charges. Their defeat was, accordingly, a direct victory
of Bonaparte; it was his personal triumph over his democratic enemies.
The party of Order fought for the victory, Bonaparte needed only to
pocket it. He did so. On June 14, a proclamation was to be read on
the walls of Paris wherein the President, as it were, without his
connivance, against his will, driven by the mere force of circumstances,
steps forward from his cloisterly seclusion like misjudged virtue,
complains of the calumnies of his antagonists, and, while seeming to
identify his own person with the cause of order, rather identifies the
cause of order with his own person. Besides this, the National Assembly
had subsequently approved the expedition against Rome; Bonaparte,
however, had taken the initiative in the affair. After he had led the
High Priest Samuel back into the Vatican, he could hope as King David to
occupy the Tuileries. He had won the parson-interests over to himself.

The riot of June 13 limited itself, as we have seen, to a peaceful
street procession. There were, consequently, no laurels to be won from
it. Nevertheless, in these days, poor in heroes and events, the party of
Order converted this bloodless battle into a second Austerlitz. Tribune
and press lauded the army as the power of order against the popular
multitude, and the impotence of anarchy; and Changarnier as the "bulwark
of society"--a mystification that he finally believed in himself.
Underhand, however, the corps that seemed doubtful were removed from
Paris; the regiments whose suffrage had turned out most democratic were
banished from France to Algiers the restless heads among the troops were
consigned to penal quarters; finally, the shutting out of the press
from the barracks, and of the barracks from contact with the citizens
was systematically carried out.

We stand here at the critical turning point in the history of the French
National Guard. In 1830, it had decided the downfall of the restoration.
Under Louis Philippe, every riot failed, at which the National Guard
stood on the side of the troops. When, in the February days of 1848,
it showed itself passive against the uprising and doubtful toward Louis
Philippe himself, he gave himself up for lost. Thus the conviction cast
root that a revolution could not win without, nor the Army against
the National Guard. This was the superstitious faith of the Army in
bourgeois omnipotence. The June days of 1548, when the whole Na