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Restoration to the CommuneFollowing the ouster of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814, the Bourbon Dynasty was restored to the French throne. Louis XVIII reigned from 1814-1824. Charles X from 1824-1830
Following the ouster of the last king to rule France, the Second Republic was formed after the election of Charles Louis Napoleon Bonaparte as President (1848-1852) who then had himself declared Emperor Napoleon III of the Second Empire from 1852 - 1871.
The powers of the monarchy were in theory confined by a Charter of Liberties but in practice both Louis and Charles ran an authoritarian regime reliant on Church support. On 25 July 1830 Charles issued the repressive Ordinances of St-Cloud, abolishing the freedom of the press, dissolving the Chamber of Deputies and restricting voting rights to the landed gentry only. A general uprising in Paris followed with three days of fighting between loyalists and rebels, including whole regiments of the Paris garrison. The king was forced to abdicate, being replaced by the more acceptable Louis-Philippe. The arrival in Paris of the Industrial Revolution prompted the city's breakneck growth, with migrant workers arriving from the countryside on newly-constructed railway lines. By now its population was over 900,000 people, making it one of the largest cities in Europe and far surpassing any other city in France. The next largest, Lyon and Marseille, had only about 115,000 each. The city's status was reflected in the construction of grandiose new monuments, such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Eglise du Dome in which Napoleon's body was interred. Much of the population, however, lived in appalling conditions in diseased slums; a cholera outbreak in 1831 killed over 19,000 people. The discontented Parisian population was ripe for an uprising, and on 22 February 1848 it duly came when troops fired on demonstrators. Louis Philippe abdicated and was replaced by a Second Republic. Nationwide elections returned a conservative government which opposed any reforms. The Parisian workers rose again only to be massacred by General Cavaignac, with some 5,000 people being killed in the fighting and subsequent reprisals. Fresh elections were held at the end of 1848. The victor was, to the surprise of many, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte - the nephew of the late Emperor. He won by an overwhelming majority,receiving 75% of the votes cast, but was not content with being a mere president. On 2 December 1851 he seized power in a coup, declared himself the Emperor Napoleon III and settled in the Tuileries Palace. It was under Napoleon III's rule that Paris in its modern form was created. In 1853 he appointed Baron Haussmann as Prefect, charged with modernising the city. This Haussmann did to a drastic extent, demolishing much of the old city and replacing it with a network of wide, straight boulevards and radiating circuses. The Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes were both transformed into large public parks. Although Haussmann was forced to resign in 1869 after financial irregularities, his scheme is largely responsible for the present-day look and layout of Paris. The Siege of Paris and the Commune Napoleon's rule came to an abrupt end when he declared war on Prussia in 1870, only to be defeated and captured at Sedan. He abdicated on 4 September, with a Third Republic proclaimed that same day in Paris. On 19 September the Prussian army arrived at Paris and besieged the city. Major city landmarks were pressed into military service, with the Louvre being turned into an arms factory, the Gare d'Orleans, now the Gare d'Austerlitz, into a balloon workshop and the Gare de Lyon into a cannon foundry. Paris held out for four months, by which time starvation had taken hold and the population had been reduced to eating rats. The city finally surrendered on 28 January 1871 with punitive terms being inflicted on the defeated French. They were, in fact, unacceptably punitive in the eyes of many Parisians, who saw the peace treaty signed by the government of Adolphe Thiers as a betrayal.
A revolt broke out on 18 March when government forces were driven out of Montmartre. The government regrouped at Versailles, while on 26 March the Commune of Paris - effectively a miniature socialist republic - was proclaimed in the city.
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