Part 195

"France was defeated but not crushed. Indeed she had gained Avignon and some districts of Alsace since 1792, and she had gained social and political stability by having millions of peasants as small proprietors in the soil; moreover, as Napoleon always waged his wars at the expense of his conquered foes, the French national debt was after all the wars only one-sixth of the debt of Great Britain. So France soon rose to a position of strength and prosperity hardly equalled in all Europe, in spite of bad harvests, political unrest, and the foreign occupation which ended in 1818. The royalists, after a quarter of a century of repression, now revenged themselves with truly French vehemence. In France a victorious party generally crushes its opponents; and the elections, held during the full swing of the royalist reaction, sent up to Paris a Legislative Assembly 'more royalist than the king himself.' Before it assembled, Louis XVIII., in spite of his promise only to punish those who were declared by the Assembly to be traitors, proscribed fifty-seven persons who had deserted to Napoleon in the 'Hundred Days.' ... Of the proscribed men thirty-eight were banished and a few were shot. Among the latter the most illustrious was Marshal Ney, whose past bravery did not shield him from the extreme penalty for the betrayal of the military oath. ... This impolitic execution rankled deep in the breasts of all Napoleon's old soldiers, but for the present all opposition was swept away in the furious tide of reaction. Brune, one of Napoleon's marshals, was killed by the royalist populace of Avignon; and the Protestants of the south, who were suspected of favouring Napoleon's home policy, suffered terrible outrages at Nimes and Uzès in this 'white terror.' The restored monarchy had far stronger executive powers than the old system wielded before 1789, for it now drew into its hands the centralised powers which, under the Directory and the Empire, had replaced the old cumbrous provincial system; but even this gain of power did not satisfy the hot-headed royalists of the Chamber. They instituted judicial courts under a provost (prévôt), which passed severe sentences without right of appeal. Dismissing the comparatively Liberal ministers Talleyrand and Fouché, Louis in September 1816 summoned a more royalist ministry under the Duc de Richelieu, which was itself hurried on by the reactionaries. Chateaubriand fanned the flames of royalist passion by his writings, until the king even found it necessary to dissolve this mischievous Chamber, and the new deputies who assembled (February 1817) showed a more moderate spirit. France was soon delivered from the foreign armies of occupation, for the sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle (September 1818), in order to combat revolutionary attempts, decided that an early evacuation of French territory would strengthen the Bourbon rule in France; and they renewed the Quadruple Alliance, which aimed at upholding existing treaties. The discontent in Germany and Italy awakened a sympathetic echo in France, which showed itself in the retirement of the Duc de Richelieu and the accession of a more progressive minister, Decazes (November 1819). This check to the royalist reaction was soon swept away by an event of sinister import. The Duc de Berry, second son of the Comte d'Artois, was assassinated (February 1820), as he was leaving the opera-house, by a fanatic who aimed at cutting off the direct Bourbon line (February 1820). His design utterly failed, for a posthumous son, the celebrated Comte de Chambord, was born in September 1820; and the only result was a new outburst of royalist fury. Liberty of the press was suspended, and a new complicated electoral system restricted the franchise to those who paid at least 1,000 francs a year in direct taxation: the, Chamber of Deputies, a fifth part of which was renewed every year by an electorate now representing only the wealthy, became every year more reactionary, while the Left saw its numbers decline. The Ultra-royalist ministry of Villèle soon in its turn aroused secret conspiracies, for the death of Napoleon (May 5, 1821) was now awakening a feeling of regret for the comparative liberty enjoyed in France during the Empire. Military conspiracies were formed, only to be discovered and crushed, and the veteran republican Lafayette was thought to be concerned in a great attempt projected in the eastern departments with its headquarters at Belfort; and the terrible society of the Carbonari secretly spread its arms through the south of France, where it found soil as favourable as in Italy itself. ... A revolution in Spain held Ferdinand a prisoner in his palace at Madrid. Louis determined to uphold the throne of his Bourbon relative, and sent an army which quickly effected its object (1823). 