1848 (30 page)

If there was any single day that was a European-wide turning point in 1848, it was 15 May. Besides this ‘red' surge in Paris, the day saw the
Stürmpetition
in Vienna, and in both cases the radicals had tried to push the revolution further to the left, but merely succeeded in provoking a conservative backlash. The other event of that day - the counter-revolution in Naples - had also been provoked by fear of radicalism. Lurking beneath this fear were deep-rooted anxieties that the revolution would not stop at its political victories, but would slide into the terror of social conflict. The March days in Vienna had seen workers burning down factories and plundering shops. In Prague Czech liberals were still haunted by the working-class riots of 1844, in which the authorities lost control of entire districts for a week. The most politically militant workers in Europe were usually the skilled craftsmen of the artisan workshops, rather than the proletariat of the factories or railways, because the former had greater literacy, their own trade organisations and traditions of social and even political behaviour. Their independence was also threatened by the rise of industrial technology, the factory system and new, cheaper ways of organising production. In 1848 workers' demands for protection from these forms of competition were beginning to be coupled with more forward-looking elements drawn from socialist ideas. In France cities such as Paris, Lyon, Rouen and Limoges were replete with such politically conscious workers, but they were also active in Germany, particularly in Saxony, Württemberg, Prussia, Frankfurt and the Rhineland. In Italian cities artisans and craftsmen provided a fertile ground not so much for new socialist ideas as for Mazzini's republican propaganda. In Vienna the workers had not developed their own political programme, but by following the lead of students and journalists, they provided the proletarian muscle behind the middle-class radical movement.

Working-class militancy and the radical left seemed to endanger not only the nobles and well-heeled bourgeois, but anyone who had property, including the landowning peasantry and the more prosperous artisans. Tocqueville, who in mid-March returned to his native Normandy to campaign for election to the Constituent Assembly, found that among his rural constituents ‘fear, which initially was confined to the upper reaches of society, descended into the depths of the popular classes, and a universal terror took hold of the entire region'.
⁷
The spectre of social revolution piqued the innate conservatism of those who had gained in different ways from the February and March revolutions, but for whom the time had come for stability. Yet, in the end, it proved impossible at one and the same time to preserve the political gains of the 1848 revolutions and to restore ‘order'. Terror (in many places, the word is not too strong) of further revolutionary violence, of social upheaval and of ‘socialism' itself proved to be stronger than attachment to the liberal victories of the spring. When faced with the choice between holding on to their new political liberties or conserving their lives, their property and their communities against ‘anarchy' or ‘communism', most people chose to sacrifice their freedom for the sake of security. The social fear provoked by left-wing activism therefore played into the hands of conservatives, as liberals, moderates and the uncommitted abandoned much of the middle ground and sought to repress the danger of a second revolution by resorting to more authoritarian methods. The ‘red summer' polarised the revolution between left and right, creating an irreparable fracture that gave the conservatives the chance to strike back.

In Paris the moderate republicans had willingly recognised the ‘popular' nature of the February revolution and congratulated themselves and the Parisian workers for keeping good order in the city. Yet socialist ideas had come frothing to the surface. Workers organised themselves into political clubs, led by the radical republicans and socialists. This popular movement was determined not to see a repeat of the 1830 revolution, from which they had drawn no benefits. There was, consequently, an explosion of working-class political participation in clubs that aimed to influence the progress of the revolution. The Paris area alone in March and April counted some two hundred such ‘popular societies',
⁸
in which workers debated the ‘democratic and social republic' - a new regime that would not only give them political liberties but would take an active role in ordering society so that poverty and the harsh realities of working-class life would be eliminated. Thus, the republican left rapidly took on the label ‘democratic socialist' - they were the
démoc-socs
. On 25 February, a petition to the provisional government had demanded ‘a guaranteed right to work', ‘an assured minimum for the worker and his family in case of sickness' and the ‘organisation of labour',
⁹
by which was generally meant the state-sponsored reform of working conditions, wages and industrial relations and the creation of workshops run by the workers themselves. To nineteenth-century liberals soaked in laissez-faire economics, these demands seemed dangerously socialist and economically counter-productive. As the owner of the moderate newspaper
Le Constitutionnel
recalled, ‘the day following the February Revolution, the bourgeois of Paris trembled for his head, and, once he was sure of retaining it, he trembled for his purse'.
¹⁰

