July Revolution of 1830

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Eugène Delacroix : Freedom Leads the People (1830)

The July Revolution of 1830 , Les Trois Glorieuses , resulted in the final overthrow of the Bourbons in France and the renewed seizure of power by the bourgeoisie in a liberal kingdom. The cause of the revolution was the reactionary policies of King Charles X. He intended to restore the supremacy of the nobility ( see restoration ). When the king tried to dissolve Parliament, craftsmen, workers and students rose up in Paris in July 1830, forcing him to abdicate and flee to England. Since the revolution took place on the three days from July 27th to 29th, 1830, these are also known in French-speaking countries as "The Three Glorious" ( Les Trois Glorieuses ).

causes

The cabinet under Count Jules de Polignac consistently ruled by the Chamber of Deputies . Together with the social problems of the onset of industrialization ( see Industrial Revolution ), this led to a politically explosive mood in the summer of 1829. Although Algeria could be conquered in the spring of 1830 , at the same time parts of the army loyal to the king were bound abroad. Similar to the “great” revolution of 1789 , the liberal (and also Bonapartist) bourgeoisie united with the proto-proletarian lower class, which became politically active again for the first time since 1795. The pioneer of the revolution was the editor-in-chief of the liberal newspaper Le National Adolphe Thiers , who became one of the most important French politicians in the following governments.

Trigger and expiration

The immediate trigger for the July Revolution were the " July Ordinances " of July 26th, in which the Chamber of Deputies was dissolved, the electoral census was raised and the freedom of the press was further restricted. On July 27th, barricade fighting began , which after three days forced King Charles X to abdicate and flee to Great Britain . The unrest of the proletarian lower class could be suppressed without problems and the republicans began to come to terms. The " Jacobins " could not prevail, especially since a republican France would have had to fear foreign policy difficulties until the Holy Alliance intervened . For this reason, the moderate party of the upper class around Thiers and above all François Pierre Guillaume Guizot prevailed. A distant cousin of the king was put on the throne: Louis Philippe of Orléans , the so-called citizen king. Then began the period of the " July Monarchy ", which was considered the golden age of the French bourgeoisie.

Effects

This revolution also affected the rest of Europe. Not only did the liberal movement get a boost everywhere, there were also riots and new constitutions in several states of the German Confederation such as the Kingdom of Saxony , the Kingdom of Hanover , the Electorate of Hesse (Hessen-Kassel) and the Duchy of Braunschweig , which were, however, still in the rural framework remained. One of the direct consequences was the Berlin tailoring revolution from September 16 to 20, 1830.

In various states of Italy, such as the Papal States , in Parma and in Modena , there were unrest among the Carbonari (→ Risorgimento ), but above all in Poland, which had been divided between Prussia , Austria and Russia since the Congress of Vienna of 1814/15 (→ Congress Poland ). The Tsar was deposed as King of Poland and a national government was formed under Adam Jerzy Prince Czartoryski . It was not until the autumn of 1832 that the uprising was suppressed by Russian troops ; Poland sank to the rank of a Russian province, and an influential Polish émigré scene emerged in Paris, which soon split into “whites” and “reds”.

There were also effects in the immediate north-eastern neighborhood of France: the southern Netherlands rebelled against paternalism from the north in the Belgian Revolution , became independent and in November 1830 the Kingdom of Belgium was proclaimed. The constitution that the new state gave itself was considered the most progressive constitution in Europe. The borders of the country were not set after various military actions until 1839 with the division of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg .

In Switzerland, under the influence of the July Revolution, there was a renewal of the liberal movement known as regeneration . Liberal constitutions were introduced in eleven cantons under pressure from the bourgeoisie. There was only isolated violence, particularly in the cantons of Neuchâtel and Basel . A liberal revision of the federal treaty failed in 1833 due to resistance from the conservative majority of the cantons. The asylum policy of the liberal cantons made Switzerland a refuge for politically persecuted people from all over Europe, such as Charles Louis Napoléon and Giuseppe Mazzini . The tensions that arose between liberal and conservative cantons in 1830 led to the Sonderbund War of 1847. The liberal successes and experiments in some cantons made Switzerland and especially Zurich after 1830 an important model for the liberal movement throughout Europe.

In the longer term, the July Revolution strengthened liberal and democratic aspirations across Europe. When the "bourgeois king" Louis-Philippe distanced himself more and more from his liberal roots of the Juste Milieu and finally joined the Holy Alliance , which was shaped by the Metternich system , another bourgeois-liberal revolution broke out in France in 1848 , the February Revolution of 1848 which led to the proclamation of the Second French Republic . The February revolution of 1848 also triggered the revolutions in many other European states that led to the overcoming of the Metternich restoration .

reception

Several works by the French composer Hector Berlioz are commissioned in memory of the victims of the July Revolution. On the one hand, there is the Requiem , which was composed in 1837 on behalf of the Minister of the Interior Adrien de Gasparin and was originally supposed to be premiered on July 28, 1838, to deal with the revolution on the one hand and the death of the assassination attempt on Louis Philippe by Joseph Fieschi three years earlier on the other to commemorate, in particular Marshal Adolphe Édouard Mortier . A second work related to the revolution is the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale, premiered on the 10th anniversary of the revolution in 1840 .

literature

Web links

Commons : July Revolution of 1830  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wiktionary: July Revolution  - Explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Remarks

  1. ^ Christian Koller: Regeneration. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ↑ Gordon A. Craig: Money and Mind. Zurich in the age of liberalism 1830–1869 . CH Beck, Munich 1988, p. 11.