With the revolution of 1848 and the founding of the Second Republic, Hugo was elected deputy to the Constitutional Assembly. Three years later, when Louis Napoleon abolished the republic by a coup d'etat and reestablished the empire, Hugo risked his life trying vainly to rally the workers of Paris against the new emperor and had to flee to Brussels disguised as a workman.
The next nineteen years of Hugo's life were spent in exile, first on the island of Jersey, then on Guernsey. His family and Mlle. Drouet accompanied him into exile. From his island in the English channel Hugo continued to inveigh against the man he considered the perverter of republican liberties, and 1852 and 1853 saw the writing of the satires Napoléon le Petit and Les Châtiments. He also turned again to poetry and the novel, publishing the philosophical Les Contemplations and the remarkable "history of man's conscience," La Légende des Siecles. Three novels also occupied him: Les Misérables, first begun many years before; Les Travailleurs de la Mer (1866), and L'Homme qui rit (1869).
Following the Franco-Prussian War and the fall of the empire in 1870-71, Hugo returned to Paris. It was a triumphal return: He was greeted at the station by an immense crowd and was accompanied through the streets to his hotel amid shouts of "Vive Victor Hugo!" He remained in Paris throughout the siege of the city, and the revenues from the first French publication of Les Châtiments bought two cannons to defend the city. In 1871, the death of one of his sons took him for some time to Brussels; he then returned to Guernsey until the death of another son brought him back to Paris in 1873. He was elected to the Senate in 1876, but two years later poor health forced him to return to the tranquility of Guernsey. His later years were saddened not only by the death of his sons but by that of Mme. Hugo in 1868 and of Mlle. Drouet in 1882.
