INSURRECTION BY ACCIDENT

BANQUETS' AFTER-DINNER SPEECHES REPLACE FORBIDDEN MEETINGS

    Château-Rouge banquet (July 9, 1847) /zoom

When a massive banquet planned for the Champs-Élysées is cancelled fights break out...

The French Revolution of 1848 by Cesare dell'Acqua, 19th century / zoom

The Champs-Élysées stretches north.

...but the ambiance is "almost amiable." Demonstrators help an officer back on his horse and offer food to adversaries who release prisoners. 

-- Amiability, My Father by Jean Renoir (1962);

-- Demonstrators, Memories of 1848 by Maxime du Camp (1876)

When the king changes Prime Minister, calm returns. Then a shot frightens soldiers who fire on the crowd, and 16 corpses are exhibited in a torchlight promenade:

     Lithograph proposed on eBay

• Next morning barricades cover the city, from the streets near the palace to the underclass suburbs of the east: 

   Internet, no source given 

 

• A crowd advances toward the palace...

10 o'clock in the morning on February 24 / zoom

...and General Bugeaud, back from Algeria, prepares to attack. But the king does not give the order.

Louis-Philippe abdicates, murmuring, "Like Charles X, like Charles X!"* Later he will say, "Happy Republic, that can fire on the people!"

* The king overthrown in 1830

The blotches show his emotion.

"I abdicate this crown that the national voice called on me to wear, in favor of my grandson, the Count of Paris. May he succeed in the grand task that falls upon him today. Louis Philippe"

 Anonymous, zoom

The king and queen change into middle-class garb, call a cab at place de la Concorde and leave France forever. 

Internet, no source named

A popular drawing of their departure.

# # #

The crowd forces the deputies to declare a republic and universal male suffrage...

Print proposed on Internet / zoom

The Count of Paris, a child of nine who appears next to his mother, reigns for four minutes.

Middle-class deputies and the largely popular crowd.

# # #

...then rushes to City Hall, where the Second Republic is declared:

Proclamation of the Republic, February 24, 1848 by Jean-Paul Laurens, toward 1902 / zoom

"There were men bold enough

 to proclaim their own names,

 not on the barricade but in a newspaper office,

not on the site of combat 

but in the defeated Chamber." 

-- Alexander Herzen,

 Russian socialist cited by Hazan, A History of the barricade

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Next,

Schism looms