Revolutions - 7.18- Democracy In Action

Episode Date: December 4, 2017

The Provisional Government of France wanted a political revolution NOT a social revolution. Direct Link:  Give a Gift Get A Gift: www.hachettebookgroup.com/stormbeforethestorm Tour! 12/4/17 LOS ANGELES, CA Barnes & Noble -- The Grove, 7:00 PM Reading + Signing   12/5/17 SAN FRANCISCO, CA Book Passage, 6:00 PM Reading + Signing 12/6/17   PORTLAND, OR Powell's Books, 7:30 PM Back where it all began   12/7/17 SEATTLE, WA Elliott Bay Book Company, 7:00 PM Reading + Signing

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 7.18, Democracy in Action. When last we left our friends in Paris, it was, let's see, the morning of February the 25th, 1848. And oh my goodness, has a lot gone on since Alphonse de la Martine, emerged from O'Dell de Ville and proclaimed the Second French Republic. I mean, it basically blew Central Europe right to hell. But after our tour of Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Italy, it's time to come back around and pick up the thread in France where we left it off. Now, to refresh our memories, let's recall just a few of the things that happened at the end of episode 7.12, events that are going to set up the conflicts of our next two episodes, because we are going to stay in France for the next two episodes.

In the wake of King Louis Philippe's abdication, a Republican provisional government just sort of voted itself in. into existence. Its leading light was the poet-turned-politician Alphonse de la Martín, and its most radical member was the journalist, Alexandra L'Hdru-Roulin. At least he was the most radical member for a few hours, because remember, an even more radical group of opposition leaders nominated the socialist Louis Blanc and the influential working-class leader, known only to us as Albert, to go join the self-proclaimed provisional government. After an awkward few minutes on the night of February the 24th, the provisional government led in Blanc and Albert, and then, after an all-night meeting, they emerged the next morning and proclaimed a republic.

The reaction throughout Paris to these events was above all shock. I mean, just a few days ago, the story was that some loony dead-enders were going to stage a banquet in defiance of a government ban, but then suddenly whiz-bang-pow, pow, the king is tossed out and the whole monarchy is toppled along with him. I mean, it was crazy. It was shocked. It was. It was But now that the monarchy was toppled, two emotions prevailed in the city, depending on your social status. Those two emotions were fear and jubilation. Anyone with property to lose was justifiably terrified that the world was about to be turned upside down, that it was going to be 1793 all over again. The heirs of the Song Q Lott are going to rise up, murder us all in our beds, and confiscate our property.

But despite the breathless terror of a new terror, this was not how it played out, because it was jubilation, not rage, that reigned among those heirs of the song Q-Lot. They did not roam the streets killing and looting. They roamed the streets, drinking, and singing. And that was even if they were roaming the streets at all, because mostly Paris enjoyed peace and quiet in the aftermath of the February Revolution. There was no looting, no killing. shops were soon reopening, and the rhythm of daily life returned. Okay, so that's Paris, but what about out in the provinces? Were they just going to accept the fall of the July monarchy?

Well, yes, yes they were. Advances in telegraph technology over the past 18 years meant that the rest of France learned about the Revolution of 1848 considerably faster than they had learned about the Revolution of 1830. By about noon on February the 25th, the prefects, of most of the departments had been notified, and word spread quickly from there. In most of the departmental capitals and big cities, groups of local opposition leaders with Republican leanings then formed spontaneous committees to take over local administration

from the Orly honest prefects, and those prefects basically had one of two options. They could either resign, or they could collaborate with these new committees. None of the prefects had the personal authority or power. or resources to resist the February Revolution. So within a few days, administration of the departments was in the hands of small groups of middle class lawyers and professionals and journalists and the odd small-time banker. Most of these guys were drawn from that bitter social strata, those who were educated enough to care about politics, but not rich enough to participate at the national level,

and they were eager to get in on the action. But this atmosphere of acquiescence could be stopped, by the two great institutions with decidedly anti-revolutionary pedigrees, the army and the church. In the army, it became very clear, very fast that nearly all the senior army officers prized order and stability over loyalty to the Orillon. So they focused on maintaining discipline in the ranks. And this posture was helped along by the Orlean family themselves, who signaled that they were not going to fight the verdict of the February Revolution. Down in Algeria, two of Louis Philippe's sons were serving as senior army officers when they heard that their father had abdicated. They resigned their commissions, urged their fellow officers to prioritize peace and harmony, and then sailed off to join their father in exile.

