General Cavaignac, who had just come home from Algeria, was made War Minister, and the clubs were closed.  Louis Blanc was sent into exile.  The Orleans family, which had been treated considerately by Lamartine, was forbidden to return to France.

The Assembly was now dissolved, and a new Chamber of Deputies was to be chosen in June.  Among the candidates for election was Prince Louis Napoleon.  He had already, in the days of Lamartine’s administration, visited Paris, and had replied to a polite request from the provisional Government that he would speedily leave the capital, that any man who would disturb the Provisional Government was no true friend to France.  Now he professed to ask only to be permitted to become a representative of the people, saying that he had “not forgotten that Napoleon, before being the first magistrate in France, was its first citizen.”

Then cries of “Vive l’empereur!” began to be heard.  Louis Napoleon’s earliest “idea” had been that France needed an emperor whose throne should be based on universal suffrage.  To this “idea” he added another,—­that it was his destiny to be the chosen emperor.

No one in these days can conceive the hold that the memory of the First Napoleon had, in 1848, on the affections of the French people.  That he put down anarchy with an iron hand was by the Anarchists forgotten.  He was a son of the Revolution.  His marches through Europe had scattered the seeds of revolutionary ideas.  The heart of France responded to such verses as Beranger’s “Grand’-mere.”  In vain Lamartine represented the impolicy and unfairness of proscribing the Orleans family while admitting into France the head of the house of Bonaparte.  Louis Napoleon was elected deputy by four departments; but he subsequently hesitated to take his seat, fearing, he said, that he might be the cause of dissension in the Assembly.

The deputies from Paris were all Socialists, but those from the departments were frequently men of note and reputation.  The country members were nearly all friends to order and conservatism.

The first necessary measure was to get rid of the national workshops.  On June 20, one hundred and twenty thousand workmen were being paid daily two francs each, only two thousand of whom had anything to do, while fifty thousand more were clamoring for admission.

Of course any measure to suppress the national workshops, or to send home those who had come up to Paris for employment in them, was opposed by the workmen.  It was computed that among those employed, or rather paid, by the State for doing nothing, were twenty-five thousand desperate men, ready for any fight, and that half this number were ex-convicts.  The Government had nominally large forces at its command, but it was doubtful how far its troops could be relied on.