france's june days were a huge defeat for the girondin party revolutionary group.
france's june days were a huge defeat for the girondin party revolutionary group.
france’s june days were a huge defeat for which revolutionary group?
the girondin party
the february 1848 revolution toppled the july monarchy, replaced by the second republic (1848–1852), while the june days uprising (or june 1848 revolution) gave a lethal blow to the hopes of a "social and democratic republic" (""la république sociale et démocratique"", or ""la sociale""). on 2 december 1851, louis napoleon ended the republic by a coup d'état proclaiming the second empire (1852–1870) the next year. the second republic, however, is best remembered for having first established male universal suffrage and for victor schœlcher's abolition of slavery on 27 april 1848. the february revolution also established the principle of the "right to work" ("droit au travail" – or "right to have a work"), and decided to establish "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 right-wing, liberal orléanists, and left-wing, radical republicans and socialists caused the second, june revolution. in december, presidential elections were held, for the first time in france. democracy seemed at first to triumph, as universal suffrage was implemented also for the first time. the left was divided however into four candidacies, lamartine and cavaignac, the repressor of the june days uprising, on the center-left, alexandre auguste ledru-rollin as representative of the republican left, and raspail as far-left, socialist, candidate. both raspail and lamartine obtained less than 1%, cavaignac reached almost 20%, while the prince louis-napoleon bonaparte surprisingly won the election with almost 75% of the votes, marking an important defeat of the republican and socialist camps.
french left
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. the party of order and the cavaignac dictatorship were still fearful of another popular uprising in the streets, so 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 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. 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 rallied support to his cause. elected with louis napoleon was a national assembly which was filled with monarchists—of both the legitimist (bourbon) variety or the orleanist (louis-philippe) variety. 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 adolphe thiers who was the leader of the orleanist party. as such, thiers became the chief spokesman of the finance bourgeoisie, and 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 returned 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 railways 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.
french revolution of 1848