XI., Chap. 5; V. Pierre, Histoire de la
republique de 1848, 2 vols. (Paris, 1873-1878); P.
de la Gorce, Histoire de la deuxieme republique
francaise, 2 vols. (Paris, 1887); E. Spuller,
Histoire parlementaire de la deuxieme republique
(Paris, 1893); Fisher, Republican Tradition in
Europe, Chap. 8.]

*322. From Republic to Empire.*--December 10, 1848, Louis Napoleon,
nephew of the first Napoleon, was chosen president by an overwhelming
vote, and ten days later he assumed office. In May, 1849, an (p. 299)
Assembly was elected, two-thirds of whose members were thoroughgoing
monarchists; so that, as one writer has put it, both the president and
the majority of the Assembly were, by reason of their very being,
enemies of the constitution under which they had been elected.[440]
The new order, furthermore, failed completely to strike root
throughout the nation at large. In this state of things the collapse
of the Republic was but a question of time. By an electoral law of May
31, 1850, requiring of the elector a fixed residence of three years
instead of six months, the suffrage arrangements of 1849 were
subverted and the electorate was reduced by three millions, or
virtually one-third.[441] December 2, 1851, occurred a carefully
planned _coup d'etat_, on which occasion the Assembly was dissolved,
the franchise law of 1849 was restored, and the people, gathered in
primary assemblies, were called upon to intrust to the President power
to revise the national constitution.[442] December 20, by a vote of
7,439,216 to 640,737, the people complied. Thereafter, though
continuing officially through another year, the Republic was in
reality dead. November 7, 1852, the veil was thrown off. A
_senatus-consulte_ decreed a re-establishment of the Empire,[443] and
by a plebiscite of eleven days later the people, by a vote of
7,824,189 to 253,145, sanctioned what had been done. December 2,
Napoleon III. was proclaimed Emperor of the French.

[Footnote 440: Hazen, Europe since 1815, 201.]

[Footnote 441: The text of this measure is in
Duguit et Monnier, Les Constitutions, 265-268, and
Helie, Les Constitutions, 1149-1150. H. Laferriere,
La loi electorale du 31 mai 1850 (Paris, 1910).]

[Footnote 442: Anderson,