The provisional government had applied some practical solutions to ease the workers' economic desperation, but the answers proved insufficient to meet either the depth of misery or the more ambitious aspirations of the left. Although not intended to be controversial, the decision that would end in the greatest bitterness of all was the establishment, on 25 February, of the National Workshops, promising to ‘guarantee work for all citizens' by providing employment in (often tedious) public works for the poor. It was the most obvious solution to a government whose composition would neither permit a radical, socialist response to the problem of unemployment nor allow the free market to take its own course. In response to a workers' protest on 28 February, the government also established a labour commission in the old Chamber of Peers at the Luxembourg Palace, presided over by Blanc and Albert. Consisting of delegates from the various trades, the ‘Luxembourg Commission' was meant to address the concerns of workers and artisans, so it became their forum and rallying point. In fact, most of their demands showed little evidence of socialism, but rather reflected the familiar concerns of artisans beleaguered by the accelerating rate of social and economic change: higher wages, a minimum rate for goods produced, better working conditions, the right to organise unions, the creation of an arbitration system for industrial relations, the abolition of
marchandage
(or subcontracting, which was exploitative because the subcontractor maximised his profits by paying lower salaries to his workers), the restriction of the use of machinery and of competition from women and unskilled workers (who commanded lower wages), the creation of National Workshops for each profession and state support for industry. On the first day that the commission met - and with the agreement of employers' representatives - it banned
marchandage
and reduced the working day from an average of fifteen hours to ten in Paris and eleven in the provinces. An arbitration committee of ten workers and ten employers was also created to deal with industrial disputes.

Underlying the government's difficulties was a budget crisis that had catastrophic effects on tax revenue. The new regime was determined, for the sake of financial stability, to honour the deficit. It quickly paid the interest owed, but could do so only by increasing direct taxation by 45 per cent - which was immediately dubbed the ‘forty-five centimes'. This, of course, angered much of the property-owning population, who were already struggling in the harsh economic climate. While the government had compelling fiscal reasons for the surtax, it seemed to those hit by it that they were paying for the National Workshops. Combined with the fear of social revolution, the resentment set the battle lines for the collision between the radicals and the moderates.

The Parisian ‘insurrection' of 15 May was the catalyst for the final descent towards a bloody confrontation. Republican sympathies for Poland (‘the France of the North') were sincere, but it was also a cause that could mobilise popular support in an attempt to inject new life into the revolutionary left. The
démoc-socs
certainly needed a good dose of restorative adrenaline, for they had taken a battering at the polls in the elections of 23 April. Of 900 seats, no more than 150 were left-leaning. A central block of around 500 were moderate republicans, while on the right were 250 who were either Legitimists (royalists who supported the old Bourbon dynasty) or Orléanists. Since the elections were based on universal male suffrage, the vast majority of voters were peasants. The results therefore partially reflected the continued influence of the landed elites: on election day, Tocqueville led some 170 of ‘his' Norman villagers to the polls, where, as he noted coyly, ‘I have reason to believe that they almost all voted for the same candidate.'
¹¹
Many peasants supported their local worthies, but their votes went beyond simple deference, reflecting their deep resentment at the ‘forty-five centimes'. One rural newspaper declared that the hard-pressed rural folk were ‘tired of nourishing . . . lazy men who . . . make a trade of avoiding work'.
¹²
The vote also expressed widespread anxieties over disorder, which naturally led men to vote for moderates or conservatives rather than those who promised even more social upheaval. It was therefore indicative of the failure of the radical republicans to reach out to the wider population - and the fact that the elections were held only two months after the February revolution ensured that they had little time in which to win converts.

