1870 French plebiscite
1870년 프랑스 국민투표
The last plebiscite of the Second Empire, held by Napoleon III on 8 May 1870. It asked voters whether they approved the liberal reforms made since 1860 and the senatus-consultum of 20 April embodying them, and passed by 7.35 million votes to 1.54 million. The French sections of the First International campaigned against it and the workers of the big towns voted no; on the eve of the vote the government arrested members of the International across the country.
In depth
At the elections of 1869 the opposition won 3.3 million votes and a majority in the big towns, and Napoleon III gave the Corps législatif the initiative of laws and in January 1870 entrusted the government to Émile Ollivier. When the senatus-consultum of 20 April introduced ministerial responsibility to parliament and moved the power to revise the constitution from the Senate to the people, the emperor put it to a plebiscite. The question was: "The people approve the liberal reforms made in the Constitution since 1860 by the emperor with the concurrence of the great bodies of state, and ratify the senatus-consultum of 20 April 1870." The liberal opposition, which had supported the reforms, could hardly vote no, and the emperor also meant to secure the succession of his son.
The republicans were divided between voting no and abstaining; Gambetta, Jules Ferry and Thiers recommended a no. The authorities printed only yes ballots, so voters who wished to vote no had to bring their own. Just before the vote the discovery of home-made bombs and the arrest of a man armed to kill the emperor were announced. The result, 7,350,142 yes against 1,538,825 no, was a triumph that won back three million votes compared with the elections of 1869, yet it was the first French plebiscite in which more than eight per cent voted against.
The First Address of The Civil War in France recorded that on the eve of the plebiscite Louis Bonaparte had the members of the International's administrative committees arrested in Paris, Lyons, Rouen, Marseilles, Brest and elsewhere on the pretext of a secret society plotting his assassination, a pretext soon exposed in its full absurdity by his own judges. The real crime of the French branches, it said, was to have told the people that voting the plebiscite was voting despotism at home and war abroad; in all the great towns and industrial centres the working class rose like one man to reject it, but the ignorance of the rural districts turned the balance. Marx held that the ruling classes of Europe celebrated the vote as the emperor's victory over the working class and that it was the signal for the war that followed two months later.