Confident in a force of 50,000 soldiers collected in the capital, confident in the majority of the Chamber of Deputies, which was actually composed of persons holding places under the crown, both king and minister looked with composure on the movement, determined to suppress it the moment it appeared to gather undue strength or wax in real danger. During the winter of 1847, Reform Banquets were held in almost all the departments of France, which were signalised by the significant omission of the king's health from the list of toasts. This was in itself a circumstance sufficiently indicative of the low estimation in which the monarch was held, not among the lower classes, who are generally discontented with any government, but among the bulk of the middle classes, the assumed bulwarks of the throne. These banquets were of course watched, but were not interfered with by the authorities; but when the legislature again assembled at Paris for its usual session, in the beginning of 1848, it was resolved to hold one on a gigantic scale in the capital itself. This the government resolved to prevent, and accordingly interdicted it; afterwards it withdrew the prohibition, and eventually renewed it. This vacillation was most injurious; it bespoke the government to be in doubt and hesitation; it imparted to the reform leaders additional boldness and determination. They persisted in holding the banquet, which was appointed to take place on the 22d February. It would be out of place to pursue the subject in detail. Suffice it to say, that an insurrection of the people broke out, who erected barricades in the principal thoroughfares of Paris; the national guards and the troops refused to act against the populace, and in four-and-twenty hours Louis-Philippe was dethroned! The palace of the Tuileries was stormed and sacked; the mob burst into the Chamber of Deputies, whence they expelled the members, and proclaimed a Republic. The monarch, who a few days previously had seemed as firmly seated on his throne as any in Europe, who was esteemed as amongst the wisest and most sagacious, and who had to fence around him 500,000 bayonets, was a fugitive with his queen, flying in disguise, without money and without clothes, and at length reaching the shore of England in an old pea-coat borrowed from the master of a steamboat! So sudden and unaccountable an event has never occurred in the history of the world, studded as it is with remarkable vicissitudes and reverses of fortune. It is for the historian, and not for the biographer, to investigate its causes and trace its development.