French demonstration of 15 May 1848

[1] Universal male suffrage, applied for the first time since 1792, resulted in the election of an Assembly with a majority composed of a group calling themselves "tomorrow's republicans".

[1] The progressives in the Assembly were also unhappy about the inaction of the Department of Foreign Affairs and its provisional minister, Jules Bastide, who refused to help the Poles then under the occupation of Prussian and Austrian troops.

The progressive Republicans had difficulty in understanding this passivity when, within human memory, France had been a "great nation" which marched to the aid of those "oppressed by their rulers".

Delegates from Poland (specifically, Poznań and Lemberg, now known as Lviv) prevailed upon a sympathetic deputy from the department of the Seine, a naturalized Pole, Louis Wolowski, to have the Assembly discuss the Polish question on 15 May.

The event started at the Bastille and headed through the boulevards toward the Place de la Concorde, at the western end of the Tuileries Gardens.

Provocative behavior by fiery old revolutionaries, like Aloysius Huber, and a general failure by Courtois, the commander of the National Guard, to respond appropriately caused the situation to degenerate.

The crowd then marched to the City Hall of Paris, where it proclaimed an "insurrectionary government" with Blanqui, Ledru-Rollin, Alexandre Martin, Louis Blanc, Aloysius Huber, Thoré, Pierre Leroux, and Raspail to serve as ministers.

Elements of the National Guard, joined by Lamartine, Ledru-Rollin, and members of the five-day-old Executive Committee, besieged the city hall and dislodged the protesters.