These reviews led to the outbreak of the long suppressed dissension between Bonaparte and his War Minister Hautpoul, on the one hand, and Changarnier, on the other.In Changarnier the party of Order had found its real neutral man, in whose case there could be no question of his own dynastic claims.
It had designated him Bonaparte's successor.In addition, Changarnier had become the great general of the party of Order through his conduct on January 29 and June 13, I849, the modern Alexander whose brutal intervention had, in the eyes of the timid bourgeois, cut the Gordian knot of the revolution.
At bottom just as ridiculous as Bonaparte, he had thus become a power in the very cheapest manner and was set up by the National Assembly to watch the President.He himself coquetted, for example, in the matter of the salary grant, with the protection that he gave Bonaparte, and rose up ever more overpoweringly against him and the ministers.When, on the occasion of the election law, an insurrection was expected, he forbade his officers to take any orders whatever from the War Minister or the President.The press was also instrumental in magnifying the figure of Changarnier.With the complete absence of great personalities, the party of Order naturally found itself compelled to endow a single individual with the strength lacking in its class as a whole and so puff up this individual to a prodigy.Thus arose the myth of Changarnier, the "bulwark of society." The arrogant charlatanry, the secretive air of importance with which Changarnier condescended to carry the world on his shoulders, forms the most ridiculous contrast to the events during and after the [last] Satory review, which irrefutably proved that it needed only a stroke of the pen by Bonaparte, the infinitely little, to bring this fantastic offspring of bourgeois fear, the colossus Changarnier, back to the dimensions of mediocrity and transform him, society's heroic savior, into a pensioned general.
Bonaparte had for some time been revenging himself on Changarnier by provoking the War Minister to disputes in matters of discipline with the irksome protector.The last review at Satory finally brought the old animosity to a climax.The constitutional indignation of Changarnier knew no bounds when he saw the cavalry regiments file past with the unconstitutional cry: Vive l'Empereur! In order to forestall any unpleasant debate on this cry in the coming session of the Chamber, Bonaparte removed War Minister Hautpoul by appointing him governor of Algiers.In his place he put a reliable old general of the time of the Empire, one who was fully a match for Changarnier in brutality.But so that the dismissal of Hautpoul might not appear as a concession to Changarnier, he simultaneously transferred General Neumayer, the right hand of the great savior of society, from Paris to Nantes.It was Neumayer who at the last review had induced the whole of the infantry to file past the successor of Napoleon in icy silence.Changarnier, himself attacked in the person of Neumayer, protested and threatened.To no purpose.
After two days' negotiations, the decree transferring Neumayer appeared in the Moniteur, and there was nothing left for the hero of Order but to submit to discipline or resign.
Bonaparte's struggle with Changarnier is the continuation of his struggle with the party of Order.The reopening of the National Assembly on November 11 will therefore take place under threatening auspices.It will be a storm in a teacup.In essence the old game must go on.Meanwhile the majority of the party of Order will, despite the clamor of the sticklers for principle in its different factions, be compelled to prolong the power of the President.Similarly, Bonaparte, already humbled by lack of money, will, despite all preliminary protestations, accept this prolongation of power from the hands of the National Assembly as simply delegated to him.
Thus the solution is postponed; the status quo continued; one faction of the party of Order compromised, weakened, made unworkable by the other;the repression of the common enemy, the mass of the nation, extended and exhausted -- until the economic relations themselves have again reached the point of development where a new explosion blows into the air all these squabbling parties with their constitutional republic.
For the peace of mind of the bourgeois it must be said, however, that the scandal between Bonaparte and the parry of Order has the result of ruining a multitude of small capitalists on the Bourse and putting their assets into the pockets of the big wolves of the Bourse.