The officer corps then took their advice to heart and accepted the fall of the July monarchy with swift equanimity. A few committed partisans resigned or were forced out in the coming weeks, but frankly there weren't, very many of those. Meanwhile, the greatest potential organizer of counter-revolutionary activity, the Catholic Church, made no move to defend the legitimacy of the Orleans. Most of the clergy didn't think the orleans were particularly legitimate to begin with, so their fall was not lamented. And with no real juice left in the legitimate tank, that is, those who wanted to bring back the bourbons, both the senior leadership and rank-and-file clergy were prepared to go along with the Second Republic, just so long as the provisional government didn't make any radical moves like

bring back de-Christianization, and the provisional government had no interest in doing that. So as it turned out, the critics of the July monarchy had been right all along. Support for the regime rested on the head of a pin. It did not extend much beyond the Gizzo-led majorities in the chamber of deputies, and those majorities amounted to a couple hundred seats voted on by a couple hundred thousand extremely rich voters. And outside this tiny electorate who was voting in rotten boroughs for paid off deputies, there was not a very deep wellspring of loyalty to the Orleanists. Louis-Philippe had reigned for less than 20 years and had himself come to power thanks to a Parisian insurrection. Live by the barricade, die by the barricade, and the July

monarchy was now dead. But all that said, the surprising ease with which France accepted the abrupt return of a republic could be turned back at any moment. If you recall from our episode on the Spectre of the French Revolution, the Specter of the French Revolution was hanging over everything. And in the popular consciousness, the Republic meant dictatorship, war, and the terror. So the provisional government had to thread a very tight historical needle. They wanted to recapture the glorious promise of the First Republic, while avoiding the memory of the bloody quagmire the First Republic had fallen into,

the Leveon Mass, the dictatorship of the Committee of Public Safety, and the reign of terror. So to head off those fears, the provisional government made it very clear that they were merely a caretaker government. We are not, repeat not, a dictatorial committee of public safety. We are going to get going with some kind of national election as soon as possible, and in the meantime, we're not going to rule with an iron fist. This revolution was about freedom of speech and the press and the freedom of assembly, and by God, that is what we are here to guarantee. And just as soon as a new National Assembly is elected, we will gladly step aside.

Then on February the 26th, they took the momentous step of officially announcing the abolition of the monarchy. But at the same time, announced that they were all. abolishing the death penalty. So the Republic is back, but Madame La Guillotine will remain safely locked away. Okay, so far so good, no dictatorship, no guillotine, but the provisional government also had to deal with the fact that for the rest of Europe, the specter of the French Revolution was less about dictatorship and guillotine and more about aggressive French armies on the march. So to calm the fears of their Europe neighbors, the provisional government also needed to renounce such aggressive war.

So on March the 5th, Le Martín published The Manifesto to Europe. And the manifesto was provocatively addressed to both the heads of Europe and the people of Europe. But the thrust of the message was, don't worry, our intentions are entirely peaceful. We will, of course, be rearranging things domestically. We have, after all, had a revolution. but we have no interest in starting wars or invading other countries. Now, there is some language in the manifesto about France supporting the legitimate national aspirations of people everywhere, which was heartening to say the Italians, but subsequent back-channel communications to the heads of Europe

made it clear that France was not interested in armed intervention in conflicts outside her own borders. So though Europe was very nervous about the return of a French Republic, just as they had done with Louis-Philippe in 1830, they accepted the changeover. The United States was the first to recognize the Second French Republic, and then Britain confirmed that recognition, in part because British Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, hated Louis-Philippe and was glad to see him go. And as for Prussia and Austria, well, in a few days, they're going to have problems of war. their own. So as they kept going with this project of a republic with all the things you liked, but none of the stuff you didn't, the provisional government actually started taking over the reins of administration and creating a Republican government for France. The Chamber of Peers was abolished with all noble titles being stripped of their legal meaning. After that, it was time to clear out

