We are no longer in ’93! We are in 1848!

The tricolor flag is no longer the flag of the Republic. It’s that of Louis-Philippe and of the monarchy.

It’s the tricolor flag that presided over the massacres of the rue Transnonain, of faubourg de Vaise, of Saint-Etienne. It has been twenty times bathed in the blood of the workers.

The people raised the red colors on the barricades of ’48, just as they raised them on those of June 1832, April 1834^[1], and May 1839. They have received the double consecration of defeat and victory. From this day on, these colors are theirs.

Just yesterday they gloriously floated from the fronts of our buildings.

Today reaction ignominiously casts them in the mud and dares stain them with its calumnies.

It is said it is a flag of blood. It is only red with the blood of the martyrs who made it the standard of the republic.

Its fall is an insult to the people, a profanation of the dead. The flag of the National Guard will shade their graves.

Reaction has already been unleashed. It can be recognized by its violence. The men of the royalist faction roam the streets, insults and threats in their mouths, tearing the red colors from the boutonnieres of citizens.

Workers! It’s your flag that is falling. Heed well! The Republic will not delay in following it.

1. Reference to the bloody repression of the popular revolts of April 13 and 14 1834 against the regime of Louis-Philippe.