PSA for the Les Mis fandom
The historian of revolutions Mathilde Larrère agreed to do a thread on twitter about the 5-6 june 1832! Her twitter account is @LarrereMathilde and ill reblog this post when she starts!
Okay now, she agreed to let me translate the story so here we go! (the original thread) my notes in italics!
5&6 june 1832 - republican insurrection in Paris (note: remember republican in france doesn’t mean the same as american republicans, no matter what nicolas sarkozy wants)
Since the July Revolution many feel like the Revolution as been stolen from them.
No democratic progress, no social progress. The new monarchy was definitely a liberal one.
90% of men old enough to vote still can’t. No social measure came to overthrow misery.
Oppositions were harshly repressed, like the revolt of the canuts in 1831.
So as a result republicans start to plan an insurrection.
They seized the opportunity of General Lamarque’s funerals, a republican leader who died of cholera
The cortege started from Austerlitz and was supposed to go towards the Grands Boulevards
But in the very middle of the cortege, on the boulevard de la Bastille, a red flag appears, people are shouting
The police intervenes. Shots are fired. Bodies fall. (Police brutality even at the time!) (allusion to the current events in France)
The republicans flee to the quartiers of the center of Paris, and start to build the first barricades of the insurrection.
June 5th, at nightfall, the center of Paris is entirely barricaded, and fights begin.
June 6th, the council of ministers make the king put Paris in state of siege.
The insurrection is crushed that day, and leaves on the pavement about a hundred insurgés as well as 70 soldiers and national guards.
The state of siege allows to take the insurgés to the council of war instead of taking them to the crown court, which might have been more indulgent
Victor Hugo denounces the “political palmers who have the state of siege in their cup’s false bottom”!
When the insurgés are condemned on june 18th, the republicans take the case to the appeal court
with the argument that taking the insurgés before the council of war is a violation of an article of the Charte that forbids to take a defendant from their right judges
They succeed, the court of appeal agrees and the defendants are back to the crown court!
The trial will turn the people against the government, and the opposition is then able to put the government on a public trial
But the sentences aren’t less severe. (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k55408588/f4.image.r=vidocq.langFR)
In Les Misérables Victor Hugo tells the story of the 1832 insurrection
Mathilde Larrère advises us to read the testimony of Charles Jeanne, A cinq heures nous serons tous morts, one of Hugo’s sources
But also Thomas Bouchet’s Le Roi et les Barricades, “about this insurrection often (and sadly) forgotten!”
So the translation is rough and really really poor but here it is! Don’t forget to go and see the actual thread, because she added a few interesting pictures.
Merci encore à Mathilde Larrère !
Thank you so much!
Although… well, here I go again, correcting Actual Historians… but I just want to point out that the cortege didn’t start from Austerlitz, that’s where it was stopped and that’s where the red flag incident happened. It started from the Faubourg Saint-Honoré where the General lived (although properly speaking from Rue Royale) and it DID traverse through the Grand Boulevards. I made a post about this. :p And I used multiple primary sources so I’m pretty confident that I’m right. (Okay fine nobody cares…)
Those are excellent reading recs, though. :D (Ahh, I REALLY WANT Le Roi et les Barricades! Can someone please just buy it for me or something… >__< It’s just so expensive.)
