The angry crowd is threatening the royal…

The angry crowd is threatening the royal palace by the morning of February 24.

Louis-Philippe, confronted by the prospect of civil war, hesitates, then retreats once more; after the National Guard refuses to cheer his presence, he announces his abdication in favor of his nine-year-old grandson, Prince Philippe, Count of Paris, and flees to England.

A rump meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, invaded by a mob that demands a republic, ignores the abdication and chooses a provisional government of moderate republicans, whose members range from constitutional monarchists to one radical deputy, Alexandre-Auguste Ledru-Rollin.

Led by the poet-deputy Alphonse de Lamartine, the members of the government proceed to the Hôtel de Ville, where the radical republican leaders have begun to organize their own regime.

After considerable palaver, the provisional government co-opts four of the radical leaders, including the socialist theoretician Louis Blanc and a workingman who calls himself Albert.

That evening, under heavy pressure from the crowd surrounding the Hôtel de Ville, the government proclaims the Second Republic.