crisis the French
look to a man, not to Chambers. The Empire had no man at hand. General
Trochu, Governor of Paris, was suspected of being a Republican--at any
rate he let matters take their course. On the 4th, vast crowds filled
the streets; a rush was made to the Chamber, where various compromises
were being discussed; the doors were forced, and amid wild excitement a
proposal to dethrone the Napoleonic dynasty was put. Two Republican
deputies, Gambetta and Jules Favre, declared that the Hotel de Ville was
the fit place to declare the Republic. There, accordingly, it was
proclaimed, the deputies for the city of Paris taking office as the
Government of National Defence. They were just in time to prevent
Socialists like Blanqui, Flourens, and Henri Rochefort from installing
the "Commune" in power. The Empress and the Prince Imperial at once
fled, and, apart from a protest by the Senate, no voice was raised in
defence of the Empire. Jules Favre who took up the burden of Foreign
Affairs in the new Government of National Defence was able to say in his
circular note of September 6 that "the Revolution of September 4 took
place without the shedding of a drop of blood or the loss of liberty to
a single person[51]."

[Footnote 51: Gabriel Hanotaux, _Contemporary France_, vol. i. p. 14
(Eng. edit.)]

That fact shows the unreality of Bonapartist rule in France. At bottom
Napoleon III.'s ascendancy was due to several causes, that told against
possible rivals rather than directly in his favour. Hatred of the
socialists, whose rash political experiments had led to the bloody days
of street fighting in Paris in June 1848, counted for much. Added to
this was the unpopularity of the House of Orleans after the sordid and
uninteresting rule of Louis Philippe (1830-48). The antiquated royalism
of the Elder or Legitimist branch of that ill-starred dynasty made it
equally an impossibility. Louis Napoleon promised to do what his
predecessors, Monarchical and Republican, had signally failed to do,
namely, to reconcile the claims of liberty and order at home and uphold
the prestige of France abroad. For the first ten years the glamour of
his name, the skill with which he promoted the material prosperity of
France, and the successes of his early wars, promised to build up a
lasting power. But then came the days of failing health and tottering
prestige--of financial scandals, of the Mexican blunder, of the
humiliation before the rising power