June Rebellion  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

The June Rebellion, or the Paris Uprising of 1832 (French: Insurrection républicaine à Paris en juin 1832), was an unsuccessful, anti-monarchist insurrection of Parisian Republicans—largely students—from June 5 to June 6, 1832.

The rebellion originated in an attempt of the Republicans to reverse the establishment of the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, shortly after the death of the king's powerful supporter, President of the Council, Casimir Pierre Périer, on May 16, 1832. The rebellion was the last outbreak of violence linked with the July Revolution.

Author Victor Hugo described the rebellion in his novel Les Misérables.

Hugo and Les Misérables

On June 5, 1832, Victor Hugo was writing a play in the Tuileries Gardens when he heard the sound of gunfire from the direction of Les Halles. The Gardens were deserted and the park-keeper had to unlock the gates to let Hugo out, but instead of hurrying home, he followed the sounds through the empty streets, unaware that half of Paris had already fallen to the mob. All about Les Halles were barricades. Hugo headed north up the Rue Montmartre, then turned right onto the Passage du Saumon, and at last turning before the Rue du Bout du Monde (World’s End Street). Halfway down the alley, the grilles at either end were slammed shut. Hugo was surrounded by barricades and flung himself against a wall, as all the shops and stores had been closed for some time. He found shelter between some columns. For a quarter of an hour, bullets flew both ways.

In his later novel Les Misérables, first published in 1862, Hugo depicts the period leading up to the rebellion, and follows the lives and interactions of several characters over a twenty-year period. The novel begins in the year of Napoleon Bonaparte's final defeat and climaxes with the battles of the June Rebellion. An outspoken republican activist in the 19th century, Hugo was unquestionably biased in favor of the revolutionaries.

Scenes of Parisian students and the poor, planning the rebellion upon the eve of the benevolent General Lamarque’s death, are portrayed in the novel through the activities of the fictional "Friends of the ABC" (a pun on abaissé, or "oppressed"), portrayed as a sub-group of the Rights of Man Society. The erection of barricades throughout Paris’s narrow streets is also described. The ABC organise the building of a barricade in the Rue de la Chanverrerie, a side-road running into the Rue Saint-Denis, near a wine shop which they use as their base of operations. During the climactic battle the main characters all come together and several of them are killed.

Although a fictional work, Les Misérables has given the relatively little-discussed rebellion widespread renown. The novel is one of the few works of literature that discusses the June Rebellion and the events leading up to it.

See also





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "June Rebellion" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools