The Encyclopedia has this to say about Napoleon III:
The Encyclopedia has this to say about Napoleon III:
"Son of Louis Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I...As President of the Second Republic, he consolidated powerful conservative support and instigated the coup of Dec 3, 1851; the legislative assembly was dissolved, and an attempted workers' uprising was brutally suppressed. He gained dictatorial powers in the new Constitution of Jan 1852, and in November a plebiscite overwhelmingly approved the establishment of the Second Empire.1At 8 am the morning of Dec 2, 18512 a servant informed Victor Hugo that the National Assembly was occupied by the troops. Hugo threw on clothes and entered the streets. Hugo's Quarter was one of the few to erect a barricade, perhaps due to his activity that morning. At one point Hugo was surrounded by a cheering crowd. What were they to do?
"Citizens! You have two hands. Take your legal rights in one and your rifle in the other and attack Bonaparte!"Victor Hugo spent only a week in France under the control of Napoleon III, before he began his life as an exile. First in Belgium, then in England. Within the next two years he published two attacks on Napoleon III: Napoleon la Petit (Napoleon the Little) and a collection of poetry: La Chatiments (The Chastisements). Napoleon la Petit came first, and Hugo told a publisher friend regarding La Chatiments, "Louis Bonaparte has only been cooked on one side, it is time to turn him over on the grill."
"Bravo! Bravo!" cried the people.
A bourgeoise who was shutting up his shop said to me, "Keep your voice down. If they hear you talking like that, they'll shoot you."
"In that case," I replied, "you would parade my body through the streets and my death would be a boon if God's justice came of it!"
"Vive Victor Hugo!" they all cried.
I told them, "Cry Viva la Constitution!"
From one poem:
The child had got two bullets in the head.Les Miserables is about a student uprising that took place on June 5, 1832. However, the novel was published in 1860, after the barricades of 1848 and 1851
The home was clean, humble, peaceful, decent;
...an old grandmother was there in tears.
We undressed the child in silence. Its pale mouth
Gaped wide. Death drowned its frightened eye. 3
1The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia
2Account taken from Hugo's Histoire d'un Crime as translated by Graham Robb, in his biography, Victor Hugo, ©1997.
3Poem translated by Graham Robb
Like most Americans, I agree with Victor Hugo that the road to solving the two problems lies in a balance between the ideas of Capitalism and Socialism. Few Americans believe in a pure Capitalistic society; the Socialist ideas of labor unions, a minimum-wage, and child-labor laws, to name a few, have gained strong enough currency in American thought that many don't realize where they came from. Where most Americans differ is exactly what type of balance is desirable. I, like Victor Hugo at the time of his life that he wrote Les Miserables, lean more towards the Liberal side of the equation. While I don't agree with a lot of what they have to say, I have links below to several Socialist and Communist websites from across the globe, in addition to the major political parties in the United States.
POLITICAL PARTIES
All links below tested as of 4/99
(For those who want to know what the bigots are saying, this first link is a great resource for information about the nation's hate-groups)