The ruling Bonapartist circles acid the counter-revolutionary the press, preparing coup d’état of December 2, 1851, did everything they could to scare all timid and law-abiding citizens by the prospect of anarchy, revolutionary plots, a new Jacquerie and encroachments on property, during the presidential election, scheduled for May 1852. A special roMle in this campaign was played by the pamphlet Le spectre rouge de 1852 (Brussels, 1851) by A. Romieu, a former prefect of police.