The Saint-Napoleon: Celebrations of Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century France

The Saint-Napoleon

The Saint-Napoleon CELEBRATIONS OF SOVEREIGNTY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

SUDHIR HAZAREESINGH

HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England

2004

Copyright © 2004 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hazareesingh, Sudhir. The Saint-Napoleon: celebrations of sovereignty in nineteenth-century France / Sudhir Hazareesingh. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-674-01341-7 Calk. paper) 1. France-History-Second Empire, 1852-1870.2. Political cultureFrance-History-19th century. 3. Political customs and rites-France19th century. 4. Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821-Influence. 5. Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821-Monuments. 6. Bonapartism-France-History-19th century. 7. Festivals-France. 8. Symbolism in politics-France. 1. Title. DC276.5.H392004 944.07-dc22 2004040512

For Martha ("Mamie") Dewell New York artist and grande connaisseuse of all things French

Contents

Illustrations

lX

Preface

Xl

Introduction: Civic Festivities in Nineteenth-Century France

1

1 A Common Sentiment of National Glory

22

2 Variations on Provincial Themes

38

3 Proud to Be French

57

4

Honorable and Honored Citizens

5 Incidents, Accidents, Excesses 6

All the Majesty of the State

78 105 120

7 The Immense Space between Heaven and Earth

140

8 We Have Our Own Music

154

9

10

Eroding Bonapartist Sovereignty

179

Legitimist Coldness, Republican Enthusiasm

201

Conclusion: Festivity, Identity, Civility

220

Notes

239

Primary Sources

281

Index

287

Illustrations

Saint-Napoleon, Martyr (August 15)

5

Saint-Napoleon, Patron of Warriors

9

Fetes of August 15: The Entry into the Opera

32

Great Festivity of August 15, 1859

52

Italian War: Return of Troops in Paris, August 14, 1859

66

Decree Establishing the Medaille de Sainte-Helene, August 12, 1857

83

Town of Troyes: Fete of His Majesty the Emperor, August 1863

113

Napoleon III, Emperor of the French People

123

Egypt: National Festivity of August 15

147

Program of the Fete of August 15, Paris

183

The Saint-Napoleon in the Barracks

216

Allee des Acacias: Review of the Territorial Army, 1880

222

Preface

This book, written alongside my study of the Napoleonic myth in France, The Legend of Napoleon (London: Granta, 2004), brings to a close a sequence of works in which I have sought to explore nineteenth-century French political culture, particularly in the eras of the Second Empire and early Third Republic. After delving into the realms of political traditions, the history of republican ideas, and masonic sociability, I here attempt to come to grips with the social and cultural history of the era, seen through the prism of its civic festivities. Political fetes were largely terra incognita for me, and before embarking upon this book I had never written on the subject. I have therefore been extremely fortunate to benefit from the encouragement, advice, and help of friends and colleagues. They have many a time steered me away from the precipices toward which I was advancing with the temerity and insouciance of the novice. If I have survived to tell the tale, I owe it above all to their patience and kindness; naturally, I alone remain responsible for whatever errors and shortcomings remain in the text. I should like in particular to begin by thanking Patrice Higonnet, who unwittingly started it all in May 2000 by inviting me to a conference on the theme of "Bodies Building Power" at the Harvard Center for European Studies, where I was asked to discuss the civic ceremonials of the Third Republic. It was in the course of preparing this presentation that I realized that the Napoleonic festivities that had

XlI

Preface

preceded July 14 were still largely unknown (and misunderstood); and in the months and years that followed, Patrice supported this project in a variety of ways for which I am immensely grateful. Two scholars with prodigious expertise in the field of nineteenth-century French cultural history have also supplied invaluable assistance: Stephane Gerson, whose work on the cult of local memories was an inspiration, and who provided the sort of detailed comments about the manuscript of which an author can only dream; and Olivier Ihl, who read the book in draft as it was being written, discussed it with me on numerous occasions, and commented insightfully on it in a truly fraternal republican spirit. I have so far failed in my endeavor to convince him that all modern French republicans are really Bonapartists at heart, but will keep trying. A gallant company of readers has also accompanied me on this journey, constantly encouraging me and providing support, and helping me to clarify ambiguities and inconsistencies in my argument. For this assistance, and the warm and generous spirit in which it was given, my deepest thanks go to Ceri Crossley, Caroline Ford, Alan Forrest, Robert Gildea, Ruth Harris, Patrice Higonnet, Des King, Sheryl Kroen, Jim McMillan, Karma Nabulsi, Philip Nord, Roger Price, Quentin Skinner, Ezra Suleiman, Robert Tombs, Owen White, and Isser Woloch. Two anonymous readers positively reviewed the manuscript for Harvard University Press and made a number of excellent suggestions for its improvement. It is a great pleasure, in this context, to record my thanks to Kathleen McDermott, the history editor at HUP, for all her wonderful support, as well as her efficiency-and that of the entire production team-in steering the book through its assembly phase. Draft versions of the chapters on religion were presented to the panel on "The Local Sphere in Nineteenth Century France" at the French Historical Society conference, Toronto, in April 2002; I am very grateful to my fellow panelists Caroline Ford, Stephane Gerson, Phil Nord, and Judy Stone for their stimulating observations. I also gave an overview of the book to the History Department at Princeton University in October 2002; my warmest thanks to Phil Nord for organizing this seminar, and to all those colleagues who provided such excellent feedback. The same warm welcome and invigorating discussions were proffered by the Department of French at the University of Birmingham, where I delivered the Mireille Best Memorial Lecture on the Saint-Napoleon celebrations in November 2002. Aspects of this project have also been presented to colleagues in France: first to a

Preface

XUl

research seminar at the Institut des Etudes Politiques in Paris in June 2002, kindly organized by Lucien Jaume and Gil Delannoi; then to the researchers of the CERAT at the Political Science Department of the Institut des Etudes Politiques, Grenoble, in November 2002 (warm thanks to Olivier Ihl for arranging the visit); and lastly to the modern political history seminar at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris in February 2003; I am greatly indebted to Pierre Rosanvallon for his kind invitation. Early drafts of some of the chapters have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Modern History, English Historical Review, European Journal of Political Theory, Modern and Contemporary France, as well as in the Revue Historique and the Revue d'Histoire du DixNeuvieme Siecle. I am very grateful to the editors and reviewers of these publications for their useful observations, all of which have helped to shape not only the specific pieces in question but also the book as a whole. Institutional support has also been invaluable. I first thank the Master and Fellows of Balliol for granting me an extended period of research leave, and the British Academy for funding it though the award of a Research Readership. Glynis Baleham, the Senior Tutor's Secretary at Balliol, has supplied various forms of practical assistance with her customary efficiency and cheerfulness. The Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University supported an application for research expenses to help defray some of the costs of traveling across provincial France. A special word of thanks, finally, to Ezra Suleiman and the Department of Politics at Princeton University, who welcomed me as an academic visitor in the fall of 2002; it was in this idyllic setting where I was lavished with wonderful research facilities that I completed the research for this book and wrote the introduction and conclusion. Above all, none of this book could have been written without the wealth of "festive" material served up by France's National and Departmental Archives. Researching this project has been one of the greatest pleasures of my scholarly life: the quest for sources has taken me, in addition to the familiar Parisian haunts of the BNF and the CARAN, to twenty-two local public archives in various parts of France. In all these sites, from the large metropolitan centers such as Lille, Marseille, Lyon, Montpellier, Nantes, Grenoble, and Bordeaux to the more modest provincial towns such as Draguignan, Bar-Ie-Duc, Tours, Auch, Rodez, and Albi, I was received with great courtesy, and no effort was spared to facilitate my efforts to excavate this relatively

XIV

Preface

unknown piece of nineteenth-century French history. To all these guardians of local French memory-the administrators who responded efficiently to written queries, the archivists who dealt promptly with specific requests for help, and the attendants who cheerfully photocopied piles of administrative reports-my heartfelt thanks. Frank Pert compiled the index with characteristic efficiency and expertise; I am greatly in his debt. Lastly, Karma: she has watched with wonder as I returned from yet another French provincial town laden with archival goodies-"another 'fete-bag,' " as she put it. She has brought her expertise on nineteenthcentury European history to bear on the manuscript, which has improved immeasurably as a result of her readings and our many discussions. Even more importantly, she has patiently listened to all my anecdotes about the Saint-Napoleon (and laughed in all the right places). For this, as well as her love and intellectual companionship, I am deeply grateful.

Introduction: Civic Festivities in Nineteenth-Century France

ON

AUG U S T

15, 1868, the day of the French national fes-

tivity of the Saint-Napoleon, a special commemorative event took place in Grenoble: the unveiling of a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte on horseback. A "massive crowd from the locality as well as from much further afield," in the words of the prefect of the Isere, came to witness this double celebration, whose high point was a speech from Monsieur Point, the mayor of the small town of Vourey. Point was something of a celebrity in his own right: he was a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur and a former officer in the Grande Armee and had fought in many campaigns alongside Napoleon. In his evocation of the memory of the great Bonaparte, he thus spoke from direct experience; the assembled gathering listened to his address in "religious silence."l Point's intervention bore witness to the richness of Bonapartist political culture in the region. He began with a portrait of Napoleon, dwelling on his magnetic and arresting personality, "which could literally pierce the spectator with one look"; he then spoke of his military genius, his commitment to equality, which he had protected and nurtured as a more robust form of a liberty-"liberty in action"-and his striking accomplishments as a lawmaker, most notably the production of the Civil Code, "a monument as honorable and everlasting as all his victories on the battlefield." The speech artfully blended this narration of the imperial legend with an appeal to local Napoleonic traditions and memories. In particular, there were proud references (immediately picked up by the crowd) to the Laffrey episode in March

2

Introduction

1815, when Napoleon had turned a military detachment sent to arrest him after his landing from Elba; to the "heroic" resistance of Grenoble to the invasion of Allied forces in July 1815, which had been celebrated every year by locals well into the 1830s; and, of course, to the triumphant support given by the department to Napoleon's nephew Louis since the late 1840s. Most remarkable of all, perhaps, was the ending of the speech, in which the old warrior paused to wonder whether the founder of the Napoleonic dynasty would have been tempted, were he still alive and in such close proximity to France's eastern border, to raid across into Germanic territories and recapture the Rhine. The answer was negative: Napoleon would not have been "attracted by conquests"; this had "never been" one of his priorities. No, the emperor would have remained there, steadfastly, "to demonstrate his attachment to the people of Grenoble."2 Behind this final parable was a restatement of one of the Second Empire's most celebrated maxims: "the Empire means peace." More broadly, this festive moment captured the range, complexity, and subtlety of the Napoleonic celebrations of the Second Empire, with their memories of the glorious past and their assertion (and occasional reinvention) of the core values of the Bonapartist tradition-order, civil equality, patriotism, military valor, and peace. At the same time, through this portrayal of Napoleon, a whole raft of local memories and political associations were nurtured and reactivated, strengthening the feelings of regional patriotism and local pride and cementing the links of the inhabitants of Grenoble with the civic order of the imperial regime. 3 How all these notions were played out during the civic festivities of the Second Empire in the 1850s and 1860s and what these stories reveal about wider themes in modern French political culture (notably state-building, identity formation, and politicization) are the central subjects of this book.

A Cult of Celebrations The nineteenth century marked the zenith of commemorative endeavor in France. Especially in provincial and rural France, much of the population still came together for the Catholic festivities that had classically marked the rhythm of urban and rural life for centuries, such as the fetes of Easter, Toussaint, and Christmas. Those who lived on the land partook in seasonal agricultural celebrations, such as the Saint-Eloi, which honored the patron saint of cultivators. There were also a host of colorful secular rituals, of which the best known were

Introduction

3

the carnival and the charivari-common (if not entirely restful) features of the French festive landscape until the mid-nineteenth century, and occasions that could readily be appropriated for the purposes of political dissent. 4 Fetes brought enlightenment and entertainment, but also loss of innocence. They were occasions of rejoicing, where individual inhibitions were lost and social hierarchies temporarily suspended; but they also marked the traditional moment when outside elements came to disturb the peace and harmony of local communities. It is no accident that Gustave Flaubert places the scene at which Emma Bovary is seduced in the village fair. What especially distinguished the nineteenth century was its consistent capacity for festive innovation. As some of these traditional rituals began to decline and lose their mass appeal-in 1858 a poet from Uzes lamented that "Lo Carnaval es mort!"5-they were increasingly replaced by what might be called "local invented traditions": cults of memory, which sought to reconstitute the institutional and cultural heritage of localized communities; folkloric gatherings of regional cultures, such as Frederic Mistral's Felibrige, devoted to the promotion of the langue d'oc and the traditions of the Midi;6 new religious festivities and processions, such as Lourdes and the Immaculate Conception; and fetes patronales, in which towns and villages celebrated their patron saint.7 By the early 1850s, despite their comparatively recent origins, some of these festivities had effectively taken center stage in the local commemorative calendar. Thus at Tonnerre (Yonne) the fete patronale had come to be regarded as the commune's most significant festivity.8 In many localities these rejoicings were something of a marathon, as at Ramatuelle (Var), where Saint-Andre was honored each year for three consecutive days in early September. 9 Fetes also made serious contributions to the local economy: shops and inns relied heavily on the revenue generated by these rituals. lO In this buoyant festive landscape, political celebrations also began to gain increasing prominence in the collective lives of French men and women. After the agitated years of the revolutionary period, when public festivities sought (ambitiously but unsuccessfully) to promote a regeneration of the civic fabric,l1 things got off to a modest but creative beginning during the first half of the nineteenth century. Desirous of creating a new anniversary to celebrate his reign after the proclamation of the First Empire in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte persuaded the Vatican to canonize a new saint to coincide with his birthday on August 15. Cardinal Jean-Baptiste Caprara duly obliged with "SaintNapoleon," named after a Roman martyr Neopolis who was thought

4

Introduction

to have been killed for refusing to pledge his allegiance to Emperor Maximilian;12 this "patron saint of warriors," as Saint-Napoleon became known, was almost certainly invented for this cause. 13 Between 1806 and 1813, the First Empire celebrated August 15 as France's national day; this commemoration also coincided with the feast of the Assumption, one of the most important Catholic festivities of the year. Organized at all points of the Empire (notably in Napoleonic Italy),14 the Saint-Napoleon ceremonies were modest in scale and essentially provided local officials with opportunities to sing the praises of the emperor, "this felicitous being sent from the skies to the French people, this cherubin dressed in a human body."15 Despite Napoleon's personal fondness for this festivity-in 1809 he even traveled incognito to the town of Vienne to see the illuminations 16-it generated little popular fervor; much less, indeed, than the celebrations of the victories of the Grande Armee. 17 In keeping with the general purposes and style of the regime, the Bourbon Restoration's state-organized festivities sought to adopt a comparatively modest profile. 18 In many parts of the country there were no special events organized for the public on the days of SaintLouis and Saint-Charles, the celebrations of the patron saints of the two successive kings. Many reports could have echoed the somber account given by the Bordeaux police in August 1819: "The fete was sad and silent in our town, and the only celebrations to be seen were those which were officially ordered."19 Far from being joyful and festive, the atmosphere was deeply marked by religiosity, with local officials frequently taking the opportunity to celebrate the "virtues of the Catholic faith."20 At the same time, the Saint-Louis and SaintCharles were constantly threatened by political dissent, with supporters of the revolutionary order attempting to subvert the proceedings. Indeed fetes and commemorations were regarded with considerable suspicion by the regime, as there were also numerous instances of local secular celebrations giving rise to flamboyant expressions of hostility to the monarchy. For example, at Troyes in February 1818, in the traditional festivity of the Mardi Gras, a straw mannequin was dressed up as Louis XVIII and decorated with potatoes and assorted vegetables; an enormous fleur-de-Iys (the symbol of the Bourbons) was also mounted on his hat. The effigy was then escorted around the town on a donkey before being set on fire with explosives and then drowned in a public fountain. 21 The July Monarchy, which seized power from the Bourbons in 1830, sought initially to make its festivities more genuinely popular.

5

Introduction

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Saint-Napoleon, Martyr (August 15). Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The legend of Saint-Napoleon was initially promoted by the First Empire with the active support of the Vatican. It was used to cultivate the image of Napoleon Bonaparte as a ruler who was true to the Catholic faith, loved his people, and was prepared to endure severe physical hardships for his citizens' happiness.

6

Introduction

The public was thus more frequently included in the events, notably through the organization of evening amusements. The regime officially celebrated the anniversary of the 1830 Revolution (on July 2729) and the Saint-Philippe celebrations (on May 1). However-rather like the Orleanist monarchy itself-these anniversaries were always caught between two stools. On the one hand their emphasis on basic liberal values and institutions (most notably a king who owed his power to the people rather than to the principle of Divine Right) found little echo in conservative and rural parts of France; on the other hand, this message was deemed insufficiently robust by those political groups that were working to build a democratic society.22 Indeed France's Orleanist rulers rapidly grew wary of the potential for political subversion. Their fetes thus became formal and guarded events, in which local authorities seemed primarily concerned with containing local political fervor. 23 Thus, in 1831, local republicans in the Isere who sought to commemorate the first anniversary of the Revolution by planting a "tree of liberty" were told that only the national banner could be publicly displayed on this occasion. 24 Freedom, the key ideal of the 1830 Revolution, had become too dangerous to celebrate by the very regime that had been founded in its name. This was one instance of a much broader sense of ideological ambivalence; the regime's symbolic self-representation was indeed riven with profound contradictions. Mindful and yet fearful of its own revolutionary origins, the liberal monarchy remained troubled by the presence of large crowds in the streets-a reasonable apprehension in light of the joy with which the frenzied populace trashed Orleanist possessions in the Tuileries palace in 1848. 25 After the February Revolution of 1848, these modest festive ambitions were qualitatively transformed. Civic celebrations sought to cultivate social solidarity and mobilize public support for the existing order, as with the rituals of earlier regimes. In terms of their format, they also drew upon specific aspects of these earlier ceremoniesnotably the emphasis on charity and the recourse to illuminations. 26 But the organizers of national fetes under the Second Republic, the Second Empire, and later the Third Republic were now driven by a wider and bolder set of purposes: to appeal to the autonomy and public-spiritedness of its citizens and to promote the ideals of civic interdependence. The greater importance of national festivities reflected the major political difference between these regimes and their predecessors: the existence of male universal suffrage, which both legitimized public institutions and constrained their behavior. The state

Introduction

7

(whether republican or Bonapartist) was not only now more aware of the existence of public expectations, but it also understood the strategic necessity of shaping and even anticipating them. The public, however, came to these festivities with fewer inhibitions and a greater sense of self-confidence. It is thus against the backdrop of the emergence of this "New France," to borrow the title of one of the most successful pamphlets of the period, that these celebrations have to be appreciated. 27

A Napoleonic Festivity The festivities of the Second Empire, the regime that ruled France between 1852 and 1870, offered a potent mixture of historical mythmaking, ideological creativity, and festive innovation. In the final months of his rule as president of the Second Republic, LouisNapoleon decreed that August 15 would henceforth be celebrated as France's national day. This return to the practices of the First Empire was partly prompted by the degeneration of the political anniversaries of the Second Republic, which by the early 1850s were giving rise to violence in many parts of the country-despite the prohibition of republican banquets on February 24, the anniversary of the founding of the regime. 28 The selection of August 15 was also an act of recognition, on the part of the future Napoleon III, of the vitality of the imperial legend across the country. Indeed, in the period between 1815 and 1848, the anniversary of the Saint-Napoleon had continued to be celebrated spontaneously by Bonapartist groups and sympathizers-often as a manifestation of sentimental attachment to the memory of Bonaparte, but also as a means of giving voice to social and political discontent against France's ruling elites. Taking place as they did at the height of summer, these popular celebrations of Napoleonic memory were often genteel in character. In the Correze, after 1815 the anniversary was observed by picnics on the river,29 whereas in the Meuse, a group of Napoleonic enthusiasts marked the birth of their emperor in the woods of Mastruck near Barle-Duc. 30 Citizens also commemorated the Saint-Napoleon in the privacy of their homes, and even in jail: in Lyon a group of Bonapartist prisoners in the St. Joseph penitentiary "formed an N on the gate of their cells with small pieces of candle which they lit in sign of rejoicing"-a festive spirit not shared by their jailers, who rewarded them with several days' solitary confinement. 31 Imperial supporters outside

8

Introduction

France also gathered on this day: in New Orleans they met regularly on August 15, offering toasts in honor of Napoleon, the American president, and "the future republics of Latin America."32 But the tone was not always benign. Under the Restoration many seditious placards appeared in provincial towns and villages on the day of the SaintNapoleon, reminding royalist officials that the emperor's supporters were still active and well organized. 33 In 1818, the prefect of the Morbihan was asked to investigate reports that a meeting had been held on August 15 in an inn at Malestroit at which "revolutionary principles had been professed, and cries of 'Long live the emperor' uttered."34 In 1823, a seditious placard found in Nerac (Lot-et-Garonne) on the day of the Saint-Napoleon urged the French people to "overthrow tyranny," and to remember the tradition of the "sansculottes" as well as "the happy days when we celebrated the birth of our friend Napoleon."35 And three years later, to the great dismay of Bourbon officials, local Bonapartists in Toulon celebrated the anniversary of their emperor by singing Napoleonic songs and offering tributes to the king of Rome. 36 Such practices highlighted, among other things, the political and ideological symbiosis between Jacobin republicanism and Bonapartism in many localities. Indeed at Melun in 1828, a man shouted, "Long live the Republic!" on the day of the Saint-Napoleon (he was arrested and given a jail sentence by the local tribunal).37 This revolutionary alliance continued after the fall of the Restoration monarchy. On August 15, 1830, for example, Paris was the theater of public demonstrations by print workers, coach makers, and butchers, all demanding that the government intervene with their employers to secure an increase in their wages. 38 In Rouen after 1834, a local society edited and published collections of Napoleonic songs for the celebrations of August 15; these were bought and used by groups all over the country.39 During the 1840s, after the return of the emperor's remains to France, the Saint-Napoleon was commemorated as a reminder of the principle of "nationality" and the continuing potency of the 1789 Revolution. 40 In the department of the Nievre, the commune of Moulins-Engilbert regularly celebrated the Saint-Napoleon under the July Monarchy, with the entire population joining in the rejoicings organized by the municipality and the church. The festivities took place in presence of a bust of the emperor, "this man of destiny who had succeeded in disciplining the French Revolution."41 In 1841, the authorities in Lille banned a local workers' corporation called the Saint-Napoleon society, which met each year on August 15, for conspiring against the Orleanist government. 42

9

Introduction

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Saint-Napoleon, Patron of Warriors. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. As with all invented traditions, there were many versions of the legend of the SaintNapoleon in the 1820s and 1830s, one of which represented the saint as a crusading knight, who was betrayed and ended his life as a prisoner on a small rocky island (any resemblance with Napoleon's fate was, of course, purely fortuitous).

10

Introduction

Napoleonic memory in the first half of the nineteenth century was thus an important element in the popular political and cultural repertoire, helping to shape French collective identities and to sustain Bonapartism as a political force; in many respects the festivities of the Second Empire marked the continuation of these long-established, popular Napoleonic political traditions. Once the Bonapartists were back in power after 1851, however, the celebrations took on an added dimension, becoming instruments for the promotion of a distinct civic order-and it is also from this perspective that they are analyzed in this book. In this sense The Saint-Napoleon continues the line of inquiry of one of my earlier works From Subject to Citizen, which sought to define the intellectual principles governing membership of the French political community under the Second Empire and early Third Republic. 43 Here, however, my focus is very much on the collective practices of citizenship. The term "civic" refers first and foremost to the official and public character of the national festivities, which were sanctioned by public authority and organized through the official institutions of the Second Empire. They were distinct, in this sense, from Catholic rituals, from secular festivities, and from the range of "local invented traditions" mentioned earlier. "Civic" also has substantive connotations: the imperial state used the festivities to convey certain political images, ideas, and values, which together sought to define the collective meaning of French "citizenship." How far the Second Empire succeeded in using its official celebrations to acculturate its citizens into its dominant social and political values is one of the central themes of this book. But perhaps the most important dimension of the term "civic" in this narrative is at the local level. As we saw earlier, the public festivities of the Second Empire mobilized local public institutions and actors (notably municipalities), which often enriched these occasions by providing them with further layers of meaning: in addition to paying tribute to France's national leader Napoleon III, the Saint-Napoleon was thus also about the cultivation of communal pride, the celebration of meritorious individuals, the beautification of public spaces, and much else. Through this combination of national and local themes, these Bonapartist civic festivities gave an important new impetus to the development of a sense of civility among the French people. This civility was not so much a positive celebration of the virtues of toleration and respect for others (which would be too much to ask, especially as these values have yet to become entrenched in modern France). This sense of civility was promoted through these fetes in

Introduction

11

order to encourage the French people to learn to live together, by defusing or at least temporarily suspending their social and ideological differences in the interests of communal harmony.

Bread and Circuses Despite their symbolic richness and political complexity and the presence of significant holdings on the subject in national, departmental, and communal archives, the civic festivities of the Second Empire and the Napoleonic culture in which they were embedded were long excised from French collective memory. Part of the reason for their expurgation was ideological: modern French political memory has largely been shaped by the republican experience, and the republican view of the Saint-Napoleon (and everything else connected with the Second Empire) was little short of scathing. "Vain and puerile amusements, without purpose, without ambition, without consequence" was the definitive verdict rendered in Alfred Legoyt's Dictionnaire de l'Economie Politique in 1854. 44 Jules Michelet's Journal, meticulously kept between 1851 and 1870, contains only one short and irritable entry on the Saint-Napoleon: "5 in the morning, the salvoes of the cannon and all this futile noise of Church bells."45 This hostility was largely shared by conservatives and Catholics, who rounded on the extraordinarily lavish celebrations of the fete imperiale, the epitome of the French elites' frivolity and degeneration-or just their plain vulgarity. Sometimes the manner in which Parisians celebrated the festivities of the Second Empire initially seemed to be described positively, as when Pierre de La Gorce began with the appearance of praise: "Never did tailors enjoy finer days; never did suppliers of fine goods display more glamorous wares; never were carriages more grandiose, and liveries more dazzling, with that mixture of English correction and national elegance which was charming."46 But then came the sting in the tail: "We had here a remarkable display of luxuriance, but with almost too much brilliance, as with a silver collection which was brand new and whose price tags had barely been removed."47 In recent years, in large part through the advances made by social and cultural historians, the festivities of the Second Empire have been brought into greater scholarly focus. Matthew Truesdell's Spectacular Politics has provided the first comprehensive account of the celebrations, highlighting their success across France and their functional effectiveness in buttressing the regime's political support. 48 More ambitiously, Alain Corbin has sought to locate these Napoleonic

12

Introduction

celebrations in a typology of festive models in postrevolutionary France. Three frameworks are posited: the royal model, with its consecration of the monarchy, its emphasis on religious ritual and ostentatious military parades, and its celebration of the organic unity of the sovereign and his people; the revolutionary model, with its cult of popular sovereignty, its emphasis on reason and sobriety, and its projection of the values of regeneration and reconciliation; and the "Caesarian" model, combining elements of court ritual and military display with the celebration of the rule of the individual sovereign. 49 The Second Empire's festivities, in Corbin's view, fall squarely within the third category. While the concept of "Caesarism" is elegant and parsimonious, and has been fruitfully deployed in a variety of historical and institutional settings,50 it is of relatively limited value in explaining the festivities of the Second Empire. Leaving aside its pejorative undertones, the term appears to assume that the festivities were exclusively concerned with celebrating the figure of the emperor, and that the state exercised comprehensive control over the manner in which the festive proceedings unfolded across France-both highly questionable assumptions, as will be seen throughout this book. The concept is also unhelpful because it seems to have been derived from the festive practices in Paris and in some of the larger towns. In these areas, it is true, the Saint-Napoleon was a spectacular, ostentatious, and militaristic event, dominated by religious piety and providing relatively little by way of civic engagement. But this was far from the norm in the rest of France. The intellectual limitations of this "Caesarist" framework appear most compellingly in Rosemonde Sanson's writings on the Napoleonic festivities of the Second Empire. Taking the Caesarist model to its logical conclusion, Sanson portrays the Saint-Napoleon celebrations as entirely devoid of genuine spontaneity and popular fervor-an "imposed" festivity, forced upon passive local communities, and not even deserving of the title of "national."51 This belittling of the Napoleonic festivities seems part of a wider ideological strategy aimed at glorifying July 14, the national celebrations invented by the Third Republic in 1880, by attributing to the latter all the civic properties allegedly lacking in the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon. 52 This book completely rejects this contrast. Indeed in many respects the Saint-Napoleon will be seen to have prepared the ground for the modern festivities of the republican era.

Introduction

13

The Tocquevillian Myth Revisited Lurking behind these ideological representations is one of the most potent legends about nineteenth-century France: the Tocquevillian myth of a prostrate nation, overwhelmed by a strong state and incapable of sponsoring autonomous forms of civic action, let alone anything resembling a genuine "civil society."53 Alexis de Tocqueville's remarks about France's inordinate love of centralization and the overwhelming power of the state are legion. His views were based on his experiences in the turbulent politics of the 1840s and early 1850s, as well as on his historical reflections on American and French politics. More than merely offering two contingent accounts of French and American society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution have durably entrenched two opposing models of modern democratic polities. The extraordinary force of Tocqueville's conceptualization lies not only in its subtle and complex account of the sociological underpinnings of American democracy, but also in the mirror image that it has projected upon modern French political experience.54 This Tocquevillian image has long shaped our understanding of the French nineteenth century and in many respects continues to do so. In its political form, it portrayed a succession of strong states seeking to impose their notion of the good life upon a more or less unwilling and helpless society, assisted by a ubiquitous and powerful bureaucracy; hence, also, the ideological failure of liberalism in France. 55 In territorial terms, it projected a vision of an atrophied political community so comprehensively dominated by Paris as to negate any possibility of genuine local civic activity (especially at municipal levels). In its depiction of social groups, this Tocquevillian image highlighted the weakness of associationalism and the political and cultural backwardness of the rural population, saved only through the republican state's transformation of "peasants" into "Frenchmen" at the end of the nineteenth century.56 Ironically-given Tocqueville's wariness of republicanism-this image of nineteenth-century France has long been incorporated into the republican myth, according to which a querulous and fragmented society was forged into a nation by the Third Republic. These two myths, if anything, have fortified each other. Over the past few decades, research in various aspects of French

14

Introduction

political and social history has seriously undermined this mythology. In particular, the antithesis between a particularistic "local" sphere that was largely devoid of civic activity and a "national" sphere that epitomized universal cultural and political values has been broken down by a range of scholarly works. This new research has underscored the energetic and creative nature of local civic life before 1880, whether in terms of village and communal politics;57 peasant politicization;58 municipal theory and practice;59 political socialization through religion;60 associational activity;61 and the reconstruction of local memory and local heritages. 62 In sum, nineteenth-century France now appears much less Tocquevillian than was readily (perhaps all too readily) accepted by earlier generations of social and political historians. To complete this aggiornamento, recent research has also redefined the national public sphere, demonstrating that the "centralizing" republic was much more subtle and flexible in its accommodation of peripheral social and cultural concerns than has traditionally been believed-notably on the issue of education. 63 This wider historiographical transformation has shifted the framework within which "nation-building" has come to be understood in France, stressing the importance of ideological and cultural negotiation between national and local levels, and the mediating role played by social and political institutions, as well as national and local memories. This is not an exclusively French tale: similar conclusions have been reached about national construction in neighboring European countries. 64 In a recent work on national memory in Germany between 1870 and 1914, Alon Confino has thus argued that nationbuilding should be viewed as a "multifarious" process, involving different territorial levels as well as different types of memory. His book's principal conclusion is that "Germans imagined nationhood as a form of localness"-an observation that in many respects could be applied to the French case. 65

Sources and Their Limits The vast majority of the archival documents used here are administrative reports written by local Bonapartist officials in the days immediately preceding or following the annual festivities. These reports were generally based on direct observation, which gives them a considerable ring of immediacy. However, the potential for bias was also considerable, given that local officials typically produced the accounts for their hierarchical superiors. Mayors, justices of the peace, and po-

Introduction

15

lice officials were writing to their departmental subprefects (and sometimes directly to the prefect). The prefect, in turn, would prepare his rapport de synthese (summary report) for the minister of the interior, whereas the procureurs-generoux sent their accounts of the festivities to the minister of justice. Did this vertical flow of information generate distortions? Without doubt, there were various forms of negative and positive bias. This was especially the case with prefectoral reports, which could at times turn into exercises in creative writing. Under pressure to prove his capacity to control his department, the prefect could well play up the degree of public enthusiasm for the celebrations and play down any dissonances. Indeed there is direct evidence of this discursive manipulation in draft reports, where offending words, expressions, or even entire sections would be struck out and replaced by more fulsome or emollient language. However, this was not the case with all prefectoral reports. Furthermore, for every such doctored account, there were dozens (sometimes hundreds) of testimonies filed by local subordinates, and these reports provide a more rounded picture of the celebrations across provincial and rural France. These testimonies were often brutally candid about local failings and shortcomings, whether of individuals, groups, or institutions; they also revealed much about local expressions of political dissent. The men who wrote these accounts-and they were all men-have often been regarded with suspicion, especially by French republican historians. These were, after all, the servants of an authoritarian regime, who in many instances had foresworn their allegiance to republicanism in order loyally to serve the Second Empire after 1851. Yet what emerges is a much more nuanced picture of these bureaucrats: we see their commitment and loyalty to the imperial regime, of course, but also their vulnerability, their humanity, and above all their abiding sense of professionalism. Producing an informative report of the civic festivities of the Second Empire was an integral part of their functions, and very many of them made it a point of honor to perform this task to the best of their abilities. Like all modern bureaucrats, these men were also self-interested agents; and yet this characteristic also contributed to the integrity of their narratives. Self-interest often generated a desire for individual recognition, which was much more likely to be achieved by an instructive, richly illustrated, and detailed account than by a perfunctory report. In addition, self-interest spurred competition and rivalry among different branches of the Bonapartist bureaucracy, often making it harder to conceal negative information-especially about the clergy,

16

Introduction

who were often actively resented by local state officials under the Second Empire. 66 Finally, the large number of reports consulted has made it possible not only to check the accuracy of single descriptions (in cases involving serious incidents, we often have up to seven separate versions of the same event), but also to look out for wider patterns. When one prefect reported the arrival of tens of thousands of visitors to his town, this could well be dismissed as an embellishment; but when the same information was volunteered by prefects all over France, and was also independently confirmed by railway and police officials, the claim is much harder to refute. A word, lastly, about our geographical range of sources. 67 The twenty-two departments were chosen so as to reflect as wide as possible a territorial cross-section of mid-nineteenth-century France. In the first instance, my determining impetus was political: to track the celebrations of the fetes in Bonapartist territories, as well as in republican strongholds, without forgetting the Catholic parts of France, where the social and political dynamics could often be markedly different (it was not uncommon, in Catholic and legitimist areas of western France, for local republicans and Bonapartists to observe a tacit alliance). My second set of criteria was purely geographical: the intention was to draw upon a reasonable sample from across French territory-from the north and south, the Midi, as well as the territories of the east and southwest. Third, I chose departments with large concentrations of population in their cheflieu (capital) so as to examine how the Saint-Napoleon was celebrated in large provincial urban areas such as Lille, Lyon, and Marseille. Finally, I wished to complement all this with contrasts between more developed, industrialized departments and more rural ones. This territorial breadth has thus enabled a comprehensive coverage of the celebrations in the different parts of the country. However, the approach taken in the book is essentially ethnographical rather than sociological. My aim is not to make any substantial contribution to what is already known about the political geography of the Second Empire and its evolution over time. 68 Indeed, the material does not really lend itself to the sort of neat territorial categorizations that could be plotted on a one-dimensional national map. Within each department, there were localities where the Saint-Napoleon was warmly and enthusiastically celebrated, and others-sometimes just a few miles away-where the opposite was the case. As we shall see, while these variations were sometimes caused by national political factors, the critical weight(s) that swung the balance one way rather than

Introduction

17

another tended to be irreducibly local. The enthusiasm of the local state officials; the degree of authority of the mayor; the number of opposition municipal councilors; the relationship between the municipality and the local clergy, and between the latter and the state; the number of Napoleonic war veterans present in the commune-all these micro-level variables were the ones that really counted on the day. This underscores one of the central messages of the book: namely, that the Saint-Napoleon was a national festivity in terms of its discourse and much of its symbolism, as well as in its common format, but it really assumed a life and character of its own in its myriad encounters (harmonious here, tempestuous elsewhere) with local social and political cultures.

A Mirror of French Collective Life In their symbolic richness and political complexity, the festivities of the Saint-Napoleon open up a wider set of questions about French collective life in the nineteenth century: most notably, the power, authority, and cohesiveness of the French state, the unity and lines of fracture within society, and the role of myth and memory in the construction of nationhood. The ceremonies of the fetes du 15 aout (August 15) have much to show about the place of ritual and memory in the shaping of French collective identity. As one cultural historian put it succinctly, "Parading is politics."69 But the wider issue of the functionality of these civic festivities remains open. Should they be viewed as a source of political integration and social consensus, as in the Durkheimian sociological tradition, or as an instrument of control and divisiveness, as claimed by its critics?70 In this context, the distinctive contribution of this book lies in the insights it offers into the ideological and doctrinal aspects of Bonapartism as reflected through its symbolic and iconographic manifestations in sculptures, flags, monuments, drawings, poems, and pantomimes. The works of Maurice Agulhon have opened our eyes to the rich treasures of republican political symbolism;71 my aim here is to explore the splendor and creativity of Napoleonic culture in nineteenth-century France. The rituals of August 15 also prove highly revealing as to the centrality of memory in shaping collective identity, particularly with reference to the Bonapartist epic.7 2 Under the Second Empire, the celebration of France's Napoleonic past was officially projected by state officials but also spontaneously maintained by a range of groups: veterans of the Grande Armee, army officers and soldiers,

18

Introduction

grassroots activists, and local associations and cultural groups. At both state and local levels, this Bonapartist memory and mythology played an important role in shaping French national identity. In this interplay among politics, ritual, and memory, the issue of sovereignty emerged as one of the key stakes in the civic festivities of the Second Empire. Indeed in many senses the discourses of sovereignty pervaded the entire proceedings. At the political level, the celebrations sought to legitimize the rule of Napoleon III and to underscore the Bonapartists' claims to sovereign power. In their myriad tributes to the emperor, individuals, groups, and local associations endorsed this very principle. For their part, opposition groups sought to contest this legitimacy, and to demonstrate through their symbolic and substantive acts of resistance that the Bonapartist state had no right to speak in the name of the French people. The legitimists had their alternative sovereign, Henry V, while republicans took the Rousseauist view that only the people, considered as an abstraction, could be the true sovereign. One of the critical fault lines to emerge here was popular suffrage-both a political ritual and a potent instrument for legitimizing authority and power. Throughout the period between 1852 and 1870, the Second Empire used the mass vote to buttress its national political legitimacy; and the celebrations of August 15 were often portrayed by local Bonapartists as tributes to the masses' intervention in the public realm. However, at the local level, the electoral system also enabled opposition councilors and mayors to occupy positions of power in municipalities, from where they were able to launch powerful counterattacks against the Bonapartist celebrations of imperial sovereignty. As a critical site for the assertion (and contestation) of sovereignty, the festivities thus take us directly into the political heart of the Bonapartist state. In his pioneering works on the prefects and the Council of State, Vincent Wright challenged the Tocquevillian myth of state omnipotence, demonstrating that the actions of these quintessentially Bonapartist institutions were often constrained by political factors as well as by internal divisions and dysfunctions. 73 However, relatively little empirical work has been carried out on other institutions of the French state-especially at the local levels. In his conceptual history of French public institutions, Pierre Rosanvallon laments the absence of such studies and the continuing prevalence of the grand theoretical frameworks of Tocqueville and Karl Marx. 74 Indeed, the Second Empire continues to be portrayed as a "strong state" by historians, sociologists, and political scientists (Corbin's Caesarist metaphor is a

Introduction

19

characteristic recent example). Studying the civic festivities of the Second Empire enables us to review both the strengths and the frailties of French public institutions, most particularly at the grassroots levels. For example, the manner in which the festivities were conducted locally suggests how far state officials were able to control the public image of Napoleon III and to what extent they succeeded in their aim of ensuring that the celebrations took place in a manner that was both orderly and enthusiastic-an especially difficult task given the fear of "the crowd" since the revolutionary years. Also to be scrutinized is how far state agents themselves lived up to the patriotic prescriptions they sought to enforce upon their fellow citizens. Above all, the evidence of the festivities allows us to evaluate how successfully local state agents maintained their sovereign power when confronted with political dissidence from individuals, from organized political groups, from municipal officials, and from the clergy. A study of civic festivities of the Second Empire, in short, proves highly revealing as to both the functionality and the porousness of the nineteenth-century French state.

Forging Social and Political Identities Just as important, this book's narrative of the Saint-Napoleon will have much to show about some of the central cleavages, values, and belief systems that structured French social and political identities at the local levels. First and foremost here is the concept of the "nation." As mentioned earlier, recent research has highlighted the diversity and plurality of nineteenth-century discourses on the nation, both at elite and popular levels; this scholarship has undermined the traditional view of France as a polity in which the nation was exclusively created by the (republican) state. In this context, the celebrations in provincial and rural France between 1852 and 1870 offer new insights into the character of national sentiment in nineteenth-century France. On the one hand, this attitude often manifested itself spontaneously, through the discourse and mobilization of local citizens and the host of associational groups they formed; on the other hand, these feelings were mediated by the intervention of national and local state agents, as well as organized political institutions and groups. Senses of national identity also crystallized around local social and political conflicts-most notably religious fractures. Indeed religious beliefs in nineteenth-century France emerge in their magnificent complexity through the prism of the Saint-

20

Introduction

Napoleon. There was considerable variety here: diversity among believers, whose attitude toward the festivities ranged from enthusiastic endorsement to fierce hostility; and diversity, too, among those who rejected Catholicism and who often took the opportunity of the national festivity publicly to manifest their opposition to the church. In this context the festivities provide a wealth of examples of partisan beliefs and how they were manifested during the celebrations: overtly, with a spectacular display of symbolic images and representations in the case of the Bonapartists; and covertly, using an equally rich battery of substantive and symbolic gestures on the part of the legitimists and (especially) the republicans. Perhaps the most intriguing divide to be observed in the celebrations is gender. Women in nineteenth-century France were not citizens, even though they made up nearly a third of the workforce. And the Second Empire era was one of the most difficult in terms of the assertion of any sort of feminist claim, which was resisted by a formidable reactionary alliance of republican misogynists, Catholic clergymen, and bourgeois conservatives. 75 The imperial view of the role of women was unquestioningly traditionalist, as laid out in an official report published in 1867: "The fate of women is to rear families and to sew."76 Although women had no power in the public sphere, they often exercised considerable moral authority in the familial setting (or through the influence of the church)-a fact that was celebrated by traditionalists and bemoaned by advocates of progress. 77 At one level, the festivities appeared powerfully to reinforce this gender divide: women were confined to essentially passive and stereotypical roles in the celebrations (as well as in the public amusements organized by the municipalities); indeed the emphasis of the rituals on the paternal figure of the emperor and the military valor of the army underscored the Bonapartists' essentially masculine conception of the public sphere. The celebration of the feast of the Assumption on the same day as the Saint-Napoleon often divided localities along gender lines; men took a prominent role in the secular festivity, whereas women often dominated the religious processions of the afternoon. But there were interesting cross-pressures. In some (traditionalist) parts of the country, the church's hostility to public amusements and secular music succeeded in keeping women away from the celebrations; elsewhere, however, these edicts encountered stiff resistance from both men and women, who refused to allow religious authorities to dictate their social (and sexual) behavior. Through their observation or contestation

Introduction

21

of the official rituals, women also underwent an important form of political education-in Napoleonic or republican memory, in the roles of different public institutions under the Second Empire, and in much else. The fete thus allowed women, even if it were just for a day or two, to escape from their traditional occupations and roles and partake in forms of social and cultural activity that widened their moral and intellectual perspectives. This opening of horizons was also a physical process: of the many hundreds of thousands of people who traveled across France on the day of the Saint-Napoleon (to Paris, to their departmental or cantonal capital), a significant number were women. Finally, the festivities also offer us glimpses of more traditional forms of belief that still shaped the masses' political understanding in mid-nineteenth-century France-most notably the rumor. 78 Rumors came in all shapes and sizes: they could appear locally, and prevent farmers and peasants from attending the festivities because they believed their fields were about to be flooded; or regionally, as when beliefs that the church and the nobility were about to restore the dime led to widespread disturbances in several southwestern departments in 1868. Rumors could serve the Napoleonic regime, as when information about French military successes in the 1850s reached towns and villages before the arrival of official confirmation; alternatively-and this is the most remarkable aspect of the story-rumors could be used by republican groups to inspire fear among the Bonapartists and cloud the atmosphere of the national festivities. In all these respects, the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon provide a social and political ethnography of the French nation, especially in provincial and rural parts of the country-a wonderfully contradictory world in which coexisted, within the same localities and often the same individuals, loyalty and dissent, hope and fear, passion and inertia, violence and order, grief and happiness, logic and irrationality, inequality and democracy. This is not just a tale from a distant past; it is in many fundamental senses the story of modern and contemporary France.

~1

A Common Sentiment

ofNational Glory

~STITUTED

BY

the decree of February 16, 1852, the

Saint-Napoleon was intended to help establish a radically different civic order in order to "bring together all minds in a common sentiment of national glory."l As noted in the introduction, the choice of this date was the first in a series of attempts deliberately to "Bonapartize" the regime founded by the coup d'etat of December 1851a process that would culminate in the restoration of the Empire by the end of that year. 2 From 1852 to 1869, continuing the tradition established by the First Empire, there were eighteen successive official celebrations throughout France. 3 Memory and forgetting are two sides of the same coin, and the Saint-Napoleon was no exception. One of its most immediate purposes was to draw public attention away from the memories and perceived values of the French republican tradition. As the author of one blueprint for the celebrations observed in the early 1850s: "We need festivities that encourage work, commerce and industry, the sources of true wealth and happiness in a country in modern times; we especially need to consecrate the necessary union of our society, which has been corrupted by the most antisocial ideas, and shaken by the attacks of barbarians who represent the negation of all forms of religion, power, and property."4 Another assumption-very common in modern French political culture-was that social and political divisions needed to be healed by explicitly cultivating a sense of grandeur. Some of the schemes proposed were remarkably ostentatious, none perhaps more

22

A Common Sentiment of National Glory

23

so than the Projet de Fetes presented to Louis-Napoleon in May 1851 by Messrs. Hector Horeau, Charles Place, and Ruggieri, who envisaged an eight-day extravaganza in which the people would take to the streets to celebrate French industrial, agricultural, and intellectual power, as well as the nation's historical triumphs and public institutions. 5 In the end Louis-Napoleon settled upon an annual celebration on August 15: a choice at once a historical tribute to his uncle Napoleon Bonaparte and a political instrument for establishing and consolidating his imperial rule. But it was also a personal throwback to his own childhood and adolescence, when he had celebrated the SaintNapoleon among friends with parties and fireworks displays.6 It was also during one of these celebrations a little later (in 1834, at Baden) that Louis-Napoleon had first vowed to overthrow the ruling French monarchy and restore the Napoleonic dynasty to the throne.7 These memories undoubtedly played a significant role in Louis-Napoleon's decision to consecrate August 15 as France's national day. Alongside these personal considerations, there also was a range of highly political factors at work. The Second Empire sought to give a distinct set of meanings to the festivities, and all of its dominant themes-political unity, military might, civic concord, benevolent Napoleonic leadership-were intended to reinforce the regime's centralist claims to represent the nation's social and political aspirations. When we examine the way in which the Bonapartists represented the festivities to themselves and to the French people, four overlapping (and sometimes conflicting) types of discourse appear: the Hobbesian, which articulated the order-providing and deterrent functions of the state and emphasized the regime's obsession with the surveillance, control, and manipulation of political attitudes and public behavior; the ecumenical, highlighting the national character of the celebration and the aspiration of the Second Empire to express the collective sovereignty of the people by transcending political differences; the sectional, which underscored the Second Empire's legitimacy in the strength of popular Bonapartism, rooted in the regime's distinct social appeal to ordinary folk; and finally the partisan, which sought to create or reinforce local senses of Bonapartist identity to use the festivities to heighten civic consciousness about the "futility of political revolutions."8 One of the imperial leitmotivs was the elimination of radical politics. A July Monarchy prefect once remarked: "When the people are kept amused, they do not conspire."9 Like all of its preceding

24

A Common Sentiment of National Glory

nineteenth-century regimes, the Second Empire hoped that its celebrations would have a similar social effect-especially in terms of wiping out the memories of the divisive and confrontational republican celebrations of the post-1848 period and applying some balm over the bitter wounds opened by the 1851 coup d'etat. lO But beyond the achievement of these negative goals, the festivities' Bonapartist organizers also nurtured more ambitious designs. The revival of the SaintNapoleon in the early 1850s was also partly an exercise in statebuilding. Within months of the first celebration in August 1852, Louis-Napoleon had proclaimed himself emperor of the Second Empire. This event was lavishly celebrated allover France, and was the first of a sequence of glittering occasions that many Bonapartists regarded as the "golden age of the Empire":11 the Saint-Napoleon each year, but also the imperial marriage in 1853, the birth of the imperial heir in 1856, the two Universal expositions (in 1855 and later in 1867), the celebrations of military successes (notably in 1855 and 1859), and much else. The millions of French men and women who joined in the Second Empire's grandiose public festivities were treated to civic pageants, military reviews, religious processions, and fireworks displays and were invited to participate in games, feasts, and dances. The regime had other functional objectives it wished to pursue through the festivities: cementing the alliance between the regime's principal social and institutional constituencies (notably the church and the peasantry); restoring the authority of the state (by encouraging greater internal cooperation between its component parts and reinforcing its majestic attributes in the eyes of the population); promoting a distinct cult of the Emperor Napoleon III, centered on a paternalistic image of a strong, caring, and providential ruler; and, above all, offering a distinct vision of the civic virtues that it regarded as worthy of public esteem and social emulation. In this context, one of the cornerstones of the celebration was the state's repeated emphasis on charity. On August 15, Napoleon III personally handed out "favors, benefits, and millions" to a wide range of individuals and groups;12 and throughout France, the Saint-Napoleon became synonymous with the distribution of food to the poor, a gesture that was urged upon communal authorities and directly associated with the personal desires of Louis-Napoleon. Minister of the Interior Fialin de Persigny stressed the point in his instructions to the prefects in 1852: "The intention of the prince president is that August 15 should be especially marked by acts of charity and assistance."13 Empress Eugenie also devoted much of her time to charitable work, and the national festivity provided an important setting for her activities. 14

A Common Sentiment of National Glory

25

The Saint-Napoleon was thus an important event for the regime: it was the moment at which it could generate and display the political unity and civic concord of the nation and thus highlight the benevolent effects of Napoleon Ill's rule. "In the precise theatrical production of the Second Empire, the festivities were, of all parts of the program, the ones that were most meticulously prepared," noted Pierre de La Gorce, a hostile but admiring observer. 1s This obsession with detail shines through the enumeration of the formalities to be followed by local authorities in preparing for the celebrations. These provisions and procedures were rigorously codified and spelled out in letters and circulars from Parisian ministries and disseminated through prefects, clerics, army officers, and mayors to the lower tiers of the administrative system. The formal arrangements of the ceremonies were carefully scripted from Paris from the dress code to be observed by officials to the sequence of the day's events. In every commune of France, the fete would begin with the distribution of charity to the poor followed by the singing of the Te Deum in the local church, with all local authorities in attendance. Thereafter, a military review would be held (with soldiers and army officers where possible, or with national guardsmen or firemen in the smaller communities), followed by games and amusements for the public in the afternoon. The entertainment would climax in the evening with fireworks displays (or the lighting of bonfires in poorer communes), followed by banquets for local elites and musical events and public dances for the rest of the population.

Napoleonic Themes The Napoleonic character was manifest in the festivities. While there was a common emphasis on celebrating Bonapartism, different local communities focused on distinct aspects of the imperial tradition. For some, especially those of the older generation, the fete was quintessentially a celebration of Napoleonic memory, focusing on the heritage of the First Empire and individual and collective recollections of the founder of the imperial dynasty. Summarizing the spirit in which the national day had been marked in Cambrai (Nord) in 1853, a state official remarked that "for a great number this festivity brought back childhood memories in which the name of Napoleon I appeared constantly."16 The following year the town's historical pageant included a float depicting the "new era" opened by the advent of the Second Empire: Napoleon Bonaparte's military victories were represented, as well as his institutional accom-

26

A Common Sentiment of National Glory

plishments (notably the Civil Code and the Conseil d'Etat).17 The mayor of Parisot (Tarn) made the same point about the celebrations in his commune in 1858: "The happiness of the people was complete at the evocation of this festivity of the First Empire."18 Napoleonic memory was also cultivated through recollections of past military and ideological battles. In Montaud (Isere) the Saint-Napleon was celebrated in 1853 in honor of the great Bonaparte "who has so often led France to victory."19 The mayor of Cubzac (Gironde) noted that as from 1815 his village used to be called "Sainte-Helene" by the legitimists of the region because of its fierce and uncompromising allegiance to Napoleon; half a century later, most of the 975 inhabitants of the commune were still using this name. 20 Under the Second Empire, this cult of Napoleon Bonaparte was powerfully reinforced at the festivities by poems composed in his honor, as with the verses rendered by P. Loisel (the author of "several Napoleonic publications") at Lille in 1853. Addressing himself to Napoleon, the northern bard pledged his "homage and faith, and his pledge of eternal love" before concluding (perhaps with a slight touch of poetic license) that "even the English now wish you were alive."21 These local artistic creations joined the already large repertoire of Napoleonic songs and chants, many of which were regularly heard during the festivities. A particular favorite was the "national tune" Partant pour la Syrie of Queen Hortense, performed in numerous churches across France before the morning Te Deum. 22 The spirit of the First Empire was also upheld by the dedication of public monuments to its founder, as noted in the introduction; there were also Napoleonic statues inaugurated at Lille in 1853 and at Rouen in 1865 in the presence of Marshal Vaillant. 23 Particular events and commemorative moments were also dedicated to the memory of Bonaparte, such as the 1869 festivities, which marked the hundredth anniversary of his birth (the celebrations were especially grandiose in his native Corsica).24 Napoleonic memory was most vividly embodied by the presence all over France of the "glorious relics" of the revolutionary and imperial armies, who after 1857 were explicitly celebrated through the awards of the Medaille de Sainte-Helene. 25 Fireworks displays were also an ideal vehicle for conveying the splendor of Napoleon's military campaigns; in Paris in 1852, the climax of the evening exhibition represented an episode in Bonaparte's victorious 1800 campaign against the Austrian army.26 The Saint-Napoleon was also, from 1852 onward, a celebration of Bonaparte's nephew Napoleon III. Indeed as the Second Empire es-

A Common Sentiment of National Glory

27

tablished itself over time, the memory and mythology of the great Bonaparte receded to some extent from the foreground of the festivities-especially after the marriage of Napoleon III to Eugenie and the birth of the imperial prince in 1856. Thereafter, while retaining its description as "national," August 15 was increasingly characterized by its Parisian and local organizers as "the festivity of the emperor" or "the festivity of the imperial dynasty."27 However, there were two notable features of the festive image of Napoleon III. The first was the almost complete absence of reference to the events of December 1851. The coup d'etat and the political repression that ensued were generally not matters for celebration and rejoicing, even among hardened Bonapartist activists and sympathizers. In 1858, it is true, an authoritarian Bonapartist soldier from the Lot-et-Garonne declaimed a poem celebrating Napoleon III for "serving the Republic, and then crushing it under his feet."28 But such robustly graphic language was extremely rare. At best, there were euphemistic references to Napoleon Ill's success in ending "civil discord";29 for his part Louis-Eugene Guillon des Tremblages, a poet from Versailles, celebrated "LouisNapoleon the savior of France, the diamond which shines in all directions."3o Such dazzling light was perhaps needed to cover the darker deeds that had marked the founding of the regime in the early 1850s: the coup d'etat itself; the repression in Paris and in the provinces in its immediate aftermath; and the imprisonment and exile of many thousands of republican activists. Without venturing too far down the psychoanalytical path, it was clear that the Saint-Napoleon was something of an exorcism of the past, a purification of the Bonapartists' original sin.

Varying Perceptions of Napoleon III How (and to what extent) was the Emperor Napoleon III celebrated during the ceremonies? The emperor normally celebrated the festivity in Paris, where the crowds were huge. 31 The festivities elicited substantial and often spontaneous expressions of devotion to Napoleon III, especially in the countryside. In 1852 in the rural commune of Chichee (Yonne), the local inhabitants were so scandalized by their officials' reluctance to celebrate the first national festivity that they organized a "subscription to cover the expenses that they proposed to make in honor of Louis-Napoleon."32 Why did the peasants love their ruler? For the mayor of Apremont (Meuse), there was no doubt: the cries of "Long live the emperor!"

28

A Common Sentiment of National Glory

demonstrated "by their very spontaneity the high regard of our rural populations for the head of state, and their gratitude for everything that he does each day for the well-being, the prosperity, and the glory of France."33 Workers were also keen to assume a prominent role in the celebrations. At Aubin (Aveyron) in 1859, the local blacksmiths clubbed together a few weeks before the national festivity to buy a large quantity of gunpowder, which they handed over to a local manufacturer of fireworks. The display on the night of the festivity "illuminated the entire valley around the locality, and all the roads were jammed with spectators."34 Other tributes, while equally effusive, were more directly political. In 1852, the mayor of Saint-Florentin expressed his "love and admiration" for the man who had turned France's fortunes around "since the second of December."35 It is important to repeat, however, that such references to the date of the coup d'etat were extremely rare. Napoleon III was the emperor of France because he had been designated as such by a popular vote. In the Bonapartist scheme of things, the "illegality" of the 1851 coup d'etat had been transcended by the two plebiscites that followed, which had endorsed the seizure of power by the president and then (a year later) ratified the founding of the Second Empire. The mayor of Marsillargues in 1855 breathlessly conveyed his constituents' gratitude "to the one whom France has chosen as emperor and to whom we all owe the peace and tranquility that we enjoy, and perhaps even our lives, had he not successfully and firmly stopped the revolutionary engine."36 Especially in the early years of the Second Empire, the SaintNapoleon was also a symbol of the comity between state and church. Pluchonneau de Rochefort, the Parisian editor of the Revue Imperiale, penned an ode in 1853 in which he praised his beloved emperor as "the supreme defender of religion."37 In a similar spirit, a priest in Rouen reminded his congregation that the national day was a civil festivity but also a religious celebration. Thanks were to be offered to God for bringing Napoleon III to the throne, since he had put a stop to the "infernal" republic, which was nothing other than "the demon who promised paradise on earth, when he advised our fathers to revolt against their creator, promising them that they would become as free and enlightened as God himself."38 Not all public responses to Napoleon III were positive. 39 In many larger communes, areas with strong opposition support (republican and legitimist) signaled their disapproval of the festivity by refusing to illuminate their homes in the evening. In smaller and more rural com-

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munities, hostility to the emperor sometimes took more active forms. In 1853, in a small town in the department of the Isere, a number of handwritten posters went up on the night of August 15. The procureur-general wrote to the minister of justice that "the name of His Majesty is adjoined to such distasteful expressions that I ask your excellency for permission not to reproduce them."40 The departmental archives of the Isere possess the "distasteful expressions," written up in a local police report: "Sur un trone merdeuxINomme lieu d'aisance/ Louis Napoleon serait mieuxlQue sur Ie trone de France" (On his shitty kingdomlNamed crap hole/Louis Napoleon would be better/ Than on the throne of France).41 In some localities matters went beyond poetry. On August 14, 1868, the gendarmerie of Civry (Yonne) arrested a man by the name of Larimy for publicly threatening the emperor, reportedly saying that Napoleon III "had been on the throne for twenty years now, and it was high time for him to be blown up, and he would be blown up on August 15, and 4,000 of his friends had gone to Paris to shoot him in the face."42 Gunpowder and bullets: it was clear that these hardy conspirators were leaving nothing to chance. During the 1850s republicans also sought to disrupt the festivities by spreading rumors about impending conspiracies against the state and the person of Napoleon III fomented by "secret societies."43 In the 1860s, encouraged by the liberalization of the regime, republican activists also began in some localities to show themselves collectively in public on August 15, as a calculated gesture of defiance to the regime; municipalities that were dominated by republicans often led the way.44 There was also religious opposition. Many traditionalist Catholics were repelled by the hedonism and self-indulgence that accompanied the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon; pleasure for its own sake was anathema in the religious moral and social philosophy of the time. 45 Many Catholics often personally detested Napoleon III (on social and moral grounds at least as much as for political reasons) and did their level best to avoid making any reference to the emperor during the festivities of August 15. This was of course extremely difficult, given that priests were officially mandated by their ecclesiastical hierarchy to perform holy prayers in honor of the ruler of France. But the local clergy played such an essential role in the ceremonies that they could find ways of signaling their dissidence. One of the most common methods was a refusal to mention the name of the emperor; in 1863 the abbe of Void (Meuse) omitted all references to the regime's ruling family in his sermon. 46 Another frequent ploy was to choose a junior

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member of the local congregation to preach, while ensuring that the correct message was delivered (or rather not delivered): in 1865 at Malaucene (Vaucluse) the sermon, delivered by a student of the local seminary, praised the kings of France for building the country's sense of nationhood; no reference was made to any member of the Bonaparte clan. 47 A state official expressed the local sense of perplexity at such behavior: "The public does not understand that the name of the emperor and everything that relates to his august person should be the object of such ecclesiastical disdain."48 This clerical dissidence produced a number of repeat offenders who acquired an increasingly high profile not only in their localities but also in Paris, where state officials carefully scrutinized their activities. In the department of Napoleon-Vendee (a bastion of ultramontane and legitimist sentiment), the bishop of Luc;on established his reputation as an implacable opponent of the emperor from the early days of the Second Empire. He scandalized the secular authorities in 1853 by refusing to sing the Te Deum after the morning mass of August 15. 49 After the commotion created by this gesture, he beat a slight tactical retreat the following year, inviting the priests in his diocese to perform a Te Deum on the day of the national festivity. But, as the prefect noted ruefully in his report, he still found several crucial ways of sabotaging the event, notably by omitting to tell the priests that the prayers were in honor of the emperor, by not mentioning Napoleon III at all in his own sermon, and by "forgetting" to invite any public official to the morning mass at Luc;on. 5o The bishop of Poitiers, Monsignor Louis Pie, also proved troublesome for the regime-especially during the first decade of the Second Empire. Pie was a somewhat unorthodox cleric: an ardent ultramontane, he was an opponent of the 1851 coup d'etat (unlike intellectuals such as Louis Veuillot), and he also condemned the restoration of the Empire in 1852. 51 Little wonder, then, that when the bishop officiated the mass of August 15 in Poitiers in 1853, he "spoke at great length but did not mention the emperor a single time, or even make a single reference to the national festivity which France was celebrating."52 But even if Pie was slowly forced into a collaborative posture, he continued to inspire numerous disciples in the Vienne. The most notorious rebel was the abbe of Lusignan, who organized "deplorable manifestations" of hostility to the regime's Italian policy during the national festivities of 1860 and 1861. He remained intransigently hostile to the Second Empire thereafter; in 1868 his sermon of August 15 began thus: "Today is the festivity of the nation ... let us pray for the nation." As the

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outraged local official noted in his report, "There was no mention of the emperor; it was as if he did not exist."53

The Parisian Setting Paris was one locality in France where such expressions oflese-majeste were almost nonexistent, crushed as they were by the weight of public enthusiasm and ceremonial splendor. Ostentatious, dazzling, an extravagant feast of the senses: such were some of the expressions commonly used to describe the celebration of the Saint-Napoleon in France's capital city during the years of the Second Empire. In the scale of its conception and design, in the resources invested in its execution, and in the extraordinary size of the crowds that poured into the city's public spaces (several million locals, to which were added around half a million French and foreign visitors), this was an event without precedent in the festive practices of nineteenth-century France. 54 The Parisian celebrations combined all the elements that made the city a unique focus of European experience and imagination. The Saint-Napoleon was at once a festivity of sensuality, with an abundance of aesthetic and hedonistic opportunities for all to savor; a celebration of France's political and military authority, with the traditional presence of Napoleon III and the organization of grandiose military reviews; a tribute to Parisian culture (both high and low), with free public access to a wide range of theatrical and musical events in the city (nearly one-fifth of the festivity's annual budget was devoted to subsidizing these costS);55 and a homage to modernity, symbolized both by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann's transformations of the urban landscape and the promotion of a vision of France united by scientific progress and technological advancement. 56 Like Haussmann's urban designs, which were formulated and implemented with clear strategic purposes in mind, the celebration of the Saint-Napoleon in Paris was carefully stage-managed by the ministry of state, with the appointment of an ordonnateur (director) to oversee the operation each year. 57 The tone was set with the 1852 celebrations, organized by the architect Louis Visconti (the designer of Napoleon's tomb at the Invalides).58 The general aims were twofold: to celebrate the grandeur of the state (notably through the emphasis on French colonial power) and to provide large-scale public entertainment. With respect to the latter, a wide range of amusements was offered to capture public attention and draw the masses into the

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[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Fetes of August 15: The Entry into the Opera. From the Journal Illustre (Paris); Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Under the Second Empire, free musical and theatrical performances were enormously popular on the day of the SaintNapoleon, both in Paris and in provincial towns.

