French Revolution of 1848



The 1848 Revolution in France, sometimes known as the February Revolution (révolution de Février), was one of a wave of revolutions in 1848 in Europe. In France the revolutionary events ended the Orleans monarchy (1830–48) and led to the creation of the French Second Republic.

Following the overthrow of Louis Philippe in February, the elected government of the Second Republic ruled France. In the months that followed, this government steered a course that became more conservative. On 23 June 1848, the people of Paris rose in insurrection, which became known as June Days Uprising - a bloody but unsuccessful rebellion by the Paris workers against a conservative turn in the Republic's course. On 2 December 1848, Louis Napoleon was elected President of the Second Republic, largely on peasant support. Exactly four years later he suspended the elected assembly, establishing the Second French Empire, which lasted until 1871.

The February revolution established the principle of the "right to work" (droit au travail), and its newly established government created "National Workshops" for the unemployed. At the same time a sort of industrial parliament was established at the Luxembourg Palace, under the presidency of Louis Blanc, with the object of preparing a scheme for the organization of labour. These tensions between liberal Orleanist and Radical Republicans and Socialists led to the June Days Uprising.

Background
Under the Charter of 1814, Louis XVIII ruled France as the head of a constitutional monarchy. Upon Louis XVIII's death, his brother, the Count of Artois, ascended to the throne in 1825, as Charles X. Supported by the ultra-royalists, Charles X was an extremely unpopular reactionary monarch whose aspirations were far more grand than those of his deceased brother. He had no desire to rule as a constitutional monarch, taking various steps to strengthen his own authority as monarch and weaken that of the lower house.

In 1830, Charles X of France, presumably instigated by one of his chief advisors Jules, Prince de Polignac, issued the Four Ordinances of St. Cloud. These ordinances abolished freedom of the press, reduced the electorate by 75%, and dissolved the lower house. This action provoked an immediate reaction from the citizenry, who revolted against the monarchy during the Three Glorious Days of 26–29 July 1830. Charles was forced to abdicate the throne and to flee Paris for the United Kingdom. As a result, Louis Philippe, of the Orleanist branch, rose to power, replacing the old Charter by the Charter of 1830, and his rule became known as the July Monarchy.

Nicknamed the "Bourgeois Monarch", Louis Philippe sat at the head of a moderately liberal state controlled mainly by educated elites. Supported by the Orleanists, he was opposed on his right by the Legitimists (former ultra-royalists) and on his left by the Republicans and Socialists. Louis Philippe was an expert businessman and, by means of his businesses, he had become one of the richest men in France. Still Louis Philippe saw himself as the successful embodiment of a "small businessman (petite bourgeoisie). Consequently, he and his government did not look with favour on the big business (bourgeoisie), especially, the industrial section of the French bourgeoisie. Louis Philippe did, however, support the bankers, large and small. Indeed, at the beginning of his reign in 1830, Jaques Laffitte, a banker and liberal politician who supported Louis Philippe's rise to the throne, said "From now on, the bankers will rule." Accordingly, during the reign of Louis Philippe, the privileged "financial aristocracy," i.e. bankers, stock exchange magnates, railroad barons, owners of coal mines, iron ore mines, and forests and all landowners associated with them tended to support Louis Philippe, while the "industrial section of the bourgeoisie which may have owned the land their factories sat on but nothing much more, were disfavoured by Louis Philippe and actually tended to side with the middle class and laboring class in opposition to Louis Philippe in the Chamber of Deputies. Naturally, landownership was favoured, and this elitism resulted in the disenfranchisement of much of the middle and working classes. By 1848 only about one percent of the population held the franchise. Even though France had a free press and trial by jury, only landholders were permitted to vote, which alienated the petty bourgeoisie and even the industrial bourgeoisie from the government. Louis Philippe was viewed as generally indifferent to the needs of society, especially to those members of the middle class who were excluded from the political arena. Early in 1848, some Orleanist liberals, such as Adolphe Thiers, had turned against him, disappointed by Louis Philippe's opposition to parliamentarism. A Reform Movement developed in France which urged the government to expand the electoral franchise, just as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland had done in 1832. The more radical democrats of the Reform Movement coalesced around the newspaper, La Réforme. However, the more moderate republicans and the liberal opposition rallied around the Le National newspaper Starting in July 1847 the Reformists of all shades began to hold "banquets" at which toasts were drunk to "République française" (the French Republic), "Liberté" (Liberty), "Egalité" (Equality) and "Fraternité," (Brotherhood) etc. However, Louis Philippe turned a deaf ear to the Reform Movement and discontent among wide sections of the French people continued to grow. Social and political discontent sparked revolutions in France in 1830 and 1848 which in turn inspired revolts in other parts of Europe. Charles X began to act like an absolute ruler which forced liberals to set up a constitutional monarchy. Workers lost their jobs, bread prices rose, people accused the government of corruption. The French revolted and set up a republic. French successes led to other revolts including those who wanted relief from the suffering caused by the Industrial Revolution and nationalism sprang up hoping for independence from foreign rulers.

