The first full scholarly study of rural politics in France during the Second Republic (1848-1852), this book examines the Revolution of 1848 and the subsequent regime that changed the face of mass politics in France. Unprecedented numbers of French men and women participated in legal and illegal forms of political activity during a period of protracted crisis which was ultimately resolved by a military coup d'etat. McPhee explores this neglected period of rural France and draws on hundreds of regional studies to examine the large-scale political mobilizations of right and left in the countryside, and offers a new synthesis and interpretation of these years. A lucid and scholarly analysis of a turbulent period in modern French history and its long-term social and political consequences, this book shows that rural politics were both more complex and more threatening to urban elites than has been generally recognized.