Preliminary notes on The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.

A note on the name: the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte was born Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, but emphasized "Napoleon" to evoke his famous and revered uncle. The work by Karl Marx is sometimes given as "Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" and sometimes as "Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte."

The French revolutionary calendar was in place from Nov. 24, 1793-Dec. 31, 1805. Supposedly philosophical and mathematical in its basis, it was divided into 12 months of 30 days: Vendémiaire (vintage month); Brumaire (fog); Frimaire (sleet); Nivôse (snow); Pluviôse (rain); Ventôse (wind); Germinal (seed); Floréal (blossom); Prairial (pasture); Messidor (harvest); Thermidor (heat); Fructidor (fruit). The calendar included a stunningly complicated method of leap years and extra days to keep the calendar in line with the solar year.

18 Brumaire was the date in 1799 (actually 18-19 Brumaire, equivalent to November 9-10) on which Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the Directory of France-the 5-man governing body which had been established in 1795.

Thumbnail history of France, 1814-1851

With Napoleon's defeat in 1814 by a European coalition including Russia, Prussia, Great Britain and Austria, the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France. The new king was the brother of Louis XVI, who had been deposed during the first French Revolution in 1789. The new king took the title of Louis XVIII, since royalists considered the son of Louis XVI to be Louis XVII even though he had never reigned. Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba.

A diplomatic congress assembled at Vienna to carve up Europe among the then great powers, but negotiations did not go well, and the allies were in danger of splitting up over the question of the disposition of Poland and Saxony. There was also widespread dissatisfaction in France over the restorations of the Bourbons, and this encouraged Napoleon to leave Elba and land once more in France.

The great powers quickly (though temporarily) settled their differences and went to war once more against Napoleon. In June 1815, Napoleon marched to meet an allied army under the Duke of Wellington. The two armies met near the village of Waterloo in Belgium. Napoleon's army was routed and four days later Napoleon abdicated a second time. This time he was transported to the island of St. Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821.

The once-again-restored Bourbon dynasty did not try to restore the institutions of the old regime, which had been completely overturned by the Great Revolution, but widespread discontent remained, and in July, 1830, another revolution deposed Louis XVIII (he was forced to flee, not beheaded), and Louis Philippe of the House of Orleans, the "citizen king," ascended the throne. The July Revolution stirred liberals elsewhere in Europe, from Belgium to Russia, but those revolts were quickly suppressed (except that Belgium did achieve independence from Holland, and were "awarded" a king chosen by the great powers).

In 1848 revolution broke out, again throughout Europe. In France, Louis Philippe was deposed and a republic proclaimed. Republicans and socialists had cooperated to overthrow Louis Philippe, but once in power, the alliance disintegrated, and after several months the socialists were crushed. A new constitution, prescribing universal manhood suffrage, was drawn up and Louis Napoleon (1808-73), nephew of the great Napoleon, was elected president of the Second Republic.

The rest of Europe was in turmoil with various republican and nationalistic revolutions, with revolutionary forces increasingly divided in their aims. In France, Louis Napoleon carried through a coup d'etat in 1851 and established a second French Empire, assuming the title of Napoleon III. (Note: when Napoleon I abdicated in 1815, it was in favor of his son, who never ruled, but was known to Bonapartists nevertheless as Napoleon II.)

It was this coup which Karl Marx analyzed in The Eighteenth Brumaire, written in 1852.

Main source: Handbook of Western Civilization, The University of Chicago, 1958.

Karl Marx's Timeline of the February Revolution, from the overthrow of King Louis Phillipe to the coup d'etat of Louis Bonaparte.

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