The allotment no longer
lies in the so-called fatherland, but in the register of mortgages. The
Army itself no longer is the flower of the youth of the farmers, it
is the swamp-blossom of the slum-proletariat of the farmer class. It
consists of "remplacants," substitutes, just as the second Bonaparte
himself is but a "remplacant," a substitute, for Napoleon. Its feats of
heroism are now performed in raids instituted against farmers and in the
service of the police;--and when the internal contradictions of his own
system shall drive the chief of the "Society of December 10" across the
French frontier, that Army will, after a few bandit-raids, gather no
laurels but only hard knocks.
It is evident that all the "idees Napoleoniennes" are the ideas of the
undeveloped and youthfully fresh allotment; they are an absurdity for
the allotment that now survives. They are only the hallucinations of
its death struggle; words turned to hollow phrases, spirits turned to
spooks. But this parody of the Empire was requisite in order to free the
mass of the French nation from the weight of tradition, and to elaborate
sharply the contrast between Government and Society.
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