The trial of Charles X’s chief minister Polignac and three other ministers, all of whom had signed the July ordinances, concluded with them being found guilty of treason and sentenced to life imprisonment. The government had been determined that they should not face the death penalty, but expected that any other verdict would cause unrest and potentially the lynching of the ex-ministers. To avoid this, the prisoners were smuggled out of the Luxembourg palace and escorted to Varennes before the verdict was reached. The following day, a crowd tried to storm the Luxembourg palace but was dispersed and the second revolution Louis-Philippe feared was averted.

See Munro Price, The Perilous Crown: France Between Revolutions, 1814-1848 (London: Macmillan, 2007), pp. 209-12.