an arrangement because the Comte de Chambord was elderly and childless – and he would therefore pass the throne to the Orleaniste Comte de Paris when he died – they wanted reassurances that that the Comte de Chambord would rule constitutionally. On 5 July 1871, the Comte de Chambord insisted that he would only rule beneath a white flag and refused to make any promises on the constitutional front. In 1873, it briefly seemed possible that an agreement could be reached, but when he again refused to use the republican tricolor flag or make constitutional assurances, their hopes of replacing the republic with a monarchy were derailed.
At the same time, the threat of a Bonapartist resurgence seemed remote, and Bonapartist sympathizers remained quiet.52 In the earliest years, monarchists and republicans were thus poised primarily against one another, and they invoked particular visions of the Second Empire to discredit each other and promote different forms of political organization. The nature of the debates over the war and the Empire changed in 1873, when the likelihood of a monarchical restoration receded and the Bonapartists re-entered the conversation, and once again in 1875, when the deputies took the first steps to consolidate the republican regime.53
Republicans
Although no political groups articulated coherent interpretations of the war and the Commune, there were common concerns that fell along political lines. Republican politicians and intellectuals in particular blamed the Empire and its high-ranking officials for the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War and France’s eventual defeat. By delegitimizing the Empire – and to some extent, the monarchy as well – they hoped to defend the new republican government from
See Paul Baquiast, La Troisième République, 1870-1940 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2002), 19; Jérôme Grévy, La République des opportunistes (Paris: Perrin, 1998), 24.
52 In the years immediately following the defeat, many monarchists – especially Orleanists and Legitimists - saw the Bonapartists as potential allies in a campaign to overthrow the republic. To some degree, the monarchists’ hope for an alliance bore fruit: in 1873, the Bonapartists worked with the monarchists to help unseat Thiers. But the
Bonapartists refused to be assimilated into a larger conservative alliance, and, at least within the Assembly itself, sometimes allied with the Republicans against the monarchists. See Kevin Passmore, The Right in France from the Third Republic to Vichy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 37.
53 In the early years, the Third Republic lacked a clear governing structure: even after the elections in 1871, its structure remained provisional. The conservatives who predominated in the government had no interest in moving to consolidate the regime, at least at first, because they hoped to overthrow it. It was only after it became clear that a monarchical restoration was impossible that a conservative coalition – dominated by moderate Legitimists and Orleanists – tried to construct a conservative coalition that would protect their interests. The first step towards this coalition was the “Rivet” law, which allowed the president to rule constitutionally. See Grévy, La République des opportunistes, 25. In 1875, in the face of a rising Bonapartist threat, Orleanists worked with moderate republicans to draft a series of laws that would come to operate as a constitution, establishing a National Assembly and a Senate, and agreeing that the regime would be called the “Republic.” They thus established a parliamentary regime that they hoped would consolidate the position of conservative elites. See Alan Grubb, The Politics of Pessimism: Albert de Broglie and Conservative Politics in the Early Third Republic (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), 240.
the conservative majorities that threatened to overthrow it by proving that the republic was not responsible for any of France’s misfortunes. This argument emerged early on. In the weeks following the September 4 Revolution, a number of politicians, intellectuals, and journalists from across the political spectrum published vehement critiques of Napoleon III, his military
strategies, and his political institutions. These critiques only became more numerous in the face of the elections that took place on 17 February 1871, when the republicans faced a strong conservative opposition in the wake of the highly unpopular peace treaty.54 But if republican thinkers agreed that the Empire was largely to blame for defeat and civil war, they often
articulated different ideas about why the Empire was to blame – and in fact defined the meaning of both “Empire” and “Republic” in diverse, sometimes contradictory ways. They also adopted different strategies for drawing the connections between empire and defeat.
Some pamphleteers focused their critique of the Empire on Napoleon III himself, and sought to demonstrate that he was personally responsible for the events of 1870-71.55 Eugène Spuller, a republican writer and politician, contended, for example, that because Napoleon III was a dictator who decided French policy from above, he alone could be held to account for the war’s events.56 He argued that Napoleon III’s pattern of placing his own desires and interests over the needs of the country had weakened France, and left it unprepared for war with Prussia
54 In the 1871 elections in particular, the republicans wanted to not only discredit the empire, but the monarchists as well. See, for example, “La France,” Le Temps (13 February 1871), 1.
55 Some maintained that he was a foolhardy dreamer who had led the country astray. “Was it improvidence? Was it perfidy? We don’t know. It is true that Louis-Napoléon was not very logical, and did not usually finish what he started.” See H. Bellamy, République ou monarchie (Angoulême: Imprimerie de T. Maignant, 1871), 11.
