"That's no worthless scrap of paper! It's an oath witnessed by God!"
A deputy from the La Réforme faction insisted.
Ryderer-Rollin could be called the most frustrated man in the entire French Second Republic. As the second-in-command of France's second-largest party, he had watched Lamartine fall from power twice, and Dan Gira and Louis Blanc come tumbling down, yet he still hadn't become president.
Lamartine's first fall had been caused by Dan Gira's efforts to push him aside. The second came when he tried to make peace with Austria.
Lamartine's original plan had been to pass the buck to the British, but he hadn't expected them to refuse to take it.
His appeal for help sank like a stone into the sea. The Pro-British Faction seized the opportunity to drive Lamartine from office once again.
The greatest consequence of the Pro-British Faction taking power was that nothing changed. Their interests made it impossible for them to break far from Dan Gira's policies.
The interim president was not Dupont de l'Eure, Arago, Garnier, or another seasoned republican who, historically, had come in second only to Lamartine in the vote. Instead, it was Billefort, a finance official with relatively close ties to the British.
In reality, history had already diverged considerably from the original timeline. France's economy was more developed.
In a sense, it was also more deeply bound to the City of London, and so had been hit harder by the economic crisis.
Meanwhile, the rise of the Austrian Empire, along with the French Second Republic's failures in domestic affairs, diplomacy, and on the battlefield, had weakened the republicans who once held sway. That was why the so-called Pro-British Faction could act so brazenly.
The historical French Second Republic might have been spineless, but it had achieved many firsts and great