all the ordeal honest appointees out there, an effort that was spearheaded by the radical Leguilis Roul-Roulon from his powerful position as Minister of the Interior. Over the course of the next few weeks, judges, prefects, and magistrates were reviewed, and anyone deemed suspect was replaced, which was a lot of them, but by no means all of them. Over the course of the next month, about 800 of the 3,000 sitting judges were replaced, as were most of the departmental prefects. But at least in this initial round of purge and replace, Worthy replacements were appointed based on skill and experience more than their political leanings.

So rather than taking this early opportunity to pack the administrative apparatus with ideological allies, Ledru-Lel-Lan wound up packing that apparatus with men whose loyalty to republicanism was pretty suspect. He would soon be correcting this oversight, though. Now, to guarantee the internal security of France, and more importantly, the security of the Republican provisional government, the government also decided to radically democratize and expand the National Guard. They announced that henceforth there would be no minimum tax requirement to join the Guard, that in fact every adult male in France should consider themselves eligible for service.

They also announced that service in the National Guard would no longer be a part-time volunteer gig, but that it would be a full-time paid job. job. Enlistments would run for one year and one day with wages, arms, and uniforms provided by the state. Tens of thousands flock to join up. Lower class volunteers obviously because this sounded like a pretty good gig, while they're upper class neighbors because they wanted to prove their patriotism. This newly reorganized version of the National Guard would then find its loyalties very closely aligned with those of the provisional government, as we are about to see. As they work to guarantee their physical security,

the provisional government also needed to guarantee their financial security. The books did not look good, thanks to the last few years of bad harvests, recession, and expenditures on relief efforts, and right away it was decided to round up all the royal silverware, minus pieces that seemed particularly artistic, of course, and melt it all down. But that was only going to get them so far. They also took the drastic and controversial step of a one-time hike of the land tax.

And by hike, I mean hike. They increased it 45%. The government could see no other way to close the massive deficits they had inherited, but believe me, this did not make them very popular. Now, the richest landowners could absorb this hike, but it fell very hard on small-time landowners, small-time landowners who were about to be invited to vote for the very first time. But even still, it was clear that the question of whether the provisional government was going to survive financially

was going to come down to the bankers. Now, those bankers representing national and international interests, were cautiously optimistic about the fall of the July monarchy. True, Louis-Philippe had always been good to them, but of less than the last, and they were, late, his regime had become very shaky, and the revolution actually provided some relief by removing the uncertainty, and the banks were willing to work with the new government, if the new government was willing to work with them. And a major symbolic showdown at the end of February sealed the deal. Still just days removed from the revolution, a demonstration of workers paraded down to the Hotel

DeVille to demand that the tricolor flag be replaced. Replace. Replace. with what? Replaced with a plain red flag. This red flag had flown above the more radical barricades and was at that very moment becoming the flag of revolutionary socialism. Arguing that a new order needed a new flag, they pressed the provisional government to drop the tricolor, now a symbol of the disgraced July monarchy, and instead raised the red flag of radical socialism. But men with ties to the banking community warned Lamartin that adopting the red flag would destroy the government's credit. So instead, Lamartin went out and sold the crowd on the tricolor, saying that it had gone round the world in triumph and should remain the glorious symbol of the French nation. This nationalist appeal overcame their socialist demands, and the tricolor remained.

So, too, did the provisional government's line of credit. But though they accepted the tricolor, it was clear that the workers and artisans were not going to just go away, and their further demands were going to have to be reckoned with. It was not hard to imagine these workers, particularly the unemployed workers, remounting the barricades that the government just tried to blow them off. And out in the provinces, reports were already coming in that the political revolution had led to the beginning of a social revolution. workers were attacking railroad stations and factories and machines, really anything that smacked of industrial economics. They also targeted foreign workers, particularly from England, Ireland, and Belgium,