Alexis de Tocqueville had observed, "We are sleeping together in a volcano. ... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon." Lacking the property qualifications to vote, the lower classes were about to erupt in revolt.

Economic and international influences
The French middle class watched changes in Britain with interest. When Britain's Reform Act of 1832 extended enfranchisement to any person paying £10 or more per year (previously the vote was restricted to landholders), France's free press took interest. Meanwhile, economically, the working class may perhaps have been slightly better off than Britain's working class. Still, unemployment in France threw skilled workers down to the level of the proletariat. The only nominally social law of the July Monarchy was passed in 1841. This law prohibited the use of child labor of those children under eight years of age, and the employment of children less than 13 years old for night time work. This law, however, was routinely flouted.

The year 1846 saw a financial crisis and bad harvests, and the following year saw an economic depression. A poor railroad system hindered aid efforts, and the Peasant rebellions that resulted were forcefully crushed. Perhaps a third of Paris was on the dole. "Dangerous" writers proliferated such as Louis Blanc ("The right to work") and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon ("Property is theft!").

The events of February
Because political gatherings and demonstrations were outlawed in France, activists of the largely middle class opposition to the government began to hold a series of fund-raising banquets. This campaign of banquets (Campagne des banquets), was intended to circumvent the governmental restriction on political meetings and provide a legal outlet for popular criticism of the regime. The campaign began in July 1847. Frederick Engels was in Paris dating from October 1847 and was able to observe and attend some of these banquets. He wrote a series of articles on these banquets, including "The Reform Movement in France" which was published in the La Rèforme on 20 November 1847; "Split in the Camp—the Rèforme and the National—March of Democracy published in the The Northern Star on 4 December 1847; "Reform Banquet at Lille—Speech of LeDru-Rollin" published in The Northern Star on 16 December 1847; "Reform Movement in France—Banquet of Dijon" published in The Northern Star on 18 December 1847; "The Réforme and the National" published in the Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung on 30 December 1847; and "Louis Blanc's Speech at the Dijon Banquet" published in the Deutsche-Brusseler-Zeitung on 30 December 1847. The banquet campaign lasted until all political banquets were outlawed by the French government in February 1848. As a result, the people revolted, helping to unite the efforts of the popular Republicans and the liberal Orleanists, who turned their back on Louis-Philippe.

Anger over the outlawing of the political banquets brought crowds of Parisians flooding out into the streets at noon on 22 February 1848. The crowds directed their anger against the Citizen King Louis Philippe and his chief minister for foreign and domestic policy--François Pierre Guillaume Guizot. Shouting "Down with Guizot" and "Long Live the Reform" the crowds marched past Guizot's residence. The crowds erected barricades in the streets of Paris, and fighting broke out between the citizens and the Parisian municipal guards.

At 2pm the next day, 23 February, Prime Minister Guizot resigned. Upon hearing the news of Guizot's resignation, a large crowd gathered outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. An officer ordered the crowd not to pass, but people in the front of the crowd were being pushed by the rear. The officer ordered his men to fix bayonets, probably wishing to avoid shooting. However, in what is widely regarded as an accident, a soldier discharged his musket, which resulted in the rest of the soldiers firing into the crowd. Fifty-two people were killed.

