Operation Rubicon: the coup d'état of the 2nd December 1851
By August of 1851 , at Saint-Cloud, Louis Napoléon, quietly began planning his coup he had met with his inner circle—Saint-Arnaud, his half brother Morny, Persigny, Magnan, and others—and raised the question directly on wether they would back him if he moved against the Assembly. Saint-Arnaud agreed, and the coup was scheduled for mid-September. But he soon urged a delay. If the Assembly was in recess, deputies would be scattered across the provinces, where they might organize resistance. It would be far safer to strike when they were all in Paris—when soldiers could surround the Palais Bourbon and arrest the opposition in one decisive sweep. Louis Napoléon, pressed for money and eager to move, reluctantly agreed to wait until November.
By autumn, rumors of a coup swirled across Europe. In London and Brussels, the political class expected it at any moment, and newspapers speculated openly about the preparations. Inside France, nerves were fraying. Even some of Louis Napoléon’s allies, like Carlier, head of Paris police, hesitated at the prospect of mass arrests. Carlier eventually lost his position, replaced by Maupas—a man of questionable reputation, but one who would obey without hesitation.
On November 4th, as the Assembly reopened, Louis Napoléon put forward a provocative proposal: to repeal the restrictive electoral law of 1850 and to restore universal suffrage. It was a clever move—forcing his enemies, the conservatives of the Party of Order, and the radicals into open conflict with each other. The vote was razor-thin, defeated by only six ballots. The balance of power was fragile, and Louis Napoléon knew time was running short.
Behind the scenes, the army was being quietly prepared. General Magnan pledged the loyalty of his officers of Louis Napoleon , and Saint-Arnaud sent out circulars reminding generals that their duty was to obey the War Ministry without question. The Assembly, fearful of its own vulnerability, debated electing special officers—the quaestors—to command the army in its defense. If the measure passed, Louis Napoléon planned to strike at once. But the proposal failed, and for a brief moment, the coup was postponed.
Still, Louis Napoléon’s mind was set. He fixed the date: December 2, 1851—the anniversary of Napoléon I’s coronation and the great victory at Austerlitz. That night, while President Louis Napoléon celebrated a ball at the Élysée Palace, he slipped away to meet his closest conspirators at a secret meeting arranged for 10:30 p.m. He was the first to arrive, he was soon joined by his brother Morny who had came straight from the Opéra, Persigny, Mocquard, Maupas, and finally Saint-Arnaud. The six men again discussed the final preparations for the coup d’état. Louis Napoléon had labelled the file containing the plans with the code name Rubicon. The discussion lasted only a few minutes, as the plans had already been worked out, and no last-minute changes were deemed necessary. By 11 p.m., the meeting was over. Louis Napoléon said he was confident of success, certain of his destiny and wearing his mother Hortense’s lucky ring. They left the study, and he retired to bed.
In the early hours of December 2, police moved swiftly. Seventy-six opponents were dragged from their beds—among them Thiers, Cavaignac, and Lamoricière. Printing presses were seized, the National Guard neutralized, and troops took up positions across Paris. Large numbers of soldiers were stationed in the Place de la Concorde, the Champs-Élysées, the Tuileries Gardens, on the bridges, and along the quais on both banks of the Seine. By dawn, posters proclaimed Louis Napoléon’s “appeal to the people(APPEL AU PEUPLE): it stated the Assembly was dissolved, and a new constitution would be decided by referendum.
Proclamations of the decree issued by the president and executed by his Minister of the Interior, Charles de Morny,
The deputies tried to resist. Some gathered in the 10th arrondissement and declared Louis Napoléon deposed. Within hours, soldiers stormed in and arrested them. The Constitutional Court also declared him guilty of high treason, but it had no power to enforce its judgment.
The fiercest resistance came not from the conservatives but from radicals and socialist leaders, many of whom were imprisoned.
On the afternoon of December 3, a number of radical deputies issued an appeal to the people of Paris, signed by Victor Hugo as President of a Provisional Government, calling on citizens to rise in defense of the Constitution against Louis Napoléon, whom the Court had declared a traitor. Barricades went up in the Faubourgs, but the response was half-hearted. Workers, recalling how politicians had turned against them in 1848, were reluctant to die for the Assembly. When Deputy Baudin tried to rally them against the coup, he was mocked—and killed at a barricade.
