The French Revolution of 1789 overthrows the feudal monarchy and establishes France's first modern bourgeois republic.

Napoleon Bonaparte seizes power, abolishes the First Republic, and declares himself Emperor of the French.

The Bourbon dynasty is restored to power in France after Napoleon I's final military defeat.

Urban workers launch the February Revolution, forcing King Louis-Philippe I to flee France and ending the July Monarchy.

The bourgeoisie seizes control of the revolution and declares the establishment of the French Second Republic.

Louis Napoleon Bonaparte is elected president of the new Second Republic with broad popular support.

The royalist Party of Order dominates the National Assembly, openly hostile to the republic it formally governs.

The urban workers' June Insurrection ends in total defeat, leaving the bourgeoisie in full control of the republic.

The Montagne attempts to impeach Napoleon for sending French troops to crush the democratic Roman Republic.

Napoleon and the National Assembly jointly abolish universal suffrage, removing three million citizens from the electoral rolls.

Napoleon recruits the lumpenproletariat into the Society of December 10th, building it into his personal political army.

Napoleon dismisses General Changarnier, removing the National Assembly's last source of independent military power.

Napoleon launches his coup by arresting the leaders of the opposition and declaring the National Assembly dissolved.

A national plebiscite abolishes the Second Republic and declares Louis Napoleon the new Emperor Napoleon III.

Marx predicts Napoleon III's government will collapse because it cannot satisfy all social classes without robbing each of them.

Marx traces the collapse of the French monarchy and the failed promise of the 1848 revolution, which handed power not to the working class but to the bourgeoisie. The Second Republic was dominated from the start by the royalist Party of Order, which crushed all working-class opposition and concentrated power in its own hands. Napoleon Bonaparte exploited the divisions and weaknesses of the National Assembly, gradually stripping it of military support and popular legitimacy. His coup dissolved the republic he nominally served, replacing it with an imperial dictatorship backed by the army and the lumpenproletariat. The peasantry ratified his rule through a plebiscite, ending the Second Republic entirely. Marx closes by predicting that Napoleon III's regime, built on contradictions it cannot resolve, will ultimately destroy itself.

The rise and fall of the French Second Republic.

Cromwell's revolutionary English government draws on Old Testament scripture to legitimize its radical rule over the nation.

King Charles X issues the July Ordinances, stripping the press of its freedoms and cutting back political representation.

The July Revolution removes King Charles X from power and installs the Orleanist Louis-Philippe I as France's new king.

The Charter of 1830 expands voting rights but still limits electoral suffrage to less than one percent of French men.

The Constituent National Assembly drafts a new constitution granting universal male suffrage and a directly elected, powerful presidency.

Royalist government ministers pressure the public to demand the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly to consolidate their own power.

Napoleon dismisses his minister Odilon Barrot, publicly declaring his political independence from the Party of Order.

Paris voters and the army back the Montagne in spring elections, temporarily forcing Napoleon back into the Party of Order's orbit.

Napoleon threatens to publicly denounce the National Assembly if they refuse to raise his annual presidential salary.

The National Assembly passes a law permitting its own members to be imprisoned for debt, undermining the body's dignity.

The Legitimist and Orleanist factions fail to agree on naming a shared royal heir, shattering their parliamentary alliance.

Napoleon's supporters push to abolish the constitutional article that bars a president from seeking a second consecutive term.

An amendment to restore universal suffrage to the electorate is defeated inside the National Assembly by a single vote.

The proletariat mounts violent street resistance in Paris, forcing Napoleon to reverse his suppression of secret ballots.

Napoleon III's regime evolves from open military dictatorship into an entrenched bureaucratic state governed by appointed agents.

Marx traces the structural and procedural steps by which France's fragile republic was dismantled from within, beginning with the legacy of pre-1848 constitutional arrangements. The charter installed after the July Revolution formally extended rights while keeping real power concentrated among the wealthy, and the royalist factions of the Second Republic repeated this pattern. Key institutional moments — the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, Napoleon's public salary dispute, the single-vote defeat of a suffrage amendment — each quietly transferred power away from the legislature. Napoleon steadily neutralized opponents through financial pressure, constitutional manipulation, and ultimately the deployment of street forces. The coup was carried out through a combination of arrests, symbolic proclamations, and street violence that the bourgeoisie ultimately chose not to resist. The regime that followed transformed into a permanent bureaucratic state, independent of any class's direct control.

The political machinery and key maneuvers behind Napoleon III's seizure of power.

Marx opens his essay with the thesis that history repeats itself — first as tragedy, then as farce.

Marx argues that bourgeois revolutions borrow their glory from the past, but genuine revolution must draw energy from the future.

Louis-Philippe I's government steadily restricts freedoms of assembly and expression, building deep resentment among workers and the petty bourgeoisie.

The royalist ministers confidently dismiss Napoleon Bonaparte as their political dupe, fatally underestimating his ambitions and capabilities.

Marx identifies Napoleon III as the personal embodiment of the lumpenproletariat, a class of exiles, criminals, and the unemployed.

The Montagne's June 13 attempt to spark a military insurrection collapses entirely, resulting in mass arrests and the exile of its leaders.

The Party of Order's successful destruction of the Montagne inadvertently elevates Napoleon's prestige above that of the legislature itself.

The bourgeoisie achieves absolute rule over the Second Republic but in doing so creates the very conditions for its own downfall.

Napoleon proposes raising non-commissioned officers' pay to build military loyalty, courting the army at the Party of Order's expense.

The Decembrists are investigated for plotting to assassinate National Assembly leaders, yet the Assembly still cannot move against Napoleon.

Marx reveals that the Legitimist-Orleanist dynastic rivalry is actually an economic conflict between landed property and banking capital.

The bourgeoisie turns against the Party of Order when trade stagnates from industrial overproduction, blaming parliamentary instability for the crisis.

Marx reveals that the bourgeoisie must surrender its political dominion entirely in order to protect its economic and social power.

The peasantry's rural isolation leads them to back Napoleon III as an all-powerful protector rather than seek legislative representation.

Marx argues Napoleon III is simultaneously the political enemy and the property defender of the bourgeoisie, a contradiction that dooms his reign.

Marx opens his analysis with the philosophical framework of historical repetition, establishing that Napoleon III is a farcical echo of his uncle's tragedy. He then systematically exposes how each faction of the bourgeoisie — through overconfidence, internal rivalry, and fear of class conflict — handed Napoleon the tools of his own dictatorship. The revelation that the Legitimist-Orleanist split was economic rather than dynastic is central to Marx's argument about base and superstructure. Every attempt to contain Napoleon — through parliamentary procedure, military command, or coalition politics — collapsed because the bourgeoisie feared the consequences of a genuine power struggle more than it feared Napoleon himself. The peasantry's support for Napoleon is revealed as a structural consequence of rural isolation, not genuine political will. Marx concludes that Napoleon III, trapped between contradictory obligations to every class, has already set in motion the forces that will destroy him.

The class contradictions and fatal miscalculations driving France toward Bonapartist despotism.