Bourges High Court trial (1849)
부르주 고등법원 재판 (1849)
The trial held before the High Court of Justice at Bourges from 7 March to 3 April 1849 of those accused over the invasion of the National Constituent Assembly at the end of the pro-Polish demonstration of 15 May 1848. Blanqui received ten years' imprisonment, Barbès and the worker Albert deportation, and Raspail six years. It removed the radical leaders of the February Revolution from political life.
In depth
The National Constituent Assembly elected in April 1848 had a moderate republican majority, with only about a hundred deputies of the socialist left. Shut out of the government, part of the left tried to lean on the street. On 15 May the far-left clubs called the people of Paris to carry a petition for intervention in favour of Poland to the Assembly, and the demonstration turned into an invasion of the chamber. Aloysius Huber, who may have been a police agent, declared the Assembly dissolved, and Barbès shouted out a list of names that looked like a new government; Louis Blanc, the worker Albert and Blanqui were swept along. The National Guard summoned by Lamartine and Ledru-Rollin restored order and the leaders of the left were arrested, the first political prisoners since February.
Articles 91 and 92 of the Constitution of 1848 created a High Court of five judges from the Court of Cassation and thirty-six jurors drawn from the departmental general councils, judging without appeal cases of attempts against the state referred to it by the National Assembly. The Assembly voted by 466 to 288 to send the accused before it and chose Bourges, far from Paris, so that the judges would not face the pressure of popular demonstrations. Seventeen men, among them Blanqui, Barbès, Albert, Sobrier, Raspail and Louis Blanc, were charged with attempting to overthrow the government and incite civil war, and three, including General de Courtais and Caussidière, as accomplices; eight, Louis Blanc and Caussidière among them, were tried in absentia.
The trial opened on 7 March 1849 in the court housed in the Palais Jacques-Cœur. Procurator General Baroche conducted the prosecution and the republican lawyer Michel de Bourges led the defence. Blanqui repeatedly challenged the court's jurisdiction; 266 witnesses for the prosecution and 62 for the defence were heard, among them Lamartine, Arago and Vidocq. In the verdict of 2 April Barbès and Albert were sentenced to deportation, Blanqui to ten years' imprisonment, Sobrier to seven and Raspail to six, and the six absent defendants to deportation; General de Courtais and others were acquitted.
In The Eighteenth Brumaire Marx wrote of Baroche: "As public prosecutor this Baroche had stormed and raged before the High Court at Bourges, the first time against the revolutionists of May 15, the second time against the democrats of June 13". In chapter III he also wrote that after the demonstration of 13 June 1849 part of the Mountain "was arraigned before the High Court at Bourges". In fact the High Court for the June 13 affair sat at Versailles in October and November 1849.