CONSEQUENCES OF JUNE 13, 1849 O n December 20 the Janus head of the constitutional republic had still shown only one face, the executive face with the indistinct, plain features of L.Bonaparte; on May 28, 1849, it showed its second face, the legislative, pitted with the scars that the orgies of the Restoration and the July Monarchy had left behind.With the Legislative National Assembly the phenomenon of the constitutional republic was completed, that is, the republican form of government in which the rule of the bourgeois class is constituted, the common rule, therefore, of the two great royalist factions that form the French bourgeoisie, the coalesced Legitimists and Orléanists, the party of Order.While the French republic thus became the property of the coalition of the royalist parties, the European coalition of the counterrevolutionary powers embarked simultaneously upon a general crusade against the last places of refuge of the March revolutions.Russia invaded Hungary -- Prussia marched against the army defending the Reich constitution;and Oudinot bombarded Rome.The European crisis was evidently approaching a decisive turning point; the eyes of all Europe were turned on Paris, and the eyes of all Paris on the Legislative Assembly.
On June 11 Ledru-Rollin mounted its tribune.He made no speech;he formulated an indictment of the ministers, naked, unadorned, factual, concentrated, forceful.
The attack on Rome is an attack on the constitution; the attack on the Roman republic is an attack on the French republic.Article 5 of the constitution reads: "The French republic never employs its forces against the liberty of any people whatsoever" -- and the President employs the French army against Roman liberty.Article 54 Of the constitution forbids the executive power to declare any war whatsoever without the consent of the National Assembly.The Constituent Assembly's resolution of May 8 expressly commands the ministers to make the Rome expedition conform with the utmost speed to its original mission; it therefore just as expressly prohibits war on Rome -- and Oudinot bombards Rome.Thus Ledru-Rollin called the constitution itself as a witness for the prosecution against Bonaparte and his ministers.At the royalist majority of the National Assembly, he, the tribune of the constitution, hurled the threatening declaration: "The republicans will know how to command respect for the constitution by every means, be it even by force of arms!" "By force of arms!" came the hundredfold echo of the Montagne.The majority answered with a terrible tumult; the President of the National Assembly called Ledru-Rollin to order -- Ledru-Rollin repeated the challenge, and finally laid on the President's table a motion for the impeachment of Bonaparte and his ministers.By 361 votes to 203, the National Assembly resolved to pass on from the bombardment of Rome to the next item on the agenda.
Did Ledru-Rollin believe he could beat the National Assembly by means of the constitution, and the President by means of the National Assembly?
To be sure, the constitution forbade any attack on the liberty of foreign peoples, but what the French army attacked in Rome was, according to the ministry, not "liberty" but the "despotism of anarchy." Had the Montagne still not comprehended, all experiences in the Constituent Assembly notwithstanding, that the interpretation of the constitution did not belong to those who had made it, but only to those who had accepted it? That its wording must be construed in its viable meaning and that the bourgeois meaning was its only viable meaning That Bonaparte and the royalist majority of the National Assembly were the authentic interpreters of the constitution, as the priest is the authentic interpreter of the Bible, and the judge the authentic interpreter of the laws Should the National Assembly, freshly emerged from the general elections, feel itself bound by the testamentary provisions of the dead Constituent Assembly, whose will an Odilon Barrot had broken while it was alive? When Ledru-Rollin cited the Constituent Assembly's resolution of May 8, had he forgotten that the same Constituent Assembly on May 11 had rejected his first motion for the impeachment of Bonaparte and the ministers; that it had acquitted the President and the ministers; that it had thus sanctioned the attack on Rome as "constitutional";that he only lodged an appeal against a judgment already delivered -- that he, lastly, appealed from the republican Constituent Assembly to the royalist Legislative Assembly? The constitution itself calls insurrection to its aid by summoning, in a special article, every citizen to protect it.Ledru-Rollin based himself on this article.But at the same time, are not the public authorities organized for the defense of the constitution, and does not the violation of the constitution begin only from the moment when one of the constitutional public authorities rebels against the other? And the President of the republic, the ministers of the republic, and the National Assembly of the republic were in the most harmonious agreement.
What the Montagne attempted on June 11 was "an insurrection within the limits of pure reason," that is, a purely parliamentary insurrection.
The majority of the Assembly, intimidated by the prospect of an armed rising of the popular masses, was, in Bonaparte and the ministers, to destroy its own power and the significance of its own election.Had not the Constituent Assembly similarly attempted to annul the election of Bonaparte, when it insisted so obstinately on the dismissal of the Barrot-Falloux Ministry?
