The Sun.
London, England, 1859-08-10 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY. EVENING, AUGUST 10, 1859.

THE EUROPEAN COUP D'ETAT.

In 1848, when the majority of a Republican As-
sembly, unmindful of national duty and• morality,
allowed the expedition against Rome, I wrote, in
reply to the calumnies of M. Montalembert, " You
will have, you Frenchmen, an expedition of Rome
in the interior !" The 2d December proved the
truth of my prediction. France still expiates in
oppression and shame the crime then committed.
If Europe persists in the cowardly and guilty
indifference with which she now contemplates the
progress and the acts of re-born Bonapartism, she
will inevitably expiate it bitterly.
As the expedition of Rome was the prelude to
the French coup d'etat, the Crimean war and the,
Italian war mark two steps towards the European
coup d'etat. The next step will be the dismember-
ment of Turkey, and war against England, isolated
in Europe.
Had the expedition of Rome been prevented--
had Lord Palmerston, instead of declaring through
Lord Normanby that the Protestant Government
of her Majesty approved the restoration of Catho-
licism in Rome, said to Louis Napoleon,—England
does not admit foreign intervention in the internal
affairs of other States,—lmperialism would have
been arrested at its commencement—the wars in

the Crimea and in Lombardy would probably not
have taken place. The weakness of others has
alone rendered Napoleon daring and powerful.
The expedition of Rome had the triple object of
propitiating the French clergy, of discrediting the
Republican Assembly, and of preparing the French
soldiers to fight against the' Republican flag at
home. But besides this, it was for Louis Nlpo-
Aeon: a= raearcaviiiiWrtainin-g- the tendencieg and
strength of the Governments of Europe. The
shameful deed for him was what feeling the pulse
is to the physician. The pulse of Europe the
tolerant, the indifferent, the idle spectator of
the noble struggle in Rome, revealed to him
that he need not fear meeting in the Govern-
ments with political firmness, faith in a regu-
lating principle, or pride of moral indepen-
dence. The peoples • began to feel the same.
Bonapartism, that is, the blind worship of force,
sprang from the ruins of Roman liberty.
Then came the coup d'etat of the 2d of December.
A cry of anger and indignation rang through
Europe. An abyss seemed to open for the usurper.
Had he then been left isolated, having no real hold
of France, without other arms than those furnished
by terror, he would ere long have fallen. The Eng-
lish Government in a fatal hour, with as little mo-
rality as foresight, filled up the void and extended
the hand to the guilty one. The English alliance
saved Louis Napoleon, and gave him power and
prestige in Europe. The peoples, seeing proud,
free, and powerful England allying herself with
him, began to suppose in him a strength that he in
reality did not possess.
Discouragement entered the hearts of the good.
Was it an idea of policy in those who formed the
alliance, that by so doing they limited the action of
their ally ? Was it the belief that it was important
to attempt to lessen, by any means, the traditional
antagonism between two great nations ? The action
of one Power is not limited by allying itself with
another, unless they both represent the same
principle.
Free England, by allying herself with Impe-
rialism, lent to it,:without circumscribing its action,
the moral force which it wanted. And in regard to
national antagonism, the facts showed, and will
show more than ,ever, that there is no remedy for
that antagonism except in the triumph of liberty in
France. France must have liberty, or glory and
war. Moreover, by allying herself with the Em-
pire, England allied herself with a man, not with
the country. No one can believe in the Napoleonic
dynasty ; and when Louis Napoleon shall be again
an exile or dead, and France shall once more be a
free nation, the alliance of England with the despot
will only too surely be, for many, a new link to
the tradition of antagonism.
You always mistrusted France, they will say,
and you only allied yourselves with her when your
alliance supported the tyranny which was crushing
her.

