The June Rebellion of 1832 was a failed republican uprising against King Louis Philippe I's "July Monarchy" in Paris, France from 5 to 7 June 1832. Motivated by working-class anger at the bourgeois monarchy, the poor handling of the 1832 cholera outbreak, and the death of the liberal orator Jean Maximilien Lamarque, the rebellion was put down in just two days, as the 3,000 revolutionaries were unable to rally adequate levels of popular support against the 40,000 French Army soldiers and 20,000 National Guardsmen sent to quell their revolt.
Background[]
Lamarque's funeral
In April 1832, a major, month-long cholera outbreak ravaged Paris, causing the wealthy (apart from the royal family and Rothschilds) and the foreigners to leave the city; so many deputies fled from Paris that not enough remained in the Chamber of Deputies to take a vote. The smell of the chlorine painted on houses as a disinfectant soon filled the city, and corpses were removed at night and carried straight to Pere Lahaise for burial; the number of funerals led to some churches being permanently draped in black. The police's decision to remove rubbish from the streets to the countryside angered the ragpickers (chiffoniers) and revendeuses of Paris, whose livelihoods depended on picking through rubbish piles, causing protests at the Porte Saint-Denis and the Place du Chatelet, with the protesters burning rubbish carts or throwing them in the Seine. Ultimately, the police had to call in the cavalry to disperse the protesters. The epidemic exacerbated popular hatred of the regime, as many Parisians claimed that the government (or even the King in person) were poisoning the wells in the city fountains and the fruit and vegetables in the marketplace with the goal of starving the people. Five Parisians (including a Jewish resident) were lynched by mobs, and a young man was torn to shreds on the Quai Voltaire. By May 1832, 18,402 people had died in the epidemic, among them Baron Cuvier, former Prime Minister Jean-Baptiste Gay de Martignac, Prime Minister Casimir Perier, and the liberal orator General Jean Maximilien Lamarque. Lamarque's funeral procession on 5 June 1832 provoked a rebellion, with his funeral procession shouting A bas Louis-Philippe! A bas la poire molle! Vive la Republique! and brandishing a red flag with the inscription La liberte ou la mort!. A speech by the Marquis de Lafayette at the Place du Pont d'Austerlitz was met with mixed reactions, and, to the cries of Aux armes! Aux barricades!, a shot rang out and fighting began between the revolutionaries and the government soldiers.
Revolution[]
Revolutionaries atop Lamarque's carriage
Within a few hours of the first shots, about 3,000 insurgents seized a section of central Paris between the Grand Chatelet and the arsenal and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine; some rebels boasted that they would dine at the Tuileries Palace that night. This rebellion was better-organized than the July Revolution, and fighting was so fierce around the Rues Saint-Merri and Saint-Martin that some Parisians felt that the revolutionaries might win.
Suppression of the uprising[]
French troops storming the barricades
However, some 40,000 soldiers and 20,000 National Guardsmen were patrolling the city's streets, and their commander, Marshal Georges Mouton, was abler than Auguste Marmont and had invented a technique for dispersing demonstrators with fire-hoses. A downpour of rain demoralized the rebels, and the National Guard was united in its opposition to the republicans. Rather than stay in Saint-Cloud far from the scene of the uprising, King Louis-Philippe returned to the Tuileries with his wife, sister, and the Duc de Nemours and held a council before leaving the palace on horseback to encourage and thank the troops, whom he called mes chers comrades ("my dear comrades"). He was greeted by cheers of Vive le roi! and cries for justice to be executed against the revolutionaries, who lacked the popular support needed to overthrow the monarchy. Paris was placed under a stte of siege and conseils de guerre were established to judge insurgents taken with arms in their hands. By 6:00 PM on 6 June, the fighting was over; casualties on both sides amounted to about 150 dead and 500 wounded, half of whom were soldiers.
Aftermath[]
King Louis-Philippe rejected left-wing depands for a more liberal and nationalistic policy in accordance with the promises of the July Revolution, but he promised to stand by the Charter of 1830. By 1832, armed revolution was unpopular with most Parisians, as businesses were negatively impacted by the disorder, and several workers attacked the revolutionaries. Although the uprising was crushed, the monarchy and bourgeois society continued to be attacked by journalists, and liberal militancy would continue to rise until the French Revolution of 1848.