tional
Guard, jointly with the regular troops, threw down the insurrection,
had confirmed the superstition. After the inauguration of Bonaparte's
administration, the position of the National Guard sank somewhat through
the unconstitutional joining of their command with the command of the
First Military Division in the person of Changarnier.

As the command of the National Guard appeared here merely an attribute
of the military commander-in-chief, so did the Guard itself appear only
as an appendage of the regular troops. Finally, on June 13, the National
Guard was broken up, not through its partial dissolution only, that from
that date forward was periodically repeated at all points of France,
leaving only wrecks of its former self behind. The demonstration of June
13 was, above all, a demonstration of the National Guards. True, they
had not carried their arms, but they had carried their uniforms against
the Army--and the talisman lay just in these uniforms. The Army then
learned that this uniform was but a woolen rag, like any other. The
spell was broken. In the June days of 1848, bourgeoisie and small
traders were united as National Guard with the Army against the
proletariat; on June 13, 1849, the bourgeoisie had the small traders'
National Guard broken up; on December 2, 1851, the National Guard of
the bourgeoisie itself vanished, and Bonaparte attested the fact when he
subsequently signed the decree for its disbandment. Thus the bourgeoisie
had itself broken its last weapon against the army, from the moment when
the small traders' class no longer stood as a vassal behind, but as
a rebel before it; indeed, it was bound to do so, as it was bound to
destroy with its own hand all its means of defence against absolutism,
so soon as itself was absolute.

In the meantime, the party of Order celebrated the recovery of a power
that seemed lost in 1848 only in order that, freed from its trammels in
1849, it be found again through invectives against the republic and the
Constitution; through the malediction of all future, present and past
revolutions, that one included which its own leaders had made; and,
finally, in laws by which the press was gagged, the right of association
destroyed, and the stage of siege regulated as an organic institution.
The National Assembly then adjourned from the middle of August to the
middle of October, after it had appointed a Permanent Committee for the
period of its absence. During these vaca