Paris was soon a barricaded city. Omnibuses were turned into barricades, and thousands of trees were felled. Fires were set, and angry citizens began converging to the royal palace.

King Louis Philippe abdicated and fled to the UK.

The Second Republic
On 26 February 1848, the liberal opposition came together to organize a provisional government, called the Second Republic. The poet Alphonse de Lamartine was appointed president of the provisional government. Lamartine served as a virtual dictator of France for the next three months. Elections for a Constituent Assembly were scheduled for 23 April 1848. The Constituent Assembly was to establish a new republican government for France. In preparation for these elections, two major goals of the provisional government were universal suffrage and unemployment relief. Universal male suffrage was enacted on 2 March 1848, giving France nine million new voters. As in all other European nations, women did not have the right to vote. However, during this time a proliferation of political clubs emerged, including women's organizations. Relief for the unemployed was achieved, by the provisional government by enactment of the National Workshops, which guaranteed French citizens' "right to work". The "right" of a citizen to work and indeed the National Workshops themselves had been the idea of Jean Joseph Louis Blanc. By May 1848 the National Workshops were employing 100,000 workers and paying out daily wages of 70,000 livres. Full employment proved far from workable, as peak unemployment may have peaked at around 800,000 people, with much under-employment on top of that. On May 31st, 15,000 jobless French rioted as rising xenophobia persecuted Belgian workers in the north. In 1848, 479 newspapers were founded alongside a 54% decline in the number of businesses in Paris, as most wealth had evacuated the city. There was a corresponding decline in the luxury trade and credit became expensive.

The rise of conservatism within the Second Republic
Naturally, the provisional government was disorganized as it attempted to deal with France's economic problems. The conservative elements of French society were wasting no time in organizing against the provisional government. After roughly a month, conservatives began to openly oppose the new government, using the rallying cry "order", which the new republic lacked.

Additionally, there was a major split between the citizens of Paris and those citizens of the more rural areas of France. The provisional government set out to establish deeper government control of the economy and guarantee more an equal distribution of resources. As noted above, to deal with the unemployment problem, the provisional government established National Workshops. The unemployed were given jobs building roads and planting trees without regard for the demand for these tasks. The population of Paris ballooned as job seekers from all over France came to Paris to work in the newly formed National Workshops. To pay for these the new National Workshops and the other social programs, the provisional government placed new taxes on land. These taxes alienated the "landed classes"—especially the small farmers and the peasantry of the rural areas of France—from the provisional government. Hardworking rural farmers were resistant to paying for the unemployed city people and their new "Right to Work" National Workshops. The taxes were widely disobeyed in the rural areas and, thus, the government remained very financially strapped for cash. Popular uncertainty about the liberal foundations of the provisional government became apparent in the 23 April 1848 elections. Despite the agitation from the left, voters elected a constituent assembly which was primarily moderate and conservative. In May, Jacques-Charles Dupont de l'Eure, chairman of the provisional government, made way for the Executive Commission, a body of state acting as Head of State with five co-presidents.

The results of the 23 April 1848 election were a disappointment to the radicals in Paris except for the election of one candidate popular among urban workers--François-Vincent Raspail. Many radicals felt the elections were a sign of the slowing down of the revolutionary movement. These radicals in Paris pressured the government to head an international "crusade" for democracy. Independence of other European states, such as Poland was urged by the Paris radicals. In 1848, Poland as a national state, did not exist. The nation of Poland had been gradually "partitioned" or divided between foreign powers of Prussia, Russia, and Austria in 1773, 1793. Finally in 1795, all of the Polish nation was swallowed up by the three powers. However, it was an opportune time to raise the issue of Polish independence as Poles were also undergoing their own period of revolt in 1848 starting with the uprising in Poznań on 20 March 1848. (See Wielkopolska Uprising.)

However, the government of the National Constituent Assembly continued to resist the radicals. The radicals began to protest against the National Constituent Assembly government. On 15 May 1848, Parisian workmen feeling their democratic and social republic was slipping away, invaded the Assembly en masse and proclaimed a new Provisional Government. This attempted revolution on the part of the working classes was quickly suppressed by the National Guard. The leaders of this revolt—Louis Auguste Blanqui, Armand Barbès, François Vincent Raspail and others—were arrested. The trial of these leaders was held in Bourges, France, from March 7 to April 3, 1849.