'The Pyrenees no longer exist,' exclaimed Louis XVIII. In fact, everywhere in Europe absolutism seemed to be triumphant, and the elections of December 1823 sent up a further reinforcement to the royalist party; also the approaching end of the sensible old king foreshadowed a period of still more violent reaction under his hot-headed brother Charles. Louis XVIII. died on September 16, 1824, At his death the restoration seemed firmly established. ... France had quickly recovered from twenty years of warfare, and was thought to have the strongest government in Europe. Always the chief of the reactionary nobles, Charles had said, 'It is only Lafayette and I who have not changed since 1789.' Honest, sincere, and affable as the new king was, yet his popularity soon vanished when it was seen how entirely he was under the control of his confessor; and the ceremonies of his coronation at Rheims showed that he intended to revive the almost forgotten past. In Guizot's words, 'Louis XVIII was a moderate of the old system and a liberal-minded inheritor of the 18th century: Charles X. was a true Émigré, and a submissive bigot' Among the first bills which Charles proposed to the Chambers was one to indemnify those who had lost their lands in the Revolution. To give these lands back would have caused general unsettlement among thousands of small cultivators; but the former landowners received an indemnity of a milliard of francs, which they exclaimed against for its insufficiency just as loudly as the radicals did for its extravagance: by this tardy act of justice the State endeavoured to repair some of the unjust confiscations of the revolutionary era. ... {1369} The attempts made by the Jesuits to regain their legal status in France, in spite of the prohibition dating from before the fall of the old regime, aroused further hostility to the king, who was well known to favour their cause. Nothing, however, so strengthened the growing opposition in the Chambers and in the country at large as a rigorous measure aimed at the newspapers, pamphlets, and books which combated the clerical reaction. These publications were to pay a stamp duty per page, while crushing fines were devised to ruin the offending critics. One of the leaders of the opposition, Casimir Périer, exclaimed against this measure as ruinous to trade: 'Printing would be suppressed in France and transferred to Belgium.' The king persevered in his mad enterprise: he refused to receive a petition from the most august literary society in Europe, the Académie Française, and cashiered its promoters as if they were clerks under his orders. Strange to say, the Chamber of Deputies passed the measure, while that of the Peers rejected it--an event greeted by illuminations all over Paris (April 1827). A few days afterwards, at a review of the National Guards in Paris, the troops raised cries for the liberty of the press and for the charter granted in 1815. The next day they were disbanded by royal command, but were foolishly allowed to retain their arms, which were soon to be used against the government. Charles next created seventy-six new peers to outvote his opponents in the Upper House. He also dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, but found the new members less pliable. Finally, Charles had to give way for the time, and accept a more moderate ministry under Martignac in place of the reactionary Villèle Cabinet. ... Charles was soon able to dismiss this ministry, the last hope of conciliation, and formed (August 1829) a ministry under Count Polignac, one of whose colleagues was the General Bourmont who had deserted to the allies the day before Waterloo. The king's speech at the opening of the next session (March 1830) was curt and threatening, and the Chamber was soon prorogued. Reform banquets, a custom which the French borrowed from English reformers, increased the agitation, which the Polignac ministry vainly sought to divert by ambitious projects of invasion and partition of some neighbouring States. The only practical outcome of these projects was the conquest of the pirate stronghold of Algiers. This powerful fortress had been bombarded and reduced by Lord Exmouth with the British fleet in 1816, and the captives, mostly Italians, were released from that den of slave-dealers; but the Dey of Algiers had resumed his old habits, complaints from the French were met by defiance, and at last the French envoy quitted the harbor amid a shower of bullets. A powerful expedition effected a landing near the strongly-fortified harbour, and easily beat back the native attack; and then from the land side soon battered down the defences of the city.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D. 1830.

