July Revolution

In July 1830 three days of street fighting in Paris overthrew the Bourbon restoration monarchy of Charles X.

Overview

Charles X ordinances dissolving the newly elected chamber, censoring the press, and restricting the franchise triggered barricade fighting from 27 to 29 July 1830, remembered as the Three Glorious Days. Workers, students, and shopkeepers defeated regular troops and royal authority collapsed. Liberal parliamentarians installed Louis Philippe, duke of Orleans, as a citizen king heading the constitutional July Monarchy. The revolution inspired uprisings in Belgium, Poland, and the Italian states, and Delacroix painting Liberty Leading the People fixed its image for all later revolutions. Yet political power stayed with a narrow propertied electorate, and frustration with that compromise built toward the explosion of 1848.