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streets; as Theophile Gautier put it in his florid account of the 1859 celebrations, "Free spectacles constitute one of the principal attractions of public festivities."59 During the day, these amusements typically included boat races, normally run between the Pont de l'Alma and the Pont d'Iena; the launching of hot-air balloons from the Invalides; free theatrical and musical performances in the principal playhouses of the city, as well as special representations laid out in open air theaters built on the Esplanade des Invalides; and a wide range of games, some provided by the authorities and others offered by small fairs and circuses. 60 The Saint-Napoleon took on a new rhythm with the evening festivities, when the city reverberated with the polyphonic chords of musical performances. A lavishly decorated Jardin des Tuileries traditionally offered the setting for a concert given by a large symphonic orchestra; several smaller military bands performed at various venues across the city; and amateur musicians of all kinds added to the festive atmosphere by entertaining the crowds on street corners. But the principal attractions were the illuminations, which were installed by a team of thirty-five hundred men. 61 As night descended, the city was bathed in artificial light (oil lamps initially; gas lighting was introduced for the festivities in 1863), illuminating major arteries such as the Champs Elysees and the Rue de Rivoli; public squares such as the Place de la Concorde and the Place Vendome; and public edifices such as the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville, and the Palais de l'Industrie. Special attention was paid to the illumination of monuments that were particularly dear to Napoleonic hearts: Bonapartist emblems such as the Arc de Triomphe, the Dome of the Invalides, and the Colonne Vendome (soon to be pulled down by Courbet and the Communards), as well as religious and cultural architectural icons such as the Eglise Sainte-Genevieve and the Theatre de l'Odeon. 62 The evening's entertainment came to a climax with the lavish fireworks display, traditionally fired opposite the Champ de Mars. In 1854, the crowning piece alone consisted of nearly fifteen thousand components. 63 The fireworks proved so popular with Parisian spectators that in later years the number of displays was increased to two. The evening traditionally ended with the large crowds spilling over into the streets and enjoying the warmth of a summer evening outdoors until the early hours of the morning. Those with some energy left could also repair to one of the many public balls that were held in different Paris neighborhoods. In 1852, for example, a festive ball was organized in the Marche des Innocents; it was opened at 9:15 P.M. by Messrs. Fialin de

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Persigny (minister of the interior), Pierre-Marie Pietri (prefect of police), Romieu (director of the beaux-arts), and General Bernard Magnan (commander in chief of the Parisian army).64 In the formula used in the official summary, the men launched the proceedings by dancing with "four ladies from the HaIles." The crowd was estimated at over 20,000, and the merriment ended at six the following morning. 65 Less than a year after the events of December 1851, the Parisian petit peuple seemed pleased and indeed eager to rejoice publicly with its new rulers. What of the grandeur of the state? The majesty of public authority was personified by the emperor, who regularly attended the festivities in Paris, appearing at the Te Deum in the Eglise de la Madeleine in the morning and presiding over the military review in the early afternoon. 66 He also received his ministers at the Tuileries, and traditionally embraced them (although Hippolyte Fortoul's diaries reveal that there were no such accolades in 1855).67 In many ways, the martial aspects of the celebrations-one of the dominant features of the Parisian festivities-most effectively served the Saint-Napoleon's purpose of power projection. The military review, traditionally held in the late morning or early afternoon, brought together in the same ceremony the leading figures of the army and the head of state-the most overt symbols of the Second Empire's monopoly of the use of force. In the 1850s, this force did not merely serve a deterrent function. It was actively engaged in battle-domestically against the republican opposition on the streets in the aftermath of the 1851 coup d'etat, and beyond France's frontiers in the 1855 conflict with Russia and in the triumphant Italian campaign of 1859. In 1859, the military theme completely overshadowed all other aspects of the celebrations in Paris. The end of the Italian war coinciding rather neatly with the SaintNapoleon, the emperor extended the celebration of the national festivity in Paris by a day in order to reap the full glory of the heroic exploits of his troops. On August 14, the victorious French army began its triumphal march through the city, in the presence of enthusiastic crowds. The procession began at the Place de la Bastille, headed by soldiers bearing Austrian standards captured from the enemy. Behind them filed the emperor and his general staff, followed immediately by the imperial guard. The four army corps that had fought on Italian soil then marched through, headed respectively by Marshals Achille Baraguey, Patrice de MacMahon, Franc;ois Canrobert, and Adolphe Niel. The procession was closed by a collection of Austrian cannons, also captured in battle. 68 The march was a majestic spectacle under-

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lining the authority of the state and the power of the sovereign: the symbolism could not have been better chosen. A martial theme also featured prominently in the popular theatrical representations that were given at the Invalides on the afternoons of the Saint-Napoleon. France's military glory was celebrated in pantomimes, generally executed by around sixty performers. French feats of arms in a variety of colonial settings provided the backdrop for most of the intrigues. The basic plot remained essentially unchanged: heroic French soldiers defended themselves against dastardly attacks perpetrated by foreigners, who were invariably presented as cruel, treacherous, and lustful; an element of sexual tension was also routinely provided by the local girl who fell for the gallant French officer. The programmatic titles of these shows were self-explanatory: Les Corsaires Algeriens (The Algerian Privateers) and Les Franfais en Kabylie (The French in Kabylia) (performed in 1858); La prise de Jaffa (The Capture of Jaffa) and La prise du col d'Ouchba par L'Armee Franfaise (The Capture of the Ouchba Pass by the French Army) (1860); Les Franfais en Chine (The French in China) (1861); Le Combat de Palikao (The Battle of Palikao) (1863); La Revolte des Flittas (The Revolt of the Flittas), and Les Bandits Mexicains (The Mexican Bandits) (1864). During the second half of the 1860s, however, there was a distinct shift away from the emphasis on war and military prowess in the Parisian celebrations; indeed the celebration of peace became the dominant theme of the Saint-Napoleon festivities of 1865, 1866, and especially 1867 (which coincided with the Universal Exposition in Paris).69

The Uniqueness of the Capital Although it bore a family resemblance to the celebrations of the national festivity in the rest of France, the Saint-Napoleon in Paris was in many ways unique. It was unique by its very site, a capital city in which were concentrated the social, political, cultural, and human resources of the nation; in the economic scale of the celebrations, with an annual official budget of several hundred thousand francs and (taking into account the expenditure of the visitors) a gross turnover of several million; in the majestic projection of power effected by the emperor and the grandiose military displays; and in the sheer range and variety of cultural goods made available to the public, from representations of Corneille to street music performed by gypsies. If the celebrations of August 15 could be compared to other events at all,

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they had much less in common with the festive events in the rest of France on the same day. Rather, they bore a family resemblance to the other lavish spectacles put on by the imperial regime in the capital city-notably the Universal Expositions of 1855 and 1867, which drew a total of over twelve million visitors to Paris.7° But what also made the Saint-Napoleon celebrations unique was the almost complete absence of civic reference points in the Parisian festive landscape. Paradoxically, the celebrations that took place in Paris on August 15 were not celebrations of Paris as a communal space: they did not substantively involve local associations and civic groups, and indeed unlike everywhere else in France the municipality of Paris played a relatively minor role in the festivities. This was no accident, but rather a reflection of the special administrative status of the city. Its municipal council (like that of Lyon) was not elected by universal suffrage; its members were appointed by the state. The functions of the mayor of Paris were effectively held by Haussmann in his capacity of prefect of Seine. In short, the fete imperiale in Paris had no distinct civic character. The festivities thus encouraged the dissolution of the participants' identities. For some, this was an aggressive and almost nihilistic dissolution of the individual into the multitude, as noted by the painter Eugene Delacroix, who felt that "blended into the crowds, all individuals had become the same: a common desire motivated them, to push past and trample over their neighbor."71 Edmond de Goncourt, who attended the fireworks display in Paris on the evening of August 15, 1862, hoping to disperse his personality into the crowd and to drown all his sorrows, experienced a similar feeling. 72 For others, the Parisian festivity was a hedonistic dissolution, turning the citizen into a passive purchaser of spectacles and commercial services. It was no accident that one of the most successful publications to emerge around the Saint-Napoleon in Paris was a pocket manual entitled "New Guide for Visitors." It outlined all the activities in the city on the day of the national festivity, and recommended restaurants and inns "with a budget for all purses."73 Some restaurants, however, were accused of taking advantage of the tidal wave of visitors to the city to make "Californian profits. "74 The Parisian citizen, in short, was essentially a consumer, for whom the celebration of the Saint-Napoleon was little more than a Caesarist spectacle: grandiose, engrossing, and ostentatious, with an overt cult of the emperor and an appeal to a militarized form of patriotism. For those who did not wish to partake in such martial delights, withdraw-

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ing was the only option available. Overwhelmed at the prospect of seeing the capital city consumed again by this Bonapartist fervor on the day of the Saint-Napoleon in 1855, the sensitive Duchess of Dino confessed: "I am terrified by all that I see before my eyes, and I am looking forward to removing myself, over the next few days, to the Sacre Coeur of Orleans, where I shall find only innocent young girls and hear nothing but pious hymns."75

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variations on Provincial Themes

2E

DISTINCTLY Caesarist concept of the festivity that governed the Parisian celebrations, with its emphasis on nationalism, the Catholic religion, and the army, and the overwhelming preponderance of spectacle over civic elements did not hold for the rest of France. Indeed, despite the state's efforts at centralized prescription, the perceptions and practices of local actors were often decisive in shaping how the Saint-Napoleon unfolded in provincial (and especially rural) France. Outside Paris the fete was not merely a spectacle, it was also an intensely civic moment. Across France even Napoleon Ill's image was subject to considerable variations in style and presentation as well as in substance. As a symbolic figurehead, the emperor was omnipresent in the festivities of August 15: almost every commune possessed a bust of Napoleon III, which was wheeled out during the ceremonies and evening festivities. More zealous-and imaginative-local Bonapartists found many other ways of reminding their fellow citizens of the centrality of their emperor. In the commune of Roquebrussane (Var) in 1852, the municipality was lavishly illuminated on the evening of the national festivity; in front of the building the inhabitants discovered a large framed portrait of Louis-Napoleon, surrounded by a garland of flowers. 1 In 1854, the wealthy municipality of Bordeaux provided a spectacular fireworks display on the Esplanade des Quinconces; the bouquet represented Napoleon III. Below the emperor appeared the inscription "To Immortality"; and above his head was deployed a

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39

large fiery eagle, perched above the imperial crown with its opened wings. 2 Imperial forms and images were universal features of the festivities of August 15. But who was Napoleon III, and what social and political values were associated with him in the minds of local populations? The personality of the emperor was something of a mystery. Indeed it was clear that for many locals the image of the emperor was rather like a silhouette that they could color largely according to their own ideological inclinations. In towns steeped in Catholic tradition, such as Cambrai, the national day was celebrated as a "family festivity," with the emperor as its benevolent head. 3 This paternalistic image was a throwback to the festivities of the First Empire, in which communal celebrations were routinely likened to "a great family honoring the festivity of the most beloved and most respected father."4 Another variation on this paternalistic theme was the sublimation of Napoleon III into the Christian tradition. As in the days of the First Empire,s the Catholic clergy often presented the emperor as the protector of the nation-"the last ditch that is holding back the revolutionary torrent" in the somewhat frantic invocation of the bishop of SaintBrieuc. 6 The elder Monsieur Borsat, a theater administrator in Paris and the author of a cantata to the emperor, was more lyrical: "Son of Napoleon! Our solemn pageantry crowns you as a Christian king, and an entire people carries a pious vow to the eternal heavens with chants of joy."7 During Louis-Napoleon's official visit to the department of the Isere in 1852, peasants expressed their adoration of their ruler by erecting small chapels outside their homes, which they adorned with Napoleonic icons "as in the great solemnities of the Catholic cult."8 A paternalistic and Christian emperor in some places, Napoleon III was celebrated as a secular popular sovereign in others. Bonapartists all over France applauded the Second Empire's restoration of male universal suffrage, one of the first acts of the regime after December 1851. "Everything for the People" was the title of a song composed by Joseph Mery and sung in the theater of the Porte Saint-Martin in Paris in August 1852; the refrain described the French people "carrying Napoleon to the popular Throne by their votes."9 In the same year, a Bonapartist supporter offered a toast to Louis-Napoleon, "the inheritor of he who was three times elected during the first fifteen years of our century and who is now twice elected by an endangered France."l0 In provincial France, popular Bonapartism also drew much of its sustenance from the strong support of rural communities for the Second Empire. In the small village of Deuxnouds (Meuse) in 1853,

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the festivity of the Saint-Napoleon was celebrated under the banner of "peace and prosperity," benefits for which the peasants consistently credited the regime. 11 The inhabitants of the village of Prenois (Cote d'Or) put on their best clothes on August 15, 1854, "and gave up their whole day to the emperor" in gratitude for his protection. 12 A poem composed by a rural Bonapartist villager in 1868 also praised the emperor for "listening to our voice and protecting our rights"-another significant underpinning of the popular vote for Napoleon III in the countryside. 13 The urban version of this popular image was the frequent celebration of the emperor's commitment to progress through economic and technological development, both of which were seen as evidence of the ruler's resolute commitment to his people's interests. 14 In a similar vein, a cantata composed in 1867 described Napoleon III as the "protector of the working class and of their workshops."15 Alongside these traditionalist and popular depictions of the emperor during the festivities of August 15 was the cultivation of his image as a warrior. This martial theme resonated especially strongly among the military supporters of the regime, whose writings, speeches, and poems glorified the Napoleonic epic and celebrated the Saint-Napoleon as a festivity of "soldiers, peoples, and battalions."16 But the militaristic thunder of the canons was by no means the dominant expression of this martial theme. The possession of a strong military force was not regarded as a means of expansion and adventurism, but rather as an instrument of deterrence. At a banquet in honor of Napoleon III in August 1858, EdmondJue thus praised the vigorous French army and its commander in chief for being "ready at the slightest danger to defend our frontiers."17 A powerful army was also an essential precondition of domestic prosperity. For Hippolyte Maignand, the author of a cantata in honor of the emperor in 1863, the emperor's wars had been fought "so as to plant in all parts of the world the olive tree of peace, so that Napoleon can sweep us on the chariot of Progress toward another golden age."18 As noted in the introduction, "The Empire means peace" had been one of the regime's rallying cries in the early 1850s, and this message found considerable echoes throughout the festivities of the Second Empire. There were a number of common social and political themes to the Saint-Napoleon, both in formal and substantive terms, and these were clearly prescribed by the festivity's Bonapartist organizers in Paris. But even with respect to its core characteristic as a Napoleonic commemoration, there were also considerable variations, which demonstrated the importance of the input of local actors in the arrangement of the festive order.

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Celebrating the Local Sphere In larger towns and in cities such as Lyon and Marseille, the authorities sometimes attempted to follow the Parisian model of a spectacular festivity. In Rouen, for example, the municipal authorities spent over eleven thousand francs on the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon in 1861-an enormous sum even for a comparatively prosperous commune. 19 But mid-nineteenth-century France was predominantly rural, and the majority of the population was dispersed in sparsely populated communes. In most of these localities, municipal authorities could not raise anything remotely approaching such sums. Many impoverished villages had no resources and could not vote any additional expenses on the national day. In the department of the Meuse in 1853, the communes of Chatillon and Chauvency celebrated a Te Deum in their local church on the morning of August 15, but were able to provide neither charitable donations to the needy nor amusements for the populations due to the "poverty of the municipal coffers."20 This absence of resources was often a source of embarrassment to local authorities. Thus in 1852, after attending the morning mass and Te Deum in church, a group of young villagers went to see the mayor of Aigremont (Yonne) to enquire whether the municipality had prepared any further celebrations in honor of the emperor. Somewhat distressed, the first magistrate was forced to inform his fellow citizens that nothing had been planned for the day; the commune "could not afford any amusements."21 A majority of local authorities, however, could and did set some funds aside for the Saint-Napoleon, even if the norm of expenditure was very modest-as for example the total of Fr 90.50 spent by the municipality of Triaucourt (Meuse) in 1861. This sum was broken down as follows: Fr 50.00 "for the distribution of bread to the most disadvantaged families of the commune"; Fr 28.50 "for the purchase of three kilogrammes of gunpowder"; and Fr 12.00 for "lamp oil to be used for the illumination of the entire municipal edifice."22 Symbolic though it was, this choice to draw local attention to the communal building was not accidental; indeed it highlighted one of the major differences between the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon in Paris as compared to the provinces. Allover provincial France, the fete was treated not only as a national occasion, but also as a celebration of the local sphere. It was an opportunity to express the pride of village and town residents in their own communal environment-in their municipality, in their religious institutions and public buildings, in their geographical and cultural particularities, in their talented and

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resourceful individualities, in their associational and charitable networks, and in much else. It was also a highly sociable moment, when local inhabitants came together in a civic communion in public space, often continuing old festive traditions. At Labejan (Gers) in 1852, the municipal council had voted a sum for the lighting of a bonfire. Deferring to an old custom, most of the inhabitants who came to watch also brought one or more logs of wood, which they added to the pyre; as the glow of the fire lit the evening sky they sang the praises of both their national ruler and their local elites: "Long live Louis-Napoleon! Long live the mayor! Long live the cure!"23 This local civic dimension should not be viewed in isolation. Rather, it formed part of a much wider process of the rediscovery and affirmation of the local sphere that had been unfolding since the early 1830s. There were four pillars to this process: the development of local structures of sociability, both in urban and rural settings, which gave an increased impetus to the formation of civic associations of all kinds;24 the growth of new and more militant forms of religiosity, which were often reflected in the mobilization of local groups around specific holy sites;25 the systematic expansion across France of the phenomenon of the "cult of local memories," through which local elites sought to reacquaint themselves with their own physical and cultural heritage;26 and the demands for the invigoration of local democracy, symbolized under the Second Empire by the Nancy Manifesto, which called for the sustained development of local representative institutions. 27 These aspirations toward greater decentralization and communal enfranchisement were shared across urban and rural France. Reviewing the issues that were of concern to local populations in the Epernay district (Marne) in 1865, the subprefect ranked the question of the "tutelle administrative" (administrative trusteeship) above all others: "In this respect the opinion is the same in our small communes as in the larger ones. The Programme of Nancy is not explicitly discussed in our villages, but in practice everyone here shares its opinions."28 This trend toward the affirmation of local identities and cultures and the widespread aspirations toward the extension of communal powers and prerogatives were in many ways reflected in the character of the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon outside Paris. The municipality, the most visible institutional emblem of the commune, was typically a central focus of the day's events. The town hall was the place where charitable donations were made to the poor and evening celebrations were held; it was also from this location that the civic

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43

procession would set out for the morning religious ceremony in church. In some towns, the municipal square also provided the setting for the evening religious procession of the Assumption. In Cambrai (Nord) in 1853, this traditional march culminated in the archbishop giving his blessing to a large crowd, which had gathered outside the town hall on a large platform built by the municipal authorities. 29 The heightened importance of municipal institutions was underscored throughout provincial France in a number of ways under the Second Empire: to the mayor's sash, the traditional emblem of municipal authority, were now added a whole range of objects intended to graft a distinct symbolic identity upon the local sphere: "clocks, drums, coats of arms, archives, statues and imperial busts, all decking communal buildings."3o In many communes, the Saint-Napoleon provided local populations with an opportunity to honor their mayor; thus, at Virsac (Gironde) on the morning of the national festivity in 1868, the male population of the village, accompanied by all members of the municipal council, spontaneously came to the mayor's house and escorted him to church. 31 In those communes that took the celebrations of the national festivity to heart, mayors also used the occasion to promote themselves to their constituents; in 1865, the mayor of Sainte-Nandane (Dordogne), perhaps thinking he was still at the hustings for municipal elections (held a few weeks earlier), delivered three long speeches to the inhabitants of his commune between August 13 and 15. 32 Municipal symbolism was also advanced through illumination; the town hall was almost invariably the principal local building that was lit at public expense in the evening. In the village of Saint-Mitre in the Bouches-du-Rhone (1,089 inhabitants), the council building was one of two public edifices that were illuminated in 1853, the other being the boys' public schoo1. 33 In larger towns, the lighting could be lavish: at Monteux (Vaucluse) in 1866, the population "gazed in astonishment at the brilliant illuminations of the hotel of the mayor";34 at Le Havre in 1868, local authorities brought in electric lighting to enhance the visual effect of the municipal building's illumination, which was admired by "enormous masses of evening strollers."35 On a number of occasions the national festivity also provided an opportunity to rebuild, restore, or redecorate some part of the local municipal edifice. In Bar-Ie-Duc in 1868, the fete de l'Empereur coincided with the inauguration of a new town hall, a large hotel particulier (mansion) purchased by the commune at great expense from the descendants of Nicolas Oudinot, one of the flamboyant Marshals of Napo-

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leon's Grande Armee. 36 The celebration of the national festivity, in these contexts, clearly turned into an occasion to draw attention to the achievements of local public officials; it was also a means of highlighting the point that the sovereign Napoleon III could be celebrated alongside the elected representatives of the people.

The Aesthetic Dimension Local pride could also be generated by focusing the festivities on the construction of public utilities in the commune. Wily Bonapartist officials typically sought to make the national festivity coincide with the completion of public works, so as to demonstrate their personal commitment to improving the facilities and services provided for local populations. The Saint-Napoleon thus became the privileged moment in which local populations discovered that their commune had acquired a new road, a new bridge, a new school, or a new public fountain. In the larger towns these public works often assumed quasiHaussmanian proportions. In Lyon in August 1856, the restless prefect Vaisse-always jealous of the attentions bestowed upon his colleague, the prefect of Seine-opened a new water and sewage system for the city, with an elaborate network of reservoirs and canals designed to provide clean water for the inhabitants. The residents of Lyon celebrated the national festivity in that year by admiring "water circulating in their streets and spurting from two large fountains established on the Place des Terreaux and the Place de la Prefecture."37 Enterprising local officials could thus gently subvert the national significance of the fete by drawing the attention of local populations (through their personal achievements) to the quality of the civic environment that they occupied. Civic self-esteem was also promoted by enhancing the aesthetic appearance of the commune on the day of the national festivity. Poor communes could afford to spend very little on the celebrations, as already noted, but it is remarkable-and often touching-to see the extent to which local elites were nonetheless driven by a sense of civic pride. In the village of Castera-Verduzan (Gers), the municipality had no funds to allocate for the rejoicings in 1853, but it organized the entire population to wash and sweep the streets clean and had hundreds of small national flags put up on the commune's houses. 38 Likewise, the inhabitants of Pontailler-sur-Saone (Cote d'Or) displayed a strong sense of amour-propre in 1853, decorating the town and illuminating their homes. 39 This was a custom all across France: public

Variations on Provincial Themes

45

buildings in cities, towns, and villages were decked out with national flags to mark the occasion of August 15; in ports, local authorities required all ships to be fully decorated, which had the effect of transforming the appearance of cities such as Marseille. 40 In the harbor of Dieppe in 1854, the national military vessel Le Levrier fired several salvoes of artillery and raised its flags on the morning of the national festivity, the latter gesture being immediately followed by all the other ships in the port. 41 In this beautification of public space, a particularly important role was played by local musical groups, which graced the festivity with their presence at all key moments; musicians accompanied the civic procession to church, performed a variety of pieces during the afternoon amusements, and also frequently gave public concerts in the evenings. Their principal function was to draw out the public in order to help make the Saint-Napoleon a success for its local organizers. In many communes lacking in musical associations of their own, officials often went to great lengths to recruit the services of bands from elsewhere. In 1852, the zealous Bonapartist mayor of Vergigny (Yonne), wishing to give "an enhanced importance" to the celebration of the first national festivity in his locality, hired the services of "all the best musicians" from the neighboring town of Joigny.42 Others were more fortunate and found themselves able to rely on transiting musical talent; the mayor of Gery (Meuse) was pleased to report in 1858 that "the brilliance of the national festivity was heightened by several pieces of music harmoniously performed by the young Thirion, who teaches at the College of Bernay in the Eure, who is spending his holidays with his uncle the cure."43 But in villages and towns with their own musical bands, local musical societies helped to give the festivities a more solemn and intimate air. Rural bands, encouraged largely by the growth (and overt manifestations) of religious sentiment under the Second Empire, became a regular feature of the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon; in 1868, the municipal council of Charquemont (Doubs) paid a public tribute to the local musical society, "which has constantly helped to enhance the celebrations of the national festivity in this locality."44 Indeed it was clear that the possession of a band became a considerable source of communal pride, and musical groups were frequently awarded prizes and commemorative medals on the day of the festivity. In this sense, the dynamics of the celebrations were effectively reversed: even though the music was performed as a tribute to the emperor, local audiences were in attendance as a tribute to their music. Reports on

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the celebrations frequently alluded to what might be termed this "local musical patriotism"; thus the subprefect of Brignoles (Var), in his report on the celebrations of 1861 in his commune, noted that "the whole town was massed around its musical corps."45

The Local Civic Spirit Musical societies were one element in a much broader phenomenon that was witnessed in the towns and villages of France during the Second Empire: the growth of local charitable and leisure associations. For these expressions of local sociability, as well, the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon were an opportunity to be shown and to be seen in public and to demonstrate by their presence the vitality of the civic spirit of their commune. In some departments, most notably the Nord, these associational networks were extensive and their members occupied a prominent position in the festivities. In 1860 in the commune of Roncq, for example, groups representing the local musical society, the society of exservicemen, the society of mutual aid, the society of archers, and the bowling society attended the official celebrations. 46 A notable measure of the honor and esteem the local authorities (and populations) held for these associations was the large number of prizes awarded to their representatives on August 15. At Tourcoing in 1863, 110 local societies received trophies of various descriptions; the ceremony lasted for over two hours. 47 At Roubaix, it became customary for all local associations to be awarded gifts and prizes by the town on August 15; in 1862, the ceremony took up most of the afternoon-which was hardly surprising as there were no less than 144 societies to be honored. 48 But the same enthusiasm could also be found in small communes. At Cubzac (Gironde), a village of just under a thousand inhabitants, the national festivities were held in presence of two mutual aid societies, whose combined membership exceeded two hundred. 49 Local officials dwelled extensively on the presence of these groups at the festivities, which symbolized the patriotism, or public spiritedness, of their communities. In the commune of Perenchies in 1853, the mayor's report on the celebrations of the national festivity underscored the presence of three associations at the ceremonies: two societies of little archery (known as flechette, literally "little arrow") and the charitable society of Saint-Mathias. These associations were present with their banners and standards and they "had lent great character to our festivity." The mayor also noted that almost all the ninety-eight

Variations on Provincial Themes

47

members of the charitable society were present and that they each wore the emblem of their association: a pink ribbon tied to an armband on their left arm. 50 Here, too, the thrust of what was being celebrated had been somewhat stood on its head: it was hard not to see that for the mayor and the local populations at least as much pride was taken in celebrating the emperor as demonstrating the vitality and colorfulness of their local associations. Another factor that encouraged-indeed powerfully stimulatedthe localization of the Saint-Napoleon festivities was the existence of deep-seated rivalries among villages, towns, and cities. Many of these conflicts were rooted in immemorial local tradition, as with the thousands of examples of feuding communes in rural France. There were also classic rivalries between towns: Amiens and Abbeville in the Somme, or Carpentras and Avignon in the Vaucluse, in addition to the universal resentment of all against Paris. Under the Second Empire these historical conflicts were often exacerbated by administrative controversies, most notably concerning the siting of the departmental prefecture. Toulon and Draguignan slugged it out in the Var, Bayonne and Pau in the Pyrenees-Atlantiques, and Le Havre and Rouen in the Seine-Inferieure. 51 What was critically at stake here, in addition to reputation and recognition, was the patronage of the state, which could be a huge source of political and economic benefit-or loss. In 1856, for example, the municipal officials of Toulon were "bitterly disappointed" at being left out of the official celebrations in Paris in honor of the birth of the imperial prince; only the mayors of the departmental capitals were invited to make the trip to the capital city. Mortified at the thought of his colleague from Draguignan being welcomed in Paris as the sole representative of the Var and citing several (allegedly) analogous occasions under the First Empire and Restoration when the first magistrate of Toulon had been included in these national celebrations, the mayor urged local state officials to intervene with the minister of interior, warning that "sentiments of popular pride, if ignored, can become a source of severe discontent."52 More than a warning, this was a direct threat. Conflicts of this nature permeated the atmosphere of the national celebrations both within communes and among them. An important aspect of this rivalry was internal to the different groups and layers of officialdom responsible for organizing the festivities in each village, each town, and each city. Administrative reports often used the expression rivaliser de zele (to compete with zeal) to characterize these

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Variations on Provincial Themes

local manifestations of civic ardor, where all officials tried their very best to ensure that the successful celebrations would reflect well on their locality.53 After the end of the festivities each year, it was not uncommon for subprefects and prefects unofficially to rank the performance of different towns; thus in 1865, the subprefect estimated that despite the valuable efforts of Entraigues, Althen-des-Paluds, and Monteux "the town of Carpentras had a clear advantage over her rivals."54 There were occasions, however, when this competitive spirit soured the festive atmosphere, especially when all officials chose not pull in the same direction. In Marseille in 1858, the mayor caused considerable consternation when he tried to hijack the celebrations of the national festivity by taking exclusive credit for the projected construction of an imperial residence in the city. The clergy and local bureaucracy, who had also actively campaigned for the project, were not amused, to say the least. 55 More broadly and even without these internal frictions, the success of a festive celebration was always to some extent perceived in relative terms and was thus imbued with emulative and competitive undertones. A superior festivity was one in which more money was raised for charity, the public decorations looked better, the local businesses earned more, and the civic turnout was larger than in the neighboring town or village. Even the receipt by a local notable of a national award of merit such as the Legion of Honor could provide a pretext for loudly beating the local drum, as in Armentieres (Nord) in 1864, when the recently appointed Dr. Butin was paraded as a civic trophy to a rapturous population. 56 For local officials, the national day thus became a privileged moment for demonstrating the patriotic credentials of their local populations and showing off their superiority relative to their neighbors. Pride stimulated emulation, but emulation was also a direct impetus for the cultivation of local pride: communes felt the need to acquire for themselves what others had acquired (or been given), whether it be the extension of or connection to a railway line, the construction of a new road, a new building, and so forth. Even the laying of the first stone of an extension to the Palais des Etats in Dijon on August 15, 1852, gave the prefect an opportunity to wax lyrical about the multiple virtues of his departmental capital. 57 An excellent sample of how these sentiments could pervade the official discourse of the fete de l'Empereur was provided in 1865 by the president of the Conseil General of the Nord in an official speech promoting the need for a new prefecture in Lille. A new building, he asserted, was an absolute necessity:

Variations on Provincial Themes

49

How could it be otherwise? When Lyon has been completely and magnificently transformed; when the shacks of Rouen have given place to sumptuous inhabitations; when Marseille deploys the immensity of its ports, of its commerce, and the splendor of its prefecture and its imperial palace, must we, the representatives of the most populated department, after the Seine, we who are the first by our agriculture and our industry, be swayed by narrowminded calculations and offer the representative of the emperor a house which is unworthy of his rank, of our importance, of our wealth?58 The question, one sensed, was clearly rhetorical. Provinciallocalities also took especial pride in their capacity to attract as many visitors as possible during the festivities of the Saint-Napoleon: the attendance of these guests was of course a tribute to the town, but it was also an important source of income for local businesses. Hence, there were numerous expressions of delight in official accounts of the national festivities at the presence of etrangers (foreigners),59 who hopefully returned to their point of origin with a refreshed mind, a happier heart-and a lighter purse. In provincial towns, many canny farmers scheduled agricultural fairs to follow right after the national festivity. At Mirande (Gers), the police commissioner noted that the 1852 celebrations had attracted "over 10,000 people" into town, but also-and perhaps more importantly-that "the agricultural fair held on the following day was remarkable, and a huge volume of transactions took place in commodities and livestock, which sold very well and at high prices."6o What was good for patriotism was clearly good for business. It also became something of a tradition for inhabitants of a department to travel to the cheflieu; in August 1852, the first celebration of August 15 at Foix (Ariege) was witnessed by an immense turnout of the local population, as well as "a crowd of visitors who have rushed to our local capital";61 the prefect of Indre-et Loire made the same observation about the celebrations held in Tours in 1856. 62 In Marseille in 1858, the evening celebrations on the Place Castellane were watched by one hundred thousand spectators, which included a large contingent from towns and villages from all over the Bouches-duRhone, according to the proud and delighted police commissioner. 63 The same tune was heard in Avignon in 1861, where local officials were pleased to celebrate the Saint-Napoleon "with our population considerably increased by a large number of visitors who have traveled from neighboring 10calities."64 Lyon, too, was a major source of at-

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traction, and visitors came even from neighboring departments to observe the lavish celebrations. 65 The Saint-Napoleon thus saw much movement from one part of the country to another. The cantonal cheflieu was also a highly popular rallying point for rural folk: at Mussidan (Dordogne) in 1866 "more than six thousand inhabitants of the countryside and of adjoining communes joined the citizens of the town for the celebrations."66 And indeed such travels were not limited to the cheflieu: smaller towns typically attracted populations from neighboring villages, as in Dammarie (Meuse) in 1867, where the combustion of a "majestic cone of timber" was watched by "an immense crowd made up of the inhabitants of the commune and a considerable number of visitors from our neighboring villages."67 Indeed, the celebrations in rural France were often extended over two days in order to make the most of the presence of these visitors, both politically and economically: at Vitry-IeFranc;ois (Marne), the national festivity was celebrated on August 15 and 16 by an "immense gathering of the townsfolk and the populations of rural communes";68 likewise at L'Isle-Jourdain (Gers), populations from neighboring communes flocked to watch the ceremonies and participate in the numerous games and amusements. 69 Sadly, this was a zero-sum game: any gains in attendance for some localities represented losses for others. These defections at times crippled the capacity of smaller villages to celebrate the national festivity. The mayor of Courrensan (Gers), for example, reported that it had long been a tradition for his villagers to travel to neighboring Gondrin to celebrate the feast of the Assumption; the advent of the SaintNapoleon had not changed these habits-indeed quite the reverse; the festivities in Gondrin had become even more attractive. The result, in 1856, was that he celebrated the Te Deum in church "in presence of the cure and a few old women. "70

Keeping the Public Amused All these populations who turned out to attend the Saint-Napoleon festivities, if necessary traveling considerable distances in order to witness them in a town or city other than their own, were driven by a variety of impulses: a sense of patriotism, a commitment to the Bonapartist cause, a deep-seated religious sentiment, or (as suggested above) a feeling of pride in their own locality. But also of considerable significance was the prospect of deriving some pleasure and amuse-

Variations on Provincial Themes

51

ment and indulging their senses. In provincial France too, the national festivities were an important source of public entertainment. The attractions on offer were numerous, starting with the official elements of the ceremonies, which were highly stylized with colorful religious and civic processions and an often-dazzling array of accompanying pageantry. The military aspects of the ceremonies were especially appealing. Each year, tens of thousands of villagers traveled from their rural communes to nearby towns, for example, to witness military reviews and exercises-a practice that would continue under the Third Republic's fete du 14 Juillet. In the garrison town of Chilons, the local troops provided all the spectacle: in the morning, after the traditional religious service, an imposing military review took place, traditionally held on the site of the training camp (opened in 1857); and in the afternoon a carousel was performed on the Saint-Martin prairie by one of the regiments. Attendance of the event was very high; a modest entrance fee was charged and all the proceeds were donated to charity.7 1 This combining of self-gratification with virtue was widespread across France during the Saint-Napoleon festivities. In smaller communes, these entertaining functions of the military were often performed by the local firemen; at Courgenay (Yonne) in 1867, the afternoon spectacle was provided by the fire brigade, who gave a display of their shooting prowess in the presence of most of the inhabitants of this small village. 72 Another great favorite with local populations were the fireworks displays, also handled by the army, especially in the larger towns. In June 1856, in honor of the birth of the imperial prince, a special fireworks spectacle was planned in the town of Bourges (Cher). The day having begun with an overcast sky, the whole population waited anxiously for the weather to clear, so that the lavish display could proceed. An hour before the spectacle was to begin in mid-evening, more than ten thousand men, women, and children (local inhabitants as well as visitors from neighboring communes) left the town and walked two kilometers to the polygon, where the spectacle commenced as planned and kept them entranced for nearly an hour. 73 In smaller towns, such as at Lalinde (Dordogne) in 1864, it was the local artillery that put on a special display for the population; its discharges "could be heard until nine in the evening."74 An important part of the entertainment was the games and amusements that were organized in every commune by the municipality. Scheduled for the afternoon, these public diversions were a particular favorite for families, which turned out in large numbers to watch and

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[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Great Festivity of August 15, 1859. Lithography from Metz; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. An excellent example of a richly illustrated provincial poster announcing the fete. In 1859, the celebrations coincided with France's victorious campaign in Italy and this military theme featured prominently alongside the traditional games and amusements.

Variations on Provincial Themes

53

participate in the different activities. Men and women took part separately; one of the most popular games across France for women was the drawing of lots. The atmosphere was competitive but also highly congenial. At Pasques (Cote d'Or) in 1857, the five winners insisted on sharing their prize (a piece of sugar) with all the contestants, so that "everyone came away pleased and happy."75 There were also occasions when women were invited to participate in games that were traditionally reserved for men; for example, in the village of CoulmierIe-Sec (also in the Cote d'Or) on the national day in 1865, the municipality hosted a "special game of skittles for ladies and young women who can throw the ball."76 But the amusements also offered plenty of opportunities for the two sexes to come together. Women were particularly fond of the musical entertainment provided, which enabled them to mingle with men (under the watchful and not always approving eye of the local clergy); in Lyon in 1868, there was a considerable flurry of activity around the four dance orchestras, situated respectively on the Cours Napoleon in Perrache, on the QuaiJoinville at the Guillotiere, on the Boulevard de l'Empereur at the CroixRousse, and on the place de la Pyramide at Vaise. 77 Allover France, there were a number of amusements that featured regularly in the celebrations of August 15. A universal feature was the evening dances, which many communes organized with great alacrity. At Fleurance (Gers) in 1852 there were two balls, which began at nine in the evening and ended at three in the morning. 78 The terrain often determined the type of games laid out; therefore, in Dieppe, as in many coastal towns, the sporting activities were organized on the beach. 79 Boat races were obligatory in all communes endowed with a river, or even a large reservoir; in Auxerre in 1852, these "nautical jousts" attracted the attention of "a remarkable crowd, which was transfixed by the competition." Later in the afternoon, there was the traditional ascent of the mat de cocagne (greasy pole) and a large number of contestants vied for the prizes: a silver tray, a wine jug, a watch, a timbal, a pair of golden torches, and a blouse. 8o Among the other favorites were target shooting, the launching of hot-air balloons, and races and ball games of various descriptions (including most notably sack races).81 Larger towns often put on special events such as a circus performance; at the park entrance in Dijon in 1855, a representation was given by the troop of Messrs. Rimbert and Lambert in the presence of fifteen hundred eager spectators. The program included trapeze, somersault, and juggling acts, several numbers with horses, and comedy.82

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Festive Tradition and Innovation One of the important features of these public amusements was the emphasis on novelty, which was indeed seen by many locals as one of the most distinctive festive aspects of the celebrations of the SaintNapoleon. 83 In the words of an enthusiastic local journalist in the Vaucluse: "In the old days we used the term 'fair' to denote these gatherings; now we call it 'Fete' and we are right to do so, for never has such a meeting given rise to so many magnificent promises and joyful hopes. In all parts of the town, we see nothing but painstaking preparations and ingenious inventions."84 Municipal officers took the lead in devising forms of entertainment that were creative, original, or merely different and would thus prove attractive to local populations. It was clear from the tone of hundreds of reports filed from local officials in the early 1850s that the festivities were extremely successful in this respect; to cite one example, the mayor of the commune of Rabastens (Tarn) wrote in 1853 that "never in our town has such a festivity been celebrated with more pomp and public enthusiasm."85 At Villefranche (Aveyron) in 1859, the evening fireworks display was specially ordered from Paris and its pieces were crafted so as to depict the victorious battles of the French army in its recent Italian campaign. The large crowd that watched this "magnificent spectacle" was "beside itself with joy," according to a local official;86 they had almost certainly never seen anything of the kind before. Local organizers showed real inventiveness. The public spectacle laid on during the Saint-Napoleon in Nl'mes took place in the Roman amphitheater, with a wide range of colorful events and performances. 87 This clearly triggered an emulative spirit in nearby Montpellier, where in 1861 the municipality provided the evening crowd with "an audacious gymnastic show."88 It was not necessary to be grandiose or ostentatious to be effective, however. Simplicity also paid huge dividends, as at Crugny (Marne) in 1859, where "what especially generated laughter and applause from the crowd was a sack race and a competition for the removal by mouth of coins placed on mobile and blackened disks."89 At Ollioules (Var) in 1861, the high point of the afternoon amusements was a "theater of speaking puppets," whose ventriloquial skills proved so appealing that three performances had to be given. 90 If novelty and originality drew out the public in large numbers in some places, it was tradition and continuity that exercised mass appeal in others. Sometimes this attractiveness was achieved merely by re-

Variations on Provincial Themes

55

instating a traditional game; at Lunel (Herault) in 1853, the fun-loving mayor, deciding upon a radical break with his doleful predecessors, elevated a mat de cocagne on the main public square, a gesture that "generated immense interest, as this pleasure had been denied to the populations of Lunel for the past twenty years."91 Especially in the south of France, the amusements provided by municipalities on the national day often drew heavily on local custom and folklore. "Throughout the day, games of different kinds, particular to meridional regions of France, have exercised and especially amused the working classes," noted, with more than a touch of condescension, the procureur-general of Montpellier in 1853. 92 A particular favorite here was the bigue, in which a boat's mast was inclined horizontally toward a quay and covered with grease; contestants had to walk across to the shore without falling into the water. Dances that were particular to certain provinces, such as the farandole, were also greatly appreciated, as in the commune of Saint-Paul (Var), where its performance provoked "universal admiration and joy."93 These local amusements were not especially restful for animals. In Frontignan (Herault), the high point of the afternoon celebrations in 1857 was the release into the local reservoir of a dozen ducks, who were then chased and caught by as many locals as were willing to dive in. 94 In Lunel (Herault), the rejoicings of the Saint-Napoleon in 1869 ended with a "race of COWS."95 Elsewhere in the province, hens and ducks were tied to ropes and blindfolded men competed for the honor of beheading them with their sabres-all in the name of the emperor. Some of these customs were introduced from neighboring countries. In honor of the marriage of Napoleon III with Eugenie, Spanish bullfighting was introduced in France in 1853; the first corridas were held near Bayonne, with the full support of the local church. From there they spread rapidly across the southwest and the Midi. 96 Bull races also became a regular feature of the Saint-Napoleon celebrations; at Nogaro (Gers) in 1854, the municipality organized this event in the afternoon, with all the town's civic and religious authorities in attendance, as well as a "considerable number of strangers."97 In the department of the Gard, where the tradition of bullfighting was established in Nl'mes from the early 1860s, the most common and popular tribute to Napoleon III was the organization of bull races. Despite the hostility of local administrative authorities and the dismay of many local citizens at the sight of this "old relic of barbarity,"98 these events drew large crowds throughout the towns and villages of the region throughout the celebrations of the national day under the Second

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Empire. 99 A local cleric noted the strong feminine presence at these gatherings, where local women manifested an ardent and enthusiastic spirit and even fell into convulsions. lOG There was perhaps no better contrast between the controlled, majestic, and stately festive narrative of Paris and the rawness and colorful exuberance that could at times be displayed in the provinces. This difference already points toward two preliminary conclusions. The first is that the national festivities varied considerably in space: the Parisian model of a Caesarist celebration, with its nationalistic, militaristic, and religious undertones, was not necessarily replicated in the rest of France. The second, which was perhaps more troubling to the organizers of the Saint-Napoleon, was that the festive script was not always entirely controlled by its official organizers-whether national or local.

...203 Proud to Be French

~

1858, the Saint-Napoleon was celebrated with great pomp in the village of Behonne (Meuse). In his report, the mayor dwelled upon the impeccable outfits of the local firemen; the pride of the imperial war veterans in the civic procession; the harmonious tones of the musical band; and the prominence of the national flag, hoisted on the mairie (municipal building) where it had remained until nightfall. But most pleasing of all had been the general sense of contentment of the inhabitants. Summing up this patriotic mood, the first magistrate of the commune concluded: "The sense of elation was general, and the enthusiasm of the celebrations demonstrated that everyone was happy and proud to be French under the glorious Empire of Napoleon 111."1 What did it mean to have pride in one's country in nineteenthcentury France? The nomenclature of the official festivities immediately conjures up the complexity of the prevailing notions of patriotism. Let us first address a semantic issue. Doubt has been cast on the collective character of these celebrations by arguing that the term "national" did not appear often in official reports; according to Rosemonde Sanson, officials more frequently designated the SaintNapoleon as the "festivity of the emperor."2 But there are also numerous references to the Saint-Napoleon as a "national" festivity. For example, in 1857, the mayor of Lunel (Herault) expressed his satisfaction at the manner in which the "national festivity" had been celebrated;3 in 1864, the subprefect of Avallon (Yonne) also spoke of 57

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the "national fete";4 the prefect of the Isere was even more emphatic in 1854, describing the celebrations in his locality as "truly national."5 The mayor of Arphi (Gard) demonstrated his fine sense of the dialectic in 1869 by describing the enthusiastic local participation in the "national festivity" as clear evidence of his commune's "entire devotion to the imperial dynasty."6 It may be thought that these descriptions were used for purely internal administrative purposes and thus merely reflected elite mentalities. But the concept of the "nation" was also widespread in official discourses directed at the public. Conclusive evidence comes here from the posters produced by municipalities to announce and describe the program of the festivities of August 15. The overwhelming majority of such notices labeled the day as a "national" festivity; the poster of the town of Cavaillon (Vaucluse) was dominated by the words "Fete Nationale," inscribed in huge bold letters at the top.7 Similar posters are to be found in the holdings on the fete du 15 aout of almost every departmental archive in metropolitan France. Whatever else one might want to say about the Saint-Napoleon, there is no doubt that for its organizers, as well as for those who attended the festivities, this was an event of a "national" character.

National Values and National Virtues In the Bonapartist scheme of things, the "nation" was an essential concept, representing the privileged site where all temporal and spiritual divisions were to be overcome. "Let us not be Orleanists, legitimists, republicans, or even Bonapartists; let us only love our country":8 this was a common rallying call of imperial writers throughout the Second Empire, and it was heard with particular insistence on the day of the Saint-Napoleon. There is much evidence that the festivities were initially successful in drawing together traditionally divided communities. In both the urban and rural communes of the Gers, for example, the festivities held in early 1852 to celebrate the Bonapartist victory in the plebiscite witnessed huge public turnouts; the mayor of Condom noted that "all honorable men were present, without any distinction of opinion."9 In 1853, the police commissioner of the canton of Peyrolles (Bouches-du-Rhone) ended his report by describing a "remarkable occurrence" that took place during the national festivity: "There exist in the commune of Puy two opposing camps, clearly divided along political lines. Each of them has its own musical group, and they never perform together. But on the day of

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the fete, these two bands combined their forces and accompanied the local procession to the church and back."l0 This was vintage Bonapartism: the belief that all groups in French society could come together on the basis of a transcendence of social and political divisions. "The poor, the rich, the old, the young all celebrated the national day together," wrote the mayor of the village ofVillers-Grelot (Doubs) in 1852, clearly attuned to the ideological imperatives of the new order. 11 The ceremonies of the festivity projected the principles of French citizenship as they were seen by the imperial regime. There was a celebration of the Napoleonic aspects of the 1789 Revolution, most notably the establishment of "order" and the upholding of "political equality for all, this eternal aspiration of the people."12 But Bonapartist notions of good citizenship were also centered upon social themes. Many of these demonstrated the close proximity of certain strands of Bonapartism with republicanism: a rural mayor, for example, stressed that the Saint-Napoleon was a celebration of the values of order, justice, equity, and moral virtue, and the absence of "excessive ambition and unreasonable egoism."13 Alongside charity, the principal social themes of the Saint-Napoleon were forgiveness and compassion. Throughout the reign of Napoleon III, the national celebrations were accompanied by imperial decrees pardoning entire classes of wrongdoers for their crimes and misdemeanors; the most spectacular were the amnesties of 1859 and 1869, which decreed an official pardon for political crimes and led to the return to France of many republican deportees and exiles. Another common official metaphor was the representation of the SaintNapoleon as a "family" festivity, where only pure sentiments were exhibited. The family was also, in this sense, an idealized microcosm of the nation, and the Bonapartists thus celebrated a community in which order was upheld, religion was defended, and social relations were characterized by harmony. More often than not, these values were found to be actualized in rural communities, the privileged social and territorial base of the Second Empire. This bucolic vision shone through an eyewitness account of the festivities of 1853 in the agricultural communes of the department of the Cher. After describing the civic and religious ceremonies and particularly noting the presence of "young girls wearing white dresses as if to teach us the rule of straight and proper conduct," the observer summed up: "Thus, on one side the authorities commanded respect, the military represented power, and the young girls the purity of the festival."14 The festivities also provided the regime with opportunities to cel-

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ebrate social virtues through emulation. The emperor often decorated ordinary men for excelling in their occupations: for instance, in August 1857, the fireman Cransac was given a medal on behalf of the emperor "as a reward for his courageous and loyal conduct."15 The working classes were not forgotten either; in the same year at Saint-Etienne, the prefect instituted Napoleonic awards "in order to reward the work, honor the courage, the devotion, the virtue of the workers of the Loire." The first prize went to a man who had helped his disabled neighbor for twelve years until his death; smaller awards were made to an industrious mechanic, two domestic servants, and two industrial inventors. 16 Decorations awarded during the Saint-Napoleon also sought to reward public servants at the lower echelons of the state bureaucracy; each year an average of around eighty rural mayors were awarded the Legion d'Honneur-the first time in French history that such officials were honored in this way. 17

Symbolic Representations of the Nation The multiple meanings associated with the concept of French nationhood were also powerfully represented in the iconography of the fete du 15 aout. The celebrations of the national festivity prompted Bonapartist officials, institutional groups, and ordinary citizens to create a rich symbolic field that sought collectively to define the meanings and wider ideological purposes of the festivity. The most common emblem to be displayed on the Saint-Napoleon was the national flag. A product of the French Revolution of 1789, the tricolor was still something of a contested symbol in the midnineteenth century. Many legitimists rejected it in favor of the white banner with the fleur-de-Iys, as did radical republican groups who later marched behind the red flag in the Second Empire. But the national banner was not exclusive to the Bonapartists. Liberal monarchists and mainstream republicans also honored it and, in this sense, its exhibition by the Second Empire was both an attempt to include and incorporate all groups under its wing and to claim hegemonic property over this shared cultural and affective heritage. 18 The tricolor was omnipresent on August 15; each year cities, towns, and villages competed with each other and with themselves to cover their public spaces with the emblem of the nation. Observing the sea of blue, white, and red that had enveloped the city of Montpellier in 1858, a local official exclaimed that he had "never seen such an exhibition of national flags."19 At Lalinde (Dordogne) in 1866, the mayor was pleased to note

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that "almost all the houses have been decked with tricolor flags."2o There was an explicit and often spontaneous association of the national banner with Napoleon III. At Perols (Herault) in 1864, the civic procession returned to the town hall after the celebration of the Te Deum in the morning. The mayor described the scene: "At the end of the [religious] ceremony, the same high spirits, the same enthusiasm in the procession and among the local population. The national flag was acclaimed in all the streets and was finally taken to the municipality where it was greeted with a frenzied explosion of joy and repeated cries of 'Long live the emperor!' "21 Alongside the tricolor, the banner of the nation, the festivities saw the deployment of the eagle, the political emblem of Bonapartism. At Auch in 1853, a "colossal and transparent eagle" was placed between the towers of the Cathedra1. 22 In 1854, the climax of the evening fireworks display in Bordeaux represented Napoleon III; above him a fiery eagle, with its wings wide open, was holding the imperial crown. 23 Individual citizens also prominently displayed eagles on flags that decorated their homes. At Vermenton (Yonne), the mayor noticed a large number of eagles alongside the "most flattering inscriptions for the savior of France."24 At Pignan (Herault) in 1859, "a thousand lights illuminated the windows of the associations, cafes, and private homes; there were large banners upon which eagles had been drawn; they carried, in large bold letters, the inscription "Long Live Napoleon! Long Live the Emperor!"25 In 1860, the mayor of Cambrai (Nord) decorated the municipality by using gas lighting to project an enormous image of an eagle over the front of the building. 26 At Cahors (Lot), in 1854, the enthusiastic Bonapartist prefect Janvier de la Motte had the public promenade illuminated, placing at one end "an eagle surmounted by a star with varied colors."27 Towns and villages also erected a variety of monuments to honor Napoleon III during the national festivities. The arc-de-triomphe was a particular favorite here. At Grenoble in 1856, "the inhabitants of one quartier of the town erected an arc-de-triomphe surmounted by a bust of the emperor, with inscriptions in honor of their Majesties and the imperial prince."28 At times these tributes associated the national and local levels. At Dammarie (Meuse) in 1867, the inhabitants erected two arcs-de-triomphe, the first to honor the mayor (a powerful local industrialist who had just been decorated by the emperor) and the second as a tribute to the head of state. The second monument was emblazoned with an enormous "N" surrounded by a crown and carried the inscription "Long Live Napoleon III!"29 This type of hom-

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age was not reserved for townsfolk: in the rural and remote commune of Bernin (Isere) in 1854, the villagers built an arc-de-triomphe at the foot of the mountain adjoining their town and illuminated it with candles forming the letter "N."30 Another much-loved symbol, as already mentioned above, was the bust of the emperor. It was sited in prominent locations and performed a variety of functions in the festivities of the Second Empire. Some villages, such as Sauveterre (Gers), displayed a bust of the emperor all day to the public, with a French national flying overhead. 31 Likewise at Luzille (Indre-et-Loire), the municipality constructed a mausoleum on the main public square on the day of the Saint-Napoleon; a bust of the emperor was placed in it, surrounded by national flags and eagles. 32 In a more bucolic setting, Louis-Napoleon's bust was ceremoniously carried to the outskirts ofVillers-Grelot (Doubs) by its 230 inhabitants in 1852, where it was the acclaimed guest at the lighting of the evening bonfire. 33 In the same year, the proclamation of the Empire in Murviel (Herault) took place in the village square, where the new municipal building had been erected. The mayor read out the proclamation "in presence of a bust of the Emperor Louis-Napoleon, which we had placed on one of the windows of the mairie and which we had adorned with garlands and flowers."34 The justice of the peace also noted this symbolic "coronation" of Napoleon 111. 35 In 1860, a bust of Napoleon III, surmounted by an eagle and flanked on each side by two balls of fire, was placed above the main entrance of the municipality of Saint-Nazaire. 36 In 1852 at Vedenes (Vaucluse), a bust of Napoleon III was carried in triumph across the town by four young men, followed by the mayor and all the local municipal councilors; the procession was joined by a group of "elegant young ladies" who joined their voices to the cries of "Long live Louis-Napoleon!"37 The ruler of France was also present at evening rejoicings; in 1858, his bust, surrounded by flowers and banners, was prominently displayed at the ball held at Apt (Vaucluse).38 Elsewhere, as in Saint-Remy (Bouches-du-Rhone), the emperor's representation adorned the military banquet that closed the festivities. The soldiers occupied a large room in the town hall, which they had decorated with leaves and banners, and "in the middle of the room they had placed the bust of the emperor."39 Symbol of the regime, emblem of the nation, herald of military valor: Napoleon Ill's bust was highly adaptable. At Chateaudouble, in 1861, he was celebrated in all these dimensions, but also as the bearer of peace. The mayor depicted the scene:

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At the end of the mass, the municipal procession made its way back to the mairie. However when it reached the rue de l'Eglise, one end of which faces the main municipal room, great was our surprise to see, on one of the window ledges, the bust of our august sovereign placed on a small podium, with on his head a crown of laurels and oak, emblems of glory and popular power, surmounted by a small olive branch, the symbol of peace (since the Empire brings peace). Whereupon cries of "Long live the emperor!" were heard from everyone in the procession and the crowd; more inhabitants, attracted by the clamor, soon came to add their voices to these tributes, and several shots were fired in honor of the sovereign ruler of the Empire. 40

Martial Undertones Throughout the Second Empire there was an indisputably martial theme to the ceremonies of August 15; indeed for some observers the festivities were marked by a "pervasive militarism" that was a wider reflection of the regime itself. 41 It is true that from the very outset, the Saint-Napoleon was seen as a festivity of military remembrance; recollections of Napoleon's Grande Armee, powerfully relayed by the imperial veterans, the Medailles de Sainte-Helene, were vividly recounted throughout the celebrations. In 1852 at Elbeuf (SeineInferieure), the mayor noted that the population had sung "a number of war songs in the evening, all embedded in memories of the great imperial epoch."42 In 1858, at a banquet given in the Puy-de-Dome, an octogenarian imperial veteran celebrated the glorious military legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte, who had conquered Europe and inspired in all Frenchmen "the sacred love of the fatherland (patrie), an eminently French sentiment in all times and under all our Kings."43 But the fete du 15 aout was also a military celebration of the imperial army. From the very outset, the latter was one of the regime's privileged public institutions. The army played a critical role in the December 1851 coup d'etat and the often brutal repression that followed and was flattered and cajoled by Napoleon III throughout his reign. 44 "Long live the army, which has saved us from anarchy"45 read a large banner in the town of Brignoles (Var) in early January 1852. A popular Napoleonic song written in the same year hailed "our noble army, the elite of France: the enraged insurgents expire under your blows and the traitors to the patrie are locked up behind bars!"46 Likewise, at a banquet at Avize (Marne), an officer in the local regiment proposed a

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toast to "our valiant army, which, by its courage and its discipline, has successfully crushed the anarchic forces which had sought to impose upon us a Republic with all the excesses of 1793."47 Republicans looked for even the slightest sign of political dissidence among army officers; they carefully scrutinized the military reviews of August 15, often reading more into specific situations than was probably warranted by the evidence. At Tours in 1858, for example, a group of republican socialists watching the military parade became convinced that the army's support for the Second Empire was waning merely because the officers' cries of Vive l'Empereur seemed too passive. 48 This was wishful thinking. The army was solidly behind the regime; indeed, whenever the Second Empire felt threatened, its first instinct was to turn to the military; in January 1858, after Felice Orsini's attempted assassination of the emperor, senior army officer General Charles Espinasse was appointed to the ministry of interior. At the Te Deum held in Notre Dame a few days after the event, three battalions guarded the church and more than three hundred soldiers were stationed inside Notre Dame during the religious ceremony.49 The army also performed a central role in the promotion and dissemination of French national sentiment, for which the festivities of the SaintNapoleon offered a perfect stage. In all cities and towns with army garrisons, the national festivity witnessed an assortment of colorful military displays. The most common ritual was the military review, which normally took place at mid-day, after the morning ceremony of the Te Deum. In Paris, as in the provinces, these reviews were hugely popular with the public and attracted large crowds that eagerly displayed their "patriotic sentiments."5o In many towns local troops also organized special events at which they demonstrated their technical prowess. At Verdun in 1865, the 7th Regiment constructed a large enclosure with stands to accommodate the public. Several thousand spectators, including all the civil, religious, and military authorities, cheered the display.51 During the 1850s, the army's image, as well as its effectiveness as a bearer of French national values, was radically transformed by the two major military campaigns of Crimea (1854-1855) and Italy (1859).52 The Crimean war marked a turning point in public perceptions, transforming the military from an instrument of domestic order into a vehicle of French national glory. In 1855, the preparations for the Saint-Napoleon were dominated by the Crimean conflict; following the wishes of the emperor, most communes donated the funds nor-

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mally allocated to the festivities to the families of soldiers who had been killed or wounded in the war. 53 But it was the course of the war that had a most dramatic impact on local expressions of patriotism. On August 15, 1855, news of French military successes in the Baltic reached the department of the Ariege during the morning ceremony of the Te Deum. The prefect improvised a public meeting on the steps of the church, and his message was greeted with "patriotic expressions of enthusiasm."54 Similar scenes were occurring all across the country. At Aix, news from the military front had been awaited with "patriotic impatience"; the French victory produced "the happiest and most profound sensation" on the population. 55 At Rennes, the happy tidings arrived in the evening and drew out large cheering crowds onto the streets. 56 The capture of Sebastopol in 1855 produced a tidal wave of popular enthusiasm, with especially ardent reports from Grenoble, Metz, Fontainebleau, Toulouse, and Besanc;on. 57 There was an unquenchable thirst for information all across the country. In Cordes (Tarn), the mayor reported that "everyone has taken such a strong interest in the war that a large number of people are coming to the municipality to find out the latest news."58 In rural parts of the Doubs, agricultural workers abandoned their fields to interrogate incoming travelers about the news. 59 In some parts of France, there were expressions of bellicosity; at Rouen the imperial procureur-general estimated that "it is now not only the victory that is popular, it is the war itself."60 Baron Gorsse, the mayor of Albi, organized a festivity in honor of the triumphs of the army, "the shield of France and the foundation of public order."61 The enthusiasm for France's military triumphs largely transcended partisan divisions: at Montpellier a local official noted that "parties have faded away before the glamour and the importance of the victory."62 At Aix, a stronghold of legitimist politics, the capture of Sebastopol brought out crowds the size and character of which had not been seen for a generation. In the words of the police commissioner, "We have to go back to 1814 to witness something on a similar scale. But then the enthusiasm was aristocratic, today it is popular." He also noted the "excellent" patriotic attitude of local republicans. 63 The ceremonies of August 1856 and 1857 still bore the deep imprint of the Crimean War; in many towns, as for example in Montpellier, celebrations were organized in honor of the soldiers and officers who had served in the conflict. 64 But the climax of these expressions of

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military nationalism came with the successful conclusion of the Italian campaign in 1859. This time, Napoleon III defined the war explicitly in the tradition of the messianic wars of liberation of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. As the emperor put it to his soldiers: "We are supporting the struggle of a people fighting for its independence, and we shall relieve them of their foreign yoke. This is a saintly cause, which has the sympathies of the civilized world."65 At a political level, this language of national liberation drew considerable political support from republican officers in the army and among republicans more generally.66 As with the Crimean War, news of the victories of the French army was impatiently awaited and received with spontaneous expressions of public joy. At Sommieres (Gard), the positive outcome at Solferino led to the illumination of the whole town, with the pop-

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Italian War: Return of Troops in Paris, August 14, 1859. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Napoleon III is featured on the right, with the Vendome Column (the symbol of Napoleonic military glory) in the background; in the foreground are many wounded French officers and soldiers. This scene is intended to glorify the martial qualities of the emperor.

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ulation taking to the streets;67 at Savenay (Loire-Inferieure), news of another French victory was received with "veritable enthusiasm."68 Many reports acknowledge the unprecedented enthusiasm that attended the national festivities of mid-August 1859. In the Cote d'Or, the mayor of Arc-sur-Tille stated that "August 15 was universally celebrated, with gaiety and animation such as we have not seen here for a long time";69 his colleague of Recey-sur-Ource agreed, pointing out that the inhabitants of his village "spent the whole night out of doors, admiring their illuminations and happy in the knowledge that peace had been signed."70 In the Indre-et-Loire, the police commissioner of l'Ile-Bouchard reported that "our little town, which is normally cold and indifferent to the national festivity, has this year witnessed great enthusiasm. "71 The festivities were spread over two days in many cities, towns, and villages; in Paris, as noted in Chapter 1, the whole day of August 14 was devoted to a triumphant procession of the four corps of the Italian army, headed by Napoleon 111. 72 On its return to its garrisons in different parts of the country, the Armee d'Italie was acclaimed by local populations, and in many towns public donations were made to fund receptions in honor of the soldiers and officers. 73 At Besanc;on, on September 30, 1859, a banquet was held for five hundred officers of the local regiment; the event was entirely paid for by a local subscription that raised ten thousand francs.7 4 Allover France, state officials noted that individuals and groups (notably the republicans) that had not publicly participated in the rejoicings following the Crimean War had illuminated and decorated their homes in 1859.7 5 Napoleon Ill's image as a successful warrior was thus significantly enhanced as a result of the Italian war.7 6

Nationalist Sentiments, Chauvinist Passions The celebration of French military triumphs in the festivities of the 1850s contributed to the promotion of a distinctly martial form of Bonapartist nationalism. Throughout the Second Empire this nationalist sentiment found powerful echoes among Bonapartist notables and in the wider public, notably through the celebration of France's military and political engagements in Europe, Africa, the Near East, and the Americas. As noted earlier, the pantomimes that were organized in Paris during the Saint-Napoleon festivities provide an excellent flavor of this populist nationalism. 77 It is interesting, in this respect, to observe how French military

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victories were represented in subsequent years during the 15 aout festivities. The Crimean war, for example, was portrayed not only as a valiant feat of French arms, but also as a fitting continuation of the messianic tradition of the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras. Speaking to his constituents on the occasion of the national festivity in 1859, the mayor of Heutregiville (Marne) noted that the Crimean conflict had been fought "also in order to defend and protect an excessively weak government from the mighty Russian Empire." The effect of the conflict had been remarkable: "Yes, my friends, our poor France had fallen very low and had become one of the weakest of the five great powers; Europe despised her. But today she is not only the first of the five, she is the first in the world."78 The mayor of L'Albenc was more direct in his hymn of praise for his imperial ruler: "Without our emperor," he told the citizens of his locality on the day of the SaintNapoleon in 1854, "our patrie would still be bowing to the vile Cossacks of the North. "79 Subsequent French military expeditions sought to arouse equally powerful nationalist sentiments. A case in point was the protection of the Christian populations of Syria in 1860. The mayor of Alignan (Herault) celebrated France's "first rank among nations," as measured by "the wonders of her military exploits in Crimea, in Italy, up to the furthest frontiers of the Orient, her territory expanded, her voice dominating the councils of Europe, and her leadership of the peoples of the West in the expedition that is being carried out against the barbarity and Islamic fanaticism of Syria."80 The ill-fated expedition to Mexico, begun in 1861, was likewise justified by the Bonapartist state as "a noble gesture of support across the seas for the cause of civilization, the interests of Catholic religion, and the honor of our flag."81 The mayor of La Haye-Fouassiere (Loire-Inferieure) noted that the populations of his commune were especially receptive to "the glory conquered by our armed forces in Mexico."82 The Mexican expedition-the "grand design of the Empire"ended in disaster: the Emperor Maximilian was executed and the French expeditionary force was compelled to pull out in 1867. But there remained plenty of theaters, especially outside Europe, where the sound of French arms continued to resonate. In this context there were numerous tributes to the French colonial effort. At a reception in 1865, a Bonapartist notable in Lille spoke glowingly of "our young and valiant army, which each day pours its blood into African soil to immortalize the French name."83 In 1869, the mayor of Villers-IesMangiennes (Meuse) celebrated France's colonial and foreign policy

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for bringing glory to the name of France and upholding its commercial interests; but most importantly for "breaking the chains of slavery by civilizing those peoples whose leaders and monarchs had enslaved them through their barbaric passions."84 As noted earlier, the colonial and messianic mission of France was a favorite theme in the military pantomimes organized in Paris during the Saint-Napoleon ceremonies; in 1861, all three representations glorified French military exploits in China, North Africa, and Cochinchina-the latter being presented as "one further conquest in the annals of French glory."85 Not all manifestations of this martial form of nationalism assumed these relatively benign and playful forms. During the festivities, particularly when French arms were engaged in battle, there were at times expressions of chauvinism directed against foreign nations. These manifestations took the symbolic form of flag burning. In the commune of Montcuq (Lot) in 1854, the priest set alight the traditional evening bonfire (which in poorer rural localities was the substitute for the fireworks display) in the presence of most of the inhabitants. The prefect (approvingly) described the scene: "On top of the mast was a Prussian flag, which was devoured by the flames to the acclamations of those present, while next to it, safe from the reach of the flames, floated the French flag."86 During the Franco-Prussian war, antiPrussian sentiments led to a variety of ugly scenes. One of the most notorious and gruesome incidents of this kind, the lynching and burning alive at Hautefaye (Dordogne) of a young nobleman accused (falsely) of republican and Prussian sympathies, has been meticulously dissected by Alain Corbin. 87 Similar expressions of inflamed nationalism were seen in other departments, especially around mid-August 1870, when local Bonapartist sympathizers were privately commemorating the festivity of the emperor (there were no official celebrations because of the war). In the Somme the Count d'Estourmel, an opposition member of the Legislative Corps nearly became a victim of these nationalist passions when he returned to the town of Albert late on the night of August 14, 1870. D'Estourmel had voted against the declaration of war and was known for his hostility to the Second Empire. 88 Having alighted from his train, the count made his way to the nearby public house, where he found the assembled congregation eagerly awaiting news from the front. The gathering was in a bellicose mood, and there had probably been heavy drinking in anticipation of the following day's fete de l'Empereur. D'Estourmel incensed those present by making pessimistic remarks about France's position in the war. He was soon facing an

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angry crowd of around six hundred people, chanting, "Here is the traitor; let us hang him; down with d'Estourmel, down with treason, long live the emperor, long live France." The parliamentarian tried to reason with his constituents, but this only made matters worse: the cries of treachery increased and he was beaten several times. The local police commissioner tried to find a safe haven for d'Estourmel in the post office, but the mob cut off their retreat; again the deputy was assaulted. A refuge was finally found for him in the railway station. There the count's ordeal lasted several more hours, during which the angry crowd repeatedly attempted to storm the premises to lynch him. He was finally ferried away to safety on a goods train early on the morning of August 15. By this time, as in the Hautefaye incident, the rumor mill had spun completely out of control. Mob accusations leveled against the hapless deputy included not only lack of support for the French war effort, but also "sending money to the Prussians through the good offices of the priests."89

The Theme of Peace So far, martialism appears as the dominant theme in the narrative of the Second Empire's festive nationalism. These notions of conquest and military glory played especially well in the authoritarian political atmosphere of the 1850s, when the Second Empire celebrated its brute force and its capacity to inspire fear to the "wicked" sections of society. But while it always remained important, especially for some sections of the Bonapartist state, this martialism was never the sole voice of the fete du 15 aout. Juxtaposed alongside the theme of war was the pursuit of peace. This dualism pervaded the ceremonies of the national festivity from the very outset. In an article on the celebration of the national festivity at Foix (Ariege) in 1852, a local Bonapartist journalist stated that "the eagle is more than a memory since it has taken its place again on our banners; but if it has become the emblem of our arms, it is especially as a vigilant and proud protector of peace."90 In 1857 in Paris, the lavish fireworks display of August 15 opened with a golden "N," crowned with laurels, with the word "war" on one side and "peace" on the other. 91 Indeed, it is important to bear in mind that the association of Bonapartism with peace was one of the constant preoccupations of Louis-Napoleon. In his early pamphlet Des Idees Napoleoniennes (1839) he had stated explicitly that "the Napoleonic principle is not one of war, but a social, industrial, commercial, and humanitarian ideal."92 This theme continued to resonate strongly in

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his later political career. In his Bordeaux speech of October 1852before the proclamation of the Empire-he set out the pursuit and consolidation of domestic and international peace as one of his key political objectives. Encapsulated in the formula L'Empire c'est la paix (The Empire Means Peace), the Bonapartist leader sought to reassure those who feared that the return of the Empire would bring war: Glory may well be transmitted as a heritage, but not war. Did the princes who rightly honored themselves to be the descendants of Louis XIV continue to wage his struggles? War is not made for pleasure, but by necessity; and in these moments of transition where everywhere, alongside so many elements of prosperity, we find so many causes of death, we can say truthfully: "Woe to he who would be the first in Europe to give the signal of a collision whose consequences would be incalculable!"93 These words would later return to haunt Napoleon III in 1870. But throughout the Second Empire, this irenicism remained central to official Bonapartist discourse and every opportunity was taken to underline the beneficial consequences of French policy in this respect. In 1860, the French annexation of Nice and the Savoie, achieved through diplomatic negotiations and a democratic consultation of local populations, was celebrated as a fortunate conjunction of the principles of peace and nationality: "[France] is happy to bring back to her fold, not by the rights of war and conquest, but through the benefits of treaties and an equitable policy, these generous populations, which are French as much by heart as by their interests and memories."94 In 1867, the Universal Exhibition was likewise an opportunity to celebrate the European peace, which had been "fortunately reinforced" by the diplomatic intervention of Napoleon III in the 1866 conflict between Prussia and the Austrian Empire. 95 But the theme of peace was prevalent even in the glorification of French military exploits. In early 1856, the procureur-general responsible for the Haute Saone summed up the feelings of the population in his department: "The Crimean War has never ceased to be national and our army continues to be the object of admiration and public sympathy, but in the Haute Saone, as elsewhere, these sentiments in no way exclude the desire for a glorious and proximate peace; this is a general aspiration, borne out by the messages received from all parts of the department."96 In his message on the occasion of the national festivity in 1856, the mayor of Marseille invited his constituents to

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celebrate with him "the fruits of a war and a peace, which are equally glorious."97 Likewise, the Italian campaign of 1859 was celebrated as much for the display of French military valor as for the honorable peace that was its outcome. Indeed at Saint-Affrique (Aveyron) it was the news of peace that first brought out the population in the streets "with unanimous expressions of joy and enthusiasm."98 The subprefect of Montbeliard (Doubs) went one step further: "The country now aspires exclusively to peace."99 In the village of Tourtour (Var) in August 1859, the evening bonfire was lit in the presence of the entire population; alongside the usual acclamations of the emperor and his family, the cry of "Long live peace" was repeatedly heard. lOG In the same year, the mayor of Heutregiville (Marne), in his speech to his constituents, drew out the two main lessons of the Italian war: the first was that Napoleon III had sued for an "honorable peace, in order to make a lasting friend of his enemy." The second was that the emperor had proved that he "did not aspire to any conquests."lOl In 1859, the mayor of Sacy (Marne) also noted the dualistic nature of local expressions of enthusiasm: "In all parts there were explosions of joy produced by the memories of the successive victories of our army charging from Turin to the banks of the Mincio river and stopping only at the moment when its admirable commander pronounced the word 'peace.' "102 In the same year, the police commissioner of St. Philibert, a neighborhood of Nantes, noted that he had not seen so much public enthusiasm among the local citizens during the SaintNapoleon. "But let us not delude ourselves, the celebration of peace was the main reason for this ovation, at least for the majority."103 This patriotic sentiment was particularly powerful in localities that felt especially exposed to the consequences of a long war, such as maritime ports. At Le Havre, for example, the announcement of peace in 1859 brought about an instant and spontaneous decoration of private homes; a local official noted the collective sense of relief at the thought that "the cessation of conflict would have a fortunate incidence on our great commercial operations."104 If these voices celebrating peace were strongly heard even in the warlike atmosphere of the authoritarian Empire, their echoes became even louder in the different political context of the 1860s. Indeed, public opinion as a whole (as measured through the administrative reports filed by local Bonapartist officials) was resolutely hostile to war for much of the decade, with the exception of the widespread expressions of sympathy for the plight of the Poles. lOs Thus, in 1866, there

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was much rejoicing at the "glorious pacific mediation" carried out by Napoleon III in the conflict between Austria and Prussia. 106 In the town of L'Isle (Vaucluse) a large number of the banners that adorned private homes carried the inscription "The Empire Brings Peace."107 At Cavaillon (also in the Vaucluse), a local painter was commissioned to produce a special motif to adorn official buildings of the town for August 15. His design was pentagonal, with an eagle in the center and a banner below it with the names of the emperor and his family. Above the eagle was a large inscription: "The Empire Brings Peace."108 The same theme was prominently featured in the celebrations of the national festivity in Paris. In 1866, the official poster detailing the program of the day's events contained a long poem entitled "The Banner of Peace." It was an ode to Napoleon III, the bearer of the peace: "Glory to the one who prefers to war, that cruel plague, feared by the people, the sweet peace, which happily gives back to the earth work, love, and liberty!"109 In the following year, "peace" was associated with the celebration of the Universal Exhibition, in honor of which a poem celebrated the dawn of a new age for humanity: War has fled, and peace reigns on earth From this end of the earth here to there Merry labor must chase away dearth And progress scintillate everywhere. Peoples, sing the hymn of bliss When happiness is reborn in man. Into the future read this promise: Peoples, come, we are reaching out our hands. 110

Forging the Nation The Saint-Napoleon celebrations were long trapped in a deadly triangle of oblivion, nostalgia, and derision. Forgotten by most, they evoked for some the innocence of a world perverted by modernity, "festivities where all, from the smallest to the greatest, could participate with a gusto and gaiety that has long since disappeared."111 For others, however, they were from the very outset the symbol of decadence, or of what Victor Hugo called "Bonaparte-the-Puny's great political swindle."112 This dismissive view of the Bonapartist civic festivities of the 1850s and 1860s was commonplace among French republicans (and a great many Catholics), and indeed these representations have largely survived up to the present.

