Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.[1]
- Alphonse Karr (Les Guêpes, January 1849).
[1] Usually
translated as “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” These words appeared following the
Revolutions of 1848 and one month after Louis Napoleon (returned from exile in
England) was elected by a landslide vote as president of the Second Republic of
France on December 10, 1848. Three years
later (on December 2, the anniversary of his more famous uncle’s coup in 1804) he staged his own coup and revised the 1848 constitution. Exactly a year later (also the anniversary of
the first Napoleon’s victory at Austerlitz), he started calling himself Napoleon III, Emperor of France.
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