French revolution of 1848

Origins

The Revolution of 1848, major political event, was born from a conjunction of several crises.

An economic crisis

The riots are the results of several years of an economic crisis without precedent, since it is at the same time of a crisis of old mode and a crisis of modern capitalism.

Since 1846, bad harvests involve an agricultural crisis which makes increase the price of goods, in particular that of the bread, the basic food of the people. The wages not being increased, the purchases of goods decrease and the public revenue falls - because the taxes do not return any more, preventing its intervention.

In addition, there is a crisis of modern capitalism, result of an excess of speculation on the quoted values, causing a slump in prices of the railway values. The peasants, the workmen and the middle-class men undergo all this crisis.

A moral crisis

Two scandals shook the public opinion little before 1848. In April - May 1847, the scandal Tests-Cubières, in which ministers are convinced of corruption. Then in August 1847, the scandal Choiseul-Praslin. The duke of Choiseul-Praslin assassinates his wife. These two businesses will sully Monarchy with July.

A political crisis

Since 1845, it reigns in France a intellectual effervescence. Very many authors publish books on the Révolution, among which Edgar Quinet, Michelet and Louis Blanc. Alphonse of Lamartine publishes the Histoire of Of Gironde the , real success sold with 100.000 specimens before 1848. In addition, the persons in charge of the government do not realize of the frame of mind of the people and are pulled about between several positions.

The banquet

After the attempted murder of Fieschi on Louis-Philippe, the public gatherings are prohibited. The opposition thus organized “Banquets”, meals where a great number of partisans met, ate and discussed around large liberal and republican speakers. The second Campagne of the Banquets begins in 1847. One of the banquets must be held in the twelfth district of Paris, on February 22nd, 1848. The government decides to prohibit it, which causes the anger of the newspapers and the release of the riots.

Parisian leaven

If the mode of the Monarchie of July is worn, the political crisis and economic worsened, the social and urban “compost” of the capital is favorable to the expression of a dissatisfaction remained latent.

Paris of 1848 is still Paris of the French revolution with its old houses and its narrow streets, with this kind of border between the West and Is, which will be tragically recalled at the time of the Journées of June 1848, by the line of battle which, of the Rochechouart boulevard to current the Boulevard of Port-Royal, will follow the Poissonnière boulevard, the street Saint-Denis, will cross the Île of the City and will go up the street Saint-Jacob. If this border is by no means rigid (the popular quarters extending towards the East, overflowing towards the " Latin Quarter of Paris " , the Town hall, the Louvre or the Tileries), differentiation are very clear between the classes " privilégiées" (or higher) and the " populate parisien". In Paris in 1848, the conditions of existence (lasted and hardness of work, misery, conditions of hygiene and health, even frightening environment of criminality) are such as mortality at the popular classes often exceeds 30 per 1000.

Even after the projections of 1830 obtaining a constitutional monarchy, antagonisms are exasperated (in these times of epidemic, of Choléra, food shortage, financial crisis, political competitions or quarrel in connection with the religious schools) more regularly in the capital than in province and can then make re-appear the barricades.

- the confusion of the Auxerre-native Saint-Germain-the church and the archbishop's palace in protest against the celebration of a mass legitimist, then the beginning of insurrection following the verdict pronounced against 19 officers of the National guard (1831), the riot at the time of the burial of the general Lamarque showing 800 dead (1832), the street fightings (heavily repressed by Bugeaud) caused by the arrest of 150 militants of the Company of the Human rights and the promulgation of the law on associations (1834), the attack against the king (1835), the incidents to push back the attackers of the Town hall and the police headquarter (1839) there are significant first decade.

- the vigorous standpoint to the Room against the Vote for all of Thiers (1840) and of Guizot (1842) refusing to take into account the democratic aspirations answers by an end not to receive with the petition supporting the National Guards expressing to obtain the right to vote and with the launching of the very first countryside of " banquets" in favor of the electoral reform (1840). If the demonstrations and strikes of the workmen of the textile, the building and the cabinetmakers turn to the riot Faubourg Saint-Anthony (1840), so of the demonstrators ravel with the " flag rouge" by stressing " Live the Republic! " (1841), the following years are characterized by the economic and financial by-effects country badly prepared with such a fast evolution, with budding of scandals, and small refrains of attempts regicides, to the long countryside of the banquets.

Revolution

The Guizot government finally decides to prohibit these false banquets and true political meetings.

the February 14th, the prefect of police prohibits a projected banquet with Paris for 19. To the call of Armand Marrast, in the National , the Parisian ones are invited to express the 22, date on which the banquet was deferred. The gathering must be carried out Place of the Madeleine. The day before, however, the main leaders of the opposition move back in front of the showdown and give the counter-order to cancel the banquet and the demonstration. The government seems to have to carry it; entrusting, it decides not to apply the military devices envisaged in the event of serious incidents.

In fact, government and opposition will be overflowed by the situation developing with the wire of the hours in " révolution".

the February 22nd in the morning, of the hundreds of students (of which some had been already mobilized as of the January 3rd to denounce the suppression of the courses of Jules Michelet) gather place of the the Pantheon, then go to the Madeleine where they mix with the workmen. The demonstrators (3 000 people) move then towards the House of Commons, Place of the Harmony, with the cries of " Lives the Reform! In low Guizot! ". But as a whole, the police force controls the situation. The military occupation of Paris was issued around 4 p.m. The king can count on 30.000 soldiers, the supplement of artillery, the safety of the forts which encircle the capital. There is, finally, the National guard, 40.000 men approximately.