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And yet this perception has done little justice to the SaintNapoleon. While the civic gatherings of the Second Empire in some respects served the centripetal ideological functions of traditional royal rituals (confirming consensus, disguising conflict, supporting hierarchy and community),l13 they were also much more complex affairs-more so, certainly, than the festivities and commemorations of the Restoration and July Monarchy, which were essentially little more than carefully stage-managed and socially exclusive celebrations of the union of the throne, the altar, and the sabre. Indeed the Bonapartist ceremonies marked an important (and innovative) departure from the festive traditions of the royalist and revolutionary eras, while in many ways anticipating the fetes du 14 juillet of the Third Republic. In overall terms and in spite of the evidence of conflict that will be explored in later chapters, there is little doubt that the fetes du 15 aout were functionally successful for the Second Empire. As the regime consolidated its rule, the festivities helped to promote a cult of Napoleon III and to disseminate the core political and social values of the Bonapartist tradition-notably charity, patriotism, and civic emulation. The evidence entirely supports Bernard Menager's claim that the festivity of August 15 marked "the first successful attempt at a national festivity in France before July 14."114 The role of these rituals in shaping French collective sentiment is particularly worth underlining. As will be seen in the following chapter, the award of the Medaille de SainteHelene during the ceremonies helped to turn August 15 into a cult of the Napoleonic tradition, especially in provincial and rural France. The Crimean and Italian wars of the 185Os also performed critical functions here, in at least three overlapping dimensions. These conflicts helped to rehabilitate and glorify the role of the army as a legitimate public institution. They also contributed to rallying distinct social and ideological groupings to the Second Empire-especially many republicans (it is conventionally assumed that the ralliements of the late 1850s were triggered mainly by the regime's domestic liberalization; the evidence here suggests that foreign policy was at least as important). Above all, these wars generated the expression of widespread patriotic sentiments among the population, as illustrated by the spontaneous acclamations that greeted the news of French military successes in 1855 and 1859. 115 Beyond the specific case of France, here emerges a powerful confirmation of Karma Nabulsi's proposition concerning the centrality of warfare in the making of national identities in nineteenth-century Europe. 116 Nation-building was at the center of the Saint-Napoleon, but it was

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not a monolithic exercise in which the state simply imposed its values and perceptions on society. This point is illustrated by considering the diverse images of Napoleon III. Although he offered a common focus of identification and loyalty in many parts of France, what has also emerged strongly are the considerable variations of the emperor's image. Even among his supporters, he was seen here as the guarantor of public order and state power and there as both the defender of the peasantry against the nobility and the guardian of the interests of the poor; elsewhere still, Napoleon III was viewed as the promoter of religion and a traditionalist social order and a continuator of the "divine right of kings."117 There were even more striking variations of this image over time. In the 1850s, the imperial ruler was often celebrated as a savior of the French people from anarchy, a warrior, and a liberator of peoples from foreign oppression; in the 1860s, he was praised as a bringer of peace and an architect of stable political institutions. This was indeed the celebration of one man, but it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the emperor's public appeal was largely a function of his remarkably plastic and synthetic qualities. Indeed the Saint-Napoleon was striking in its capacity to elicit multiple forms of spontaneous social and political behavior. The fete du 15 aout could assume different meanings in the same place, different meanings across space, and different meanings across time. Among fervent supporters of the regime, there were creative forms of civic behavior, blending together the different motifs of the festivity into highly personalized and original celebrations of French public institutions and national greatness. One of the most remarkable instances of this cultural inventiveness at the grassroots level was provided by a group of workers in the department of the Allier in 1853. Their tribute, described admiringly by the prefect, was a seamless amalgamation of religious, historical, political, and military allusions: "The corporation of nail-makers had erected an altar of repose during the morning procession in honor of the Virgin Mary. In the evening, they surrounded it with colored glass and replaced the image of the Virgin with a full portrait of that great captain of modern times, Napoleon the First. Alongside was a framed eagle which had been borrowed from the cap of a soldier of the old Guard."118 At the same time, this type of popular inventiveness graphically illustrates the difficulties faced by the historian in making "collective" sense of the nationalism and patriotism of the Second Empire era. What is to be read into this substitution-a symbol of the unity of the sacred and the secular orders, or a transcendence of the former by the latter? And in their

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tribute to Napoleon, were these humble workers paying homage to the military conqueror, the political architect of French national unity, or even the "republican monarch" still celebrated in one strand of the Bonapartist legend? The history of popular memory is in an ultimate sense unknowable-and yet these recollections and cultural practices formed a powerful underpinning of French national sentiment throughout the nineteenth century (and not just for the Bonapartists). What overall conclusions, finally, might be drawn about the nationalism of the Second Empire and the patriotism that it generated? Many conventional appreciations of Bonapartist nationalism remain highly negative. In a recent study of French collective sentiment, Jean Claude Caron speaks of a distinct and vivacious rural nationalism under the Second Empire, "a combination of pride and at times violent intransigence."119 But this apparent equation of the Bonapartist variant of nationalism with chauvinism is over-simplistic. At the level of its intellectual and doctrinal composition, the striking element about Bonapartism during this period remained the originality of its conception of the nation. For the republicans, the nation was indistinguishable from the people, the ultimate repositories of sovereignty.l2o For the monarchists, this fiction of popular sovereignty was a dangerous illusion; there could be only one sovereign, the king. l2l The Second Empire offered a third option, which exercised a powerful appeal to public imagination for much of the nineteenth century: a sovereign who was the embodiment of the nation, but who also drew his political support from the people and was directly accountable to them. As for the religious dimension of the festivities, they were neither preponderant (as in traditional royalist rituals) nor completely excluded (as would be the case under the Third Republic). Instead, they were given an instrumental role in the events of August 15 (just as they had been under the republican festivities of the Second Republic), thus helping to galvanize the public around the country's ruler and national institutions-confirmation, in this respect, of the conclusions of recent scholarship concerning the inclusive role of religion in the making of French national identity.l22 The massive public participation in the national festivities was viewed by Bonapartist elites as evidence of this special affinity between the sovereign and his people; some officials even depicted the SaintNapoleon as a celebration by the French people of the Bonapartist state's recognition of their own sovereignty. Commenting on the celebrations in the rural communes of the Haute-Garonne in 1853, the procureur-general at Toulouse concluded that "the people saw in Au-

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gust 15 its own festivity, as well as that of the emperor. "123 There was perhaps a degree of wishful thinking in this assertion. But it was a proposition that was grounded in the distinct institutional configuration of the Second Empire, a regime that successfully cultivated its own distinct forms of nationalism and patriotism and blended the monarchical trappings of the sovereignty of the ruler with the protorepublican principle of universal suffrage. 124 Without doubt, many of those celebrating the Saint-Napoleon saw the festivity as an affirmation of their civic identity-a perspective recently echoed by a French cultural historian, who argued that the widespread popular enthusiasm generated by the festivities of the Second Empire was among other things "a tribute to universal suffrage."125 But the mass vote was a double-edged instrument: it could legitimize ruling elites, but alsoas will be seen later in this book-could empower individuals and groups seeking to challenge and contest the Bonapartist order.

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ON

AUGUST 15, 1866, the eleven hundred inhabitants of the small village of Foix (Nord) awoke to the sound of church bells ringing vigorously. As in every city, town, and village in the country, the peals were marking the official celebration of the Saint-Napoleon, France's national festivity, as well as the Catholic feast of the Assumption. For Dumont, the mayor of Foix, the day began normally enough, with a distribution of bread and meat to the poorer members of the community. At mid-morning he welcomed the fonctionnaires and eminent citizens of the commune into his house. The assembled men talked animatedly for a while and then lined up in preparation for the procession to church. In recent years, a company of firemen in full uniform accompanied this official civic procession. The most important function of the escort was to honor the military veterans of the First Empire, the Medailles de Sainte Helene. Each and everyone of these "glorious relics" was known and respected in Foix. The older folk, some of whom were their exact contemporaries, still vividly remembered the day when these men had returned to the village in 1814 or 1815, with their scorched clothes, blackened faces, and haggard expressions. France was then a defeated and occupied nation, and its emperor was about to depart to his final exile in Saint-Helena. Some of the soldiers had subsequently fallen into poverty, but others had successfully reintegrated into civilian life; a few had even become pillars of the community. But all of them loved to regale the younger

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people with accounts of their military exploits, in battles with such strange and resonant names as Wagram, Eylau, Austerlitz, and Marengo. The Medailles de Sainte-Helene, in short, were the folk heroes of the village of Foix, as well as its living link to a glorious past. In his report to the prefect of the Nord, Mayor Dumont dwelled on the village's pride in these former foot soldiers of the great Bonaparte, noting the joyful expressions on their faces during the church ceremony and the singing of the Te Deum. He then went on to outline the events during the rest of the day. As had been the case each year, the mass was followed by public games, which were held in different parts of the commune. These amusements were extremely popular among the villagers, especially with the younger folk. By late afternoon-helped no doubt by the heat and the generous flow of alcohol-the atmosphere was relaxed and festive. Foix seemed like any other village celebrating the Saint-Napoleon. But there was a particular twist to this year's celebrations in the commune. Mayor Dumont's narrative continues: "Despite the animation with which the inhabitants were enjoying themselves, at around six in the evening the games stopped as if by enchantment. The bells of the church were tolling again, informing the population that a funereal ceremony was about to take place; indeed the time had come to pay the last respects to a virtuous serviceman of the First Empire, a man by the name of Saumin, holder of the Medaille de Sainte-Helene, who had died on August 14 at the age of 84."1 Saumin had clearly been one of the village elders of Foix. His funeral brought an end to the festivities in the village and at the same time set the day in its true perspective. Upon hearing the church bells, all the officials of the commune and indeed the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants gathered at the house of the deceased. The entire village accompanied Saumin's coffin to the church and then to the cemetery, where he was to be buried. Before the coffin was lowered, one of the First Empire veterans gave a speech celebrating the life of his distinguished comrade. Saumin had witnessed the Revolution of 1789 as a little boy and then joined the Grande Armee where he had served with distinction in many campaigns. The orator especially reminded those present of the "qualities of the soldier and the citizen that made Saumin a brave soldier and an honorable and honored man."2 Many of the villagers were moved to tears. The first magistrate of the commune summed up what had just occurred: "The fete ended amidst an imposing calm that gave rise to the most serious reflections concerning the duties of the citizen toward his patrie."3

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Life and death, rejoicing and grief, glory and humiliation, honor and disgrace, wealth and poverty, memories of the past and anticipation of the future, private affections and public virtues, the secular and the sacred, local patrimony and national mythology, republicanism and Bonapartism: the individual narrative of Napoleonic war veteran Saumin brings out the rich tapestry of meanings associated with the celebrations of August 15 under the Second Empire.

Veterans and French Society Recent scholarship has done much to illuminate the complex and often tragic fate of the large number of veterans of the Napoleonic army who sought to reintegrate into French civilian life after Waterloo. 4 Deprived of any military pension, ignored and often persecuted by political authorities under the Restoration, the soldiers of the Grande Armee instead became central figures in the propagation of the Napoleonic legend-a role that gave them a privileged position in nineteenth-century artistic and literary representations of the Napoleonic cult. 5 Notable examples include the paintings of Horace Vernet and the lithography of Fesneau, "Souvenirs et reconnaissance," which showed an old soldier seated at his table gazing at a small statue of the emperor by his window. 6 The other key sentiment attributed to the veterans in these artistic representations was sorrow, bitterness even, at their callous treatment by their fellow citizens. The imperial war veteran Goguelat, one of the leading characters in Honore de Balzac's Medecin de Campagne, at one point commented wistfully on the fate of all his comrades after 1815 : "France is crushed, the soldier is nothing, he is robbed of his just deserts and packed off home to be replaced by noblemen who cannot even walk."7 The roles played by the veterans under the Second Empire will shed new light on their public and private existences between 1815 and 1870, as well as their contributions to popular Bonapartism. In particular, they will help reexamine the traditional contrast between the allegedly "apolitical" character of the Napoleonic legend and Bonapartism as a political phenomenon. 8 In the estimation of Frederic Bluche, the 1851 coup d'etat gave a critical political boost to Bonapartism but, by the same token, dealt a "severe blow" to the legend. 9 The nephew, in short, achieved political preeminence but only at the expense of his uncle's public image and memory. As will become apparent, this view is too simplistic. The Second Empire veterans embodied

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the Napoleonic legend but also used their former association with Bonaparte explicitly to bolster the popularity and appeal of the regime. The stories of these former grognards also have much to tell us about the place of the soldier in modern French society. 10 It is still commonly held that, for most of the nineteenth century, the war veteran retained his "disreputable qualities as a vagabond, a spendthrift, a thief, a braggart and a libertine." In this view it was only under the Third Republic that mass attitudes toward French soldiers changed fundamentally.ll Responses to the Napoleonic veterans during the Second Empire will show that such negative views were not characteristic of public attitudes toward the former imperial soldiers-rather the opposite. Indeed, the Medailles de Sainte-Helene have much to reveal about the notion of honor in nineteenth-century France-both in "horizontal" terms, as an expression and celebration of individual attributes, and from a "vertical" perspective, as a reflection of qualities bestowed upon individuals and groups by the collectivity (including for these purposes the political institutions of the state as well as social hierarchies such as the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy).12 On the one hand, this story is a textbook version of the creation of a new category of "honorable" citizens by public authority. Marking an important episode in the democratization of honors in modern France, the French state took the initiative of instituting the decoration of the Medaille de Sainte-Helene, helping by this process to forge a new social legitimacy for the Bonapartist veterans at the twilight of their lives. The political and ideological dynamics that underlay the creation of this new civic decoration illustrated the power of public authority to fashion a new "public reputation" for a distinct class of citizens-one episode in a long and ongoing narrative in modern France. 13 But this was not the whole story; in fact it was arguably not even the main part of it. As highlighted by the tale of the imperial veteran Saumin above, honor was also a matter of local reputation and recognition. Through their memories and experiences, in the social and moral qualities that they demonstrated in their communities, and in their activities as a corporation, the imperial veterans were the bearers of a clearly defined code of honor; and it was, to a large extent, this code that underpinned the legitimacy and respect that the Medailles enjoyed in the wider French public. In other words, the veterans' public identities were not "created" by the state: by awarding them a new form of institutional recognition, the Second Empire was merely giv-

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ing official sanction to the prestige that they already enjoyed in their local communities.

A New Imperial Decoration The distinction of the Medaille de Sainte-Helene was established by Napoleon III by a decree of August 12,1857. 14 It was to be awarded to all those, both of French and foreign nationality, who had fought under the French national flag during the revolutionary and imperial wars. The commemorative medal was made of bronze and was to be worn at the buttonhole, suspended by a green and red ribbon. One side depicted the effigy of the emperor, and the other carried the inscription "Campaigns from 1792 to 1815-To His Companions of Glory, His Final Thought, 9 May 1821."15 At the end of the Napoleonic wars it is estimated that around 1.1 million soldiers returned to their homes. 16 Of this number, around 390,000 were still alive in 1857 to receive their medals 17-a remarkably high figure, which is partly explained by the relative youth of the recruits of the Grande Armee in the final campaigns of the First Empire. 18 Why did Napoleon III establish the award? The ostensible purpose of the decoration was to honor the many surviving veterans of the French armies of the Napoleonic era and to help identify those among them who were in need of material assistance and support. But there were also deeper symbolic and political dimensions at work here. Nineteenth-century French political regimes were obsessed with the legitimation of their lineage. With the Medaille de Sainte-Helene, the Second Empire sought to celebrate its links to the founder of the imperial dynasty, Napoleon Bonaparte. The dramatic reference to the moment of his death at Saint-Helena drew upon the romantic legend of the Napoleonic cult, which exercised a powerful appeal to successive generations in nineteenth-century France. 19 In the context of the workings of the Second Empire, Napoleon III also hoped to use these awards as a means to create a "popular nobility" and thus demonstrate that his regime remained true to the Bonapartist ideal of a society in which talent and merit could be recognized irrespective of wealth or social origin. The Second Empire had already initiated the practice of awarding the Legion of Honor to mayors of small rural communes; the Medaille de Sainte-Helene was, from this point of view, an extension of the process of "democratizing" the honors system. 20 The processing of individual claims, verification of entitlements, and issuing of the medals began in earnest in the autumn of 1857. It was

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[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Decree Establishing the Medaille de Sainte-Helene, August 12, 1857. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. This commemorative medal was awarded to all surviving French and foreign soldiers who had fought in the revolutionary and imperial wars between 1792 and 1815; by the late 1850s, it is estimated that 390,000 medals had been handed out.

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a massive operation, involving the entire French state bureaucracy at the national, departmental, and communal levels. In over thirty-six thousand communes of metropolitan France, mayors invited former soldiers of the First Republic and Empire to come forward and drew up nominative lists of candidates for the awards; applicants were asked to provide evidence of their incorporation or discharge from the army. These nominative lists were passed on to the prefect of the department, who, after an initial verification, dispatched them to the Grande Chancellerie de la Legion d'Honneur in Paris (part of the Ministry of State, headed by Achille Fould). The Grande Chancellerie, after consulting where necessary with the Ministry of War, then issued the requisite number of medals and certificates. These awards traveled back to their point of origin by exactly the same route: first to the prefects, who then handed them on to the mayors. The prefects were given responsibility for ensuring prompt delivery of the medals. On the whole, the operation proceeded very satisfactorily. A summary table produced by the subprefect of the arrondissement of Epernay (Marne) for the whole of the year 1858 demonstrated that, of the 1,063 medals and certificates received by the department of the Marne by October 1858, 1,030 had been issued to their recipients. 21 What had happened to the thirty-three unclaimed medals? The mayors had not yet distributed around a third of them. Also, some of the honorees may have left the commune, although this (given their age and social conditions) could only have applied to a very small number of MedailIes. It was most likely that some of the veterans had died during the previous twelve months and that others had become too ill-or simply too frail-to come in person to the mairie. In her study of veterans in the department of the Meurthe, Franc;oise Job noted that, in 1857,43 percent of the Medailles were aged between sixty-five and seventy, and 17 percent were between seventy and seventy-fivehighly vulnerable age groups.22 Some survivals were literally miraculous: few would have held up much hope for the soldier who was discharged in 1802 after being diagnosed of "general weakness and chronic chest pains, with manifest symptoms of pulmonary phthisis."23 Yet this gallant veteran was still there in 1857 to receive his medal. Indeed it should not be imagined that all the former servicemen were in a state of physical decrepitude. The records held in departmental archives across France attest to the remarkable experiences and continuing vitality of many of the Medailles. An example is Pierre Nollet, who originated from the village of Saudrupt (Meuse). In April 1813, he joined the army and was immediately assigned to serve as

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courier for Napoleon. He performed this task for over a year, during which he was on the front line of several key battles in the French campaign. 24 Although in his early seventies by 1858, Nollet was still in good health and received his medal with alacrity. And what of former corporal Augustin Aubertin, born in 1778, who gave gallant service to the French army between 1798 and 1812, during which he fought for over twelve years? Aubertin did battle in the Italian and Spanish campaigns and sustained two injuries, one at a skirmish in Tyrol in April 1798 and the other at the battle of Albuera in May 1811. Already in his eightieth year in 1858, he was still in excellent health and greatly looked forward to receiving his meda1. 25 These individual stories reflected the remarkable odds that these former military servicemen had defeated in order to receive these awards, four or five decades after the conclusion of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. 26

Individual Tales and Group Mfiliations But the bureaucratic procedure did not go smoothly everywhere. The process of vetting and delivering the medals also gave rise to problems, especially among those imperial veterans who possessed no documents attesting to their years of service. Consider the case of Andre Poupon, a textile worker from Lyon. Poupon's was a tale of fortitude and misery in equal measure. Having enlisted as a volunteer in June 1807, he had fought in the campaigns of Wagram (1809), Holland (1810), Russia (1812), and Belfort (1815). During the Russian campaign he was captured and sent to Siberia, where he was interned for eighteen months; he developed rheumatic pains, which plagued him for the rest of his life. Sent back to France through an exchange of prisoners in 1814, Poupon was discharged, but-being a passionate Bonapartist-he enlisted again during the Hundred Days. His body took a severe battering during his eight years of active service: his right arm was pierced by a Cossack lance at Smolensk; his feet froze during the retreat from Moscow and a Prussian sabre cracked open his head at Belfort. And yet this was not the end of his troubles. Destitute and miserable, he spent the entire Restoration period in abject poverty. The Bourbons had nothing to offer the veterans of an army whose commander in chief they had so bitterly opposed. All attempts by local officials to draw attention to the plight of former soldiers in the 1820s fell on deaf ears in Paris. 27 After the change of regime in 1830, Poupon sent a petition to the Duc D'Orleans asking him for a state pension,

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attaching all his military service documents. His demand found no favor and his papers were never returned. Two further decades of deprivation followed. Louis Philippe's regime was eager to exploit the Bonapartist legend to its own advantage, notably through the return of Napoleon's remains in 1840; but it showed little interest in the fate of the emperor's loyal foot soldiers. In 1850, under the Second Republic, Poupon again petitioned the prefect of the Rhone for help, stressing his old age, material destitution, and poor health. Still he received no reply. Three years later-by now the Second Empire had been proclaimed and his hopes were high-he tried the Ministry of War. This time he received a letter back informing him that he was not eligible for any state support, as he had been officially classified as a deserter. This bureaucratic mistake (for it was one-his was an extremely common name) caused Poupon to fall seriously ill. Finally in 1857, still lacking any documents to prove his membership of the Grande Armee, he appealed directly to Napoleon III. Moved by his plight, the emperor seems to have ruled in his favor. 28 Similar dramas unfolded all across France, not always with the positive conclusion that marked Poupon's repeated and impassioned pleas. Thomas Aubert, a prison warden at Villefranche (Rhone), found his application turned down because his discharge papers were issued collectively to a group of around thirty soldiers in the chaotic end of the 1815 campaign. Despite the award of the medal to many of his companions in the same regiment, and several of them vouching for him, his pleas remained unanswered. 29 Others, such as Marie-Antoine Lardet, a textile worker, could not produce their discharge papers because they were destroyed in the "wretched invasion of 1815"30-a reminder that many servicemen returned to their villages at the end of the Napoleonic wars only to face more hardship and misery. Local officials sometimes weighed in on behalf of disappointed applicants. The mayor of St. Lager (Rhone) was "painfully affected" to learn that none of the ten applicants from his commune had been granted their medals. He appealed to the subprefect to have their cases reexamined, stressing that it was of "public notoriety" in his commune that all these men had served in the Grande Armee. 31 Delays in the issuing of medals also created difficulties among veterans. In the run-up to the celebration of the Saint-Napoleon in 1858, many potential Medailles had still not received their decorations. This situation made for great embarrassment, noted one frustrated proprietaire (landowner) from Givors. Speaking for all those who shared his predicament, he remarked that without their medals "it would be dif-

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ficult for them properly to attend the Fete and even less the banquet that will follow it."32 Those whose applications were categorically denied were in an even worse position. It is easy enough to imagine the devastating social consequences of such denials of official recognition, especially in a small rural village: these hapless veterans would not only be excluded from the festivities, but also from the wider collective life of their communities. Many veterans who were already socially marginalized-through destitution, ill health, poor mobility, and old age-thus risked finding themselves even more excluded as a result of the process. Those whose claims were rejected were also banned from membership of veterans' associations. Many departments established their own mutual aid associations to defend and promote the interests of their Medailles. The extent of help provided in this manner varied from one region of France to the next, depending on the number of local veterans and the extent of their requirements. In Nice, for example, the veterans were clearly in need of support. The society for assistance to imperial veterans was established in 1859; after the annexation of the county by France, this association came under the patronage of the prefect. Its benefactors included the upper echelons of the bureaucracy and army, as well as a sizeable number of local Bonapartist notables. Appeals were made each year in order to help veterans who were "in need, deprived of means of existence, and not in a position to work." The association's report did not provide figures, but it can be deduced that a majority of local Medailles were impoverished from the annual accounts, which showed that more than half the funds raised were allocated to the provision of bread. 33 Similarly, in her account of the veterans of the Vaucluse, Natalie Petiteau found many individual cases of distress. 34 Situations also varied enormously within departments. In the Cote d'Or in the early 1850s impoverished imperial veterans were relatively rare and often benefited from communal assistance; in August 1852, the municipality of Belsey awarded eight francs to "Gaillard Claude, former soldier of the Empire, who is reduced to the greatest misery."35 In the case of the Dordogne, the prefect wrote to all mayors to ascertain what proportion of the veterans residing in their commune would be prevented from traveling to Perigueux to receive their medals "on grounds of age, infirmity, or position of fortune."36 The mayor of Perigueux replied that "a large number" of the chef-lieu's veterans "would not be able to dress properly for any public ceremony";37 likewise the subprefect of Bergerac stated that "most" of his Medailles

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would be incapable of traveling due to ill health and poverty.38 However the subprefects of Riberac and Sarlat responded that a majority of their veterans were physically and materially in a position to make the journey-and indeed were enthused to do SO.39 In the end, the prefect decided not to hold any ceremony at Perigueux and to devolve the distribution of medals to the mayors. In the department of the Somme, in contrast, the material situation of the veterans seemed a source of less concern. There were over fiftythree hundred recipients of the medal by the late 1850s. 40 In December 1859, the prefect Sencier set up the Association des Medailles de Sainte-Helene. Its membership consisted of all the medal holders, who paid a modest annual subscription, as well as honorary members who paid a minimum of six francs per year. The Association's aim was to supplement through local subscriptions the aid given to imperial veterans by the state. 41 The organization was extremely active and raised significant funds: for the year 1861-1862 the total amount generated was Fr 7,328, of which Fr 4,010 were spent in grants to destitute Medailles. 42 The records of the Association offer some insights into the social circumstances of the veterans. In the 1860 membership list for the arrondissement of Abbeville, for example, at least half of the subscribers could not sign their names. But almost all the veterans made some contribution to their association. One of them, Antoine Hector Carre, was eighty-seven years old and paid his annual membership fee of ten centimes even though he was described as "blind and poor." The only exception was the seventy-two-year-old JeanBaptiste Lebrun, from the commune of Maison-Ponthieu, who was exempted altogether from paying his subscription. The entry in the "observations" column noted that he was "completely destitute and almost an invalid."43 In overall terms, however, the Medailles of the Somme did not give the impression of being overwhelmingly devoid of resources. Out of a total membership of over five thousand, only 208 requests for financial help were received by the Association in 1861-1862-from less than 5 percent of all members. 44 In subsequent years, the number of applications for assistance fell even further. Indeed, by the mid-1860s, the Association was thriving financially, with a budgetary surplus of Fr 5,743. 45 Public support, through individual donations and departmental and communal subscriptions, had gathered considerable momentum. Every year, though, the number of Medailles was being considerably reduced through death. The 1865 report gives no figures but notes that "a large number" of Medailles had died over the previous five years. 46 For those "glorious relics" who

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had cheated death on so many occasions on the battlefield and had survived through the treacherous waters of the nineteenth century, the 1860s represented the final race against Death. This sense of the ebbing of time was poignantly conveyed in a short letter written by a group of Medailles from the Hospice de la Charite in Lyon in early August 1867. They appealed to the prefect of the Rhone to allow them out to attend the mass in the St. Jean Cathedral on August 15, because many of them "would perhaps not be there next year."47

The Award Ceremonies Even before the official establishment of the Medaille de SainteHelene, the imperial veterans were playing a central role in the festivities of August 15. This was notably the case in Paris, where they were assembled outside the Madeleine Church in 1852 and provided a guard of honor for the head of state,48 but also at Sainte-Claude aura) in 1852,49 La Chatre (Indre) in 1853,50 and Carcassonne (Aude) in 1854. 51 In some localities with particularly large numbers of Napoleonic veterans, the soldiers had formed their own associations well before the founding of the Second Empire. In the town of Vienne (Isere), they were all members of the "Societe de la Vieille Armee"; each veteran wore a small medal with the image of Bonaparte, which hung at the end of a tricolor ribbon. One of the society's leading figures was a former officer by the name of Faure, who had accompanied Bonaparte on his Egyptian expedition in 1798-1799. 52 Did all the veterans pledge their allegiance to the Bonapartist regime after 1851? In a very small number of cases, such as in Mormoiron (Vaucluse) in 1861, imperial veterans refused to take part in the festivities because of their "opposition to the government"53-a reminder that many Jacobins had fought for Napoleon (especially during the Hundred Days)54 but did not necessarily remain committed to the Bonapartist cause in subsequent decades. Local monographs have also occasionally afforded us glimpses of individual rebels. In the Cher, after the 1851 coup d'etat of Louis-Napoleon, former imperial soldier Claude Vilain reaffirmed his faith in the principles of republican socialism and his admiration for Proudhon; he publicly declared that he "was very fond of the uncle, but after what he has done, not of the nephew."55 But there is little evidence that such opposition to the Second Empire was widespread among Napoleon's former soldiers and officers. 56 The veterans' greatest moment came during the ceremonies of the

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year 1858, during which they were issued with their medals and certificates. In the village of Gourdon (Var), the mayor noted in his report that because this year's festivity had coincided with the distribution of medals to the commune's veterans, "the whole of the population was keen to turn out." This was no rhetorical statement. The award ceremony had been fixed for the early afternoon of August 15, and was to be held in the mairie in the presence of the municipal council. However when the veterans made their way to the public room at the appointed hour, they found "hundreds" of inhabitants already waiting for them. These citizens had come spontaneously; the mayor had issued no summons. And each minute that passed brought more people, so much so that "soon the room became too small to hold the crowd and the meeting had to be moved to the big square in the village." The mayor then gave a brief speech, in which he summarized the origins of the Medaille and underlined the "respect" owed to all its recipients. Before calling the names of the honorees, he invoked the memory of Emperor Napoleon at Saint-Helena by reading out the inscription on the medal. In the words of the mayor, the veterans received their decorations "with hearts bursting with joy and eyes full of tears of gratitude." The crowd chanted, "Long live Napoleon! Long live the emperor!" A group of soldiers, on home leave from a nearby garrison, fired several rounds in the air "to render full military honors to the happy old folk who had received this honorary distinction."57 In some localities, the celebrations of 1858 were extended by several days in order to provide a fitting tribute to the Medailles. In the town of Pertuis (Vaucluse), the subprefect noted that the festivities had taken place "under conditions that had not been witnessed up till that point." There were three days of rejoicing: the emperor was feted on August 15, with all the traditional religious and civic manifestations; a large agricultural fair was held on the next day, with public amusements and distributions of prizes to farmers; and the festivities culminated on August 17 with a ceremony in honor of the commune's Medailles de Sainte-Helene. This event took place in the afternoon, in the presence of most of the inhabitants of Pertuis. A large banquet then followed, and in the evening there was a spectacular display of fireworks. There was little doubt that, for the local population, the third day had represented the climax of the festivities. 58

The Civic Procession The important position occupied by the Medailles de Sainte-Helene in the ceremonies of the Saint-Napoleon after 1858 could be measured

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at each of the successive stages of the proceedings, as will be shown. But their defining moment in the public sphere was the morning procession, in which all the notables of the commune marched from the mairie to the church. This was a moment that the Medailles themselves awaited eagerly. At Bouziques (Herault) in 1859, the mayor was slightly put out to find the village veterans already assembled in front of his house at six in the morning. But their enthusiasm was infectious: he could not help marveling at how "these noble veterans were looking for each other, calling out at each other in order to come together, exchanging views and together evoking the memory of their illustrious companion. "59 Allover France between 1858 and 1869, civic processions granted a special place to the Medailles de Sainte-Helene. At Brens (Tarn), they were assembled behind the local authorities and were "delighted to be the object of such public attention."60 In many communes, such as at Bouziques, the veterans lined up immediately behind the mayor and the municipal council, which placed them ahead of all the other public functionaries. 61 Elsewhere, they stood out by virtue of their small numbers, proud symbols of military valor and physical resilience. Reporting on the national celebrations at La Ciotat (Bouches-duRhone) in 1862, the police commissioner enumerated a long list of official figures who escorted the municipal council to the church; in the midst of the procession and surrounded by an atmosphere of respect and admiration were "two Medailles de Sainte-Helene."62 At Serignan (Vaucluse), the language of the mayor's report was similarly revealing: he described the veterans as having accompanied all the other "corps" of the commune to the church. In other words, the Medailles were here fully integrated into the public sphere. 63 The subprefect of Dieppe went one stage further, noting that the official procession in this maritime town had included "the administrative, military, and judicial authorities together with the Medailles de Sainte-Helene."64 In their different formulae, all these reports indicate that the veterans enjoyed equal status with the public officials of the commune, but were in many senses more respected than all the others-by virtue of their age, their bravery, and the challenges they had overcome and, above all, through their personal memories of the Emperor Napoleon. In most towns and villages the solemnity of the civic procession was enhanced by the presence of an escort of firemen, whose function was to draw out the distinctiveness of the commune's civic order. And what better symbol of this individuality than the Medailles de SainteHelene? Little wonder, then, that the veterans were not only given a

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prominent place in the procession, but were also entrusted with the emblem that most vividly symbolized the commune's civic autonomy: the banner. At Solies-Ville (Var) in 1866, the civic procession was led off from the mairie by a group of imperial veterans, one of whom proudly bore the tricolor flag. 65 At Fains (Meuse), the national banner was carried in turn by the firemen and the veterans; both groups surrounded the flag "almost protectively" during the religious ceremony in church. 66 In many parts of France, the veterans also marked the Saint-Napoleon by creating their own emblems. The 1866 civic procession in the town of L'Isle (Vaucluse) saw the imperial veterans carry "their own magnificent banner, which bore the following inscription: 'Long Live the Emperor-The Medailles de Sainte-Helene.' "67 Perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the centrality of the MedailIes in the civic processions of the national festivity lay in the surrogate functions they were called upon to perform. In many communes of France, opposition councilors often abstained from attending the ceremonies of August 15. Mayors responded by increasingly relying on the Medailles to fill these glaring deficiencies in the civic order of the commune. As noted in Chapter 3, the year 1859 marked one of the high points of the national festivities all across France, coinciding as it did with the triumphant return of the French army from the Italian campaign. This was not the case, however, in the village of Willems (Nord). On August 14, the mayor had summoned his municipal council in order to vote a special credit for the local celebrations. Only four councilors presented themselves, preventing the meeting from reaching a quorum. The mayor was thus prevented from organizing any public festivities. Mortified, he wrote to the prefect: "Our fete simply consisted in attending the Te Deum, accompanied by the Medailles de Sainte-Helene."68 In many of the rural communes of the Herault, in 1860, the police commissioner reported that the celebrations had taken place "without any great enthusiasm"; the only exceptions were those localities with significant cohorts of imperial veterans. 69 The following year, things had not improved; the same police officer reported to the prefect of the Herault that the whole municipal council of the commune of Lansargues, made up "almost entirely of republicans," had refused to join the civic procession and had not attended the religious ceremonies in church. The only officials present were the mayor, his deputy, and the Medailles de Sainte-Helene. 70 The same tune was heard in L'Isle and Thor (Vaucluse) in 1867 and 1869: at the latter "a major part of the municipal councilors were absent," and at

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the former "none of the councilors attended the procession and the ceremony. "71 Reading between the lines of the reports, it was clear that in both cases it was the presence of the Medailles that had saved the day.

Forms of Honor This theme of "honor" was clearly one of the dominant questions in the minds of Napoleonic veterans. It played very strongly in the internal debates and practices of associations of imperial veterans that mushroomed all over France after 1858. One such organization at la Chapelle Saint-Denis (Seine) regrouped a hundred veterans living in this Parisian neighborhood. At its founding meeting in May 1858, the association approved a constitution of thirty articles and elected an executive bureau of six members, which was presided over by Hebert, the mayor of La Chapelle. 72 The association's definition of the decoration was striking: "The medal of Sainte-Helene is an eminently honorable distinction for all those who have the right to wear it, as it does for those who do not have the honor of being decorated by it, but who know how to understand and appreciate its meaning" (p. 7). The aim of the corporation was to foster solidarity among its members and to engender "respect and honor" of the medal (p. 1), to ensure that it was always worn "decently" and never "dishonored" by any action or insult (p. 8). Individual members who were in material need and wished to plead to the emperor for assistance were required to have their appeals vetted by the corporation first; again the point was clearly to preserve the reputation of the membership as a whole (pp. 2-3). Transgressions from this code of honor were severely punished. Any member who brought the corporation's good name into disrepute by his "scandalous conduct and depraved morals" was liable to be permanently expelled (p.4). All members were also under obligation, when one of theirs died, to attend his funeral; failure to pay their respects to the last remains of their colleague was also grounds for dismissal from the corporation (pp. 5-6). The behavior of all Medailles toward each other had at all times to be marked by the "decency that always has to be shown by men who respect one another" (p. 7). Elsewhere in France some associations, such as the Medailles de SainteHelene of Maine et Loire, adopted even more stringent criteria, reserving the right to deny membership to any imperial veterans who did not enjoy a "social position, which alone can guarantee them the respect that they enjoy as individuals."73

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As a collectivity, the imperial veterans were also extremely sensitive to their status and reacted with appropriate feeling to any impropriety of conduct by public institutions toward them. The main culprits here tended to be the municipalities. At Tours in 1859, the veterans were placed at the back of the civic procession; its leaders marched so rapidly that the Medailles were left behind and eventually cut off by the crowd; the mayor acknowledged that the old soldiers had been "offended."74 At Balaruc-Ies-Bains (Herault) in 1867, a Medaille complained that he had received no invitation to take part in the municipal procession, despite having been included in the official list in previous years; he blamed the mayor for the "lack of solemnity that had been given to this national festivity."75 The same problem occurred at Barbentane (Bouches-du-Rhone) in 1862; the subprefect of ArIes noted that "the mayor had not invited the Medailles de Sainte-Helene."76 At Aix in 1859, the (legitimist) municipality had also tried to get away with the strict minimum in terms of the organization of public festivities. There was thus no civic procession from the mairie to the church, and only the mayor and his deputy attended the religious service. Even worse, the municipal posters that traditionally announced the national festivity to the population were not printed that year. Apart from providing details of the day's events, these posters also served as the official summons to attend the Te Deum in the cathedral, notably to all army veterans. The subprefect noted that the Medailles were "deeply offended by this oversight."77 Often this sort of behavior rallied the entire local population in gestures of solidarity with the veterans and against the municipality; for example, in November 1852, many inhabitants of the village of Landersheim (Bas-Rhin) signed a petition to the minister of the interior demanding the dismissal of their mayor on the grounds that he was "persecuting the old veterans of the Empire."78 In the same year, even more offensive proved the behavior of the cure of the parish ofVritz (Loire-Inferieure), who refused to allow the delegation of Medailles de Sainte-Helene to enter his church bearing the tricolor flag they had flown during the procession. The reports do not mention whether the veterans came in without their banner, or else stayed outside in protest. In a letter of complaint to the archbishop of Nantes, the prefect accepted that the priest had acted within his rights; he was after all statutorily responsible for maintaining order in his church. However, the wider political context-Napoleon Ill's support for Italian unity and the concomitant threat to the temporal powers of the pope-undoubtedly provided the motivation for the priest's

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symbolic act. In any event, noted the prefect, this priest had something of a track record of opposing the Second Empire; his gesture had thus provided "new evidence of his hostile dispositions toward the administration."79 The same underlying hostility to Napoleon Ill's foreign policy no doubt drove the priest at Gigean (Herault) to describe the Medailles, who were slowly shuffling into the church along with the rest of the municipal procession, as "old goats."80 But these were relatively isolated incidents. The overwhelming majority of administrative reports on the national festivities spoke not only of the warmth and respect shown by local populations toward the Medailles, but also of the extraordinary effects their presence at times provoked. In the village of Sacy (Marne) in 1859, the official procession was made up of a strong contingent of imperial veterans; the mayor noted that "everywhere on its passage the procession was greeted with great fervor." Indeed that year's celebrations in the commune-the first in which the Medailles had taken a full part-had proved the most memorable and festive to date. 81 At Cousancelles (Meuse), the firemen elected to honor the imperial veterans in a special way. The mayor described the enthusiastic scenes that followed: The firemen in an impeccable outfit wished not only to escort the local authorities [to church], but insisted on the honor of fetching the Medailles de Sainte-Helene from their homes and accompanying them together with the municipal council to the ceremonies of the day, after which they again escorted the veterans back to their homes, where they presented their arms and gave a roll of honor. These old and brave relics of our glorious armies responded to these military honors with energetic cries of "Long live the emperor," repeated a thousand times by the inhabitants who had spontaneously accompanied the escort. 82 In the 1864 celebrations in the town of Armentieres (Nord), the civic procession was made up of local officials, recently elevated Chevaliers of the Legion d'Honneur, and Medailles de Sainte-Helene. Firemen "in grand uniform" escorted the procession and the local philharmonic society provided music. The mayor noted that "a mass of people was pressing against the procession."83 At Nantes in 1869, events took an even more remarkable turn. The mayor had invited, as was customary, the imperial veterans (together with the veterans of the Crimean War) to gather in the fore court of the municipality in order to proceed to the cathedral. Shortly before eleven in the morning, as the gathering

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prepared to make its way, "representatives of 36 workers' corporations, banners flying proudly, came spontaneously to join the procession, which they accompanied all the way to the cathedral."84 At Bergues (Nord) in 1864, the mayor's report stressed that the working class, "which had been most favored during the festivities, warmly expressed its deep sense of satisfaction."85 Indeed, in many localities it was apparent that the principal reason for the large turnout of workers during the festivities of August 15 was the presence of the Medailles de Sainte-Helene. But the veterans' appeal was not limited to one section of society. At Pignan (Herault), the civic procession was joined by "the Catholic youth of the locality, who had brought with them a full complement of music."86 At Perols (in the same department) in 1864, large sections of the population were present outside the mairie in the morning to witness the departure of the civic procession, which included a significant complement of Medailles. However, as they began to move, it became apparent that the deputy mayor and a significant proportion of the municipal councilors were absent. The mayor picked up the story: "At this moment all the young people who were in the crowd, with their banners and music, spontaneously came to join the procession in order to protest by their presence against the deliberate absence of the municipal officials."87 This popular guard of honor was not merely a gesture of support for the mayor, but also a reflection of the public esteem for the Medailles; the youth in this particular locality clearly regarded the absence of the municipal councilors as an unacceptable betrayal of the respect owed to the Napoleonic veterans. It is not surprising, then, that official reports typically dwelled on the contentment of the imperial veterans. For example, the police commissioner of Avignon reported in 1861: "Everyone yesterday saw with pleasure the old Medailles de Sainte-Helene in the civic procession. The faces of these brave old folk were radiant with happiness."88 This was not merely because they were recognized and feted by allalthough of course this was a huge source of satisfaction to them. There was something deeper, however. The Medailles were happy because they saw that they possessed a special power-the capacity to enthuse local populations, to draw out all sections of society into the public sphere, and to generate mass fervor. On the large stage of the Saint-Napoleon, theirs was the act that invariably generated "respect, admiration, honor."89 This special place of the veterans in the hearts and minds of the French public was noted by state officials across France. The

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procureur-general of Colmar wrote in 1858 that "the institution of the Medaille is very popular, especially in the countryside where there are still a substantially large number of relics of our old troops."90 The subprefect of Beziers echoed this sentiment: "The presence and the enthusiasm of the Medailles of Sainte-Helene have produced a happy effect on public consciousness. By honoring them, the Empire has conquered the sympathies of even the most indifferent and rallied many hearts."91

Entertaining the Veterans The pivotal position of the imperial veterans in the celebrations of August 15 came to a joyful climax during the various forms of entertainment laid out in their honor by local officials. The strength of communal sociability, the vigorous dissemination of Bonapartist ideology, and the physical resilience of the Medailles themselves shine through the surviving accounts of these festivities. In some communes the receptions for the veterans were held during the day. There were often two processions taking place on August 15: a civic manifestation in the morning and a religious procession in honor of the Virgin Mary in the early evening. At Valreas (Vaucluse) in 1868, the municipality offered the Medailles a collation at lunchtime, no doubt to help sustain the veterans during this very long day.92 But in general most of these gatherings were held in the evening. At Seillans (Var) in 1861, the processions having ended, the mayor invited the Medailles into the town hall for a small reception. The atmosphere was festive, and the veterans were in excellent form despite their exertions of the day: "On numerous occasions, their hearts brimming with joy and enthusiasm, they drank the health of the emperor, the empress, and the imperial prince."93 In the village of Heutregiville (Marne), the mayor and the entire municipal council invited the MedailIes, together with the company of firemen, to the Cafe du Commerce, the main establishment of the commune. The lengthy toasts and enthusiastic tone of the report suggest that its owner, Monsieur Garnotel, did very good business that evening. 94 In many communes, as in Cousancelles (Meuse) in 1858, imperial veterans contributed to the costs of the celebrations, often by paying for the gunpowder. 95 But in the majority of communes, the festivities in honor of the Medailles took the classic form assumed by nineteenth-century French sociability: the banquet. At Avallon (Yonne) in 1861, the mayor gave an "improvised banquet" for the imperial veterans. 96 In Fleury (in the

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same department) in 1863, the thirty-two firemen of the commune gave a banquet, funded by the municipality, in honor of the eight Medailles de Sainte-Helene. 97 At Althen-des-Paluds (Vaucluse) in 1864, the commune's eight imperial veterans were treated to a banquet during which they feasted "with constantly renewed enthusiasm."98 In the larger towns these occasions were patronized by the entire administrative elite: at Toulouse in 1858, sixty imperial veterans were guests of honor at a banquet at the prefecture;99 and at Rouen in 1859, the banquet in honor of the Medailles was organized by the mayor, with the prefect of the Seine-Inferieure and the top military brass in attendance. lOG No banquet would be complete without a proliferation of toasts. Their objects in this case were typically the Emperor Napoleon, his nephew Napoleon III (and the imperial family), and the Medailles de Sainte-Helene. At Marsillargues in 1858, the communal authorities laid out a banquet for thirty-six guests in honor of the imperial veterans. After the dinner, the mayor invited all those present to drink to the health of Napoleon III and his family. The police commissioner then stood up: Gentlemen, allow me in turn to offer a toast to the memory of the great man whose glorious memories still resonate powerfully in our hearts; to the glory and prosperity of his illustrious descendant, the founder of the noble legion of Sainte-Helene; and to these veterans who, by adorning their scarred breasts, revive feelings of enthusiasm and patriotism in the hearts of our little children and make heroes of all those humble conscripts who fought memorable battles in order to make France the queen of civilized nations. lOl The distinctive appeal of the Bonapartist legend shone through here. This was not merely an invocation of patriotism and nationalism through the great figures of the Napoleonic dynasty. It was also a reminder of the powerful role of the people in sustaining the Bonapartist myth-a collectivity symbolized here by the Medailles de Sainte-Helene and invested with the qualities of simplicity and martyrdom and, at the same time, fortitude and pride. The notion of "nobility" was also essential, conveying both an elevation based on honor and virtue and a sublimation of social differences through effort and achievement. In the Bonapartist scheme of things, nobility was not merely a matter of birth: it could be acquired, even by the most

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humble grognard fighting for his country-as reflected in the legend that claimed that every soldier in Napoleon's army carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack. Not all toasts went exactly according to plan. The generous flow of wine was often responsible for some embarrassing slippages. At the same gathering in Marsillargues the deputy mayor, clearly the worse for wear after the prolonged libations, provoked general hilarity when he proposed a toast "to the memory of Monsieur Ie Maire." The police commissioner reminded him that, far from being dead, the mayor was sitting across the table. 102 The festive atmosphere also gave new lease of life to the veterans. At the banquet in the village of Sarcey (Rhone) in 1866, following the traditional toasts, the assembled MedailIes stood up on a table and vigorously sang a succession of Napoleonic songs; they paused at each couplet to chant "Long live the emperor! Long live France!"103 At Monteux (Vaucluse), in the same year, the imperial veterans chanted patriotic songs in honor of the Bonapartist dynasty; after the end of the banquet, "the Medailles processed through town, with flags and drums beating wildly, breaking the silence of the night with their repeated cries of "Long live the emperor!"104 Most remarkable was the vitality shown by the forty Medailles of the village of Chateaudouble (Var) in 1861. The day before the festivities they felled a pine tree and carried it to the main square of the town, where they chopped it into small logs to be used for the bonfire. On August 15, they took a full part in two processions, one in the morning and the other in the early evening, after which they gathered again at a banquet given in their honor by the municipality. After the dinner, the imperial veterans led the guests out again into the town in a torchlight procession, which rapidly attracted a large following. At midnight, this merry band could still be heard singing the refrain of Pierre-Jean Beranger's Napoleonic ditty, "Parlez-nous de lui grandmere, grand-mere parlez-nous de lui ('Tell us about him, grandmother; grandmother, tell us about him.')"105 The festivities carried on until the early hours of the following morning, when the Medailles "somewhat inebriated, if truth be told, concluded this great national festivity by a breakfast paid for from their own funds."106

Bearers of the Legend The Medailles de Sainte-Helene had a significant impact on French public consciousness between 1858 and 1869. Their prominence dur-

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ing the festivities of August 15 reflected their deep entrenchment in their local communities, as well as the respect and admiration they enjoyed in large sections of society. One of the most striking features to emerge is the sheer resilience of the Medailles, especially the ordinary soldiers. 107 It is true that the institution of the decoration by the Second Empire came too late for many of them; already in 1857the year the Medaille was established-many communes had only one or two army veterans among the survivors of the Napoleonic era. 108 But even though the process of natural attrition led to a gradual decline in their numbers during the 1860s, there were still enough of them for the veterans' presence to be strongly felt at public events. Indeed, the last Napoleonic soldier to receive his decoration in the department of the Vosges did so in February 1870-only a few months before the downfall of the Second Empire. 109 The deaths of imperial combatants continued to be recorded in Bonapartist publications throughout the 1860s,110 and funerals of Medailles continued to be held well into the following decade. ll1 In 1887, a Saint-Napoleon banquet was held in Paris at the Salon des FamilIes; among the 750 guests was a nonagenarian Medaille. 112 Resilience, therefore, and also robustness marked their character. These men, generally aged somewhere between their late sixties and mid-eighties, took a full and active part in the ceremonies of the SaintNapoleon. In provincial and rural communes, the veterans typically participated in two processions, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon; in many towns with statues of Napoleon, as in Bordeaux, the Medailles also held a special procession to lay a wreath at the feet of their emperor. 113 In many instances they also, as just observed, continued the celebrations well into night. Their stamina not only put to shame guests with significantly lower age profiles, but also inspired a local poet from Rouen in 1865: Malgre tant de souffrance Malgre tant de revers Lauriers de notre France Vous etes toujours verts!114 Through the active participation of the veterans in its ceremonies, there have been promising glimpses of the complexity and richness of the Saint-Napoleon. Away from Paris and other French cities and large towns, France's national festivity under the Second Empire appears in a fundamentally different light from the complacent stereo-

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types conveyed by historians of la fete republicaine. These gatherings were joyful and festive, without any doubt, and attracted the participation of wide sections of local communities. But what also appears clearly is the catalytic effect of the imperial veterans, whose presence often engendered various forms of spontaneous social behavior (acclamation of the procession, gestures of solidarity with the veterans against absent municipal councilors, etc.). An equally forceful connection that emerges is the robust sense of civic pride that manifested itself during these festivities. The imperial veterans were incorporated into the public sphere of the commune, and their presence gave the official processions from the mairie a luster that was carefully nurtured by local municipal officials. Contrary to the received wisdom about the religiosity of the national celebrations, the veterans' presence demonstrated the existence of a powerful secular dimension to the festivities-a secularism that was explicitly brought into the open (and contested) in the clashes between the Medailles (and municipal authorities more generally) and the church authorities. The theme of honor has appeared as a leitmotiv throughout this account. The Medailles possessed a great sense of self-respect; and administrative reports from all over France stressed the pride with which the imperial veterans wore their medals. lls This dignity manifested itself in the conduct that the veterans displayed in their social interactions among themselves and in the models of civic behavior and heroic emulation that they sought to personify in the midst of their own communities. The evidence uncovered in this chapter suggests that they were more than successful in this respect: during the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon the depths of public feelings of esteem and admiration for the war veterans were apparent throughout the period between 1858 and 1869. The institution of the Medaille de Sainte-Helene was welcomed, and poems and pamphlets were written in its honor;116 inhabitants of towns and villages turned out in large numbers to witness the award of the decorations to the meritorious citizens of their commune; the presence of the imperial veterans in the processions of August 15 was greeted with acclaim; and individuals, groups, and institutions all over France gave generously to help those Medailles who were experiencing material hardship. And what is more, the veterans seemed to appeal to all sections of society-young and old; rich and poor; bourgeois, worker, and peasant; agnostic and believer. Particularly noteworthy was the appeal of the veterans in rural France, as highlighted by numerous administrative reports throughout the period. In 1869, the subprefect of Vitry-

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le-Franc;ois (Marne) pointed out that the awards to the imperial veterans had given rise to sentiments of enthusiasm "everywhere in our countryside."117 In the Aveyron, reports from 1857 onward stress the "touching" and "effusive" character of the awards ceremonies and the large public turnout. ll8 Likewise, in the Puy-de-Dome, where there were around four thousand Medailles in 1857, the imperial veterans played a central role in the festivities of the Saint-Napoleon and largely contributed to the festivities' popular success between 1858 and 1869. 119 So, why did they command this universal respect? Not, it is clear, because the veterans had been decorated by the state; and not even because they had succeeded in making theirs a code of honor that belonged to one of France's dominant social groups (whether the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy). No, the remarkable status enjoyed by the Medailles was a tribute to something more complex: the glorious memory of France's Napoleonic past, which they personified; the physical qualities of bravery, endurance, and resilience, which they had demonstrated throughout their lives; their sense of discipline, and the honorable social behavior, which they insisted upon in their interactions among themselves and with their fellow-citizens;l2o and, perhaps most important of all, the reconciliation, in the festive landscape of the Saint-Napoleon, of the dichotomy between the notables and the people-a transcendence that was often stressed by leaders of veterans' associations,l2l and remained throughout the nineteenth century one of the key facets of the Bonapartist conception of military honor. l22 They were the ordinary heroes of the Napoleonic tradition, models of civic virtue and social emulation. l23 In this sense, the veterans demonstrated the powerful connection between the Napoleonic legend and Bonapartist politics under the Second Empire; contrary to received wisdom that the coup d'etat dealt a blow to the legend, these two elements came together forcefully after 1852 and helped cement the political foundations of the imperial regime. What, then, of the alleged "militarism" of the Saint-Napoleon? The presence of the Medailles at the festivities and their repeated invocations of the memory of the great Bonaparte's romps across Europe might invite the rather simplistic conclusion that the veterans were mere instruments of French chauvinism, the lowest and most debased expression of French national sentiment in the nineteenth century.l24 But here too things were much more complex. These Napoleonic manifestations of nationalism and patriotism should be treated cautiously

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because although the imperial veterans often spoke about "some oftheir military feats," as one report puts it, there are very few direct records of what they said. 125 There is no doubt that the martial theme ofNapoleonic domination and conquest was present and powerfully reverberated through the songs, poems, and dramas of the period. 126 But it was most often celebrated alongside the civic and political aspects ofthe Bonapartist epic. Indeed, in the Napoleonic tradition of the Second Empire, reference was often made to the preeminence of civic virtues over martial ones: "Military qualities, as the emperor used to say, are necessary only in some circumstances and some moments. Civic virtues, which are characteristic of the real lawmaker, can at all times influence public felicity." 127 This was very much the language ofBonapartist elites during the Saint-Napoleon. Speaking at the ceremony at which the imperial veterans of Albi received their medals in 1858, the local deputy (a general and a Medaille de Sainte-Helene, as well as the mayor ofAlbi and president of the Conseil General of the Tarn) spoke of "the immortal glory of our great emperor, who, all at once, was a man of genius, a warrior, a lawgiver, and a profound political strategist."128 In fact, as noted in the previous chapter, the militarist theme was overshadowed by three other motifs. The first was the age-old notion of "France as the bearer of civilized values"-a progressive civilization that had disseminated the values of 1789 to Europe under Napoleon Bonaparte and was continuing to spread the message of Christianity to France's colonies (a theme that would be seamlessly picked up by the Third Republic). A popular Napoleonic song, composed by a Medaille de Sainte-Helene, celebrated the Second Empire's wars as "struggles for justice, for peace, and for the restoration of security among oppressed peoples."129 The second theme, indeed, was peace. "The Empire brings peace" was one of Louis-Napoleon's slogans from the earliest days of the regime, and it assumed a strong place in the imagery and rhetoric of the festivities. One First Empire veteran echoed this theme in a song he composed in 1852, urging the foreign powers to "deal with Louis and have trust in him; he does not want wars."130 In 1859, a poem written by a Napoleonic veteran, entitled "The French Echo," was sent to the prefect of Gironde; it ended with a tribute to the Bonapartist diplomacy, "for which peace was another name."131 The public also warmed to this theme; even while they were listening to the imperial veterans recounting their past military exploits, local populations were enthusiastically chanting "Long live peace!"132 Finally, the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon stressed the patriotic

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readiness of the French people to defend their country against external attack. This spirit was captured in a popular Napoleonic song: "If the foreigner declares war on us, we shall brave all dangers, and as good soldiers we shall rush to the frontiers to defend our rights and our freedoms." 133

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IMPERIAL

officials coped with the wide range of

demands with which they were faced on the day of the SaintNapoleon-from political elites, from the general public, and, above all, from unforeseen contingencies-will be the focus of this chapter and the next. The single largest concern for the local organizers was to ensure the widest possible public turnout. The mayor, an appointee of the regime, often saw the fetes as a golden opportunity to justify the confidence placed in him by his hierarchical superiors and to raise his own political profile in the commune. A poor turnout was often disguised by the use of euphemisms. In 1855, the subprefect of Castres (Tarn) reported that the national festivity had passed in his locality with "order and regularity"-an expression that hardly suggests the presence of much local enthusiasm. 1 However, as already noted in earlier chapters, the public turnout during the festivities was often very high, sometimes exceeding even the most optimistic hopes and calculations. Administrative reports frequently attested to the size of crowds, which represented every age groups "from the old octogenarian to the young child";2 all strata of local society, "including members of all the social classes";3 and, most importantly, all manner of political opinion. Nothing could give greater comfort to a local official than to be able to conclude his report, as did the mayor of Saint-Paul (Var), on the following ecumenical note: "No unfortunate incident came to upset this festivity for which the term "national" applies perfectly: everyone was there, 105

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including even those who, before the 2nd of December, used to parade their socialist convictions in our locality."4

An Obsession with Order Such large gatherings, and the presence in their midst of men and women of different generations, social classes, and even political opinions, created a grave concern for the organizers: the maintenance of order. Forms of rural violence against the state, such as antitax revolts, remained a serious problem for French governments under the Restoration and July Monarchy.5 And, the harsh political climate of the 1850s notwithstanding, many local incidents still occurred in which angry populations confronted state authorities over the collection of public revenues. 6 Even when they were not consciously revolting against the authorities, the French people could give their governments much to worry about. Nineteenth-century popular festivities were often notorious for giving rise to extreme forms of riotous behavior-especially in the hot summer months when tempers could easily fray-and also providing a forum for publicly voicing local animosities. In Paris, carnivals and evening dances were closely watched by the police to prevent such disturbances from getting out of hand;7 in the rural world, as noted in a regional study of peasant violence in France, "the chronological unfolding of conflict overlapped very closely with the leisure calendar."8 In the turbulent political atmosphere of the 1840s and early 1850s, it was commonly assumed by police authorities that fetes would degenerate into brawls between rival groups.9 Indeed, after 1849, the conservative republican government became so frightened of public disorder and "wicked passions" that all banquets and public meetings were banned-even on May 4, the national anniversary of the proclamation of the republic. 10 Despite this injunction, serious disorders continued to erupt in many townsnotably in Libourne (Gironde) in 1851. 11 Understandably, the Second Empire's local agents were initially highly apprehensive as to the potential consequences of dealing with such a large public presence on the streets. Hence, there was a significant police and military presence during the Saint-Napoleon celebrations, both in physical terms as well as in the festive iconography and ceremonies. This dimension, which has led some scholars to characterize the early Second Empire as a "police state," was frequently highlighted in official reports. 12 The police underwent a fundamental reorganization during the 1850s, moving from the notion of control

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of criminal individuality to that of "the control of social and political body"13-a shift whose effectiveness could be tested on the day of the Saint-Napoleon. The army, which had been one of the major supporters of December 2 (and one of the principal agents of anti-republican repression after 1851), also performed an important deterrent function. In the early years of the regime there were widespread fears of republican insurrection in the provinces, and constant rumors about plots to assassinate Napoleon III. In August 1853, the procureur of Mauriac (Cantal) wrote to his superior the procureur-general of Riom: "At the approach of the festivity of August 15, the men of disorder seem to hope that there will some attempt against the life of His Majesty the Emperor. Nothing certain, just a vague murmur."14 What better way of clamping down on such rumors-and on those subversive elements who might be tempted to act upon them-than to demonstrate the power of the state through a massive display of public force? These requirements of power projection, deterrence, and surveillance remained central elements of the festivities throughout the Second Empire-even when the regime became much more secure politically in the late 1850s. These constant pressures from above tested the nerves of local officials. "The greatest calm was observed, and nowhere did the forces of public order or police have to intervene, even though the crowds were considerable, especially in the evening," noted the police commissioner of Aix in 1853, his relief reflected in his breathless syntax. 1S A year later at Le Havre, another local official expressed similar sentiments: "Although the entire population had mobilized itself to take part in the festivities and amusements, there was not the slightest disorder."16 But too much order was not welcome either: at the other end of the spectrum, the great worry was apathy. No official wanted to have to echo the 1857 report of the police commissioner of Mielan (Gers), who stated somewhat lamely that "the most perfect tranquility was observed everywhere, but in many parts of town this calm was merely a reflection of public indifference."17 Hard-pressed officials also became haunted by the possibility of political subversion, or simply of any unexpected event that might undermine the Empire's majestic image on the day of the SaintNapoleon. This defensiveness accounted for local officials' obsession with controlling any information that might emasculate their power over their own political community. An example of this Foucaldian disposition to "define the truth" took place at Yvetot (Seine-Inferieure) in 1867 when official authorities panicked after the official posters

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announcing the national festivity were lacerated on the eve of the celebrations. A large police operation was launched against the authors of this "heinous act," without any success. The subprefect became so alarmed that he asked the editors of all local newspapers not to report the incident-an injunction to which they readily agreed. 18 On the day Saint-Napoleon, there could only be good news.

