Thus the industrial bourgeoisie shouts its servile “Bravo!” to the “coup d’etat” of December 2, to the destruction of the parliament, to the downfall of their own reign, to the dictatorship of Bonaparte. The rear of the applause of November 25 was responded to by the roar of cannon on December 4, and the house of Mr. Sallandrouze, who had been loudest in applauding, was the one demolished by most of the bombs.
Cromwell, when he dissolved the Long Parliament, walked alone into its midst, pulled out his watch in order that the body should not continue to exist one minute beyond the term fixed for it by him, and drove out each individual member with gay and humorous invectives. Napoleon, smaller than his prototype, at least went on the 18th Brumaire into the legislative body, and, though in a tremulous voice, read to it its sentence of death. The second Bonaparte, who, moreover, found himself in possession of an executive power very different from that of either Cromwell or Napoleon, did not look for his model in the annals of universal history, but in the annals of the “Society of December 10,” in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. He robs the Bank of France of twenty-five million francs; buys General Magnan with one million and the soldiers with fifteen francs and a drink to each; comes secretly together with his accomplices like a thief by night; has the houses of the most dangerous leaders in the parliament broken into; Cavalignac, Lamorciere, Leflo, Changarnier, Charras, Thiers, Baze, etc., taken out of their beds; the principal places of Paris, the building of the parliament included, occupied with troops; and, early the next morning, loud-sounding placards posted on all the walls proclaiming the dissolution of the National Assembly and of the Council of State, the restoration of universal suffrage, and the placing of the Department of the Seine under the state of siege. In the same way he shortly after sneaked into the “Moniteur” a false document, according to which influential parliamentary names had grouped themselves round him in a Committee of the Nation.