‘The July Revolution of 1830 marked a significant turning point in the advancement of liberalism and constitutionalism in France.’ Analyse.

The cause. Charles X pursued an ultra-royalist programme against a liberal majority in the Chamber. When the elections of 1830 returned a stronger opposition, he issued the July Ordinances on 25 July 1830, dissolving the newly elected Chamber, suspending press freedom and narrowing the franchise — a direct attack on the Charter of 1814.

The three days. Printers and journalists led the protest, barricades went up across Paris, and after the Trois Glorieuses of 27-29 July the army lost the capital. Charles X abdicated. The republicans who had done the fighting were outmanoeuvred by liberal notables, who installed Louis Philippe of Orleans.

Why it was a turning point.

• Sovereignty was relocated. Louis Philippe became King of the French, not King of France, ruling by the will of the nation rather than divine right.
• Constitutional gains were real. Censorship was abolished, Catholicism ceased to be the state religion, the king lost the power to rule by ordinance, and the electorate roughly doubled, from about 90,000 to some 170,000.
• It broke the Restoration settlement of 1815, setting off the Belgian revolution of 1830, the Polish rising of 1830-31 and unrest in Italy and Germany.

The limits. The franchise stayed tied to property; the July Monarchy was a bourgeois regime; the workers who built the barricades gained nothing, and the unresolved demand for a republic produced 1848.