Managing Contingencies Especially in the early years of the regime, local officials' efforts to ensure that the festivities proceeded smoothly gave rise to extreme forms ofmicromanagement. On the morning of August 15,1852, the somewhat overzealous subprefect of Gaillac (Tarn) summoned two former republican local activists, Messrs. Romeu and Nequille, to his office in order to warn them to "keep out of trouble" during the day. The two men assured him that they had long abjured their republican political beliefs. Although there is no evidence that they had indeed made such a renouncement (what else could they have said?), their assurance clearly came as a relief to the anxious Bonapartist officia1. 19 Elsewhere, political suspects themselves took the lead in offering reassurance as to their sympathies for the new order. At Pontarlier (Doubs), a former republican by the name of Girod, president of the town's choral society, organized a performance of his singers on the balcony of the Hotel de Ville on the day of the Saint-Napoleon in 1859-"shining evidence" beamed the subprefect "of his devotion to the emperor."20 Police surveillance was reinforced in the days immediately preceding and following the national festivity. A wide range of antisocial activity was caught in the net, from minor transgressions such as "allowing hens to roam the streets and dogs to foul the road"21 to a whole assortment of petty crimes. A summary report from the Gendarmerie of the Bordeaux area covering the period between August 15 and 20, 1857, gives a good indication of the sorts of misdemeanors committed all over France around the time of the Saint-Napoleon. Among the men arrested were Jean Rigal, a shoemaker, and Philippe Labarrere, a baker (warrants had been issued for their detention); Antoine Miriez, a joiner, and the young Etienne Dupey, a twelve-year-old (theft); and Messrs. Boulineau, Barre, Haben, Landreau, and Denis, all inhabitants of the commune of Ambares, who were arrested for "hunting without permission" (a common transgression all over France at this time of the year). Sadly, there was little festive rejoicing on August 15 for

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Baptiste Elis, who was found strangled to death in Castres; or for Antoine Cuvagne, who died when he found himself at the wrong end of a landslide; or even for Jean Balance, an employee of the Chemins de Fer du Midi, who returned home from the ceremonies at Biganos to find that his two roosters had been stolen. 22 This was one of the many perverse social effects of the national festivity: with police forces being detained elsewhere with higher duties and preoccupations, thieves all over France found themselves with a free hand. The maintenance of order was also a matter of ensuring that all necessary steps were taken to prepare appropriately for the ceremonies. To this end, the imperative of administrative cooperation and coordination was constantly emphasized. Mayors and prefects, state and church officials, civilian and military authorities were all inveigled into the proceedings, sometimes with curious consequences for the lower tiers of the bureaucracy. In order to guarantee that the entire population ofVaucouleurs (Meuse) would be apprised of all the details concerning the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon in 1856, the authorities decided that municipal posters were not sufficient. They drafted the police commissioner to walk round the whole town announcing the event; he was assisted by a police officer and several rural policemen and accompanied by a retinue of drummers from the musical corps of the local fire service. The local population apparently welcomed this "new mode of publication," as the deputy mayor somewhat pompously described it,23 although it must also have caused considerable mirth-and unintentionally offered creative ideas to the local fraternity of thieves and pyromaniacs. From the very outset, however, there was a tension between the authorities' desire to keep absolute control of the events, and ensure that everything occurred according to the preordained script of the festivity, and their equally genuine desire to see local populations loosen their inhibitions and simply enjoy themselves. The assumption, for many Bonapartists, was that such forms of outdoor sociability were conducive to good politics: "From a political standpoint we can say without error or exaggeration that it is precisely in such solemn occasions that our public spirit is formed without any constraint, and that it gives full voice to its genuine feelings. "24 Many officials agreed. "A beautiful and sincere celebration, which took place in an atmosphere of fraternity, order, and tranquility" was how the police commissioner ofVaucouleurs described the national celebrations in 1865;25 he was by now clearly accustomed to his role as public announcer of festivities. However these two notions, imposed order and popular

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spontaneity, often appeared almost literally to collide with each other, as in the report of the mayor of Elbeuf (Seine-Inferieure) in 1852, where it was stated that "the most admirable order did not cease to obtain, and everyone was animated by the most expansive joy."26 The same tension appeared in the summary of the mayor of the village of Saint-Jean-de-Bueges (Herault) in 1859: "In living memory we have never seen so much enthusiasm in our commune for the celebration of August 15; the greatest order was always present."27 This juxtaposition of these antinomic terms, "order" and "spontaneity," highlighted the concerns of local officials to preserve control over the festive narrative. But even the most zealous Bonapartist bureaucrats were helpless in the face of some forms of non-cooperation on the part of the public, especially in rural areas where the presence of the working populations of the towns and villages were required for the festivities' success. The month of August, in large parts of France, coincided with the harvest season, and in many communes, the peasants could ill afford to abandon their plows. In some villages, the hectic pace of work had a strongly adverse impact on the preparations for the Saint-Napoleon. At Frelinghien (Nord) in 1852, the mayor tried to gather his municipal councilors a few days before the festivity to allocate funds for the celebrations. However, no decisions could be taken because they could not make a quorum; most of the councilors had ignored his summons and remained in their fields. 28 The prefect of Seine-et-Oise admitted in 1856 that the harvest had severely limited the scope of celebrations in his department-or at least offered a very convenient excuse to those who did not wish to partake in them. 29 Likewise, at Pasques (Cote d'Or) in 1854, the municipality did not organize games or evening dances "on the grounds of the great fatigue experienced by the locals after the harvest."3o And gathering the crops was not the end of their labors: the produce also had to be sold. The mayor of Autreche (Indre-et-Loire) thus warned the prefect that the national festivities would be parsimoniously attended in his locality in 1854, as this was the market day in the neighboring town of Chateaurenault. 31 Nature also could wreak havoc with a festivity that largely took place outdoors. Wind and rain drove peasants to their fields; these natural elements also hampered the plans of those villagers and townsfolk intent on celebrating the festivity outside. In the commune of Saint-Mihiel (Meuse) in 1856, the festivities were interrupted (or perhaps enhanced) by "a frightful storm." Lightning struck near the village three times, probably causing the death of a soldier, whose body

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was found in an adjacent field the following morning. 32 In Macon (Saone-et-Loire), the celebrations for the birth of the imperial prince were prevented by "persistent rain," a bitter blow to a region already suffering from floods. 33 On the day of the Saint-Napoleon in 1857, it poured all across central, southern, and eastern France; in Dijon and Besanc;on all outdoor events (including the troop review and the fireworks display) were cancelled. 34 The prefect of the Meuse announced, quite precisely, that it was the first time in six years that it had rained in Bar-Ie-Duc on August 15 (he added, perhaps incautiously, that the local farmers were not too displeased).35 At Villefranche (Aveyron) in 1860, the day ceremonies passed without incident, but at six in the evening "a terrible storm fell upon the locality and ruined all the illuminations that had been prepared."36 In 1865, the "immense crowd" that was watching and participating in the public amusements in Le Havre was dispersed by "a torrential downpour, which lasted an hour and sent everyone home."37 Even Napoleon the Great had to concede defeat in the face of strong gusts: in Paris in 1852, the illuminations of the upper part of the Vendome column (including the statue of Bonaparte at the top) were snuffed out by the strong winds, leaving only the lower half of the monument in public view-a "shapeless and truncated colonnade."38 Likewise, the centenary celebrations of the birth of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1869 were ruined in Monteux (Vaucluse) by the Northern wind, which prevented the lighting of all the illuminations-a wind that "was not merely blowing, it was howling."39 Wind could also ruin carefully prepared acoustic effects, as at Cahors (Lot) in 1862 when a vast crowd gathered by the river in the evening to watch the fireworks display and listen to a concert given by the choral society. The singers were placed on a large illuminated wooden raft that had been mounted in the middle of the river Lot. The strong wind, however, blew their melodies in the opposite direction of the crowd, which was left with a spectacle of lumiere but without any son. 40 In addition, rumors similarly could interfere with the successful celebration of the Saint-Napoleon. Lying halfway between reality and deception, rumors were a widespread feature of social life in rural France. The effects of politically manipulated rumors on the festivities will be covered in Chapters 9 and 10. However, there were other forms of gossip that could have material consequences on the national celebrations. For example, the mayor of the commune of Salives (Cote d'Or) explained the poor turnout of his administres in 1856 as follows: "The harvest is not over; the storms of the previous days; the

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rumor that had been spreading, no doubt with great exaggeration, concerning the devastation of nearby fields; the thunder that was still rumbling in the distance; all of this had spread the alarm, and as a result, all the villagers had rushed to fields to gather the wheat that had been harvested."41

Incidents and Accidents Most dramatically, epidemics could sweep through entire communities, provoking in the most extreme cases a complete collapse of all physical activities. The mayor of Saint-Seine-en-Bache (Cote d'Or), clearly at his wit's end, filed this haunting report in 1859: "Three quarters of our population is ill. We are all devoured by fever. In the streets of the village we see only spectres."42 The cholera epidemic of 1854 was especially deadly, provoking "complete consternation" in many departments all over the country.43 In ArIes (Bouches-du-Rhone), the "lamentable sanitary situation and the grief of so many families have prevented all forms of public rejoicings";44 similarly, in Mirebeau (Cote d'Or), "the only feeling in the commune has been one of great and profound sadness since the epidemic."45 Like the harvest, cholera too could be used by those seeking to spoil the celebrations, as was candidly admitted by the police commissioner of Ancerville (Meuse): "In general those who are hostile to the government in some way or the other have successfully exploited the circumstance of the epidemic to bring the authorities not to celebrate the festivity."46 In counterpoint to these disturbances caused by nature, various accidents also affected the national festivities. In the most severe cases there were fatalities. In Gaillac (Tarn), Rosalie Galinier, a young woman from the locality, was killed by a fireworks explosion during the evening festivities in 1858. 47 At Le Havre in 1865, a ten-year-old child drowned after watching the evening fireworks display from an elevation; his body was recovered only the following morning. 48 Death was indeed the great leveler, making no distinction of age or occupation: in 1856, the mayor of Dijon traveled to Paris to attend the celebrations in honor of the birth of the imperial prince. He collapsed and died after witnessing the baptism ceremony. The population of Dijon, which had been preparing lavish celebrations for the young-born infant, instead found itself hosting a funeral for its deceased official.49 Most of the incidents, however, were far more mundane. The widespread use of illuminations provoked numerous blazes. In 1852, the

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evening celebrations at Ligny (Yonne) ended abruptly when the population, which had gathered in the village square, "caught sight of a blaze in one of the main buildings." By the time the fire was extinguished, no one was really in a festive mood-especially not the local firemen. 50 In 1860, in the rural commune of Puy-Guillaume (Puy-de-

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Dome) the illuminations caused a fire that burnt down the village cafe; the loss "would have been considerable had the owner not been insured."51 Even more problematic were the fireworks, which could cause serious damage in towns and cities. In Marseille in 1858, several rockets fired from the Place Castellane landed on a sulfur refinery in the nearby Rue des Bonhommes; one of the missiles pierced the roof and landed directly into a container of refined sulfur; the ensuing series of explosions added a spectacular, if not entirely planned, dimension to the evening illumination of the city skyline. 52 On the Saint-Napoleon in 1864 in Limoges, a woman, rushing out of the house to catch sight of the evening fireworks display on the Champ de Juillet, failed properly to extinguish her lamp; the ensuing fire ravaged the entire neighborhood and financially ruined nearly 2,000 families. 53 The large amounts of gunpowder deployed on the day of the national festivity also brought about some accidents. The firing of cannons and the discharge of muskets and weapons of all kinds at all hours of the day and after the evening fireworks displays created propitious conditions for mishaps. A typical example was the misfortune suffered by the rural policeman of the commune of Ancerville (Meuse), who, in 1861, had to have the fingers of his left hand amputated after his weapon exploded during the official ceremonies. 54 More fortunate was the shoemaker Jean Villebrun, a member of the Villeneuve-les-Beziers military society, who tried in 1857 to show off his double-barreled rifle to his comrades. As he swung the weapon off his shoulder and prepared to take aim at a passing bird, a shot accidentally fired, narrowly missing his face but taking off his hat, which was projected high into the air;55 the lucky bird, however, survived unscathed. In SaintGilles (Gard), the traditional bull race of the Saint-Napoleon ended with a bull charging into a group of spectators and injuring one man. The report noted laconically that "the animal then escaped."56

Alcoholic Excesses More significant even than gunpowder (being cheaper, more freely available, and subject to far fewer controls), alcohol was probably the largest single cause of trouble on the Saint-Napoleon. Its presence was not, however, a sufficient condition for disorder. In very many communes, intoxicating beverages were served in carefully measured quantities-especially when provided at the mayor's expense. In Meynes (Gard), the first magistrate invited the population to come for a mid-

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afternoon drink; he had laid on "three barrels of beer and a few bottles of wine." His report noted that "not a single member of the commune was absent from this rendezvous";57 in all likelihood, they did not stay for very long either. Alcohol could also be used for wider social purposes, such as charity; in 1865 at Monteux (Vaucluse), the inhabitants were invited to purchase a drink from a "fountain of wine" set up by the municipality; proceeds went to local families in need. 58 Elsewhere, however, events unfolded at a much less sedate pace. In the somewhat prudish opinion of the subprefect of Montbeliard, alcohol was a propitious inducement for "young people of both sexes to indulge in excessive drinking and libertine behavior."59 And the young were not the only ones to gorge themselves on the day of the national festivity. If the mayor was not willing to provide large amounts of drink, local populations could always repair to their local tavern, where they were welcomed with open arms. The effect on their faculties, though, could be severe. Here, for example, is the mayor's account of the celebration of the national festivity in the village of Sorbey (Meuse) in 1869: In the afternoon, all the inhabitants got together in the inns and following a bizarre custom, which consists in believing that in order appropriately to celebrate the festivity of the Emperor, it is necessary for one's legs to refuse to carry their owner, they started to drink; and they perfectly accomplished the objective that they had aimed for. Around midnight they could be seen returning to their homes having completed their mission, and many were in need of one or even several helpers to carry them. And the strangest thing is that these people are generally a model of sobriety.60 Such high levels of alcohol consumption inevitably provoked incidents. Closing time was an especially delicate moment for local lawenforcement officers, when the atmosphere among patrons could swing dramatically from pleasantly mindless intoxication to vitriolic and potentially violent remonstration. In 1869, the rural policeman of the commune of Quincy (Meuse) entered the local inn after midnight to close proceedings down, after complaints from the neighbors about the level of noise. The clients refused to leave; insult was added to injury when the officer was copiously abused by the owner, one Hubert Laurent. 61 Things could turn nasty, too; in the nearby village of Verneuil-Petit, on the night of the national festivity, the rural policeman who tried to break up a fight between drunken youths in the

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local cabaret was severely beaten Up.62 At Dijon in 1857, a brawl broke out among different groups of young men who "had been drinking heavily"; numerous injuries were sustained and it took the intervention of both the police and the gendarmerie to bring things under contro1. 63 Local innkeepers frequently campaigned for an extension of opening hours, especially on festive days; incidents such as these invariably drew strong appeals against any such measures of liberalization: "The heads of these establishments would be the only ones who would gain; the interests of families would suffer greatly, and the claims of morality perhaps even more."64 Another official warned against "this plague of the cabaret, which causes serious disorders and provokes bad habits, especially among children. "65 Mayors would often order the temporary closure of inns where incidents took place, as at Benais (Indre-etLoire) in 1862 after three inebriated revelers insulted the rural policeman after being asked to leave on the night of the SaintNapoleon. 66 Excessive consumption of wine and beer could also, in classic fashion, bring back to the surface underlying antagonisms and conflicts among locals. Often barely contained within the realms of civility, petty factional disputes within communes could boil over when alcohol was added to the equation. For instance, in Fabriques (Herault), there was a scuffle on the evening of the national festivity between the members of rival musical clans. The students of the Philharmonic Society, clearly favored by local officials, were performing in the town square when they were pelted with tomatoes and stones by "members of the other musical corps, aided and abetted by part of the audience."67 At Monfort (Gers) in 1862, the local musicians (not for the first time) picked a fight with the stewards responsible for maintaining order on the day of the festivity. The police commissioner did not pass up on the obvious bon mot, lamenting the fact that "this so-called philharmonic society is in fact nothing but a source of disharmony in the entire locality."68 Political passions, which may well have been an element in the above incidents, were often brought up through these alcohol-related incidents. In 1854 in the village of Broxeele (Nord), the festive atmosphere was considerably dampened by the action of one Dominique Marcotte, a local peasant, who "finding himself in a state of inebriation picked up and smashed with his feet the statue of His Majesty the Emperor that was on display in the mairie."69 In Greulzin (also in the Nord), the attempt to close down a tavern provoked a "general disorder," with the patrons spilling out in the street "uttering cries that

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sounded almost inhuman." The drunken citizens then proceeded to the house of the Bonapartist mayor, where they shouted, "Long live the emperor!" in the most sarcastic fashion possible. This cabaret was frequented by political groups that were "known for their hostility towards the present government."70 Drink could even turn a peaceful gathering of spectators into a murderous mob. At Lyon on the evening of the national celebrations in 1865, an incident in which a boat blocked the view of a group of local citizens who had assembled on the deck of a hired ship to watch the fireworks display on the Saone river degenerated rapidly; by the time the police had intervened, the body of a sailor had to be recovered from the water; he had been lynched by the passengers.7 1 However, the largest single group responsible for alcohol-related incidents during the festivities was soldiers. In overall terms, the image of the military remained highly positive during the festivities-not only because of the army's prestigious role in the ceremonies, but also through the massive public identification with the Medailles de Sainte-Helene, which was noted in the previous chapter. But in some localities this good reputation was somewhat tarnished by the actions of a minority of soldiers who, once intoxicated, provoked all sorts of problems: scuffles among each other, as at Verdun (Meuse) in 1865 when "a hundred cavalrymen tried to disarm an equal number of infantrymen, and there were several injuries on both sides";72 brawls with other lawenforcement officials, as at Clermont-Ferrand (Puy-de-Dome) in 1861 when a drunken officer "seriously injured the local police commissioner with two blows of his sabre";73 damage against property, as at Bar-Ie-Due (Meuse) in 1862 when a posse of drunken soldiers threw stones at a brothel and at neighboring houses, injuring one of the residents;74 and harassment of innocent civilians, as at Maubeuge (Nord) in 1853 when soldiers from the local garrison (assisted by gendarmes) "provoked and beat up a large number of peaceful citizens and then put them in jail."75 The Maubeuge incident provoked a furor in the entire department; the military high command claimed that the soldiers had been acting in self-defense and blamed the conduct of the local justice of the peace. 76 The subprefect, for his part, pointed to a deeper underlying problem: "The poor relations that have developed of late between the military and the local bourgeoisie"-a state of affairs that was to his mind largely the result of the heavy-handedness of the army, which "has tended to treat the population as if they were under martial law."77 The local official also accused many of the local soldiers of

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overt hostility to the Bonapartist regime; he had even spotted one of them throwing mud at an illumination of the imperial eagle.7 8 In some parts of France, this animosity between military and civilian communities led to retaliation attacks against soldiers. On the evening of the national festivity at Dijon in 1852, two inebriated locals attacked a soldier but were overpowered by their victim and later arrested. 79 Throughout the festivities, and especially in the final years of the Second Empire, there is evidence that this phenomenon of alcoholism was a source of growing concern to the authorities. This was especially the case with mayors, who felt particularly exposed when such incidents occurred. The mayor of the commune of Claret (Herault) did not serve any alcoholic drinks at the celebrations of the national festivity in 1866, and in subsequent years; many of his colleagues across France started to follow his example. 80 Other first magistrates became increasingly worried about the maintenance of order. In the town of Rocquevaire (Bouches-du-Rhone), the mayor pleaded with the prefect for help with policing his commune during the Saint-Napoleon celebrations. He could rely on one rural policeman and five or six gendarmes, but was expecting nearly eight thousand visitors to descend upon the locality-more than the population of the town. "With so few forces at my disposal," he asked, "how can you expect me to take the necessary measures to maintain public order and especially to prevent brawls?"81 Similar worries were formulated at all echelons of imperial society in the 1860s when the problems of alcoholism became a source of serious concern at national and regional levels. 82 In the face of this veritable "plague," there were growing fears that the dream of a festivity that united all the people of France could turn into an ugly nightmare. Spontaneously unregulated social behavior was beginning to be perceived as a threat to the integrity of the regime itself and to the core social and moral values for which it stood. In 1868, the imperial senate received a petition signaling the widespread development of alcoholism in France and promised to produce a report on the question; the minister of the interior also asked all his prefects to send him an account of alcohol-related incidents in their departments and the moral and social problems to which they gave rise. 83 This threat of moral dissolution was highlighted most graphically, and perhaps somewhat presciently, by an anonymous letter received by the prefect of the Nord after the celebrations of the national fes-

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tivity in 1869. The author, a resident of Lille, lamented the "bacchanalia" that had accompanied the festivities in the town on the night of August 15. He singled out as especially disgraceful the state of complete inebriation in which the local military garrison had fallen: "There is surely no other town in the whole of France that has witnessed such hideous baseness." Such laxity, he warned, "could only leave the door open to all kinds of disorder." He concluded by warning the prefect that "the future will teach those who have power in their hands how dangerous it is to allow popular passions to slip out of control; the security of a state depends on the respect of order and of public morals."84

Sobering Considerations Although the imperial authorities' early fears about the riotous degeneration of the festivities did not materialize, their efforts to mould public attitudes and public behavior on the day of the Saint-Napoleon ran into unforeseen difficulties. The weather disrupted the celebrations in some places, demonstrating the unfortunate truth that even the best plans could come to nothing if Mother Nature deemed otherwise. In other localities, however, rural habits (indifference, drinking, harvesting-or indeed a lethal mixture of all three) could overshadow the celebrations. In the narrative structure of this book, this chapter represents a point of transition, opening the way (after the "positive" phenomena outlined in the early chapters) for the emergence of substantive forms of non-cooperative and dissident behavior on the part of state officials, clerics, and assorted political adversaries of the regime. But there is also a deeper message, which has much wider implications than the politics of the Second Empire. Despite the best efforts (and undeniable successes) of many nineteenth-century regimes to reach out to the public in provincial and rural France, and for all their transformations of the fabric of economic and social life, there were important senses in which traditional rural mentalities, manners, and ways of life continued unabated. This point is not intended to take anything away from the scenes of collective enthusiasm that have been described in previous chapters-but merely to set them in (sobering) perspective.

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1861, the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon in the town of Valenciennes (Nord) were "somewhat cold," in the words of the subprefect. This was something of an understatement. Apart from the organization of a small distribution of food to the poor, the municipality of Valenciennes did nothing to commemorate the SaintNapoleon in this commune. The religious ceremony and the military review took place, but they were organized by the church and the Army respectively. The Mutual Aid Society did hold a musical event in the evening, but entry cost one franc-a prohibitive fee for most of the common folk. Very few of the town's public buildings and houses were lit up, and even in these exceptional cases "the illuminations were insignificant." Even the troop review had been lackluster. During the soldiers' procession the colonel had shouted, "Long live the emperor!" but his cry had met with a deafening silence not only from the crowd but also from within the ranks of his own troops, the 7th regiment of Dragons. 1 Why such sullenness? The root of the problem, according to a local official, was the attitude of the mayor of Valenciennes, a man notorious for his hostility toward the Second Empire. Indeed, his approach to the festivity was summed up by the fact that he had left town a few days prior to August 15 "to spend a few days in the countryside."2 It was little wonder, with such an example being set by the first magistrate of the commune, that the vast majority of public officials had taken a strictly minimalist attitude toward the national festivity. The 120

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official illustrated this lamentable disposition among the local bureaucracy by appending to his report a list of all state functionaries "who had not illuminated their homes during the national festivity." It was an edifying roll. The nineteen errant officials who were specifically named included the regimental colonel (the very man who had urged his troops and the public to wish a long life to Napoleon III), the mining engineer, the public works engineer, the director of postal services, the judge, the tax collector, the controller of weights and measures, the justice of the peace, the customs inspector, the deputy public prosecutor, and the presidents of the civil and commercial tribunals; also upbraided for their deficient illuminations were a number of lower-ranking military officers, as well as "all the municipal councilors, the notaries and their clerks, the fathers of Christian doctrine, and all the priests."3 In truth, it seemed that almost no public official in Valenciennes had made much of an effort to celebrate the SaintNapoleon.

Majesty in Action The Valenciennes episode, although not typical of the way in which the national festivity was celebrated by state officials, was not uncommon. Indeed, during the 1860s, dismayed Bonapartist officials reported incidents of a similar nature with increasing regularity. The interest of such stories lies not only in the light they shed upon the external and popular impacts of the Saint-Napoleon, but also in what they reveal about the workings of the imperial state-most notably the relationship between its upper and lower reaches. Through the celebrations, the Second Empire and its supporters sought to underscore the majesty of the Bonapartist state-a sense of splendor and grandeur that had many facets. It was personally embodied in the emperor, institutionally reflected in the might of state officialdom, physically illustrated by the regime's capacity to guarantee order and public safety, and practically displayed in the public turnout on the day of the fete. The Saint-Napoleon was in this sense a barometer of the state's authority: the smoothness of the celebrations (and the size of the crowds) were seen by the regime as a gauge of the state's functional integration and its capacity to project effectively its power. Bureaucrats all over the country were expected to participate actively in this process of civic regeneration and to use the festivity as an arena for uniting the citizenry in a common identification with Emperor Napoleon III and the collective principles of citizenship he represented.

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The blueprint for this civic order, which was extensively cited by state officials throughout the 1850s, was the speech given by LouisNapoleon at Bordeaux in October 1852-a few months before the restoration of the Empire. At that time, the future emperor spoke of the special understanding he had come to develop with the people of France: The people know that, in 1852, society was on the brink of collapse because each party was already justifying the general wreckage in the hope of planting its banner on the debris that might remain. The people are grateful to me for having saved the ship by raising only the banner of France.... Today, France surrounds me with its sympathies because I am not of the family of ideologues. To act in the best interests of the country, there is no need for new philosophical systems. We must instead have confidence in the present and provide security for the future. 4 This statement encapsulated all the key principles of Napoleonic ideology: faith in the transcendental values of the nation; strong hostility to parties and the claims of particularist groups, coupled with a belief in the capacity of the state to serve the people as a whole; and a celebration of the special link between the sovereign ruler and the people. The state bureaucracy was to echo and reverberate these principles among local communities-a requirement that was at its most pressing during the head of state's frequent visits to the provinces, which were meticulously planned by local officials. Napoleon III was one of the first modern political rulers to develop the systematic practice of officially traveling to different parts of his country. During these journeys, which began with his trip to the Midi in autumn 1852 and continued throughout his reign, the emperor passed through a large number of towns and villages. State officials were fully mobilized on these occasions and were expected to help draw out large and enthusiastic crowds. Any failure-or even anything less than a comprehensive success-could blight the image of local officials and even prematurely end the career of a prefect. 5 On the whole, however, this mass mobilization was achieved; it was no doubt facilitated by the genuine popularity enjoyed by Napoleon III in provincial and rural parts of France. Thus, during the imperial family's visit to Normandy and Brittany in August 1858, the procureur of Bayeux reported that "the presence of the emperor and the empress have stimulated among

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[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Napoleon III, Emperor of the French People. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The theme of majesty, represented in all its diversity: the emperor is hailed here as the provider of peace, harmony, and prosperity; the builder of "great works" in Paris and in the provinces; and the disseminator of religious values. Among the important background symbols are the Napoleonic eagle (above the emperor) and Masonic emblems (on the left).

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our populations a strong and profound sense of sympathy."6 His colleague from Cherbourg noted that, during Napoleon Ill's visit, "the town was illuminated like it had never been before. All the streets, all the houses, all the windows were scintillating with venetian lanterns and colored glass."7 Such visits served to reaffirm the bonds between the monarch and his people, but also to demonstrate the emperor's sense of solidarity with the poor and his compassion for the victims of epidemics and natural disasters. After the severe floods of 1856 in the eastern departments, for example, Napoleon III made a well-publicized visit to the region; at each of his stops he offered large donations to help those who had lost their homes. 8 The positive political effects of such journeys were underlined by local officials: "The visit of His Majesty in the flooded departments has had an enormous effect on local populations, and has without any doubt greatly contributed to the enthusiasm displayed on the occasion of the national festivities."9 Napoleon Ill's image and political values were thus used by local state officials to promote the success of the Saint-Napoleon. The burden of expounding the virtues of civic and political unity also fell on the shoulders of the bureaucracy; and the language used by these agents often reflected the strong pressure they felt to come up with a good celebration. The mayor of Vergeze (Gard), for example, urged the inhabitants of his commune to "come together, completely forgetting the past, and to give to this festivity, through a demonstration of our concord, all the brilliance that it deserves"-a statement that clearly implied that this "concord" was yet to be achieved. lO In a large number of reports this idyllic communion of the citizenry was presented as already fully realized. This harmony came in a variety of forms. In some places, it appeared as the transcendence of all differences (whether personal or ideological); at Vedenes (Vaucluse), the mayor described the first Saint-Napoleon celebration in 1852 in these terms: "The most perfect tranquility did not cease to reign at all moments. All the inhabitants without distinction of opinion had gathered and were having fun together and were respecting each other."ll In other towns and villages, the unity of the fete was presented in social terms-a celebration of "the perfect harmony that has not ceased to exist among all classes of society," in the words of the mayor of Commercy (Meuse) in 1858. 12 In rural parts of the country, this sense of collective identification was sometimes conveyed without any sociological distinctions. The mayor of Bouziques (Herault) thus proudly reported in 1859 that "the festivity of the Saint-Napoleon has been

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marked in our small commune by unanimous expressions of joy on the part of the inhabitants."13 The most striking depiction of this type of social concord was the claim that the festivity had drawn together men bitterly divided along partisan lines-either prior to 1851 or even thereafter. "I am happy to announce that the most pleasing harmony reigns at the moment among all inhabitants, who have put all their past quarrels behind them," chirped the mayor of Tourtour (Var) in 1859. 14 At Neufchatel in 1861, the subprefect wrote that the population celebrated the national festivity with "eagerness and unanimity," adding that "no one, even among those who are known to have held the most radical ideas of 1848 or are believed to incline toward legitimism, was missing from the church ceremony."15 This theme of political reconciliation was reinforced by the frequent amnesties granted by Napoleon IlIon the occasion of the national festivity-among the most comprehensive being the amnesties of 1859 and 1869; the former enabled many political exiles to return to France and the latter granted a full pardon to all those convicted of political crimes. A local Bonapartist newspaper welcomed the 1869 amnesty, and in so doing underlined the changing physiognomy of the national festivities over time: For many years, we have celebrated on August 15 memories of glory and military greatness; we have celebrated the memories of restored order, of a country saved from revolutions and restored to itself. These memories are dear to us and they could suffice to demonstrate a magnificent reign, but Napoleon III had another mission to accomplish, and after having completed the tasks of order and glory, he has courageously initiated the task of building liberty and fostering national reconciliation. 16 This final goal was, of course, a pious dream, and its repetition in official discourse invites a measure of skepticism of these accounts of local unity cited above. In some cases, local officials no doubt slightly exaggerated the degree of harmony that presided over the festivities, telling their hierarchical superiors what they wanted to hear. Confirmation of this comes from the widespread tendency in official reports-sometimes in the very same ones that emphasized the themes of unity and reconciliation-to distinguish among meritorious and unworthy citizens. This distinction typically emerged when official accounts dwelled on the popular character of the celebrations. Especially

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in the larger towns and cities, state officials tended to present public enthusiasm during the Saint-Napoleon as emanating essentially from the working people: "The working class, which has been the most favored class during these festivities, has warmly demonstrated the deep satisfaction it was experiencing."17 Official reports from urban France repeatedly offered striking contrasts between the restrained and cold behavior of the more affluent sections of society and the overt enthusiasm of the "people." In 1858, the police commissioner of Aix noted that "most of houses have been generously decked with flags"; but at the same time, he could not help noticing that "there were many more banners flying above the homes of the workers than above the inhabitations of the aristocracy."18 In 1860, and again in 1861, the procureur-general of Besanc;on drew attention to the same phenomenon in his report: "A very large number of inhabitants had rushed to decorate the front of their homes with flags and to illuminate them in the evening. It was mostly in the popular neighborhoods that these manifestations were widespread and significant."19 In the same year, his colleague from Nl'mes noted that the national festivity had been celebrated with "greater enthusiasm than in previous years," a fact that he explained by the "sincere support of the popular masses of the town and countryside."20 But when such enthusiasm was lacking, as it clearly was at Millau (Aveyron) in 1857, it was up to the bureaucracy to provide a "minimum service": The subprefect noted that "there were large crowds on the streets but, with a very small number of exceptions, it was only the public functionaries who illuminated their homes."21

Partisan Undertones The ecumenical discourse of the Saint-Napoleon, in which state agents sought to draw all sections of the population together irrespective of their political opinions, was thus qualified by a tendency among local officials to offer sociological distinctions between enthusiastic and passive sections of society. This conceptual slippage already altered the characterization of the fete, turning it into an event celebrated not by the whole people but only by sections of it. This tendency by state officials to narrow down the range of civic participation was powerfully reinforced by another widespread practice, whereby Bonapartist elites (both national and local) presented the festivities as an exclusive celebration of their own distinct political lineage and political culture.

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It is not surprising, of course, that some imperial officials should have responded to the pressure to produce a good festivity by seeking to turn the Saint-Napoleon into a partisan fete. Battles of political symbolisms had raged across France for much of the nineteenth century, with political groups seeking to capture popular imagination by occupying public and private spaces through a range of distinct emblems and civic practices. The establishment of the fete du 15 aout was a Bonapartist expression of this strategy, which required not just the cultivation of the Napoleonic tradition but also the obliteration of all competing versions of the French national epic. Upon their accession to office, the Bonapartists thus began by ruthlessly destroying any symbolic traces of the republican order that had preceded them. The republican motto of liberte-egalite-fraternite was wiped off the face of all public buildings, and the "trees of liberty," which had been ceremoniously planted under the Second Republic, were cut down in early 1852. 22 Such signs and symbols were at best distractions from the principles which should guide the political community, and at worst they represented misleading and potentially dangerous memories of the Revolutionary past. As a local Bonapartist newspaper put it: "The legend of a great people should not be diversely or falsely interpreted."23 But these falsehoods needed also to be countered by the narration of the "true" legend-hence the central role of the imperial veterans, as noted earlier, as well as the repeated association of the Saint-Napoleon festivities with distinct elements of Bonapartist mythology and practice. State officials frequently associated the national celebrations with the inauguration of public monuments to honor specific aspects of the imperial legend. At Metz in 1860, the festivities thus centered upon the unveiling of a statue of Marshal Michel Ney, military hero of the First Empire and great Bonapartist martyr of the Restoration (he was killed by the Bourbons). The statue was uncovered with great pomp in one of the town's main squares in the presence of local and national Bonapartist dignitaries, notably Marshal Franc;ois Canrobert. As a local official noted: "The festivity of the emperor was conjoined with the inaugural ceremony of the statue."24 Such celebrations were also often acts of reparation against individuals or institutions that had been forgotten by posterity or whose reputations had been sullied by the Bonapartists' political adversaries. In some cases, reparation took on a physical form: in the town of Die (Drome) in 1854, the national festivity provided the opportunity for the rebuilding of an old public monument, "the column that had been erected in the Year IX to Bon-

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aparte, First Consul and that had been pulled down in 1814 by the enemies of our glory."25 These examples illustrate not only how the state could be used to perpetuate the Bonapartist legend, but also how Napoleonic memories and myths continued to flourish spontaneously among local political communities between 1815 and 1848. Some local functionaries went to remarkable lengths to underscore their loyalty. The subprefect of Carpentras ended his long report on the festivities of 1865 by expressing the hope that their success would encourage "the creation and development of a Napoleonic party" in the locality.26 The mayor of Vergigny (Yonne) reported that he had first conceived the idea of publicly celebrating the anniversary of the Saint-Napoleon in 1850 (under the Second Republic!) and that he had actually organized festivities in his locality on August 15, 1851, without precisely informing the citizens of his commune of their "real purpose" (the restoration of the Empire). This ingenious-but also somewhat disingenuous-official had even had recourse to a form of subliminal advertising to convey his political message to his citizens: the evening fireworks display, which was commissioned and paid for by the mayor from his personal funds, had ended with a large illumination of the figure three-"the number of the prince-president."27 Partisanship was also frequently expressed-especially in the early years of the regime-by the celebration of one of the most distinct instruments of the Bonapartist political system: the plebiscite. The anniversary of the Saint-Napoleon was in many communes an opportunity for local Bonapartist officials to celebrate the Second Empire's restoration of universal suffrage and the legitimate roots of the state in mass democracy. In the rural commune of Moulis (Gironde), the Bonapartists received quasi-unanimous support in the plebiscite of December 1851, which gave popular sanction to Louis-Napoleon's coup d'etat. Eight months later, when it came to celebrate the national festivity, the church tower was draped with an enormous flag upon which was inscribed this telling reminder of local Bonapartist political supremacy: "Moulis: 315 'yes' votes. "28 State officials effectively turned the Saint-Napoleon into an exercise in political triumphalism, with the implicit stigmatization of those few who had dared express their opposition to the coup d"etat in this locality.

Bureaucratic Majesty The pressures brought to bear on state officials by the regime on August 15 produced a highly contradictory festive discourse: at one

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level, it sought to bring together the French people in a celebration of their transcendental unity under the sovereign rule of the emperor, but at another level, it also separated the wheat from the chaff, the "good" people from those "wicked" elements who refused to recognize themselves in the regime and its Napoleonic lineage. The SaintNapoleon was a festival of togetherness in which the whole of the French people were expected to participate under the benevolent patronage of state officials, but at the same time, it could become a partisan gathering, where only men and women of the "right" ideological disposition were welcomed. These were not rigid, hard-andfast distinctions: these contrasting characterizations could often be found in the same locality (indeed in the speech of the same official), bearing witness to the strange mixture of strength and vulnerability, inclusiveness and sectarianism, which remained the hallmark of the Second Empire throughout its existence. In either context-whether to draw the population together or to celebrate the partisan lineage of Bonapartism-the regime relied heavily on its bureaucratic agents to "deliver" on August 15. And these external goals, crucial to the success of the Saint-Napoleon, made it all the more imperative that the demeanor of state officials should be irreproachable on the day of the national festivity. Indeed, this internal exemplarity was regarded so critically that the regime devised an implicit "code of practice" to be followed by all state functionaries-a blueprint formulated in circular letters sent from various ministries in Paris, which (following the pyramidal structure of authority) was then disseminated at local levels through prefects, bishops, magistrates, and police and army officers. This majestic code sought comprehensively to regulate the behavior and practices of state officials, providing injunctions as to what was expected of them in terms of their attitude and their functional cooperation with one another-all the way down to their attire. Protocol was extremely strict in this respect: in 1856, the newly appointed mayor of Vesoul (Haute-Savoie) wrote to the minister of the interior asking whether he could attend the official ceremony wearing a suit and his tricolor sash, given that he did not possess a mayoral uniform. The answer came back by return of post: all functionaries had to wear their uniforms, and "there could be no exception to this rule."29 In some parts of the country, even the most minute deviations from expected norms were identified and commented upon. In 1857, for example, the police commissioner ofVaucouleurs (Meuse) drew up a table detailing the practices of public officials during the

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national festivity in the twenty communes of his canton. Information was provided for each commune under six separate headings, including such matters as whether the firemen had been invited to join the civic procession to church, whether the municipal councilors had attended the Te Deum, and even whether "the mayors and their deputies were wearing their official sash. "30 In many parts of France-especially in Paris and in rural communes with strong political support for the Bonapartist regime-such plans were successfully adhered to, as the first four chapters of this book attest. From the very outset, however, many state officials rebelled against this Bonapartist attempt to impose a majestic code of behavior upon them during the national festivity. In some localities, instances of rebellion were widespread; in others, they were the work of small minorities-or even single individuals, as with the justice of the peace of Pavilly (Seine-Inferieure), who obstinately stayed away from all Saint-Napoleon celebrations between 1852 and 1858. 31 But this was no isolated incident. In the towns and cities of the Second Empire, as well as in the deepest countryside, during the early days of the regime no less than in its final years, in Bonapartist strongholds as well as in areas with strong legitimist and republican support, elements of the French bureaucracy distinguished themselves by celebrating the national festivity with the utmost restraint. This minimalism was often expressed in reports-or even better in the failure to send in reports, a phenomenon so widespread in some departments that standard reminders were printed by the prefecture and routinely dispatched to recalcitrant mayors. The responses to these missives often illustrated the palpable absence of administrative involvement in the festivities. 32 The mayor of Belsey (Cote d'Or) replied in 1852 that "I did not think this festivity was a big deal";33 his colleague from Merens (Gers) curtly wrote back: "I have no report to offer in connection with the festivity of H. M. the emperor, other than that we sang the Te Deum in his honor."34 It is not difficult to imagine how little breath this zealous agent and his officials must have expended in the execution of this chant. Indeed, minimalism could be achieved by limiting the use of this most precious of bureaucratic commodities, the vocal cords. The police commissioner of Bar-Ie-Duc (Meuse) was appalled by the "tepidity" with which the "functionaries of the various public administrations chanted, "Long live the emperor!" after the troop review in 1853. 35 The same lack of bureaucratic enthusiasm was evident at Douai in 1865, when the mayor and two firemen "made a show of not joining

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the cry of 'Long live the emperor'" (this remarkable achievement should be noted: combining the absence of a gesture with an ostentatious effect).36 Even the military was not exempt from this apathy. The subprefect of Castres noted sourly in 1858 that not a single soldier had wished long life to Napoleon III after the traditional troop review. 37 The police commissioner of Amiens made the same melancholy observation in 1869: "As is now customary, the national guard marched without a single cry of 'Long live the emperor!' being uttered, even though the only people present were the zealous and rightthinking people."38 Another common (and undoubtedly well-tested) bureaucratic tactic was absenteeism-typically at the Te Deum ceremony, such as when the deputy mayor of the commune of Blesnes (Marne) did not attend in 1860;39 similarly, large numbers of municipal councilors in the rural communes of Branches, Villiers, and Guerchy (Yonne) avoided the ceremony in 1863. 40 At Castelnau (Gironde), there was only one municipal councilor in attendance at the Te Deum in 1864: the rest of his colleagues did not bother to attend, imitating the mayor who "had left the 10cality."41 Often, these absentees were repeat offenders: the six retired army officers who failed to attend the Te Deum in Commercy (Meuse) in 1854 had been absent for the third consecutive year, clearly indicating that these were opponents of the regime, either legitimist or republican. 42 In the commune of Fontenay-sous-Fourmesle (Yonne) in August 1852, the rural policeman Gautrot refused to join the civic procession from the municipality to the church, preferring in the words of the mayor to "join his friends in drinking and making propaganda to disturb the peace."43 In the Cote d'Or in 1859, the prefect noticed the absence from church of the forest guard Lebon but spotted him shortly after the ceremony "drunk in the local tavern."44 Many of these absences were motivated by explicitly political considerations, as in the case of Monsieur Garaniol, a municipal employee who in 1852 failed to attend any of the festive ceremonies in his home town of Graulhet (Tarn). The police commissioner had no doubt what lay behind this abstinence, given that this official "knew very well how to attend the political saturnalia that used to be celebrated by the men of [18]48."45 At Montbazon (Indre-et-Loire) in 1856, the firemen refused to join the civic procession: some were protesting against their conditions of work, and others were expressing their political opposition to the regime, which was manifested in the formation of a "small committee."46 Several employees of the Ponts et Chaussees in Villefranche (Aveyron) stayed away from the Te Deum in 1867;

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according to the subprefect there was little doubt that this absence reflected the poor company they kept: "Sincere friends of the government have on many occasions expressed their astonishment at the social relations, the demeanor, and the language used by these functionaries."47 Even more widespread was the reluctance on the part of state officials to decorate and illuminate public buildings and their homes. These "unpatriotic" gestures did not go unnoticed. On the evening of the 1852 national festivity, the home of the local judge at Lavaur (Tarn) remained "obstinately dark"; he was known for his legitimist opinions, remarked the subprefect ruefully.48 Likewise, the judge at the civil tribunal at Auch (Gers) "made it a habit" of keeping his house dark on August 15;49 at neighboring Condom, the list of offenders was longer and included the president of the tribunal, the tax collector, the controller of weights and measures, as well as all the local priests and monks. 50 At Chateaurenault (Indre-et-Loire), four public functionaries failed to put up any national flags in front of their homes; one of them was Monsieur Chalumeau, an engineer in Ponts-etChaussees: "This was remarked and produced a most unfortunate effect among the population."51 In 1853, the prefect of the Moselle noted that the Railway Company of Strasburg had made no arrangements to decorate the main stations of the department, despite his express instructions. 52 In the same year, the prefect of the Doubs reported that "some functionaries not only abstained from decking their inhabitations with flags, but also failed to illuminate their windows."53 A year later, the subprefect ofLe Havre scribbled the same conclusion in the margin of his report: "I have noticed to my greatest regret that a large number of officials have neglected to illuminate their homes and to deck them with flags."54 At Senas (Bouches-du-Rhone) in 1862, even the municipality was not illuminated; the mayor, the official report noted somewhat cryptically, was in "a very bad way"-which could be taken to mean that he was incompetent or an alcoholic or merely surrounded by opposition councilors and officials. 55 Flying the national banner was also found to be too demanding for some local officials. At Peyrolles (Bouches-du-Rhone) in 1863, the police commissioner indignantly reported that the justice of the peace and his assistant, the tax collector, the director of the post office, and the entire police force did not display the tricolor on the SaintNapoleon. 56 At Joigny (Yonne) in 1869, the pattern of non-display had become so common among public officials that the subprefect thought

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it would be a good idea, "in future, to make some observations on the subject of flags and illuminations to the functionaries who abstain all too frequently from displaying their patriotism in these public celebrations."57

A Range of Excuses Bonapartist elites were left with no doubt-through the reports of their own agents-that public servants were frequently lacking in the sort of enthusiasm that befitted the officials of a majestic state. Indeed, any such doubts would have been dispelled by another source of information concerning this wayward behavior of the bureaucracy: a torrent of public denunciations. National and local officials were inundated with correspondence from indignant Bonapartist citizens across the country, bitterly complaining about the failure of state officials in their locality to mark the Saint-Napoleon with appropriate pomp and zeal. Many such letters were anonymous, such as this short note that landed on the desk of the prefect of the Meuse in August 1857: "At Lacroix, we have tax collector notary forest guard tobbaconist decommissioned military officers retired firemen [sic]. None joined the municipal procession, which was not even at full strength. It is very bad for the festivity of our emperor."58 Other denunciations were grounded in solid juridical research: in 1853, Minister of Interior Persigny received a (signed) letter reminding him that according to the law of August 24, 1790, article 471 of the Penal Code and the arret (court ruling) of August 29, 1817, any citizen failing to illuminate his home during a national festivity was breaking the law. The author urged the minister to prosecute and heavily fine all those found guilty of such a crime. 59 There is no evidence that Persigny-zealous Bonapartist though he was-followed up on this constructive suggestion. But all officials took a keen interest in the issue of illumination and often remonstrated against towns and villages that were thought to have been inadequately decorated during the national festivity. Mayors were routinely asked by subprefects and prefects to provide specific information about local deficiencies (both in terms of bureaucratic absenteeism and lighting). The subprefect of ArIes-clearly a man with a good bureaucratic cast of mind-even devised a special form for this purpose, which he proudly described to the prefect of the Bouches-du-Rhone. In the event of any public official failing to light up their home during the

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national festivity, he would dispatch the following note: "The subprefect of ArIes regrets to have to observe to Mr. X that he has been noticed as one of those who did not illuminate their house on August 15 on the occasion of the festivity of the emperor. "60 The note's very existence, of course, highlighted the pervasiveness of the phenomenon. The issue of lighting was not merely of local interest. Parisian officials also kept a close watch-especially over the degree of illumination of the departmental cheflieu, the local showcase of the regime. In 1858, Minister of the Interior Charles Espinasse (not a gentle soul at the best of times) rebuked the prefect of the Nord: "I am reliably informed that at Lille there were barely 40 houses that were illuminated on August 15. Please let me know what might be the causes of this lack of enthusiasm on the part of the population."61 The prefect of the Nord responded by throwing up several smokescreens: first, he firmly denied that the illuminations at Lille had been as insignificant as claimed by the police. Then, for good measure, he produced a few cultural generalizations about northerners: "Public effusion is not in the character of the local people here." This claim, however, was immediately undermined by his ensuing observations of wild public enthusiasm at Avesnes, Cambrai, Roubaix, and Tourcoing, where the festivity had allegedly taken place with "extraordinary fervor"62 (presumably these localities were not inhabited by northerners). The truth was somewhat more unpalatable: in Lille, traditional secular and religious festivities were much more popular than official celebrations. 63 Blaming local temperament became something of a habit: after a poor turnout in his locality in 1856, the subprefect of Semur (Cote d'Or) railed against "the cold and undemonstrative nature of the population."64 Officials posted in southern parts of France, for their part, explained the defective patriotism of the locals on a surfeit of heat and foreign blood: the prefect of the Var darkly noted, "There is an Italian and Arab character to the inhabitants of this part of the province."65 Generalizations of this kind were valuable not only to account for universal forms of behavior, but also for very specific events-or rather nonevents. Asked by the prefect of the Meuse to explain why his station was not illuminated on the day of the national festivity in 1857, the police commissioner gave a new meaning to the notion of cultural specificity: "At Bar-Ie-Duc we are not in the habit of illuminating windows on the ground floor. "66 Sociological generalizations were also favored, especially if they landed the blame on specific social or professional groups. The police commissioner of Vaucouleurs asserted that the absence of many mu-

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nicipal councilors from the festivities was caused by "the harvesting season."67 Although this was often a reality, as noted in the last chapter, it could also provide a very convenient excuse indeed, especially in rural communities. Secular officials also often criticized priests: in his 1858 report, the police commissioner of Marsillargues (Herault) noted that the local priest had not illuminated his church or his own home, and had used his influence with the Catholic community to ensure that the town remained dark. 68 In specific instances, public officials responded by supplying medical certificates. The tax collector, the first official to be mentioned in the anonymous denunciation sent to the prefect of the Meuse,69 offered the supportive testimony of his mayor, who wrote that this valiant public servant "had been suffering from diarrhea for several days"an illness so crippling that he "had not even been able to work on his figures."7o Another public official, Monsieur Richardon, inspector of the Eaux et Forets, was explicitly prohibited by his doctor from attending the celebrations of the national festivity in Avignon in 1855; the patient was suffering from "an acute inflammation of the lower abdominal organs, produced by the great fatigue incurred by him in the accomplishment of his inspectoral duties."71 The chief engineer of the Ponts-et-Chaussees of the Cote d'Or was literally laid out in 1856 with "lumbago pain."72 For his part, the captain of the gendarmerie of Villefranche (Aveyron) claimed that he had been unable to attend the ceremonies of 1860 because of "indigestion." However, the subprefect pointed out that "he was almost certainly tight and incapable of presenting himself"; indeed, this law-enforcement officer was known to be "in a constant state of drunkenness; his maintenance at his post is a public scandal."73 This impressive list of explanations and excuses for the errant behavior of state officials also included personal excuses; in 1853, the mayor of Bresse (Bouche-du-Rhone) explained his failure to decorate and illuminate his apartment on the Saint-Napoleon by claiming that he was not the owner of the property; he was still living with his father.7 4 There were also some trenchant observations about the bureaucracy itself. One frequent theme here was the age-old contention that state officials were concerned not with the public interest (or even that of the Bonapartist state) but only with themselves. In his report on the celebration of the national festivity at Montpellier in 1861, the police commissioner described the introspective frame of mind of the local fonctionnaires: "There was the odd banner hanging, this morning, from the windows of the officials' houses. At the religious ceremony,

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we noticed a big gap among the personnel of the public administration; at Montpellier, as everywhere, the agents of the different ministries-especially the Finances-do not consider themselves, from a political point of view, as agents of the government, but as individualities who are responsible only to their particular bureaucratic division." One of the key premises of public choice theory was strikingly anticipated in his final observation: "These men are independent characters, inspired above all by the instinct for self-preservation."75 More fundamental physiological and character deficiencies in the French bureaucracy also came to light. In Bordeaux in 1856, it became apparent that the local administration could not cope with high summer temperatures; mindful of a potentially high drop-out rate, the organizers of the morning ceremonies cancelled the traditional procession and invited all public officials to come directly to church "on the grounds of the excessive heat to which we are presently subjected."76 Stopping in front of the house of the president of the tribunal on the evening of August 15, the subprefect of Saint-Pons (Herault) was mortified to find that "the illumination merely consisted of three or four small lanterns placed on the street." By common consent this gross lack of propriety on the part of Monsieur and Madame Bora had one cause, and one cause alone: "sordid avarice."77

Majesty and Its Limits For the Bonapartist regime, one of the central functions of the SaintNapoleon was to uphold and reinforce the majesty of the state, notably through the zealous participation in the festivities "of the totality of the agents of public authority, from ministers to the most humble of local functionaries."78 State officials were subject to intense and at times conflicting pressures on August 15. In addition to playing their part in bringing out the crowds on this day of national unity and maintaining a general sense of order, public officials were also expected to conform to a majestic code of practice, reinforcing the regime's political message and demonstrating their loyalty to Napoleon III. How far did imperial institutions exhibit and uphold this majesty between 1852 and 1870, both within their own ranks and in terms of external projection? With regard to the latter, there is little doubt that in some respects the Saint-Napoleon was remarkably successful. Traveling from Bazas to Bordeaux on the day of the national festivity in 1858, a Bonapartist official was delighted to find most houses-even the most "humble abodes"-decorated with national flags, an unprec-

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edented sight.7 9 There, as in many parts of France, enthusiastic local populations also came out in large numbers (especially when they were blessed with the presence of Napoleon III himself) to watch and participate in civic processions, attend religious ceremonies, and observe military parades in the afternoons and spectacular bonfires and fireworks displays in the evenings. In a way that arguably no previous modern French state had managed, la fete imperiale successfully projected an aura of state power and authority, an image that served to mobilize the French population around key Bonapartist ideological values and ultimately to reinforce the personal power of Napoleon III. Even republican critics of the regime such as Charles Dupont-White recognized (and gave due credit to) the Second Empire's effectiveness in restoring a sense of state pride in France. 8o This sentiment was shared by many provincial observers; in 1855, after attending the national day ceremonies, the mayor of Castres (Gers) expressed his admiration at the effectiveness of the Empire's rituals: "Mass, procession, Te Deum attended by the mayor and his deputy, both wearing their sash, and the entire municipal council; a detachment of the national guard escorting the municipal council; the drum beating enthusiastically as we entered the church; there was at last in the ceremonies a sense of dignity, which we were no longer used to."81 The regime's mobilization of its state agents was thus in many ways crowned with success. The bureaucracy, to be clear, did not create the festivities, but it made possible their successful celebration by the public by efficiently planning, coordinating, and implementing its different stages; its agents also, as noted in this and earlier chapters, often led by example. The imperial state in this sense fitted the liberal thinker Charles Dunoyer's characterization of French public institutions as "creators of sociability."82 This conclusion confirms the observations in Chapter 4, which noted the efficacy with which the imperial state handled the entire bureaucratic process leading to the issuing of the Medailles de Sainte-Helene. But these successes were not achieved without costs to the bureaucracy, whose local agents were faced with conflicting demands by the regime. In some cases, these multiple pressures led to open conflicts among local officials-most notably between mayors and prefects. One of the notorious instances occurred in the late 1850s in Marseille, where the municipal administration (although deeply loyal to the Second Empire) clashed repeatedly with prefect Charles Besson. In 1860, Besson was dismissed from his post for failing to communicate the details concerning the national festivity to Mayor Lagarde. 83 The pressures faced by state agents on the day of national festivity

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reflected multiple tensions and contradictions in the Bonapartist weltanschauung. Throughout its existence, the Second Empire oscillated between its Hobbesian yearning for a passive and submissive population and its belief-rooted in the tradition of 1789 to which it subscribed-in the virtues of active citizenship. The official language of local state agents contained glaring contradictions between an ecumenical discourse of unity and togetherness and a recurrent appeal to specific sections of the community. These high-minded aspirations toward unity were even harder to reconcile with one of the major features of the festivities: the explicit reinforcement of the Bonapartist heritage. This was precisely the point at which the success of the festivities was at its most ambiguous; the national day often turned into a celebration of one particular political tradition and, indeed, a celebration of the sovereignty of one individual over the nation (which made it especially difficult for republicans and liberals to stomach). Like all nineteenth-century French states, the Second Empire was thus caught between its aspiration to reflect a new form of universality and its instinctive retreat into the realm of its own particularisms. These ambiguities between the universal and the particular, which were manifest in the externalization of the principle of majesty, even more powerfully affected the behavior of public and state officials during the festivities. The regime devised a comprehensive code of conduct to regulate the behavior of all officials during the official ceremonies-both appointed bureaucrats and elected representatives. But here, too, these optimal expectations were not met. The lower tiers of the French bureaucracy often rebelled against the majestic code by drawing on the traditional panoply of methods used by obstructive officialdom in all ages, most notably sluggishness and obfuscation. By the late 1860s, some outside observers were noting that the Second Empire seemed to inspire suspicion and even hatred among the ranks of its own functionaries. 84 In its final years, the regime-partly through a greater sense of toleration and partly through lassitudeseemed even to have given up chasing its own dissident bureaucratic agents. A satisfactory minimum thus appeared to have tacitly emerged with regard to the celebration of the Saint-Napoleon; this routinization was picked up by the police commissioner of Amiens, who reported in 1869 that "the festivity of the emperor at Amiens has been celebrated this year as in previous years, that is to say with great calm by the population and without much expense by the municipality. Since time immemorial, the program has not changed."85 The dangers of poor bureaucratic participation in the national fes-

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tivity were well highlighted by the mayor of Mielan (Gers), who had just returned from the celebrations in 1856 and noticed the absence of "the justice of the peace, his assistant, the court clerk and usher, one councilor, and one former military officer with a pension of 190 Francs." The problem could be simply stated: "When functionaries are absent from a public ceremony, they invite the inhabitants to indifference and isolation through their conduct. In my opinion this is an extremely perverse development for the government."86 The following chapters make it apparent that this municipal official had every reason to be concerned.

J07 The Immense Space between Heaven and Earth

Y~LIGION

OCCUPIED a central role in the ceremonial landscape of the Second Empire, especially in the first decade of the regime. In some respects, this was merely a continuation of the festive practices of earlier nineteenth-century regimes, from the Restoration through to the Second Republic (the latter's iconography notably incorporated images of priests giving their blessings to the "trees of liberty"). 1 But after 1851, there appeared to be a qualitative upsurge in the number of celebrations-a reflection, partly deliberate and partly unconscious, of the regime's desire to tap into the rise in popular religiosity to create a new symbolism to replace the defunct republican order. 2 Central to this symbolism were the celebrations held in Paris, "the religious capital of the Second Empire" to borrow from the apposite title of Jacques-Olivier Boudon's comprehensive study.3 Most of the important moments of the authoritarian Empire were officially marked by the organization of a Te Deum in the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Prayers were offered to celebrate the successful vote of December 1851, which gave a semblance of political legitimacy to the coup d'etat; the birth of the imperial prince in 1856; the military successes of the Crimean and Italian campaigns in 1855 and 1859; the emperor's survival of the attempted assassination by Orsini in 1858; and the annexation of Nice and the Savoie in 1860. 4 It was also in Notre-Dame that Napoleon Ill's wedding to Eugenie de Montijo was celebrated, in great pomp, in January 1853. 5

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Each year, too, the cathedral provided the imposing setting for the official celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon. The Parisian clergy was entirely and unconditionally devoted to commemorating the imperial reign. In 1855, Archbishop Marie Sibour wrote to the emperor asking that the bronze from the Russian cannons captured at Sebastopol be melted into the cathedral bells. He declared that the towers of NotreDame (which had just been restored) were meant primarily "to make known to all generations the glory of France and the glory of the emperor."6 A year later, the Parisian Bonapartist press gleefully reported the message of Monsignor de Coutances to his priests, in which Napoleon III was described as the "liberator who has consented to sacrifice himself for our fatherland."7 During the national celebrations in the 1860s, Archbishop Georges Darboy would often surpass this eulogy. For example, in 1863, he described the Napoleonic dynasty as the natural successors to the line of Clovis, Charlemagne, and Saint Louis. 8 The organizers of the festivities fully expected the Parisian model of the religious celebrations to be followed all across France. In all communes, after the morning mass, church authorities were required to sing the Te Deum in honor of the emperor, followed by the Domine Salvum. Instructions to this effect were sent out each year from the minister of public instruction to all bishops, who in turn wrote to all the priests under their jurisdiction mandating them to hold these public prayers in honor of the ruler of France. Prefects, for their part, were required by the minister of the interior to ensure that local religious and civil authorities coordinated their efforts, so that the different phases of the festivity could unfold seamlessly. Religion was intended to serve a number of functions in the fete du 15 aout. Before these are explored, however, it is worth noting that for many Bonapartists-starting with their leader Napoleon III-the promotion of religious sentiment was regarded as intrinsically valuable. As the future emperor put it in his Bordeaux speech of October 1852, which in many senses set out the defining principles of his new civic order: "I wish to win over to religion, to morality, to well-being those sections of society, still so numerous, which, in the midst of a country of faith and belief, barely know the precepts of Christ. "9 This aspiration was, of course, entirely consistent with the regime's institutional goal of cementing church-state relations. The incorporation of religion into the festivities could thus be presented by the regime as a token of its commitment to the wider dissemination of the Christian faith.

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At the same time, Bonapartists traditionally viewed religion as a valuable instrument of political rule. lO This functionalism was most eloquently articulated under the First Empire by Minister of Cults Jean Portalis: Civil ceremonies and pomp are nothing, unless they are connected to the pomp and ceremonies of religion. Religion fills the immense space that separates the heavens from the earth; it communicates to all celebrations a mysterious and sublime sense; it provides to these ceremonies this imposing gravity and this touching character, which command respect; it links the transient actions of men to that eternal order of things, the unique source of all celestial consolations, and the sole goal of all pious hopes. l l Especially in the early years of the Second Empire, religion was seen as providing a welcome dose of pomp and solemnity to the celebration of France's national day and thus contributing to one of Napoleon Ill's key objectives: the restoration of the dignity of the state. Equally important was what may be termed the "catalytic" function of the religious ceremonies: to draw the population out into the public sphere, so as to make the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon a manifestation of popular attachment to the imperial dynasty. And what better day to choose for this patriotic mobilization than one that was a universal favorite in the religious calendar, the feast of the Assumption?

The Religious Dimensions of the National Festivity Little is known about the religious conflicts of the Saint-Napoleon that arose under the Second Empire. There is still a tendency among historians to stress the common interests of the Bonapartists and the Catholic clergy in the 1850s and 1860s, even though this convergence was far from apparent in many parts of provincial and rural France. For example, Rosemonde Sanson's account of the festivities emphasizes the successful stage-managing of the festivities by the authorities and the strict political subordination of the clergy.12 Similarly, Matthew Truesdell stresses the harmony between state and church during the celebrations, even adding that incidents opposing local officials and the clergy were "rare."13 Maurice Agulhon also limits the conflicts between church and state in the 1850s and 1860s to occasional skirmishes at the level of "high" politics. At a grassroots level, he argues,

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the Second Empire witnessed "a new alliance of the throne and the altar, with almost more boldness and much more substantial means than under the Restoration."14 Evidence gathered from national and departmental archives suggests that this conventional wisdom needs to be revisited: religion was not only a source of harmony but also of bitter conflict during the national festivities. Shedding new light on the Saint-Napoleon, these local disagreements also raise the wider issue of church-state relations under the Second Empire. The regime's choice of August 15 as the national day was in itself evidence of the close relationship between the state and church in the early 1850s. As noted above, the Bonapartists often turned to the Catholic Church to celebrate important moments of the reign of Napoleon III, and, especially in its early years, the regime regarded the cultivation of religious sentiment as an important aspect of the moralization of society. This was one of the many reasons why republicans such as Victor Hugo railed against the celebration of the Saint-Napoleon-a national festivity tainted by the coup d'etat of 1851, which would thus "stain the altar with blood and the national flag with sprinkles of holy water."15 But the church, especially at the lower levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, did not always reciprocate these Napoleonic religious feelings. 16 The Second Empire's handling of these conflicts attests to the changing institutional and ideological vocations of the regime and the difficulties encountered by the Bonapartist state in controlling religious institutions. From a wider perspective, the 1860s represented a defining moment in the conflict between church and state, preparing the terrain for the battles that would lead to the 1905 separation. 17 The religious celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon also delve into the heart of the Catholic Church. The Second Empire represented a period of religious militancy in the French countryside-"the apogee of the rural priesthood" according to Pierre Pierrard. 18 These were the years of numerical expansion and rejuvenation of the lower clergy; years when crosses were planted, innumerable processions created, and solemn prayers organized; years also when many religious edifices were erected, often at the expense of the commune. This was the period of Lourdes, of the Sacre Coeur, and of Mary, Mother of Godespecially with the proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in 1854, celebrated in many communes with processions and illuminations. Combined with these grassroots phenomena was the emergence of an assertive form of ultramontanism, a form of religious belief which was expressed in strong support for the Vatican

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and the Papal States. It is against the backdrop of this externalization of the Catholic cult (the proliferation of marches, processions, and the cult of shrines) and the affirmation of papist ultramontane sentiment that many of the local religious conflicts of August 15 have to be appreciated. 19 These clashes lend considerable weight to the approach of those scholars who have sought to break down the conventional dichotomy between a "traditional" Catholicism and a "modern" state. As Ruth Harris showed in her study of Lourdes, nineteenth-century French Catholics were very much aware of modernity and were capable of using elements of it to further their own ends;20 the same broad conclusion emerges with respect to the Catholic opposition to the fete imperiale. These religious conflicts also afford key insights into the (re)construction of the communal order in nineteenth-century France. The Second Empire's religious revival was mirrored in many senses by the resurgence of local political institutions, especially those centered on the commune. 21 This resurgence was driven by several factors, most notably the adoption of male universal suffrage for municipal elections, which stimulated the development of adversarial politics at a local level; the liberalization of the regime in the 1860s, which further encouraged the development of local opposition forces; and, above all, the emergence of the municipality (and in particular the mayor) as the emblem of a revived sense of civic autonomy and pride. The clash between religious and state authorities, at a local level, was in many respects a conflict between two rival institutions, the church and the mairie, both hunting on the same pastures. 22 Behind all of this lies the issue of anticlericalism and its diverse causes and manifestations in the nineteenth century. Anticlericalism was a pluralistic phenomenon, cutting across the classical left-right divide and revealing itself in a variety of forms. 23 The republican anticlericalism, which became a central component of French political culture under the Third Republic, was of a distinct Voltairian variety: it was mostly urban and rationalist and defined itself largely over the issue of education. 24 But there was an older, more deeply entrenched and more intense anticlericalism that continued to resonate in France throughout the nineteenth century.25 Sheryl Kroen's study of Restoration political culture has highlighted the variety of sources of this popular anticlericalism, and also the social depth of its manifestations. 26 This hostility towards the clergy was an important underpinning in the enduring local patriotism of provincial and rural France: it was based more on interest than on ideology and typically repre-

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sented a reaction of local populations against the perceived material and social power of the church and its attempts to regulate social and moral life-most notably through its austere imprecations against many forms of pleasure. 27 Through their consensual and conflicting aspects alike, these celebrations raise central questions about the social interpretation of religiosity in nineteenth-century France. August 15 provides a perfect vantage point for exploring the connection between religious and national identities. For example, between 1852 and 1870, the fete was celebrated both as a secular and a Catholic festivity. Religion played a central role in the day's events, both in the morning church ceremony and in the processions that took place in many communes in the afternoons. At the same time, through the secular aspects of the Saint-Napoleon (civic processions, military parades, fireworks displays, banquets, and evening dances), local populations were exposed to a wider world of the French nation, its army, and its rulers, with which they were invited to identify. This allegiance with the national sphere was often reinforced through the conflicts between religious and secular communities, effectively turning the festivity into an instrument for socializing the commune into broader principles and values. In this sense, the festivities provide further evidence to reverse the long-held view that the formation of national identity in France was carried out by emissaries of the center and imposed on a weak and passive periphery.28 Through their struggles, no less than in their harmonious collaboration, Catholic and secular groups demonstrated that religious and national identities in nineteenth-century France were often complementary.29 What of the Catholic Church? Many of its intellectuals, notably Louis Veuillot and Charles de Montalembert, enthusiastically supported the 1851 coup d'etat; and its hierarchy in the provinces generally welcomed the advent of the new regime. 30 In some parts of the country, the lower clergy actively helped to bring out the vote in the 1852 referendum that restored the Empire. 31 Indeed, the Catholic Church officially embraced the new national festivity and offered enthusiastic cooperation with the regime in the organization of the religious aspects of its ceremonies. Thus, in 1852, the archbishop of Rouen sent a letter to all the cures of his diocese with precise instructions about how the religious ceremonies should be held. He began by noting that the minister of instruction had ordered this celebration and that the religious authorities "could only defer with diligence to a request that was in such conformity with public sentiment." He

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asked the priests to "go out of their way to recommend to God the interests of the state and of its head" and urged them to "bring to this pious ceremony all the solemnity that it deserves."32 In Nantes, the language was somewhat less fulsome, but church and state authorities clearly came to a modus vivendi. 33 In the early years of the Second Empire, this complimentary language of the church about this Bonapartist festivity was very much reciprocated by the state. In his circular letter to all prefects in 1853, Minister of the Interior Persigny reminded his subordinates that "the Saint-Napoleon coincides with the festivity of the Assumption, one of the four religious festivities recognized by law and one of those that is observed with the greatest solemnity by the Catholic Church."34 Despite these declarations of good intentions on both sides, it was very clear from the outset that state and church were essentially carrying out distinct celebrations. This was reflected in the language used by both sides. The Bonapartists typically referred to August 15 as the "national" festivity or "the festivity of the Emperor;" and, on some occasions, the expression "national and religious festivity" was also used. 35 This conjunction sometimes slightly flustered local officialsas with the mayor of Mussidan (Dordogne), who described the SaintNapoleon as "the national festivity of the Assumption of the Virgin, dedicated to H. M. the Emperor Napoleon 111."36 For the church, however, there was no possible confusion. As the bishop of Verdun put it in his letter to the priests of his diocese in 1866, this was the day of "the festivity of the Assumption of the Virgin Saint, patron of France, and of Saint-Napoleon, martyr, patron saint of the emperor."37 For the state, in other words, politics preceded religion; for the church, religion came before politics-or, more accurately, above it: as a pro-Bonapartist cleric from the Haute-Loire wrote in 1865: "I love France, I love the emperor and his government as much as anyone, and I have no intention of undermining it, but I also-and indeed more than my own life-love Jesus Christ, his church, and his revealed truth."38

State-Church Harmony In a large number of communes, local civil and religious authorities worked in good (and at times excellent) partnership during the joint festivities of the Saint-Napoleon-especially in rural areas. 39 In Les Roches de Condrieu (Isere) in 1854, the celebrations were described as "religious and national"-a preeminence of the church over the

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state, which was reflected in the inauguration of a statue of the Virgin in the main square. 40 Likewise, in Marron (Meuse) in 1857, the inhabitants gathered around a statue of the Virgin Mary, which was then carried in procession through the village "with pomp and solemnity."41 In the village of Marcq-en-Barreul (Nord) in 1859, no fewer than fourteen priests officiated the religious service of August 15. 42 Describing the procession that preceded the religious celebration in the village church in August 1853, the mayor of Heudicourt spoke of a gathering that was "both at the same time religious and national."43 In the same year, the mayor of La Ciotat reported to the prefect that the double festivity of the Saint-Napoleon and the Virgin had passed excellently, and that, in the popular enthusiasm, it was impossible to distinguish "the religious element from the political."44 In many de-

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Egypt: National Festivity of August 15. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The Saint-Napoleon was also celebrated by French expatriates. Here, in Egypt, where France had many economic and cultural links under the Second Empire, the Suez Canal was inaugurated in November 1869.

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partmental capitals, there was also considerable enthusiasm: at Tours in 1853, the service and Te Deum were performed by the cardinal archbishop "with unprecedented pomp and brilliance"; the ceremony lasted "over two hours."45 Such positive relationships often survived until the late 1860s. This concord, at work in many of the towns and villages of France, revealed itself in a variety of ways. One valuable measure of the degree of cooperativeness between local church and state authorities was the duration and frequency with which church bells were rung. 46 In communes with cooperative religious authorities, the bells would begin to sound on the eve of the festivity. In Florensac (Herault) in 1863, cheerful chimes were heard "at all hours of the day" on August 14, with the polyphonic accompaniment of artillery salvoes from the local military barracks. In most communes, however, church bells began to ring in the early morning of August 15; in Bordeaux in 1856, the city awoke to the joyful and repeated peals of the cathedral's imposing bells. 47 It was also a convention to ring the church bells during the performance of the religious chants in honor of Napoleon III; and in many communes, this also provided the signal for the military authorities to discharge several rounds. In villages and small towns, the shots would typically consist of gunfire; in more populated areas with larger military garrisons, the sounds were even more majestic. In Toulon, during the national festivities of January 1852, the Te Deum was performed in church to the booming accompaniment of the local fort's canon. 48 There were several preconditions of a successful and well-ordered morning religious ceremony. The most critical, of course, was that the local priest should show goodwill and a positive sense of initiative. It was essential for the cure to announce the event well ahead of time to his parishioners; he also had to officiate the ceremony with grace and decorum. The performance of the Te Deum was watched especially carefully by the Bonapartist authorities; as indicated later, this was the moment when the Catholic clergy could subtly-and sometimes not so subtly-inject a dissonant note into the ceremonies of the SaintNapoleon. But in a very large number of instances, the ceremony and the ensuing prayers in honor of Napoleon III were carried out with panache. In Besanc;on in 1856, the mass and Te Deum were officiated by the cardinal and archbishop with such gusto that their execution was judged to be "brilliant" by local Bonapartist observers. 49 It was also up to the church authorities to coordinate their activities with the other religious and civil institutions of the locality. In towns with Protestant temples and Jewish synagogues, the Catholic cere-

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mony had to be timed in such a way as to make it possible for the local civil authorities to attend the functions in all three sites-a state of affairs that made for a busy morning in places such as Lyon, Nlmes, Besanc;on, and Colmar. 50 Celebrations of the national day were a matter of great pride to local Jewish congregations, which took the opportunity to pay tribute to the Second Empire's defense of the principle of freedom of religion. 51 At Besanc;on in 1862, the speech given by the president of the Jewish community highlighted his organization's attachment to French humanist values-notably the principles of justice, charity, and toleration, which were the foundation of its public law. 52 The local Catholic Church was also responsible for issuing invitations to the administrative authorities and making special arrangements to ensure that key public officials such as the prefect or subprefect, the mayor, and the representatives of the judiciary, police, and army were properly seated. But the most important prerequisite for a successful ceremony was the presence of a devout local population, eager to celebrate the patron saint of the emperor and pray for his continuing prosperity. Such were exactly the dispositions of the inhabitants of Aix who crowded into their metropolitan church in 1856: in the words of the local judicial officer, the gathering "was pressed inside and demonstrated, by its pious attitude, both its worthy religious sentiments and its respectful sympathies for the head of state."53 At Chateaudouble (Var) in 1861, the mayor colorfully depicted the arrival of the civic procession (under full military escort) in front of the church and the ensuing religious ceremony: In separate order by the left column and then the right column forward march [sic], the men in arms went to place themselves before the church and fired several rounds in honor of the Saint of Saints! These salvoes of musket were repeated at the moment of the intonation of the verse Domine Salvum Fac Imperatorem nostrum Napoleon em, which was sung with admirable fervor and enthusiasm by the choir and by the whole population, which had turned out in massive numbers to attend the divine office and to join its voices to those of the municipal officers and imperial veterans. The church was packed and we were all soaking with sweat. 54 This was in many senses the ideal outcome of the religious celebration of the national festivity: a harmonious collaboration among

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military, civil, and religious authorities; a solemn and fervent religious service, led by an enthusiastic cleric; and a large public turnout in church. These conditions were most spectacularly met in the early years of the regime's festive endeavors. At a celebration of the Bonapartist triumph in the plebiscite of December 1851 in CastelnauBarbarens (Gers), the mayor noted that the church was "full and many people could not get in" and that "the cure has taken great care to decorate the church as for the great festive days." He concluded that "never has such an enthusiasm been witnessed in this commune."55 In many localities, the spirit of local state-church cooperation extended even beyond the expectations of the regime (and the Gallican Catholic hierarchy). The morning ceremony in church was often an occasion for local priests to offer a homily. Some seized on this opportunity to celebrate the achievements of Napoleon III-none more fulsomely so than the cure of Avallon (Yonne) in 1861, who compared the emperor to Clovis and Charlemagne and praised the French ruler for everything he had done for the greatness and elevation of the Christian religion. The subprefect almost fell off his pew: "At no point [since 1851] had the population of Avallon heard such a favorable evaluation of our government by the church."56 The religious ceremony also provided opportunities for a variety of zealous displays. In Carpentras in 1865, the Cathedral of Saint-Siffrein witnessed the performance of a solemn mass composed specially by the head of the town's musical society in honor of the Saint-Napoleon. The subprefect noted that the music was "admirably executed by the instrumentalists and choristers" and that "the vast church struggled to accommodate all those who had come to pray" (and presumably listen to the music).57 In the commune of Meynes (Gard) in 1869, the mayor's report praised the "ardent and pious" local priest, Abbe Brassier, for his efforts to please the administration during the festivity: "Instead of one Te Deum, he sang two, and if we had had the good fortune as in other communes of having two masses on this day, it is highly likely that he would have sung a third."58

Clerical and Administrative Spillover Most interestingly, there were also numerous examples of what may be called "clerical spillover," whereby priests and religious organizations extended their participation in the festivities well beyond the organization and conduct of the morning mass. At Fleurance (Gers) in 1857, the Catholic Societe de Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, despite the

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organization's increasing national alignment with legitimism, officially joined the civic procession that marched from the municipality to the church-a fact all the more remarkable, according to its local president, because most of its members had been bitterly opposed to the 1851 coup d'etat and the proclamation of the Empire. 59 In the official schedule of the fete du 15 aoitt, the event that normally followed the church ceremony was the military review (typically held at midday). In many communes, the local clergy took an active and enthusiastic role in proceedings. In Rennes in 1860, for example, before the military review began, the "standard of the 14th Artillery Regiment was blessed by Monsignor the Archbishop."60 In less populated communes, the inspection of the local fire brigade often replaced the military review. Here, too, there are several instances of the local clergy joining in: the prefect of the Haut-Rhin noted in 1856 that "in the communes that possess fire brigades (around ninety), these brigades were inspected by the authorities, on many occasions afforced by the local priests."61 In rural areas, another important symbolic moment in the festivities came at the end of the day when a bonfire was lit in the presence of the population. At Tourtour (Var) in 1859, this traditional ceremony was blessed by the local priest. 62 At Hevilliers (Meuse) in 1869, both the mayor and the cure were invited to light the fire; the first magistrate, "deferring to an ancient local custom," ceded the honor to the priest. 63 Perhaps the most spectacular examples of clerical spillover occurred during the religious celebrations of the French military victory in the Russian campaign of 1855. At the mass celebrated on the Saint-Napoleon, the cure of Barsac (Gironde) "spoke eloquently and movingly about our brothers who are risking their lives so heroically in Crimea."64 After the capture of Sebastopol, the cardinal-archbishop of Bordeaux, Monsignor Franc;ois Donnet, issued a bloodcurdling martial proclamation: "In the designs of divine wisdom, war occupies no less a place than in the history of peoples. War is the universal law of expiation; and as God always lends his mercy to the execution of justice, war can become, as Bossuet noted, a salutary trial for the reinvigoration and regeneration of nations."65 There were also many instances of the reverse phenomenon, which may be termed "administrative spillover," whereby public officials substantively involved themselves in the religious ceremonies of the afternoon. Many local officials were unclear as to whether they should participate officially in the celebration of the festivity of the Assumption and, indeed, other Catholic festivities such as the Fete Dieu and

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the Immaculee Conception. The regime's official attitude was carefully non-prescriptive. In May 1853, responding to requests for clarification from his prefects, Minister of the Interior Persigny responded that "the government does not believe that it has to prescribe a fixed rule in this respect. Prefects know better than anyone the sentiments and especially the customs of their local populations; they are the best judges of the conduct they should follow."66 In a significant number of communes, both urban and rural, local imperial officials participated fully in the religious processions of the Assumption on the afternoon of August 15. Often, the religious parade was accorded exactly the same status as the civic procession of the morning. At La Seyne (Var) in 1852, for example, the religious pageant left church in mid-afternoon and slowly made its way across town. When it reached the municipality, "the procession was greeted with a most edifying spectacle: twenty-one shots were fired in its honor by the local military guard."67 At Cahors (Lot) in 1856, all the administrative authorities participated in the religious procession in the afternoon, which culminated in the blessing by the local bishop of the town's statue of the Virgin, with the canon booming in the background. 68 A report by the mayor of Lacroix (Meuse) illustrated how far this interpenetration of the political and religious festivity could be carried in some localities: All the communal authorities went in corps to the morning mass and the evening vespers, and the national guard in uniform had hastened to respond to the invitation of its commander. The latter did not think that his duty was limited to attending the mass and the Te Deum that followed it; he also believed that the presence of his men at the solemn procession after the vespers would give a national standing to this religious act, and he ordered the formation of a military guard of honor on either side of the statue of the Virgin Saint, who was carried triumphantly.69 Another terrain on which local state and church authorities often shared convergent interests was education. After the Falloux law of 1850, which instituted a regime of freedom in primary and secondary education, religious congregations accentuated their presence in the educational system, a trend openly blessed by the Second Empire in the early years of the regime (things did not go so well during the 1860s). The national festivities frequently witnessed celebrations of this dimension of state-church amity. In 1858, on the day after the

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Saint-Napoleon, the procureur-general of Amiens reported that he had attended the prize-giving ceremony at Providence College, an establishment held by the Jesuits "in which are brought up the children of the most important families of the Somme." All the leading public functionaries, both civil and military, were present, and they were no doubt delighted to hear an improvised speech by the archbishop of Amiens; the prelate gave "a magnificent eulogy to the government of the emperor for its services both to society and to religion."70 In many parts of France, the festivities successfully filled what Portalis had described as the "immense space between heaven and earth." This was especially the case in Paris, as noted at the beginning of this chapter, but also in many provincial and especially rural communes. Speaking of the more remote parts of the Jura, the procureur-general noted in 1852 that "religious festivities have a greater solemnity there: the processions have a larger following; there is a greater sense of piety; the churches are more frequented; and for these reasons the anniversary of August 15 has been celebrated with much pomp and enthusiasm by the local populations."71 In many localities, it was clear that religious pull was the major factor in ensuring the overall success of the Saint-Napoleon celebrations. In the Indre-et-Loire, the mayor of Nouans noted in 1852 that "religion, as we might expect, helped to enhance the national festivity";72 his colleague from Chateau-LaValliere reported in 1854 that the church service had been very well attended, but he candidly admitted that "many of the folk had no doubt come because of the religious festivity."73 Likewise, the mayor of Roquebrune (Gers) wrote in 1857 that the town had witnessed a splendid procession, "imposing and full of majesty," but he especially noted the demeanor of the imposing crowd, whose "grave and silent presence lent a particular solemnity to the occasion."74 The dominant tone here was clearly religious and devout rather than political or civic. Unfortunately for the Second Empire, however, this idyllic image of a pious celebration did not hold true in all parts of the country-as the next chapter explains.

