On this day in 1848, more than 40,000 French workers initiated the June Days Uprising after the state closed National Workshops that provided work to the unemployed, causing 10,000 casualties and 4,000 workers to be deported to Algeria.

The National Workshops had only been formed a few months earlier, when, on February 25th, a group of armed workers interrupted a session of the provisional government to demand “the organization of labor” and “the right to work”.

In late June, the Second Republic began planning to close the workshops, leading to a national uprising. In sections of the city, hundreds of barricades were thrown up. The National Guard was sent in to quell the rebellion, and workers seized weapons from local armories to fight back.

The violence, which lasted just three days, resulted in more than 10,000 casualties and 4,000 participants to be deported to Algeria. Among the dead was Denis Auguste Affre, Archbishop of Paris, killed while trying to negotiate peace with an angry crowd.

The rebellion was successfully crushed, and the episode put a hold on revolutionary ambitions of radical Republicans at the time. In its aftermath, the French Constitution of 1848 was adopted, mandating that executive power be wielded by a democratically elected president.

The first president under this framework was Napoleon Bonaparte, who dissolved the constitution during his first term in office.

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