The conservative classes of society were becoming increasing fearful of the power of the working classes in Paris. They felt a strong need for organization and organized themselves around the need for "order"—the so-called "Party of Order." For the Party of Order the term "order" meant a roll back of society to days of Louis Philippe. The Party of Order was now the dominant member of the government. As the main force of reaction against revolution, the Party of Order forced the closure of the hated Right to Work National Workshops on 21 June 1848. On 23 June 1848, the working class of Paris rose in protest over the closure of the National Workshops. On that day 170,000 citizens of Paris came out into the streets to erect barricades. To meet this challenge, the government appointed General Louis Eugène Cavaignac to lead the military forces suppressing the uprising of the working classes. General Cavaignac had been serving in the Army in Algeria. Cavaignac had returned from Algeria and in the elections of 23 April 1848, he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly. Cavaignac arrived in Paris only on 17 May 1848 to take his seat in the National Assembly.

Between 23 June and 26 June 1848, this battle between the working class and Cavaignac came to be known as the "June Days Uprising." Cavaignac's forces started out on 23 June 1848 with an army composed of from 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers of the Paris garrison of the French Army. Cavaignac began a systematic assault against the revolutionary Parisian citizenry, targeting the blockaded areas of the city. However, he was not able to break the stiff opposition put up by the armed workers on the barricades on 23 June 1848. Accordingly, Cavaignac's forces were reinforced with another 20,000–25,000 soldiers from the mobile guard, some additional 60,000 to 80,000 from the national guard. Even with this force of 120,000 to 125,000 soldiers, Cavaignac still required two days to complete the suppression of the working-class uprising.

In February 1848, the workers and petite bourgeoisie had fought together, but now, in June 1848, the lines were drawn differently. The working classes had been abandoned by the bourgeois politicians who founded the provisional government. This would prove fatal to the Second Republic, which, without the support of the working classes, could not continue. Although the governmental regime of the Second Republic continued to survive until December 1852, the generous, idealistic Republic to which the February Days had given birth, ended with the suppression of the "June Days."

The "Party of Order" moved quickly to consolidate the forces of reaction in the government and on 28 June 1848, the government appointed Louis Eugène Cavaignac as the head of the French state. On 10 December 1848 a presidential election was held between four candidates. Cavaignac, was the candidate of the Party of Order. Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin was also a candidate in that presidential election. Ledru-Rollin was the editor of the La Réforme newspaper and as such was the leader of the radical democrats among the petty bourgeoisie. François-Vincent Raspail was the candidate of the revolutionary working classes. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte was the fourth presidential candidate. Napoleon III won the presidential election of 10 December 1848 with 5,587,759 votes as opposed to 1,474,687 votes for Cavaignac and 370,000 votes for Ledru-Rollin. Raspail ended up a distant fourth in the balloting.

