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 500 General History of Europe Long live the Republic ! " The king abdicated, and a provisional government was established. The first decree of this body,. rees- tablishing a republic, was solemnly proclaimed on the former site of the Bastille, February 27. Thus the second French Republic came into existence. 888. The "Red Repub- lic." The new provisional government was scarcely in session before it was threat- ened by the " red republic," whose representatives, the Social Democrats, desired to put the laboring classes in control of the government and to let them conduct it in their own interests, and wished to substitute the red flag 1 for the national colors. The government went so far as to concede the so-called "right to labor"; that is, the duty of the government to see that everyone had work. Great numbers of the unemployed were given use- less work by the Assembly. 889. Insurrection in Paris (June, 1848). A National Assembly had been convoked, whose members were elected by the votes of all Frenchmen above the age of twenty-one. Since the majority of Frenchmen were country people who were not inter- ested in the victims of the factory system, the result of the elec- tion was an overwhelming defeat for the Social Democrats. Their leaders then tried to overthrow the new Assembly on the pre- text that it did not represent the people ; but the national guard 1 Socialists use red as a symbol of the common blood of the brotherhood of man. THE CONFLICT BETWEEN WORKING- MEN AND THE GOVERNMENT TROOPS IN PARIS, JUNE, 1848