Defending Livelihoods and Neighbourhoods: the June Days of 1848

Abstract

The basic organizational framework of the insurgent struggle of June 1848 was a neighbourhood one, as in previous risings in Paris. The radical leaders had been arrested in May, but a spontaneous popular leadership emerged through the organs of the democratized National Guard and the National Workshops. Although most of the clubs had disappeared by 23 June 1848 and few other than the Montagnards de Belleville fought on an organizational basis,¹ the convictions of many individual club members, female as well as male, carried them into battle. Rapid resistance was aided by the strategy of the forces of order. General Eugène Cavaignac, who was put in charge of military operations to end the rebellion, concentrated his troops slowly and carefully, enabling insurgents to organize neighbourhoods for defence and seek to establish local consensus by browbeating reluctant bystanders into participation or acquiescence — a role in which women were to be significant. From 23 to 26 June three days of bitter street fighting occurred, the rebels taking to the battle-lines on an intermittent and localized basis, as the needs of attack and defence required. The defeat of the June rebellion by Cavaignac’s forces brought the arrest of thousands of rebels, of whom at least 11 600 were noted in arrest records.