Philip’s Reviews > The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte > Status Update

While Bonaparte is of the house of the peasant, there's nothing he can do materially for them as all they want is in the past or in their minds.

While the Legitimists are the party of the Landed Aristocracy, and the Orleanists are the party of Finance, the Napoleonists are the party of the Peasants.

Louis Bonaparte achieves his coup d'état on December 2, 18th Brumaire LX, and all thanks to the Party of Order self-immolation to protect itself against the imaginary 'red anarchist' threat.

VII

If the proletariat had risen up on December 2 it would have united the bourgeoisie at its weak moment and suffered another defeat.

Talks of coup have been ongoing since a month after Bonaparte was elected so that when the real thing showed up almost no one took it seriously by then.
The Party of Order shows it has no majority anymore as one or the other faction votes against itself.

The aristocracy of finance fully backs President Bonaparte against the parliamentary Party of Order, and blames a downturn in commerce on the political situation, even though England has an industrial crisis at the same time, and anyway the situation starts to recover as the crisis deepens.

The Party of Order fully implodes under suggestions that the Orleanist and Legitimist branches should merge, instead they collapse under their fundamental class interests - industrialists and bankers, and landed aristocracy respectively - and by a shifting base of support.
The Party of Order could not choose whether it wanted to support the President, the constitution or oppose either.

VI

The Party of Order must decide. Will it vote against a constitutional revision that Bonaparte wants and be relegated into oblivion, or for it and watch it fail, vetoed by the Republicans, or even submit to the executive and end the Republic.

The National Assembly gives up on calling for the army and accepts the dismissal of Changarnier. The Party of Order starts collapsing as it sides with the executive over itself.

Louis Bonaparte manoeuvres his cabinet and the army into an advantageous position, and his Party of Order does its job of shutting down anything that might bring instability to the State.