After some incidents (a death), the disorders move towards the church Saint-Roch, the demonstration is organized, the situation envenime since the crisis cannot be untied, the Room having refused a few hours more early the application of committal for trial of the government Guizot deposited by Odilon Barrot.

the morning of February 23rd, whereas the insurrection develops, the national guards of the second Legion, Boulevard Montmartre, shout " Lives the Reform! ". In other districts, various battalions of the National guard protect the workmen against the municipal guards and even against the troop from Line. The National guard is posed thus as a referee between the army and the people. This defection rings the knell of the capacity of Guizot.

Louis-Philippe suddenly realizes of the unpopularity of his minister and is solved, in the afternoon, to replace it by the count Molé, which is equivalent accepting the reform. The king returns certainly tardily his minister Guizot, but the protest is calmed: the worst seems prevented even if the climate remains tended.

In evening, crowd saunters under lampions to express her joy and plans to go under the windows of Guizot to hoot it. Dissatisfaction had been so deep since months and the tension of the last hours so sharp that the slightest incident could still put in danger this payment " légaliste" and impromptu of the crisis and to revive the revolutionary heats. In the district of the Nasturtiums, a street is barred by 14th Line and the provocation of a demonstrator carrying a torch towards an officer has tragic consequences. Believing themselves threatened, the guard opens fire, leaving on the paving stone more than 50 killed which " justifient" the bounce and the amplification of the movement protester, whereas the appeasing seemed in right track. This shooting of the boulevard of the Nasturtiums, the walk of the corpses at night to the gleam of the torches, on a cart in the streets of Paris, the call of the alarm bell announcing the massacre, enters 23 hours and midnight, of Saint-Merri with Saint-Sulpice, start again the insurrection. Since there are 52 martyrs, dévalise the arms manufacturers and one barricades are built. There are of them soon 1.500 in all the city. The working world there coudoie student's youth and lower middle class.

While Paris is raised, the king, with the Tuileries, does not have any more a government. The marshal Bugeaud, appointed higher commander of the army and the National guard of Paris, is convinced that it can overcome the riot, but the sovereign refuses the solution of force. Far too much blood already ran.

the February 24th, Louis-Philippe does not manage to take again in hand the situation.

When the palate starts to be attacked by crowd, about midday, the king abdicates in favor of his 9 year old grandson, the count of Paris, entrusts the Régence to the duchess of Orleans, then is solved to take the way of the exile. At the beginning of the afternoon, the duchess of Orleans goes to the Palate-Bourbon to make there invest her son and make there proclaim regency officially, in the hope to save the dynasty. The deputies, in their majority, seem favorable to a regency. But the republicans learned from their failure of 1830 and while the middle-class organizes a new government simply more liberal, they force the hand: during the meeting, the Palate-Bourbon is invaded by the revolutionists who, of agreement with the elected officials of the extreme left, push back any monarchical solution and make proclaim a provisional government.

the February 25th, a republican provisional government is established, the Monarchie of July is extinct, the Second Republic French was born.

It is estimated that the three days of February made 350 died and at least 500 wounded.

Accounts and analyzes

Karl Marx analyzes the events in the class struggles in France (1) :

“ the February 25th, about midday, the République was not proclaimed yet, but, on the other hand, all the ministries were already distributed between the middle-class elements of the Provisional government and between the generals, bankers and lawyers of the National . But, this time, the workmen were determined not to more tolerate one retraction similar to that of July 1830. They were ready to start the combat again and to impose the Republic by the force of the weapons. It is with this mission that Raspail went to the Town hall. In the name of the Prolétariat Paris IEN, it ordered at the Provisional government to proclaim the Republic, informant that if this order of the people were not carried out in the two hours, it would return to the head of 200 000 men. The corpses of the combatants were still hardly cooled, the Barricade S were not removed, the workmen were not disarmed and the only force which one could oppose to them was the National guard. In these circumstances, the political considerations and the legal scruples of the Provisional government disappeared abruptly. The two hours deadline was not yet past that already over all the walls of Paris were spread out in gigantic characters :
French Republic! Freedom, Equality, Fraternity! ”

These revolutionary days appear in sentimental Education of Flaubert; they form the framework of the beginning of the third part:

“ the day before at the evening, the spectacle of the carriage containing five corpses collected among those of the boulevard of the Nasturtiums had changed the provisions of the people; and, while Tileries the aide-de-camps followed one another, and that Mr. Molé, making a new cabinet, did not return, and that Mr. Thiers tried to compose some another, and that the King baffled, hesitated, then gave to Bugeaud the general command to prevent it from making use of it, the insurrection, as directed by only one arm, organized itself formidably. Men of a frantic eloquence haranguaient crowd with the corner of the streets; others in the churches sounded the alarm bell with full flight; one ran lead, one rolled of the cartridges; the trees of the boulevards, the urinals, the benches, the grids, the gas burners, all was torn off, reversed; Paris in the morning was covered with barricades. Resistance did not last ; everywhere the national guard interposed; - so that at eight hours, the people, of gladly or force, had five barracks, almost all the town halls, the strategic points surest. Of itself, without jolts, monarchy was based in a fast dissolution; and one now attacked the station of Castle-in Eau, to deliver fifty prisoners, who were not there”

Victor Hugo lengthily evokes this Revolution in its Things Seen.

See too

the lived testimony of lawyer and politician Jean-Baptiste Roustain
Days of June
8 hours

External bonds

Synthèse on the site Hérodote.net
Article of Inserted

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