ABSTRACT
The revolutionary upheaval of 1848 ended with the establishment of a new authoritarian regime and the consolidation of the bourgeois social order, but it did plant the seeds for the eventual success of democratic republicanism in France. Guizot's government had done little to alleviate the resulting unemployment and misery, but the economic crisis had actually dampened worker agitation. By late 1847, however, the economic crisis was easing and the visible opposition to the July Monarchy came not from the lower classes but from upper and middle-class groups excluded from the political system. To deal with unemployment, which rose sharply because of the uncertainty following the February revolution, the Provisional Government opened National Workshops, where workers were paid a modest wage but frequently had little to do. The February Revolution suddenly threw the whole future of liberal, bourgeois society into question. The Falloux law introduced Catholic religious education in the public schools, breaking with the secularist tradition inaugurated during the Revolution.
