[FRENCH COUP D'ETAT OF 1851]: MAY EDWARD HARRISON: (1824-1887) English-American Painter who spent much of his ...

[FRENCH COUP D'ETAT OF 1851]: MAY EDWARD HARRISON: (1824-1887) English-American Painter who spent much of his career in Paris, residing permanently in the French capital from 1851. A good, lengthy A.L.S., Edward H May, four pages, 4to, Paris, 14th December 1851, to 'My dear Johnson'. May provides his correspondent with a first hand account of the French Coup d'Etat, which had commenced less than two weeks earlier, and states, in part, 'Of course you will have read the accounts of the last revolution here, your papers will be full of it and contain probably as good an account as I good (sic) give you and perhaps a better history than I know myself as all the press here is awed into the service of Louis Napoleon and dare only give the most one sided & partial views of the occurrences that took place then. I passed over the Boulevard the day after the surrender of the barricades & found some of the houses much battered by the cannon shot & musketry. They say that the soldiers behaved more brutally than on any former occasion. Most of them were drunk & many of the officers. About every officer had a cigar in his mouth, a very un-soldier like thing but which gave an appearance of great coolness & premeditation in the arrangement of things. At the Porte St. Denis the soldiers were taken off the Boulevard for 5 hours on purpose to allow the people time to build the barricade without molestation until it should be nearly completed that the destruction of its defenders might be more complete & inevitable. An American named Sterling happened to be on the Boulevard near the barricade when the soldiers commenced the attack. He took refuge with some 18 or 20 men & women, most of them inoffensive & respectable inhabitants, in a booksellers shop which was immediately entered by the drunken soldiers & every person but himself bayonetted, his own escape was almost miraculous & through the intervention of an officer. Dr. Hunt & another American named Cagon were walking peaceably on the Boulevard des Italiens on the Tuesday evening of the day when the ''coup d'etat'' took place, a crowd of boys passed singing the Marseillaise & crying ''Vive la Republique'' after they had passed a party of Sargents de ville came up & arrested Hunt and his friend, they neither of them attempted to resist. Hunt was seized by two of these cowardly brutes & a third came up & struck him over the head with a ''case tete'', an instrument on the principle of the sling shot of the ''bhoys'', his head was cut open & in that state he was dragged before a Commissaire de Police who discharged him as nothing could be alledged (sic) against him but his wound confined him to the house twelve days and he had a narrow escape with his life. Cagon although equally innocent was sent to the Conciergerie where he was confined with twelve hundred other wretched prisoners in a miserable dungeon for 5 days and only released after great exertions on the part of Mr. Rives and the consul. Numbers of people have been shot scarcely with the form of a trial on suspicion of being opposed to the government. A few days ago seventy poor wretches were shot on the ''Champ de Mars'' charged with having arms in their possession. I have not heard of any Americans having been killed, some Lieutenant Jones of the army or navy, I don't know which, was shot through the thigh and had two fingers shot off. I have heard of three or four English having been shot, among others Parris the druggist in the Rue de la Paix whose shop you may remember. The Provinces are in a wretched state of disturbance and excitement, almost half the cities and large towns have been declared in a state of siege. I do not apprehend however another actual outbreak in Paris as a struggle against 150,000 men (which is the number of soldiers within the walls of Paris at present) would be too unequal & hopeless. The election for President takes place next Sunday & Monday if that can be called an election where there is but one candidate whom people dare not & could not oppose. The election (so called) in the army was a farce of the richest character, the very few officers who dared to vote against Napoleon were cashiered & I have only heard of one soldier who did not vote for him, & he declared himself not sufficiently instructed to vote. This was paraded in the papers in evidence of the freedom allowed in the army!' May continues his letter with news of his own activities ('I am still working in the atelier or under the direction of [Thomas] Couture though I have not attempted to paint many pictures'), expressing disappointment that his Esmeralda was not bought by the art union, referring to New York and a recent visit to England ('I thought I never had seen so beautiful a country'), mutual acquaintances and the prospect of making some studies in the Louvre. With a postscript cross written to the first page and signed by May with his initials. A letter of fine content. Some light age wear and a couple of small, minor tears to a few edges, otherwise VG The French Coup d'Etat of 2nd December 1851 was staged by the then President of the French Second Republic, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1808-1873, nephew of Napoleon I). Code-named Operation Rubicon and timed to coincide with the anniversary of Napoleon I's coronation and victory at Austerlitz, the coup ended in the successful dissolution of the French National Assembly and the subsequent re-establishment of the French Empire the next year.