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AUGUST 15, 1865, like every town and village in France, the commune of Leers (Nord) prepared itself for what had become the familiar joint celebration of the emperor and the Virgin Mary. Everything seemed in place for the traditional religious ceremony of the morning. But Abbe Dubray, the cure of Leers, shared little of this civic enthusiasm for the celebration of France's national festivity. For him, August 15 marked the Catholic festivity of the Assumption; "the other fete," as he put it dismissively, was an unnecessary distraction. A week earlier, his parishioners had received an intimation of this attitude when his sermon referred to the forthcoming celebrations in purely religious terms; he pointedly made no mention of any special ceremony or prayer in honor of Napoleon III. Furthermore, on the eve of the festivity, Dubray went to the municipality to inform the mayor that the Musical Society would not be allowed into the church. "We have our own music," he said laconically. The situation worsened on the day of the celebrations. Breaking with established custom, the church bells did not ring, either at dawn or at the time of the morning mass. When the civic procession arrived in front of the church (without the unfortunate musicians), there was no one to greet them. As they entered, it became immediately clear that there had been no preparations for their arrival; there were no reserved seats for the municipal authorities. Indeed, the religious ceremony itself was almost over by the time the mayor and his colleagues appeared; the priest was singing the final verses of the Te Deum as

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the hapless local notables scrambled to find a place to sit. No mention was made of the emperor in the prayers. Even so, when they heard their priest begin the sacred chant and thinking that they were doing the right thing, the church attendants began to ring the bells to honor the ruler of France. The Abbe Dubray immediately ordered them to stop; local rumor had it that he later dismissed them for this overzealous display of Napoleonic patriotism. Word of this disastrous ceremony at Leers quickly reached Paris. The prefect of the Nord was ordered to investigate its causes, "with the greatest possible discretion." One of his subordinates was sent to the area, and he reported back a few weeks later. The official had found a commune bitterly divided between two clans, one religious and other secular. The envoy laid most of the blame upon the priest, whose "irascible character" had brought things to a head. The mayor, incensed at having been received in the church "like a dog interrupting a game of skittles," demanded that the priest be fired. The account concluded by noting the striking difference between Leers and the neighboring commune of Lannoy, where the religious ceremony of the Saint-Napoleon had been officiated with "good-will, pomp, and solemnity" and all those present had been "struck with wonder."l Harmony and entente between ecclesiastical and civil authorities in one commune, savage conflict in another: between 1852 and 1870, this dualism was mirrored across the whole of France during the national festivities. In some places, as noted in the previous chapter, the religious dimension of the celebrations brought communities together; in others, they served to highlight underlying conflicts between secular and religious camps. In this chapter, the nature of these battles is explored to ascertain what they reveal about the state, the church, and the complex relationship between the religious and secular worlds in nineteenth-century France.

Querelles de Clocher An essentially untranslatable (and pejorative) expression well sums up the typical French view of such conflicts as occurred at Leers: une querelle de clocher. The reference to church bells suggests that religious clashes were central to its etymology. Reflecting the republican and positivistic contempt for such manifestations of primitive social behavior, Emile Littre's Dictionnaire defined such querelles as "petty local village jealousies, or from one small town to another; they are of no general interest."2 There is little doubt that part of what was in evi-

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dence here was often irreducibly parochial: this was the world of clans, personality clashes, and gossip-the "idiocy of rural life," scornfully dismissed by Karl Marx, and the obtuseness of village existence excoriated in the novels of Emile Zola and Marcel Pagnol. But even if they were sometimes manifested in petty forms, the conflicts that opposed state and church during the festivities of the Saint-Napoleon were complex and significant in character. In overall terms, a broad distinction exists between those incidents provoked by state agents (mayors, municipal councilors, prefects, magistrates, and representatives of the army), and those where the primary source of the problem lay with local church authorities. The most frequent cause of consternation for the church was the failure of certain civil authorities to attend the Catholic ceremonies of the Saint-Napoleon, either individually or (even worse) as a group. In the latter category, the chief culprits were undoubtedly the municipal councilors, who often did not come to church. 3 In the same context, mayors could also cause enormous trouble for the religious authorities-especially because the smooth running of the ceremonies required an effective collaboration between municipal and church authorities. Anticlerical mayors often would make small but highly symbolic gestures to signal their hostility to the clergy-as with the mayor of Lacropte (Dordogne), who systematically refused the choir seat offered him by the cure, choosing instead to attend the mass with the rest of the congregation. 4 In the diocese of Nantes, secular authorities made so much trouble during the early and mid-1850s that a survey of the religious disposition of the mayors was commissioned from village priests; it found that just over half could be characterized as "religious," while nearly a third were either "indifferent" or "hostile."5 In 1857, the cure of Marville (Meuse) wrote a letter of complaint to the prefect, after the failure of the mayor to contact him prior to the morning religious ceremony of the Saint-Napoleon. This had come as no surprise to him, given that "Monsieur Ie Maire never sets foot in church."6 The morning mass, which preceded the Te Deum, was not formally part of the state ceremony in honor of the national festivity; it was merely the traditional religious ritual observed by Catholics. Anticlerical (or merely insensitive) mayors often made it a point to arrive at the moment when the mass was ending, just as the priests and church singers were intonating the Te Deum. 7 This behavior tended to irritate the local clergy because it disrupted the solemnity of the ceremony, belittled the clergy's role in the festivities, and made the clergy appear as mere subordinates of the local municipal officers-which was, of course, the authorities' intended effect. As

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one indignant cleric put it in a letter of complaint to the prefect, such behavior "changes the religious ceremony of the festivity of the emperor into a shambles and creates chaos in the church."8 Judicial authorities in some localities also systematically refused to attend the Catholic processions of the Assumption. For example, at Agen, long before the institution of the Saint-Napoleon, the Catholic community had traditionally held a "procession of Louis XIII" on the afternoon of August 15. This was a pageant in honor of the Virgin, and it was named thus because it dated back to the reign of the "righteous king" in the early seventeenth century. In the early years of the Second Empire, all local and state officials attended this procession. In 1856, however, the representatives of the judiciary collectively abstained, clearly and deliberately signaling their hostility toward the church. 9 The reports do not specify the causes of this disagreement; in all likelihood, the judiciary, given the rationalist predispositions of many of its members, was attempting to draw a clear line in the sand between religious and secular celebrations and to keep the state firmly out of the church. But the incident left a deep mark: the following year, the magistrates repeated their gesture, provoking the annoyance not only of the church but also of the prefect, who deplored the fact that "the Imperial Court had chosen to persist in its mistake of last year. "10 In the early years of the Second Empire, the church also encountered substantial difficulties with some local representatives of the army. In 1852 in Avignon, religious authorities expressed the hope that a military deputation would officially attend the civic procession of the Saint-Napoleon and that the musical corps of the local regiment would provide the accompaniment. This did not seem an unreasonable request, and in many localities the army participated in precisely this manner. However, the general commanding the Fourteenth Subdivision refused to comply with both requests. In a letter to the prefect, he made clear that his orders from the minister of war made no mention of "asking any officer to attend a religious procession" and that, as far as he was concerned, only the maintenance of public order could justify a military presence on such an occasion. As for the musical accompaniment, he continued, it might be provided, but only if the colonel in charge of the musical corps did not raise any objection and, more importantly, if the religious authorities were willing to pay for its services. His tongue in his cheek, this officer (almost certainly a laic) ended by noting that "he was sorry to see that this condition did not appear to please the church."11 Likewise, in Nl'mes a few years later, the Louis XIII procession of

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August 15 was marred by the refusal of the commanding officer of the departmental regiment to attend or to send a deputation of his officers. The military music was also forbidden, despite a formal request from the Catholic Church. Mortified, the prefect noted that the local religious authorities were annoyed. What was more, he had been doing his best to represent the Second Empire as a regime whose interests converged completely with those of the church, and this "systematic abstention" by the army had done little to help.12 Firemen were also not averse to expressing their anticlerical sentiments: in 1856, the company of sapeurs-pompiers of Moutiers-Saint-Jean (Cote d'Or) turned out in full regalia and presented arms to the civic procession, but refused to attend the church ceremony.13 The capital of the Gard was the theater of another incident that caused offence to the Catholic Church in 1856. This time, the principal offender was the prefect. On August 15, in keeping with local convention, the Louis XIII procession had been scheduled for the afternoon. The mayor of Nlmes, for his part, had planned a free spectacle, a performance in the Roman circus, in honor of the national festivity. In order to defer to the Catholic procession, he had scheduled his spectacle for August 16. The prefect refused what to him appeared as an unacceptable inversion of festive priorities and ordered that the spectacle be held on the afternoon of August 15. The result was predictable: there was a very poor turnout at the Catholic procession, with almost no public officials present. The local procureur-general, one of the few to attend the Louis XIII pageant, concluded: "This incident did not fail to produce a certain commotion among the clergy."14 Many imperial prefects were notorious for their anticlericalism; in the Poitou, the regime chose its functionaries precisely for this reason, in order to challenge the activities of the Monsignor Pie, whose ultramontane sympathies were a source of considerable concern for the Second Empire. 1s In many cases, the church was at the receiving end of something resembling a united front of secular institutions and groups, all converging to oppose the claims and demands of local religious authorities. One frequent request was the formal association of local state institutions with the celebration of religious festivities. Thus, in February 1855 in Avallon (Yonne), the local Catholic hierarchy formally requested that all public edifices be illuminated in honor of the festivity of the Immaculee Conception. The subprefect, mayor, and president of the local tribunal immediately ganged up and agreed that it was not appropriate for their edifices to be illuminated for a festivity

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that was merely religious; such practices could be reserved only for the Saint-Napoleon (and other national public festivities). Local relations between state and church were evidently poor; in a letter to the prefect of the Yonne, the officials further justified their decision with the assertion that they need not "heighten the defiance of the population against the invasive influence of the clergy."16 The organization of the secular aspects of the festivities-the processions, public amusements, illuminations, and evening rejoicingswere often the theater of acrimonious disputes, which frequently ended with the church on the losing side. The forms and especially the duration of local public entertainment on the Saint-Napoleon were often profoundly distressing to the church. Thus, it was typical for the prefect to give permission for public houses and dance halls to remain open on the day of the national festivity until midnight. 17 However, when August 15 fell on a Sunday (as it did, for example, in 1856), such measures were regarded as a direct affront to the church, for it seemed that local populations were being encouraged to make merry on a day that was sacred to Catholics. Dancing, which the clergy denounced as a sinful invitation to lechery and sexual debauchery (particularly with the advent of the waltz and the polka), was seen to epitomize the depravity of secular festivities. 18 In mid-nineteenthcentury France, it was still common for rural priests expressly to forbid the faithful from attending balls and dances,19 especially in some rural parts where dancing was associated with republican politics. 20 All of this was too much for the cure of Bressieux (Isere), who campaigned against the organization of any popular rejoicings in his parish on the day of the Saint-Napoleon in 1860; he forcefully opposed "the establishment of any vogue which would lead to singing, dancing, and disturbances to public order, including fights and acts of concupiscence such that after nine months we would have to feed mothers and their newborn."21 Gender often emerged as a significant variable in these conflicts: after 1850, ultramontane piety was generally associated with women's devotion,22 and the clergy's injunctions against the celebrations could provoke serious tensions within families-even at the highest levels of local society. For example, in 1853, the bishop of Metz publicly expressed his dismay at the prefect's decision to organize public amusements and evening dances on Assumption day. The prelate used such disapproving language that a large number of women stayed at home that evening. The reception at the prefecture turned into an essentially masculine affair; many wives of high-ranking public functionaries,

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most notably Madame de Gerando, the spouse of the procureurgeneral, did not attend. 23 In his report to the minister of the interior, the prefect of Moselle could barely contain his irritation: "Would I be wrong, your Excellency, to organize a ball on August 15 because it also happens to be the festivity of the Assumption? I cannot concur with the opinion of Monsignor of Metz."24 Other bishops expressed similar reservations in various parts of France; the resolution-if such is the appropriate term-was slow and painful and marked more by a suspension of hostilities than a genuine peace. In the department of Vienne, for example, the bishop and his retinue began to attend the evening reception in the prefecture only in 1857, five years after the institution of the fite du 15 aout. And even then, they did not stay for very long. 25 Priests also often pulled out of such occasions as a gesture of disapproval of particular state policies. In 1861, the cure of Saint-Agricol (Vaucluse) declined the invitation to attend the reception organized by civil authorities on the grounds that his face was "covered in heat rashes"-an ailment that had almost certainly been brought about by Second Empire's Italian policies. 26 In other cases, social events sanctioned by civil authorities physically prevented the church from organizing its own religious gatherings on the afternoon of the Saint-Napoleon. At Bedarrides (Vaucluse) in 1858, the traditional Assumption procession had to be canceled because the mayor had given permission to the local innkeepers to organize an evening dance in the center of town. According to the police report, the cure asked for this event to be postponed so that the religious procession could follow its customary path through the main arteries of Bedarrides. The mayor refused on grounds that he had already given his authorization to the local businesses two weeks earlier. 27 The local priest's version of events underscored the obstructiveness of the mayor and the prefect, neither of whom had even deigned to respond to his pleas (the mayor was laboring his fields, an hour's distance away from town). The frustrated cure appealed to the archbishop to put an end to "this illegality, this scandal, even," before ending with a plaintive overview of the deplorable outcome: "Christian families have lamented their fate before God, while the shameful advocates of amusements and pleasures have maintained a dull and complete silence over the affair."28 Even more colorful was the language used by the priest of Clary (Nord), who on August 15, 1868, warned his congregation to stay away from the games organized by the municipality and especially from the music, which he described as "filthy"-hardly surprising given that the municipal band was made up of "complete

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scoundrels." He ended this most undiplomatic of sermons by comparing the municipality and its musical performers to "limping horses and donkeys walking backwards."29

Church-Provoked Conflicts All the above incidents share one common characteristic: the church was (or at least perceived itself as) the victim of the actions and machinations of the secular authorities. In other cases, however, it was the local clergy that was primarily responsible for creating dissention between the church and state institutions. A common source of the conflict was the perceived authoritarianism of the local priest, who did not always live up to poet Alphonse de Lamartine's idealized portrait of the village cure: "In church he is the man of God, everywhere else he is the most humble and self-effacing of men."30 The complexities of these sorts of disputes are epitomized in one specific episode that occurred in a small village in the department of the Nord during the national festivity of 1860. The chief protagonists were the mayor of Tressin and the priest of the nearby parish of Chereng, who also occasionally officiated in the small church at Tressin. The particular incident that triggered the clash was a casual remark made by the priest during the morning mass of August 15. The small church was so crowded that some inhabitants of Tressin were forced to stand outside. Hearing some commotion during the religious ceremony, no doubt caused by the late arrival of some worshippers, the priest berated the mayor and his municipal councilors: "I can hear people talking back there! Municipal magistrates, do your job, for if this sort of behavior continues I shall inform the bishop and, if necessary, we shall have this chapel closed." Feelings in the village immediately ran high. The cleric's intemperate outburst had succeeded in offending both the worshippers and the local secular authorities. The authorities took offense to the suggestion that their constituents had behaved disrespectfully in a place of worship (and that they were incapable of controlling them); the worshippers were displeased by the threat to close the local church (disparagingly referred to as a mere "chapel"). After receiving several deputations of indignant villagers, the mayor agreed to write a letter to the prefect of the Nord denouncing the cure's behavior. A five-page missive was drafted and dispatched to Lille, where it arrived a week later. It described the background to the incident, listing the numerous petty humiliations inflicted upon the village by the priest since his

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appointment. It was especially noted that the cure had appeared unwilling to perform a Te Deum in Tressin on the day of the SaintNapoleon and that it was only after several pleas from local notables (and the alluring prospect of an abundant collection for the persecuted Christians in Syria) that he had deigned to come to the village on the day of the national festivity. The letter played on an extraordinary range of levels simultaneously: it was a pledge of loyalty to Napoleon III, "the illustrious victor at Solferino"; an expression of Marian piety directed at "the Queen of Heavens, the patron saint of France"; a patriotic defense of the local church, unceremoniously maligned by the cure-and yet the edifice had been "the only one in the neighborhood to have been vandalized by the Austrians in 1792"; a bombastic assumption of authority by the mayor, who declared that he "assumed full responsibility for all his administrative acts"; an admonition to the priest that "in order to win over the people, one should follow the example of the Saviour and exhibit sweetness and goodwill"; and a vote of confidence "of the commune, the mayor, the municipal council" in the local schoolteacher, who had been "insidiously" attacked (manifestly by the cure again). The report came to a breathless climax with this violent tirade directed at the cleric: This priest's behavior has been noticed. We all know that he neglects to visit the sick; that he truncates the performance of vespers on the first Sunday of the month; that he shows no sympathy for the difficulties faced by poor parents during First Communion; that he comes to perform mass at Tressin only when he can lay his grubby hands on the sum of six francs, and even then he shows no regard for the times announced, arbitrarily deciding on all matters; that his system of inquisition on the village has but one goal, namely to provoke irritation and to enable him to deliver some ostensible insult, as when he threatens to approach the bishop to close down our chapel in order to accustom the inhabitants of Tressin to attend mass in Chereng. We all know that his real aim in all of this is forcibly to unite the commune of Tressin to the parish of Chereng, so that he may obtain a vicarage on which he could relax and lounge around his estate, a walking stick with a golden apple in hand. 31 The letter demonstrates the extreme susceptibility of municipal authorities conjoined with a deep sense of pride in the commune's her-

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itage and traditions, which were explicitly and positively connected to the memories of the revolutionary era. In the early years of the Restoration, such local sentiments of patriotism were indeed explicitly associated with anticlericalism because the church was often perceived to be beholden to the Bourbons, who had been brought back into France "in carriages supplied by foreign powers."32 What thus emerges is the particular shape of rural anticlericalism: its special focus on memory and local interests rather than ideology, the arbitrariness and perceived corruption of the local clergy, and the deep sense of religiosity of the notables and inhabitants. Christian precepts were used as the very benchmark against which the behavior of the errant cleric was found wanting. Finally, the inextricable connection between local and national issues in shaping religious conflicts in French towns and villages became apparent-lurking behind the explosion at Tressin were memories of the conflicts of the revolutionary era as well as the Italian war of Napoleon III, an event that clearly sharpened antagonisms on both sides of the divide.

Foreign and Domestic Policy Of the various national causes of clerical hostility to the Second Empire, the French military and diplomatic campaigns in support of Italian unification-a direct threat to the interests of the Papal States and the temporal powers of the Vatican-was undoubtedly among the most salient. Ultramontane Catholics were so incensed by the French position that they launched a vigorous campaign against Napoleon III, which was taken up verbally by local priests during their Sunday sermons and written up in small brochures, which were disseminated in hundreds of thousands of copies across France-a situation that greatly alarmed the authorities. 33 In 1859, and again in 1860, the national celebrations were marred by overt demonstrations of dissidence, especially on the part of the ultramontane clergy.34 In 1859, the cure of Le Cellier (LoireInferieure) used his sermon during the national festivity and the celebration of the victory at Solferino to condemn the rejoicings and especially the bonfires organized by the local administration. Scandalized by this blatant absence of patriotism by a salaried functionary of the state, the prefect wrote a letter of complaint to the bishop of Nantes. 35 To the astonishment of local Bonapartist officials in La Teste (Gironde), the Te Deum held in honor of the French victory in Italy was attended neither by the mayor nor by the cure. 36 A year later, the

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incidents with the local clergy were so numerous in the run-up to the celebrations of the quinze aout that a special folder had to be opened by Ministry of Justice officials in Paris to file the various reports. 37 A few examples: the procureur-general of Douai stated that there was general dissatisfaction among the local clergy with Napoleon Ill's Italian policy; at Dunkerque the cure apocalyptically denounced "crimes that call for celestial punishment."38 During the Saint-Napoleon celebrations, numerous priests refused to perform any holy prayers in honor of the emperor. Some, such as the cure of Thermes (Gers), were brazen and denied having received any formal instructions to this effect. 39 Others were more troubled and, indeed, tormented by their conflicting impulses-perhaps none more so than the priest at Allemagne (Basses-Alpes), who kept the suspense going until the very last moment: The cure, after announcing to his parish that the Te Deum would be chanted at the end of mass, deliberately omitted to sing, at the appropriate moment, either the Te Deum or the Domine salvum fac imperatorem. He accompanied this abstention by the following words, uttered in presence of the crowd of worshippers: "I told you that we would chant the Te Deum, but I find I cannot sing it. Go ahead and sing it yourselves if you like."40 The effects of the Italian war lingered well into the 1860s. Between 1859 and 1869, there were no less than fifty-five complaints directed at clerical manifestations of dissent toward the Second Empire in the diocese of Nantes, all of which were based on the clergy's opposition to Napoleon Ill's Italian policy.41 In 1868, the cure of Clary was "pseudonymously denounced" [sic] to the prefect of the Nord for "doing nothing to celebrate the festivity of His Majesty the emperor." According to a confidential report from the justice of the peace, the main reason for this passivity was the cleric's inveterate hostility to Giuseppe Garibaldi; he also blamed the French government for supporting the dissemination of "the revolutionary spirit" in the peninsula. The report noted that the church at Clary was not only substantively but also symbolically in ultramontane hands: on August 15, the Swiss guard present in front of the edifice "was not wearing a tricolor cockade on his hat."42 Garibaldi clearly became something of a hate figure for traditionalist French Catholics; during a celebration of the SaintNapoleon, the cure of Champdeniers (Deux-Sevres) pronounced such a violent diatribe against the Italian patriot that his parish thought he had taken leave of his senses. 43

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The unification of Italy was by no means the only national issue that cast a dark cloud over the religious celebration of the national festivity. Indeed, there were serious episodes of clerical dissidence throughout the Second Empire, beginning with the very first ceremonies of 1852, which took place against the backdrop of the 1851 coup d'etat, the fierce repression against republican resistants, and the rumors of an imminent restoration of the Empire. In the Vaucluse, the cure of Visan refused to sing the Te Deum, claiming that he had received no formal instructions to this effect; this was to become a standard excuse offered by dissident clerics. In the commune of Sault, the Abbe Chamoux ended his morning sermon on the Saint-Napoleon by unfavorably comparing the beneficial protection afforded to France by the Virgin Mary with the actions of "those great conquerors who are mere plunderers of our provinces"-a reference to both the Napoleonic wars and the destruction wrought by Louis-Napoleon in the wake of his seizure of power. 44 In a fine understatement, the prefect of the Vaucluse suggested to the archbishop of Avignon that "these words seemed to the attendance, at the very least, misplaced on the day of the festivity of the Napoleonic family."45 Some clerics also expressed their hostility to the Second Empire by snubbing the celebrations in honor of the birth of the imperial prince in 1856; for example, the bishop of Montauban, who "did not conceal his royalist convictions," ostentatiously refused to attend the baptism ceremony in Paris-to the fury and embarrassment of local Bonapartist officials, who had already described as "unspeakable" the letter of information the bishop had sent out to the priests in his diocese following the birth of the Napoleonic heir. 46 One rural cleric from the Allier took this hostility to its logical extreme and took umbrage at the mere mention of the imperial name in his presence; in 1861, he even refused to publish the marriage banns of a couple from the parish of Lurcy-Levis on the grounds that one of the husband's names was "Napoleon."47 Two years later, the cure of La Chapelle Blanche (Cotesdu-Nord) likewise refused to give his blessing to an altar of repose on the grounds that it was decorated with the national colors and the inscription mentioned the name of Napoleon III alongside that of the Virgin Mary.48 There were also other ideological sources of conflict between the clergy and the regime. In the early 1850s, a number of priests were known for their left-wing sympathies; the subprefect of Lectoure reported one such cleric in his region, a sympathizer of "the fanatical division of the republican party," for failing to celebrate the national festivity of 1852 with appropriate decorum. 49 In 1860, the French an-

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nexation of Nice and the Savoie was met with disapproval from many local Catholics and the clergy refused to celebrate the event. 50 Education also became a serious bone of contention between the state and church, especially during the 1860s under the ministry of the secular Victor Duruy. In many departments of western France, with large Catholic populations and an established network of religious schools, the Second Empire's education policies met with stiff opposition. In many instances, differences over education were expressly cited as the main reason for state-church confrontations during the national festivities. 51

Local Conflicts Alongside national disagreements over the foreign and domestic policy of the Bonapartist state, a range of local tensions and rivalries fueled the religious fractures of the Saint-Napoleon. By far, the most significant conflict was between the church and the municipality, of which several specific examples have already been noted. Such clashes were complex and multifaceted, involving national political disagreements; personal rivalries and incompatibilities between mayors and clerics; implicit and overt anticlericalism; and disagreements over a wide range of social and moral issues, as well as practical issues such as the management of the parish budget. 52 There was also an element of confusion over the formal allocation of powers. Priests had absolute control over the performance of religious rites, but mayors had "the right and duty to ensure that during all services there was no disorder"53-an overlapping allocation of power that gave rise to frequent clashes (often accompanied by interminably long, dense, and heated letters of complaint written by both parties to the prefect). But underlying all of this was a structural conflict between two different orders, both with strong roots in society (and both containing elements of tradition and modernity) but grounded in fundamentally clashing forms of legitimacy. On the one side was a religious order that rested on the principle of unquestioned authority and of truths that were revealed and immutable; as the Second Empire moved into the 1860s, the church's posture became even more dogmatic, reasserting its belief in papal infallibility and the superiority of the spiritual sphere over the temporal; and the rejection of science. 54 The municipality, on the other side, often saw itself as the champion of principles and values that were destined to enjoy increasing prominence in the

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remaining half of the nineteenth century: diversity, secularism, associational autonomy, and democracy.55 Seating arrangements for municipal authorities were a frequent source of tension. When the civil authorities of the commune ofNizas (Herault), led by the mayor, arrived in the church on August 15, 1857, they found the municipal bench "covered with planks and assorted rubbish; there was also a large amount of earth, indeed a sufficiently large amount to believe that it had been left there on purpose." The municipal delegation's suspicions were exacerbated when they noticed that the adjoining bench, reserved for the local parish council, was "squeaky clean."56 This was clearly no accident. In 1858, Monsieur Corcinos, the mayor of Mosset (Pyrenees-Orientales), was shoved into a corner of the church by the priest, who told him in Catalan that this recou (dark corner) was all he deserved; the indignant first magistrate appealed to the Conseil d'Etat for redress. 57 In 1862 in the commune of Algans (Tarn), the priest apparently allowed the traditional municipal bench to be occupied by "a family with which he was on good terms."58 Not impressed by this favoritism, the mayor and his councilors were further humiliated to discover that new seats had been allocated to them "in the most obscure part of the church."59 Adopting a tone of false innocence, the cure of Algans stated that all church benches were "made of the same wood."60 In 1863 in the village of Sainghin-en-Melantois (Nord), the municipal delegation was appalled to find themselves seated with the rest of the congregation; for some reason, the priest had not placed them in the choir, as in previous years. The mayor expressed the frustration of his colleagues: this gesture has denied them their "status as representatives of a higher authority"61 (a highly revealing turn of phrase, which would no doubt have been disputed by the clergy). In the same year, the mayor of Fontangy (Cote d'Or) was so incensed by the refusal of the priest to allocate seats to the elected representatives that he "stormed up the aisle, red with anger, furious as a lion, a stick in his hand."62 In 1864, the mayor and entire municipal council of Saint-Privat (Dordogne) refused to attend the Te Deum: the local cure had "unaccountably" denied them their usual seats in church. 63 Larger towns were not spared: in the imposing cathedral of Nantes in 1862, the mayor and his municipal councilors arrived to find that (unlike in previous years) there were no seats reserved for them. In order to avoid "any aggravation," the local representatives stood outside during the ceremony. Ferdinand Fabre, the mild-mannered mayor of Nantes, furiously asked the prefect to intervene with the local re-

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ligious authorities to prevent a repetition of this affront: "You will no doubt agree that it is of the utmost importance that the prerogatives of my administration be clearly recognized."64 In Nantes, the principal political cleavage was religious rather than ideological: Bonapartists, Orleanists and republicans were in de facto alliance against the legitimists, who were strongly supported by the clergy. But even in communes without any overt political divisions along secular-religious lines, the issue of municipal seating could prove highly contentious. In the commune of Laheycourt (Meuse), the mayor was told by the local cure in 1855 that there would be no special seat for him and his councilors in church during the morning mass of the Saint-Napoleon. Reviewing the two equally undignified alternatives now available to him, the first magistrate exploded with anger: "Here we have the greatest solemnity of the year, August 15, a festivity that is both civil and religious. The mayor, the head of the commune, rightfully occupies his place in the temple. Must he therefore wander about in church, looking for a seat? ... Or must he abstain from coming, so as not to be the object of public mortification?"65 In 1860 in the commune of Lahaye-Fouassiere (Loire-Inferieure), the priest asked the municipal representatives to pay for their seats, and came up to them individually before the ceremony to ask for the money; upon their refusal, he laced his sermon with "disobliging remarks" about the mayor. 66 In 1857, during the Saint-Napoleon, there was an even more dramatic confrontation between municipal and church authorities in a commune of the Nord. The civic procession set out to attend the morning ceremony and Te Deum and upon reaching the church, they found the principal door closed and the ceremony already in full swing. After vainly attempting to gain entry, the representatives turned back. Disagreements over social issues, notably burial rights, were at the heart of this particular controversy. By the following year, the relationship between civil and religious authorities had deteriorated further. This time, the cure did not even inform the municipal authorities of the time of the morning religious ceremony. It was clear that ingress into the church would likely prove problematic again. The elected representatives met in the municipality on August 14 and voted the following resolution: "While protesting its complete devotion to the person of His Majesty the emperor and his family, the Municipal Council, in order to avoid all struggle and disorder in the commune, is regretfully forced to abstain from attending the Te Deum."67 In some communes, the conflict between the municipality and the church was so bitter that secular authorities and

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groups had to find refuge elsewhere. At Escarmin (Nord) in 1867, after being locked out of the church, the local council, firemen, and imperial veterans were forced to attend the Te Deum in the neighboring village of Capelle. 68

Sound Control Another major source of confrontation was what might be termed "sound control." It was noted earlier, in the Tressin incident, how sensitive priests were to uncontrolled public noise during the religious ceremonies. But even orchestrated gestures were frowned upon. After attending the Te Deum in the church of Fontaine-la-Mallet (SeineInferieure) in 1854, the mayor and his municipal delegation cheerfully shouted, "Long live the emperor!" They were immediately (and very publicly) reprimanded by the cure, who informed them that even though it was very true that the emperor was a good man and Providence should be thanked for his rule, "the church is the house of God, and one should come here only to pray." Their cry was thus "inappropriate." The mayor, who had been in post for several decades, was nonplussed: he well remembered priests in the same church urging the congregation to shout (three times!) "Long live the king" during the festivities of the Restoration and July Monarchy.69 The same incident occurred at Monprimblanc (Gironde) in 1865; there, the priest told the congregation that it was not "proper" to cheer the emperor in church-a remark that, in the words of the mayor, "astonished all those present. "70 Even more contentious was the performance of music, both instrumental and vocal, during the religious ceremonies of the SaintNapoleon. Both the church and the municipality acted as sponsors of musical groups and associations, and the rivalry between the two institutions was often played out in the morning mass of the national festivity.71 The scope for clashes and misunderstandings was immense here, and there were frequent incidents during the celebration of the national festivity. In many instances, discord was caused simply by the failure of secular and religious authorities to communicate with each other. At Beziers in 1858, for example, the mayor invited the town's choral society to perform in church on the morning of August 15. However-either through an oversight or by design-he omitted to inform the cure. Finding out about these arrangements on the very morning of the ceremony, the cleric refused to allow the choir into his church on the (not unreasonable) grounds that the program of

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prayers and chants had already been laid out. The subprefect sided with the religious authority: "The religious ceremony is entirely a matter for the cure.... This priest certainly must have had very serious reasons not to allow the choral society to perform in his church."72 Other incidents could not be given such a benign interpretation. At La Ciotat (Bouches-du-Rhone) in 1862, the municipal and religious authorities had agreed that the choral society would sing the Te Deum after the morning mass. The choristers had carefully rehearsed for the occasion and lined up in church with keen anticipation on the day. But, to the general surprise of the assistance, the priest did not invite them to perform after the end of the religious ceremony. Instead he intonated the Te Deum himself, with the support of a few of his church assistants. The chant was performed "in a discordant and cold manner." The police commissioner, who witnessed this calculated piece of dissonance, concluded that the intention here was to snub not merely the municipality and its choir but also the government ofNapoleon 111. 73 At the very worst, these musical incidents could degenerate into open confrontations between religious and secular authorities. In 1856, the cure of Blere (Indre-et-Loire) kept the mayor and his musical band waiting outside the church; when they were eventually let in, there were no seats for them.7 4 At Montbazens (Aveyron) in 1862, the drummers of the local national guard were sternly rebuked when they tried to enter the local church; when they tried to argue, the priest informed them that "responsibility for maintaining order in church belonged to him and not the mayor."75 At Gondrecourt (Meuse) in the same year, the priest refused to allow the local firemen's band to enter the church on two occasions-first before the beginning of the religious service and then again before the Te Deum; consequently, part of the municipal delegation withdrew in protest. 76 At Culey (Meuse) in 1867, the mayor was outraged when the cure denied entry into the church to the drummer of the firemen's musical band: an insult to the musicians, to the municipality, and to the solemnity of the festivity of His Majesty.7 7 Still, in 1867 and for the second consecutive year, the cure of Champagne (Cote d'Or) refused entry to the firemen's musical band. 78 At Solesmes (Nord) in 1857, the mayor arrived at church with his civic procession, which was led by a platoon of firemen providing a full musical accompaniment. As they entered the building, the musicians began to perform a rousing military march. The police com-

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missioner noted what happened next: "As the members of the civic procession were taking their seats in the church choir, the cure turned haughtily to the mayor and said to him: 'If you do not have this racket stopped immediately I am leaving the altar.' "79 Before anyone could react, the priest indeed disappeared into the sacristy. Abandoned by the very authorities meant to be their hosts, the mayor and his delegation (music and all) had no option but to leave the church. The first magistrate's indignation knew no bounds: "More than an act of intolerance, this was an intolerable act." The mayor felt, on this occasion, that even the church's most unconditional supporters were on his side: "It was a good thing that a sudden downpour dispersed the numerous groups who were standing in the public square after the end of the church ceremony; there were expressions of indignation on all faces. Men who were normally very calm were highly irritated, and even the women condemned the incomprehensible behavior of the CUre."80 The sacristy was clearly a good place to hide. In 1855, the cure of Neve (Gironde) retreated into this sanctuary at the end of morning mass and refused to perform the Te Deum-thus forcing his congregation (and the assembled local dignitaries) to leave. 81 It was not necessary to drive the municipal authorities out of church; local clerics could find a host of other ways of annoying and humiliating the representatives of the secular order. At Angers in 1858, at the morning ceremony in the cathedral, the atmosphere was soured when the officiating priest took the opportunity, in the presence of local officials, to make a collection for the capucins, a controversial religious order recently established in the town. Noting the embarrassment of his administrative and municipal colleagues, the procureur-general reported that "even many pious and sensible people do not quite see the utility of this religious corporation and the cure would have done much better, I think, to postpone his collection for a less official occasion."82 This may have been true, but the magistrate was assuming that the priest's intention was to avoid rather than provoke confrontation-an assumption that almost certainly did not hold in this particular case. Another common source of confusion and embarrassment for municipal authorities was the time at which the prayers in honor of the sovereign were performed. Three examples illustrate how easily the local clergy could ridicule the unfortunate local representatives. First, at Saint-Laurent-des-Ombres (Gard), the priest informed the mayor that the Te Deum would be performed after the vespers' procession in the early evening. The municipal authority took part in the pro-

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cession, but as they were approaching the church, the mayor and his councilors were dismayed to hear the familiar chants being performed. The cure had not bothered to wait for them. 83 Second, at Perrignysur-l'Ognon (Cote d'Or), the cure urged the choir to sing the Te Deum quickly, as he "did not want to linger"; when the choristers, assisted by the audience, insisted on performing the religious hymn "in a grave and solemn manner," the cleric loudly "snapped his hymn book shut."84 Third, the cure of Saint-Valery-en-Caux (SeineInferieure) went to even greater lengths to keep the municipal representatives out of his church. In 1864, he had reproached the mayor for "interrupting the divine service" when he arrived with his retinue toward the end of the religious ceremony. The following year, in an attempt to avert a similar rebuke, the mayor searched for the cleric the day before the national festivity to establish the exact time at which the morning mass would end. He was received with the greatest of courtesy and told to come at noon. Escorted by his municipal officers, the first magistrate arrived outside the church fifteen minutes early. He found to his chagrin that the service had ended and the Te Deum had already been performed. Everyone had gone home, and the mayor and his colleagues were left standing outside an empty church in the scorching August heat. The mayor had been deliberately misinformed by the cure. It also transpired that, in order to ensure the discomfiture of the municipal delegation, the scheming priest had officiated the religious ceremony that morning with "unaccustomed rapidity." He even told the organist to "play more quickly."85

Unity and Conflict In the words of Thomas Kselman, religious experience in nineteenthcentury France was marked by "pluralism, voluntarism, and experimentation."86 This first element-pluralism-is very evident in the previous examples from the Second Empire era. Religion brought communities together during the national festivities of the Second Empire but also radically separated them. The first point worth underlining here is the consistency of conflict over time. While the skirmishes clearly escalated in the period 1859-1861 (the Italian war and its fallout),87 these conflicts were present from the very onset of the Second Empire and continued into the late 1860s. In this sense, the evidence corrects the view-still widespread among French political and cultural historians-that the Catholic Church and the Bonapartist

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regime remained firmly allied throughout the Second Empire, especially in the provinces. The forms of polarization could occur in many dimensions: women against men; believers against nonbelievers; entire communes against each other; mayors against priests; the Catholic Church against the Bonapartist government in Paris; local clerics against local administrative authorities; secular political movements against religious parties and groups; and even believers against each other. In one commune Gallican authorities gladly cooperated with the state to celebrate the civil festivity, while in another, the ultramontane clergy were much more circumspect and sometimes even openly defiant. Religion was also a source of division in communities with significant Protestant minorities. In 1853, the prefect of the Bas-Rhin noted that many Protestant towns of his department had not celebrated the Saint-Napoleon because the event was perceived as a predominantly Catholic festivity.88 Elsewhere, it was the presence of Protestants who caused offence: in 1853, the subprefect of Lectoure (Gers) complained that many mayors in his locality were forcing local officials to attend religious ceremonies both at churches and in temples, a conjunction that "was incompatible with religious conscience."89 Also notable, finally, were the variations in location. In terms of Pierre Barral's typology of different forms of church-state relations, it is clear that religious conflict during August 15 was most intense in the regions of "anticlerical democracy" (the Parisian basin, the Provence and the Mediterranean Languedoc) and the territories of "republican democracy" (Champagne, Burgundy, Poitou, parts of the Massif Central). But they were also frequent in the regions of "clerical democracy" (Flanders, Basque country, and southeast of the Massif central) as well as in the clerical strongholds of Brittany and Vendee, where they were fueled by ultramontanism. 90 The explanation for the widespread occurrence of these conflicts was that in some areas they were fueled by religious authorities and in others by secular groups and institutions; the aggregate result, as noted throughout this chapter, was explosive. In those localities where church-state relations were harmonious, or at least cordial, religion made a positive contribution to the success of the festivities-though the enthusiasm of the clergy for the Empire undoubtedly waned over time. 91 But this was by no means the entire picture; the Bonapartist government's objectives on the ground were also severely disrupted by dissident priests, whose strategic control of the ceremony (abetted by statutory regulations that gave them full

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control of what happened inside the church compound) were used to subversive ends. And wherever it was faced with religious dissidence, the regime-for all its political and military might-was powerless. The central message from these conflicts is that the legitimacy of the imperial regime could be eroded by resolute groups of activists working at local levels-a point that was very much taken on board by the republican opposition to the Second Empire. What has also emerged is the remarkable degree of political voluntarism and sophistication among the clergy. In the heartlands of ultramontanism, such as in parts of western France, priests did not merely rebel; they also developed a propensity to conceal their real political sentiments behind a superficial aura of orthodoxy and cooperation. Local authorities were often duped. In the Loire Inferieure, for example, the prefect commissioned annual reports from his subordinates in the aftermath of the Saint-Napoleon celebrations to establish whether the local clergy had performed the Te Deum. After a difficult first few years, this official seemed pleased, producing a table showing that of the twenty-seven priests who had officiated in the communes of the Ancenis district in 1855 only two had not chanted in honor of the emperor. 92 But such tables did not provide the full picture. One of the priests listed as having performed the Te Deum was Yves Bretaudeau, the cure of Vritz. But other sources inform us that he remained a rebel;93 like many of his colleagues all over France, he had no doubt found a variety of ways to signal his dissidence during the religious ceremonies. These gestures could have included refusing to announce the Te Deum to the congregation beforehand; singing the Te Deum but not the Domine Salvum; and chanting both but either very quickly, very slowly, very unintelligibly (as in Mallemort, in the Bouches-du-Rhone, where the priest sang the Te Deum "as a mumble")94 or, like the cure of Saint-Geoire (Isere) in 1861, "in a completely ridiculous manner."95 The clergy, in short, rapidly invented (or reappropriated) a repertoire of oppositional gestures that demonstrated its capacity to resist the perceived encroachments of the Bonapartist state. This draws attention to one of the enduring features of nineteenth-century French collective life: the complex relationship between political power and social authority and the subtle ways in which the latter could undermine the former. Dissent had a long tradition in the French church since the early 1790s, and memories of earlier battles between church and state clearly assisted many of the cures of the Second Empire era in forging their tools of symbolic resistance.

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The religious clashes of the Saint-Napoleon also bring to the fore the complex issue of secularism. Not for the first time in nineteenthcentury French history, a state that was "friendly" to Catholicism developed fundamentally diverging interests from the church and sought to act upon them. 96 During the Second Empire, the state was faced with an assertive church, which often zealously sought to increase its influence and visibility in society. This expansion was welcomed by the regime when it was thought not to challenge the local and national interests of Bonapartist elites. But the perception increasingly shifted so that the growth of the church did pose a problem for the stateespecially when the regime sought to develop its own "civil religion," which effectively competed with the official institutions (and holy days) of the Catholic faith. Bernard Menager is right to describe the Saint-Napoleon as a festivity that was "secular in its inspiration,"97 for it essentially sought to replace the consecration of God by that of the emperor and the political institutions created by him. It was precisely for this reason that many local clergymen found the civil religion of August 15 offensive and threatening. Furthermore, when many Bonapartist officials refused to take part in afternoon ceremonies of the Assumption or to illuminate public buildings in their locality during nationally recognized Catholic festivities, they were articulating (long before its official enactment) the principle of separation of church from state or, at the very least, taking a stand against what they saw as an unacceptable incursion into the temporal sphere by the spiritual authorities. These conflicts between the Bonapartist state and church authorities thus reveal that the critical fault lines between secular and religious worldviews amounted to much more than an ideological battle between republicans and Catholics. What does the evidence suggest more widely about Catholic observance, practice, and sentiment in nineteenth-century France? From the perspective of the religious elites, what comes across most powerfully is the priority of the religious over the political: the real celebration, for the church, was the Assumption. Indeed throughout the Second Empire most clerics put much more effort into celebrating traditional Catholic festivities than those of the imperial regime. One rural mayor noted irritably: "Our clergy, which normally announces even the most obscure religious festivities from the pulpit and invites the faithful to celebrate them, in general remains silent when it comes to the national festivity of August 15."98 The persuasive power of the local clergy was impressive-sometimes helping to draw out the mass of believers in many parts of

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France by their positive support for the national festivity and, at other times, exercising a negative influence (most notably over women). At the same time, it is apparent that this negative social power was increasingly finding its limits: as one religious historian puts it, the period after 1860 was, for a large number of priests across France, "the beginning of the end of a world."99 Most clerics were instinctively hostile to the hedonistic aspects of the fete du 15 aout, and many openly denounced as "vices" the public amusements that were encouraged by the regime and promoted by local municipalities. Yet the masses still turned out in huge numbers to these games, public balls, and dances. Indeed, it has been argued that the immense popular success of these profane festivities had a direct impact on the style of religious ceremonies and processions in the 1860s, which made a much greater effort to appeal to the aesthetic and sensual proclivities of the faithful. lOO Finally, the religious aspects of the Saint-Napoleon festivities have also been greatly revealing with regard to the communal sphere. From an institutional point of view, the conflicts between church and municipality provide compelling evidence of the depth and intensity of municipal patriotism in nineteenth-century France. This sentiment was historical, territorial, cultural, and political: it was nurtured through common memories and customs, grounded in an attachment to particular buildings and monuments, anchored in a common identification of the interests of the collectivity, and expressed through the regular election of local councilors. The commune was also, of course, a secular site; its reinforcement, by the same token, gave another fillip to the idea of laicite. This secular identity was reinforced by the central role performed by municipalities in the organization of public festivities-a role that enabled enterprising local mayors to raise their own profile and that of their municipal administration. The commune also provided the territorial focus for the development of anticlericalism. This chapter has illustrated the existence of a distinct variety of this phenomenon: rural rather than urban and interest-based rather than ideological. 101 This anticlericalism was in essence a reaction against the authoritarian demeanor of the local clergy as well as its perceived absence of talent and virtue. 102 C. de Vandieres, a rural Bonapartist mayor in the Dordogne, captured this frustration succinctly when he wrote in 1860 (having just encountered fierce resistance to the celebration of the national festivity by his local priest): "The time has now come to challenge the devouring ambition of the clergy ... this sect whose only religion is the cult of its own

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preponderance."103 Five years later, after facing yet more "clerical insolence" during the Saint-Napoleon celebrations, the old mayor admonished the prefect: "How could such a so-called 'minister of God' still remain unpunished?"104 The extreme virulence of this rural anticlericalism startled Bonapartist authorities in the late years of the Second Empire. For example, in the summer months of 1868, preparations to celebrate the national festivity in peasant communities of the Charente, Charente-Inferieure, and Gironde were marred by a sharp rise in anticlerical feelings, triggered by widespread stories that local priests were working with the nobility to restore the old regime tax in kind, the dime. lOS The source of these rumors is unclear, but their effects were clearly measurable in the parish of Donnezac (Gironde) in May 1868. In this normally tranquil village, the religious celebration of the Fete de l'Adoration Perpetuelle came to an abrupt end when a large band of peasants armed with pitchforks and hunting rifles invaded the local church and chased out the priest, who "had to flee for his life."106 The men chanted, "Long live the emperor! Down with the priests!"107 Far from being discouraged, this anticlericalism was often nurtured by Bonapartist officials. 108 Here, for example, is the pessimistic description of the local clergy by the subprefect of Epernay (Marne) in 1865: The clergy is recruited only among the lowest classes of rural workers. It is made up of men who have sought in the priest's garb a refuge from the hard labor of the fields. With these elements, it would have been very hard to create a good clergy, even with intelligent leadership. But I am inclined to believe that the education dispensed in seminaries has been of very low quality over these past few years. Our rural priests are generally lamentable in their mediocrity: full of prejudices, ignorant, and crude; and they are also imbued with the arrogance of the upstart. 109 The anticlerical dimensions of the conflicts between local religious and municipal authorities undoubtedly helped to fortify communal sentiment and communal identity. When the mayor of Castillon (Gironde) marched into his local church in 1864 with his civic procession and musical accompaniment and shouted, "We are the masters here,"110 he was provocatively but explicitly appealing to this very bedrock of political values and sentiments. And given that many of these religious battles were also national in character and scope (notably

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over such questions as Italian unification and education), it also becomes clear that the communal sphere was not purely concerned with "local" issues. The confrontation between religious and secular elements in French towns and villages reinforced local sentiment, but also established powerful bonds between the local and the national spheres. Rural anticlericalism was thus not merely a negative phenomenon; it also gave French men (it was mainly the men) a sense of who they were and where they came from; it gave them, in other words, a sense of collective identity-a composite notion incorporating historical, territorial, cultural, and universal elements (as well as a strong perception of masculinity). 111 These petty struggles that took place in the church compound were thus much more significant than they seemed-perhaps even to the actors themselves. Long before the advent of the Third Republic, these battles confirmed the veracity of Jules Meline's saying: "Let us not brush off the esprit de clocher, for it is one of the very foundations of the idea of patrie."112

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AUGUST 15,1861, the commune of Stainville (Meuse) celebrated the national festivity "quite well," in the carefully qualified estimate of the mayor. At first sight, this seemed rather like a grudging assessment. His report to the prefect indicated that there had been a colorful civic procession from the municipality to the local church in the morning; and later in the day, soldiers from the local garrison, firemen, rural policemen, and forest wardens had come together for a convivial banquet-after which a group of around 150 men had descended upon the mayor's house where they had merrily sung imperial ditties for nearly two hours. In the early evening these hardy revelers had left the mayor's front yard to join the rest of the town at the three musical events organized by the municipality. The festivities had ended at midnight, "without any trouble or dissension"; and the mayor had especially noted that "all faces were glowing with joy, and everyone was fraternizing."l Why, then, was the mayor so reluctant to commend the day's festivities? The problem was that "the men of the opposition party had refrained from taking any part in the festivity." Four municipal councilors-Michel, Dube, Morin, and Charoy-Charoy-had refused to join the civic procession to church (although they had attended the Te Deum). Even worse, none of these four men had "deigned even to light a candle" in front of their homes, even though all the town's public buildings and most of its private houses had been illuminated. Councilor Charoy, a republican, was evidently the mayor's bete noire;

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in a postscript to his report, the mayor went out of his way to praise the conduct of the public notary of Stainville, Monsieur Martin, who had decorated the front of his "chateau" with national flags and illuminated the entire building in the evening, "something that his neighbor, the postman Charoy, had signally failed to do, even though he is a member of the municipal council."2 Such contrasts between civic unity and political conflict went to the heart of the festivities of the Saint-Napoleon. There was an understood and meticulously precise repertoire of symbolic gestures on all sides-participants as well as dissenters. It is interesting to note, for example, the delicate but slightly perplexing balance struck by the opposition councilors-refusing to join the municipal procession behind their own mayor but nonetheless electing to attend the church service in honor of the Emperor Napoleon III (probably a case of personal animosity outweighing ideological hostility). The celebrations gave rise to many such paradoxes. Without quite recognizing it, the mayor of Stainville articulated the greatest of them when he ended his report with the comment that "the harmony we witnessed was probably due to the fact that the men of the opposition party did not show their faces on the occasion of this great and beautiful festivity."3 This was a telling admission. It recognized that the behavior of Charoy and his fellow republicans, which the mayor had severely condemned, had actually contributed to the success of the festivity. But this success had been achieved at a paradoxical cost: the absence (or exclusion) from the public sphere of those citizens who did not share the political values of the Bonapartist regime. This was a national festivity, but only as long as all those participating in the events-public officials and ordinary citizens-acquiesced in the symbolic and substantive principles of the Saint-Napoleon.

Critics of Imperial Sovereignty Throughout the Second Empire, the pattern of behavior exhibited by the opposition councilors of Stainville was replicated throughout France during the national celebrations, both by elected officials and ordinary citizens. At one level, it was easy enough to understand why opponents of the regime refused all manner of identification with these Bonapartist events. Republicans and legitimists (the two main organized forces of opposition on the ground) viewed the Empire as the product of an illegal seizure of power-a coup d'etat carried out against a constitutionally founded republic. Indeed, the republicans

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would never forgive the Second Empire for its original sin of December 2, 1851-an infamous date that, as Leon Gambetta cruelly reminded the Bonapartist magistrates at the 1868 Baudin trial, the regime itself did not dare commemorate. 4 It was not only the founding moment of the regime that was problematic, but also its immediate political consequences. In some parts of the territory, the 1851 seizure of power had met with stiff popular resistance, generally orchestrated by local republican groups.5 Once this resistance had been crushed, a fierce wave of repression was launched against its perpetrators-the brunt of which was borne by republican activists who were arrested and tried by the infamous Commissions Mixtes; large numbers were sent to prison and many were sentenced to deportation to Algeria or Cayenne. 6 During these years of the "authoritarian" Empire, republican political, intellectual, and associative organizations and networks were closed down, and republican activists and sympathizers were ruthlessly evicted from all public positions. 7 Broken at its center, the republican party was essentially reduced to licking its wounds in private; at these small informal gatherings-such as at the salon of the Countess Marie d'Agoult in Paristhe mood was overwhelmingly melancholic; one observer described the dominant sentiments as "sadness for the present, and fear for the future."8 Defeated, traumatized, and despondent, the republicans were thus hardly in a mood to celebrate the Saint-Napoleon. And as the Second Empire consolidated its rule during the 1850s, the rationale for republican opposition to the festivities of August 15 deepened. The republicans had a festive tradition of their own, theoretically articulated in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the previous century. In his advice to the Poles, Rousseau had urged the avoidance of all unnecessary "luxury," adding that "the festivities of a free people must always be imbued with decency and solemnity, and one must present to public admiration only those objects that are worthy of its esteem."9 This Rousseauesque conception had largely inspired the festivities of the revolutionary era-especially the 1790 Fete de la Federation, that poignant and fleeting moment of French civic and political concord to which all subsequent republican generations throughout the nineteenth century harked back. lO The celebrations of the Second Empire, however, appeared to the republicans as the negation of the values that befitted such civic ceremonies, in at least three fundamental ways. Philosophically, these festivities celebrated not the principle of popular sovereignty, but

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rather the majesty and sovereignty of one ruler over the rest of the nation, with all the dysfunctions that such a system could engender: arbitrariness, patronage, and the encouragement of vanity and venality.ll It was for such reasons that republicans were hostile to state decorations, such as the Legion of Honor, which were perceived to be fundamentally "antidemocratic."12 Politically, Bonapartist festivities were thought not to inspire the citizenry towards noble collective ideals and national aspirations, but merely to reinforce the regime's claims to political legitimacy-by constraint and force if necessary. For example, in early 1852, republican political prisoners were made to hang banners (paid for by themselves) celebrating Prince Louis-Napoleon outside their own detention center in Brignoles (Var).13 Morally, perhaps most importantly of all, these celebrations were believed not to educate and elevate the citizenry, as in the "intelligent" festivities of the republican tradition,14 but rather to appeal to their baser instincts, most notably the pursuit of selfishness and greed and the adoration of luxury. The fete imperiale was thus seen by republicans as a debasement of the civic fabric-a corruption that encouraged subservient mentalities and private immorality and ultimately reinforced the power of the Second Empire. As the republican thinker Jules Barni put it: "How can he who is enslaved by pleasure and ostentation not also be enslaved by his Caesar?"15 "Paris is full of elation," added Juliette Adam. "People can only think of pleasure. This is, indeed, what all the provincials and foreigners come to seek in the city."16 There was more than an air of social (and geographical) snobbery in this republican view, which is well captured in this tirade by Henri Allain-Targe after attending the 1867 Universal Exposition in Paris: I went to the Exposition yesterday. I stayed on my feet for five hours in the midst of all this merchandise, which is even less interesting than the shops on the rue Vivienne. This throng of objects and provincial visitors is tiresome and inept. Ah! If it is with such trifles that freedom and art, and our public, national, and intellectual life are to be replaced, we are sailing very close to decomposition and decadence. 17 Such laments against the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of the Bonapartist civic order were commonplace among republican men and women; before going into permanent exile after 1851, the republican feminist Jeanne Deroin also savaged the "immorality" and "corruption" of imperial France. 18 These views offered interesting echoes of traditionalist Catholicism, whose critique of the Second Empire's fes-

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[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

Program of the Fete of August 15, Paris. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. One of the many posters announcing the 1853 national celebrations in Paris. This image symbolizes much of what the republicans detested about the Second Empire: the imperial personification of sovereignty, the association of Napoleon III with justice, and the replacement of republican political themes (such as liberty and equality) with economic notions such as commerce, industry, and agriculture.

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tivities was also grounded in hostility to hedonism. 19 Not surprisingly, this theme resonated powerfully in royalist and Catholic discourse; as one observer of the era put it somewhat sullenly, the period between 1851 and 1870 was one in which "the moral level was falling every day."20 Commenting on the declining mores of provincial society in the early years of the Second Empire, the duchess of Dino railed against the "unbridled luxury and avidity for threatening material pleasures."21 But while they shared the republican hostility to the imperial regime's apparent cult of materialism and hedonism, which was so blatantly manifested during the national festivities, the legitimists disagreed with the broader philosophical premises that underpinned the republican critique of the Saint-Napoleon. The most fundamental point of divergence was the notion of popular sovereignty, which for legitimists remained embedded in the Second Empire's civic orderan inclusion that had devastating social consequences: "In modern society there is no more any sense of respect; and that is for a simple reason: man, imbued with his own sense of sovereignty, no longer believes in any form of superiority. This independence engenders contempt, and egoism obliterates not only all sense of hierarchy, but even the instinct of propriety."22 In this respect, legitimists saw Bonapartist festivities as damaging because they promoted and celebrated perverse doctrines such as freedom and individualism, and turned French society away from its Catholic and royalist heritage, with its core moral values of obedience, honorability, honesty, and humility.23 Sovereignty was thus at the heart of the republican and legitimist critiques of Bonapartist festivities-but from opposing ideological perspectives. For the republicans, the Saint-Napoleon symbolized the confiscation of popular sovereignty by Napoleon III; they thus saw their task as one of unmasking the falsehood of the Second Empire's claims to legitimacy-both in the immediate sense of the regime's entitlement to govern and in the historical sense of being part of the revolutionary tradition. For legitimists, in contrast, the Second Empire was the very affirmation of the Revolution, especially with respect to the leveling of hierarchies and a vision of individual selfrealization, which was completely divorced from social tradition and divine revelation. For the royalists, the national celebrations were thus an opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to their monarch and more broadly to their traditionalist social and political values. The differences reflected in the contrasting ways in which both the republicans and the legitimists manifested their opposition to the festivities of August 15 are examined in this chapter and in the next.

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Active Withdrawal, Active Presence Not much is known of grassroots republican political activity during the 1850s, the most somber and difficult years of the authoritarian Empire. The party was effectively broken as a national political force, and a great deal of its activity took place, at best at the interstices of official public life in France, in private settings (notably in salons and Masonic lodges), underground, or in exile. 24 In a context in which the conduct of open political activity was highly problematic, rituals took on an especially significant dimension in republican collective life. Thus, when the "trees of liberty" planted under the Second Republic were cut down after December 1851, many local republicans gathered the pieces of wood and carried them off "like holy relics."25 At Simorre (Gers) in early January 1852, local republicans not only carried away pieces of wood, but also left behind a stirring message printed on a piece of silk, which was found by the local gendarmerie: "0 tree of Hope and Happiness, be pleased that you still have roots, For by next May you will again grow sublime."26 Even such small incidents illustrate the continuation of republican political activity at local levels; indeed, this is one of the reasons why republican responses to the Saint-Napoleon are worthy of attention. Many individuals, of course, simply adopted an exiting strategy and withdrew into their private sphere-a gesture taken somewhat to the extreme by one of the few republican activists in the commune of Maubeuge (Nord), who decided, in 1864, that the best way of celebrating the national festivity was to take his entire family to Brussels. 27 But even when they opted out of the celebrations, many republican activists in the early years of the Second Empire often made simple and symbolic gestures in order to express their continuing faith in their political values, their existence as a political community, and their challenge to the regime's claims to sovereignty and legitimacy. Over time such acts of civic resistance became increasingly ritualized and even institutionalized. The Napoleonic fete, in other words, gave rise to a republican "anti-fete," a moment at which the revolutionary past could be commemorated and hostility to the present order articulated-a set of symbolic practices commonly adopted by republican generations ever since the Restoration. 28 Hence, there exists another great paradox of the national celebrations of the Second Empire: although intended by their Bonapartist organizers as a moment of unity and civic concord, the festivities instead provided republican opposition groups with a variety of opportunities to initiate the process of

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their own political reconstruction and acculturate like-minded citizens into defying the regime. The most common manifestation of republican opposition to the festivity was what may be called "active withdrawal": a retreat from the public sphere, which at the same time clearly signaled to the authorities the presence of positive opposition to the regime. Explaining the "reserved" and "indifferent" attitude of the local population in August 1853 in the commune of Varennes (Meuse), the Bonapartist mayor noted: "We have here, in several strands of society, a certain number of men who are sulking in their corner and are more or less secretly opposed to the new order of things."29 Additionally, the police commissioner of the canton of Lannoy (Nord) in 1858 indicated, "There are no openly declared political parties as such here." However there was "some dissent in the air," a syndrome that he attributed to the existence of a small number of republicans who were hostile to the government; he gave them the ironic title of "the society of the discontented."30 In some localities, these republicans' withdrawal from the public sphere succeeded in dampening the atmosphere. Candidly recognizing this power of the local opposition, one rural mayor also underlined his own helplessness: "A little more gratitude and publicspiritedness, and a little more money, would have given us an even better festivity. I am working on the latter, but about the former I can do nothing."31 In communes where republicans were merely a handful, they still managed to make a public statement of their hostility to the Second Empire-notably by refusing to illuminate their homes. This obscurity seemed ominous to the police commissioner of Masseube (Gers): "It was easy to recognize the homes of the democrates, who, wishing to be true to their principles, abstained from all activity. This had as its effect to render their inhabitations most lugubrious, which seemed to announce their imminent demise."32 In the town of Mirebeau (Cote d'Or) in 1855, the following republicans signaled their presence by refraining from illuminating their homes: "Maillot the pharmacist; Sauvageot, the veterinarian; Blot the manager of the Cafe de la Cote d'Or; Durand, owner of the Cafe du Commerce; and Voire, innkeeper and baker."33 In the town of Villefranche (Dordogne) in 1864, it was common knowledge that on the national day "the few individuals known for their hostile opinions, such as Pascal and a few others, kept their houses in the dark. "34 In the staunchly Bonapartist commune of St. Orse (Dordogne) in 1866, "all the houses of the locality were illuminated in the evening,

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with the exception of Mr. Bron, opposition municipal councilor, and Mr. Mounier, the public schoolteacher."35 These forms of active withdrawal were often exacerbated when local republican groups sought to manifest their opposition to the national and foreign policies of the Second Empire. At Besanc;on in 1859, the republicans, who had supported the regime's Italian campaign with some enthusiasm, marked their great irritation at its inconclusive outcome by "completely abstaining from taking part in the festivity of August 15 and the illuminations of the evening."36 Another more forceful way in which republican individual citizens and groups manifested their opposition was by a measured form of "voice," which could be termed "active presence": the physical occupation of public space. In many communes throughout France there were vibrant traditions of local festivities, many of which dated back to the Middle Ages. Such celebrations (which in some communes could last several days) often provided a welcome opportunity for political opponents of the Second Empire to make public appearances as a collectivity. In the Bas-Languedoc, republicans came out in massive numbers-along with the rest of the local population-to watch bull races, which, as noted earlier, experienced a remarkable growth in popularity in the 1850s and 1860s. 37 Raymond Huard offered a sociopsychological explanation for the phenomenon: "At a time when the village was becoming more civilized, and where daily life tended to be more policed, these races offered an outlet for all violent instincts by presenting the spectacle of a regulated form of violence."38 This was true, no doubt-but the republican presence was probably even more readily explained by political factors, most notably the ambivalence of some local imperial authorities towards the "barbaric" practice of bull racing. 39 On other occasions, the republican presence at these local festivities was a carefully calculated gesture of defiance. For example the republicans of the commune of Brignoles (Var)many of whom had been coerced into a humiliating demonstration of their loyalty to Louis-Napoleon during their imprisonment a year earlier-exacted their revenge in 1853 by ignoring the national celebrations in their locality, choosing instead to show themselves at the festivity of the patron saint of their commune a few days later. The procureur-general of Aix, who also attended this local fete, was in no doubt that the former political prisoners' sudden enthusiasm for their patron saint was in large part an ostensible gesture of defiance directed at Napoleon 111. 40 It is interesting to note, in this respect, that the republicans who acted in this way were restoring a practice that had

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been firmly established under the Second Republic; in his study of populist religion under the July Monarchy and Second Republic, Ed Berenson has indeed noted that "government reports from 1850 to 1851 indicate that the transformation of the traditional fete patronale into a demonstration of Montagnard political commitment had become a fairly common political occurrence."41 Public rejoicing was one way of reclaiming communal space; public grieving was another. In the early and mid-1850s, funerals were an important occasion for republicans to come together-both in private settings to pay their respects to their deceased comrades and in public to demonstrate their continuing capacity to mobilize their supporters and sympathizers and recruit new followers. 42 After attending one such event in Paris, Arthur Ranc asked (rhetorically), "Is this a funereal ceremony? Is it a fete? None of us really knoWS."43 The freethinking movement-one of the many strands of French republicanism under the Second Empire-also developed during this period, often seeking to wrest control of funereal ceremonies from local Catholic priests. 44 The climax of such gatherings typically came with the burial ceremony, during which local republican and socialist leaders (often with Masonic connections) delivered political speeches. 45 In effect, the cemetery thus became the site for a surrogate political meeting-a transformation that so deeply alarmed national authorities that Minister of Police Charlemagne Emile de Maupas sent a circular letter to all prefects in March 1853, urging them to prevent republican funerals from assuming "an exclusively political character." Leaving little to chance, Maupas even made specific suggestions: "The best way to achieve this goal would be to prevent too large a gathering at the house of the deceased, to disperse any group that takes on the character of a crowd, to prevent the entry into the cemetery of an excessively large number of people who are strangers to the family, and to ban all types of speeches. "46 But this was easier said-especially from the comfortable distance of Paris-than done. In fact, although there were a few instances of heavy-handed police interventions (notably at the funeral of Michel de Bourges in 1853),47 prefects were both unable and unwilling to enforce such stringent regulations; the reasons were both practical (the absence of manpower resources) and political (the risks that such operations could backfire against the police). Funerals effectively continued to provide the focus for republican political meetings. Thus, in October 1855, the commune of Brignoles-clearly something of a republican stronghold-witnessed the burial of Monsieur Bastide, a

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well-known political activist and one of the leaders of the local republican insurrection against the 1851 coup d'etat. His funereal procession was followed by more than two hundred inhabitants of the town, from lawyers and notaries to artisans. The police report found a modicum of solace in the fact that among the mourners "there were no agricultural workers" (the imperial regime's privileged social constituency). But the overall conclusion was grim: "The democratic party today made a demonstration, peaceful it is true, but that nonetheless clearly indicates that this party has not disbanded and its followers can still massively respond to instructions given by its leadership."48 A month later, the death of Lazare Giraud brought out the entire town of Saint-Maximin (Var). Aged 86 at the time of his demise, Giraud had been "esteemed by the whole population for his probity"; and during the Second Republic "he had professed moderate republican opinions." At the cemetery, the republican orator (another 1851 resistant) reviewed this militant's exemplary life, which had been selflessly devoted to the republican cause; he then addressed the crowd, especially focusing on the large number of young men and women present: "All of you young people who are listening to me, if you are now asked what is a Democrate, you will now be able to say, the Democrate is an honest man, he lives on little, he returns good for evil, and it would be desirable that those who can do so should follow the lead given to us by Lazare Giraud."49 This sober and unpretentious message advocating how to live a republican life, delivered in this imposing setting, offered a powerful contrast between the virtues of integrity, simplicity, and moral rectitude of the republican militant and the deceitfulness, love of luxury, and cynicism of Bonapartist elites. As the Second Empire's hold on power consolidated in the 1850s, republicans in some areas-especially in the cities and larger townsbegan to demonstrate their active presence by showing themselves in public on the very day of the national festivity. At Marseille, for example, "large numbers" of republicans usually gathered around the Cathedral during the morning of the Te Deum ceremony; these "demagogues" also formed the habit of congregating in several public spaces in the city.50 One of the major meeting points for dissident activists were licensed public houses, the number of which rose in France from 291,244 in 1855 to 364,875 in 1870. 51 These establishments were often owned by republican activists. A "statistical list of dangerous men" in the Var during the Second Empire showed that one in three of the most notorious republicans of the department were either cafe owners or innkeepers. In the "remarks" column of this report, it was expressly

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noted that several of these men "received demagogues in their house" or "were in correspondence with demagogues." Of one Jean Baptiste Crepin Cestanier it was remarked that "his establishment is frequented only by the most fanatical demagogues."52 In the departments of the Ariege and Tarn-et-Garonne, cabarets were known as the primary meeting place of republican activists and were closely watched by the police;53 similarly, subversive activities were known to take place in the taverns of the Loire-Atlantique, especially those in and around Nantes. 54 In Lyon, informal republican associations (cercles) emerged in the 1860s, all of them structured around cafes "where republicans could meet by chance."55 A report from Grenoble in 1853 noted the systematic absence of illuminations in local inns and cafes. 56 Active withdrawal and active presence were different means of achieving the same end: initiating the process of challenging the Bonapartist contention that the Saint-Napoleon was a truly national festivity, a moment in which all political quarrels could truly be forgotten and citizens unite behind the protective and reassuring figure of Napoleon III. On the one hand, withdrawal, if carried out by sufficient numbers, could dampen the public mood in a locality and jeopardize the popular turnout at the festivities; presence, on the other hand, sought to contest and recapture the public sphere from the adversary and thus to reject the Bonapartist claim to exercise sovereign dominion over the commune and its institutions. In both respects, however, these grassroots activities provided evidence of the resilience of republican networks in the early years of the Empire. In order to be effective, both withdrawal and presence required prior communication among activists, a measure of tactical planning, and coordinated forms of action. The extent to which these gestures were successfully carried out by dissident groups in cities and towns during the festivities of the 1850s (as well as in alternative gatherings such as local fetes and funerals) suggests that a great deal of republican political activity continued to occur beneath the surface even at the height of the Second Empire's most authoritarian phase.