Thus the city which had long been the terror of Mediterranean sailors became the nucleus of the important French colony of Algeria (July 4,1830). The design of Charles X. and of his reactionary Polignac ministry to divert the French people from domestic grievances to foreign conquest needed the genius and strength of a Napoleon to ensure success. The mere fact of the expedition being Under the command of the hated General Bourmont had made it unpopular. ... So, although the victory was triumphantly announced throughout France, yet the elections sent up a majority hostile to the king. Nevertheless, with his usual blind obstinacy, Charles on the 25th July 1830 issued the famous ordinances which brought matters to a crisis. The first suspended the liberty of the press, and placed books under a strict censorship; the second dissolved the newly-elected Chamber of Deputies; the third excluded licensed dealers (patentés) from the franchise; the fourth summoned a new Chamber under the new conditions, every one of which violated the charter granted by the late king. The Parisians at once flew to arms, and raised barricades in the many narrow streets which then favoured street-defence. Marmont, hated by the people as being the first of Napoleon's marshals who had treated with the allies, was to quell the disturbances with some 20,000 troops of the line; but on the second day's fighting (July 28) the insurgents, aided by the disbanded National Guards, and veterans of the empire, beat back the troops; and on the third day the royal troops, cut off from food and supplies, and exhausted by the heat, gave way before the tri-colour flag; the defection of two line regiments left the Louvre unguarded; a panic spread among other regiments, and soon the tri-colour floated above the Tuileries. Charles thereupon set the undignified example, soon to be followed by so many kings and, princes, of giving way when it was too late. He offered to withdraw the hated ordinances, but was forced to flee from St. Cloud. He then tried the last expedient, also doomed to failure, of abdicating in favour of his little grandson the Duc de Bordeaux, since better known as the Comte de Chambord. Retiring slowly with his family to Cherbourg, the baffled monarch set out for a second and last exile, spent first at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, and ended at Göritz in Bohemia. More than 5,000 civilians and 700 soldiers were killed or wounded in these terrible 'three days' of July 1830, which ended all attempts to re-establish the tyranny of the old régime. The victims were appropriately buried in the Place de la Bastille. They freed not France alone, but dealt a fierce blow at the system of Metternich."

