A revolution scarcely deserving the name had made France a second time a republic.

The Second French Republic was the creation of no particular party.

In fact, it seemed to have sprung into being spontaneously out of the soil of discontent.
Its immediate cause was the forbidding of a banquet which was arranged to take place in Paris on Washington's birthday, February 22d, 1848.
M.Guizot, who had succeeded M.Thiers as head of the ministry, knowing the political purpose for which it was intended, and that it was a part of an impending demonstration in the hands of dangerous agitators, would not permit the banquet to take place.
This was the signal for an insurrection by a Paris mob, which immediately led to a change in the form of government--a crisis which the nation had taken no part in inaugurating.

Revolution had been written in French history in very large Roman capitals! But when the smoke from this smallest of revolutions had curled away, there stood Louis Napoleon--son of the great Bonaparte's brother Louis and Hortense de Beauharnais--who had been elected president by vote of the nation.
France did not know whether she was pleased or not.

Inexperienced in the art of government, she only knew that she wanted prosperity, and conditions which would give opportunity to the genius of her people.
Any form of government, or any ruler who could produce these, would be accepted.