After intense urban fighting, large crowds managed to take control of the capital, leading to the abdication of King Louis Philippe on 24 February and the subsequent proclamation of the Second Republic.

[citation needed] In 1830, Charles X of France, presumably instigated by one of his chief advisers, Jules, Prince de Polignac, issued the Four Ordinances of St.

[citation needed] Nicknamed the "Bourgeois Monarch", Louis Philippe sat at the head of a moderately liberal state controlled mainly by an educated elite.

[6] Starting in July 1847 the reformists of all shades began to hold "banquets" at which toasts were drunk to "République française" (the French Republic), "Liberté, égalité, fraternité", etc.

[7] Louis Philippe turned a deaf ear to the reform movement, and discontent among wide sections of the French people continued to grow.

French successes led to other revolts, including those who wanted relief from the suffering caused by the Industrial Revolution, and nationalism sprang up hoping for independence from foreign rulers.

When Britain's Reform Act 1832 extended enfranchisement to any man paying taxes of £10 or more per year (previously the vote was restricted to landholders), France's free press took interest.

[citation needed] Bastiat, who was one of the most famous political writers of the 1840s, had written countless works concerning the economic situation before 1848, and provided a different explanation of why the French people were forced to rise in the revolt.

He believed that the main reasons were primarily the political corruption, along with its very complex system of monopolies, permits, and bureaucracy, which made those who were able to obtain political favors unjustly privileged and able to dictate the market conditions and caused a myriad of businesses to collapse, as well as protectionism which was the basis for the French foreign trade at the time, and which caused businesses along the Atlantic coast to file for bankruptcy, along with the one owned by Bastiat's family.

Indeed, a large part of French economic problems in the 1830s and 1840s were caused by the shortage and unnaturally high prices of different products which could have easily been imported from other countries, such as textiles, machines, tools, and ores, but doing so was either outright illegal at the time or unprofitable due to the system of punitive tariffs.

One of the members of the French Chamber of Deputies reportedly received a standing ovation when he proposed that the depression of 1847 was due primarily to "external weakness" and "idle pacifism".

Nationalist tendencies caused France to severely restrict all international contacts with the United Kingdom, including the ban on importing tea, perceived as destructive to the French national spirit.

[citation needed] Because political gatherings and demonstrations were outlawed in France, activists of the largely middle class opposition to the government began to hold a series of fund-raising banquets.

[13] 22 February started quietly, and at 9 a.m., members of the Municipal Guard who had been assigned to arrest the banquet leaders were recalled to their normal duties by the Prefect of Police.

[14] The crowds, mostly unarmed, easily overcame the few Municipal Guardsmen, filling the squares and nearly invading the Palais Bourbon, the seat of the Chamber of Deputies.

[13] Upon Guizot's resignation, the leaders of the Movement Party (known as the "dynastic opposition"), Adolphe Thiers and Odilon Barrot, congratulated themselves on achieving a change of ministry while preserving the monarchy.

[14] By 24 February, Paris was a barricaded city, and King Louis Philippe remained without a government, as first Molé, then Thiers, failed to form a cabinet.

[13] After hearing of the massacre on the Boulevard des Capucines, Louis Philippe called for a government to be installed by Barrot, who represented a significant concession to the reformists.

[13] At the same time, however, the king gave the command of the troops in Paris to Marshal Bugeaud, who was despised by the crowds for his reputation of brutality in suppressing protests.

[15][13] Louis Philippe and Queen Maria Amalia boarded a carriage awaiting at the Place de la Concorde and left Paris escorted by cavalry.

On the king's throne, which would be burned the next day at the Place de la Bastille, they wrote, "The People of Paris to All Europe: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

[13] The effort by the dynastic opposition to secure a regency was defeated by popular calls for a Republic, and a preliminary list of members of a provisional government was announced by deputy Alphonse de Lamartine.

[15][13] In the early hours of 25 February, Lamartine came to the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville and, followed by a euphoric cheering from the crowd, announced the proclamation of the French Republic.

[19][15] The American chargé d'affaires to the Austrian Empire, William H. Stiles, reported the Revolution "fell like a bomb amid the states and kingdoms of the Continent", and that "the various monarchs hastened to pay their subjects the constitutions which they owed them".

[19] In Mexico, monarchist sentiment had gained traction since 1845, envisioning the restoration of the First Mexican Empire under a European monarch as the cure to the country's chronic instability.

Great Britain, the Netherlands, and France were cited as examples of countries that had abandoned unstable republican forms of government and found prosperity as parliamentary monarchies.

[20] The fall of the French monarchy and its replacement by a republic switched political fashion back to republicanism and may have prevented a monarchist restoration in the aftermath of the Mexican defeat in the Mexican-American War.