Operation Rubicon, December 1851
Len Ortzen describes the Coup d’etat in Paris which prepared the way for the Second Empire.
On a sunny afternoon in the summer of 1851 Auguste de Morny had a long talk with his half-brother, President Louis-Napoléon, as they strolled in the Elysee gardens. The necessity of a coup d’etat was again raised by Morny, and this time the President agreed. ‘It was a great weight lifted from me,’ Morny wrote later. ‘From that moment, I felt glad; I could at last see that the country would be saved and the future assured.’
Morny meant, of course, his own future. He had little doubt that the coup d'etat would be successful if he were allowed to engineer it. There would be some risk involved, obviously, but his gambling instincts rather welcomed it. And his cool, calculating mind and penetrating intelligence set about reducing the risk and amassing as many trump cards as possible.
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