IV. By the Constitution of 1814, the power belonged mainly to the Parisian bankers, merchants, and manufacturers. These men preferred constitutional monarchy to either democracy or military despotism; but they meant to maintain their own rights; and they were much offended at the attempts of Charles X. to check mental progress and revive superstition. His plans for fettering the press were voted down in the Chamber of Nobles; journalists prosecuted by his orders were acquitted by the courts; and he could not enforce a law under which burglars who robbed a Catholic church would have mounted the guillotine. Early in 1830, he dissolved the Legislature for declaring that he was not governing according to the wish of the people. The candidates next elected were two to one against him. On Monday, July 26, appeared his ordinances forbidding publication of newspapers without his permission, unseating all the deputies just chosen, and threatening that subsequent elections would be empty formalities. The plan was like that of 1797; but this time the soldiers in Paris were few in number and ill-supplied with provisions, while their general was not even notified of his appointment. The police allowed the journalists to spread the news throughout Paris and publish a protest declaring that they would not obey the ordinances and appealing to the people for support. The leader, Thiers, had already called for a king who would reign but not govern. Lawyers and magistrates pronounced the ordinances illegal. Printers and other employers told their men that the next day would be a holiday. On Tuesday, the crowds of operatives, clerks, students, ragged men and boys could not be dispersed by the police. Marmont took command of the troops that afternoon, and shot a few insurgents. That night all the street-lamps were put out; thousands of barricades went up, after plans but recently invented; and gun-shops, powder-magazines, arsenals, and even museums were broken open. On Wednesday, there was a new city government in the Hotel de Ville; everywhere hung the tri-coloured banner of Napoleon and the Republic; and the tocsin called out a hundred thousand rebels in arms. The weapons of Crusaders were seen side by side with the bayonets and uniforms of the National Guard, which had been revived by Napoleon but disbanded by Charles X.