rtial
law was proclaimed. Orders were given that all who resisted the
usurpation in the streets were at once, and without trial, to be shot.
All liberty of the press, all liberty of public meeting or discussion,
were absolutely destroyed. About one hundred newspapers were suppressed
and great numbers of their editors transported to Cayenne. Nothing was
allowed to be published without Government authority. In order to
deceive the people as to the amount of support behind the President, a
'Consultative Commission' was announced and the names were placarded in
Paris. Fully half the persons whose names were placed on this list
refused to serve, but in spite of their protests their names were kept
there in order that they might appear to have approved of what was
done.[45] Orders were issued immediately after the _Coup d'etat_ that
every public functionary who did not instantly give in writing his
adhesion to the new Government should be dismissed. The Prefets were
given the right to arrest in their departments whoever they pleased. By
an _ex post facto_ decree, issued on December 8, the Executive were
enabled without trial to send to Cayenne, or to the penal settlements in
Africa, any persons who had in any past time belonged to a 'secret
society,' and this order placed all the numerous members of political
clubs at the mercy of the Government. Parliament, when it was suffered
to reassemble, was so organised and shackled that every vestige of free
discussion for many years disappeared, and a despotism of almost
Asiatic severity was established in France.

It may be fully conceded that the tragedy of December 4, when for more
than a quarter of an hour some 3,000 French soldiers deliberately fired
volley after volley without return upon the unoffending spectators on
the Boulevards, broke into the houses and killed multitudes, not only of
men but of women and children, till the Boulevards, in the words of an
English eye-witness, were 'at some points a perfect shambles,' and the
blood lay in pools round the trees that fringed them, was not ordered by
the President, though it remained absolutely unpunished and uncensured
by him. There is conflicting evidence on this point, but it is probable
that some stray shots had been fired from the houses, and it is certain
that a wild and sanguinary panic had fallen upon the soldiers. It is
possible too, and not improbable, that the stories so generally believed
in Paris that large batches