who had been brought in to work in factories in northern France. More than a thousand British workers were going to be chased off over the next few weeks. Now, the big problem for the provisional government was how to put a lid on all this. they were, with the exception of Louis Blanc and Albert, principally concerned with carrying out a political revolution. They did not want a social revolution, but if they ignore the social demands of the working classes, they might trigger a further social revolution,

a revolution that none of them wanted. So they had to do something. So what to do? What to do? The something they decided to do was co-opted Louis Blanc's popular credo that men had a right to work. A well-known rallying cry since Blanc had first introduced it in his influential pamphlet, the Organization of Labor, the provisional government seized on the right to work as one of their

principal platforms, a strong and straightforward guarantee to the working classes who had spent the last few years buffeted by a terrible economy and the last few days fighting on the barricades. So after decreeing the right to work, on February the 2015, fifth. The next day, the government established national workshops. The idea was pretty simple. If you were unemployed, you could go to a workshop and get subsistence wages doing work made up by the state, even if it was just digging ditches and then filling them back up again. Now that's an exaggeration, but does get to the heart of it. But here's the thing. The provisional government

didn't really believe in the right to work, or in the idea of these national workshops. And you can tell because instead of putting Louis Blanc in charge of the project, they put it in the hands of the Minister of Public Works, a guy named Pierre Marie. And he hated Blanc, he hated socialism, and he was put in charge of the national workshops for that very reason. His job was to permanently discredit the whole project. Now, despite Marilee's hostility to the national workshops, he was now running, he had with him a small, group of energetic advisors who were positively brimming with ideas. In the weeks and months to come, they would suggest that workers be let loose on all manner of public works, railroads, canals, bridges, improved housing. But all these proposals kept being mysteriously denied. Instead,

the jobs were kept as menial and pointless as possible. And what's more, the work that was approved never covered more than about 10,000 men on any given day. Now, when the workshops opened, that would have been just about right for the unemployed of Paris. But when word began to spread that these national workshops existed, more than 100,000 men from the surrounding districts started migrating into the city. But the amount of available work was never increased. Now, to deal with that divide, a man would be paid a full day's wage if he worked that day, and then be given about 75% of a wage if he came in, but there was nothing to do. Now, in hindsight, it's pretty clear that the national workshops were being set up to fail, and specifically for everyone to hate them.

The workers would hate the workshops because there was no work to do. What work there was to do was pointless, and they were still all hardly making ends meet. Meanwhile, taxpayers would watch their money go to pay a bunch of guys sitting around doing nothing. And the real real, the real thing is, genius part here is that even though it was Pierre Malie running the program into the ground, the right to work and the national workshops were so publicly identified with Louis Blanc that he wound up taking the blame for their failures. Your ideas just don't work in the real world. But initially, there was a lot of hope and promise that went along with the national workshops, and at their peak enrolled about 120,000 men, with another 50,000 just sort of hanging around the

outskirts at Paris, hoping to get signed up. So having denied Louis Blanc oversight of the national workshops, the provisional government instead gave him a different job that was similarly designed to discredit him and his ideas. They told him to go take over the Luxembourg Palace, the former meeting site of the Chamber of Peers, and there convene a council of workers to discuss their shared grievances and offer some solutions.

What became known as the Luxembourg Commission was, like the National Workshops, launched with a lot of hope and promise, but it quickly ran out of steam. At their very first meeting on March 1st, the delegation of workers who assembled pressed for hard rules about how long a workday should be. They wanted to bring it down from the 15 to 16 hours it was at the moment to a more reasonable 10 in Paris and 11 out in the provinces. Blanc then invited in a committee of owners and got them to agree to these rules, but that would be the sum total of the Luxembourg Commission's success. With hundreds of workers coming in and going out, there was a lot of talking and a lot of disagreement, but even where they agreed, they could not then get the owners or the government to agree with them. One of their big complaints was the prevailing system of nested subcontracting for big projects, where the money invested would be passed through a number of subcontractors, each of whom would siphon off a small percentage for themselves,

before any of the money got to the workers doing the actual work. The Luxembourg Commission recommended clearing out all those subcontractors, but they couldn't get the owners to agree. And they had no real power to force anyone to do any. Meanwhile, Blanc himself tried to implement some of his more radical socialist ideas. He wanted to establish agricultural and worker colonies, where groups would share living spaces, enjoy old age and disability pensions, and get startup loans from the state. But he too was stymied in his efforts, and it slowly dawned on him that he had been shuffled off to an irrelevant and powerless commission,

while the provisional government went about its business. The star of Louis Blanc was now fading fast, as his more conservative colleagues wanted nothing more to do with him, and more radical agitators thought him slow and inept. But while all of this was going on, in the background, everyone was gearing up for a new national election. The provisional government was determined to hold elections as soon as possible to prove that they were not like the bad old committee of public safety.