Active Resistance Active withdrawal and active presence represented two of the less forceful aspects of local republican strategies of opposition to the festivities of the Second Empire. But some republicans did not hesitate to throw down the gauntlet at the regime by engaging in active forms of resistance, whereby individuals and groups openly and explicitly manifested their hostility to the regime's civic gatherings. Here, too,

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a wealth of different methods was used, depending on the degree of organization of local republican forces. In a large number of cases, there was an important element of spontaneity to these reactions, almost as if the mere existence of a Bonapartist symbolic and festive order were an affront to their dignity as republicans. In some towns, small groups of republican militants used such active resistance to disturb and subvert the orderly proceedings of Bonapartist festivities. This could be achieved by the most symbolic of gestures, such as the manner of dress. In the early years of the new Bonapartist order, the color red was explicitly associated with republican militancy, and many activists went out of their way to display as much of it as they possibly could-even at the risk of being arrested. 57 In the town of Saint-Maximin (Var) in 1854, a police report on Flavier Queyreti, one of the local republican leaders, noted that "he often wears, especially on Sundays, a red band on the left side of his jacket. The bottoms of his trousers, the ends of the sleeves of his jacket or his jersey are also distinguished by a piece of red fabric." But this militant's most potent vestimental weapon was concealed from view: "Queyretti also sometimes wears, hidden under his clothes, a red belt."58 We can only imagine the effect this crimson array would have produced as this republican leader strolled around Saint-Maximin on the day of the Saint-Napoleon, truly nailing his colors to the mast. There were many variations on the dress theme: republicans could dress up, as in the case of Queyretti, but they could also dress down. In many cities and towns republican activists manifested their presence on the day of the national festivity by appearing in ordinary clothes rather than in their festive best. At Is-sur-Tille (Cote d'Or) in 1860, a municipal official attended the ceremonies "but without his official attire as prescribed by the law."59 Indeed, the practice of dressing down became so widespread that it induced fits of paranoia among local Bonapartist authorities. At Issoire (Puy-de-Dome) in 1858, the imperial procureur-general claimed that local republicans pointedly dressed down on the day of the national festivity, turning out in their working clothes as a gesture of disrespect to the emperor. 60 Asked by Paris to investigate this incident, the prefect of the Puy-de-Dome hotly disputed this interpretation: what the judicial officer had observed were merely a group of workers who had been busy with the final preparations for the Sunday celebrations. 61 Another classic (active) manifestation of oppositional symbolism was the utterance of republican mottos, slogans, and mots d'ordre-either verbally or by inscription upon a variety of public facades. Either way, such statements, especially if they were accompanied (as tended to be

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the case) with an assortment of expletives directed at Napoleon III, were extremely dangerous for their authors. For the Limoges and Toulouse areas alone, there is a thick file in the Archives Nationales on the successful prosecution of individuals found guilty of "insulting behavior toward the emperor" during the 1850s, with sentences ranging from small fines (normally directed at the inebriated or weak of mind) to up to two years in jail for serious cases (where remarks were thought to have been premeditated and the accused deemed to be motivated primarily by political considerations).62 These seditious assertions often occurred around important dates in the commemorative calendar. In 1853, on the night of May 1, municipal posters all over the town of Rennes were enhanced by this message, traced in black ink: "Liberty or Death, Long Live the Republic of 1793!"63 In 1855, shortly before and after the celebration of August 15, a wealth of inscriptions went up in the republican areas of the Yonne; they included the customary condemnations of the Empire and celebrations of the republic, but also the reminder that "under the republic, we paid three cents for our bread."64 Other messages were more elaborate. On the morning of August 19,1855, Monsieur Charrier, judge at the civil tribunal at Auxerre and a prominent local Bonapartist, opened his front door to find this message pinned to it: "Let us vote for Robespierre and his friends, so that we may cut off the head of Napoleon the galley slave and former convict, that pillager and plunderer who has signed the pact of famine and has stolen thirty million from the Bank of Paris on December 2. Down with all scum!"65 Republicans did not always carry out active resistance in isolation. In many instances (especially early on after 1851), they joined forces with legitimists-as for example at Toulouse, where the early years of the Second Empire were extremely difficult for the regime. In the run-up to the national festivity of 1853, republican and legitimist militants actively campaigned to dissuade local citizens from attending the celebrations. 66 Further evidence of the close interaction between the two groups emerged in the course of the military review held in Toulouse on August 15 of that year. As the local regiment was marching through the town center, an incident involving a collision between a horse and a group of spectators led to several arrests. Within a few minutes, a large number of people had emerged from a nearby cafe, booing, whistling, and jeering. These expressions of disapproval were directed at the appearance of excessive force used by the authorities to quell the incident, but they also happened to coincide with the chants of "Long live the emperor!" that were being shouted by the

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passing troops. The public prosecutor, who witnessed the entire scene, noted that this public house was known in Toulouse as a meeting place for those "known, in some cases, for the exaltation of their legitimist ideas, and in others for their support for the most radical democratic doctrines. "67 In this particular case, this expression of civic opposition ended peacefully. But such gestures of active resistance could sometimes prove highly costly. In the town ofPontarlier (Doubs) in early January 1852, the local authorities ordered the performance of a Te Deum in church to celebrate the Bonapartist triumph in the plebiscite of December 21-22. The municipal band flatly refused to commemorate an occasion that they regarded as "infamous." To celebrate their brave gesture, a group of local republicans organized a reception in their honor. The subprefect, who clearly had little time for such manifestations of civic affirmation, ordered the seizure of all the offending musical instruments as well as the arrest of "four of the main ringleaders" of the municipal band. 68

Organized Networks All these cases of republican opposition to the Bonapartist civic and festive order were in some significant respects spontaneous, in the sense that they were the work of individuals or small groups of militants acting in relative isolation or else responding to specific and unforeseen events occurring on the day of the national celebrations. But, even in the difficult climate of the 1850s, there were also more organized networks of republican resistance that were beginning to crystallize; and, in some localities, republicans drew upon these networks to articulate their opposition to the Bonapartist festivities. As noted earlier, an important moral and civic dimension of the Saint-Napoleon from the point of view of the authorities was charity.69 Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie made considerable donations to help the poor on the day of the national festivity, and the imperial family also encouraged local authorities throughout France to do their utmost to provide relief to the needy and destitute inhabitants of their commune; this message was relayed by prefects each year to the mayors of every commune. In a large number of cases, municipalities directly paid for a distribution of rations (typically bread, meat, and some wine). In some instances, however, town councils sought to increase the scale of these donations by asking for public contributions. Subscriptions were thus launched in the run-up to the national festiv-

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Itles, and local citizens were invited to give generously. Indeed, the size of such contributions became a source of competition and emulation among Bonapartist municipalities, as they zealously vied with each other to demonstrate their commitment to the charitable ideals of Napoleon III. Such attempts to mobilize local civic patriotism obviously provided an ideal opportunity for republicans to subvert the process, and they were frequently successful. For example, in 1858 in the town of Apt (Vaucluse), the subprefect lamented the relatively low sum raised by the municipal charitable subscription for the national festivity. The miserly amount was blamed on "the maneuvers of certain people who have deliberately sought to prevent the citizens from making donations"7°-clearly a coded reference to the existence of an active oppositional network of citizens that successfully persuaded a majority of Aptians to withhold their money for a better cause. This was a striking example of authority exercised without formal power: by drawing upon the prestige of their leaders and their political entrenchment in the community, these republicans were able to cripple local Bonapartist efforts to mobilize local populations behind Napoleon Ill's civic project. Stopping, or at least hindering, the Second Empire's celebrations was one way of recapturing the political initiative from the regime. In parallel to these "spoiling" tactics, efforts were also made to organize alternative networks of republican sociability. Despite the fierce repression (both threatened and actually exercised) by the Second Empire during the 1850s and early 1860s, there is evidence that republican groups successfully coalesced and sustained their existence over time. These groups normally regarded the Saint-Napoleon as an opportunity to congregate in private. What better moment was there to meet, after all, than the day when national and local state officials were busy with their own festivity? Thus, for example, the small network of republican socialists at Pezenas (Herault) traditionally "celebrated" the national day by holding a private dinner; they moved location from one year to the next in order not to attract too much attention upon themselves.7 1 Elsewhere republican networks were more complex in character. In the canton of Joigny (Yonne), an official report provided details of republican covert activity that had been taking place for several years under the innocent guise of "civic banquets." These banquets would be held in various communes at fixed times in the calendar-notably during the Saint-Napoleon but also during the celebrations in honor

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of local patron saints and on specific republican dates such as the founding anniversaries of the First Republic (September 22) and Second Republic (February 24). Despite their best efforts, the police were unable to find out any compromising information about these gatherings. However, it was plain that in the course of these dinners the conversations were eminently political: none of the guests had opinions other than republican; a large number were activists and former political prisoners who had openly resisted the 1851 coup d'etat; and several were serving republican members of municipal councils. 72 The impressive solidarity of this particular group-which the police had been unable to break-was no doubt a function of its relatively small size and its ideological homogeneity as well as its members' common experience of adversity in 1851; it is also worth noting the key role played by the municipal councilors, who were able to use their legitimacy as elected representatives to help organize local civic opposition to the Second Empire. These occasions were not always popular among activists, however-especially those on the socialist and revolutionary sides of the republican movement, who had little reason or inclination to commemorate the Second Republic, which had violently crushed them in the "June Days" of 1848. Gustave Lefranc;ais scathingly noted: "Not very cultish by disposition, I have little taste for emotions generated on fixed days of the year.... I find all these speeches with their 'fine allusions' hugely tedious."73 Republican organizations of this kind did not merely meet and socialize in private. They also sought to disseminate anti-Bonapartist propaganda, which was sometimes produced locally but was often smuggled into France through contacts abroad, centering on networks of republican exiles in England, Belgium, and Switzerland.74 In 1853, shortly before the Saint-Napoleon, the police in Dijon raided the shop of Perchet, a "manufacturer of images" who was well known for his socialist sympathies. They confiscated "a large number of busts made of plaster, representing the Montagnards [Maximilien de] Robespierre and [Louis] Saint-Just"; there were also busts of Alexandre LedruRollin and Felix Pyat, as well as medals and a variety of allegorical representations of the republic, including a collection of statues of Marianne wearing a Phrygian cap, one of the traditional symbols of republican liberty.75 The years of the Second Empire indeed witnessed a veritable cult of Marianne among republicans.7 6 These symbolic artifacts were clearly intended, among other things, to adorn private republican festivities and commemorations; but they could also be used to lampoon the Second Empire; in 1857-shortly before the cel-

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ebrations of the national festivity-the police in the town of Cordon (Ain) seized "a crude caricature of the emperor; his image is in plaster and represents the head of Napoleon III inside an oyster shell."77 Again, the theme of luxury is highlighted. The most important instruments of republican political agitation were posters and small pamphlets, which would be gathered by local republican groups for distribution during the festivities of August 15. A circular letter of the minister of interior to all prefects in October 1853 described the intricate networks that enabled this material to be distributed all across France. Lyon was the center of operations, with links to Rome and Milan in the south, the Duchy of Baden, Belgium, and London in the north, and Switzerland in the east. 78 The Belgian border town of Meunin was the meeting place for many of these republican activists, who assembled in this locality on the thirteenth of every month. 79 Most interestingly, the techniques of introducing this literature into French territory varied in accordance with the country of origin. Republican propaganda from Belgium was printed on white silk and sewn into the dresses of regular visitors from France. The police found out about this method when they searched two sisters based in Valenciennes, who regularly went to Brussels to visit their exiled parents; after one such visit in the spring of 1853, the women were arrested after being discovered with a number of republican pamphlets sewn in their dresses. 8o But this was only one of the methods used by the "intelligent, careful, and wily republican demagogues": the material from Switzerland was printed in "biblical style" and hidden in holy texts; republican inscriptions from Italy took the form of "innocent-looking commercial documents," which, however, contained secret messages to be read by applying a cardboard cut-out over the letters, thus highlighting the key words; and finally, from France, the text of the literature was sent in code to local activists, who deciphered the messages and slogans and then ran off copies for distribution. 81 Republican activists also used the postal services. In Castres (Tarn), a cloth merchant named Nouzieres planned to celebrate the 1852 festivity by distributing copies of a pamphlet, Restauration de la guillotine, specially ordered from a republican cell in Belgium. The police intercepted the publications before they reached their destination. 82 In 1852-1853, a republican feminist and socialist activist by the name of Patriarche (sic), based in the commune of Bleneau (Yonne), regularly received pamphlets printed in London. One batch was seized by the police; it contained a publication produced by republicans based in

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London and was entitled "Society, The Revolution: Anniversary of the First Republic, 22 September 1852." It urged the French peasantry to remember the benefits of the 1789 Revolution and to work toward the overthrow of the Second Empire. 83 Republicans thus succeeded in "literally flooding the entire French territory with their publications."84 Especially in the early years of the Second Empire, political agitation of this kind was also seen as evidence of an organization called the republican secret society, the mere mention of which sent shivers down the spine of Bonapartist officialdom. These associations were very real, and in a number of specific instances, their leaders and activists were arrested during the 1850s. 85 One of the best-known organizations of this type was the Marianne, which in the department of the Doubs was highly active in Montbelliard, Pontarlier, Beaune-Ies-dames, and Besanc;on; it was also seeking to recruit workers from "all the eastern departments."86 Bonapartist authorities in Paris were also highly suspicious of Freemasons, and, in 1852, Minister of Police Maupas sent a circular letter to all prefects requesting information about all Masonic political pursuits in their departments, especially those of a "revolutionary" character. 87 Consequently, a large number of Masonic lodges were closed. 88 But secret societies thrived even more in the imagination of fearful state officials, and republicans at local levels often craftily used these worries to spread confusion and panic in the run-up to the national festivities. At Joigny (Yonne), a group of twenty republicans met in a house in Rue Saint-Spire and formed themselves as a secret society in April 1853. Their aim was to organize an insurrection of the local population "by all means available," and they hoped to commence this uprising around the time of the August national festivity. Unfortunately, they were penetrated by the local police, who even found out about their revolutionary plan: it involved using children to sing republican songs so as to lure the local troops into a specific part of the town; at which point the soldiers would be blocked by barricades and shot by insurgents concealed in the upper floors of nearby houses. 89 This particular network was rapidly broken and its leaders arrested. But republicans played on the fears provoked by such conspiratorial activities to entertain a climate of fear and tension around the festivities. In the charged political atmosphere of the 1850s, republican groups throughout France excelled at what one historian has aptly termed "the political exploitation of rumor."90 In 1854, a collective wave of panic spread through the departments of the Loiret and Yonne due to widespread rumors that a "socialist insurrection" had been

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planned for the national day. The story even reached Paris, and in a letter dated August 8, 1854, the minister of the interior invited the prefects of the two departments to investigate the reports as a matter of urgency. However, the only evidence consisted of a fourth-hand account of a conversation among a group of socialists-overheard first by a carpenter living near Orleans, who passed it on to his motherin-law, who reported it to the mayor of Bleneau, who in turn transmitted it to the prefect of the Loiret. 91 Like all well-crafted rumors, this one clearly gathered momentum with each successive iteration. In his search for conspirators, the prefect of Yonne could only come up with a statement made by one Jean Richer, an inhabitant of the commune of Rogny, who allegedly declared: "If the price of bread has not come down to 10 centimes per half kilogram for the festivity of August 15, there will be trouble in Paris."92 Richer had no doubt intended to cause some alarm locally and keep the Bonapartist officials on their toes; he succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings. Indeed the atmosphere of the national festivities in the early and mid -185 Os was seriously corroded by fears of conspiracies, insurrections, and assorted manifestations of republican secret society activity. It is virtually impossible to distinguish reality from mythology in the numerous accounts of revolutionary activity provided by Bonapartist officials-except to note that in the minds of these officials there appeared to be no real distinction between the two. Reporting on political developments in the departments in his jurisdiction, which lay on the French borderlands, the procureur-general of Besanc;on noted in 1852 that secret society activity was on the increase in the run-up to the national festivity of August and that local republicans had established close links with their counterparts in Switzerland and Italy.93 In June 1853, a rumor to the effect that "priests had attempted to assassinate the emperor" originated in the working-class districts of Paris (where republicanism was still deeply entrenched). Within the following few months, the story had spread to no less than fifteen departments, clearly putting a damper on the celebrations of the SaintNapoleon in these areas. 94 The extent to which local state officials could be swayed by rumor was demonstrated by the long report sent to the minister of justice in May 1853 by the procureur-general of Aix, in which he warned of "the imminent reconstitution into a single entity of the secret societies of the Carbonari, the New Mountain, and the Boulangerie."95 His source for such a dramatic assertion turned out to be a man who had "recently been traveling in the Marseille region." In 1854, the police

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commissioner of Rouen was informed that local secret societies had planned to chant "Down with monopolizers!" and "Bread at three sous!" during the military review held on August 15. The zealous officer planted a large number of plainclothes policemen in the crowds, but no such slogans were forthcoming. Local republicans probably had a good laugh at his expense that evening.

The Republican Challenge In the early years of the new regime, "when good citizens rejoiced and the wicked trembled," Bonapartist officials openly bragged about the distinct form of unity that their festivities had achieved-most notably through the exclusion from public space of all those who might challenge the political harmony that they were seeking to create. Reporting on the national festivity of 1852 in Dijon, the prefect gloated: "Everyone has remarked that this festivity in no way resembled those that were celebrated under previous governments. This was really the festivity of the people, who participated fully and spontaneously in all the day's events. And it is in vain that one might seek out, in the crowd, those birds of ill omen who used to show themselves in the past in analogous circumstances. Even the most well-trained eye would have failed to identify any such creatures."96 This triumphalism did not last long. Within a few years of the restoration of the Empire, the "birds of ill omen" began to reappear and were soon circling menacingly around the Bonapartists on the very day of their festivity. Their challenges took a variety of forms, as presented throughout this chapter, ranging from individual private acts to collective public demonstrations as well as the dissemination of propaganda. Taken together, these gestures highlight the continuity and vitality of republicanism in the 1850s, especially in the provincial and rural heartlands of the new Napoleonic order. Republican citizens turned the fragmentation of their political movement to their advantage, relying on small and decentralized forms of militant activity to turn the fete into an "anti-fete," inspiring alarm and apprehension among Bonapartists. And since the concept of threat contains an important psychological element, imperial law-enforcement officers were most in fear of the enemy they could not see-which explains why, throughout the 1850s, local Bonapartist officials were perhaps most in dread of the political exploitation of rumors. The procureur of Lyon reported in 1855 that there were insurrectionary plans hatched by republicans in the city

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"every three or four months."97 There had been a workers' uprising scheduled for the festivities of August 15, and it had apparently been postponed because of the news of French military success in the Crimean war. 98 In this sort of atmosphere, anything became possible-or at least credible. In January 1857, a woman in Toulouse told her grocer that Napoleon III had been "poisoned by macaronis"; the story spread like wildfire across the Haute-Garonne, and even traveled as far as Pezenas (Herault), where it provoked considerable commotion. 99 And as late as February 1858, as Roger Price has noted, "a five-hour delay in the arrival in Metz of official dispatches from Paris could set off rumors of revolution in the capital."lOo In the wake of Orsini's attempt on the emperor's life in early 1858, panic spread throughout the country's law-enforcement agencies. In early August, the minister of interior, tipped off by a Parisian rumor, warned the prefect of the Doubs that "demagogues were preparing an event in Besanc;on" on the occasion of the national day: "It is therefore essential that the most severe orders be given and that the most active vigilance be prescribed so that we are not the victims of a surprise attack." 101 Clearly, the official ceremonies at Besanc;on took place under something of a cloud that year-as in all those localities where republican activity was known to be strong or (even worse) rumored to be so.

10 Legitimist Coldness, Republican Enthusiasm

~

RESPONDING to the Saint-Napoleon celebrations, legitimists were faced with a complex set of dilemmas. For one thing, this day also marked the festivity of the Assumption, and (unlike the republicans) most legitimists were devout Catholics who were strongly committed to honoring the Virgin Mary, the "Queen of Heaven." This dedication sometimes created embarrassing situations in some localities for those legitimists wishing actively to spurn the SaintNapoleon, given that the two festivities were celebrated harmoniously by local church and state authorities in many communes. And for those legitimists who surmounted this difficulty by staying away from the civic events organized on the national day, there remained the awkward fact that an important aspect of the ceremonies, the Te Deum, actually took place in the local church-in "their" church, which they attended faithfully and where they brought their families every Sunday. No doubt some legitimists resolved this dilemma by actively supporting the Catholic clergy's dissidence, particularly in those areas where the church was hostile to the regime. But what could the legitimists do when the option of relying on clerical dissent was not available-as in a significant number of rural communes? At a political level, the dilemmas were no less perplexing. The legitimists made no secret of their dislike for Napoleon Ill's regime, and, indeed, they personally detested the emperor, whom they perceived as an illegitimate ruler and a man of low morals. In this sense, their hostility to the Saint-Napoleon festivities was a direct conse-

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quence of their rejection of the existing sovereign. But for all their loyalty to their exiled monarch Henry V (the Count of Chambord), whose name day (in July) and birthday (in September) they dutifully celebrated,l most Bourbon royalists could not help appreciating the regime's restoration of "order" in 1851. In many localities, legitimists even gave tacit support to the authorities on the grounds that the Bonapartists provided an effective bulwark against the republicansespecially as the latter relentlessly advanced to capture municipal power in the 1860s. To complicate matters even further, however, even as they gave conditional support to the Second Empire in some of these areas, legitimists nonetheless remained overwhelmingly repelled by what they perceived as the moral degeneration of the regime, typified in the celebration of August 15, with its hedonism and vulgarity and its shameless tribute to luxury and moral individualism. One of the overall consequences of these quandaries and crosspressures was that legitimist responses to the festivities of August 15 were somewhat less forceful in magnitude and even less widespread, than those offered by the republicans. But when they did respond negatively to the Saint-Napoleon, legitimist gestures were nonetheless symbolically and substantively distinctive. Their expressions of dissent were all marked by a certain gentility and self-restraint, which typified the manner of politics traditionally associated with legitimism. For this reason, active withdrawal was a favorite in the legitimist repertoire of dissent-especially as it was precisely the tactic advocated by the Count of Chambord as a response to the advent of the Second Empire. 2 In October 1852, the pretender to the Bourbon throne specifically instructed his supporters to resign from all offices that required an oath of loyalty to the regime (except the army).3

Legitimist Dissent The most systematic manifestation of legitimist active withdrawal was the refusal to join the rest of the citizenry in the illumination of communal edifices. As noted throughout this book, public buildings were traditionally lit on the evenings of the Saint-Napoleon, and in their proclamations, Bonapartist officials made it clear that all good citizens were also expected to light up their homes as a tribute to their sovereign. From the very outset, however, legitimists refused to adhere to this practice-and went to great lengths to hold to this posture of dissent. At Perigueux (Dordogne) in early August 1852, the legitimist members of a civic association, the Cercle de la Philologie, strongly

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opposed their director's proposal that their building should be illuminated on the day of the national festivity. The feud that followed created bitter partisan divisions in the town, and the news rapidly reached the minister of interior in Paris, who ordered local authorities to investigate. The affair ended with the collective resignation of all legitimists from the Cercle, after the prefect had warned its executive officers that "unless the illumination is arranged, without fuss, the association will be immediately closed."4 This kind of bullying could be effective with associations and organized groups, but it had little or no impact upon the private attitudes of legitimists. Indeed, it is clear that heavy-handed Bonapartist attempts to coerce local residents into illuminating their homes merely stiffened the royalists' resolve to "celebrate" the Saint-Napoleon by dimming their lights. Official reports complaining about the systematic darkness of legitimist neighborhoods on the evenings of the national festivity were in no doubt that this practice was the product of deliberate and purposive action. Throughout the Second Empire, royalist areas in Lille, Lyon, Toulouse, Rennes, Aix, Nlmes, Besanc;on, Montpellier, and Nantes obstinately displayed the same pattern-often in contrast to bourgeois and poorer neighborhoods, which were modestly but more evenly illuminated. 5 In Nantes in 1869, the weary police commissioner made what had clearly become a routine observation for him: "Why is it no surprise for me to see that the second arrondissement, inhabited by the nobility, was noticeable for its absolute obscurity?"6 The same disposition was found in smaller provincial towns and villages under royalist influence. "It is all coldness and indifference in my district when it comes to any demonstration in favor of the present government," noted the police commissioner of Le Sceau Bottereau, an area "under legitimist and clerical influence" in the Loire Inferieure in 1855.7 The subprefect of Verdun (Meuse) noted with respect to the celebrations of August 1867 that "it is among the middle class or among the small farmers that we see the greatest exuberance whilst the aristocratic families maintain a cold reserve."8 Local Bonapartist officials responded to this predicament in a variety of ways. Some played down the significance of these legitimist gestures by relying on derision and mockery. In Lille in 1853, the splendor of the illuminations of the prefecture building starkly contrasted with the adjacent Rue Royale (a legitimist street), which remained completely unlit on the evening of the national festivity. Word rapidly spread that this obscurity was not so much a political gesture

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as a reflection of the legitimists' propensity to save on fuel costs-a dig at the well-known miserliness of the local nobility.9 But more reflective officials realized that the refusal of the legitimists to join in the public and private illuminations of their commune was politically damaging to the Second Empire-highlighting (literally) the political divisions between different neighborhoods in the same town or village and demonstrating the limits of the regime's capacity to draw the entire population into its civic design. Especially in smaller towns and villages, public officials also feared that the behavior of legitimists would attract a wide following through social snobbery: if aristocratic legitimists did not illuminate their homes, it then followed that all those who did not illuminate their homes also were aristocrats. lO Many Bonapartists also took this opportunity to complain about the appointment of legitimists as mayors-a practice aimed at rallying local royalists to the regime, but which in many respects clearly did not have the desired effect: "It is in such circumstances that we must deplore having legitimists as mayors. They are without any initiative when it comes to encouraging any manifestation of popular sentiment, and in the evenings their towns are shrouded in complete darkness."ll Legitimists' expressions of disapproval tended to be especially pronounced when they were reacting adversely to specific practices and values promoted by the regime in the course of the celebrations. One case in point was the diplomatic and military successes of the Second Empire. These were strongly opposed by the legitimists, who had a deep-rooted ideological dislike of nationalism. Thus, unlike many republicans who welcomed the French defeat of Russia at Sebastopol, the legitimists refused to join in the victory celebrations of August 1855. In some localities, as in Aix, the legitimist leadership (clearly not courting local popularity) even expressed support for the Russians, openly describing themselves as the "party of Russophiles."12 The Italian campaign of Napoleon III met with even greater royalist hostility, not only on the grounds of their antinationalism, but because the French were explicitly challenging the temporal sovereignty of the Pope. Thus, at Montluc;on, the legitimists (supported by the ultramontane clergy) took no part in the victory celebrations of 1859. 13 This sullenness was still visible the following year. Reporting on the celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon in the departments under his jurisdiction in 1860, the procureur-general of Riom noted that "in several towns the legitimist party has abstained from any participation."14 The hostility to the nationalism of the Bonapartist festivities extended

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beyond the ceremonies of August 15; the legitimists also collectively withdrew from the festivities in honor of the French annexation of the Savoie and Nice in 1860. 15 Equally distinctive in the legitimist expression of dissent was the public use of disdain, which could be deployed with devastating effect by concerted action undertaken by small groups of activists. A privileged target here were the social events organized by Bonapartist authorities. In royalist strongholds, evening receptions organized by the prefect on the occasion of the national festivity were frequently snubbed by legitimist sympathizers. In 1857, the prefect of the Vienne complained to the minister of the interior: I have to tell you that several officers of the second hussards, who are regularly welcomed in legitimist families, have let it be known that they intentionally stayed away from the reception given by the representative of the state,16 and I could also cite you the name of a functionary who, on the pretext of a family bereavement, was also quick to stay away-even though I met him on the following night at a function hosted by the bishop of Poitiers. These concessions to the [legitimist] party, which is strongly organized in this locality, deserve to be noted. 17 Contempt was also displayed by calculated refusals to attend the religious ceremonies of the Saint-Napoleon. In the 1850s in the legitimist heartlands of the West and the Midi, there were numerous instances of royalist officials, notables, and their families staying away from their local churches. These episodes of active withdrawal could at times be dramatically underscored. At Marmande (Lot-etGaronne), where the legitimists were in the words of the prefect "especially hot-headed" they signaled their utter disdain for the religious ceremony by coming to church but keeping their wives and daughters at home. 18 The slap in the Bonapartists' faces reverberated across the holy chamber: the religious celebration of the national festivity, it was being intimated, was no place for a man decently to bring his family. A much-used variation on this theme of active presence was for legitimists attending the religious ceremonies on the day of the national festivity to withdraw during the performance of the Te Deum. In 1854 in the town of Luc;on in Napoleon-Vendee (a Bourbon royalist stronghold), the hymn in honor of Napoleon III was chanted in the evening, after the traditional vespers' procession; the prefect noted however that "the legitimists who are numerous in this town and who

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were attending the vespers withdrew with affectation during the Te Deum and came back afterward."19 Such ostentatious displays of dissent occurred throughout the Second Empire, both by groups and individuals. Official reports on these incidents naturally attempted to present their perpetrators in the most unfavorable light possible. At Pomerols (Herault) in 1858, the subprefect of Beziers reported that "when the Te Deum was sung, the hardened legitimists left the church, which made them look ridiculous."2o At L'Isle (Vaucluse) in 1866, Mr. Bonnet, a local notary "whose legitimist opinions were well known, left his pew and went outside during the performance of the Te Deum." This theatrical gesture was played down as an individual moment of attention seeking: "He was hoping to attract upon himself the notice of those present."21 But such relative passiveness in the face of the enemy was not to the liking of legitimist activists everywhere. In many parts of France, the Bourbon royalists used religious and civic festivities such as the Saint-Napoleon, the Assumption, and the Immaculate Conception to challenge the regime more boldly-notably by disseminating their own propaganda. During the 1850s in Toulouse and Poitiers, for example, branches of lys-the symbol of the ancien regime monarchywould hang from the windows of legitimist homes on the day of national and local civic festivities. 22 Some enterprising royalist activists also recruited the services of the local clergy. In the town of Thiers (Puy-de-Dome), the cure of the parish of Saint-Jean was found in possession of a large collection of images of the Virgin Mary in a golden fleur-de-Iys-images that were clearly put to good use during the festivity of the Assumption. 23 A small number of legitimists could even eschew gentility completely and become openly confrontational. Pierre Castro, a legitimist wine merchant from the Gard, elected to celebrate the festivity of August 15 by climbing up the imperial column in the central square of Algiers and smashing the Napoleonic eagle with his bare fists. 24 In Bedarieux, meridional tempers frayed easily on the day of the national festivity in 1855. A butcher named Crouzet was tending his stall, and conversing with his neighbor Rousset, a woman who sold fabrics. These two legitimist sympathizers then saw a young woman of their acquaintance, who informed them that she was on her way to the local Protestant temple to pray for Napoleon III. Rousset sneered: "Henry V will soon come to put some order in all of this nonsense." Crouzet let out a string of expletives and copiously insulted the emperor: "Why don't you rather pray that he drops dead?"25

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Municipal Dissidence In this panoply of rebellious signs and deeds publicly carried out during the national festivities, municipal councilors held a special position. Of all groups of public functionaries, these local representatives were-along with the clergy-the most frequent perpetrators of dissident gestures. However, this was not a matter of petty local politics. By challenging the imperial state during one of the most sacred days in its civic calendar, opposition councilors sought explicitly to undermine the majesty of the Bonapartist state. They were also, through their dissent, opening up one of the fundamental issues of the 1850s and 1860s: the place of democracy in the imperial political order. This was again intimately bound with the issue of sovereignty: rejecting the state's claim to represent the collective will of the nation, local councilors drew upon their popular legitimacy (acquired through their election by universal suffrage) to throw down the gauntlet at the Second Empire. The municipal regime of the Second Empire was governed by the laws of July 1852 and May 1855. Throughout the period of the elaboration of these laws, conservative Bonapartists sought altogether to eliminate the recourse to elections at local levels. Foreseeing the years of trouble he was about to experience with the mayors and local councilors of his department, the prefect of Tarn-et-Garonne expressed a typical view in early 1855: "We shall never have good and loyal municipal administrations as long as they are the fruit of so-called popular suffrage."26 But despite such strong warnings, the Second Empire remained true to its republican heritage in this respect and retained universal suffrage as the basis for all national and local elections; it was thought that the interests of authority could be sufficiently safeguarded by the nomination of mayors by the state. 27 Municipal councilors were thus elected in 1852, 1855, 1860, 1865, and even in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War. And unlike national elections, which were often the theater of active intervention by local state agents, municipal elections generally took place in a context of relative freedom. 28 Opposition representatives-republican, legitimist, and liberalthus entered municipalities in droves, beavering away separately toward the goal that they collectively shared: the erosion of Bonapartist political legitimacy in their cities, towns, and villages. In the very early years of the regime, there seemed to be relatively little dissidence reported from municipal councilors. For instance, a detailed summary of all prefectoral reports, prepared for the minister

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of the interior after the celebrations of August 1853 appeared to suggest that overall the festivities had been highly successful and popular, with the only notable instances of opposition coming from the clergy.29 But even in these darkest days of the authoritarian Empire, there were municipal councilors who stood up to the regime. Some did so on the very day of its inception. The official proclamation of the Second Empire in December 1852, which was made across France by a public declaration of the mayor, was effectively sabotaged in a number of communes by republican and legitimist councilors. In Gornies (Herault), none of the elected representatives attended the proclamation ceremony, choosing instead to remain in the municipal building;30 at Gignac, in the same department, the republican councilors attended the ceremony but greeted the proclamation of the Empire with "mocking laughter."31 (It can safely be assumed that these men did not go on to celebrate August 15 in the ensuing years with much decorum.) The municipal elections of 1852 produced a number of "detestable municipalities" in the departments of the Doubs, Jura, and HauteSaone; it is plain these communes, too, did little to celebrate the SaintNapoleon in the years that followed. 32 Thus, even in these early years, some patterns of dissident behavior were beginning to emerge. At Auriol (Bouches-du-Rhone) in 1853, seven legitimist councilors were conspicuously absent from the Te Deum. 33 This withdrawal clearly became something of a habit; in 1856 the police commissioner's report from Auriol again noted the absence of seven legitimist councilors, who (with typical aristocratic disdain) had told the mayor that "they would rather walk their dogs in the woods than attend this ceremony."34 Already the lines of demarcation were emerging between the Hobbesian sovereignty as defined by some Bonapartists and the elected representatives' self-perception as the bearers of popular sovereignty. For example, in 1852 in the commune of Belgentier (Var), only one municipal councilor attended the Te Deum in church. The enraged mayor, who realized that the absentees were challenging the Bonapartist state by appealing directly to their constituents, immediately wrote to the prefect: "If against my hopes [these councilors] are victorious in the next elections, I shall not hesitate immediately to ask you for the dissolution of the new municipal council."35 At Couchey (Cote d'Or) in 1853, only half of the municipal council attended the religious ceremony, which therefore "did not have quite the luster it should have had."36 Unfortunately for the regime, the elections of 1855 and 1860 did little to improve the situation from the point of view of the authorities.

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At Aix, the municipal council, which played a vigorous role in the popular success of the festivities in the early years of the Second Empire,37 fell almost completely into legitimist hands after the 1855 elections. The national celebrations clearly suffered as a result of this political realignment. In 1859, most of the municipal councilors "went to the countryside" on August 15 (a visit to the woods was clearly a favorite stratagem in the legitimist repertoire of political dissent), and only one elected representative attended the Te Deum ceremony; even worse, the municipality did not even bother to publish the program of the festivity.38 Similarly "detestable" communal authorities emerged all over France after the municipal elections. At Marsillargues in 1855, only two members of the municipal council attended the religious ceremony; the mayor, who had just been triumphantly reelected, excluded all fervent Bonapartists from his list, and the meager celebrations of the commune stopped abruptly at noon. 39 At Beziers in 1856, the subprefect noted the "very small number of municipal councilors present at the Te Deum," adding that he was certain that "most of these absences were deliberate."4o At nearby Nievral, in the same year, the mayor summoned his municipal councilors to attend the Te Deum and stood in the public square vainly waiting for them; the municipal benches remained desolately empty in the local church that morning. 41 In Sainte-Maur (Indre-et-Loire) in 1858, the mayor made no effort to organize the festivity of August 15: "In the evening, the town seemed even deader than usual, which is not saying a little."42 In the Vaucluse, things were not much better. In 1857, only one municipal councilor from Villeron and only two elected representatives from Aubignan joined the others in attendance for the Te Deum; the subprefect was not surprised, given that "political attitudes in these communes leave a lot to be desired" (clearly the municipal elections of 1855 had left a lot to be desired toO).43 There were also instances of opposition councilors clashing openly with mayors during the ceremonies; at Florensac (Herault), the deputy mayor and the mayor had a bitter (and very public) exchange over the entitlement of councilors to wear the tricolor sash-a highly potent symbol of majesty and sovereignty and one that was contested between republicans and Bonapartists. 44 By the early 1860s, agents of the Second Empire were beginning to fear the worst: in several cantons of the Yonne "the choices were deplorable, the lists presented by those whom we call the red republicans have been victorious almost to a man, and we have good reason to believe that many councilors will refuse to swear the oath required by the constitution."45 In the Vaucluse, Bonapartist expectations had been so lowered that

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local officials declared the presence of half of the municipal council of Carpentras at the ceremonies of August 1861 a great political triumph. 46 Reports from this period begin to speak not only of specific absences, but also of something approximating a culture: a consistent pattern, repeated year after year. The majority of the municipal council of Brignoles (Var), for example, appears to have neglected to attend the official ceremonies of the Saint-Napoleon in 1860, 1861, and 1862, at which point the exasperated prefect urged "greater action" from local officials. 47 For his part, the subprefect of Orange (Vaucluse) ended his report on the 1863 celebrations in his town with this melancholy observation: "There is one thing that I observe with regret, and that is the reluctance displayed by municipal councilors in general in attending the Te Deum."48 The mayor of Pessoulens (Gers), after noting the systematic absence of two of his councilors from the ceremonies, was forced to conclude that Messrs. Cluze and Bazau seemed "very defective in their Napoleonic sentiments."49 The reluctance of opposition councilors to participate gathered a new head of steam after the elections of 1865-one of the turning points in the local political history of the Second Empire. Speaking of the departments under his jurisdiction, the procureur-general of Besanc;on noted in the autumn of 1865 that "the republicans have left no stone unturned in their bid to overrun our municipal councils; a considerably large number have achieved their objective."50 Similarly subdued assessments came in from all corners of France. In almost every department, republican, liberal, and legitimist opposition councilors entered municipal assemblies in large numbers, creating sizeable minority groups and often succeeding in establishing majority control-a situation that pitted these councilors against the mayor, who remained an appointee of the state. 51 This dramatic shift in the balance of local power raised dissident municipal behavior at the national festivities to new heights in the final years of the Second Empire. From 1865 onward, "radical victories" in municipal elections cast a dark cloud over the celebrations of August 15 in Dijon, Beaume, and "many other localities" in the Cote d'Or. 52 In an open act of defiance, twelve municipal councilors from La Ciotat (Bouches-du-Rhone) did not attend the official ceremony in 1866, "even though they were in town."53 In the same year, the majority of councilors from Lalinde (Dordogne) also stayed away, leaving the mayor to fulminate against "the disunity that persists in my municipal council."54 "Those from our commune who are the least devoted to the government of His Majesty are of course the municipal

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councilors in their great majority," muttered the mayor of SaintSauveur (Yonne) after the festivities of 1866, adding that "only one councilor had lit three candles on his windowsill, the others nothing. "55 In 1868, very few councilors attended the Te Deum at Gignac (Herault)56 and at Valreas (Vaucluse), where none of the absentees (including the deputy mayor) bothered to illuminate their homes or decorate them with flags. 57 In 1869, the celebrations of August 15 in the communes of Pernes, Thor, and Serignan (all in the Vaucluse) took place in the presence of a mere handful of councilors-the rest were, in the words of one report, "enemies of the government."58 Reporting to the minister of the interior on the celebrations of August 15 in his department, the prefect of Herault lamented the "lack of enthusiasm of municipal officials in responding to the invitations that they had been sent"-a state of affairs that he explained by electoral agitation and the influence of the press. 59 At La Teste (Gironde), thirteen out of twenty-one members of the municipal council failed to attend the festivities in 1869-their motives, in the words of the mayor, "were obviously hostile."60 Perhaps giving away more than he should, the first magistrate noted that such gestures were in part intended to "court popularity"-a revealing statement about the balance of political sentiment within the commune. In the later years of the Second Empire, provincial reports frequently mentioned the complete absence of elected representatives at the Saint-Napoleon ceremonies. At Cendrieux (Dordogne) in 1865, the mayor, mindful of the republican sensitivities of his newly elected municipal council, took every step possible to ensure their attendance at the church ceremony; he even convinced the cure to reserve seats for them in the choir. But it was all in vain: not a single councilor showed Up.61 Likewise, in the Vaucluse, there were no municipal councilors present during the national festivities at L'Isle in 1867;62 and at Pernes in 1868 and again in 1869, the councilors also failed to appear-the representatives were all "uncompromising republicans."63 The mayor of Candillargues (Herault) found himself splendidly isolated in church during the Te Deum ceremony of 1869;64 the same fate awaited his colleague at Chaussin (Yonne), who lamented the fact that "no municipal councilor responded to my invitation."65 In the department of the Gers, it seems there were virtually no municipal councilors in attendance at official ceremonies after 1865. 66 This abstention also extended to social functions, which were systematically boycotted: at the subprefect's traditional Saint-Napoleon reception at Lectoure, "there was not a single councilor to be found."67

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The mayor of Villers-Ie-Sec (Meuse) would perhaps have preferred absenteeism to the unpleasant incident he experienced during the ceremonies of 1869 in his commune. In the evening, as the bonfire was being lit in presence of local officials and most of the population, chants of "Long live the emperor!" began to be heard. As the crowd started to join in, an opposition municipal councilor replied with the cry: "Vive les Cons!" (Long live the cretins!) Repeated three times, the insult was clearly directed at the mayor, the Bonapartist majority in the local council, and of course the imperial family. Attempting to achieve clinical precision, the mayor noted that "three quarters and a half" (sic) of the population were appalled by this gesture;68 the councilor was presumably performing for the rest.

Republican Challenges The liberalization of the Second Empire in the 1860s radically altered the environment in which political activity could take place, not just for municipal councilors, but also for the wider public at large. Laws enabling a greater degree of associational and journalistic freedom allowed opposition groups to organize themselves more openly, to mobilize public support, and to criticize and challenge the government. 69 And as the regime moved toward a genuine form of parliamentary rule, it even promised that state officials would take a less active role in election campaigns-a commitment that was especially honored in departmental and municipal elections, where local choices were generally allowed to proceed unfettered. The expression of political opposition, both symbolically and substantively, was still something of a risky business: in January 1866, a group of students and workers were arrested and prosecuted for singing the "Marseillaise" near the Pantheon in Paris;70 in November 1867, a republican activist was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for "seditious inscriptions" on the facades of several homes in the town of Elbeuf (Seine-Inferieure)-a verdict loudly applauded by the minister of the interior in person. 71 A year later, a worker by the name of Alphonse Trebuchet spent eight months in jail for "offensive language toward the emperor" on the day of the national festivity.7 2 And in November 1869, Jean Baptiste Rouhaud was arrested in Nantes for shouting "Long live the republic! Down with despotism!"73 But in overall terms, the effect of these measures of liberalization was to bring political activity much more into the public domain. The opposition groups that benefited the most from these changes were

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the republicans, who, as just noted, began to place their representatives in municipal councils throughout France.74 Many legitimists were still hampered by the Count of Chambord's injunction to his troops to stay out of mainstream political activity; and even those who sought to become more engaged with the political process were held back by two (related) constraints: their inherent suspicion of mass politics and their increasing fear of the republican political advances. Both of these factors drove many legitimists into local tactical alliances with the Bonapartists during the "liberal" Empire. 75 Indeed, the royalists had every reason to be concerned. It was not only that republicans were being elected in droves in municipal councils. They were also actively disseminating their propaganda-notably through the Parisian press, which exercised a significant intellectual hold on political life in large cities as well as in the smaller towns within the orbit of the capital. As the subprefect of Epernay (Marne) put it in 1865: "The influence of Paris is enormous. Paris makes its presence felt not only through its newspapers, but also through the links that our local liberals have established there. We can say that the opinion of Paris is received religiously in our small towns and even in the countryside."76 But alongside this influence of the elites from the center, the republicans also developed highly effective local political networks-notably through regional newspapers, civic associations such as the Ligue de l'Enseignement, and (some) Masonic lodges. In cities such as Paris, Marseille, and Lyon, as well as in many middle-sized towns, these structures of sociability enabled local republicans to mount powerful political challenges to the Bonapartists in the final years of the Second Empire. 77 These changes to the overall political culture had a notable impact on republican strategies with regard to the festivities. In some parts of France, the liberalization of the regime drew a correspondingly emollient response from local republicans-especially from elected representatives. Now that the Empire was allowing them to compete on a level playing field in local elections, officially welcoming them into town and village halls, and even (sotto voce) appointing some of them as mayors, republicans in some localities reciprocated by seeking a modus vivendi with the regime, most notably by formally joining in the celebrations of the national festivity. For instance, the two republican councilors elected in 1865 at Verdun played a full part in the public ceremonial of August IS-an unexpected but very satisfying outcome for the local Bonapartist authorities, who had faced resolute hostility from all opposition councilors throughout the 1850s.78 At

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Menesterol (Dordogne), both the old and the new municipal councilors (among whom were some republicans) attended the festivities of 1865, with the day's events unfolding "in the most perfect order."79 But for every such instance of consensus, there were several that went the opposite way. Many republican elected representatives took their political challenge directly to church; not many, perhaps, exhibited as little subtlety as the mayor of Paulin (Tarn), who marched up angrily to the cure during the performance of the Te Deum in August 1862 and declared: "I am the boss here."8o Indeed, in a majority of communes where republican influence was on the rise, the mood remained adversarial and defiant. The aim remained the same as in the 1850s: to cause as much discomfort to the regime as possible, to challenge Bonapartist claims to sovereignty by "hollowing out" the festivities, and to dampen any displays of public support through a policy of "active withdrawal." This strategy was indeed increasingly effective, and there was a distinct decline in the salience of the festivities of the Saint-Napoleon in the final years of the Second Empire-notably in Paris and in the larger towns. 81 Small groups of republican activists continued the practice of the 1850s and met in private on the day of the national festivity. At Amiens in 1869, a republican activist by the name of Debaussaux hosted a private dinner; the gathering took place on the premises of the baker Flicot on Beauvais Street. The police report was heavily sarcastic: "I am convinced that at this intimate little reception no one proposed a toast in honor of His Majesty."82 Spreading alarming rumors about the imperial regime had clearly become something of a hobby among local republican leaders. In 1868, the republicans in the commune of Chevenceaux (CharenteInferieure), playing on local resentment against the clergy, spread the news "that Her Majesty the empress has left the emperor to go and live in Rome with the Pope."83 In the run-up to the celebrations of 1869, the prefect of the Somme wrote to the minister of the interior about "a story that is being spread around to the effect that there will be trouble in Paris on August 15"; the source of this rumor was the entourage of Jules Lardiere, "one of the most active members of the opposition in the department."84 Ironically, the same Lardiere was soon to become the prefect of the Somme, under the republican Government of National Defence (September 1870-February 1871). Local republicans also gave a glacial reception to major political gestures of the regime, such as the wide-ranging amnesty granted by Napoleon IlIon the occasion of the 1869 national festivity. "It pains

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me to have to say that this act of clemency was met in Marsillargues with a great deal of indifference by the party of the irreconcilables," noted the police commissioner. 85 In the town of Cette (Herault), the amnesty decree was received "with a great deal of coldness," and, on many of the posters announcing the news, local activists had inscribed the message "Long Live the Democratic Republic!"86-probably not quite the reaction the emperor had been hoping for.

A Relentless Opposition Republican symbolic gestures of dissent also became bolder. The mayor of Courris (Tarn), who had been used to celebrating the national festivity with his constituents in a gentle and familial atmosphere, was startled in 1862 to find the principal street of the town blocked by a group of republicans. The large cake that he had ordered in honor of Napoleon III was ridiculed, and he was accused of "wasting communal funds on useless fripperies."87 The republican municipal councilors elected at Vic-Fezensac in 1865 not only declined to attend the ceremonies of August 15 but also "pointedly stood as a group on the street, watching the procession go by while they smoked their cigars."88 Expressions of political dissent also became more aggressive-and not only on the day of the Saint-Napoleon. On a spring afternoon in 1868, a crowd of around 250 young republican men, "most of them armed with sticks," caused an affray in the center of Bordeaux, "chanting the 'Marseillaise' at the top of their voices and shouting, "Long live the republic." Before he was beaten up, the police officer who witnessed the incident noted that the leader was marching "with a big rod to which had been attached fragments of red cloth."89 Elsewhere, republican dissent was somewhat more inventive, although in no way less uncompromising. At Cette, the overwhelmed police commissioner complained that his staff was now on constant toilet duty: "Incendiary inscriptions continue to appear in public lavatories, and it is an enormous task for the police almost every day to wipe off the words 'republic,' 'socialism,' and 'guillotine'; our surveillance can only prevent the locals from reading these inscriptions, which illustrate, more and more, the perverse and revolutionary nature of this cowardly and hostile population."90 At Yvetot (Seine-Inferieure)-a republican stronghold-the ceremonies of 1868 took place under something of a cloud: most of the notices announcing the national festivity were torn down or soiled. The main one on the municipal announcement board was

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lacerated and cut up into small pieces, and another one posted alongside the entrance to the post office was "covered in mud."91 In 1869, the harmony of the national celebrations at Malaucene (Vaucluse) was rudely shattered when a group of citizens deliberately threw fireworks at the civic procession; it turned out that this prank was the work of "the cafetier Mazet and his clients"-another republican gesture of civic defiance, no doubt. 92 In 1868 in Saint-Astier

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

The Saint-Napoleon in the Barracks. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. The republican opposition to the Empire was also hostile to the SaintNapoleon because of the festivity's association with a cult of the military, here illustrated by a military cantata written by the Parisian Guard in honor of the 1853 celebrations.

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(Dordogne), the authorities awoke to find the entire town littered with small pieces of paper, upon which were inscribed these uncelebratory remarks: "Down with the Emperor! Long Live the Republic!"93 Republican activists in Marseille went even further, using the very posters announcing the national festivity to make the Bonapartists the laughingstock of the entire population. Here is the account of the procureur-general of Aix: This morning, the police had to tear down small bands from a certain number of posters announcing public festivities; these bands carried the word "final" written in large characters immediately above the words "Fete of the Emperor." My assistant in Marseille tells me that these bands were removed in time and were seen only by a small number of people; but according to other information I have received, this incident had become known to the entire local population by the evening. 94 Not surprisingly, in light of such incidents, the prefect of Herault asserted that there was no point in trying to appease the radical opposition: "Their attitude is and will always remain irreconcilable."95 Republicans also did their best to dampen any display of popular fervor during the festivities-and there is much evidence to suggest that they were successful in this respect. In 1869, the church congregation at Saint-Laurent (Dordogne) was preparing to sing the Te Deum at the end of the morning mass when one of the local republican leaders stood up. "Lacoste, followed by twenty to thirty people, ran out of the church shouting and screaming so piercingly that everyone followed them out."96 The ceremony later resumed but the disruption had by then had its desired effect. In the final years of the 1860s, the republican strategy of hollowing out the festivities appeared to be paying off in the larger urban areas; official reports painted a bland and increasingly morose picture of the celebrations. "The national festivity of August 15 did not present any distinctive characteristic this year," wrote the police commissioner of Lyon in 1868. The republicans were nowhere to be seen, although in previous years, they had turned out in groups and attempted to "ridicule the celebrations."97 In Amiens in 1869, the national festivity was celebrated "as it has been each year in recent times, that it to say with great calm on the part of the population and with little expense on the part of the municipality," observed the police commissioner pointedly.98 In the later years of the Second Empire, municipalities domi-

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nated by republicans made no effort at all to mark the Saint-Napoleon. At Givors (Rhone) in 1868, there were no public festivities and the municipal building was not illuminated in the evening-"an example" noted the local police sourly "that was followed by almost the totality of the inhabitants."99 In some areas, the entire municipal council withdrew from the proceedings. At Pernes (Vaucluse), there were no public expressions of enthusiasm; the police commissioner laid the blame on the republican municipality, which made no plans to mark the national festivity.lOo In 1869, the mayor of the commune of Chaussin (Yonne) complained that "no member of my council responded to my invitation." These dissident councilors also refused to illuminate their homes; the mayor was especially indignant at the behavior of one councilor, a candle merchant by profession, who did not "even feel able to light the small residue of candle that was left in his outside lantern. "101 Toward the end of the Second Empire, this republican boldness rested on a clear appreciation that the regime was no longer willing (and perhaps no longer able) to deploy coercive means against dissident municipal officers. In 1868, the republican mayor of the village of Maisieres (Doubs) thus openly encouraged his colleagues throughout France to refrain from cooperating politically with the Bonapartist state: gone were the days when recalcitrant mayors could be summarily removed from office. 102 The authorities, it is true, were facing a rising tide of anti-Bonapartist demonstrations, some emanating even from within the ranks of official institutions. In 1868, during the reviews of the national guard in Paris and Marseille on the day of the SaintNapoleon, shouts of "Long live liberty!" were heard from the ranks and taken up (and amplified) by some sections of the crowds. 103 Even more spectacularly, republicans began to organize special cultural events of their own, normally centering on key dates in the republican commemorative calendar. A particular favorite was February 24, the anniversary of the founding of the Second Republic in 1848. Republicans all over France gathered to celebrate the event in 1870 104mostly in small private settings, but also in open gestures of defiance, as at Narbonne, where a red flag was hoisted on the Cathedral of Saint-Just. lOS There were also some large public gatherings. Perhaps none was more imposing than the festive meeting that took place in the Alacazar hall in Lyon on the evening of February 24, 1870. More than ten thousand republicans from the city crowded into the building to hear a program of patriotic songs (including a performance of the "Mar-

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seillaise," which was banned at the time). There were also speeches by several orators who highlighted the distinct elements of republican culture. Although unable to attend the gathering, the veteran Franc;ois Raspail was elected as the honorary president of the festivity; two republican women dressed in black and red brought onto the stage a civic wreath in his honor. In a message that was read out to the audience, Raspail emphasized the importance of education and free thinking in the making of republican citizenship. Indeed, every effort was made to offer an unfavorable contrast between this type of republican festivity and the celebrations of the Second Empire, which were presented as untidy, disorderly, vulgar, and above all hedonistic. Republican festivities were the opposite: collected, cerebral, and educative, "the triumph of calm and dignified will over the excesses of passion."106 At the height of the Second Empire's majestic power, when its civic festivities successfully drew large and enthusiastic crowds into the streets, scorn and derision were the dominant themes in imperial discourse concerning their republican adversaries: "useless and hollow dreamers, who would rather see France perish than their sacred principles undermined." 107 Imperial journalists and pamphleteers celebrated the triumph of the Bonapartist conception of liberty: "Now everyone was and felt free, because one knew oneself to be protected by a strong and truly popular state."108 In the final years of the regime, this self-assurance had been replaced by uneasiness-fear, even. This transformation of the Bonapartist officials' weltanschauung was evident in this somewhat prophetic report from the town of Apt (Vaucluse) in August 1869: "As for the republican revolutionaries, who constitute a very powerful minority in this district, they are not in any way grateful to the emperor for the new freedoms he has granted; on the contrary, they will use these very freedoms to bring down the dynasty."lo9

Conclusion: Festivity, Identity, Civility

~

THE

third week ofJuly 1890, the prefect of Dordogne

received a letter from an inhabitant of the commune of Saint-Pierrede-Chignac, who described himself as a "republican veteran" from the Second Empire era. His opening paragraph is worth quoting in full: There is a rumor spreading in the locality, monsieur Ie prefet, that Laroche and his acolytes, from Salleneuve, are planning to host a big banquet on August 15 on the day of the anniversary of the festivity of the emperor. This event is to be held in a reactionary public house in Saint-Pierre, in the presence of around a hundred guests. According to a private conversation that I overheard, the aim is to cry, "Long live the Empire" between dessert and coffee. Then the watchword will be passed along: "If these republican rascals come to annoy us we shall teach them a good lesson and receive them as they deserve."l This denunciation (accompanied by a request for "prompt public action by the authorities") was written a week after the annual national celebrations of July 14 and a year after the grandiose fetes of 1889, the centenary of the Revolution. No doubt this "republican veteran" had taken an enthusiastic part in the triumphant republic's rituals in his locality; perhaps he had even traveled all the way to Paris to see the newly inaugurated Eiffel Tower. His letter demonstrates that Bonapartists all over France were still merrily celebrating the Saint220

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Napoleon twenty years after the downfall of the Second Empire. In Paris, there were Saint-Napoleon banquets organized by the Comites Plebiscitaires de la Seine in the 1880s and 1890s;2 and, likewise, in certain provincial towns of the southwest, in Marseille and of course in Corsica, the anniversary of August 15 continued to bring together supporters of the Napoleonic tradition during the first two decades of the Third Republic. 3 It was also clear from this letter that republicans continued to be fearful of their old adversaries-especially at a time when the Boulangist movement was mounting a stiff challenge to the institutions of the Third Republic. 4 As the nineteenth century neared its close, the two freres ennemis of the French revolutionary tradition still seemed locked in fierce combat. Above all, the indignation of this member of the republican old guard was a measure of the changes and continuities in French festive practices across time. The Saint-Napoleon was celebrated throughout the entire nineteenth century, as an official fete during the periods of the two Bonapartist empires, but also as an "anti-fete" under the Restoration and July Monarchy, when it had been commemorated by smaller groups-including social forces openly contesting the political order. In the late nineteenth century, as the winds of political fortune were turning against Bonapartism, the anniversary of August 15 had again become an anti-fete, marked in the (robust) intimacy of private groups of citizens. The contrasting fortunes of republicans and Bonapartists were reflected in this saga. In the years of Napoleon III, the republicans had been forced underground while Bonapartists triumphantly occupied the public realm. After 1880, the roles were reversed, and it was now the imperialists' turn to be dispatched into the private sphere to nurture their Napoleonic memories. But there was also great continuity between these festive ritualsand by extension, between the fete and the anti-fete. The tension between the national character of the festivities and their appropriation for partisan ends, which had often underpinned the period between 1851 and 1870, was still very much in evidence under the Third Republic. July 14 was not just a celebration of French national greatness, but also an occasion on which republican civic principles, republican memories, and republican political institutions were honoredand those who did not subscribe to these values were excluded. As one scholar put it delicately, republicans "would not refrain from celebrating events and men dear only to them."5 Indeed, the links between the two eras, the Bonapartist and the republican, are even more fundamental. Historians of the republican festive tradition have tended

Allee des Acacias: Review of the Territorial Army, 1880. Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. In 1880, the new republican regime inaugurated the festivity of July 14, which replaced the Saint-Napoleon as France's national celebration. This image underlines the strong elements of continuity with Bonapartist festivities, notably the cult of the army.

[To view this image, refer to the print version of this title.]

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to highlight the "important discontinuity"6 between the Third Republic and the festivities that preceded it. In the estimation of Olivier Ihl, republican rituals were celebrations of "civic interdependence," unlike the Second Empire's celebration of one individual; 7 the fete republicaine was also "a festivity without God," again in contrast with the religiosity of the ceremonies of the 1850s and 1860s. 8 Above all, historians of republican festivities and commemorations have tended to emphasize the spontaneous and popular character of their rituals, as opposed to the (allegedly) rigid, artificial, and monotonous celebrations of the Second Empire. 9 But these dichotomies largely melt away when the evidence laid out in this book is considered-evidence that highlights the extraordinary public fervor for these festivities, as well as the symbolic creativity demonstrated by local participants. Particularly noted by contemporaries was the sense of popular fervor. Writing from his country house in Val-Richer in 1867, Franc;ois Guizot observed that there were "no workers to be seen anywhere on August 15."10 It is little wonder, then, that the republican regime that followed the Second Empire largely adopted its ceremonial and festive practices. Indeed, many characteristics that were later seen as essential embodiments of the republican festivity (the proliferation of busts; the decoration of homes with national flags and candles; the patriotic cult of the military; the distribution of charity to the needy; and much else)11 were already well in evidence in the civic practices of the Saint-Napoleon. In this respect, the Third Republic assumed the mantle of the Second Empire without any acknowledgment. Republicans also took from the Bonapartists the simple but essential notion that a public festivity had to be enjoyable. After 1880, the republicans finally dispensed with the solemn, monotonous, and mournful gatherings that had generally marked their political rituals from the Revolution onward; gone now were the days when republican festivities were, in Ernest Renan's cruel depiction, "an Eden of contented burghers, enjoying themselves in regimented gangs and enthusing by decree."12 The place of God in the rituals of the Saint-Napoleon needs to be strongly relativized-not only because of the local social and political conflicts that have been documented here, but also because the celebrations essentially represented an incorporation of the religious sphere by the state (an instrumentalism that was very much part of the Napoleonic tradition).13 Indeed, it is essential to remember that from Louis XIII onward, French monarchs historically used the performance of the Te Deum as a means of strengthening their own "sacred" power and sovereignty, independently of the church. 14

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Bonapartist Successes and Limitations As the official celebration of the Bonapartist state between 1852 and 1870, the commemorations of August 15 reveal the heart of the Second Empire and, more generally, the history of Bonapartism. The first conclusion that needs to be underlined has to do with the functional effectiveness of the festivity. The Saint-Napoleon was successful in its own terms: the celebrations were popular, joyful, and exuberant and brought millions of French men, women, and children into the streets, drawn out by a mixture of political, religious, civic, and hedonistic considerations. One of the important features of the festivity, glimpsed throughout the book, was the presence of local associations-of war veterans, musicians, archers, workers' corporations, and much else. These organizations often played a crucial role in drawing out local populations. In Vienne (Isere) in 1853, there was an "immense affluence" of the public, which according to the subprefect was largely explained by the fact that "all the local mutual aid societies had joined themselves to this popular movement."15 Similar scenes involving local associations and groups were repeated on August 15 throughout France, anticipating-here again-the layout of the republican festivities of the Third Republic, with its working-class associations, gymnastic societies, and rifle clubs. The Empire's achievement in establishing a genuinely popular fete is especially worth highlighting in historical perspective. Since the Revolution, all French regimes had been obsessed with the fear of being overrun by the "crowd." In the first half of the nineteenth century, even official festivities were often regarded with considerable apprehension by ruling regimes lest the celebrations gave rise to uncontrollable passions. Responding to a request from local authorities in Marseille to commemorate the return of the Bourbons after 1815, an internal note to the Restoration minister of police responded cautiously that "it would in general be preferable that departments limited themselves to celebrating the public festivities sanctioned by law or ordered by the government."16 For much of the 1850s and 1860s, Napoleon Ill's regime helped to allay such fears and to demonstrate that the occupation of the public sphere by the masses was not a matter for concern-another way of insisting that democracy (understood sociologically as well as procedurally) was here to stay. The fete du 15 aout was also instrumentally useful to Napoleon III, helping him carry out the transition from republic to empire between 1851 and 1852; in this sense, it was an effective instrument of state-building. The festivity

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allowed the new imperial regime to consolidate its power over time by entrenching its distinct social and political values, providing a forum for the dissemination of its rich symbolic order, and appealing to its key social constituencies-especially in provincial and rural France, which were constantly presented as the "more enlightened" sections of society in contrast with agitated individualism of urban populations. 17 What do the festive experiences of the Second Empire tell us about nineteenth-century Bonapartism? In the first instance, they highlight its transformation over time. The Saint-Napoleon festivities of the First Empire were focused entirely on the personality of the emperor;18 the monistic and quasi-liturgical character of the celebrations, which harked back to the humanitarian cults of the Revolution (and especially the Supreme Being),19 offers a striking contrast with the pluralistic and popular nature of the fetes of the 1851-1870 period. Bonapartism, in the intervening period, had undergone a significant cultural transformation-especially with respect to its entrenchment in mass suffrage. The fete du 15 aout was a popular success not only because the imperial regime wished it to be so and devoted material and bureaucratic resources to achieve this end, but also because local groups of citizens joined in willingly and enthusiastically. Their participation was eager, spontaneous, and often highly creative-perhaps most vividly so in the sheer range and diversity of national and local tributes to Napoleon III. The Saint-Napoleon, in this sense, reflected the apogee of mid-nineteenth-century Bonapartism, notably in its capacity to federate and synthesize the diverse and often contradictory aspirations of the French people. 20 The presence of the public was also a reflection of the regime's capacity to appeal to their citizens' very real sense of pride in their nation and its heritage. There was genuine patriotic excitement all over France, for example, when the regime established the Medaille de Sainte-Helene, and all the evidence unearthed here has demonstrated that celebrations were significantly enhanced by the presence of the imperial veterans. In the words of a local official in 1858: "The animation produced everywhere by the gatherings of the old imperial soldiers who have been decorated by the Medal of Saint-Helena has enormously contributed to the dynamism with which the fete of August 15 has been celebrated this year."21 In the tens of thousands of small towns and villages of France, the fetes of the late 1850s and 1860s were less concerned with national questions of war and peace than with honoring these relics of the

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Napoleonic tradition-the true heroes of their local communitiesand the men who before 1815 had represented the symbiosis between Bonapartism and republicanism. 22 This is one of the reasons why Caesarism is too rigid and static a concept to capture the remarkable fluidity of the celebrations-the variations in the festive script in space and time, the weaving together of national and local motifs, and, indeed, the failure of many public servants to live up to the "majestic" expectations heaped upon them by their bureaucratic overlords. The experiences of the festivity in provincial and rural France provide important insights into the popularity of the regime, but they also underscore its fault lines. While there is evidence of the festivities serving as a rallying point for converts to the regime (especially in the early years of the Second Empire), it is also clear that the SaintNapoleon was at times a source (or a theater) of intense social and political conflict. The social and religious battles with the ultramontane elements in the local clergy provoked bitter disputes in some communes, poisoning the atmosphere of the national festivity and destroying the church-state harmony that the Second Empire had sought to promote. Likewise, the political clashes with the republicans (and, in a more restrained manner, some legitimists) demonstrated that the Bonapartists failed in their maximal aspiration to create social peace by transcending traditional ideological divisions. One of the key political purposes of the Saint-Napoleon, as established at the outset of this book, was to contain the republican menace; this the festivities signally failed to do. What impact did these localized conflicts-which intensified over time and reached their zenith by the late 1860s-have over the regime's capacity to control the civic and symbolic narratives of "its" festivity? There can be no denying that there was a degree of hollowing out of the celebrations in the final years of the Second Empireespecially in urban areas and in communes with growing republican political support. In parallel, there was also an element of rigidity that began to appear in the Bonapartists' festive script: rituals became increasingly routinized and there was a decline in symbolic creativity (both at the elite and mass levels). Perhaps the regime was simply getting old: by the mid-1860s, the emperor was a rapidly aging sovereign, and each year saw a considerable cull in the most potent human symbol of the festivities, the Medailles de Sainte-Helene. But this relative loss of dynamism should be kept in perspective, as it is common to most modern civic rituals. The Third Republic's festivities eventually suffered a similar fate; Charles Rearick thus noted that, by the

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1890s, "the fete of 14 July struck more and more observers as old, routine, and worn out."23 In the final analysis, the downfall of the Bonapartist regime in September 1870 was far less a product of any loss of symbolic and ideological appeal-it had, after all, spectacularly triumphed in the plebiscite of May 1870-than a direct and irreversible consequence of its military defeat by Prussia.