No; the conduct of the English Government was
inspired by a policy of fear, and there is nothing
worse than a policy of fear towards a Power equal
to you in strength—but not really friendly.
Loais Napoleon divined the source of-that policy,
and prosecuted with greater audacity his own
designs.
The Crimean war was for him only the means of
ensuring that a treaty of peace should be signed in
Paris, and of opening the way for an understand-
ing with Russia. No sooner had he gained his ob-
ject than he hastened, as he has now, to conclude
an insecure peace for his ally, and which was de-
clared to be premature by English public opinion.
He aggravated the hostility between England and
Russia; and the secret negotiations with the Czar
began soon after. As in the Crimean war, so in
the war in Italy Louis Napoleon sought the means
of a new alliance with Austria. The traditional
pride of the Austrian monarchy could only be sub-
dued upon the field of battle. Our war, he said to
Count Cavour in the conferences at Plombieres,
will only last seven weeks ; after a defeat, Austria
will offer again the conditions of 1848, and we shall
accept them. The Powers dare not interfere.
Count Cavour—sincerely or not little matters—
gave his adherence, and made of the national idea
a stepping-stone to the Austro-Russo French al-
liance. But, as soon as the Italian national idea,
emancipating itself from the plan, pointed towards
unity, and disappointed the dynastic ambition of
Louis Napoleon, has hastened on thefpeace ; he pro-
posed what in the first idea he was to have accepted.
The peace of Villafranca is the inauguration of a
new Holy Alliance between the three Powers which
now represent despotism in Europe—lmperial
France, Russia, and Austria. The aim of the
alliance—they are phrases uttered at Plombieres
and at Stutgard—is to imperialise Europe, mak-
ing themselves master, in order to falsify it, of
the national idea, and substituting the territorial
question to the question of liberty : the means—and
this will be the next step to the Lombard war—
are the partition between the three members of the
alliance of the Mahometan possessions in Europe
and Africa, and war with England. If Austria did
o
not accept the proposals of Villafranca, the plan
was to have been executed in a modified manner
between the Czar and the Emperor—Hungary,
m
tine ; the Mediterranean, converted into a French
lake,an c
oip tht
,
or indirectly, mistress of the North and of the East
Imperial France, of the
of Europe ; to be, directly
West and of the
South. At present the agreement of the three
changes the idea of partition, and limits, as I said.
the next step to the dismemberment of Oriental
emancipated
E fpero Austria,
Russiaria was would fall to Constan-
tine
Europe, and to the war with England and Prussia.
I declare, not from conjecture more or less pro-
bable, but from certain knowledge of the fact, the
existence of this plan. I declare that it was dis-
cussed at Plombieres. I declare that the bases of
agreement between the Emperor and the Czar, con-
cerning the East, were carried back by La Ronciere
to Paris in his last mission, shortly before the
Sardo-Lombard war. Those live in Europe who
know the truth of what I say, and ought to sub-
stantiate it ; but they will not, nor is it for me to
betraythose who choose to be silent. But the readers
of my letter to Cavour, published last year, and of
some numbers of the journal Pensiero ed Azione,
know that the revelations then given of what hap-
pened later, prove the authority of the sources from
which I draw my information.
Such a plan as this appears to many to argue
genius in Louis Napoleon. To me it only shows
the intolerable mediocrity and weakness of the
European Governments. To those who made
Lafayette the hero of both hemispheres, because he
was an honest man and not to be bought with
money, I replied twenty-eight years ago that his
exaggerated fame only proved unfortunately the
immorality then predominating in Europe. The
brief success of Louis Napoleon only pi oyes to me
the want of a firm and honest policy in the Go-
vernments of Europe. When on the one side are
to be found deep-laid plans, obstinacy and caution
in carrying them out, lying reduced to a system
and absolute power ; and on the other, hesitation,
fear, complete absence of fixed policy or common
accord—to succeed for a time does not require the
power of genius.
It was sufficient for Louis Napoleon, in this last
undertaking, to guess that the Germans, devoted
by long habit to the sphere of pure thought, would
meditate long before acting upon the historical
mission of the Teutonic element—upon the double
part which appertained to Austria and Prussia,
and upon the rights of the thirty-seven States,
which compose the common country ; it was suffi-
cient for him to understand that, led astray by a
materialistic policy, now traditional, by the narrow
sectarian teaching of the peace-at-any-price party,
and by the internal disputes, not of principles, but
of parties, England would resign herself, though
agitated by, and even aggravating the dangers of
the situation, to the policy of abnegation which is
called neutrality, The genius of Louis Napoleon
is the genius of the spirit of evil. Incapable of
believing in or comprehending the germs of good,