They were also committed radical Democrats who really believed that the coming election would fulfill the great promise of the February Revolution. For them, this new election was what the revolution had been all about. Now, the procedure for running this election was approved on March 2nd, and it went like this. Elections for a new national constituent assembly would be held on April 9th, and the assembly would then convene on April the 20th. This National Assembly would have 900 members with representatives elected from the 86 departments, with representatives assigned on the basis of one delegate per 40,000 residents. So a few of the lesser populated departments would have just four or five delegates, while the Department of the Sen had over 30.

Okay, so pretty straightforward. The only subtle difference over previous elections was that rather than dividing France into 900 single-member districts, Voters would instead vote on lists of candidates who would then represent the department as a whole. But the truly radical innovation was that the election would take place on the basis of universal manhood suffrage. No minimum tax requirement, no active citizen, passive citizen distinction, just universal manhood suffrage. If you were 21 years old, had lived in the department for six months and hadn't had your civil rights stripped away, due to some criminal conviction, you could vote. Even domestic servants would be allowed to vote.

And not even the legendary democratic constitution of 1793 had allowed domestic servants to vote. So overnight, the electorate ballooned from a scant $250,000 to over $10 million. Only the United States had so drastically democratized its elections, and that had been piecemeal, state by state, over the course of about 20 years. years. The provisional government may have been terrified of social revolution, but they were absolutely going to carry out the political revolution that they all believed in, come hell or high water. But merely throwing up in the franchise was not the beginning and end of the revolution. On top of their commitment to democratic principles, the provisional government was

also committed to liberal civil rights. So freedom of speech and the press would be strictly observed during the campaign. The government would not jail its enemies or lock up those who criticize them. So over the course of 1848, something like 500 new newspapers opened up to support the now limitless spectrum of political and social thought that could be entered into the public sphere. And at least initially, this plethora of new papers were meant to influence the course of the coming election, as various groups and clubs and committees started joining together to identify candidates for the Assembly and put together endorsed lists for voters in the departments to work from. Now, obviously, the revolution had created a pretty energized Republican base who

believed that the election was theirs to win. They were drawing from the kind of guys who would read the national and from the type of people who now formed the provisional government or who came together for all those spontaneous committees out in the departments. But the commitment to free speech and organization meant that those hostile to the provisional government, both on the left and the right, were also free to organize themselves. Now, on the left, obviously, this meant more committed radicals and socialists who were not satisfied with these moderate Republicans who cared only about the political question. So they broke off and formed their own committees to find and endorse their own candidates.

The workers in the Luxembourg Commission did the same thing. And pretty soon, there was actually a huge variety. of competing left-wing candidate list floating around out there, which would become a problem for all of them come election day. Meanwhile, it did not take conservatives long to test the government's commitment to free speech by getting themselves organized. This group included everyone from Gizzo-style constitutional monarchists to like unreconstructed bourbon legitimists. Backed by wealthy landowners and bankers and merchants, they found the government's commitment to free speech surprisingly genuine, and they ramped up their efforts to go win a majority in the National Assembly.

They went and found candidates, they started newspapers, they contributed funds to print pamphlets and delegate lists. They aimed to win a majority in the National Assembly, even though they didn't really believe in the National Assembly, or frankly, the revolution. But though the provisional government believed that holding an election as quickly as possible was absolutely necessary, Not everyone agree. As they scrambled to put together a campaign apparatus, the radicals and socialists quickly came to the conclusion that this was all happening too fast. They presented petition after petition to the government demanding the election be postponed.

The thrust of their argument was that the people of France had not been sufficiently educated in Republican principles to trust them with the vote yet. If you just throw an election without preparing anybody, they'll just do whatever the richest landowner in the district does, or whatever the clergy tells them to do. And that turned out to be kind of true. But the demands to postpone were also rooted in the left-wing's belief that they themselves needed more time to properly organize, and that polling the elections on April the 9th would just mean that the same old faces would be returned to government. Along with their repeated calls to adequately provide for the unemployed workers of Paris, postponing the election was now

one of the central demands of the working-class leaders on the left. Not wanting to postpone the election, but at least cognizant that these petitioners might have a point, Minister of the Interior, Ledruhe Rolland, decided it was his job to educate the population of France on the benefits and responsibilities of Republican government. This is also when he started taking a closer look at the ideological disposition of the appointees he was sending out to the departments. Bypassing the old prefect apparatus, Ledreux-Rour-Wan created a new breed of administrative agents called commissars.

Operating a lot like the old representatives on mission during the original French Revolution, the commissars were to act as the provisional government's agents in the departments, and they were given a huge amount of authority to just act as they saw fit. And on March the 12th, Ledreur-Roulon issued an order that, these commissars had absolute final authority over the local elections. Clearly representing a brand of Republican ideology favored by the provisional government, this order was instantly seized on by opponents on both the left and the right, as proof that the government planned to tamper with the election, just like Gizot used to do. These charges seem to be confirmed when Ledruel

Elan tap public money to pay for artists and writers to go out and promote the glory of the new Republic. Now, though they were facing attacks from both the left and the right through March and April of 1848, the central focus of the provisional government remained their left flank to stop those who still wanted to use the political revolution as a springboard for a larger social revolution. On March the 17th, at least 100,000 and possibly as many as 200,000, paraded down to the Hotel DeVille to demand that the elections be post. postponed so that they would have a fair chance to make their voices heard. In the face of this demonstration, Louis Blanc made a fateful decision to stand with his colleagues in the

provisional government, and he urged the demonstrators to disperse. Now, his name was already being spat out derisively in radical circles, but Blanc's performance on March the 17th pretty much sealed his reputation as a weak-willed stooge. Still trying to hold on to his bona fides, though. It was Blanc who finally forced the government to postpone the election. About a week and a half after this showdown, he and the worker delegate Albert threatened to resign from the provisional government if the elections were not postponed. Fearing that losing these two links to the left, however tenuous those links now were,

would fatally undermine the provisional government's legitimacy. The others agreed. They postponed the election. but the compromise Blanc secured was hardly worth celebrating. The elections were postponed from April 9th to April the 23rd. Blanc had bought everyone a whole two weeks. With the elections finally approaching, the left-wing demonstrators re-rallied for another demonstration. Aware that they were probably not going to do well in the coming elections,

they wanted to press some more demands on the provisional government and hope that those demands would stick after the National Assembly convened and took over the government of France. In particular, they demanded that the government create what they called a ministry of progress. This ministry, fully vested with the power of the state, unlike the advisory Luxembourg Commission, would be tasked with implementing socialist policies that would benefit the peasants in the urban working classes. And through their various organizing networks, the word went around that demonstration would be held on April the 16th. When spies told Lemartin what was being planned, he assumed that this was the socialist

revolution he had long feared. Knowing what was coming but unable to stop it, Lamartin wrote out a will and burned most of his working papers on the night of April the 15th. Now, the real worry for Lamartin and the other moderates and the provisional government was that as minister of the interior, it would be led to Lédroula-Lan. who had the power to call out the National Guard. If the workers really came for blood, would Led Rulalon deploy the National Guard to stop them or to help them?

They all got their answer the next morning. When a huge crowd gathered and started marching on the Hotel de Ville, ostensibly to push for a Ministry of Progress, but who knows how far these people wanted to go, Led Lulaan called out the National Guard and planted them between the government and the crowd. A committed political radical, but soft on the social question, Ledru-Lolan decided he would go no further with the leftists.

