Reputed to be the winners of the 1848 Constituent Assembly election, the Moderate Republicans were strategically allied to The Mountain, the left-wing group, against the monarchists.
[4] The legislative elections of 1849 brought the Moderate Republicans' isolation as they obtained only 75 seats, down from 600 the previous year, losing to the conservative Party of Order.
After the coup d'état of 1851 and the proclamation of the Second French Empire, Napoleon III (the official title of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) repressed the Republicans, with 239 being imprisoned to Cayenne and 6,000 of 10,000 people interned in military camps in Algeria while some were guillotined or sentenced to house arrest in France.
Despite the amnesty of 15 August 1859, some exiled Republicans never returned to France (like Hugo, former Montagnard Ledru-Rollin, Louis Blanc and Armand Barbès).
They became the official opposition group with the Léon Gambetta's Belleville Agenda of 1869 based on radical, progressive, laicist and reformist goals.