National Legislative Assembly (France, 1849–1851)

The Constitution of 1848 created a single assembly of 750 members, elected by male universal suffrage for three years, which the president could not dissolve. In the election of 1849 the Party of Order, the conservative coalition of Legitimists, Orléanists and Bonapartists, won about 64 per cent of the seats. The moderate republicans held only about 11 per cent, while the Democratic Socialists ("démoc-socs"), with their more social programme, won about 25 per cent of both votes and seats. The president had to keep the Party of Order leader Odilon Barrot at the head of the government.

The Assembly first broke the republicans. When the French expeditionary force attacked the Roman Republic on 3 June 1849, the démoc-socs invoked Article 5 of the Constitution, by which the republic never used force against the liberty of any people, and moved to impeach the president and the government; the motion was rejected by 361 votes to 202. Their peaceful demonstration of 13 June was dispersed by Changarnier's troops, and Ledru-Rollin, Félix Pyat, Delescluze, Considerant and others fled abroad. The Assembly restricted the press and the clubs and on 15 March 1850 passed the Falloux Law, which handed education back to the Church. When the left won again in the by-elections of March 1850, it passed by 433 votes to 241 the electoral law of 31 May with its three-year residence requirement; migrant workers were struck off in large numbers and the electorate fell from 9.6 million to 6.8 million.

The conflict with the president deepened. On 31 October 1849 Bonaparte dismissed the Barrot ministry and formed an extra-parliamentary cabinet of his own men. In 1850 he toured the provinces to win support, and at the Satory review in October Bonapartist soldiers clashed with Changarnier's supporters. In January 1851 he dismissed Changarnier and took the command of the troops from him. The terms of both president and Assembly were to end in May 1852; revising Article 45, which barred the president's re-election, required three quarters of the deputies, and the Party of Order was itself divided over the future. When revision failed, Bonaparte dissolved the Assembly in the coup of 2 December 1851.

Marx opened chapter III of The Eighteenth Brumaire with the words: "On May 28, 1849, the Legislative National Assembly met. On December 2, 1851, it was dispersed. This period covers the span of life of the constitutional or parliamentary republic." He held that the disfranchising "law of May 31, 1850, was the coup d'état of the bourgeoisie", and he called the deputies' habit of mistaking victories inside parliament for real ones parliamentary cretinism.