The rebellion originated in an attempt by republicans to reverse the establishment in 1830 of the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe, shortly after the death of the King's powerful supporter and President of the Council, Casimir Pierre Périer, on 16 May 1832.

On 1 June 1832, Jean Maximilien Lamarque, a popular former Army commander who became a member of the French parliament and was critical of the monarchy, died of cholera.

The French author Victor Hugo memorialized the rebellion in his 1862 novel Les Misérables, and it figures prominently in the stage musical and films that are based on the book.

In the 1830 July Revolution, the elected Chamber of Deputies had established a constitutional monarchy and replaced Charles X of the House of Bourbon with his more liberal cousin Louis-Philippe.

[2] However, over and above the easily provoked 'fury' or 'rage' of the Parisian population (at the differences between their poverty and the differences in income and opportunities of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy), Bonapartists for their part lamented the loss of Napoleon's empire, and the Legitimists supported the deposed Bourbon dynasty, seeking to empower the man they regarded as the true king: Charles's grandson and designated successor Henri, Count of Chambord.

[5] In February 1832 in Paris supporters of the Bourbons—the Legitimists, or Carlists as they were called by their adversaries—made an attempt to carry off the royal family in what would become known as the "conspiracy of rue des Prouvaires".

[4] This was followed by an insurrection in the Bourbon heartland of the Vendée led by Caroline, Duchess of Berry, mother of Henri, Count of Chambord, the Legitimist claimant to the throne as 'Henri V'.

[2] Parisian workers and local youth were reinforced by Polish, Italian and German refugees, who had fled to Paris in the aftermath of crackdowns on republican and nationalist activities in their various homelands.

[6] The subsequent uprising put the roughly 3,000 insurgents in control of much of the eastern and central districts of Paris, between Chatelet, the Arsenal and the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, for one night.

[7] During the night of 5–6 June the 20,000 part-time militiamen of the Paris National Guard were reinforced by about 40,000 regular army troops under the command of the Comte de Lobau.

[3]: 60  Returning to Paris from Saint-Cloud, he met his ministers and generals at the Tuileries and declared a state of siege, then rode through the area of the rising, to the applause of the troops.

The government, which had come to power in a revolution, distanced itself from its own revolutionary past, famously removing from view Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People, which had been commissioned to commemorate the events of 1830.

[3]: 62  A pamphlet published in 1836 compared the last stand of the republicans to the heroic resistance of the 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae:[3]: 14 A republican is virtue, perseverance; is devotion personified...[he] is Leonidas dying at Thermopylae, at the head of his 300 Spartans; he is also the 72 heroes who defended during 48 hours the approaches of the Cloître Saint-Merry from 60,000 men and who… threw themselves onto bayonets to obtain a glorious death.Louis-Philippe's regime was finally overthrown in the French Revolution of 1848, though the subsequent French Second Republic was short-lived.

In the 1848 Revolution, Friedrich Engels published a retrospective in which he analyzed the tactical errors which led to the failure of the 1832 uprising, and drew lessons for the 1848 revolt.

[9] On 5 June 1832, young Victor Hugo was writing a play in the Tuileries Gardens when he heard the sound of gunfire from the direction of Les Halles.

An outspoken republican activist, Hugo unquestionably favored the revolutionaries, although in Les Miserables he wrote about Louis-Philippe in sympathetic terms, as well as criticising him.