Eugene Delacroix, "Liberty Leading the People" (1830)















In this podcast we look at the false hope that the French Revolution of 1830 put in the hearts of the liberal bourgeoisie (middle class).  “Hearts” is the correct word, because Romanticism was a driving force of this liberal revolution, as the painting by Eugene Delacroix shows here.  The Revolution of 1830 set up the middle class for an awful fall, and the fall came with the bloody revolutions of 1848 all over Europe, revolutions that decoupled liberalism from nationalism and revolution forever afterwards.