The Elusive Search for Revolutionary Consensus 627

Troops attacking a barricade in Paris during the June Days, 1848.

uprising with brutality, using regular army soldiers, the Mobile Guard, and
National Guard units, some of whom arrived from conservative provinces by
train and steamboat, symbols of a new age. More than 1,500 insurgents were
killed, some summarily executed. The provisional government deported more
than 4,000 workers to Algeria or other colonies, and sent thousands of people
to prison.
Karl Marx believed that the June Days were a dress rehearsal for a future
proletarian revolution that would pit workers against the bourgeoisie. The
short, bloody civil war, however, was more complicated than that. Some
younger workers, including artisans, fought alongside unskilled proletarians
in the Mobile Guard, which helped put down the uprising. Some radical
bourgeois supported the workers.
The Assembly immediately passed legislation to curtail popular political
movements. New laws limited freedom of the press and assembly and closed
political clubs, specifically banning women from membership. The Luxem­
bourg Commission was quickly disbanded. Cavaignac became provisional
chief executive of the republic.
Attention now focused on the presidential elections instituted by the new
republican constitution that was finally promulgated in November 1848.