No account of the coup d’etat,—­the most striking and effective in this series of dramatic events—­surpasses in authenticity or interest that of De Tocqueville.  The famous author of Democracy in America, and of equally celebrated works of French history, became Vice-President of the National Assembly in 1849.  As a member of that body he was justified in saying of his story of the coup d’etat, “I merely relate, as an actual witness, the things I saw with my eyes and heard with my ears.”  The first step taken by Napoleon in this affair was the arrest of the opposition leaders of the Assembly in their beds, on the pretext of a conspiracy against him in that body.  De Tocqueville describes what followed.

When the representatives of the people learned on the morning of December 2, 1851, that several of their colleagues were arrested, they ran to the Assembly.  The doors were guarded by the Chasseurs de Vincennes, a corps of troops recently returned from Africa and long accustomed to the violence of Algerine dominion, and, moreover, stimulated by a donation of five francs distributed to every soldier who was in Paris that day.  The Representatives, nevertheless, presented themselves to go in, having at their head one of their Vice-Presidents, M. Daru.  This gentleman was violently struck by the soldiers, and the Representatives who accompanied him were driven back at the point of the bayonet.  Three of them, M. de Talhouet, Etienne, and Duparc, were slightly wounded.  Several others had their clothes pierced.  Such was the beginning.

Driven from the doors of the Assembly, the Deputies retired to the mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement.  They were already assembled to the number of about three hundred when the troops arrived, blocked up the approaches, and prevented a greater number of Representatives from entering the apartment, though no one at that time was prevented from leaving it.

Who then were those Representatives assembled at the mairie of the Tenth Arrondissement, and what did they do there?  Every shade of opinion was represented in this extemporaneous Assembly.  But four-fifths of its members belonged to the different conservative parties which had constituted the majority.  This Assembly was presided over by two of its Vice-Presidents, M. Vitet and M. Benoist d’Azy.  M. Daru was arrested in his own house; the Fourth Vice-President, the illustrious General Bedeau, had been seized that morning in his bed, and handcuffed like a robber.  As for the President, M. Dupin, he was absent, which surprised no one.  Besides its Vice-Presidents, the Assembly was accompanied by its secretaries, its ushers, and even its phonographer who preserved for posterity the records of this last and memorable sitting.  The Assembly, thus constituted, began by voting a decree in the following terms: 

“In pursuance of article sixty-eight of the constitution, viz., the President of the Republic, the ministers, the agents, and depositaries of public authority are responsible, each in what concerns himself respectively, for all the acts of the Government and the Administration:  any measure by which the President of the Republic dissolves the National Assembly, prorogues it, or places obstacles in the exercise of its powers is a crime of high treason.