JUNE 1848: A TABLE AT THE BACK OF THE ROOM

THE FIRST CONSCIOUS WORKERS' RISING AND MODERN

EUROPE'S FIRST GREAT MASSACRE* ARE RELEGATED TO THE VERY END OF THE FLOOR

* Estimated insurgent deaths: 1830, 1500; Lyons 1834, 600; February 1848, 350; June 1848, 5000. 

 Wounded are not included: Many were cared for at home and we do not know their fates.  

The three paintings on the June uprising do not show carnage (for a closer look, please click back). 

The two small works on the left illustrate festivities of the provisional government. The two on the right are of June fighting, but the combats with no visible casualties fade into the background. The central painting shows army tents and not the distant barricade.

For more, go behind the panel that shows the king's abdication...

...behind it is a void:

Official images line the wall. 

On the right is another void and a text on nascent photography:  

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If you turn around, you come to the museum's sole work about  underclass insurrection — or rather, lack of it: It shows workers refusing to back middle-class republicans in resisting Napoleon III's coup d'état (in 1851).

     Alphonse Baudin on the Barricade of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine on December 3, 1851 by Ernest Pichio /  zoom

Deputy Alphonse Baudin tries to persuade workers to resist. When they say, "We won't fight for your 25 francs a day (a deputy's salary), Baudin says "Here is how one dies for 25 francs a day" and climbs onto a barricade. He is immediately shot and killed.

The worker listens with scepticism. 

The tear reveals poverty. Choosing a suggests that insurgents are like children who do not think.

He is the only humble fighter that the museum shows full face. 

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On a table is the daguerreotype of a barricade, with a text in small print that begins with"In the beginning of summer 1848 workers revolt against the government. In Paris, they build barricades." It continues with information on early photography.

"At the start of the summer of 1848, workers revolt against the government. At Paris, they build barricades. This daguerreotype is a photograph on copper plaque covered with silver. It shows the barricades at Faubourg du Temple. The first, at the intersection of rue Saint-Maur is an accumulation of beams, ladders, a wheel, a wagon, paving stones. Alone on the right, a woman wearing a white cap leans out of the window."

That is the only reference to

the first great carnage of modern France

and to the start of the struggle between capital and labor.

# # # 

There are no seats.

But in a ballroom... .

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Next,

Barricades, a game for kids