Class struggles within the revolution
Karl Marx saw the "June Days" uprising as strong evidence of class conflict. Marx saw the revolution as being directed by the desires of the middle-class. While the bourgeoisie agitated for "proper participation", the workers themselves had other concerns. Many of the participants in the 1848 Revolution were of the so-called petite bourgeoisie (the owners of small properties, merchants, shopkeepers, etc.). Indeed the "petite" or petty bourgeoisie outnumbered the working classes (unskilled laborers working in mines, factories and stores, paid for their ability to perform manual labor and other work rather than their expertise) by about two to one in 1848. However, the financial position of the petty bourgeoisie was extremely tenuous. Because of the economic recession of 1846–47, the petty bourgeoisie had developed a great burden of debt as they attempted to stay in business. By 1848, in Paris alone 21,000,000 francs of this debt was "overdue." In the provinces another 11,000,000 francs of commercial paper (business loans) were overdue. During the February Revolution a united front had been presented by all classes of society who were in opposition to Louis Philippe. Both the industrial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie had joined with the working classes in the February Revolution in order to obtain "proper participation" in the government for all sections and classes in society. However, as the working classes became more dissatisfied with the small share of this participation they actually received, they revolted and sought to have their demands heard in the streets. All the "propertied classes of the February Revolution," i.e. the finance bourgeoisie, the industrial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie, became fearful of the workers revolt. Thus, the industrial bourgeoisie and the petty bourgeoisie turned on their former allies in the February Revolution and moved to repress the working-class uprising during the June Days. No class worked harder to suppress the workers revolt than did the petty bourgeoisie. However, since February, because slow sales and economic dislocations of the Revolution, the financial condition of the small merchants and shopkeepers of the petty bourgeoisie had deteriorated even further. As of June 1848, over 7,000 shopkeepers and merchants in Paris had not paid their rent since February. During the June Days, the creditors holding all the commercial paper for those loans and the landlords to whom the back rent was owed (i.e. the finance bourgeoisie), forestalled most attempts to enforce judgment to collect on those debts and back rent owed by the petty bourgeoisie. Once the worker revolt was put down, however, the creditors and landlords began to assert their claims for back rent and overdue debts in court. Bankruptcies and foreclosures rose dramatically following June 1848. It was as if the petty bourgeoisie returned home after their heroic fight against the working class on behalf of the propertied classes only to find that their allies in that fight (i.e. the finance bourgeoisie) had turned against them and turned them out of their businesses and homes. The petty bourgeoisie gathered in a large demonstration at the National Assembly to force the government to inquire into the problem of foreclosures and requiring an extension of debt for all those businessmen who could prove that their insolvency was caused by the Revolution itself. Although a plan containing this proposal was introduced in the National Assembly, the plan was rejected in the end. Thus, the petty bourgeoisie was betrayed and left to its own resources. The result was the pauperization of the petty bourgeoisie. Eventually, individual shopkeepers and merchants left their own failed businesses and sought wage labor and thus became part of the laboring class themselves.

Accordingly, the provisional government, which had been created to address the concerns of the all classes of French society, did not have enough of a foothold in the working classes to be successful in this effort. Therefore, in the end, the provisional government tended to address only the concerns of the liberal bourgeoisie and forgot the concerns of the working class and the concerns of the petty bourgeoisie. Support for the provisional government was especially weak in the countryside, where a vast amount of France's population was agricultural and traditionally less revolutionary. Though the peasantry countryside did have their own concerns, such as food shortages as a result of bad harvests, the concerns of the bourgeoisie were still too far-off from those of the lower classes. Also, the memory of the French Revolution was still fresh in the minds of the French.

The "Thermidorian reaction" and the ascent of Napoleon III to the throne are evidence that the people preferred the safety of an able dictatorship to the uncertainty of revolution. Louis Napoleon portrayed himself as "rising above politics. Each class saw Louis Napoleon as a re-enactment of the "great days" of Napoleon Bonaparte. The various classes of France each had different visions of what a return to the days of Napoleon Bonaparte would mean and they supported Louis Napoleon for different reasons. This phenomenon was precisely what Karl Marx meant when he said "History repeats itself: the first time as a tragedy, the second time as a farce." The various classes and political groupings in France each had different reasons for supporting Louis Napoleon in the election of December 10, 1848. Louis Napoleon, himself  encouraged this by "being all things to all people." Both the Legitimists (Bourbons) and the Orleans (Citizen King Louis-Philippe) monarchists saw Louis Napoleon as the beginnings of a royalist restoration in France. The army voted for Napoleon (against the Mobile Guard which supported Cavaignac in same election) because they saw Napoleon as a supporter of an active foreign policy—war instead of peace. The big industrial bourgeoisie supported Louis Napoleon as a means of breaking with the proletariat and the other revolutionary forces. They felt that Louis Napoleon would suppress all further revolutionary activity. Even sections of the proletariat supported Louis Napoleon (over the petty bourgeoisie socialist Alexandre Ledru-Rollin who was also in the electoral race) because they saw Louis Napoleon as a means of getting rid of the hated Cavaignac and the hated bourgeoisie republicanism of the National Assembly which had betrayed the proletarian interests in the recent June Days. The petty bourgeoisie saw Louis Napoleon as the rule of the debtor over the creditor, as their savior against the large finance capitalists, who had denied them any kind of relief from their crushing debts despite the loyal support the petty bourgeoisie had provided the propertied interests in the June Days suppression of the revolution.