The following day, in his proclamation, Louis Napoléon had urged all law-abiding citizens to stay home and not impede the soldiers. Yet by the afternoon of December 4, the boulevards were full of middle-class onlookers. Paris descended into chaos. Soldiers clashed not with insurgents but with curious civilians. A single shot—its source never discovered—set off the Troops firing blindly into the crowds, and they stormed cafés, and even turned artillery on homes. Hundreds of were killed.
Louis Napoléon’s English friend, Captain Gronow, who was in Paris and supported the coup, blamed the panic of the troops, recalling the army’s resentment against Parisians since the revolution of February 1848.
Elsewhere, peasant uprisings flared in central and southern France. In Nièvre, Var, and the Basses-Alpes, thousands marched under radical lawyers and teachers, sometimes clashing with police or priests. The army, however, suppressed them with ease. For conservatives, these rural revolts seemed to confirm their worst fears of a “Red” revolution, “strengthening” their reluctant support for Louis Napoléon.
The referendum was scheduled for late December. Though voting was technically secret, the atmosphere was heavy with intimidation: newspapers were silenced, meetings banned, and officials pressed voters to say Yes. Still, the majority of France genuinely supported Louis Napoléon. He was the only figure seen as strong enough to restore order and prevent civil war. The Legitimists advised their supporters to abstain, but the Catholic clergy threw its weight behind Louis Napoléon—bishops began calling his victory “providential,” and priests urging congregations to vote (Yes). Cardinal Gousset declared that the “hand of God was visible in the coup”, while La Guéronnière wrote in “Le Pays” that voters had no choice but to support Louis Napoléon, who had saved France from “the terrible settling day of 1852.”
In the “La Patrie”, Amédée de Cesena warned that the alternative to Louis Napoléon would have been confiscation of property, forced levies on the rich, massacres of landowners, destruction of palaces and châteaux, closed churches, and the annihilation of civilization. Reactionaries like Louis Veuillot praised Louis Napoléon as the savior of Catholic France, while moderates such as Montalembert argued that voting (No) was to side with socialism and chaos.
“The act of 2 December has routed all the revolutionaries, all the Socialists, all the bandits of France and Europe… To vote against Louis Napoléon is to support the Socialist revolution… It would be calling in the dictatorship of the Reds to replace the dictatorship of a Prince who for three years has rendered incomparable services to the cause of order and Catholicism.”
When the results were announced, they were overwhelming: over 7.4 million (Yes) votes to just 647,000 No votes. Paris was divided, but the countryside—especially Catholic heartlands—had spoken. Louis Napoléon ordered that a Te Deum for the success of the coup and referendum be held in every cathedral and church on New Year’s Day. He himself attended the service at Notre-Dame. Paris was cloaked in thick fog as he left the Élysée and drove through streets lined with troops. Banners with his initials, L.N., hung from posts, and outside the cathedral, flags and flowers surrounded the figure “7,000,000.” Inside, nearly a thousand candles illuminated the richly decorated cathedral, and a choir of five hundred sang the Te Deum composed by Lesueur for the victory of Austerlitz.
Louis Napoléon attended in triumph before moving into the Tuileries Palace, signaling the end of the Republic. By January 1852, a new constitution confirmed him as President for ten years with sweeping powers. The National Assembly was disbanded, an universal (male) suffrage was restored.
Louis-Napoléon announced that the new constitutions goal was to reinstate the political system that had been set up under the “First Consul”.
During this period, he enhanced his already remarkable popularity, especially among the working classes, whose welfare had never before received such administrative attention. Once order was restored after the coup d’état, Louis Napoléon threw himself into creating employment and securing industrial and social welfare. With funds plentiful, the opposition neutralized, and the nation’s approval, he introduced financial reforms, shifted taxation from necessities to luxuries, increased army pay, and improved housing and sanitation. His plans for extensive railroads, waterways, and docks moved forward. Sunday labor was discouraged, adulteration of food prohibited, public baths and wash-houses were established, asylums built for the destitute and mentally ill, and proper burial systems provided for paupers. The Code Napoléon was revived, and eagles and banners restored to the army.
