Victor Hugo resists the 1851 coup and goes into exile

Victor Hugo’s resistance to the coup of December 2, 1851, marked the decisive break between his earlier support for Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte and his republican opposition to the regime. His attempt to rally the people of Paris brought political resistance into the streets; the coup forced him into exile, where opposition to the Second Empire continued in his writing.

From Support to Opposition

Hugo’s republican commitment emerged gradually. He initially supported Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, seeing him as the heir to Napoleonic greatness. As the prince-president moved toward authoritarian rule, however, Hugo turned against him with increasing vehemence, using the epithet “Napoléon le Petit.” The change was more than a shift in allegiance: Hugo came to oppose the political course Louis-Napoléon represented.

The Coup and Exile

On December 2, 1851, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte overthrew the French Second Republic; a year later, he restored the Empire. Hugo, then a deputy of the French Second Republic, attempted to raise the people of Paris against the coup. His resistance left him unable to remain in France, and he went into exile, first in Belgium and then in the Channel Islands. The episode converted his republican stance into sustained opposition from outside the country.

Exile and Political Writing

Exile did not end Hugo’s engagement with the coup. Far from France under the French Second Empire, he composed Les Châtiments in 1853, a collection shaped by personal sadness as well as political revolt. In “Souvenir de la nuit du 4,” he recounts a scene he witnessed during the coup: a child was shot dead, receiving two bullets in the head. The poem carries the violence of the political crisis into his writing, making the fate of a child part of the record of the coup he had resisted.