Then there was the peasantry, which overwhelmingly supported Louis Napoleon. The support of the peasantry for Louis Napoleon was so strong that the election of Louis Napoleon has been seen as a coup d'état or an insurrection of the peasantry. Thus, one might argue, without the support of these large lower classes, the revolution of 1848 would not carry through, despite the hopes of the liberal bourgeoisie.

The end of the Revolution in France
Following the repression of the June Days, the French Revolution of 1848 was basically over. Politics in France continued to tilt to the right, as the era of revolution in France came to an end. However the Party of Order and the Cavaignac dictatorship were still fearful of another popular uprising in the streets. Accordingly, on 2 September 1848, the government continued the state of siege that had been in place since the June Days. Also on 2 September 1848, the National Constituent Assembly vowed not to dissolve itself until they had written a new constitution and enacted all the organic laws necessary to implement that new constitution. Although the National Constituent Assembly had attempted to write a constitution before the June Days, only a "first draft" of that constitution had been written before the repression in June 1848. This first draft, however, still contained the phrase "Right to Work" and contained several provisions dealing with the demands of the working classes. In the eyes of the Party of Order, these provisions were now entirely unacceptable, especially in the new conservative political environment after the June Days. Accordingly, on 4 September 1848, the National Constituent Assembly, now controlled by the Party of Order, set about writing a new constitution. " The new constitution was finished on 23 October 1848 and presidential elections were scheduled for 10 December 1848. As noted above Louis Napoleon won the presidential election by a wide margin over the current dictator Louis Cavaignac and the petty bourgeoisie socialist Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. Louis Napoleon's family name of Napoleon rallied support to his cause. Elected with Louis Napoleon was a National Assembly which was filled with monarchists—of either the Legitimist (Bourbon) variety or the Orleanist (Louis-Philippe) variety. As noted above the Bourbons tended to support the landed aristocracy while the Orleanist tended to support the banking and finance bourgeoisie. One of those elected to the National Assembly was Adophe Thiers who was the leader of the Orleanist party. As such, Thiers became the chief spokesman of the finance bourgeoisie, however as time went by he was tending to speak for the whole bourgeoisie, including the rising industrial bourgeoisie. After sweeping the elections, Louis Napoleon tried to return France to the old order. Although, Napoleon purged republicans and returning the "vile multitude" (including Adolphe Thiers) to its former place, Napoleon III was unable to totally turn the clock back. Indeed the presidency of Louis Napoleon, followed by the Second Empire, would be a time of great industrialization and great economic expansion of railroads and banking. By the time of the December 2, 1851 coup, Louis Napoleon had dissolved the National Assembly without having the constitutional right to do so, and became the sole ruler of France. Cells of resistance surfaced, but were put down, and the Second Republic was officially over. He re-established universal suffrage, feared by the Republicans at the time who correctly expected the countryside to vote against the Republic, Louis Napoleon took the title Emperor Napoleon III, and the Second Empire began.

In literature

 * Gustave Flaubert's novel L'éducation sentimentale uses the 1848 revolution as a backdrop for its story.
 * Karl Marx's Essay The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852) describes the 1848 revolution as a class struggle.
 * Laura Kalpakian's novel "Cosette" uses the 1848 revolution as a primary part of the plot.
 * Sylvia Townsend Warner's novel "Summer Will Show" uses the 1848 revolution as a primary part of the plot.
 * Kurt Andersen's novel "Heyday (novel)" begins with one of the protagonists witnessing and unintentionally participating in the 1848 revolution.
 * The character of Piotr Alejandrovitch Miusov, uncle and tutor of Dmitri Fyodorovich Karamazov in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel The Brothers Karamazov, hinted that he himself had almost taken part in the fighting on the barricades in the 1848 revolution.
 * L'Autre Dumas (The Other Dumas), a 2010 French film directed by Safy Nebbou, depicts Alexandre Dumas in a fictitious involvement with a young female revolutionary.