to socialism, and the
proposal was again rejected. His responsibility for the disastrous
experiment of the national workshops he himself denied in his _Appel aux
honnetes gens_ (Paris, 1849), written in London after his flight; but by
the insurgent mob of the 15th of May and by the victorious Moderates
alike he was regarded as responsible. Between the _sansculottes_, who
tried to force him to place himself at their head, and the national
guards, who maltreated him, he was nearly done to death. Rescued with
difficulty, he escaped with a false passport to Belgium, and thence to
London; in his absence he was condemned by the special tribunal
established at Bourges, _in contumaciam_, to deportation. Against trial
and sentence he alike protested, developing his protest in a series of
articles in the _Nouveau Monde_, a review published in Paris under his
direction. These he afterwards collected and published as _Pages de
l'histoire de la revolution de 1848_ (Brussels, 1850).

During his stay in England he made use of the unique collection of
materials for the revolutionary period preserved at the British Museum
to complete his _Histoire de la Revolution Francaise_ 12 vols.
(1847-1862). In 1858 he published a reply to Lord Normanby's _A Year of
Revolution in Paris_ (1858), which he developed later into his _Histoire
de la revolution de 1848_ (2 vols., 1870-1880). As far back as 1839
Louis Blanc had vehemently opposed the idea of a Napoleonic restoration,
predicting that it would be "despotism without glory," "the Empire
without the Emperor." He therefore remained in exile till the fall of
the Second Empire in September 1870, after which he returned to Paris
and served as a private in the national guard. On the 8th of February
1871 he was elected a member of the National Assembly, in which he
maintained that the republic was "the necessary form of national
sovereignty," and voted for the continuation of the war; yet, though a
member of the extreme Left, he was too clear-minded to sympathize with
the Commune, and exerted his influence in vain on the side of
moderation. In 1878 he advocated the abolition of the presidency and the
senate. In January 1879 he introduced into the chamber a proposal for
the amnesty of the Communists, which was carried. This was his last
important act. His declining years were darkened by ill-health and by
the death, in 1876, of his wife (Christina Groh), an Englishwoman whom
he had married in 1865. He