Ledru-Rollin – republican democrat challenger to Napoleon III
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin was a lawyer who wrote legal commentaries and defended republicans in trials following the 1830 revolution. He was elected to the National Assembly as a deputy for Le Mans in 1841. He became notable for his attacks on the government of Louis Philippe and founded the journal Le Reforme. His exchanges with the utopian communist Etienne Cabet in Le Reforme in 1845, however, demonstrated his distance from any communistic ideas. He nevertheless formed an alliance with social democratic militants, and together with the socialist Louis Blanc, he spoke at a series of workers’ banquets, which generated support for the uprising which led to the fall of the Guizot government and the abdication of Louis Philippe in February 1848.
Ledru-Rollin became Minister of the Interior in the republican government. Though on the left wing of the provisional government, he was essentially a republican democrat in the Jacobin tradition and, unlike Louis Blanc, the Minister of Labour, was not at that time a socialist. In his ministerial role, he was primarily responsible for the introduction of universal suffrage and for radicalising the provincial administration of prefects and sub-prefects, as shown in the extract below. He was, however, seen as both a bourgeois and as a moderate when, together with Alphonse Lamartine, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who effectively led the republican government, he resisted the popular invasion of parliament. He nevertheless stood as a left-wing candidate for President in the December 1848 election, but with limited support, the election was won by Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who later became Emperor Napoleon III. He led the republican grouping, known as the Mountain, in the 1849 legislative assembly, a group which won a quarter of the votes, but his attempt to impeach the president, Louis Napoleon, after his military intervention in the Roman Republic, was defeated, and Ledru-Rollin fled to England.
Ledru-Rollin became one of the leaders of the republican exiles in London. Though his group was separate from that of Louis Blanc, he gradually moved to a more socialistic position. He established a Central Democratic Committee with the Italian exile Giuseppe Mazzini and the Hungarian exile Lajos Kossuth, and together they issued a Republican Manifesto, which generated a critique from Blanc. In 1870, following an amnesty, he returned to France, being elected to the National Assembly in 1874, dying later that year. His publication in 1850, The Decline of England, which was a critical examination of the social conditions in the country, was not appreciated by his English associates. In exile, Ledru-Rollin remained positive about France’s future (as shown in the second extract below), contrasting this with his negative view of England. His widow published an edition of his other writings in two volumes in 1879.
Ledru-Rollin had a reputation for being a populist and opportunist. He is perhaps best remembered for his comment during one of the riots of the 1848 revolution – “There go the people. I am their leader. I must follow them.” This is perhaps apocryphal, but justified.
“Agents of a revolutionary authority, you are a revolutionary too. After the people’s victory, you have a mandate to proclaim and consolidate its work. To accomplish this task, you are invested with its sovereignty; you stand only before your own conscience. You must do whatever circumstances require for the public good… Republican sentiments must be actively roused. For that, all political duties must be in the hands of reliable, well-trained men. Prefects and sub-prefects must be changed everywhere. Your main task is the elections. They sought to save the country. Our future depends on the composition of the assembly. It must be inspired by the Revolutionary spirit. Your watchword must everywhere be: New men – and, so far as is possible, they should come forward from the people. The country is incompletely educated. So it is for you to guide the country.”
“Such is the essential and sacred character of the Revolution, which struggled not only for the defence of the country, but to realise social justice upon earth, the justice of brothers between citizens, between the people, it succumbed under impotent means, and under the league of interests and fears, to revive at a later period, by a new effort of its people, with their two immortal principles, which are the whole truth of the immortal testament: Equality of citizens, solidarity of nations… it had killed its old enemy, the principle of divine right and authority….”
Further Reading
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre; Kossuth, Lajos and Mazzini, Giuseppe Manifesto of the Republican Party (London 1855 )
Blanc, Louis Observations on the Recent Manifesto of Kossuth, Ledru Rollin and Mazzini (London 1855)
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre The Decline of England (London 1850)
Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre Discourses Politiques 2 vols (Paris 1879)
Ledru-Rollin , Alexandre and Hugo, Victor Les Plus Beaux Discours ed Crastre (Paris undated) Schnerb, Robert Ledru-Rollin (Paris 1948)
Calman, Alvin Ledru-Rollin and the Second French Republic (New York 1922)
Calman, Alvin Ledru-Rollin apres 1848 (Paris 1921)
Mitard, Stanislav L’Affaire Ledru-Rollin (Paris 1952)
Von Stein, Lorenz The History of the Social Movement in France 1789-1850 (1850; reprinted New Jersey: Bedminster Press 1964)
Pilbeam, Pamela Republicanism in Nineteenth Century France (London: Macmillan 1995)
Price, Roger The French Second Republic: A Social History (Cornell University Press 1972)