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.

*     *     *

Next,

A worker's revolt announces the future