Historians of the Second Republic have long given over stage center in their accounts to Paris. Indeed, the role of the capital in most histories of the period has been so great that we often seem to be reading not about the French revolution of 1848, but the Parisian revolution. Correspondingly, the role of the provinces has rarely been recognized: Paris acts and France reacts. It is from Paris, not only the seat of government but also France's most important and most turbulent city, that all the great revolutionary stimuli proceed. Until lately, we have been accustomed to thinking of the provinces as conditioned to salivate at the sound of the Parisian bell – voting in negative response to Parisian radicalism, sending off volunteers to help crush the June insurgents, and so forth.