56 Eugène Spuller was a republican politician close to Gambetta. He became the editor of République française after the war and was elected to the Assembly in 1876. See Nathalie Baylon, Eugène Spuller, 1835-1896: Itinéraire d’un républicain entre Gambetta et le Ralliement (Lille: Les Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2006), 19.
when it came.57 The republican politician Émile Dehau echoed the contention that Napoleon III’s selfishness that led to the defeat in his pamphlet “Napoleon III or National Shame” published in early 1871. He claimed that contemporary France’s weak political and military position was the result of Napoleon III’s decision to try to increase his personal prestige by embarking on a series of unjustified wars in the country’s name.58
Even as these authors condemned Napoleon III as selfish, they argued that Napoleon III’s incompetence as a military commander was the most important factor in French defeat. This focus on his military abilities in part reflected republicans’ concern about the continued power of the Napoleonic myth of military greatness. Many republicans saw this myth as responsible for Napoleon III’s rise, and they feared that he might be able to make his way back into power if it remained intact.59 Some writers attempted to dismantle the myth by attacking the legacy of Napoleon I. 60 But most did not contest Napoleon I’s military greatness; instead, they argued that Napoleon III had not inherited his talents. Eugène Spuller claimed that Napoleon III was simply too corrupt to be an effective military commander. He charged that Napoleon III – in an attempt to enrich himself – had purposefully diverted the funds he had requested to maintain and arm his
57 While Spuller acknowledged that Napoleon III had ostensibly put in place some reforms to liberalize the empire, he held that for the most part, these reforms were essentially illusory. See Eugène Spuller, Histoire de Napoléon III : l'homme, le système, le règne, les prétendues réformes, les désastres, conclusion (Paris: A. le Chevalier, 1872), 23. 58 He condemned both Napoleon III and Bonapartism for undermining France’s prosperity and prestige. He advocated for a “liberal” republic that would heal France’s wounds and emancipate its people. See Émile Dehau,
Napoléon III ou la honte nationale (Paris: Imprimerie Auguste Vallée, 1871), 35. 59 See, for example, Jean Pilori, Gare à l'Empire (Paris: A. Lévy, 1871), 5.
60 Crespy-Noher, for example, compared Napoleon I to Washington unfavorably. See Crespy-Noher, Washington et
Napoléon ou la République et la Monarchie en présence (Bordeaux: P.-M. Cadoret, 1871), 16. Félix Oger, a professor of geography at Saint-Barbe and the chair of commercial geography at Bordeaux, sought to show that both Napoleons were poor military leaders because they had ultimately weakened France instead of strengthening it. He insisted that the only legacy that either Empire had left for France was that of territorial loss, as the allies had stripped France of the Republic’s territorial gains when Napoleon I surrendered in 1815, and Prussia had assumed control over Alsace and Lorraine when Napoleon III surrendered in 1870. See Félix Oger, Les Bonaparte et les frontières de la France (Paris: Germer-Bailliere, 1872), 35.
soldiers into his personal accounts. He thus contended that the French army had lost primarily because it was criminally underfunded and underequipped.61 Émile Dehau took a more systemic approach: he declared that Napoleon III’s attempt to create an army that was both loyal to and dependent upon him had had devastating effects on the military’s ability to effectively fight wars. By limiting enrollment and refusing to create a national army out of fear that such an army might turn against him, he had failed to recruit and train enough soldiers to defend France.62
Most authors went beyond personal failure, however, and insisted that the defeat did not just stem from Napoleon III’s personal, political, or military weaknesses, but from the fact that the Empire itself was a fundamentally flawed political institution. The critics thus challenged the legitimacy of the whole imperial system. They did not necessarily agree, however, about why the empire was inherently problematic. Some took a structural approach, arguing that the Empire was an inherently contradictory form of political administration. Achille Eyraud, a well-known writer and journalist, argued that Napoleon III sought to be both a “demagogue” and a “despot” – and that as a result, he was unable to create consistent domestic or foreign policies.63 Léon Feer, on the other hand, agreed that the Empire represented both demagogy and despotism, but denied that these two tendencies were contradictory: instead, he maintained, that they were “two allies” that had worked together beneath Napoleon III’s rule to undermine France.64 Others pointed to the Empire’s political culture: Le Petit Journal implied that the empire’s key fault lay in its tendency to promote loyalty over competence. It particularly condemned the use of official candidature, which, it contended, helped create an administrative culture based on conformity
61 Spuller, Histoire de Napoléon III, 31.
62 Dehau, Napoléon III ou la honte nationale, 32
63 Achille Eyraud, République ou Monarchie (Paris: E. Dentu, 1872), 22.
64 Léon Feer was an orientalist; this book was his only work on France. See Léon Feer, République et royauté: de la
and personal connections. Such an incompetent administration could not adequately govern the country nor meet the demands of waging a war.65
Other authors charged that the Empire’s failures lay primarily in the fact that it was a fundamentally corrupt form of political organization, which promoted a decadent, immoral culture.66 If Eugène Spuller had argued that this corruption stemmed from the Emperor himself, others described it as a systemic problem that spread throughout the entire administration and degraded the French nation.67 In an open letter to Gambetta, Jean-Baptiste Vitteaut implied that Napoleon III had spread this corruption deliberately because he had feared an uprising and had therefore undermined the religious and national ties that naturally bound the French people together by promoting an egotistical culture.68 Without those ties, they had been unable to unite in the face of a common enemy and defend themselves against the Germans. Le Siècle agreed with this diagnosis, maintaining that the Empire was “only a despotism and an orgy. It did not and it could not leave anything behind it other than ruin and shame. We have not had anything
65 Thomas Grimm, “Le Choix des deputés,” Le Petit Journal (4 February 1871), 1.
66 Eugène Bazin contended that the Empire had corrupted the society of letters, and by extension, Parisian society itself. See Eugène Bazin, 1870-1871 (Paris: Sauton, 1872), 6.
