A REPUBLIC FOR THE HAPPY FEW

UNIVERSAL MALE SUFFRAGE IN THIS MASSIVELY RURAL COUNTRY LED TO A NATIONAL ASSEMBLY DOMINATED BY THE FAR RIGHT 

(IN APRIL 1848)

The conservatives' leader, the royalist Count Alfred de Falloux

     Zoom

     His château / zoom

Alexis de Toqueville describes how notables control peasant votes 

Villagers meet in front of the church before marching in procession, two by two, to the voting site. There Toqueville makes a speech, telling them to remain together until all have voted and to ignore people who try to dissuade them.

-- Cited in Thiers, by Georges Valance

But deputies to the provisional government owe their seats to the street, which obtains...

• The right to organize: professional societies, which are embryonic unions, appear and between February and June 250 delegations solicit the Assembly. At the same time, 171 journals are founded (some say 300).

-- The Underclass of June 1848, "Annales," sept.-oct. 1974 (in French)

• A palliative to unemployment, the "National Workshops" 

The National Workshops by Victor Adam, 1849 / zoom

Many are paid to do nothing.

Here the unemployed rest, bowl, 

listen to a newspaper being read aloud 

or hold a meeting under a banner

But a third of the out-of-work are artisans in luxury production, who are unfit for physical labor. As well, the government does not wish to compete with businesses, or confront employers who oppose whatever interferes with their control over labor. 

The jobless nevertheless build the space in front of the Saint-Lazare railway station, build the Paris-Versailles line, accomplish other tasks in the suburbs and replace trees torn up for the February barricades. Their cost: 1% of the national budget.*

* Daily wage of a skilled worker, 3,50 francs.Workshop handout: 2 francs a day, reduced to 1,50 ( cost of bread, the staple, 35 centimes; a, deputy's salary, 25 francs)

Turning points:

• The violent repression of a revolt in Rouen (on April 27 and 28).

• The loss of the left's leaders when 130 "troublemakers" are arrested after a chaotic demonstration (on May 15):

Insurrection of May 15 1848, demonstrators and the National Guard at the Palais Bourbon by Gaspard Gobaut, no date / zoom

Riot of May 15, 1848: Invasion of the National Assembly, anonymous, 1848 / zoom

In the confusion demonstrators dissolve the Assembly and rush off to City Hall to form a new government. Auguste Blanqui says at his trial, "We have a certain experience of insurrections and conspiracies, and I can assure you that one does not spend three hours standing around talking in an Assembly that one wants to overthrow," but conservatives use the incident to arrest the leaders. 

General Clément-Thomas (the incorruptible republican combattant of 1830) commands the forces that quell the "insurrection." Many years later, that action will seal his fate.

"Better a horrible end than horror without end!" The right girds for battle, focusing on the Workshops:

• "A strike that costs 170,000 francs a day... get rid of it!"

-- Count de Falloux

• Youths will be soldiers in Algeria and older men build canals or drain malarial swamps. Daily wage: 15 centimes.

On June 22 the Workshops close.
The unemployed march in cadence through the city,

 chanting "We won't go, we won't go."

-- Toqueville

On June 23, "June" erupts.

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Next,

A worker's revolt announces the future

A WORKERS' REVOLT ANNOUNCES THE FUTURE

"JUNE" FIGHTING BREAKS OUT IN THE NEW WORKING-CLASS TERRITORIES

Insurrections once concentrated in faubourg Saint-Antoine near the Bastille, now erupt as well in the much wider industrializing areas in the east:

Zoom

Barricades of June 1848

Combat at the Saint-Denis gate, anonymous lithograph, 1848 / zoom

# # # 

Women fight much more than in 1830:

The Barricade at the Saint-Denis gate, Paris 1848 by William Edward Gabe / zoom

"At the moment when the leader dropped the flag, a young girl grabbed it and lifted it over her head,
waving it in an inspired way. Hair flying, arms bare, wearing a scarlet dress, she seemed to defy death...

"A shot rang out and she stumbled and collapsed. 

Another woman suddenly jumped to her side. With one hand she held the bleeding corpse, with the other she threw stones at the assailants. Another round was fired. She fell on the corpse she embraced."

--  Stern 

Discipline is as evident as in February, though the leaders have been arrested: Modern accounts do not mention this key aspect, to my knowledge.

"They fought without leaders, yet with a unity and military experience that astonished the most elderly officers."