And like Louis Blanc before him, whatever goodwill he had out there in the leftist communities was now gone. They now derided him as a turncoat and a stooge. But the National Guard also refused to join the workers. So they dispersed peacefully. With the election now right around the corner, everyone finalized their candidate lists and tried to get them into the hands of supporters and voters out in the departments, either passing out pamphlets or publishing names and ideologically supportive newspapers.

As these lists were finalized, the shape of the election revealed itself. This was not going to be an alignment of left-wing forces, the socialists and radicals and Republicans and Democrats, joining together to defeat the last vestiges of conservatism. it would instead be a broad alignment of respectable opinion aligning against the forces of left-wing social revolution. Even moderate Republican interests, as represented by the members of the provisional government, who were all themselves candidates for the Assembly, preferred to do business with conservative monarchists rather than left-wing socialists. So there was a very strange de facto alliance between legitimists and orleanses and moderate republicans.

and old dynastic left types, who all seemed to agree on the basic principles of order and property and family and religion, and they all warned repeatedly of the dangers of turning the world upside down. Election day was April the 23rd, 1848, which just so happened to be Easter Sunday, and the whole election turned out to be a categorical trouncing of the left. As the radicals and socialist feared. Out in many parishes, priests would hold Easter Mass, then distribute lists of approved conservative candidates, and then personally lead a procession down to the ballot boxes. So ballots were then counted over the next few days, and in the very first Democratic election in the history of France, nearly 50% of the voters showed up, which is pretty good compared to

the like 1% that we used to get back during the French Revolution. Given how hastily this all unfolded and how improvised the elections were. It's hard to give numbers like this party won this many seats and that party won that many seats. But of the 900 seats, about 65% were won by some version of moderate Republican. Another 25% of the seats were won by avowed conservatives, plenty of whom were openly monarchists. The left-wing radicals and socialists won just 10%. But though they had been trounced. The left did not take the results of this election as proof that they should tuck tail and slink away. They took it as final proof that the Revolution of 1848 was a deed only half done. That real change would not come until a second social revolution had been

properly staged. And so they got to work planning a second social revolution. Next time, we will stay in France as the new government of the Second Republic faces an immediate existential and are forced to decide once and for all which side of the line they are on. Are they for order and property, or are they for liberty and the people? And in June of 1848, that is a question that would once again have to be answered on the barricades. But that story is going to have to wait two weeks, because I am, as you listen to this, in Los Angeles, getting ready for the West Coast leg of the trip. And if this episode sounded a little different than usual, it's because I'm.

I'm recording it in a hotel room in Los Angeles. On December the 4th, I will be at the Grove Barnes & Noble here in Los Angeles. Then December the 5th, I will be at Book Passage in San Francisco, December the 6th at Powell's in Portland. And then finally, December the 7th, the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle. I cannot wait to see everyone. These have been tons of fun, and I look forward to having more fun with all of you. And as I hinted before, these events are going so well that the publisher and I are looking at more dates, probably in February and March, dates that will take me gasp south of the Mason

Dixon line. I am also happy to announce that the publisher and I have been able to cook up a little Saturnalia promotion. As you know, the storm before the storm pretty much makes the perfect gift for everyone in your family. And to help you make the right decision to have the storm before the storm be the perfect gift that you give to your family, I want to give a gift to you if you give a gift to them. So give a gift, get a gift. Now, presumably you have read the book. So the gift you will be getting is a special little audio epilogue that will discuss the specifics of how the sullen constitution was dismantled in the decade or so after Sulla's death. Like, he stripped the tribunes of all their power, but we know by the age of Julius Caesar that the tribunes had all their powers back.

So how did they get it back? Well, I'll tell you all about it, and minor spoiler alert, Krasis and Pompey are right in the middle of it. So if you buy two or more hardcover copies of the Storm Before the Storm from any retailer by December the 25th, which is a date we just picked at random, you can go to hashetbookgroup.com slash the storm before the storm, upload your receipts, and receive this exclusive audio epilogue. If you've already bought more than two copies, congratulations, you qualify too. Just visit hashetbookgroup.com slash the storm before the storm for more information and terms and conditions. Until then, I will be back in two weeks, and I hope to see you all out on the tour.