Fashioning National Identities The Saint-Napoleon was not only a creative festivity from the point of view of the Bonapartist tradition. The events and experiences of August 15 all across the country reveal much about the construction of French national identities (a plural term) in the nineteenth century, in terms of their shaping both by public and institutional activity and through spontaneous local endeavor. The festivities, in this sense, provide compelling evidence of the complexity of French nation-building. Republican contemporaries derided the festive and symbolic order of the Second Empire, which in their view had no visible effect on the political education of the French nation-especially the peasantry. In his account of French electoral practices under the Second Empire, Jules Ferry railed against the "logic of the country dweller," which in his view was "as brutish as the nature that surrounds him."24 This patronizing view was shared by his colleague Eugene Pelletan, one of the leading figures in the national republican movement in the 1850s and 1860s: "What does [the peasant] know about politics? He is vaguely aware that he has a sovereign because he sees his profile on his coins and banknotes. He has even heard it rumored that there are high dignitaries who command the army and administer the country. But he has never been able to distinguish one from the other and even less the living from the dead."25 This image of a passive and backward rural population crushed by the weight of an authoritarian and domineering state has long underpinned not only the traditional Marxist, republican, and liberal views of the Second Empire, but also, in a wider sense, the conceptualization of the relationship between state and society in nineteenth-century France. The same image lurks behind the classical Tocquevillian conception of French society, with its emphasis on a weak and fragmented civil society. The mirror reflection of this image is the belief that French collective sentiment was essentially fashioned by the state. "The state created the nation" is a commonplace phrase in French historiography, a construction that is viewed either as an accomplish-

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ment of republican modernity or as a successful exercise in inventing a tradition. The celebrations of the Saint-Napoleon invite a more nuanced perspective. Peasants (and workers and indeed all social groups except the nobility) came out in vast numbers to honor France's national day on August 15. What did the "nation" signify to them? It denoted a host of ideas, values, memories, and institutions, which varied in time and space: to some, the emperor as sovereign was the symbol of French nationhood; to others, the nation was embodied in the army; to others still, the nation was a historical entity, fashioned by France's past glories and heroic figures (among whom Napoleon Bonaparte figured prominently). The concept of nationhood also entered the public imagination through the rich symbolism of the festivity, from the ubiquitous presence of the tricolor flag to the wealth of Napoleonic poems, plays, statue-building, and street-naming. But what has emerged most strongly through this book's journey across the Saint-Napoleon is that local groups appropriated the "nation" in their own ways, through creative gestures that blended together political, social, and religious motifs. Celebrating the nation often went hand in hand with paying tribute to a particular localityin the form of its mayor, its municipal institutions, its physical environment, and its civic and cultural institutions. In some parts of France, and at some moments between 1851 and 1870, national sentiment led to the burning of Prussian flags and the celebration of French military glory; at other times and places, this feeling expressed itself in an irenic yearning for peace, economic stability, and progress. Religion, too, reinforced patriotic sentiment in a variety of ways: through the celebration of the Second Empire's successes and the clergy's active support for the regime or-perversely but no less powerfully-through the anticlerical sentiments generated at local levels by conflicts between the church and the municipality. The festivities of August 15 show, in sum, that national identities were not only fluid and dynamic, part sentiment and part ideology, but they were also constantly negotiated by a variety of actors operating at all levels of society, weaving together both universalistic and particularistic elements. And even though this nation was constructed around masculine concepts such as honor and military valor, it is worth noting that women, too, were able to partake in the civic celebrations and thus be socialized into the wider world of politics from which they were excluded as active citizens. And despite such exclusion, intriguing glimpses of the presence of women in French public

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and private life have emerged in this book-they cheered the emperor, watched bullfights with gusto, participated in civic and religious processions, and, at the same time, those of republican and legitimist persuasions often helped to organize anti-fetes that contested the Bonapartists' ordering of civic space.

Empowering the Citizenry In overall terms, the Saint-Napoleon was a creative and dynamic occasion, especially at local levels. The festivities, all at once, opened wide avenues for civic empowerment for social groups, political associations, and public institutions. The celebrations of August 15 gave citizens allover the country an opportunity to cultivate a sense of pride in their locality. In France's cities and large towns, the sentiment of local patriotism was sometimes drowned out by the sheer scale of the rejoicings and the presence of large numbers of visitors from neighboring areas (and in the case of Paris and Lyon the absence of elected municipal representatives). But in the tens of thousands of middle-sized and small towns, and especially in France's villages, the Saint-Napoleon was a civic occasion that was both more intimate and more inclusive. Municipal elites competed with each other in order to beautify their public spaces, enlisting the support of local populations to decorate their homes with flags and illuminations (and on many an occasion to sweep the streets). Civic pride was also stimulated by the presence at the festivities of representatives of leisure, cultural, and professional associations, eager to parade themselves in public as well as to show off the splendor and vivacity of their locality. Closely related to this sense of pride was the notion of civic honor. The Bonapartist state was eager to use the festivities to promote its social and moral values. Generosity was celebrated and encouraged through philanthropy and local acts of charity, and public and civic service was rewarded by the decoration of eminent local citizens. The most remarkable example of this recognition of virtue was the award of the Medaille de Sainte-Helene to several hundred thousand Napoleonic war veterans after 1857. The public enthusiasm displayed during the award ceremonies demonstrated the strength of rural patriotism, as mentioned earlier. But it was also a local narrative, which indicated that honor was not merely fashioned by the state: the old veterans who were receiving their medals were already, in a large number of cases, heroic figures in their villages and towns; by creating this

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new award, the Bonapartist state was giving legal recognition to this moral fact. The major institutional beneficiary of the Saint-Napoleon (and indeed of all secular festivities)26 at the local level was the municipality. The mayor used the festivities to promote his personal leadership of the commune; all the announcements detailing the program of the festivities were distributed under his name, and it was clear that he collected much of the credit for their success. Municipal buildings were decorated and illuminated with unprecedented lavishness, underscoring the growing symbolic importance of these representative institutions in local collective life. Local populations often considered festive occasions organized by municipalities as the high points of the year. At Nimes, for example, the local council organized public games and amusements in the Roman circus on the afternoons of August 15-a gathering that typically brought together tens of thousands of citizens. The mayor of Nimes, a crafty Bonapartist politician, took advantage of the absence of state officials to raise his own profile, as well as that of local municipal institutions: "According to an ancient usage, the mayor on these occasions addresses official invitations to the festivity; he indicates the municipality as the meeting point and he goes from there to the site of the festivity, accompanied by a company of firemen and preceded by a musical band."27 This strength was often tested in the encounters between municipal and religious authorities during the church ceremonies; and although the secular authorities at times came off second best in these contests, their willingness to assert themselves against the local clergy was symptomatic of a new sense of municipal confidence. From whence did this buoyancy spring? The short answer is: male suffrage. Under the Second Empire's municipal regime, councilors were elected by popular vote, and by the 1860s this democratic process had transformed the nature of the local public sphere, even effectively influencing the choice of mayors (who were appointed by the state, but increasingly sought to have their legitimacy confirmed through popular election). In many parts of France, local municipal representatives used the power afforded them by the vote to affirm the superiority of the secular world over the religious sphere and to challenge what they perceived as the domineering role of the local clergy. In this respect, too, the religiosity of the Saint-Napoleon needs to be relativized: at the local level, the festivity was essentially about limiting and confining the religious realm (and appropriating a traditional religious ritual for secular purposes)-something that caused many a muttering among the local clergy.

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What do the Saint-Napoleon festivities reveal about the (difficult) emergence of a sense of civility in France? Great care needs to be taken here, especially as this book has not dealt with all aspects of social conflict in France during this period (notably labor disputes and tax revolts). The evidence is far from linear. Rural populations, for example, were much less prone to social and political violence under the Second Empire than under preceding regimes; but they were also more likely to suffer from alcoholism, the incidence of which was increasingly alarming to the Bonapartist authorities by the late 1860s. There was progress, therefore, but it was uneven. But it could be argued that some of the manifestations of dissident behavior were civically affirming when seen from the perspective of the domestication of political violence. In challenging the legitimacy of the festivities, republican and legitimist opposition groups at times created networks of political activism, which operated in parallel to those of the official public realm. These underground forms of political activity were part of an emerging civil society, and the networks often successfully penetrated the public sphere-most importantly through the activities of municipal councilors, who acted as links between the official sphere and the private and often subterranean networks of activism. The narrative of oppositional politics during the Saint-Napoleon can essentially be told as a story that begins underground, in clandestinity and in the colorful world of conspiracies, secret societies, and rumors, and ends with local republican elites successfully hollowing out the festivities by persuading their supporters and sympathizers to stay at home on the Saint-Napoleon in certain parts of (urban) France. "Civility" appears in two dimensions in this narrative: first, within the republican fold, in the move from subterranean politics to the open and public expression of dissent; and second (more subtly perhaps), in the observation and tacit agreement of certain rules of the game between the government and the opposition. At one level, this rapprochement should not be viewed in isolation: it was part of a much wider trend toward the peaceful coexistence of representatives of public authority and social groups in nineteenth-century France, as illustrated, for example, in the increasingly conciliatory relationship between gendarmes and provincial and rural populations. 28 There was, outside of Paris and the larger cities, a distinct political dimension to this pacification process. Even during its most authoritarian phase, the Second Empire did not seek to persecute those citizens who refused to celebrate its political anniversary; likewise, the republican opposition manifested its opposition to the festivities through the use of derision but without transgressing certain fundamentallimits-nota-

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bly the recourse to physical violence against Bonapartists. This unwritten code distinguishes the Second Empire era from the premodern manifestations of social and political violence of earlier French regimes and confirms the view that the mid-nineteenth century marked a major turning point in the forms of expression of political dissent in modern France. 29 At the same time, there were unmistakable elements of continuity with the symbolic practices adopted by previous generations of dissident groups: the subversive mockery of the republican anti-fete of the 18S0s and 1860s drew upon the repertoire of the carnival and charivari, as well as on the local traditions of political dissent, which were deployed from the Restoration onward and found expression in seditious placards, defacement of public monuments, and irreverent cries and songs. 30 History also has its ironies: in the Restoration years the main contributors to this oppositional culture of the anti-fete were the Bonapartists; during the Second Empire they had become its victims.

The Saint-Napoleon and French Political Culture While this exploration of the festive worlds of the Saint-Napoleon has revealed much about Bonapartism, it also powerfully resonates more universal themes. At a most basic level, the book bears witness to the extraordinary importance of symbols in modern French political discourse and practice-perhaps best illustrated in the frenzy with which successive nineteenth-century regimes sought to destroy the symbolic orders of their predecessors before replacing them with their own. This is the one respect in which Bourbons, Bonapartists, and republicans were at one, gleefully defacing, destroying, and burning each other's emblems and monuments in acts of ritual purification, which demonstrated (among other things) the complex relationship between vandalism, memory, and political culture. In France, the real significance of political symbolism is rarely what seems most obvious. Consider this example: in 1871 one of the first actions carried out by local republicans in Golfe-Juan was to bring down the column that had been erected to mark the landing of Napoleon in this coastal village in March 181S-the prelude to the emperor's spectacular "flight of the Eagle" and the Hundred Days.31 The reasons for this destructive gesture are not known; however, many possible layers of meaning exist. In one sense, it was obviously an act of vengeance against the Bonapartist regime that had just fallen and its local agents, and it was also a way of marking the beginning of a

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new era-in the same way as the Second Empire had wiped away all institutional symbols of the Republic in 1852 and the Restoration had ordered the systematic burning of eagles and the destruction of Napoleonic portraits and busts after 1815. 32 In another sense, it may have been a symbolic statement of opposition to any return to power of Napoleon III or a gesture of solidarity with the Paris Commune, which had pulled down the Vendome Column; or it's possible, though remotely, that it was a posthumous tribute to the memory of Auguste Comte, who had been one of the first to call for the dismantling of monuments that glorified war. For all its crassness and brutality, this gesture could even, with only a slight stretch of the imagination, be seen from the perspective of civility: unleashing local passions against an inanimate stone relic is, after all, a much more genteel exercise in political retribution than lynching the local Bonapartists. It is important to remember that the physical purges after 1815 and 1851 were accompanied by significant acts of public violence against supporters of the previous regime-which stands in dramatic contrast with 1871, when the only bloodletting occurred within the republican camp itself. The festivities of the Second Empire highlighted many of the underlying weaknesses in French political culture: the frailty of state power when confronted by local counterpressures; the centrifugal effects of religious conflict; and the profound rift between Catholic and secular communities, notably on moral issues. One of the important findings of this book, in this context, is the depth of anticlerical sentiment in provincial and rural France-a phenomenon that foreshadowed the conflicts of the early Third Republic, which themselves paved the way for the separation of church from state. Secular France, which is all too often presented as an exclusive creation of the republicans (and of urban social and political values more generally), thus appears as the product of a much wider and more complex range of forces. Above all, the book has shed light on a constant pattern in modern French political history: the frustrations encountered by all states when they attempt to use their power to fashion civil society in their image. In France, heroic policy ambitions rarely survived the cold encounter with social and political realities and the country's territorial diversity; and many of the problems encountered by the Bonapartists in the 1850s and 1860s came back to haunt the republicans under the Third Republic. The book has also drawn attention to many of the enduring constitutive features of French political culture. The festivities are an illustration of the complex manner in which the French have learned

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to live together in modern times. They offer a tribute to the nation's irreducible political individualism-symbolized by the substantial local variations in the performance of the Bonapartists' festive script, the defiant attitudes of many public officials, and the collective resistance offered by republican localities to the celebrations; in different ways, these phenomena demonstrate the growing depth, potency, and popular entrenchment of the concept of sovereignty. Then, as now, this individualism was neither wholly creative nor entirely destructive; rather, it confirmed what cultural historians regard as the "dynamic contradiction" of modern France: its possession, on the one hand, of symbolic forms that push toward social fragmentation and, on the other hand, its generation of "synthetic myths" concerning its identity that are capable of "repairing the damage."33 The civic festivities of the Second Empire also need to be viewed from the wider perspective of the entrenchment of Napoleonic mythology in French political culture. It is ironic, in this respect, that one of these synthetic myths, effectively reconstructed by the French republican tradition after 1880, was the Napoleonic legend. In temporal terms, the fetes depicted in this narrative occupy an intermediary position between the legend of the first half of the nineteenth century and the reappropriation of the figure of Napoleon by the republican generation of the Third Republic. Even as they reaffirmed their unconditional condemnation of the Second Empire and its imperial ruler, pedagogues such as Ernest Lavisse celebrated the memory of Bonaparte, whose political achievements and military glory were held up as examples for the republican youth of the late nineteenth century.34 Pierre Larousse's Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe siecle provides a key to the mechanism underlying this readmission of the emperor into republican collective memory: the work contains two separate entries, one on "Bonaparte, the greatest, most glorious, most radiant name in history," who died on the day of his coup d'etat of Brumaire in 1799, and the other on "Napoleon I, political and military dictator," whose career as an imitator of Caesar was launched from that moment. 35 Through its illustration of the depth and complexity of French collective identification with the emperor in nineteenth-century France, this book sheds some light on why even these virulently antiBonapartist republicans could not afford to ignore Napoleon, who remains one of the most popular mythological figures in contemporary France. By the same token, the narrative underscores the multiple convergences between republican and Bonapartist political cultures, notably at the level of their common cult of the "Grande Nation."

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In this way, the festivities lead us to one of the most fundamental aspects of construction of modern French collective identity: the enmeshing of national and local political cultures. The political education of modern French citizens-the pedagogy of the nation-was achieved not by the imposition of a centralized Jacobin diktat upon a passive and atomized periphery, but rather through the fusion of local motifs into national and universal themes-a "dual sensibility," in the words of Maurice Agulhon. 36 The fete du 15 aoitt, like the republican festivities that succeeded it, very much captures this dual spirit, providing a forum for public identification with the institutions and values of the Napoleonic state (both positive and negative) and for the celebration of the commune, with its civic associations, historical monuments and buildings, and democratically elected municipality. Through this dialectic between the national and the local has emerged the particular shape of French collective identity and the distinct style of its modern politics-perhaps, most notably, the capacity for its civic intercourse, even at its most fiercely dramatic and adversarial moments, to retain a certain sociable (or even playful) quality.

Notes Primary Sources

Index

Notes

Introduction 1. Prefect of Isere report to minister of interior, Grenoble, France, August 19, 1868, AD Isere 54 M 15 (fetes du 15 aout, 1864-1870). 2. Speech by mayor ofVourey, August 17,1868, AD Isere 54 MIS. 3. The statue of Napoleon remained in Grenoble until 1930. It was then moved to Laffrey, where it can still be seen today. See Madeleine Tartary, Sur les traces de Napoleon (Paris: Peyronnet, 1956), p. 218. 4. See Alain Faure, Paris Careme-Prenant: Du carnaval it Paris au XIXeme si'ecle (Paris: Hachette, 1978); Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le charivari (Paris: Mouton, 1981); Maurice Agulhon, La Republique au village (Paris: Seuil, 1979), pp. 158-162; and Jack Thomas, Le temps des foires (Toulouse: Presses Uniersitaires du Mirail, 1993). 5. Cited in Raymond Huard, Le mouvement republicain en Bas-Languedoc, 1848-1881 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1982), p. 186. 6. See Philippe Martel, "Le Felibrige," in Les lieux de memoire, vol. 3, no. 2, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1992). 7. Jean-Claude Farcy, "Le temps libre au village," in L'avenement des loisirs, 1850-1960, ed. Alain Corbin (Paris: Flammarion, 1995), p. 238. 8. Report of subprefect of Tonnerre, August 16, 1864, AD Yonne, 3 M 3/33. 9. Letter of mayor of Ramatuelle to prefect ofVar, August 27, 1859, AD Var 6 M 18/1. 10. Agulhon, La Republique au village, p. 155. 11. See Mona Ozouf, La jete revolutionnaire, 1789-1799 (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). 12. Barbara Day-Hickman, Napoleonic Art: Nationalism and the Spirit ofRebellion in France (1815-1848) (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1999), p. 93.

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Notes to Pages 4-7

13. See Adolphe Aynaud, "Saint-Napoleon," Le Vieux Papier, July 1964; and Henri George, "Saint-Napoleon a-t-il existe?" Le Vieux Papier, January 1990. According to George, the answer to the question of whether this saint ever existed is emphatically negative. 14. For more on the conflicts engendered by the celebration of this festivity in the Italian peninsula, see Michael Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy: The War against God, 1801-1814 (London: Routledge, 2002). 15. Report of mayor of Monts, August 15, 1807, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 245. 16. Louis Garros and Jean Tulard, Napoleon au jour de jour (Paris: Tallandier, 2002), p. 394. 17. Christian Pfister, Les fetes it Nancy sous Ie Consulat et Ie Premier Empire, 1799-1813 (Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1914), pp. 89-92. 18. For more on the festivities and commemorations of the Restoration era, see Franc;oise Waquet, Les fetes royales sous la Restauration ou l'Ancien Regime retrouve (Geneva: Droz, 1981); and Sheryl Kroen, Politics and Theater: The Crisis of Legitimacy in Restoration France, 1815-1830 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). 19. Report of police commissioner, Bordeaux, August 27, 1819, AN, F7 3744. 20. Speech of mayor of Chaponnay, August 27, 1816, AD Isere 54 M 5 (fetes 1814-1829). 21. Gendarmerie report, Troyes, February 11, 1818, AN F7 6866 (affaires politiques 1814-1830). 22. Remi Dalisson, "Symboles politiques et politiques festives dans l'Eure (1815-1889)," paper delivered at public conference, Rouen, November 25,2000. 23. See the reports in AD Isere, 54 M 6 (Fetes et ceremonies publiques de la Monarchie de Juillet, 1830-1848). 24. Report of mayor of Barraux, July 31, 1831, AD Isere 54 M 6. 25. For more on the symbolic representations of the July Monarchy, see Jo Burr Margadant, "Gender, Vice, and the Political Imaginary in PostRevolutionary France: Reinterpreting the Failure of the July Monarchy," American Historical Review (December 1999). See also Herve Robert, "Les funerailles du Due d'Orleans: Une 'fete royale' sous la Monarchie de Juillet," Revue Historique 602 (April-June 1997). 26. For more on the festivities of 1848 see Robert Bezucha, "Masks of Revolution: A Study of Popular Culture during the Second French Republic," in Revolution and Reaction, ed. Roger Price (London: Croom Helm, 1975), pp. 236253; Maurice Agulhon, "Fete spontanee et fetes organisees a Paris en 1848," in Les fetes de la Revolution, ed. Jean Ehrard and Paul Viallaneix (Paris: Societe des Etudes Robespierristes, 1977), pp. 243-271; Remi Dalisson, "Fete publique et citoyennete: 1848, une tentative de regeneration civique par la fete," Revue d'Histoire du XIXe si'ecle 18, 1 (1999), pp. 49-72; and Jacqueline Lalouette, "Celebrer la Constitution: la Fete du 19 Novembre," in Fidelite republicaine et monde rural, 1848-1851: Actes du Colloque d'Aurillac 27-28 aout 1999 (Aurillac: Societe des lettres, sciences, et arts "La Haute Auvergne," 2001), pp. 111-141. 27. Lucien Prevost-Paradol, La France Nouvelle (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1868). 28. See, for example, the reports in AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 253 (Fetes 18481852). 29. Gendarmerie report, Tulle, August 18, 1820, AN F7 6906. 30. Report of prefect, Bar-Ie-Due, August 1822, AN F7 6770, dossier 16 (Meuse).

Notes to Pages 7-12

241

31. Gendarmerie report, Lyon, August 17, 1822, AN F7 6705 (objets seditieux). 32. L'Ami des Lois, Journal du Soir, New Orleans, August 18, 1818, AN F7 6866. For more on the Napoleonic impact on Latin American revolutions during this period, see Richard Walter, "Revolution, Independence and Liberty in Latin America," in Revolution and the Meanings of Freedom in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Isser Woloch (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 103-137. 33. For some examples of this phenomenon see Kroen, Politics and Theater, pp. 164-165, 177, 180. 34. Letter from Cabinet of Prefecture de Police to prefect of Morbihan, Paris, September 3, 1818, AN F7 6869 (affaires politiques 1814-1830). 35. Report of procureur, N erac, August 16, 1823, AN BB30-193 (procureurgeneral, Agen, reports 1822-1830). 36. Report of prefect ofVar, Draguignan, August 23, 1827, AN F7 6772 (situation politique dans les departements 1820-1830). 37. Report of prefect of Seine-et-Marne, Melun, August 17, 1828, AN F7 6772. 38. Octave Festy, Le mouvement ouvrier au debut de la monarchie de Juillet (Paris: Cornely, 1908), pp. 36-38. 39. L. de la Hodde, Strophes et chansons politiques (Paris, 1845); quoted in Jean Lucas-Dubreton, Le culte de Napoleon, 1815-1848 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1960), pp. 400-402. 40. C. Temblaire, "Le 15 aout 1844," Revue de l'Empire, vol. 2 (Paris, 1844), pp. 307-310. 41. Henri Tholle, Souvenirs de la Saint-Napoleon it la Lieut-Mer (1854), Bib.Nat.LB56-186. 42. Elise Seguin, "Imagerie et vie sociale a Lille," exhibition catalog, Paris, 1959. 43. Sudhir Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen: The Second Empire and the Emergence ofModern French Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998). 44. A. Legoyt, in Dictionnaire de l'economie politique (1854), cited in Olivier Ihl, La jete republicaine (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), p. 73. 45. Entry for August 15, 1865, in Jules Michelet, Journal, vol. 3, ed. Claude Digeon (Paris: Gallimard, 1976). 46. Pierre de La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire, vol. 2 (Paris: PIon, 1908), p.49. 47. Ibid., p. 50. 48. Matthew Truesdell, Spectacular Politics: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte and the Fete Imperiale, 1849-1870 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997). See also David Baguley, Napoleon III and His Regime: An Extravaganza (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000), which uses both political and literary sources to examine how the emperor was "represented" both by his supporters and detractors. 49. Alain Corbin, et aI., preface to Les usages politiques des fetes aux XIXe-XXe steeles (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1994), p. 9. 50. See Peter Baehr, ed., From Bonapartism to Fascism: Studies in the History and Theory of Dictatorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 51. Rosemonde Sanson, "Le 15 aout: Fete nationale du Second Empire," in Corbin et aI., Les usages politiques des fetes.

242

Notes to Pages 12-14

52. See Rosemonde Sanson, Le 14 juillet: Fete et conscience nationale 1789-1975 (Paris: Flammarion, 1976). 53. For a comparative evaluation of the relationship between democracy and civil society, see the collection edited by Nancy Bermeo and Philip Nord, Civil Society before Democracy: Lessons from Nineteenth-Century Europe (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000). 54. For more on this theme, see Frans;oise Melonio, Tocqueville et les Franfais (Paris: Aubier, 1993). For more on Tocqueville's life and political thought, see Sheldon Wolin, Tocqueville between Two Worlds (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 55. See Lucien Jaume, L'individu efface ou Ie paradoxe du liberalisme franfais (Paris: Fayard, 1997). 56. Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen (London: Chatto, 1977). 57. The classic work here is Agulhon, La republique au village. See also the contributions on the July Monarchy, the Second Republic, and the Second Empire in Louis Fougere, J ean-Pierre Machelon, and Frans;ois Monnier, eds., Les communes et Ie pouvoir: Histoire politique des communes franfaises de 1789 it nosjours (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002). 58. Eugen Weber's thesis about the state-driven cultural transformation of an anomic and fragmented rural France has been vigorously challenged, notably in James Lehning, Peasant and French (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and Alan R. H. Baker, Fraternity among the French peasantry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). See also Peter Sahlins' study of peasant politicization in the Ariege, Forest Rites: The War of the Demoiselles in NineteenthCentury France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). 59. See Christiane Guionnet, L'apprentissage de la politique moderne: Les elections municipales sous la Monarchie de Juillet (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1997); William B. Cohen, Urban Government and the Rise of the French City: Five Municipalities in the Nineteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1998); and Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen. 60. See Caroline Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France: Religion and Political Identity in Brittany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); and Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Penguin, 1999). 61. Carol Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France: Gender, Sociability, and the Use of Emulation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Sudhir Hazareesingh and Vincent Wright, Francs-mafons sous Ie Second Empire: Le Grand Orient de France it la veille de la Troisi'eme Republique (Rennes: Presses U niersitaires de Rennes, 2001). 62. See Stephane Gerson, "Town, Nation, or Humanity? Festive Delineations of Place and Past in Northern France, ca. 1825-1865," Journal ofModern History, 72 (2000) and his book The Pride of Place (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003). 63. See Jean-Frans;ois Chanet, L'ecole republicaine et les petites patries (Paris: Aubier, 1996); and Anne-Marie Thiesse, lis apprenaient la France: L'exaltation des regions dans Ie discours patriotique (Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de FHomme, 1997). 64. See Heinz-Gerhard Haupt, Michael Muller, and Stuart Woolf, eds., Regional and National Identities in Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Kluwer Law International, 1998).

Notes to Pages 16-23

243

65. Alon Confino, The Nation as Local Metaphor: Wurttenberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1914 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 188. 66. See Sudhir Hazareesingh and Vincent Wright, "Le Second Empire," in Machelon and Monnier, Les communes et Ie pouvoir, p. 310. 67. The list of departments visited can be found in the list of primary sources. 68. See Roger Price, The French Second Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 95-133. 69. David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making ofAmerican Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), p. 1. 70. For further discussion, see David Kertzer, Ritual, Politics, and Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). 71. See most notably his trilogy: Marianne au combat: L'imagerie et la symbolique republicaines de 1789 it 1880 (Paris: Flammarion, 1979); Marianne au pouvoir: L'imagerie et la symbolique republicaines de 1880 it 1914 (Paris: Flammarion, 1989); and Les metamorphoses de Marianne (Paris: Flammarion, 2001). 72. The literature on this subject is enormous. For more on France, the defining work is by Pierre Nora, ed., Les lieux de memoire, 7 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1984-1992). For stimulating recent contributions, see Robert Gildea, The Past in French History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994); and Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789-1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). For more on the Bonapartist legend, see Bernard Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple (Paris: Aubier, 1988); and Jean-Marcel Humbert, Napoleon aux Invalides: 1840, Ie retour des cendres (Paris: Albaron, 1990). 73. Vincent Wright, Le Conseil d'Etat sous Ie Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1972); and Bernard Ie Clere and Vincent Wright, Les prifets du Second Empire (Paris: Armand Colin, 1973). 74. Pierre Rosanvallon, L'Etat en France de 1789 it nosjours (Paris: Seuil, 1990), p.l0. 75. Roger Magraw, France 1800-1914: A Social History (London: Longman, 2002), p. 341. 76. Quoted in Michelle Perrot, Les femmes ou les silences de l'histoire (Paris: Flammarion, 1998), p. 121. 77. Ibid., p. 215. 78. For more on this theme, see Franc;ois Ploux, De bouche it oreille: Naissance et propagation des rumeurs dans la France du XIXe si'ecle (Paris: Aubier, 2003).

1. A Common Sentiment of National Glory 1. Recueil de programmes de la jete du 15 aout (Paris, n.d.), Bib.Nat.Fol.LB56531. 2. Louis Girard, Napoleon III (Paris: Fayard, 1986), pp. 164-165. 3. There were no celebrations in August 1870, France being at war with Prussia; each commune was invited to hold public prayers for the French ruler and the army. 4. Leon Mehedin, Projet de fetes publiques it Paris (Paris: Bailly, 1852), pp. 24-25. 5. Hector Horeau, Charles Place, and Ruggieri, Projet de fetes offertes it toutes les nations du globe (Paris, 1851). This project, deeply imbued with Saint-Simonist

244

Notes to Pages 23-27

notions, was approved by the president and later inspired the Universal Exhibition of 1855. 6. In 1823, for example, the fifteen-year-old prince celebrated the SaintNapoleon at Augsburg with a program that bore an uncanny resemblance to the format of the 15 aout: it included games and a reception, and ended with an exhibition of fireworks. See his enthusiastic letter to his mother, Hortense, August 27, 1823, AN 400 AP 39 (Archives Napoleon). 7. Lucas-Dubreton, Le culte de Napoleon, p. 333. 8. Ernest Valette, Fete du 15 aout dernier dans les communes rurales de France (Bourges, 1853), p. 4. 9. Report of prefect Delessert, February 13, 1839; quoted in Jean-Claude Caron, Generations romantiques: Les etudiants de Paris et Ie Quartier Latin (18141851) (Paris: Armand Colin, 1991), p. 164. 10. For examples of these confrontations, see Thomas Forstenzer, French provincial police and the fall of the Second Republic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), esp. pp. 119-148. 11. Charlemagne Emile de Maupas, Memoires sur Ie Second Empire, vol. 2 (Paris: Dentu, 1885), p. 47. 12. Entry for August 15, 1860, in Mme. Jules Baroche: Second Empire: Notes et souvenirs de seize annees (1855 it 1871) (Paris: Cres, 1921), p. 160. 13. Circular to all prefects, Ministry of Interior, Paris, August 8, 1852, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 14. Truesdell, Spectacular politics, pp. 121-135; see also Baguley, Napoleon III and his regime, pp. 162-163. 15. La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire, p. 47. 16. Report of subprefect, Cambrai, August 16, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 17. I am grateful to Stephane Gerson, who has worked extensively on the Cambrai archives, for kindly drawing this event to my attention. 18. Report of mayor of Parisot, August 16, 1858, AD Tarn IV M2 57. 19. Report of mayor of Montaud, August 15, 1853, AD Isere 54 M 12 (fetes du 15 aout 1852-1857). 20. Report of mayor of Cubzac, August 15, 1864, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 21. P. Loisel, "A Napoleon Premier," Lille, August 12, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 22. See, for example, the report of the mayor of Dammarie, August 18, 1867, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 23. See the report of the prefect of Seine-Inferieure, August 10, 1865, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 352. 24. See the accounts in A l'occasion du centieme anniversaire de la naissance de Napoleon Ier et de la reunion du royaume de Corse it la France, double jete celebree it Ajaccio (Ajaccio, 1869), Bib.Nat.LB56-2422.

25. See Chapter 4. 26. Philippe Busoni, "Courrier de Paris," L'Illustration, August 21, 1852. 27. The expression "festivity of the imperial dynasty" was used in the report of the mayor of Arphi, August 16, 1869, AD Gard 1 M 937. 28. Vers declames par l'auteur au banquet du 15 aout 1858 que les Medailles de Sainte-Helene ont donne dans Agen pour la jete de l'Empereur (Agen, 1858), Bib.Nat.Ye39625. 29. Eugene Bonnefous, Fete du 15 aout 1853 it Toulouse: A sa majeste Napoleon III (Toulouse, 1853), Bib.Nat.Ye5421.

Notes to Pages 27-33

245

30. L. E. Guillon des Tremblages, Le diamant, hommage it sa majeste Napoleon III pour Ie jour de la jete du 15 aout 1867 (Versailles, 1867), Bib.Nat.Ye23888. 31. Truesdell, Spectacular politics. 32. Report of mayor of Chichee, August 16, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 33. Report of mayor of Apremont, August 16, 1866, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 34. Report of police officer, Aubin, August 16, 1859, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 35. Report of mayor of Saint-Florentin, August 16, 1852, AD Yonne, 3 M 3/33. 36. Report of mayor of Marsillargues, August 16,1855, AD Herault 1 M 504 (emphasis added). 37. Pluchonneau de Rochefort, Le 15 aout 1853: La Saint-Napoleon (Paris, 1853), Bib.Nat.Ye49638. 38. Undated religious proclamation, Rouen, AD Seine-Maritime, 1 M 351. 39. What follows is a brief foretaste of some of the themes that will be developed in later chapters. 40. Report of procureur-general, Grenoble, August 18, 1853, AN BB30-407. 41. Police report, Voiron, August 16, 1853, AD Isere 54 M 12. 42. Report of subprefect, Avallon, August 17, 1868, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 43. See, for example, the reports of the procureur-general, Besanc;on, May 10, 1852, AN BB30-373; procureur-general, Aix, May 17,1853, AN BB30-407; and procureur, Lyon, September 16, 1855, AN BB30-413. 44. See, for example, the report of the mayor of Chaussin (Yonne), August 16, 1869, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 45. For an exploration of this theme, see Theodore Zeldin's essay "The Conflict of Moralities," in Theodore Zeldin, ed., Conflicts in French Society (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 13-50. 46. Report of police commissioner, August 15, 1863, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 47. Report of mayor of Malaucene, August 16, 1865, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 48. Report of subprefect of Orange, August 17, 1867, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 49. Report of prefect of Napoleon-Vendee, August 18, 1853, AN FICI 110. 50. Report of prefect of Napoleon-Vendee, August 18, 1854, AN FICI 110. 51. See the entry on Pie in Jean Tulard, ed., Dictionnaire du Second Empire (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 1003-1004. 52. Report of prefect of Vienne, August 18, 1853. AN FICI 110. 53. Report of procureur-general, Poitiers, August 25, 1868. AN BBI8-1776. 54. La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire, p. 51. 55. The details of annual budgets for the Parisian celebrations can be found in AN F70/250 (Ministere d'Etat). 56. See Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 121-148, 177-204. 57. The festivities of 1852 and 1853 were overseen by Louis Visconti; after Visconti's death the architect Galand was appointed by the decree of January 10, 1854. AN F70/250 (Ministere d'Etat). 58. See Franc;oise Hamon and Charles MacCallum, Louis Visconti, 1791-1853 (Paris, 1991). 59. Theophile Gautier, "La Fete du 15 aout," Le Moniteur Universel, August 16-1 7, 1859. 60. Ibid. 61. Poster, "Programme complet et detaille des spectacles, divertissements, et

246

Notes to Pages 33-40

rejouissances qui auront lieu dans Paris Ie 15 aout 1854," in Recueil de programmes de la jete du 1 5 aout. 62. AN F701250 (Ministere d'Etat). 63. "Programme complet et detaille." 64. A friend of the emperor, Magnan was later appointed marshal and served as grand-maitre of the Grand Orient de France between 1862 and 1865. 65. Poster, "Fete du 15 aout: Detail des fetes et ceremonies qui ont eu lieu Ie Dimanche 15 aout 1852 en l'honneur de la Saint-Napoleon," Bib.Nat.foi. LB552535. 66. "Fete nationale du 15 aout" (1862), in Recueil de programmes de la jete du 15 aout. 67. Entry for August 15, 1855, Journal d'Hippolyte Fortoul, vol. 2 (Geneva: Droz, 1989), p. 52. 68. Poster, "Fete nationale du 15 aout 1859. Entree triomphale des troupes de l'Armee d'Italie"; in Recueil de programmes de la jete du 15 aout. 69. Posters for the festivities of these different years, in Recueil de programmes de la jete du 1 5 aout. 70. Truesdell, Spectacular Politics, p. 101. 71. Entry for August 15, 1855, in Eugene Delacroix, Journal, 1822-1863 (Paris: PIon, 1996). 72. Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Journal: Memoires de la vie litteraire, vol. 5 (1861-1863) (Paris: Flammarion, 1956), p. 146. 73. Tout Paris en poche, nouveau guide de l'etranger; in Recueil de programmes de la jete du 1 5 aout. 74. Philippe Busoni, "Courrier de Paris," L'Illustration, August 19, 1854. 75. Entry for August 10, 1855, in Duchesse de Dino, Chronique de 1830 it 1862, vol. 4 (Paris: PIon, 1910), p. 213.

2. Variations on Provincial Themes 1. Report of mayor of Roquebrussane, August 15, 1852, AD Var 6 M 18 (5). 2. Report of prefect of Gironde, Bordeaux, August 16, 1854, AN FICI 110. 3. Report of subprefect, Cambrai, August 16, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 4. Report of subprefect, Yvetot, August 17, 1807, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 346. 5. See Annie Jourdan, Napoleon: Heros, Imperator, Mecene (Paris: Aubier, 1998); and Jacques-Olivier Boudon, "Grand homme ou demi-dieu? La mise en place d'une religion napoleonienne" Romantisme 100 (1998, vol. 2): 131-141. 6. Circulaire de Monseigneur l'Eveque de Saint Brieuc et Treguier au sujet de la fete du 15 Aout (Saint-Brieuc, 1858), Bib.Nat.E-2400. 7. Grande Cantate du 15 Aout 1868, par M.Borssat pere (Paris, 1868), Bib.Nat.Ye5431. 8. Report of subprefect of Vienne, October 18, 1852, AD Isere 54 M 7 (voyage du Prince Louis Napoleon, 1852). 9. Joseph Mery, Tout pour Ie peuple. Chant du 15 Aout (Paris, 1852), Bib.Nat.Ye7051. 10. Speech by Marandet, Banquet pour l'anniversaire de la naissance de l'Empereur et Ie retablissement de la jete nationale du 15 Aout (Paris, n.d.), p. 8. 11. Report of mayor of Deuxnouds, August 16, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6.

Notes to Pages 40-44

247

12. Report of mayor of Prenois, August 17, 1854, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 13. L.S, Le chant des hameaux ou epitre d'un villageois it leurs Majestes l'Empereur et l'Imperatrice des Franfais pour la jete du 15 Aout (Marennes, 1868), Bib.Nat.Ye51988. 14. Mme. Marie Plocq de Bertier, Fete du 15 Aout 1857. A l'Empereur. Souvenirs (Paris, 1857), Bib.Nat.Ye49620. 15. E. Ouvier, "Cantate en l'honneur du 15 Aout," Bordeaux, August 14, 1867, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 16. Boulard, La distribution des aigles. La jete du 15 Aout (Rouen, 1852), Bib.Nat.fol. LB55-2537. 17. Couplets composes et chantes par Edmond Jue au banquet du 15 Aout 1858 (Paris, 1858), Bib.Nat.Ye55471. 18. L'anniversaire national. Cantate it l'occasion de la jete du 15 Aout; paroles d'Hippolyte Maignand (Paris, 1863), Bib.Nat.Ye55471. 19. Invoice from ]allot-Thaboureux, Entreprise Generale des Fetes Publiques et Particulieres, Rouen, August 21, 1861, AD Seine Maritime 1 M 352. 20. Reports of mayors of Chatillon, August 20, 1853, and Chauvency, August 19, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 21. Report of mayor of Aigremont, August 17,1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 22. Report of mayor of Triaucourt, August 16, 1861, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 23. Report of mayor of Labejan,]anuary 15,1852, AD Gers 1 M 337. 24. See Carol Harrison, The Bourgeois Citizen in Nineteenth-Century France, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 25. See the works of Pierre Pierrard, especially his Histoire des cures de campagne (Paris: Bartillat, 1990). 26. For a specific example, which stresses the creative interplay of the local and national realms, see David G. Troyansky, "Memorializing Saint-Quentin: Monuments, Inaugurations, and History in the Third Republic," French History 13-1 (March 1999): 48-76. 27. Un projet de decentralisation (Nancy: Vagner, 1865). 28. Report of subprefect of Epernay, September-October 1865, AD Marne 30 M 19. 29. Report of subprefect of Cambrai, August 16, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 30. Christian Thibon, "L'ordre public villageois: Ie cas du pays de Sault (18481914)," in Maintien de l'ordre et polices en France et en Europe au XIXe steele, ed. Philippe Vigier et al. (Paris: Creaphis, 1987), p. 315. 31. Report of mayor of Virsac, August 21, 1868, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 32. Report of mayor of Sainte-Nandane, August 17, 1865, AD Dordogne 1 M96. 33. Report of mayor of Saint-Mitre, August 18, 1853, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 34. Report of mayor of Monteux, August 19, 1866, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 35. Report of subprefect, Le Havre, August 18, 1868, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 352. 36. Report of prefect of Meuse, Bar-Ie-Due, August 17, 1868, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 37. Report of prefect of Rhone, Lyon, August 16, 1856, AN FICI 111. 38. Report of mayor of Castera-Verduzan, August 16, 1853, AD Gers 1 M 338.

248

Notes to Pages 44-50

39. Report of commissaire cantonal, Pontailler-sur-Saone, August 16, 1853, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 40. Report of mayor of Marseille, August 15, 1856, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 41. Report of subprefect of Dieppe, August 17, 1854, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 351. 42. Report of mayor of Vergigny, August 17, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 43. Report of mayor of Gery, August 16, 1858, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 44. Quoted in Vincent Petit, La clef des champs: Les societes musicales du HautDoubs horloger au XIXe si'ecle (Maiche: Chopard, 1998), p. 59. 45. Report of subprefect of Brignoles, August 17, 1861, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 46. Report of mayor of Roncq, August 17, 1860, AD Nord M 141 (94). 47. Report of mayor of Tourcoing, August 19, 1863, AD Nord M 141 (94). 48. Report of police commissioner, Roubaix, August 16, 1862, AD Nord M 141 (94). 49. Report of mayor of Cubzac, August 15, 1864, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 50. Report of mayor of Perenchies, August 15, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 51. Sudhir Hazareesingh and Vincent Wright, "Le Second Empire," in Louis Fougere, Jean-Pierre Machelon and Franc;ois Monnier (eds.), Les communes et Ie pouvoir (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2002), p. 263. 52. Letter of subprefect of Toulon to prefect of Var, June 2, 1856, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 53. See, for example, the report of the mayor of La Vernarede, August 16, 1869, AD Gard 1 M 937. 54. Report of subprefect of Carpentras, August 17, 1865, AD Vaucluse 1865. 55. Report of police commissioner, Marseille, August 16, 1858, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone 1 M 642. 56. Report of mayor of Armentieres, August 16, 1864, AD Nord M 141 (95). 57. Report of prefect, Dijon, August 17, 1852, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 58. Speech by M. Mimerel, president of the Conseil General of the Nord, quoted in Departement du Nord-Ville de Lille. Fete de I'Empereur, 1 5 Aout 1865. Pose de la premiere pierre de la nouvelle prifecture sur la place Napoleon III (Lille, 1865), Bib.Nat.LK7-12054. 59. Etrangers, in this context, refers to men and women who were foreign to the locality. 60. Report of police commissioner, Mirande, August 18, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 338. 61. 1. Violle, "Fete du 15 Aout a Foix," L'Ariegois, August 21, 1852, Bib.Nat.]o.305. 62. According to the railway police (report August 16, 1858), between nine and ten thousand visitors came to Tours by train on August 15, 1858. Report of prefect, August 16, 1856, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 63. Report of police commissioner, Marseille, August 16, 1858, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone 1 M 642. 64. Report of police commissioner, Avignon, August 16, 1861, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 65. Report of police commissioner, Lyon, August 16, 1865, AD Rhone 1 M 165. 66. Report of mayor of Mussidan, August 16, 1866, AD Dordogne 1 M 96.

Notes to Pages 50-56

249

67. Report of deputy-mayor of Dammarie, August 18, 1867, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 68. Report of sub-prefect, Vitry-Ie-Franc;ois, August 18, 1869, AD Marne, 30 M 31. 69. Report of mayor of L'Isle-Jourdain, August 16, 1857, AD Gers I M 342. 70. Report of mayor ofCourrensan, August 17,1856, AD Gers 1 M 341. 71. Poster, "Programme de la Fete Nationale du 15 Aout, Ville de Chalons," August 13, 1859, AD Marne 32 M 10. 72. Report of mayor of Courgenay, August 16, 1867, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 73. Report of prefect of Cher, Bourges, June 22, 1856, AN FICI 111. 74. Report of mayor of Lalinde, August 16, 1864, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 75. Report of mayor ofPasques, August 17,1857, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 76. Report of mayor of Coulmier-Ie-Sec, August 21, 1865, AD Cote d'Or 1 M467. 77. "Programme de la Fete Nationale du 15 Aout" [1868], AD Rhone 1M 165. 78. Report of mayor of Fleurance, August 16, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 338. 79. Report of subprefect of Dieppe, August 16, 1869, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 352. 80. Report of mayor of Auxerre, August 16, 1852, AD Yonne, 3 M 3/33. 81. See for example the reports of the mayor ofVermenton, August 18, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33; and the report of the mayor of Vecquemont, August 20, 1861, AD Somme 99 M 672. 82. "Empire Franc;ais. Mairie de Dijon. Fete Nationale du 15 Aout 1855," AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 83. La Gorce, Histoire du Second Empire, pp. 47, 51. 84. Le Conciliateur du Vaucluse (Carpentras), July 10, 1852, Bib.Nat.]o.969. 85. Report of mayor of Rabastens, August 16, 1853, AD Tarn IV M2 53. 86. Report of subprefect of Villefranche, August 16, 1859, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassfied). 87. Municipal poster, "Fete de l'Empereur a Nimes," August 12, 1866, AD Gard 1 M 938. 88. Report of procureur-general, Montpellier, August 16, 1861, AN BBI81636. 89. Report of mayor of Crugny, August 16, 1859, AD Marne 32 M 10. 90. Report of mayor of Ollioules, August 16, 1861, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 91. Report of mayor of Lunel, August 21, 1853, AD Herault 1 M 503. 92. Report of procureur-general of Montpellier, August 16, 1853, AN BB30407. 93. Report of mayor of Saint-Paul, n.d., AD Var 6 M 18/5. 94. Report of mayor of Frontignan, August 17, 1857, AD Herault, 1 M 505. 95. Report of police commissioner, Lunel, August 18, 1869, AD Herault 1 M 509. 96. Eric Baratay, "Representations et metamorphoses de la violence: la corrida en France (1853 a nos jours)," Revue Historique 602 (April-June 1997), pp.495497. 97. Report of mayor of Nogaro, August 18, 1854, AD Gers 1 M 338. 98. Letter of retired civil servant to prefect of Herault, Marsillargues, August 16, 1855, AD Herault 1 M 504. 99. AD Gard 1 M 939 (courses de taureaux). 100. Incident cited in Huard, Le mouvement republicain, p. 188.

250

Notes to Pages 57-62

3. Proud to Be French 1. Report of mayor of Behonne, August 17, 1858, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 2. Sanson, "Le 15 aout." 3. Report of mayor, August 16, 1857, AD Herault, 1 M 505. 4. Report of subprefect, August 16, 1864, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 5. Report of prefect of Isere (Grenoble), August 22, 1854, AN FICI 110. 6. Report of mayor, August 16, 1869, AD Gard, 1 M 937. 7. AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 8. E. Cherot, La bourgeoisie et l'Empire (Paris: Dentu, 1860), p. 30. 9. Report of mayor of Condom, January 12, 1852. See also report of subprefect of Lectoure and mayor of Saint-Jean Poutage, January 13, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 337. 10. Report of police commissioner, Peyrolles, August 17, 1853, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone 1 M 642. 11. Report of mayor ofVillers-Grelot, August 17, 1852, AD Doubs 1 M 846. 12. Speech by M. Couture at Bonapartist gathering in Paris, 1852, Banquet pour l'anniversaire de la naissance de l'Empereur et Ie retablissement de la jete nationale du 15 aout (Paris, n.d.), p. 5, Bib.Nat.LB55-2538.

13. Report of mayor of Brugnens, January 11,1852, AD Gers 1 M 337. 14. Ernest Valette, Fete du 1 5 aout dernier dans les communes rurales de France (Bourges, 1853), pp. 3-4, Bib.Nat.LB56-99. 15. Report of prefect of Indre-et-Loir, August 18, 1857, AN FICI 111. 16. Report of prefect of Loire, August 22, 1857, AN FICI 111. 17. Expose sur la situation de l'Empire (Paris, 1863). 18. See Raoul Girardet, "Les trois couleurs," in Les lieux de memoire, vol. 1, ed. Pierre Nora (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), p. 61. 19. Report of procureur-general, Montpellier, August 16, 1858, AN BB30421. 20. Report of mayor of Lalinde, August 16, 1866, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 21. Report of mayor ofPerols, August 17,1864, AD Herault, 1 M 508. 22. "Programme de la Fete Nationale du 15 aout 1853," Auch, AD Gers 1 M 338. 23. Report of prefect of Gironde, Bordeaux, August 16, 1854, AN FICI 110. 24. Report of mayor of Vermenton, August 18, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 25. Report of mayor of Pignan, August 17,1859, AD Herault 1 M 506. 26. Report of mayor of Cambrai, August 16, 1860, AD Nord M 141 (94). 27. Report of prefect of Lot, August 17, 1854, AN FICI 110. 28. Report of prefect of Isere, Grenoble, August 16, 1856, AN FICI 111. 29. Report of mayor of Dammarie, n.d., AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 30. Report of mayor of Bernin, August 15, 1854, AD Isere 54 M 12. 31. Report of mayor of Sauveterre, August 21, 1856, AD Gers 1 M 341. 32. Report of mayor of Luzille, August 19, 1853, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 33. Report of mayor ofVillers-Grelot, August 17,1852, AD Doubs 1 M 846. 34. Report of mayor of Murviel, December 7, 1852, AD Herault 1 M 503. 35. Report of justice of the peace, Montpellier, December 17, 1852, AD Herault, 1 M 503. 36. Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1860, AD Loire-Atlantique, 1 M 676.

Notes to Pages 62-66

251

37. Report of mayor ofVedenes, August 16,1852, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 38. Report of subprefect of Apt, August 20, 1858, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 39. Report of mayor of Saint-Remy, August 16, 1854, AD Bouches-du-Rhone, 1 M 642. 40. Report of mayor of Chateaudouble, August 18, 1861, AD Var, 6 M 18/5. 41. Baguley, Napoleon III and his Regime, p. 163. 42. Report of mayor of Elbeuf, August 18, 1852, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 351. 43. Fete imperiale du 15 aout 1858, Ambert, Puy-de-Dome (1858), Bib.Nat.LL24-12. 44. On this theme see William Serman, "Le corps des officiers franc;ais sous la Deuxieme Republique et Ie Second Empire," vol. 2 (Ph.D. diss., University of Lille-III, 1978), pp. 1297-1333. 45. Report of subprefect, Brignoles, January 12, 1852, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 46. "A l'Armee Franc;aise," in Chanson it double circonstance, improvisee dans une reunion d'amis sur les evenements du 2, 3, et 4 Decembre 1851 (Oise, n.d.). Bib.Nat. Ye55471 (351bis). 47. AD Marne 32 M 11. 48. Report of police commissioner, Tours, August 16, 1858, AD Indre-etLoire 1 M 255. 49. Letter of minister of war, January 16, 1858, AN F70 251. 50. Report of mayor of Cambrai, August 16, 1860, AD Nord M 141 (94). 51. Report of subprefect, Verdun, August 14, 1865, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 52. For more on the military campaigns of the French army in the 1850s and 1860s, see William Serman and Jean-Paul Bertaud, Nouvelle histoire militaire de la France 1789-1919 (Paris: Fayard, 1998), pp. 333-410. 53. See the prefectoral reports on the festivities of 1855, AN FICI 110. 54. Report of prefect of Ariege, Foix, August 16,1855, AN FICI 111. 55. Report of procureur-general, Aix, August 15, 1855, AN BB3 0-413. 56. Report of procureur-general, Rennes, September 11, 1855, AN BB30413. 57. "Fetes celebrees en rejouissance de la prise de Sebastopol," AN BB30413. 58. Report of mayor of Cordes, September 11, 1855, AD Tarn IV M2 55. 59. Report of procureur-general, Besanc;on, September 17, 1855, AN BB30413. 60. Report of procureur-general, Rouen, September 19,1855, AN BB30-413. 61. Proclamation of mayor of Albi, August 18, 1855, AD Tarn IV M2 55. 62. Report of procureur-general, Montpellier, September 18, 1855, AN BB30-413. 63. Report of police commissioner, Aix, 1855, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. The general wave of support for French military success is also echoed in Horace de Viel-Castel, Memoires sur Ie regne de Napoleon III, vol. 1 (Paris: Le Prat, 1979), p. 254. 64. Report of procureur-general, Besanc;on, August 15, 1856, AN BB30-418. 65. Proclamation of Napoleon III to Italian army, May 12, 1859, in Louis Napoleon, Discours, messages et proclamations de I'Empereur (Paris: PIon, 1860), p.396. 66. Serman, Le corps des officiers franfais, p. 1312. "Our revolutionary emperor"

252

Notes to Pages 67-71

was how republican officer Pierre Marie Denfert-Rochereau referred to Napoleon III in a letter. 67. Report of mayor of Sommieres, July 4, 1859, AD Gard, 1 M 938. 68. Report of subprefect, Savenay, June 26, 1859, AD Loire-Atlantique M 675. 69. Report of mayor of Arc-sur-Tille, August 18, 1859, AD Cote d'Or M467. 70. Report of mayor of Recey-sur-Ource, August 16, 1859, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. See also the reports of mayor of Grancey-Ie-Chateau, August 18, 1859 and police commissioner, Dijon, September 30, 1859, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 221. 71. Report of police commissioner, l'Ile-Bouchard, August 17, 1859, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 72. "Recueil des programmes de la fete du 15 aout." 73. For the case of Aix, see the report of the subprefect, August 16, 1859, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 74. Report of procureur-general, Besanc;on, October 9, 1859, AN BB30-373. 75. For examples from the Gard, see the report of a police commissioner, August 16, 1859, AD Gard, 1 M 938. 76. See for example Almanach des victoires de Napoleon III: campagne d'Italie (Paris, 1860), Bib.Nat. LC 22-304. 77. See Chapter 1. 78. Report of mayor of Heutregiville, August 1859, AD Marne 32 M 10. 79. Proclamation of the mayor of L'Albenc, August 13, 1854, AD Isere 54 M 12. 80. The "expansion" was a reference to the annexation of Nice and the Savoie in 1860. Report of principal of Toulon College on holiday in Alignan-du-Vent, August 16, 1860, AD Herault 1 M 506. 81. Circular letter from minister of justice, Paris, August 1, 1863, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 82. Report of mayor, August 16, 1863, AD Loire-Atlantique, 1 M 676. 83. Departement du Nord-Ville de Lille. Fete de I'Empereur. Pose de la premiere pierre de la nouvelle prifecture sur la Place Napoleon III (Lille, 1865), p. 13.

84. Report of mayor ofVillers-les-Mangiennes, August 16, 1869, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 85. "Recueil des programmes de la fete du 15 aout." 86. Report of prefect of the Lot, August 17, 1854, AN FICI 110. 87. Alain Corbin, Le village des cannibales (Paris: Aubier, 1990). 88. See the entry on d'Estourmel in Eric Anceau, Dictionnaire des deputes du Second Empire (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1999), p. 143. 89. Police report, Albert, August 15, 1870, AD Somme 99 M 80978/9 (troubles a l'ordre). This document contains a folder on the whole affair, including a letter from d'Estourmel protesting his innocence. 90. 1. Violle, "La fete du 15 aout a Foix," L'Ariegois (Foix), August 21, 1852, Bib.Nat.]o305. 91. "Recueil des programmes de la fete du 15 aout." 92. "Des Idees Napoleoniennes," in Oeuvres de Napoleon III, vol. 1 (Paris: PIon, 1857), p. 172. 93. "Discours prononce par Ie Prince Louis Napoleon a Bordeaux, Ie 9 Octobre 1852," in Louis Napoleon, Discours, messages et proclamations de I'Empereur, pp.241-242.

Notes to Pages 71-75

253

94. Circular letter of minister of public instruction, Paris, June 11, 1860, AD Yonne 3 M 3/34. 95. Circular letter of minister of justice, Paris, August 1, 1867, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 96. Report of procureur-general, Haute Saone, January 18, 1856, AN BB30373. 97. Proclamation, Marseille, August 11, 1856, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 98. Report of subprefect of Saint-Affrique, July 13, 1859, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 99. Report of subprefect of Montbeliard, September 30, 1859, AD Doubs 1 M 746. 100. Report of mayor of Tourtour, August 18, 1859, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 101. Report of mayor of Heutregiville, August 15, 1859, AD Marne 32 M 10. 102. Report of mayor of Sacy, August 23, 1859, AD Marne 32 M 10. 103. Report of police commissioner, Nantes, August 16, 1859, AD LoireAtlantique 1 M 675. 104. Report of subprefect, Le Havre, July 5, 1859; quoted in Pierre Ardaillou, Les republicains du Havre au XIXe si'ecle (1815-1889) (Rouen: Publications de l'Universite de Rouen, 1999), p. 129. 105. See the pioneering work by Lynn M. Case, French Opinion on War and Diplomacy during the Second Empire (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1954), pp. 271-272. 106. Report of mayor of Vaucouleurs, August 16, 1866, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 107. Report of police commissioner, L'Isle, August 16, 1866. AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 108. A copy of the design is in AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 109. "Recueil des programmes de la fete du 15 aout." 110. Ibid.; author's translation. 111. Gabriel Vanel, Le Second Empire: Souvenirs d'un contemporain (Paris: Marigny, 1935), p. 243. 112. Victor Hugo, Napoleon-Ie-Petit: Histoire d'un crime (Paris: Ollendorf, 1907). 113. David Cannadine, "Divine Rights of Kings," in Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. David Cannadine and Simon Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 15. 114. Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple, p. 153. 115. These points are also underscored by Franc;ois Gresle, "L'adieu aux armes: Reflexions sur la genese de la 'nation armee' comme forme citoyenne constitutive de l'identite franc;aise," in Sociologie des nationalismes, ed. Pierre Birnbaum (Paris: Presses U niversitaires de France, 1997), pp. 351-352. 116. Karma Nabulsi, Traditions of War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). On the importance of warfare in the making of national identity, see also Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 117. This theme was especially prominent during Napoleon Ill's visits to Catholic territories. See, for example, the official account of his trip to Normandy and Brittany in August 1858 by Jean-Marie Poulain-Corbion, Recit du voyage de Leurs Majestes I'Empereur et I'Imperatrice en Normandie et en Bretagne (Paris: Amyot, 1858), p. 257. 118. Report of prefect of the Allier, August 19, 1853, AN FICI 110.

254

Notes to Pages 76-81

119. Jean-Claude Caron, La nation, l'etat, et la democratie en France de 1789 it 1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1995), p. 61. 120. See Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, pp. 245-246. 121. On legitimist political thought, see Stephane Rials, Revolution et contrerevolution au XIXe si'ecle (Paris: Albatros, 1987); Steven Kale, Legitimism and the Reconstruction of French Society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1992); and Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen. 122. See most notably Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France. 123. Report of procureur-general, Toulouse, August 18, 1853, AN BB30407. 124. Jean-Claude Caron, De l'Empire it la Republique (Paris: Fayard, 1985), pp. 18-23. 125. Franc;oise Melonio, Naissance et affirmation d'une culture nationale: la France de 1815 it 1880 (Paris: Seuil, 2001), p. 234.

4. Honorable and Honored Citizens 1. Report of mayor of Foix to prefect of Nord, August 17, 1866, AD Nord (Lille), M 141 (95), Fete du 15 aout 1864-1870. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. See Franc;oise Job, "Les anciens militaires de la Republique et de l'Empire dans Ie departement de la Meurthe en 1857," Annales Historiques de la Revolution Franfaise 245 Ouly-September 1981), pp. 419-436; Louis-Henri Fleurence, "Les survivants des campagnes de la Republique et de l'Empire et l'attribution de la medaille de Sainte-Helene dans Ie departement des Vosges en 1857," Revue de l'Institut Napoleon 151, 2 (1988); and Natalie Petiteau, "Les veterans du Premier Empire: Un groupe socio-professionnel oublie," Cahiers d'Histoire 43, 1 (1988), pp. 25-45; see also Petiteau's latest work, Lendemains d'Empire. Les soldats de Napoleon dans la France du XIXe si'ecle (Paris: La Boutique de l'Histoire, 2003). 5. For more on the primordial importance of imperial veterans in the dissemination of the Napoleonic myth under the Restoration and July Monarchy, see Jean Tulard, Le mythe Napoleon (Paris: Armand Colin, 1971), p. 41. 6. For more examples of this imagery see Day-Hickman, Napoleonic Art. 7. Honore de Balzac, Le medecin de campagne (Paris: Gallimard, 1974 ed.), pp.239-240. 8. Jules Garsou, Les createurs de la legende Napoleonienne (Brussels, 1899). This book deals mostly with Auguste Barthelemy and Joseph Mery, two artists whose works did much to promote the Napoleonic cult under the Restoration and July Monarchy. 9. For this distinction, see Frederic Bluche, Le Bonapartisme: aux origines de la droite autoritaire (1800-1850) (Paris: Nouvelles Editions Latines, 1980), p. 172. 10. Grognard (literally "grumbler") was a term affectionately used to designate the soldiers of Napoleon. See Jean-Pierre Bois, Les anciens soldats dans la societe franfaise au xviiie si'eele (Paris: Economica, 1990); Isser Woloch, The French Veteran from the Revolution to the Restoration (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979); and Raoul Girardet, La societe militaire de 181 5 it nos jours (Paris: Perrin, 1998). 11. David M. Hopkin, "La Ramee, the Archetypal Soldier, as an Indicator of

Notes to Pages 81-87

255

Popular Attitudes to the Army in Nineteenth Century France." French History 14, 2 Gune 2000), pp. 115-149. 12. For this distinction between horizontal and vertical honor, see Frank Henderson Stewart, Honor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 32-33. See also Geoffrey Best, Honour among Men and Nations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982); and the chapter by Norman Hampson in War and Society, ed. M.R.D. Foot (London: Elek, 1973). 13. On the French honors system since the Revolution, see Olivier Ihl, "Emulation through decoration: a science of government?", in The Jacobin Legacy in Modern France, ed. Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 14. The idea was propagated in Bonapartist circles as from the early 1850s. See, for example, Jean-Baptiste Schweitzer, Relation historique de l'institution de la Medaille de Sainte-Helene par un vieux soldat du Premier Empire (Marseille, 1861); Schweitzer claimed that in 1852 he had sent the minister of war a drawing of what would later become the Medaille de Sainte-Helene. 15. L. Tripier, Code des membres de la Legion d'Honneur (Paris: Mayer-Odin, 1859), pp. 52-53. 16. Petiteau, "Les veterans du Premier Empire," pp. 27-28. 17. Fleurence, "Les survivants des campagnes," p. 62; this figure comes from the Hotel des Monnaies et Medailles in Paris, which was responsible for striking the commemorative medals. 18. Lucas-Dubreton, "The Army of 1813 was in its immense majority an Army of 'Minors,' " Le culte de Napoleon, p. 25. 19. Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple. 20. See Hazareesingh and Wright, "Le Second Empire," in Fougere, Machelon and Monnier (eds.), Les communes et Ie pouvoir. 21. AD Marne, 16 M 1 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene). 22. Frans;oise Job, "Les anciens militaires," p. 424. 23. Ibid., p. 427. 24. Certificate issued by municipality of Saudrupt, April 17, 1856, AD Marne, 16 M 1 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene). 25. AD Marne, 16 M 1 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene). 26. For further examples, and a general discussion of the difficulties faced by imperial veterans in returning to civilian life after 1815 see Petiteau, Lendemains d'Empire, pp. 35-137. 27. For example, the prefect of Corsica wrote to the minister of the interior on March 22, 1827, about ninety-six retired officers who were all "without resources and in the greatest need" and urged Paris to intervene. The reply was scribbled on the letter: "nothing to do" (rien a faire), AN F7 6702 (Militaires). 28. His letter to the Emperor made its way to Lyon, where the prefect assigned him a medal. AD Rhone, 1 M 263 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene). 29. A copy of Aubert's letter to the prefect of the Rhone, dated August 19, 1858, is in AD Rhone, 1 M 263 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene). 30. Ibid., letter dated March 30, 1858. 31. Letter of mayor of St. Lager, April 10, 1858, AD Rhone, 1 M 263 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene). 32. Letter ofJean Fleury Cognat, Givors, July 21,1858, AD Rhone, 1 M 263 (Medaille de Sainte-Helene).

256

Notes to Pages 87-91

33. Compte-rendu de la Societe d'Assistance des Medailles de Sainte-Helene de Nice

(Nice, 1864), Bib.Nat.LL24-20. For 1863, the society spent Fr 1138.50, of which Fr 565.60 was paid to local bakeries. 34. Petiteau, "Les veterans du Premier Empire," pp. 33-38. 35. Report of mayor of Belsey, August 28, 1852, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 36. Circular letter of prefect of Dordogne, Perigueux, December 12, 1857, AD Dordogne 1 M 125. 37. Mayor of Perigueux to prefect, December 17, 1857, AD Dordogne 1 M 125. 38. Letter of subprefect of Bergerac, January 12, 1858, AD Dordogne 1 M 125. 39. Letters from Riberac dated December 22, and Sarlat, December 29, 1857, AD Dordogne 1 M 125. 40. AD Somme, 99 M 27 (Medailles de Sainte Helene). 41. Statuts de l'Association des Medailles de Ste. Helene de la Somme, December 15, 1859, AD Somme, 99 M 27. 42. Association des Medailles de Ste. Helene de la Somme, report for 18611862 activities, Amiens June 25, 1862, AD Somme, 99 M 27. 43. "Liste des souscriptions (1860), arrondissement d'AbbevilIe, Association des Medailles de Ste. Helene de la Somme," AD Somme, 99 M 27 (MedailIes de Sainte Helene). 44. Somme association, report for 1861-1862 activities. 45. General Assembly of Association, 1865, report by prefect of the Somme, AD Somme, 99 M 27 (MedailIes de Sainte Helene). 46. Ibid. 47. Letter from Auclair to prefect of Rhone, Hospice de la Charite, Lyon, August 6, 1867, AD Rhone 1 M 165. 48. Philippe Busoni, "Courrier de Paris," L'Illustration (August 21, 1852). 49. Report of procureur-general, Besanc;on, September 14, 1852, AN BB30373. 50. Report of prefect, August 20, 1853, AN FICIII/Indre (6). 51. Report of prefect of Aude, August 20, 1854, AN FICI 110. 52. Report of subprefect of Vienne, October 18, 1852, AD Isere 54 M 7. 53. Report of mayor, Mormoiron, August 17, 1861, AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 54. See Robert S. Alexander, Bonapartism and the Revolutionary Tradition in France: The Federes of 181 5 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 55. This case is cited in Michel Pigenet, Les ouvriers du Cher (fin XVIlle siecle1914): Travail, espace, et conscience sociale (Paris: Institut CGT d'Histoire Sociale, 1990), p. 176. 56. A somewhat different conclusion is reached in Petiteau, Lendemains d'Empire, pp. 291-297; although the author concedes that direct evidence of veteran political opposition to the Second Empire is hard to come by. 57. Report of mayor of Gourdon, August 16, 1858, AD Var 6 M 18 (5). 58. Report of subprefect of Apt, August 20, 1858, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 59. Report of mayor of Bouziques, August 20, 1859, AD Herault 1 M 506. 60. Report of mayor of Brens, August 16, 1858, AD Tarn IV M2 57. 61. Report of mayor of Bouziques, August 20, 1859, AD Herault 1 M 506. 62. La Ciotat Police Station, report of August 18, 1862, AD Bouches-duRhone 1 M 643.

