ABSTRACT
‘By 1830’, in the words of Frederick Artz, ‘the whole political order was so unstable that a serious disturbance in any of the capitals of Western Europe would almost certainly lead to outbreaks in a number of other states.’ That year was to see a number of events which were to trigger off just such a series of upheavals. And, though some of them were to take place outside France and before the end of July, they were really only premonitions. The event which lanced the boil took place in Paris. Yet, despite the long-standing confrontation between the Crown and its supporters on the one hand and the liberal opposition on the other, the July Days were neither planned nor really expected. None the less, the Parisian crisis was to trigger revolutionary outbreaks in ten states in the course of the next few months. At the same time other countries moved more peaceably towards political changes similar to those sought by the revolutions, and the resultant crisis seemed to many to threaten the Continent with a new revolutionary war.
