Coup d’état à l’Elysée (in French)

The Coup d'Etat on 2 December 1851 greatly divided the French people. After more than 150 years, the time has come to put aside partisan perspectives and, through the sources and eye-witnesses, uncover the real historical truth of the event. Here the coup d'Etat is described hour by hour, indeed minute by minute. Alain Decaux narrates with skill and objectivity the long preparation for the coup, the four-day-long coup itself – sixty thousand troops against the barricades – and the final crushing of the insurrection. The reader becomes an eye-witness, almost a participant in the story. On 2 December 1851 two sentences were found stuck to the walls of Paris: “The Assemblée nationale has been dissolved. Universal suffrage is re-established.” Did the idea for the coup d'Etat really take shape in 1851, as an opportunistic reaction to the political situation at the time? Or was it not rather Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte's carefully considered intention, fuelled by thirty years of exile? He had barely reached the 'age of reason' when he saw his uncle, Napoleon I, on the eve of leaving for Waterloo. His uncle considered him thoughtfully, after which Louis-Napoleon heard him murmur: “Maybe he is the future of my dynasty?”
 
This book was awarded the 2008 Fondation Napoléon history prize for a work on the Second Empire.