Neither were there lacking from the time of the Convention models for parliamentary insurrections which had suddenly transformed completely the relation between the majority and the minority -- and should the young Montagne not succeed where the old had succeeded? -- nor did relations at the moment seem unfavorable for such an undertaking.Popular unrest in Paris had reached an alarmingly high point -- the army, according to its vote at the election, did not seem favorably inclined toward the government;the legislative majority itself was still too young to have become consolidated, and in addition it consisted of old gentlemen.If the Montagne were successful in a parliamentary insurrection, the helm of state would fall directly into its hands.The democratic petty bourgeoisie, for its part, wished, as always, for nothing more fervently than to see the battle fought out in the clouds over its head between the departed spirits of parliament.
Finally, both of them, the democratic petty bourgeoisie and its representatives, the Montagne, would, through a parliamentary insurrection, achieve their great purpose, that of breaking the power of the bourgeoisie without unleashing the proletariat or letting it appear otherwise than in perspective; the proletariat would have been used without becoming dangerous.
After the vote of the National Assembly on June 11, a conference took place between some members of the Montagne and delegates of the secret workers' societies.The latter urged that the attack be started the same evening.The Montagne decisively rejected this plan.On no account did it want to let the leadership slip out of its hands; its allies were as suspect to it as its antagonists, and rightly so.The memory of June, 1848, surged through the ranks of the Paris proletariat more vigorously than ever.Nevertheless it was chained to the alliance with the Montagne.The latter represented the largest part of the departments -- it had increased its influence in the army; it had at its disposal the democratic section of the National Guard; it had the moral power of the shopkeepers behind it.To begin the revolution at this moment against the will of the Montagne would have meant for the proletariat, decimated moreover by cholera and driven out of Paris in considerable numbers by unemployment, to repeat uselessly the June days of 1848, without the situation which had forced this desperate struggle.The proletarian delegates did the only rational thing.They obligated the Montagne to compromise itself, that is, to come out beyond the confines of the parliamentary struggle, in the event that its bill of impeachment was rejected.During the whole of June 13 the proletariat maintained this same skeptically watchful attitude, and awaited a seriously engaged irrevocable melee between the democratic National Guard and the army, in order then to plunge into the fight and push the revolution forward beyond the petty bourgeois aim set for it.In the event of victory a proletarian commune was already formed which would take its place beside the official government.The Parisian workers had learned in the bloody school of June, 1848.
On June 12 Minister Lacrosse himself brought forward in the Legislative Assembly the motion to proceed at once to the discussion of the bill of impeachment.During the night the government had made every provision for defense and attack; the majority of the National Assembly was determined to drive the rebellious minority out into the streets; the minority itself could no longer retreat; the die was cast; the bill of impeachment was rejected by 377 votes to 8.The "Mountain," which had abstained from voting, rushed resentfully into the propaganda halls of the "pacific democracy,"the newspaper offices of the Democratie Pacifique.
Its withdrawal from the parliament building broke its strength as withdrawal from the earth broke the strength of Antaeus, her giant son.
Samsons in the precincts of the Legislative Assembly, the Montagnards were only Philistines in the precincts of the "pacific democracy." A long, noisy, rambling debate ensued.The Montagne was determined to compel respect for the constitution by every means, "only not by force of arms." In this decision it was supported by a manifesto and by a deputation of "Friends of the Constitution." "Friends of the Constitution" was what the wreckage of the coterie of the National, the bourgeois-republican party, called itself.