-- Toqueville (as for the next excerpts)

Workers' aim has immeasurably broadened:

"What distinguished them too was their goal, not to change the form of government,
but to alter the order of society."

# # #

Elites are terrified:

"In spite of its victory, all [privileged] society felt a dread that can only be compared to the invasion of Rome by the barbarians."

Reference to barbarians

 becomes constant in conservative texts.

*      *     * 

Next,

The right changes too:

Provincial nobles answer the call...

THE RIGHT CHANGES TOO: PROVINCIAL NOBLES ANSWER THE CALL

"ALMOST ALL THE VENERABLE NOBILITY TOOK UP ARMS..."  

-- All excerpts from Toqueville

...from the most down-home squire to the useless and elegant heirs of the great houses all remembered in that instant (...)

That they had been part of the military ruling caste, and everywhere gave the example of departure and vigor, so great was the vitality of that venerable aristocratic corps...

Zoom

For they keep a trace of themselves even when they seem reduced to dust and rise several times from the ashes before they rest there for eternity." 

# # #

Trains do not function yet and the nobles arrive too late to join the struggle. 

But their mobilisation

shows the depth of dread:

They lack confidence in their generals,

fear revolts in other towns,

and remember earlier insurrections' success. 

*    *    *

Next,

Young delinquents joyously join in

YOUNG DELINQUENTS JOYOUSLY JOIN IN

INDUSTRIALISATION BRINGS A POOL OF UNEMPLOYED, 

AND OUT-OF-WORK TEENS JOIN THE RIGHT

 

Without the discipline, social ties and solidarity that come from work, they turn to delinquency and conservatives mobilize them through pay

Zoom

"Young Martin, aged 16 ... 

after mounting a barricade on rue Menilmontant * five times, on the sixth try stabbed an insurgent who was carrying the flag under a hail of bullets. General Cavaignac embraced him with affection, gave him the Legion of Honor and said, 'you have well deserved it.' "

* In tumultuous eastern Paris.

They appear for the first time in June '48 and at first frighten the privileged...   

They cry "long live social reform!" and sing the Marseillaise [revolutionary then]. "They left us full of doubt and fear as to the intentions of those youths, or rather those children, who then more than anyone held our fates in their hands." 

-- Toqueville

...but salaries, uniforms, youthful recklessness and officers' authority make them formidable soldiers:

"The bravery of these children of the garde mobile ... cannot even be imagined by those who have not seen it. The sound of shooting, the whistling of bullets, seem like a new game that they love ... they rush to attack, climb up crumbling blocks of stone with a marvelous agility ... a joyous emulation carries them on and hurls them toward death."

-- Toqueville

Internet article (in French)

That ardor is available for whoever can capture it:

Underclass youth will fight

 for La Commune with as much fire.

*      *     * 

Next,
Empathy from a countess alone

EMPATHY FROM A COUNTESS ALONE

ALMOST ALL THE PRIVILEGED, LIBERAL INTELLECTUALS INCLUDED, AGREED THAT:

• "The poor, trained to envy, to hate, to thirst for pillage... only the army holds them back" 

 -- The Red Specter, 1852, cited in "The Journal of the Commune," March 31, 1871

• "E. Cavaignac has served his country well:" title of the image below

Dictionnaire Larousse

General Eugène Cavaignac,

the —  republican — commander of the repression

rides over a broken barricade.

He had asphyxiated Algerian villagers who had taken refuge in caves: "If those bandits retire to their caverns, copy General Cavaignac. Smoke them out like foxes."  

-- General Bugeaud

His orders for June are as ferocious.

# # #

Exception: Marie de Flavigny, Countess d'Agoult, a member of the most venerable nobility and most cultured elite, who left husband, child and caste to run away with Liszt

(In 1835)

Franz Liszt Improvises at the Piano by Josef Danhauser /  zoom

Marie is at Liszt's feet; seated behind her, Alexandre Dumas and George Sand; standing, Berlioz, Paganini and Rossini. 

Franz Liszt and Marie d'Agoult, side by side at the Musée Carnavalet

That artists were considered servants of the elite made Marie's shattering of the codes still more spectacular. 

The couple had three children, but Liszt lost interest. The unattainable goddess was one thing, an outcast dependent on him another. Tolstoy tells a similar story in Anna Karenina.

Her personal revolt led to understanding that of others, and her History of the Revolution of 1848* echoes Karl Marx  

* Pen name, Daniel Stern

 "The insurgent of June

 is the combattant of February"

The poor take power, maintain perfect order and give the new government three months — "three months of misery" — to accede to their sole demand, employment. They revolt when the Assembly, which owes them its jobs, goes back on its word.

Her account was badly received.  

*      *      *

Next,

June brings Europe's most authoritarian regime

IV.I.4. THE CITY MUSEUM AND THE INSURRECTIONS

MENU: 4.1.3. City Museum & the insurrections

PARIS STANDS OUT FOR THE CULTURE OF ITS ELITES AND FOR ITS INSURRECTIONS

How does the Carnavalet City Museum present them?

(Renovated, 2016-2022)

 Zoom

The palatial townhouse of the Marquise de Sévigny is now the historical museum. "I think I will be happy here," she wrote.

In brief

• A spectacular homage to the elites

• A French Revolution that is almost peaceful

• Insurrections as shown before the renovation

• 1830: Elegant fighters replace the humble

• February 1848: Furniture

• June 1848: A table at the back of the room  

• Barricades, a game for kids

*    *    *

Next,

A spectacular homage to the elites

A SPECTACULAR HOMMAGE TO THE ELITES

STREET SIGNS AT THE ENTRY MASK THE BIAS 

Two rooms of those emblems of popular energy, whose traces are then put into the reserve...

...lead immediately to a breathtaking staircase...

...that goes to the installations that are its most impressive achievement, such as...

• The study of a 17th-century statesman ( Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who headed the economy in roughly 1660-1680) :

• A series of 18th-century salons:

Details

• For the turn of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th a jeweler and a ballroom...

• ...and homages to Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein:

The museum presents the culture

of the upper crust magnificently.

But...

*    *    *

Next,

A French Revolution that is almost peaceful

A FRENCH REVOLUTION THAT IS ALMOST PEACEFUL

FIVE ROOMS WHERE VIOLENCE AND THE RANK AND FILE ARE ALMOST ABSENT

Some ferocity can't be left out...

• The fame of taking the Bastille obliges the museum to include an image like this... 

Taking the Bastille by Jean-Baptiste Lallemand, toward 1789 / zoom

"The entire world knew, hated the Bastille. Bastille, tyranny, were synonyms in all languages. At the news of its ruin all nations believed themselves delivered.   

In Russia, in that empire of mystery and silence, that monstrous Bastille between Europe and Asia, the news had barely arrived before men of all nations shouted, cried in the squares, threw themselves in each others' arms while stating the news: 'How not cry from joy? the Bastille is taken !' " 

-- History of the French Revolution by Jules Michelet, 1847 (my trans.)

...but all that surrounds it is peaceful:

 

Demolition

• The royal family: One feels its tragedy from knowing the story, not from the dry presentation.

Furniture from their prison at the Temple

Why give so much space to an unreadable proclamation? Is the black object a garter? No explanation and except for the portrait, little interest.

• The guillotine, this image only:

A rare work in which the crowd appears.

# # #

...but nothing is shown of the hate, the fear, the dramatic events, and almost nothing of the sans-culottes:*   

*"Without breeches," trouser-wearing workers who made up the heroic and terrifying army of the street.

• This painting is at the Musée du Château de Versailles. Nothing comparable is exhibited here.  

Storming the Tuileries palace on August 10 , 1792 by Jacques Bertaux / zoom 

 

• I visited the museum six times before finding this well-known painting, exhibited at last....
  

Portrait of a Sans-culotte by Louis-Léopold Boilly, 1792 

...but in a dark corner.  The pike and remnant of a phrygien cap, are technically legitimate but not at all evocative:

• The sole other sign of those combattants is also buried at the back of a room... 

...behind proclamations, portraits of middle-class leaders and a game for children:

# # #

The night before taking the Bastille:

"History returned that night, a long story of suffering, in the vengeful instinct of the people. The soul of fathers who, after so many centuries, suffered, died in silence, returned to their sons and spoke.

Strong men, patient men, so pacific until then, who on a single day struck a grand blow for Providence, the sight of your families, without resources except for you, did not soften your heart. On the contrary, on seeing for the last time your sleeping children, those children whose destinies the new day would change, your uplifted thought embraced the free generations that would arise from their cradles, and felt in that dawn the combat of the future." 

-- Jules Michelet

That is not the message

 that the museum seeks to transmit. 

*    *    *

Next,

Insurrections as shown before the renovation