jun 13, 1849 - Peaceful procession in Paris which results in removal of Montagne members from Legislative Assembly
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“It should suffice to say that the Montagne was at the head of this movement to know that the movement was defeated and that June 1849 was a caricature, as ludicrous as it was contemptible, of June 1848. The great retreat of 13 June was eclipsed only by the even greater battle report of Changarnier, the great man improvised by the party of Order. Every social epoch needs its great men, and if it does not find them it invents them, as Helvétius said.”
- p. 427
"The ‘Mountain’ laboured till daybreak. It gave birth to a ‘Proclamation to the people’, which on the morning of 13 June occupied a more or less shamefaced place in two socialist journals.98 It declared that the President, the ministers and the majority of the Legislative Assembly were ‘outside the Constitution’ (hors la constitution) and summoned the National Guard, the army and finally the people to ‘rise up’. ‘Long live the Constitution!’ was the slogan which it issued, a slogan which meant nothing other than ‘Down with the revolution!
In response to the Montagne’s proclamation the petty bourgeoisie held a so-called peaceful demonstration on 13 June; that is, a street procession moved along from the Château d’Eau through the boulevards, 30,000 strong, mostly members of the National Guard, unarmed, interspersed with members of the secret workers’ sections, shouting ‘Long live the Constitution!’, a slogan which was uttered mechanically, ice-cold, and with a bad conscience by the demonstrators themselves, and which, instead of swelling up like thunder, was ironically tossed back by the echo of the people who milled about on the pavements. Deep-chested notes were missing from the many-voiced chorus. And as the procession turned by the meeting place of the ‘Friends of the Constitution’ and a hired herald of the Constitution appeared on the roof of the building violently cleaving the air with his claqueur hat, letting the slogan ‘Long live the Constitution!’ fall like hail from his monstrous lungs onto the heads of the pilgrims, even they seemed to be overcome by the comedy of the situation. It is well known how, when the procession arrived at the corner of the rue de la Paix, it was met in the boulevards in a thoroughly unparliamentary manner by the dragoons and chasseurs of Changarnier, how, in an instant, it scattered in all directions, casting over its shoulder the occasional cry ‘to arms’ so that the parliamentary call to arms of 11 June might be fulfilled.”
- p. 432-3
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Timeline for The Class Struggle in France & the 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
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