On July 14th, France commemorates its first step towards overthrowing its last monarchy. Yet the glorious days of the 1789 Revolution did not suffice to establish a lasting republic. A review of The Atlantic’s archives reveals that the siege of the Bastille was only the first in a series of clashes between the French people’s revolutionary spirit and their leaders’ monarchical ambitions.
By the time The Atlantic’s first issue was printed in 1857, France had gone through two republics, a directory, a consulate, three kings and an emperor, and it was settling in a period of relative stability under its second emperor. Napoleon III’s coup d’état in 1851 put an end to the short-lived Second Republic, thwarting hopes that the 1848 revolution—in which the French deposed their last king, Louis Philippe—would usher in a stable democracy.
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