_J. H. Rose, Century of Continental History, chapter 23._

ALSO IN: _D. Turnbull, The French Revolution of 1830._

_A. de Lamartine, The Restoration of Monarchy in France, books 32-50 (volumes 3-4)._

_E. E. Crowe, History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X._

_Prince de Talleyrand, Memoirs, part 10 (volumes 3-4)._

_G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in Modern France, chapter 3._

FRANCE: A. D. 1822: The Congress of Verona. French intervention in Spain approved.

See VERONA: THE CONGRESS OF.

FRANCE: A. D. 1823-1827. Interference in Spain to suppress the revolution and reinstate King Ferdinand.

See SPAIN: A. D. 1814-1827.

FRANCE: A. D. 1827-1829. Intervention on behalf of Greece. Battle of Navarino.

See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829.

{1370}

FRANCE: A. D. 1830-1840. The monarchy renewed under Louis Philippe. Its steady drift from the constitutional course.

"The Constitutional party set their hopes on Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans. This prince, born in 1773, was the son of that notorious 'Egalité' who during the revolution had ended his checkered career under the guillotine. His grandmother was the noble Elizabeth Charlotte, a native of the Palatinate, who had the misfortune to be the wife of the effeminate Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis XIV. Louis Philippe was a Bourbon, like King Charles; but the opposition of several members of this Orleans branch of the royal house had caused it to be regarded as a separate family. From his youth up he had displayed a great deal of popular spirit and common-sense. ... Seemingly created by his nature and career to be a citizen king, he had long since, as early as 1814, determined to accept the throne in case it were offered him." The offer came in 1830 with the revolution of July. On the 31st of that month he accepted the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom, conferred by the vote of a meeting of fifty delegates. "The 'Society of the Friends of the People' [an organization of the pronounced republicans], not very well pleased with this result of the 'great week' [as the week of the revolution was called], laid before Lafayette, on the following day," their programme, "and commissioned him to make the duke guarantee the popular rights therein set forth by his signature. With this document in his pocket, Lafayette made his ... visit to Louis Philippe in the Palais Royal. In the course of conversation he said to him, 'You know that I am a republican, and consider the American constitution the most perfect.' 'I am of the same opinion,' replied the duke; 'no one could have been two years in America and not share that view. But do you think that that constitution could be adopted in France in its present condition--with the present state of popular opinion?' 'No,' said Lafayette; 'what France needs is a popular monarchy surrounded by republican--thoroughly republican--institutions.' 'There I quite agree with you,' rejoined Louis Philippe. Enchanted with this political harmony, the old general considered it unnecessary to present the programme, and went security to the republicans for the duke, the patriot, of 1789. ... On the 3d of August the Chamber was opened by the Duke of Orleans, and the abdication of the king and dauphin announced. ... The question whether the constitution was to be changed, and how, gave rise to an animated contest between radicals and liberals. The confidence in Louis Philippe was so great, that they were content with a few improvements. The throne was declared vacant, and Louis Philippe proclaimed king of the French. ... August 8th, Louis Philippe appeared in the Palais Bourbon, took the oath to the constitution, and was thereupon proclaimed king. ... None of the great monarchs had so difficult a task as Louis Philippe. If he attached himself to the majority of his people and showed himself in earnest with 'the republican institutions which ought to surround the throne,' he had all the continental powers against him; if he inclined toward the absolute system of the latter, then not alone the extreme parties, but also the men of the constitutional monarchy, ... rose against him. ... His system, which he himself named a happy medium (juste milieu), would have been a happy medium if he had struck the middle and kept it; but he gradually swerved so much toward the right that the middle was far to his left. From the outset he had three parties against him--Legitimists, Bonapartists, and Republicans." At intervals, there were demonstrations and insurrections undertaken in the interest of each of these. In July, 1835, the assassination of the king was attempted, by the explosion of an infernal machine, which killed and wounded sixty people. "The whole Republican party was unjustly made responsible for this attempt, and new blows were struck at the juries and the Press. Every Press offence involving a libel of the king or the administration was to be tried from this time on before the Court of Peers, and the composition of that body rendered conviction certain. With these September laws' the reaction was complete, the power of the Republicans was broken. Their activity did not cease, however. Their numerous societies continued to exist in secret, and to the political affiliated themselves the social societies, which ... demanded, among other impossibilities, the abolition of private property. It was these baleful excrescences which deprived republicanism of all credit, and outbreaks like that of May 12th, 1839, where a few hundred members of the 'Society of the Seasons,' with Barbès and Blanqui at their head, disarmed military posts and proclaimed the republic, found not the slightest response. The repeated attempts which were made on the king's life were also unsuccessful." The relations of Louis Philippe "to foreign powers became better the more he approximated to their system, putting restraints upon societies, the Press, and juries, and energetically crushing popular revolts. Naturally he was by this very means constantly further estranging the mass of the people. ... What the Legitimists and Republicans had not effected--a change of government--the Napoleonids now took in hand." Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of ex-king Louis of Holland and Hortense Beauharnais, made his appearance among the soldiers of the garrison at Strasburg, October 30, 1836, with the expectation that they would proclaim him emperor and set the example of a rising in his favor. But the attempt was a wretched failure; Louis Napoleon was arrested and contemptuously sent out of the country, to America, without punishment. In 1840 he repeated his undertaking, at Boulogne, more abortively than in the first instance; was again made prisoner, and was consigned, this time, to the castle of Ham, from which he escaped six years later. "All the world laughed at his folly; but without the scenes of Strasburg and Boulogne, and the martyrdom of a six years' imprisonment, his name certainly would not have produced such an effect in the year 1848."

_W. Miller, Political History of Recent Times, sections 7 and 14._

ALSO IN: _L. Blanc, History of Ten Years, 1830-1840._

_F. P. Guizot, Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Own Time, volumes 3-4._

FRANCE: A. D. 1831-1832. Intervention in the Netherlands. Siege of Antwerp.

See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1830-1832.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1840. The Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement.

See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840.

FRANCE: A. D. 1833-1846. The subjugation of Algeria. War with Abd-el-Kader.

See BARBARY STATES: A. D.1830-1846.

{1371}

FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848. The limited electoral body and its corruption. Agitation for reform. The suppressed banquet at Paris and the revolution which followed. Abdication and flight of the king.

"The monarchy of Louis Philippe lasted for 18 years. But the experiment was practicable only so long as the throne rested on a small body of obedient electors. The qualification for the franchise was so high that it was held only by 200,000 people. So small a constituency could, be 'managed' by the skill of M. Guizot and M. Thiers [who were the chief rivals of the time in political leadership]. It could be 'managed' through gifts of places, bribes, the influence of local magnates, and the pressure of public officials. There was never perhaps so corrupt an electoral body. ... M. Guizot, who was an austere puritan at home, and who has entered into a competition with Saint Augustin as a writer of religious meditations, raised many sneers to the lips of worldlings, not only by lending his hand to the infamous intrigue of the Spanish Marriages, but by allowing his subordinates to traffic in places for the sake of getting votes. His own hands, of course, were clean; no one spoke a whisper against his personal purity. But he seemed to have much practical sympathy with the advice which Pitt, in one of Landor's 'Imaginary Conversations,' gives to his young disciple Canning. Pecuniary corruption was the very breath of life to the constitutional monarchy. The voters were bought as freely as if they had stood in the market-place. The system admirably suited the purpose of the little family party of princes and parliamentary chiefs who ruled the country. But it was as artificial and fleeting as the sand castles which a child builds on the edge of the advancing tide."

_J. Macdonell, France since the First Empire, pages 172-174._