The election results dealt a serious blow to left-wing hopes for a democratic and social republic. The unemployed urban workers also feared, with good reason, for the existence of the National Workshops. When it became clear that the conservatives were winning the poll in Limoges, the prefecture was invaded by workers, who, armed with picks, pikes, sticks and staffs, swept aside the National Guard and tore up the records of the electoral count. For two weeks from the end of April, the workers controlled the city: groups of them carrying axes and batons patrolled the streets and guarded all the strategic points.
¹³
Tempers eventually cooled and the insurgents handed control back to the legal authorities. In Rouen matters were much more serious. This Norman textile city was suffering particularly badly from unemployment, and workers demonstrated noisily against the election results on 26 April. They were confronted by the National Guard, whose cavalry charged into the crowd. In the mêlée a protester was mortally wounded, which provoked a full-scale insurrection. The workers tore up paving stones to build barricades and armed themselves with iron bars and machine tools. The next day, the militia brought up artillery and blasted apart the defences, taking twenty-three lives with them.

These events in the provinces led to uproar in Paris. Blanqui's Central Republican Society condemned the slaughter as a ‘Saint Bartholomew's massacre of workers'. It did not help that the magistrate charged with investigating the events was the same prosecutor who had secured Blanqui's death penalty in 1839. The Society of the Rights of Man warned its members that ‘if today reactionaries rise up in arms in Rouen, tomorrow it will be the turn of Paris'.
¹⁴
The moderately oriented National Assembly first met in this feverish atmosphere on 4 May.

The intensity of post-electoral feeling drove the demonstration eleven days later, although the precise motives of the organisers remain unclear. Blanqui had opposed the whole protest, believing that the earlier marches had alienated public opinion and that a fresh show of strength would prevent popular sympathies from returning to the revolutionary left.
¹⁵
None of the main organisers seems to have planned on an insurrection. The socialist Prefect of Police Caussidière's second-in-command, Joseph Sobrier, explained to the socialist Victor Considérant on 12 May that, while the legislature could not afford to offend ‘public sentiments' (meaning the demonstrators), ‘their dignity imperiously commands that they do not appear to give in to the pressure of the People'. They would rather have to show their unity with the marchers in ‘a spontaneous, magnificent momentum of patriotism, a solemn commission of Peoples, a great triumph carried off by democracy'.
¹⁶
In other words, the aim was to put the moderate republicans under intense moral pressure to unite with the radicals and to respect their aspirations, while resisting the authoritarian blandishments of the conservatives.

Yet, with the disastrous turn of events on 15 May, the
démoc-socs
were badly compromised. Their most recognisable leaders were arrested, and Caussidière - the only socialist still clinging on to a position of power since the April elections - lost his job at the Prefecture of Police because his militia had done nothing to stop the invasion of the National Assembly. His men, loyal to Caussidière to the end, barricaded themselves into the Prefecture, but they gave up after a brief siege laid by General Bedeau. The radicals' hot-headed behaviour allowed conservatives to cast a shadow of suspicion over even the more cautious wing of the
Réforme
tendency, who had not participated in the insurrection and who wished to work within the democratic framework of the Republic. Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, who had nothing to do with the planning or execution of the insurrection, were immediately put under intense pressure. The former, who had been manhandled by the protesters on 15 May, none the less only narrowly avoided arrest, and he was indicted by a parliamentary commission, though he survived the final vote in the Assembly. Ledru-Rollin's gifted female assistant, the cigar-smoking, trouser-wearing feminist George Sand, who had helped edit his official
Bulletin de la République
when he was minister of the interior, was so disenchanted that she left Paris and took refuge in the provinces. The political middle ground was crumbling beneath the feet of those republicans who wanted peaceful social reform: compromise between ‘order' and the ‘social republic' was becoming dangerously elusive. On 5 June the National Assembly passed a law cracking down on public gatherings. The political clubs limped on, but the arrests had deprived them of their high-profile leaders: the revolutionary left had effectively been ‘decapitated'.