February Revolution in France

In February 1848, the democratic revolution led by the French bourgeois republicans overthrew the Orleans Dynasty (also known as the “July Dynasty”) and established the Second Republic.

In the 1840s, the House of Orléans (a constitutional monarchy that ruled France from 1830 to 1848, named after King Louis Philippe d’Orléans), which represented the interests of the financial aristocracy, ruled France, opposed any reforms, and seriously impeded the development of capitalism and intensified the exploitation of the proletariat and the peasantry. Coupled with the successive crises in agriculture, industry and commerce, social contradictions gradually intensified, and the economic crisis that began in England in 1847 spread to France, accelerating the advent of the revolution. When the industrial bourgeoisie’s bill calling for a reform of the electoral system was rejected in the Legislative Assembly in March 1847, the bourgeois opposition held political rallies throughout the country under the name of “banquets” to mobilize the masses in support of the reform movement. The first public banquet was held in the ballroom of the Château Rouge (Red Palace) in Paris on July 9, 1847, at which all the pro-reform factions were represented, with a rather mixed composition. At this banquet, the bourgeois democrats demonstrated great superiority both in number and in ideas.

On February 22, 1848, the scheduled “banquet” was banned by the Guizot led government, which provoked the resistance of the citizens of Paris. The people of Paris held massive demonstrations to show their protest. On the 23rd, the workers held a general strike and engaged in street battles with the army. On the 24th, the battle of the barricades turned into an armed uprising, in which the insurgents, chanting “Long live Reform! Down with Guizot!”, stormed the palace and King Philippe fled. The Republicans, led by Lamartine, formed the 11-member Revolutionary Provisional Government, which declared the establishment of republic on the 25th, known as the “Second French Republic”. The February Revolution in France marked a temporary victory for the Republicans, opened the prelude to the French Revolution of 1848, and gave major influence to the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movements in European countries.