La Liberte guidant les peuples

Visitors to the Place de la Bastille in Paris are often surprised to learn that the great column in the middle, carrying a gilded figure of Liberty, does not commemorate the destruction in 1789 of the grim fortress that once stood there, but rather the trois glorieuses of 1830. Most probably wonder what these were. The Revolution of 1830, much less the disturbances elsewhere in Europe around the same time, has always been far less remembered than the great events of forty years earlier, or indeed the Europe-wide revolutions eighteen years later. Nor have they commanded the same amount of attention among historians. They were all over fairly quickly, and most were snuffed out by the established authorities. Even in France the departure of Charles X was more the removal of a threat to representative government than the fundamental change of direction which republicans had hoped for. Only the independence won by Belgium proved a permanent change in the appearance of Europe

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