Notes to Pages 91-99

257

63. Report of mayor of Serignan, August 16, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 64. Report of subprefect of Dieppe, August 21, 1865, AD Seine Maritime, 1 M 352. 65. Report of mayor of Solies-Ville, August 16, 1866, AD Var, 6 M 18 (5). 66. Report of mayor of Fains, August 16, 1862, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 67. Report of police commissioner of L'Isle, August 16, 1866, AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 68. Report of mayor of Willems, August 18,1859, AD Nord, M 141 (93). 69. Report of August 16, 1860, AD Herault 1 M 506. 70. Report of August 16, 1861, AD Herault 1 M 507. 71. L'Isle, report of August 16, 1867; Thor, report of August 19, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 72. Corporation des Membres Decores de la Medaille de Sainte-Helene en residence

it la Chapelle Saint-Denis. Reglement (Paris, 1858), Bib.Nat.LL24-11. 73. Preambule et Statuts des Membres Decores de la Medaille de Sainte-Helene,

Maine et Loire (1859), Bib.Nat.LL24-10. 74. Report of mayor of Tours, August 15,1859, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 75. Letter of Antoine Cournet, August 17,1867, AD Herault 1 M 509. 76. Report of subprefect, August 20, 1862, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 643. 77. Report of subprefect, August 16, 1859, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 78. AN FIe IV 8 Ministere de l'Interieur, elections aux conseils generaux (1852). 79. Letter dated August 27 1859, AD Loire Atlantique, 1 M 675. 80. "Vieilles peaux"; quoted in Pierre Pierrard, Histoire des cures de campagne (Paris: Bartillat, 1990), p. 206. 81. Report of mayor of Sacy, August 23, 1859, AD Marne 32 M 10. 82. Report mayor of Cousancelles, August 16, 1858, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 83. Report of mayor of Armentieres, August 16, 1864, AD Nord, M 141 (95). 84. Police report 1869, Nantes, AD Loire Atlantique, 1 M 675. 85. Report of mayor of Bergues, August 17, 1864, AD Nord M 141 (95). 86. Report of mayor of Pignan, August 17, 1859, AD Herault, 1 M 506. 87. Report of mayor of Perols, August 17, 1864, AD Herault, 1 M 508. 88. Report of police commissioner, Avignon, August 16, 1861, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 89. Report of subprefect of Mirande, August 18, 1858, AD Gers 1 M 342. 90. Report of procureur-general, Colmar, October 4, 1858, AN BB30-376. 91. Report to the prefect, Beziers, August 17, 1858, AD Herault, 1 M 505. 92. Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1868, AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 93. Report of the mayor of Seillans, August 20, 1861, AD Var, 6 M 18 (5). 94. Mayor's report, n.d., AD Marne, 32 M 10. 95. Report of mayor of Cousancelles, August 16, 1858, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 96. Report of mayor, August 16, 1861, AD Yonne, 3 M3 33. 97. Report of police commissioner, August 17, 1863, AD Yonne, 3 M3 33. 98. Report of mayor, August 18, 1864, AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. 99. Report of procureur-general, Toulouse, August 16, 1858, AN BB30-421. 100. Draft report of prefect to minister of interior, 1859, AD Seine-Maritime, 1 M 351. 101. Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1858, AD Herault, 1 M 505. 102. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 99-103

258 103. 104. 105. 106. (5). 107.

Report of mayor of Sarcey, August 23, 1866, AD Rhone 1 M 165. Report of mayor of Monteux, August 19, 1866, AD Vaucluse, 1 M 880. See Jean Touchard, La gloire de Beranger (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968). Report of mayor of Chateaudouble, August 18, 1861, AD Var, 6 M 18 For further evidence of the physical resilience of the veterans, see Petiteau,

Lendemains d'Empire, pp. 339-343.

108. See, for example, the report of the mayor ofVilleneuve-les-Beziers on the celebration of August 15, 1857; the official procession contained "one former soldier of the Empire." AD Herault, 1 M 505. 109. Fleurence, "Les survivants des campagnes," p. 64. 11 O. For example, see Almanach Historique, Anecdotique, et Populaire de l'Empire Franfais pour 1867 (Paris, 1866), p. 127. 111. See Discours prononce par M. Pellecat sur la tombe de M. Jacques-Louis Philippe, Medaille de Sainte-Helene (Rouen, 1874), Bib.Nat.LN27-27729. 112. Le Petit Caporal, August 17-18, 1887, cited in Jean El Gammal, Politique et poids du passe dans la France ''fin de siecle" (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 1999), p. 142. 113. Letter of Bureau of Association des Medailles de Sainte-Helene (Gironde) to prefect, Bordeaux, August 8, 1859, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 114. Aux decores de la Medaille de Sainte-Helene. A propos de l'inauguration de la statue de Napoleon Ier it Rouen, Ie 15 aout 1865, Bib.Nat. Ye-37738. "Despite so

much suffering/Despite so many setbacks/Laurels of our FrancelYou remain forever green!" 115. An example: the report of the mayor of Behonne (Meuse), August 17, 1858, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 116. There is a modest collection of this genre in the Bibliotheque Nationale. See, for example, Henry Courant, Sur la Medaille de Sainte-Helene (Paris, 1858), LL24-2. 117. Report of the subprefect ofVitry-le-Franc;ois, August 18, 1869, AD Marne 30M 31 (reports to the prefect 1869-1870). 118. See for example the report of subprefect of Villefranche, February 27, 1857; and prefect letter to minister of interior, August 17, 1858, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 119. Frederic Chalaron, "Le Bonapartisme dans la vie politique du Puy-deDome (1848-1879)," Revue d'Auvergne, 94-3 (1980): 329. 120. These qualities are all stressed by the mayor of Mailly (Cote d'Or) in his report of August 16, 1859, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 121. See, for example, "Quelques mots adresses aux medailIes de Sainte-Helene par leur President, Ie 15 Aout 1861," AD Gironde 1 M 707. 122. Best, Honour among Men and Nations, p. 30. 123. Menager also highlights the importance of the Medailles as functional intermediaries; see Les Napoleon du peuple, p. 155. 124. For a study of the resonance of this theme in French nineteenth-century writings, see Gerard de Puymege, Chauvin, Ie soldat-laboureur: contribution it l'etude des nationalismes (Paris: Gallimard, 1993). 125. Report of mayor of Tourtour, August 18, 1859, AD Var 6 M 18 (5). 126. For an excellent sample of this genre, see Napoleon ou la gloire franfaise (n.d.), Bib.Nat. Ye 28422.

Notes to Pages 103-107

259

127. Hilaire Le Gai, Almanach des souvenirs de l'Empire. Bonapartiana (Paris: Passard, 1853), p. 5. 128. Discours prononce it la distribution de la Medaille de Sainte-Helene aux anciens soldats de la Republique et de l'Empire de la commune d'Albi, Ie 24 Janvier 1858, par M. Ie General Baron Gorsse (Albi, 1858), p. 4, Bib.Nat.LL24-4 (emphasis added). 129. Chanson Napoleonienne par Girod-Genet, Hussard de l'Armee de la Loire

(Paris, n.d.) [1866], Bib.Nat.Ye 55471 (1016). 130. Chanson it double circonstance, improvisee dans une reunion d'amis sur les evenements du 2,3, et 4 Decembre 1851 (Oise, n.d.), Bib.Nat. Ye 55471 (351bis).

131. "L'Echo Frans;ais," poem submitted to the prefect of Gironde by the Association of Medailles de Sainte-Helene (Gironde), August 13, 1859, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 132. Chanson it double circonstance.

133. "La Marseillaise N apoleonienne," in Recueil de chansons napoleoniennes, chantees et vendues par Prosper (Ardennes, n.d.) [1851], Bib.Nat Ye 55471 (1647).

5. Incidents, Accidents, Excesses 1. Report of subprefect of Castres, August 16, 1855, AD Tarn IV M2 55. 2. Report of mayor of La Neuville, August 16, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 3. Report of mayor of La Ciotat, August 17, 1853, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 4. Report of mayor of Saint-Paul, n.d., AD Var 6 M 18/5. 5. See Agulhon, La Republique au village, pp. 109-125; and Jean-Claude Caron, L'ete rouge: Chronique de la revolte populaire en France (1841) (Paris: Aubier, 2002). 6. For some examples, see Charles Tilly, "How protest modernized in France, 1845-1855," in The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History, ed. William. o. Aydelotte et aI., (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), pp. 248-249. 7. Caron, Generations romantiques, pp. 160-61. 8. Frans;ois Ploux, Guerres paysannes en Quercy: Violences, conciliations, et repression penale dans les campagnes du Lot (Paris: La Boutique de l'Histoire, 2002), p.123. 9. Price, The French Second Empire, p. 333. 10. Letter from prefect of Gironde to mayor of Bordeaux, April 25, 1851, AD Gironde 1 M 706. 11. Prefect of Gironde to mayor of Libourne, May 6, 1851, AD Gironde 1 M 706. 12. The classic work from this perspective is Howard C. Payne, The Police State of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, 1851-1860 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966). 13. Maryvonne Bernard, "La reorganisation de la police sous Ie Second Empire (1851-58)," in Philippe Vigier et aI., Maintien de l'ordre, p. 133. 14. Letter of August 8, 1853, AN BB30-407. 15. Report of police commissioner, Aix, August 15, 1853, AD Bouches-duRhone 1 M 642. 16. Report of subprefect, Le Havre, August 17, 1854, AD Seine Maritime 1 M 351.

260

Notes to Pages 107-112

17. Report of police commissioner, Mielan, August 16, 1857, AD Gers 1 M 342. 18. Report of subprefect, August 16, 1858, AD Seine-Maritime, 1 M 352. 19. Report of subprefect of Gaillac, August 16, 1852, AD Tarn IV M2 49. 20. Report of subprefect, Pontarlier, August 22, 1859, AD Doubs 1 M 746. 21. Police report, Dijon, August 17,1852, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 22. Gendarmerie Imperiale, report dated August 21, 1857, Tableau sommaire des arrestations operees, 15-20 Aout, arrondissement de Bordeaux, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 23. Report of deputy mayor of Vaucouleurs, August 17, 1856, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 24. Report of police commissioner, Rodez, August 18, 1864, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 25. Report of police commissioner, Vaucouleurs, August 16, 1865, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 26. Report of mayor of Elbeuf, August 16, 1852, AD Seine-Maritime 1 M 351. 27. Report of mayor, August 16, 1859, AD Herault, 1 M 504. 28. Report of mayor of Frelinghien, August 16, 1852, AD Nord M 141 (91). 29. Report of prefect of Seine-et-Oise, Versailles, August 19, 1856, AN FICI 111. 30. Report of mayor of Pasques, August 16, 1854, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 31. Report of mayor of Autreche, August 10, 1854, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 32. Reports of police commissioner, St. Mihiel, August 15 and 17, 1856, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 33. Report of prefect of Saone et Loire, Macon, June 21, 1856, AN FICI 111. 34. Reports of procureur-general, Dijon, August 15, 1857; and Besanc;on, August 16, 1857, AN BB30-418. 35. Report of prefect of Meuse, Bar-Ie-Due, August 18, 1857, AN FICI 111. 36. Report of subprefect of Villefranche, August 16, 1860, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 37. Report of police commissioner, Le Havre, August 16, 1865, AD SeineMaritime 1 M 352. 38. Philippe Busoni, "Courrier de Paris," L'Illustration (August 21, 1852). 39. Report of police commissioner, Monteux, August 17, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 40. Le Courrier du Lot (Cahors), August 16, 1862, Bib.Nat.]o.635. 41. Report of mayor of Salives, August 16, 1856, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 42. Report of mayor of Saint-Seine-en-bache, August 19,1859, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 43. Report of mayor of Thierville, August 16, 1854, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 44. Report of subprefect of ArIes, August 15, 1854, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 45. Report of police commissioner, Mirebeau, August 16, 1854, AD Cote d'Or. 46. Report of police commissioner, Ancerville, August 18, 1854, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 47. Report of mayor of Gaillac, August 16, 1858, AD Tarn IV M2 57.

Notes to Pages 112-118

261

48. Report of police commissioner, Le Havre, August 16, 1865, AD SeineMaritime 1 M 352. 49. Report of prefect of Cote d'Or (Dijon), June 18, 1856, AN FICI 111. 50. Report of mayor of Ligny, August 17, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 51. Report of procureur-general, Riom, August 20, 1860, AN BB30-423. 52. Report of police commissioner, Marseille, August 16, 1858, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone 1 M 642. 53. Incident described in John Merriman, Limoges, la ville rouge (Paris: Belin, 1990), pp. 163-164. 54. Letter to prefect, August 26, 1861, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 55. Report of police commissioner, Villeneuve-Ies-Beziers, August 16, 1857, AD Herault 1 M 505. 56. Report of police commissioner, Saint-Gilles, August 15, 1859, AD Gard 1 M 938. 57. Report of mayor of Meynes, August 17, 1869, AD Gard 1 M 937. 58. Report of subprefect, Carpentras, August 17, 1865, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 59. Report of subprefect of Montbeliard, September 30, 1859, AD Doubs 1 M 746. 60. Report of mayor of Sorbey, August 16, 1869, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 61. Report of subprefect, Montmedy, August 20, 1869, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 62. Ibid. 63. Report of police commissioner, Dijon, August 25, 1857, AD Cote d'Or 1 M467. 64. Letter of police commissioner of Saint-Sauveur to prefect of Yonne, August 16, 1863, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 65. Report of subprefect of Montbeliard, September 30, 1859, AD Doubs 1 M 746. 66. Report of mayor of Benais, August 16, 1862, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 67. Report of mayor of Fabriques on the national festivity, n.d., AD Herault 1 M 509. 68. Report of police commissioner, Monfort, August 17, 1862, AD Gers 1 M 343, emphasis in text. 69. Report of subprefect, Dunkerque, August 18, 1854, AD Nord M 141 (91). 70. Report of police commissioner of Gceulzin on the national festivity; AD Nord M 141 (94). 71. Report of procureur-general, Lyon, August 21, 1868, AN BB 18-1 776. 72. Report of prefect of the Meuse, Bar-Ie-Due [1864], AD Meuse 73 M 6. 73. Report of procureur-general, Riom, August 17, 1861, AN BBI8-1636. 74. Report of police commissioner, Bar-Ie-Due, August 17, 1862, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 75. Report of mayor of Maubeuge, August 16, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 76. Letter of the General commander of the 3rd Division to prefect of the Nord, Abbeville, August 18, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 77. Report of subprefect, Avesnes, August 17, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 78. Report of subprefect, Avesnes, August 21, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 79. Report of police commissioner, Dijon, August 17, 1852, AD Cote d'Or 1 M467. 80. Report of mayor of Claret, August 16, 1866, AD Herault 1 M 508.

Notes to Pages 118-128

262

81. Report of mayor of Rocquevaire, August 7,1857, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 82. See Didier Nourisson, "Du mal regional au £leau national: l'alcoolisme Normand au XIXeme siecle," in Du provincialisme au regionalisme XVIlle-XXe si'eele: Festival d'histoire de Montbrison, 28 septembre au 2 octobre 1988 (Montbrison: Cerisier, 1989), p. 225. 83. Confidential circular of minister of interior, Paris, May 21, 1868, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 519. 84. Letter to prefect of Nord, Lille, August 16, 1869, AD Nord M 141 (95).

6. All the Majesty of the State 1. Report of subprefect of Valenciennes, August 16, 1861, AD Nord M 141 (94). 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. "Discours prononce par Ie Prince Louis Napoleon a Bordeaux, Ie 9 Octobre 1852," AD Seine Maritime (Rouen), 1 M 180. 5. Hazareesingh and Wright, "Le Second Empire," in Fougere, Machelon and Monnier (eds.), Les communes et Ie pouvoir, p. 269. 6. Report of procureur, Bayeux, August 4, 1858, AN BB30-42 1. 7. Report of procureur, Cherbourg, August 5, 1858, AN BB30-42 1. 8. See, for example, the report of the prefect of Saone-et-Loire, June 21, 1856, AN FICI 111. 9. Report of subprefect, Brignoles, June 18, 1856, AN FICI 111. 10. Speech of mayor ofVergeze, August 24,1859, AD Gard 1 M 937. 11. Report of mayor of Vedenes, August 16, 1852, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 12. Report of mayor of Commercy, August 17, 1858, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 13. Report of mayor of Bouziques, August 20, 1859, AD Herault 1 M 506. 14. Report of mayor of Tourtour, August 18,1859, AD Var 6 M 18 (5). 15. Report of subprefect of Neufchatel, August 16, 1861, AD Seine Maritime, 1 M 352. 16. L'Ariegois (Foix), August 21, 1869, Bib.Nat.]o305. 17. Report of mayor of Bergues (Nord), August 17, 1864, AD Nord M 141 (95). 18. Report of police commissioner, Aix, August 15, 1853, AD Bouches-duRhone 1 M 642. 19. Reports of procureur-general, Besanc;on, August 17, 1861, AN BB 181636. 20. Report of procureur-general, Nimes, August 15, 1861, AN BBI8-1636. 21. Report of subprefect, Millau, August 17, 1857, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 22. See, for example, the report of the mayor of Bazian (Gers), January 12, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 342. The trees of liberty were cut down after the morning ceremony in church, and all republican signs were removed from the commune. 23. Le Conciliateur du Vaucluse (Carpentras), January 18, 1852, Bib.Nat.]o969. 24. Report from procureur-general, Metz, August 16, 1860, AN BBI8-1636. 25. Report of prefect of Drome to minister of interior, August 17, 1854, AN FICI 110.

Notes to Pages 128-132

263

26. Report of subprefect of Carpentras, August 17, 1865, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 27. Report of mayor of Vergigny, August 17, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 28. Report of mayor of Moulis, August 16, 1852, AD Gironde 1 M 706. 29. Letter of mayor ofVesoul, June 1, 1856; reply of minister of interior,June 4, 1865, AN FICI 111. 30. "Tableau des communes du canton de Vaucouleurs," December 31, 1857, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 31. The mayor of Pavilly expressed his frustration in a delicate understatement: "It is regrettable that the justice of the peace still keeps himself aloof from authority." Report, August 16, 1858, AD Seine Maritime 1 M 351. 32. In what follows, I include mayors as part of the Second Empire's state bureaucracy. This was how the regime considered these officials, who were appointed by the state. Mayors often took a somewhat different view of their "identity," as later chapters demonstrate. 33. Report of mayor of Belsey, August 28, 1852, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 34. Report of mayor of Merens, September 6, 1855, AD Gers 1 M 339. 35. Report of police commissioner, Bar-Ie-Due, August 16, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 36. Report of subprefect, Douai, August 16, 1865, AD Nord M 141 (95). 37. Report of subprefect, Castres, August 17, 1858, AD Tarn IV M2 57. 38. Report of police commissioner, Amiens, n.d., AD Somme 99 M 417 [police reports, 1869]. 39. Letter of prefect, Chalons, October 11, 1860, AD Marne 32 M 10. 40. See the report of the police commissioner of Saillant, August 17, 1863, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 41. Report of justice of the peace, August 21, 1864, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 42. Report of subprefect of Commercy, August 28, 1854, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 43. Report of mayor of Fontenay, August 16, 1852, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 44. Letter of prefect to Conservateur des Forets, August 31, 1859, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 45. Report of police commissioner, Graulhet, August 16, 1852, AD Tarn IV M 2 49. 46. Report of police commissioner, Montbazon, August 16, 1856, AD Indreet-Loire 1 M 255. 47. Report of subprefect of Villefranche, October 5, 1867, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 48. Report of subprefect of Lavaur, August 17, 1852, AD Tarn IV M2 49. 49. Report of police commissioner, Auch, August 16, 1867, AD Gers 1 M 344. 50. Report of police commissioner, Condom, August 15,1862, AD Gers 1 M 343. 51. Report of gendarmerie to prefect, August 17, 1853, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 52. Summary of prefectoral reports to Minister of Interior, August 18, 1853, AN FICI 110. 53. Ibid. 54. "Situation tres mauvaise." Report of subprefect of Le Havre, August 17, 1854, AD Seine Maritime 1 M 351.

264

Notes to Pages 132-139

55. Report of subprefect of ArIes, August 20, 1862, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 643. 56. Report of police commissioner, Peyrolles, August 17, 1853, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone 1 M 643. 57. Report of subprefect, Joigny, August 16, 1859, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 58. AD Meuse 73 M 6. 59. Undated letter [1853 folder], AN FICI 110. 60. Report of subprefect of ArIes, August 20, 1862, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 643. 61. Letter of minister of interior to prefect of the Nord, August 20, 1858, AD Nord M 141 (93). 62. Report of prefect of Nord to minister of interior, August 18, 1858, AD Nord M 141 (93). 63. See Pierre Pierrard, La vie ouvri'ere it Lille sous Ie Second Empire (Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1965), pp. 310-311; and his Chansons populaires de Lille sous Ie Second Empire (La Tour d'Aigues: Editions de l'Aube, 1998), pp. 181-190. 64. Report of subprefect of Semur, August 17, 1856, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 65. Prefect of Var report, July 7, 1856, cited in Le Clere and Wright, Les prifets du Second Empire, p. 132. 66. Police commissioner, Bar-Ie-Due, August 17, 1867, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 67. "Tableau des communes du canton de Vaucouleurs." 68. Report of police commissioner, Marsillargues, August 15, 1858, AD Herault 1 M 505. 69. AD Meuse 73 M 6. 70. Certificate of mayor of Lacroix, September 27, 1857, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 71. Certificate, Avignon, August 13, 1855, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 72. Letter to prefect, August 15, 1856, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 73. Report of subprefect of Villefranche, August 16, 1860, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 74. Report of subprefect of Aix, September 15, 1853, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 75. Report of police commissioner, Montpellier, August 16, 1861, AD Herault 1 M 507. 76. Letter of General of 14th Division, Bordeaux, to prefect of Gironde, August 12, 1856, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 77. Report of subprefect, Saint-Pons, n.d., AD Herault 1 M 506. 78. Circular letter of Minister of Interior Persigny, Paris, June 21, 1863, AN BB30-426. 79. Report of subprefect of Bazas, August 17, 1858, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 80. Charles Dupont-White, Le progres politique en France (Paris: Guillaumin, 1868), p. 27. 81. Report of mayor of Castres, August 20, 1855, AD Gers 1 M 339. 82. Cited in Rosanvallon, L'Etat en France, p. 96. 83. Vincent Wright, "Charles-Jean-Olympie Besson, 1799-1896," in Dictionnaire du Second Empire, ed. Jean Tulard (Paris: Fayard, 1995), pp. 145-146. 84. See Maxime Du Camp, Souvenirs d'un demi-siecle, 1830-1870 (Paris: Hachette, 1949), p. 125. 85. Report of police commissioner, Amiens, n.d., AD Somme 99 M 417 (1869 police reports). 86. Report of mayor of Mielan, August 16, 1856, AD Gers 1 M 342.

Notes to Pages 140-144

265

7. The Immense Space between Heaven and Earth 1. See Maurice Agulhon, 1848 et l'apprentissage de la Republique (Paris: Seuil, 1973); for more on the religious dimension, see Paul Christophe, L'Eglise de France dans la Revolution de 1848 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1998). 2. Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple, p. 154. 3. Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Paris: capitale religieuse sous Ie Second Empire (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2001). 4. See most notably the folder "Te Deum de 1854 a 1865," AN F70-251. The only notable exception was the proclamation of the Empire in December 1852 in all the communes of France, which was intended as a purely civil ceremony-although even here this official injunction was ignored in many parts of the country. 5. Boudon, Paris capitale religieuse, p. 320. 6. Ibid., 321. 7. L'Aigle, August 17, 1856, Bib.Nat. LC2-2211. 8. Boudon, Paris capitale religieuse, p. 326. Circular letter to clergy of Paris, August 3, 1863. 9. "Discours prononce par Ie Prince Louis Napoleon a Bordeaux, Ie 9 Octobre 1852," in Louis Napoleon, Discours, messages et proclamations de I'Empereur, pp.241-242. 10. The classic work on the Second Empire's relations with the church is Jean Maurain, La politique ecclesiastique du Second Empire (Paris: Alcan, 1930), where Napoleon Ill's religious policies are seen as "essentially opportunistic" (p. 958). 11. "Rapport presente a sa Majeste Imperiale et Royale par Ie Ministre des Cultes," February 19, 1806, AD Marne, 32 M 10. 12. Sanson, "Le 15 Aout," p. 130. 13. Truesdell, Spectacular Politics, p. 85. 14. Agulhon, Marianne au combat, p. 169. 15. Hugo, Napoleon-Ie-Petit. 16. See Eric Anceau, La France de 1848 it 1870: Entre ordre et mouvement (Paris, 2002), pp. 176-177. 17. For general works on the Catholic Church, see Jean-Marie Mayeur, L'Histoire religieuse de la France, XIXe-XXe si'ecles (Paris: Beauchesne, 1975); Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, 1789-1914 (London: Routledge, 1989); Jacques Le Goff and Rene Remond, Histoire de la France religieuse, 3 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 1991); Denis Pelletier, Les Catholiques en France depuis 181 5 (Paris: La Decouverte, 1997); Gerard Cholvy, La religion en France de la fin du XVIIIe si'ecle it nos jours, 2nd. ed. (Paris: Hachette, 1998). 18. Pierre Pierrard, Histoire des cures de campagne, pp. 155-202. 19. Gerard Cholvy and Yves-Marie Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France, 1800-1880 (Toulouse: Privat, 2000), pp. 177-225. 20. Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (London: Penguin, 1999), pp. 12-13. 21. Hazareesingh and Wright, "Le Second Empire." 22. For more on the development of the role of mayors in modern France, see the collective work, Les maires en France du consulat it nos jours, ed. Maurice Agulhon et al. (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1986). 23. Rene Remond, L'anticlericalisme en France de 1815 it nos jours (Paris: Seuil, 1976).

266

Notes to Pages 144-148

24. For a study of republican anticlerical ideology and discourse in the Third Republic, see Jacqueline Lalouette, La Republique anticlericale (Paris: Seuil, 2002). 25. See Roger Macgraw, "The Conflict in the Villages: Popular Anticlericalism in the Isere, 1852-1870," in Conflicts in French Society, ed. Theodore Zeldin (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), pp. 169-227. 26. Sheryl Kroen, Politics and theater, pp. 202-228. 27. Cholvy and Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France, pp. 157-158. 28. The classic statement of this position is Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen (London: Chatto, 1977). 29. The defining work on this theme is by Ford, Creating the Nation in Provincial France. See also David A. Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), which also argues that religion was central to the fashioning of patriotism and national sentiment in revolutionary and postrevolutionary France. 30. See Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, pp. 110-111. For more on Veuillot see Pierre Pierrard, Louis Veuillot (Paris: Beauchesne, 1998). 31. See, for example, the report of the juge de paix, Montpellier, December 17, 1852, AD Herault 1 M 503. 32. Letter of archbishop of Rouen, August 7, 1852, AD Seine Maritime, 1 M 351. 33. Marcel Launay, Le diocese de Nantes sous Ie Second Empire, vol. 2 (Nantes: Cid, 1982), pp. 673-674. 34. Circular, August 5, 1853, AN FICI 110. 35. See, for example, the circular letter of the minister of interior to all prefects, Paris, August 4, 1862, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 36. Report of mayor of Mussidan, August 17, 1866, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 37. Letter of bishop of Verdun, August 7, 1866, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 38. Letter of bishop Le Breton to Minister of Cults, 3 January 1865; quoted in Auguste Rivet, La vie politique dans Ie departement de la Haute-Loire de 181 5 it 1974 (Le Puy: Editions des Cahiers de la Haute-Loire, 1979), p. 292. 39. For examples of state-church comity from the diocese of Orleans under the Second Empire, see Christianne Marcilhacy, Le diocese d'Orleans sous l'episcopat de Mgr. Dupanloup, 1849-1878 (Paris: PIon, 1962), pp. 422-432. 40. Report of mayor of Les Roches, August 16, 1854, AD Isere 54 M 12. 41. Report of mayor of Marron, August 18, 1857, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 42. Report of mayor of Marcq-en-Barceul, August 18, 1859, AD Nord M 141 (93). 43. Report of mayor, August 18, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 44. Report of mayor of La Ciotat, August 17, 1853. AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 45. Report of prefect of Indre-et-Loire to minister of interior, August 16, 1853, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 46. For more on the wider political ramifications of church bells in nineteenth-century France, see Alain Corbin, Les cloches de la terre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994). 47. AN FICI 111. 48. Report of subprefect, Toulon, January 12, 1852, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 49. Report of procureur-general, Besans;on, August 16, 1853, AN BB30-407.

Notes to Pages 149-156

267

50. See, for example, the reports for the year 1854, AN FICI 110. 51. See the speech of president of the Jewish community in Mens, August 7, 1861, AD Isere 54 M 13. 52. Speech to Jewish community by M. Picard, Besanc;on, August 15, 1862, AD Doubs 1 M 846. 53. Report of procureur-general, Aix, August 15, 1856, AN BB30-418. 54. Report of the mayor, Chateaudouble, August 18, 1861, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 55. Report of mayor of Castelnau-Barbarens, January 15, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 337. 56. Report of subprefect, Avallon, August 16, 1861, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 57. Report of subprefect, Carpentras, August 17, 1865, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 58. Report of mayor, Meynes, August 17,1869, AD Gard 1 M 937. 59. Letter of Fleurance, president of the St. Vincent de Paul society, to prefect of Gers, August 17, 1857, AD Gers 1 M 342. 60. Report of procureur-general, Rennes, August 15, 1860, AN BBI8-1636. 61. Report of prefect, Colmar, 1856, AN FICI 111. 62. Report of mayor, Tourtour, August 18, 1859, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 63. Report of mayor, Hevilliers, August 17, 1869, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 64. Report of mayor, Barsac, August 16, 1855, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 65. Proclamation of Mgr. Donnet, Bordeaux, September 12, 1855, AD Gironde 1 M 706. 66. Circular letter to all prefects, May 19, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 67. Report of mayor, La Seyne, August 16, 1852, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 68. Report of prefect, August 18, 1856, AN FICI 111. 69. Report of mayor, August 16, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 70. Report of procureur-general, Amiens, August 16, 1858, AN BB30-42 1. 71. Report of procureur-general, Lons Le Saunier, September 14, 1852, AN BB30-373. 72. Report of mayor of Nouans, August 16, 1852, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 73. Report of mayor of Chateau-La-Valliere, August 16, 1854, AD Indre-etLoire 1 M 255. 74. Report of mayor of Roquebrune, August 18, 1857, AD Gers 1 M 342.

8. We Have Our Own Music 1. Report to prefect of Nord, Lannoy, September 1, 1865, AD Nord, M 141 (96). 2. Emile Littre, Dictionnaire de la Langue Fran fa ise, vol. 1 (Paris, Hachette, 1877), p. 646. 3. This particular theme is developed in Chapters 9 and 10. 4. Letter of cure of Lacropte to prefect of Dordogne, August 15, 1869, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 5. Figures quoted in Marcel Launay, Le bon pretre. Le elerge rural au XIXeme steele (Paris: Aubier, 1986), p. 231. 6. Letter of cure of Marville, August 16, 1857, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 7. For an example, see the report of the justice of the peace of Morteau, August 28, 1866, AD Doubs 1 M 846.

268

Notes to Pages 157-163

8. Letter of archbishop of Besanc;on to prefect of Doubs, August 18, 1866, AD Doubs 1 M 846. 9. Report of prefect of Lot-et-Garonne, August 18, 1856, AN FICI 111. 10. Report of prefect of Lot-et-Garonne, August 17, 1857, AN FICI 111. 11. Letter from general commanding Fourteenth Subdivision, Avignon, August 14, 1852, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 12. Report of prefect of Gard, August 16, 1854, AN FICI 110. 13. Report of subprefect of Semur, August 17, 1856, AD Cote d'Or M467. 14. Report of procureur-general, Nimes, August 16, 1856, BB30-418. 15. Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple, p. 251. For more on the role of Monsignor Pie, see my earlier remarks in Chapter 3. 16. Letter of subprefect, Avallon, February 3, 1855, AD Yonne 3 M 3/75. 17. See the letter of the prefect of Sarthe, Le Mans, May 30, 1856, AN FICI 111. 18. For more on the traditionalist Catholic condemnation of dancing, see Ralph Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism (London: Routledge, 1999), pp. 92-94; and Gerard Cholvy, Christianisme et societe en France au XIXeme steele (Paris: Seuil, 2001), p. 74. 19. See, for example, the injunction given by Edouard Pierchon, cure of the village of Haveluy (Nord) and recorded in his memoirs, Un village du Nord avant la mine (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1996), pp. 256-257. 20. In the words of Peter MacPhee, "By 1850 dancing and support for the Left had become virtually synonymous through much of southern France"; in "Popular Culture, Symbolism, and Rural Radicalism in Nineteenth-Century France," Journal of Peasant Studies 5,1 (October 1977), p. 245. 21. Report of justice of the peace, Bressieux, August 17, 1860, AD Isere 54 M 14. 22. For more on the feminization of religion during this period, see Claude Langlois, "Feminisation du catholicisme," in Histoire de la France religieuse, vol. 3, ed. Jacques Le Goff and Rene Remond (Paris: Seuil, 1991), pp. 292-310; Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, pp. 152-153. 23. Summary of prefectoral reports for the 1853 national festivities, AN FICI 110. 24. Report of prefect of Moselle, August 17, 1853, AN FICI 110. 25. Report of prefect of Vienne, Poitiers, August 17,1857, AN FICI 111. 26. Letter dated August 14, 1861, Avignon, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 27. Report of police commissioner of Bedarrides, August 18, 1858, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 28. Letter of cure of Bedarrides, August 17, 1858, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 29. Letter of complaint of mayor of Clary, August 18, 1868, AD Nord M 141 (95). 30. Quoted in Launay, Le bon pretre, p. 227. 31. Report of mayor of Tressin, August 20, 1860, AD Nord M 141 (95). 32. Cholvy and Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France, p. 29; see also Kroen, Politics and Theatre.

33. Circular letter of the minister of the interior, February 17, 1860, AD Marne 30 M 19. In the letter, he invites prefects to take action to "put a halt to this agitation" and especially to prevent the dissemination of these brochures.

Notes to Pages 163-167

269

34. For examples from the Limousin, see Alain Corbin, Archaisme et modernite en Limousin au XIXeme si'eele, vol. 2 (Limoges: Presses Universitaires de Limoges, 1998), pp. 854-855. 35. Letter of prefect, Nantes, August 27, 1859, AD Loire-Atlantique 1 M 675. 36. Report of police commissioner, La Teste, June 12, 1859, AD Gironde 1 M 706. 37. "Fete du 15 aout 1860: incidents divers," AN BB30-423. 38. Report of procureur-general, Douai, June 23, 1860, AN BB 30-423. 39. Letter of mayor of Thermes to prefect, August 15, 1860, AD Gers, M 343. 40. Report of procureur-general, Aix, August 25, 1860, AN BB30-423. 41. Launay, Le diocese de Nantes sous Ie Second Empire, pp. 720-721. 42. Report of the justice of the peace, Clary, August 24, 1868, AD Nord M 141 (96). 43. Incident quoted in Pierrard, Histoire des cures de campagne, p. 206. 44. Police report, Avignon, August 19, 1852, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 45. Letter of prefect of Vaucluse, August 20, 1852, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 46. Andre Armengaud, Les populations de l'Est-Acquitain au debut de l'epoque contemporaine (Ph.D. diss., University of Paris, 1961), p. 410. 47. "Lurcy-Levis: Plainte contre Ie refus du cure d'enregistrer un nom bonapartiste lors de la publication des bans de mariage (1861)," AD Allier 2 V 19. I am grateful to Monsieur D. Tranchard, director of the Departmental Archives of the Allier, for drawing this dossier to my attention. 48. Report on political opposition of clergy [1863], AN BB30-426. 49. Report of subprefect of Lectoure, August 19, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 338. 50. Report of procureur-general, Riom, June 21, 1860, AN BB30-423. 51. See, for example, the report on the failure of the priest at N otre-Damedes-Landes (Loire-Inferieure) to perform the Te Deum, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 676. 52. For the discussion of one local case during the Second Empire era, see Le diocese de Montpellier, ed. Gerard Cholvy (Paris: Beauchesne, 1976), pp. 221-222. 53. Alphonse Grun, Traite de la police administrative, generale et municipale (Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1862), p. 311. 54. For more on the antimodernist stance of the Catholic Church, see Gibson, A Social History of French Catholicism, pp. 94-100. 55. Pierrard, Histoire des cures de campagne, pp. 219-222. 56. Letter of mayor of Nizas, August 16, 1857, AD Herault 1 M 505. 57. Incident cited in Jacques Lafon, Les pretres, les fideles et l'Etat: Ie menage it trois du XIXe siecle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1987), p. 42. 58. Report of subprefect of Lavaur, August 27, 1862, AD Tarn IV M2 60. 59. Letter of mayor of Algans to prefect of Tarn, August 15,1862, AD Tarn IV M2 60. 60. Letter of cure of Algans to prefect of Tarn, August 13, 1862, AD Tarn IV M2 60. 61. Letter of mayor of Sainghin-en-Melantois, August 23, 1863, AD Nord M141 (94). 62. Letter of cure of Fontangy to prefect of Cote d'Or, August 17, 1863, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 647. 63. Letter of mayor of Saint-Privat, August 15, 1864, AD Dordogne 1 M 96.

270

Notes to Pages 168-174

64. Letter of mayor of Nantes, September 3, 1862, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 676. 65. Letter of mayor of Laheycourt, August 8, 1855, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 66. Report of mayor of Lahaye-Fouassiere, August 16, 1860, AD LoireAtlantique, 1 M 676. 67. Deliberation of municipal council, August 14,1858, AD NordM 141 (96). 68. Report of mayor of Escarmain, August 16, 1867, AD Nord M 141 (95). 69. Report of mayor of Fontaine-la-Mallet, August 18, 1854, AD SeineMaritime 1 M 351. 70. Report of mayor of Monprimblanc, August 17, 1865, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 71. For a local case study, see Petit, La clef des champs. 72. Report of subprefect, Beziers, August 17, 1858, AD Herault, 1 M 505. 73. Report of police commissioner, La Ciotat, August 18, 1862, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone, 1 M 643. 74. Report of police commissioner, Blere, August 16, 1856, AD Indre-et-Loire 1 M 255. 75. Letter of mayor of Montbazens to prefect of Aveyron, August 16, 1862, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 76. Report of subprefect of Verdun, August 27, 1862, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 77. Report of mayor of Culey, August 18, 1867, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 78. Letter of mayor of Champagne to prefect, August 18, 1867, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 647. 79. Report of police commissioner, Solesmes, August 15, 1857, AD Nord M 141 (96). 80. Report of the mayor of Solesmes, August 16, 1857, AD Nord M 141 (96). 81. Report of gendarmerie of Libourne, September 1, 1855, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 82. Report of procureur-general, Angers, August 15, 1858, AN BB30-421. 83. Report of mayor of Saint-Laurent-des-Ombres, August 16, 1869, AD Gard 1 M 937. 84. Report of mayor of Perrigny-sur-l'Ognon, August 17, 1861, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 647. 85. Report of mayor of Saint-Valery-en-Caux, August 16, 1865, AD SeineMaritime, 1 M 352. 86. Thomas Kselman, "State and Religion," in Revolutionary France, ed. Malcolm Crook (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 65. 87. Pierrard, Histoire des cures de campagne, p. 207. 88. Report of prefect of Bas-Rhin, August 18, 1853, AN FICI 110. 89. Report of subprefect of Lectoure, August 22, 1853, AD Gers 1 M 338. 90. Pierre Barral, Les agrariens franfais de Meline it Pisani (Paris: Armand Colin, 1968), pp. 41-66. 91. Vincent Wright, "Religion et politique dans les Basses-Pyrenees," Annales du Midi, 81, 94 (October 1969), p. 426. 92. "Fete Nationale du 15 Aout 1855: Celebration en 1855, arrondissement d'Ancenis." Report by subprefect, August 29,1855, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 675. 93. See Chapter 4. 94. Report of subprefect, ArIes, August 20, 1862, AD Bouches-du-Rhone, 1 M 643.

Notes to Pages 174-181

271

95. Police report, St. Geoire, August 17, 1861, AD Isere 54 M 14. 96. See Sheryl Kroen, "Revolutionizing Religious Politics during the Restoration," French Historical Studies, 21-1 (Winter 1998), pp. 27-53. 97. Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple, p. 157. 98. Report of mayor of Saint-Sernin, August 17, 1864, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). 99. Launay, Le bon pretre, p. 233. 100. Cholvy and Hilaire, Histoire religieuse de la France, p. 219. 101. For more on the proliferation of anticlerical incidents in rural churches during the 1860s, see Pierrard, Histoire des cures de campagne, pp. 223-224. See also Pierrard's La vie quotidienne du pretre franfais au XIXeme si'ecle (Paris: Hachette, 1986), pp. 230-231. 102. For more on the violence of rural anticlericalism in the Limousin, see Corbin, Archaisme et modernite, vol. 1, pp. 641-652. 103. Letter of mayor of Tourtoirac (1860), quoted in Pierre Couchot, "Anticlericalisme et opinion en regime concordataire: 1868 en Dordogne," in Bulletin Historique et Archeologique du Perigord (1960), p. 147. 104. Letter of mayor of Tourtoirac, August 16, 1865, AD Dordogne 1 M 96; emphasis in text. 105. Letter of minister of interior to prefect of Gironde, June 2, 1868, AD Gironde 1 M 377 (manifestations republicaines et anticlericales dans Ie departement, 1868). 106. Letter of archbishop of Bordeaux to prefect of Gironde, July 4, 1868, AD Gironde 1 M 377. 107. Report of subprefect of Blaye, May 27, 1868, AD Gironde 1 M 377. 108. Menager, Les Napoleon du peuple, p. 251. 109. Report of subprefect, Epernay, October 1865, AD Marne 30 M 19. 110. Letter of cure of Castillon to prefect of Gironde, August 29, 1864, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 111. For an analysis of the masculinity of anticlericalism, based on the cleavage between the clergy and the attractions of youth gangs, military conscription, and rivalries with neighboring villages, see Philippe Boutry, Pretres et paroisses au pays du Cure d'Ars (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1986), pp. 578-582. 112. Quoted in Corbin, Les cloches de la terre, p. 206.

9. Eroding Bonapartist Sovereignty 1. Report of mayor of Stainville, August 20, 1861, AD Meuse, 73 M 6. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. See Leon Gambetta, Discours et plaidoyers politiques, vol. 1, ed. J. Reinach (Paris: Charpentier, 1880). 5. See Price, The French Second Empire, pp. 28-32; for more detailed studies see Ted Margadant, French Peasants in Revolt: The Insurrection of 1851 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979); and Peter McPhee, The Politics of Rural Life: Political Mobilization in the French Countryside (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 6. The impact of the 1851 coup, and particularly the resistance and repression that followed, were first analyzed in Eugene Tenot, La province en 1851: Etude

272

Notes to Pages 181-185

historique sur Ie coup d'etat (Paris: Le Chevalier, 1868). For departmental case studies, see Line Skorka, "Le coup d'etat de 1851 et ses repercussions dans FYonne" and Claude Levy, "Les proscrits du 2 Decembre," in Les republicains sous Ie Second Empire, ed. Leo Hamon (Paris: Maison des Sciences de FHomme, 1994), pp. 131. See also "Autour de 1851," in a special issue of the Revue d'Histoire du XIXe siecle 22, 1 (2001). 7. The classic study of this period is Iouda Tchernoff, Le parti republicain au coup d'etat et sous Ie Second Empire (Paris: Pedone, 1906). 8. Entry of February 12, 1853, in Emile Ollivier, Journal, vol. 1 (Paris: Julliard, 1961), pp. 144-145. 9. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Considerations sur Ie gouvernement de la Pologne et sur sa riformation projetee, in Oeuvres Completes, vol. 3 (Paris, Gallimard, 1964), p.964. 10. See Ozouf, La jete revolutionnaire, pp. 59-101.

11. Esquisses d'institutions republicaines, par un des comites insurrectionnels de Paris

(London, Brussels, and Geneva, 1862), pp. 8-9, Bib.Nat.LB56-1258. 12. Auguste Scheurer-Kestner, Souvenirs de jeunesse (Paris: Charpentier, 1905), p.lI. 13. Report of subprefect, Brignoles, January 12, 1852, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 14. Eugene Pelletan, Les Fetes de l'Intelligence (Paris: Pagnerre, 1863). 15. Jules Barni, La morale dans la democratie (Paris: Germer Bailliere, 1868), p.119. 16. Juliette Adam, Mes sentiments et nos idees avant 1870 (Paris: Lemerre, 1905), p.126. 17. Letter to his father and mother, Paris, May 1867; in Henri Allain-Targe, La Republique sous l'Empire. Lettres (1864-1870) (Paris: Grasset, 1939), p. 122. 18. Quoted in Michele Riot-Sarcey, La democratie it l'epreuve des femmes: Trois figures critiques du pouvoir 1830-1848 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1994), p. 268. 19. See Chapter 8. 20. Andre Barbes, Les traditions nationales autrefois et aujourd'hui dans la nation franr;aise (Paris: Douniol, 1873), p. 320. 21. Entry dated September 25, 1853, in Duchesse de Dino, Chronique de 1830 it 1862, vol. 4 (Paris: PIon, 1910), p. 180. 22. Sebastien Laurentie, Melanges: Religion, philosophie, morale (Paris: Vives, 1865), p. 342. 23. Antoine Blanc de Saint Bonnet, De la restauration franr;aise (Paris: Herve, 1851), p. 259. 24. See Tchernoff, Le parti republicain; Hazareesingh and Wright, Francsmar;ons sous Ie Second Empire; and Philip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in 19th Century France (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). 25. Police report, Brignoles (Var), July 28, 1852; quoted in Price, The French Second Empire, p. 322. 26. "Espoir, bonheur, tu es heureux qu'il te reste encore des racines, au mois de mai prochain tu deviendras sublime." Gendarmerie report to prefect of Gers, January 13, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 338. 27. Report of police commissioner, Maubeuge, August 16, 1864, AD Nord M 141 (95).

Notes to Pages 185-190

273

28. For more on this concept of "anti-fete," drawn from a paper by Susanna Barrows, see Kroen, Politics and Theater, p. 164-165. 29. Report of mayor of Varennes, August 16, 1853, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 30. Report of police commissioner, Lannoy, September 2, 1858, AD Nord M 141 (93). 31. Report of mayor of Larresingle, August 18, 1852, AD Gers 1 M 338. 32. Report of police commissioner, Masseube, August 16, 1859, AD Gers 1 M 342. 33. Report of police commissioner, Mirebeau, August 16, 1855, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 34. Report of police commissioner, Villefranche, August 16, 1864, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 35. Report of mayor of Saint-Orse, August 18, 1866, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 36. Report of procureur-general, Besans;on, August 16, 1859, AN BB30-422. 37. See Chapter 2. 38. Huard, Le mouvement republicain, p. 188. 39. For a sense of the scale of bull racing in the department of the Gard during this period, see AD Gard 1 M 939, which contains voluminous correspondence on the issue. 40. Report of procureur-general, Aix, August 21, 1853, AN BB30-370. For more examples of such republican activities during fetes patronales in the 1850s, see Price, The French Second Empire, pp. 332-333. 41. Edward Berenson, Populist Religion and Left- Wing Politics in France, 18301852 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 208. 42. See Avner Ben-Amos, Funerals, Politics, and Memory in Modern France, 1789-1996 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 95-100; also Danielle Tartakowski, Nous irons chanter sur vos tombes: Le Pere Lachaise XIXe-XXeme siecle (Paris: Aubier, 1999). 43. Arthur Ranc, Sous l'Empire: Memoires d'un republicain (Paris: Dreyfous, 1878), p. 112. 44. Jacqueline Lalouette, La libre pensee en France 1848-1940 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1997), pp. 30-39. 45. Ranc, Sous l'Empire, p. 114. 46. "Mesures a prendre pour prevenir, dans les funerailles, les manifestations qui troubleraient l' ordre public." Circular, minister of police, Paris, March 15, 1853, AD Yonne 3 M 1/272. 47. See Truesdell, Spectacular Politics, p. 180. 48. Report of subprefect, Brignoles, October 26, 1855, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 49. Report of police commissioner, Saint-Maximin, November 11,1855, AD Var 6 M 18/5. Democrate is a common nineteenth-century French synonym for "Republican." 50. Police report, Marseille, August 16, 1858, AD, Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 51. Figures cited in Price, The French Second Empire, p. 158; see also p. 330 and p. 332. 52. "Tableau statistique des hommes dangereux du departement" [Second Empire], AD Var 4 M 38. 53. Armengaud, Les populations de l'Est-Acquitain, p. 411.

274

Notes to Pages 190-197

54. Letter of prefect to minister of interior, December 14, 1867, AD LoireAtlantique 1 M 519 (rapports sur la situation politique 1864-1870). 55. For a list of these establishments in Lyon, see the anonymous memoirs of a republican activist of the Second Empire era, Souvenirs d'un Lyonnais (Lyon, 1897), pp. 24-25. 56. Police report, Grenoble, August 16, 1853, AD Isere 54 M 12. 57. In the spring of 1852, republican suspects were still being arrested for wearing red clothing. See Price, The French Second Empire, p. 34. 58. Police report, Saint-Maximin, February 18, 1854, AD Var 4 M 38. 59. Report of police commissioner, Is-sur-Tille, August 16, 1860, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 60. Report of procureur-general, Riom, August 18, 1858, AN BB30-421. 61. Letter of prefect, September 11, 1858, AN BB30-421. 62. AN BB30-412. 63. Report of procureur-general, Rennes, May 2, 1853, AN BB30-407. 64. Report of subprefect of Sens, August 25, 1855, AD Yonne 3 M 1 270. 65. Report of police commissioner, Auxerre, August 22, 1855, AD Yonne 3 M 1 270. 66. Report of procureur-general, Toulouse, August 17, 1853, AN BB30-407. 67. Ibid. 68. Report of procureur-general, Besans;on, January 15, 1852, AN BB30-373. 69. See Chapter 1. 70. Report of subprefect, Apt, August 20, 1858, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 71. Report of subprefect, Beziers, August 17, 1856, AD Herault 1 M 504. 72. Report of subprefect, Joigny, December 16, 1862, AD Yonne 3 M 1/272. 73. Gustave Lefrans;ais, Souvenirs d'un revolutionnaire (Paris: Tete de Feuilles, 1972), p. 227. 74. For more on the experience of republican exile during this period, see Amedee St. Ferreol, Les proscrits franfais en Belgique (Brussels: C. Muquardt, 1875); Edgar Quinet, Lettres d'exil, 4 vols. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1885-1886); Marc Dufraisse, Lettres d'exil (Perigueux: Joucla, 1973); and Jean-Marc Largeaud, "Le lieutenant-colonel Charras, soldat de "la" Republique? ," Revue d'Histoire du XIXe siecle 20-21 (2000), pp. 55-72. 75. Report of procureur-general, Dijon, June 15, 1853, AN BB30-407. 76. Agulhon, Marianne au combat, pp. 157-172. 77. Report of procureur, Lyon, June 21, 1857, AN BB30-418. 78. Letter of minister of interior to all prefects, Paris, October 10, 1853, AD Doubs 1 M 744 (surveillance des societes republicaines). 79. Ibid. 80. Report of subprefect of Joigny, April 1, 1853, AD Yonne 3 M 1/267. 81. Letter of minister of interior to all prefects, Paris, October 10, 1853, AD Doubs 1 M 744 (surveillance des societes republicaines). 82. Letter of chef de cabinet, minister of police, Paris, to prefect of Tarn, August 6, 1852, AD Tarn IV M2 49. 83. Report of subprefect of Joigny, April 1, 1853, AD Yonne 3 M 1/267. 84. Tchernoff, Le parti republicain au coup d'etat et sous Ie Second Empire, p. 139. 85. Price, The French Second Empire, pp. 113, 161; Tchernoff, Le parti republicain au coup d'etat et sous Ie Second Empire, pp. 225-262.

Notes to Pages 197-204

275

86. Letter of minister of interior, Paris, October 23, 1856, AD Doubs 1 M 744 (surveillance des societes republicaines). 87. Letter of ministry of police, Paris, August 19, 1852, AD Tarn IV M2 49. 88. See Hazareesingh and Wright, Francs-mafons sous Ie Second Empire, pp. 58; 146-148. 89. Report of subprefect of Joigny, April 1, 1853, AD Yonne 3 M 1/267. 90. Frans;ois Ploux, "L'imaginaire social et politique de la rumeur dans la France du XIXeme siecle (1815-1870)," Revue Historique 614 (April-June 2000), p.410. 91. Letter of prefect of Loiret to prefect of Yonne, Orleans, July 31, 1854, AD Yonne 3 M 1/268. 92. Letter of Minister of Interior to prefect of Yonne, Paris, August 8, 1854, AD Yonne 3 M 1/268. 93. Report of procureur-general, Besans;on, May 10, 1852, AN BB30-373. 94. Ploux, "L'imaginaire social et politique de la rumeur," p. 412. 95. Report ofprocureur-general, Aix, May 17,1853, AN BB30-407. 96. Report of prefect of Cote d'Or to minister of interior, August 17, 1852, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 97. Report of procureur, Lyon, September 16, 1855, AN BB30-413. 98. Ibid. 99. Ploux, "L'imaginaire social et politique de la rumeur," p. 399. 100. Price, The French Second Empire, p. 261. 101. Letter of minister of interior to prefect of Doubs, Paris, August 3, 1858, AD Doubs 1 M 746.

10. Legitimist Coldness, Republican Enthusiasm 1. Price, The French Second Empire, p. 280. 2. Jean-Paul Bled, Les lys en exil (Paris: Fayard, 1992), p. 157. 3. Price, The French Second Empire, p. 276. 4. Letter of prefect of Dordogne to minister of interior, Perigueux, August 16, 1852, AN F70-251 (Ministere d'Etat). 5. See the reports of prefects of Haute-Garonne and Ile-et-Vilaine, August 16 and 20,1854, AN FICI 110; police commissioner, Aix, August 14,1855, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642; procureur-general, Besans;on, July 8, 1859, AN BB30-373; gendarmerie report, Montpellier, August 18, 1861, AD Herault 1 M 507; procureur-general, Nimes, August 15, 1861, AN BBI8-1636; report of procureur-general Besans;on, August 17, 1861, AN BB 18-1636; police commissioner Lyon, August 16, 1865, AD Rhone 1 M 165. 6. Report of police commissioner, Nantes, August 15, 1869, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 675. 7. Report of police commissioner, August 20, 1855, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 675. 8. Report of subprefect, Verdun, August 18, 1867, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 9. Report of police commissioner, Lille, August 16, 1853, AD Nord M 141 (91). 10. Report of police commissioner, Cette, August 17, 1858, AD Herault 1 M 505.

276

Notes to Pages 204-210

11. Report of procureur-general, Riom, June 21, 1860, AN BB30-423. 12. Report of police commissioner, Aix, August 14, 1855, AD Bouches-duRhone 1 M 642. 13. Report of procureur-general, Riom, August 18, 1859, AN BB30-422. 14. Report of procureur-general, Riom, August 20, 1860, AN BB30-423. 15. Report of procureur-general, Riom, June 21, 1860, AN BB30-423. 16. Circumlocution; the prefect is referring to himself. 17. Report of prefect of Vienne, Poitiers, August 17, 1857, AN FICI 111. 18. Summary of prefectoral reports, Paris, August 18, 1853, AN FICI 110. 19. Report of prefect of Napoleon-Vendee, August 18, 1854, AN FICI 110. 20. Report of subprefect, Beziers, August 17, 1858, AD Herault 1 M 505. 21. Report of police commissioner, L'Isle, August 16, 1866, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 22. Reports of procureurs-generaux, Toulouse, February 5, 1855, and Poitiers, February 6, 1855, AN BB30-410. 23. Report of procureur-general, Riom, March 1, 1855, AN BB30-410. 24. Report of procureur, Algiers, October 10, 1856, AN BB30-418. 25. Report of procureur-general, Montpellier, August 18, 1855, AN BB30413. 26. Report, January 11, 1855, AN FIcIII Tarn-et-Garonne. 27. See Hazareesingh, From Subject to Citizen, pp. 79-95. 28. Thibon, "L'ordre public villageois," p. 315. 29. Summary report, Paris, August 18, 1853, AN FICI 110. 30. Report of the justice of the peace, Ganges, December 13, 1852, AD Herault 1 M 503. 31. Report of police commissioner, Gignac, December 6, 1852, AD Herault 1 M 503. 32. Report of procureur-general, Besans;on, September 14, 1852, AN BB30373. 33. Report of police commissioner, Auriol, August 16, 1853, AD Bouches-duRhone 1 M 642. 34. Report of police commissioner, Auriol, August 17, 1856, AD Bouches-duRhone 1 M 642. 35. Report of mayor of Belgentier, August 16, 1852, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 36. Report of mayor of Couchey, August 19, 1853, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 467. 37. See, for example, the report of the subprefect of Aix, August 22, 1853, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 38. Report of subprefect of Aix, August 16, 1859, AD Bouches-du-Rhone 1 M 642. 39. Report of former Bonapartist municipal councilor, Marsillargues, August 16, 1855, AD Herault 1 M 504. 40. Report of subprefect, Beziers, August 16, 1856, AD Herault, 1 M 504. 41. Report of mayor, August 17,1856, AD Herault 1 M 504. 42. Report of police commissioner, Sainte-Maur, August 18, 1858, AD Indreet-Loire 1 M 255. 43. Report of subprefect, Carpentras, August 19, 1857, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 44. Report of mayor of Florensac, August 16, 1863, AD Herault 1 M 507. 45. Report of procureur-general, September 17, 1860, AN BB30-426. 46. Report of subprefect, Carpentras, August 24, 1861, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880.

Notes to Pages 210-214

277

47. Letter of prefect of Var, August 20, 1862, AD Var 6 M 18/5. 48. Report of subprefect, Orange, August 17, 1863, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 49. Report of mayor of Pessoulens, September 3, 1862, AD Gers 1 M 343. 50. Report of procureur-general, Besans;on, October 12, 1865, AN BB30-373. 51. See Andre-Jean Tudesq, "De la monarchie a la republique: Ie maire, petit ou grand notable," Pouvoirs 24 (1982), pp. 7-17. 52. Draft report of prefect, August 1865, AD Cote d'Or 1 M 217. 53. Report of police commissioner, La Ciotat, August 17, 1866, AD Bouchesdu-Rhone 1 M 642. 54. Report of mayor of Lalinde, August 16, 1866, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 55. Report of mayor of Saint-Sauveur, August 16, 1866, AD Yonne 3 M 3/ 33. Emphasis in text. 56. Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1868, AD Herault 1 M 509. 57. Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1868, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 58. Report of mayor of Thor, August 18, 1869. See also the mayoral reports from Pernes, August 17, 1869; Thor, August 19, 1869; and Serignan, August 16, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 59. Draft report of prefect, Montpellier, August 18, 1869, AD Herault 1 M 509. 60. Report of mayor of La Teste, August 16, 1869, AD Gironde 1 M 707. 61. Report of mayor of Cendrieux, August 15, 1865, AD Dordogne 1 M 96. 62. Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1867, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 63. "Republicains irreconciliables." Report of police commissioner, August 16, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 64. Report of mayor of Candillargues, August 19, 1869, AD Herault, 1 M 509. 65. Report of mayor of Chaussin, August 16, 1869, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 66. See, for example, reports of police commissioner, Auch, August 15, 1866 and mayor of Vic-Fezensac, August 16, 1867, AD Gers 1 M 344. 67. Report of subprefect of Lectoure, August 17, 1867, AD Gers 1 M 344. 68. Report of mayor, Villers-Ie-Sec, August 21, 1869, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 69. See Price, The French Second Empire, pp. 260-271. 70. Incident quoted in Allain-Targe, La Republique sous l'Empire, p.47. 71. Letter of minister of interior to prefect of Seine-Inferieure, November 12, 1867, AD Seine Maritime 1 M 181. 72. Report of procureur-general, Angers, August 1868, AN BB30-389. 73. Report of police commissioner, Nantes, November 19, 1869, AD Loire Atlantique 1 M 519. 74. For the example of the Cote d'Or, and the rise of the republican notable Joseph Magnin, see P. Gonnet, "La vie politique a Dijon sous Ie Second Empire et au debut de la IIIe Republique 1852-1872," Bulletin de la Faculte des Lettres de Strasbourg (October 1965), pp. 337-338. 75. Price, The French Second Empire, pp. 289-290. 76. "Rapport sur la situation politique de l'arrondissement d'Epernay," September-October 1865, AD Marne 30 M 19. 77. See Nord, The Republican Moment. 78. Report of subprefect of Verdun, August 17, 1865, AD Meuse 73 M 6. 79. Report of mayor of Menesterol, August 16, 1865, AD Dordogne 1 M 96.

278

Notes to Pages 214-219

80. Letter of cure of Paulin to prefect of Tarn, August 27,1862, AD Tarn IV

M 2 60. 81. One of the measures of this decline is the relatively small space given to the festivities in the semiofficial publications; see, for example, the successive issues of the Almanach de l'Empire Franfais between 1865 and 1870, Bib.Nat. LC22340; the 1869 volume made no reference to the celebrations of August 15 in its summary of the main events of the year 1868. 82. Report of police commissioner, Amiens, n.d. [1869], AD Somme 99 M 417. 83. Report of police commissioner, Coutras, April 28, 1868, AD Gironde 1 M 377 (manifestations republicaines et anticlericales dans Ie departement, 1868). 84. Letter of prefect of Somme to minister of interior, August 2, 1869, AD Somme 99 M 417. 85. Report, August 18, 1869, AD Herault 1 M 509. 86. Report of police commissioner, Cette, August 18, 1869, AD Herault 1 M 509. 87. Report of mayor of Courris, August 17, 1862, AD Tarn IV M2 60. 88. Report of mayor of Vic-Fezensac, August 16, 1866, AD Gers 1 M 344. 89. Report of police commissioner, Bordeaux, March 21, 1868, AD Gironde 1 M 377 (manifestations republicaines et anti-clericales dans Ie departement, 1868). There were riots in Bordeaux on March 19, 20, and 21. 90. Report of police commissioner, Cette, August 18, 1869, AD Herault 1 M 509. 91. Report of subprefect, Yvetot, August 13, 1868, AD Seine Maritime 1 M 352. 92. Report of police commissioner, Malaucene, August 17, 1869. AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 93. Report of procureur-general, Bordeaux, August 17, 1868, AN BBI8-1776. 94. Report of procureur-general, Aix, 1868, AN BBI8-1776. 95. Draft report, Montpellier, August 18, 1869, AD Herault 1 M 509. 96. Letter of mayor of Saint-Laurent, August 20, 1869, AD Dordogne M69. 97. For details of these forms of republican sociability, see, for example, the report of the police commissioner, Lyon, August 16,1868, AD Rhone 1 M 165. 98. Report of police commissioner, Amiens, undated [1869], AD Somme 99 M 417. 99. Report of gendarmerie, Givors, August 16, 1868, AD Rhone 1 M 165. 100. Report, Pernes, August 16, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880. 101. Report of mayor of Chaussin, August 16, 1869, AD Yonne 3 M 3/33. 102. Edouard Ordinaire, Lettre electorale d'un maire de village it ses coll'egues (Paris: Le Chevalier, 1868), p. 27. 103. Francisque Sarcey, Le bilan de l'annee 1868 (Paris: Le Chevalier, 1869), p.l06. 104. Price, The French Second Empire, p. 360. 105. Reported in the newspaper La Fraternite, February 26, 1870; in Marc Cesar, La Commune de Narbonne (mars 1871) (Perpignan: Presses Universitaires de Perpignan, 1996), p. 29. 106. Une jete republicaine it Lyon: Compte-rendu de l'anniversaire democratique du 24 Fevrier 1870 au Palais de l'Alcazar, par Ie citoyen Jules Frantz (Lyon, 1870), Bib.Nat.Fo!. LB56-2589.

Notes to Pages 219-230 107. July 7, 108. 109.

279

Letter of controller of weight and measures, Rodez, to prefect of Aveyron, 1860, AD Aveyron 1 M (Fetes du Second Empire) (unclassified). "Fete du 15 aout," L'Illustration, August 21, 1852. Report of subprefect, Apt, August 20, 1869, AD Vaucluse 1 M 880.

Conclusion 1. Letter dated July 22, 1890, AD Dordogne 4 M 199 (surveillance des partis politiques: Bonapartistes 1875-1901). 2. For an account of one such gathering, see Le 15 aout 1893: La Saint Napoleon (Paris, 1893), Bib.Nat. Fol.LB57-12612. 3. El Gammal, Politique et poids du passe, pp. 141-148. 4. See John Rothney, Bonapartism after Sedan (New York: Cornell University Press, 1969), esp. pp. 230-291; also William D. Irvine, The Boulanger Affair Reconsidered (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). 5. Charles Rearick, "Festivals in Modern France: The Experience of the Third Republic," Journal of Contemporary History 12 Guly 1977), p. 440. 6. Ihl, La jete republicaine, p. 33. 7. Ibid., pp. 21,27. 8. Ibid., pp. 116, 357. 9. Jean-Pierre Bois, Histoire des 14 juillet (Rennes: Ouest-France, 1991), p.123. 10. Letter to his daughter, Thursday, August 15, 1867, in Frans;ois Guizot, Lettres it sa fllle Henriette 1836-1874 (Paris: Perrin, 2002), p. 868. 11. Ihl, La jete republicaine, pp. 119, 125, 146-147. 12. Cited in Raoul Girardet, Mythes et mythologies politiques (Paris: Seuil, 1986), pp. 146-147. 13 . For more on this theme, see Jacques-Olivier Boudon, Napoleon et les cultes (Paris: Fayard, 2002). 14. Alain Cabantous, Entre fetes et clochers: Profane et sacre dans l'Europe moderne (Paris: Fayard, 2002), p. 81. 15. Report of subprefect of Vienne, August 16, 1853, AD Isere 54 M 12. 16. Note of prefect of police, Paris, n.d., AN F7 6869 (affaires politiques 1814-1830). 17. For more on this sociological distinction, which underpins the Bonapartist conception of public opinion, see, for example, the speech by Fialin de Persigny in May 1864 to the Concours Regional of Roanne, AN 45 AP 19 (Papiers Rouher). 18. See Jourdan, Napoleon: Heros, imperator, mecene. 19. Jeremie Benoit, "La Resurrection," in Napoleon, Ie retour des cendres (Paris: Presses Artistiques, 1990), p. 149. 20. Anceau, La France de 1848 it 1870, pp. 225-226. 21. Report of subprefect of La-Tour-du-Pin, August 21, 1858, AD Isere 54 M 13. 22. Tchernoff, Le parti republicain au coup d'etat et sous Ie Second Empire, p. 151. 23. Rearick, "Festivals in Modern France," p. 451. 24. Jules Ferry, La lutte electorale en 1863 (Paris: Dentu, 1863), p. 84. 25. Eugene Pelletan, Aide-toi Ie ciel t'aidera (Paris: Pagnerre, 1863), p. 7. 26. Agulhon, La Republique au village, p. 157-158.

280

Notes to Pages 230-235

27. Report of procureur-general, Nimes, August 19, 1857, AN BB30-382. 28. Jean-Noel Luc, "Veiller a la surete publique et assurer Ie maintien de l'ordre et l'execution des lois," in Gendarmerie, etat et societe au XIXe si'ecle, ed. Jean-Noel Luc (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002), pp. 218-219. 29. See Peter McPhee, A Social History of France, 1780-1880 (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 196. 30. For more on this theme see Kroen, Politics and Theatre. 31. Antoine Chollier, La vraie route Napoleon (Paris: Editions Alpina, 1946), p.25. 32. Lucas-Dubreton, Le culte de Napoleon, p. 51. 33. Robert Muchembled, La societe policee: Politique et politesse en France du XVIe au XXe si'ecle (Paris: Seuil, 1998). 34. Natalie Petiteau, Napoleon de la mythologie it l'histoire (Paris: Seuil, 1999), pp. 140-141. 35. Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXeme si'ecle (Paris, 1874), 2, p. 920; 11: p.804. 36. Maurice Agulhon, "The Centre and the Periphery," in Rethinking France: Les lieux de memoire, vol. 1, ed. Pierre Nora (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 64.

Primary Sources

National Archives, Paris FICI 110 FICI 111 FICI 127 FICI 168 FICI 198 F7-3744 F7-6705 F7-6767-72 F7-6866, 69 F7-6906 F7041 & 42 F70-250 F70-251 BB18-1636 BB18-1776 BB30-193 BB30-370 BB30-376 BB30-382 BB30-407 BB30-410 BB30-412 BB30-413 BB30-418 BB30-421 BB30-422

281

festivity of the emperor (1853, 1854, 1855): prefectoral reports baptism of imperial prince; various fetes (1856-1857) fete of August 15: various receptions (1851-1865) honorific distinctions festivity of the emperor (1869) police reports (1819-1820) seditious objects (1815-1830) political situation in departments (1815-1830) political affairs (1814-1830) political affairs (1820-1821) funerals of grand dignitaries of the Empire fete of August IS-decrees (1853-1864) Te Deum (1854 to 1868); public fetes festivity of the emperor (1860-1861) procureurs-generaux reports (1861-1868) procureurs-generaux reports, Agen (1822-1830) procureurs-generaux reports, Agen and Aix procureur-general reports, Besanc;on (Doubs) procureur-general reports, Nimes (Gard) procureurs-generaux reports, national festivity of August 15 (1853) procureurs-generaux reports, various fetes (1854-1855) procureurs reports, Limoges and Toulouse procureurs-generaux reports, fete of August 15 (1855) procureurs-generaux reports, fete of August 15 (1856-1857) procureurs-generaux reports, fete of August 15 (1858) procureurs-generaux reports, fete of August 15 (1859)

Primary Sources

282

Departmental Archives AVEYRON (RODEZ)

1M

(series being reclassified) fetes of Second Empire (1852-1870)

BOUCHES-DU-RHONE (MARSEILLE)

1M 1M 1M 1M 1M 1M 1M 1M

641 642 643 712 713 628-31 648 841

local affairs (1853-1870) fetes 1853-1860 fetes 1861-1870 war of 1870-1871 The Commune (March-May 1871) public opinion in Marseille (1852-1870) correspondence addressed to prefects propaganda/political activities (1870-1910)

COTE D'OR (DI]ON)

1 M 217 1 M 231 1 M 424 1 M 467 1 M 502 20 M 172,76

summaries of prefectoral reports (1859-1865) general correspondence relating to public opinion (An X-1884) organization of celebration of national fetes (1845-1884) celebration of fete of the emperor (1852-1870) visit of Napoleon III to Dijon plots against the emperor (1857, 1864-1870)

DORDOGNE (PERIGUEUX)

1 M 71 1 M 96 1 M 125 4M41,42 4M 199

events and incidents (1852-1870) fete of the Emperor Medailles de Sainte-Helene monthly police reports (1866-1867) surveillance of political parties: Bonapartists (1875-1901)

DOUBS (BESAN