The principal resistance to the French Revolution of 1848 came from former local and parliamentary elites, organized in the legitimist and Orleanist parties, and from police and judicial administrators and prosecutor, many of whom had survived the provisional government's attempt to replace Guizot's prefects with republican commissioners. The brief administrative revolution had run its course by early May when the extreme Left was defeated in a national elections which brought to power moderate republicans who found willing allies among conservatives in their effort to protect their political revolution from radical democrats and revolutionary socialists. Even before the repression of the June insurrections, administrative personnel had begun to return to the pre revolutionary routine of prosecuting political suspects and restricting freedom of the press and freedom of association. While the legitimists were initially gratified to see Louis-Philippe and the Orleanists punished for the events of 1830, they were no less immobilized than their dynastic rivals by the fear of social revolution. In the firs t days of the revolution, conservatives of every nuance were bewildered by the sudden loss of their political monopoly and nervously anticipated a new Reign of Terror.
Yet, the anticipated consequences of universal suffrage, republican judicial, administrative, and social reforms, and the financial crisis of 1848 soon turned early passivity into a concerted effort to mobilize resistance. Although the monarchists h ad lost control of the central government and the large cities, they maintained a grip on most rural communes and held on to their predominant positions in business, banking, and provincial journalism. As the April elections approached, legitimist and Orleanist notables formed electoral committees and used their newspapers to badger republican administrators and denounce republican policies as a threat to the social order. The press campaign against the 45-centime tax and a variety of republican political and social "excesses" forged a new unity between former monarchist adversaries and diffused a fear of radical social and economic reform which found resonance among rural and urban property owners.
The April elections reversed the forward impetus of the revolutions and opened a period of reaction which culminated in Cavaignac's dictatorship and the election of Louis-Napoleon to the presidenc y. Viewing the April elections as a victory for order, the Right was now confident enough to isolate and resist the revolutionary movement in Paris. The events of May 15 demonstrated that repression in the capital would not stir grave disorder in the provinces. The first counter revolutionary measures against demonstrators, proposed on June 7 by the republican-dominated executive commission, assured monarchists that the Left was divided and that moderates would choose repression if the extreme Left tried to overturn the assembly.
By the time of the June insurrection, therefore, conservatives were well placed to assist in the repression of working class radicalism. Many on the Right had foreseen the coming confrontation and hoped to insure its outcome by provoking disturbances in order to destroy working-class insurgency once and for all. The repression of the Jun e Days not only weakened the extreme Left and brought to power those Cavaignac moderates who were willing to act in concert with the party of order to place severe restrictions on public liberties, it also served the long-term goals of reaction by confirming bourgeois fears of democracy and increasing provincial and peasant hostility toward the republic. Subsequent municipal and departmental elections guaranteed the ability of the notables to reassert their local predominance in all but a few regions while conservative pressure in parliament and the general state of siege turned the administration once again into an instrument of counter revolutionary surveillance and enforcement. After June 23, therefore, resistance to the revolution continued unabated until the coup d'etat at 1851 dismantled the Second Republic.
Since the assembly was its principal power base, the party of order resisted the drift toward increased presidential autonomy. Yet, its leaders had helped pave the way for a Bonapartist dictatorship by persecuting elements on the Left which made it difficult to convince the peasant masses of the benefits of a republican regime. Many Orleanists and legitimists who might otherwise have supported parliame ntary institutions accepted the coup d'etat of 1851 as a guarantee against the political and social reform with which they associated the republic.
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