67 Léon Feer, who mostly focused on attacking Napoleon III personally, widened his critique here. He referred to the Empire as an “odious” form of government, “established by violence, sustained by brutal force, founded on war, enemy of both peace and liberty. The Empire has only ever brought France to the abyss: it destroyed liberty, morals, and civic and national spirit… the Bonapartist dynasty is made up of foolhardy adventurers who… have only been marked by crime and depravity.” SeeFeer, République et Royauté, 20-21. Auguste Dalichoux similarly argued that the Empire spread corruption throughout French society, especially among the aristocrats and the bourgeoisie. See Auguste Dalichoux, 1871: Les premières phases d’une decadence, 3rd ed. (Paris: Rue de Seine, 1871), 15. An anonymous pamphlet-writer agreed, noting, “Caesarian monarchy… was the monarchy of decadent times of great social corruption.” See La république et la monarchie (Lille: Imprimerie et librairie Camille Robbe, 1873), 57. 68 He argued, “the causes of our national decadence are multiple and profound… the strongest, which weighs most heavily along with Bonapartist corruption and hypocrisy, and the Orleanist cult of material interest… is egoism.” This egoism, he avowed, was the result of the decline in religious belief that Napoleon III in particular helped precipitate. He alleged that the Republic would need to embrace Catholicism in order to be successful – and in fact went so far as to aver that Republicanism was the type of political organization most compatible with Christianity. He insisted that all kinds of monarchy – and Bonapartism in particular – replaced the figure of Christ with the figure of the monarch, and thereby misdirected the religious feelings of the people. In a republic, he maintained that the people would focus on God. See Jean-Baptiste Vitteaut, À Monsieur Gambetta: Réflexions sur les causes de notre décadence et les conditions essentielles de la démocratie. (Paris: J. Dejussieu, 1872), 7,19.
but an immoral comedy in France for the past twenty years…”69 Like Vitteaut, the author thus tied what he saw as the Empire’s moral failures to the outcome of the conflict with Prussia, and implied that the government had been destined to end in disaster.
While some republican pamphlet-writers defined the Empire as a unique form of political organization and attempted to discredit it alone, others tied its failures to older conservative forms of government. Some linked the Empire explicitly to the French monarchy by describing the empire as a “type” of monarchy – and then argued that all forms of monarchy were equally intrinsically despotic.70 Raymond d’Aiguy, an officer at Lyon’s court of appeals, for example, described the Bonapartists, the Legitimists, and the Orleanists, as “three monarchies” and held them all responsible for “dishonoring [the nation’s] name, debasing its flag, and plunging it into an abyss of ruin and devastation.”71 While G. Barthélemy, a republican politician, did distinguish between Bonapartists, Legitimists, and Orleanists, he maintained that the differences between them were ultimately negligible, because all three were “synonymous with tyranny, absolutism, and despotism” and each would ultimately bring ruin to the French nation.72 A third anonymous writer acknowledged that Bonapartists, Legitimists, and Orleanists represented three distinct political ideals.73 But he went on to claim that all “were equally false and equally bad.”74
69 Dupaure, “Paris. – 3 février,” Le Siècle (4 February 1871, 1)
70 Albert Osmonville argued that the problem with the Empire was that it was a type of monarchy, and as such, it had stripped France of its wealth, spirit, and citizens. See Albert Osmonville, Ce que coûte un monarque (Lyon: Jevai et Bourgeon, 1871), 5. Émile Second similarly described both Empire and Monarchy as “royal” governments “marked by infamies without number, debauchery, shame, corruption, and tyranny.” See Émile Second, Histoire de la décadence d’un peuple, 1872-1900, 2nd ed. (Paris: Librairie André Sagnier, 1873),141.
71 Raymond d’Aiguy, Guerre de 1870 et ses conséquences: quelle gouvernement la France se donnera-t-elle? (Lyon and Paris: Félix Girard, 1871), 57.
72 G. Barthélemy, Route des Bonapartistes, Légitimistes, et Orléanistes (Paris: E. Lachaud, 1871), 14.
73 The Bonapartists, he contended, represented “autocratic but popular and democratic monarchy,” whereas the Orleanists represented “liberal or constitutional monarchy,” and the Legitimists represented “traditional or absolutist