ABSTRACT
ON the 24th of February 1848 the bourgeois monarchy in France was overthrown by a revolution. This movement was not without its repercussions in Brussels, but King Leopold, a wily old Coburger fox, succeeded in extricating himself from the situation more cleverly than his father-in-law in Paris. He announced to his Liberal Ministers, the Deputies and the Mayors that if the nation demanded it he would abdicate at once, and this generous gesture so touched the hearts of the sentimental bourgeois statesmen that they immediately suppressed all their rebellious feelings.
