Meanwhile the National Guard began to fraternize with the people.  The popular agitation increased every hour.  Soon matters again became serious.  Barricades were erected.  There was consternation at the Tuileries.  A cabinet council was hastily called, with the view of a change of ministers, and Guizot retired from the helm.  The crowd thickened in the streets, with hostile intent, and an accidental shot precipitated the battle between the military and the mob.  Thiers was hastily sent for at the palace, and arrived at midnight.  He refused office unless joined by the man the king most detested, Odillon Barrot.  Loath was Louis Philippe to accept this great opposition chief as minister of the interior, but there was no alternative between him and war.  The command of the army was taken from Generals Sebastiani and Jacqueminot, and given to Marshal Bugeaud, while General Lamoriciere took the command of the National Guard.

The insurgents were not intimidated.  They seized the churches, rang the bells, sacked the gunsmith shops, and erected barricades.  The old marshal was now hampered by the Executive.  He should have been made dictator; but subordinate to the civil power, which was timid and vacillating, he could not act with proper energy.  Indeed, he had orders not to fire, and his troops were too few and scattered to oppose the surging mass.  The Palais Royal was the first important place to be abandoned, and its pictures and statues were scattered by the triumphant mob.  Then followed the attack on the Louvre and the Tuileries; then the abdication of the king; and then his inglorious flight.  The monarchy had fallen.

Had Louis Philippe shown the courage and decision of his earlier years, he might have preserved his throne.  But he was now a timid old man, and perhaps did not care to prolong his reign by massacre of his people.  He preferred dethronement and exile rather than see his capital deluged in blood.  Nor did he know whom to trust.  Treachery and treason finished what selfishness and hypocrisy had begun.  Still, it is wonderful that he preserved his power for eighteen years.  He must have had great tact and ability to have reigned so long amid the factions which divided France, and which made a throne surrounded with republican institutions at that time absurd and impossible.

AUTHORITIES.

Louis Blanc’s Six Ans de Louis Philippe; Lamartine; Capefigue’s
L’Histoire de Louis Philippe; Lives of Thiers and Guizot; Fyffe’s Modern
Europe; Life of Lafayette; Annual Register; Mackenzie’s Nineteenth
Century; Conversations with Thiers and Guizot.