Louis XVIII returned to Paris in 1815, not because the French nation wanted him, but because the bayonets of the victors of Waterloo imposed him on his not very willing subjects. A second time foreign armies marched into the great city by the Seine. Nevertheless France was not grievously depressed. There had been no anxiety to make costly sacrifices for Napoleon. The enthusiasm to carry "liberty, fraternity, and equality" to the ends of the earth, the ardor that had kindled the young armies of the Republic, had been burned away on a hundred battle-fields. A new generation had grown up which knew not Rousseau, and which was very anxious for peace and for solid bodily comfort. The great estates of the Church and of the old noblesse had been redistributed, and their new owners, men of short pedigrees but often of large fortunes, desired static conditions. The mothers of tall sons rejoiced at the end of conscriptions; and men who had been Jacobins in their youth were willing to shudder at the excesses of the past five and twenty years and thank Providence that they had emerged from them all safe and much wiser.
After the great days, great passions, great crimes of the Revolution, after the colossal Cæsarism of the Empire, it is a more petty and infinitely more prosaic France which we encounter. Most of the heroes of 1789-93 were dead. Lafayette, indeed, was still alive; we shall meet him again, but the guillotine, as it worked up to 1795, and after that date the blood tax of the Napoleonic wars, had robbed the nation of a great proportion of all the keenest intellects which might have built for the future. The terrific drain of the battles is even said to have pulled down the physical stamina of the country. It is alleged that the physique of the average young Frenchman of 1815 was poorer, his stature shorter, than that of his father in 1789. In any case, France was a terribly disillusioned nation. From being apparently on the point of founding an empire greater than the Roman, she had beheld her soil twice overrun, her capital occupied, her ruler dethroned by foreign armies. True, the very circumstances of the defeat were somewhat flattering to French pride. To overcome her all the rest of Europe had had to form a common league against her; it had almost been France against the world. But that did not obliterate the great fact that the end of all the Napoleonic "glory" had been a smashing military defeat.
The Allies had treated France with comparative generosity in 1814. In 1815 when they brought back Louis XVIII the second time, they were thoroughly exasperated and imposed harsher terms. France was given the boundaries, not of 1792 (as in the first treaty), but of 1790. Thus she lost various fortresses on the frontiers of Alsace-Lorraine, and ceded back to the King of Sardinia the province of Savoy. She had also to pay a war indemnity (huge for the day) of 700,000,000 francs ($140,000,- 000) and submit to the military occupation of some of her border towns until the sum had been discharged. These terms were not crushing, but they were humiliating. They served to start Louis XVIII upon his renewed lease of power with very little glory.
France was still a very great nation, but she hardly held even her old position before 1789. British sea power had seemingly given its possessor a strangle hold upon the commerce of the world, and British industries were incomparably more developed than those of any rival. The most powerful politician in Europe was not at Paris; he was at Vienna, and he was the clever absolutist Prince Metternich. The greatest military power seemed to rest with Czar Alexander I, who was now notoriously at Metternich's beck and call. France was thus thrown back upon herself. Most of her colonies had been seized by the English. The treaty of peace returned to her only a few small islands in the West Indies and some trading factories in Africa and India. The great colonial empire which had existed before 1760 had, of course, vanished much earlier. The second great colonial empire, which was to cover Northern Africa before 1900, was not yet even planted. Frenchmen had therefore few outside problems to take their thoughts away from their home troubles.
The France of 1815, nevertheless, was very far from being the France of 1789. The Jacobins had decidedly failed. Their despised and berated predecessors, the men of 1789, had largely succeeded. The "privileges" and most of the other gross abuses of the Old Régime had vanished never to return. There were no privileged "classes," and property was widely divided among a large fraction of the population: all Frenchmen were equal in the eyes of the law and had, theoretically, equal claims to public office. The Church had been shorn of its overweening prerogatives. The national finances were in relatively good order. There was pretty complete religious toleration. In short, in 1815"the nation was already provided with its social and administrative organization; it remained – as it still remains – a democratic society, whose affairs are managed by a centralized administration. The mechanism of the central government, was not, however, yet constructed France has labored to establish it: she has spent the nineteenth century in making herself a political constitution." The importance of this statement can be realized only if it is understood how completely the Government in Paris dominated the entire life of the nation. America and most British communities would remain essentially democratic and liberal even if the National Government were suddenly to become non-liberal; local autonomy is so strong. But there was and still is (to American thinking) very little local autonomy in France. The Paris ministries extend their power to the obscurest commune. Therefore our gaze is continually upon the capital. In 1815 the great bulk of the French nation was not, it should be said, profoundly interested in politics. The population had risen, despite the long wars, to some 29,000,000. The great majority of the people were still the peasants. The Revolution and its destruction of the estates of the noblesse and the Church had brought to many of these their heart's desire – a solid little farm with a modest competency. They constituted, on the whole, the most thrifty, self-respecting, stable, homekeeping peasantry in the world: with a deplorably high element of illiteracy and superstition, indeed, but comparing very favorably with those of any other country. They were the real strength of the nation. The Revolution and the Empire had done more for them than for any other class of Frenchmen, but they cared relatively little who was their ruler so long as he gave them peace, good order, and prosperity. Again and again the peasantry of France were to redress the blunders of the more obvious parts of the nation: to repress revolutionary excesses; to pay enormous war debts and indemnities; and finally, in 1914-18, to supply the great majority of those sturdy, indomitable poilus who were to be the living bulwark of the freedom of the world.
In the cities there were, of course, considerable industrial classes, but French cities were, by present comparisons, neither numerous nor large. Outside of Paris, probably only Lyons had over 100,000 inhabitants. French manufacturers were by no means so far developed as were the English. A very large fraction of these artisan classes were, of course, in Paris, the seat of government. On several occasions a sudden uprising by them was therefore to have extremely serious political consequences: for their fingers were always close to the administrative windpipe of France. Ten thousand howling working-men in Paris could accomplish far more in the way of a revolution than 100,000 malcontent peasants scattered through the departments. But when the revolution had once been accomplished, its cheerful acceptance by all the rest of France could by no means be assumed. The peasantry could more slowly, indeed, but none the less emphatically, express their dissent. This was to be peculiarly true in 1848.
Above peasant and artisan was the great class known as the bourgeoisie – property-owners of more or less social pretension, public officials, great and small, professional men, etc. They were charged with being intensely conservative, leading "a simple, quiet life, the life of a small town – monotonous, without comforts, without amusements, without intellectual activity, a slave to public opinion." They were also accused of having almost as few political ideas as the peasants, and with being grossly selfish in their efforts, especially in those to prevent the artisans from bettering their wages and conditions of labor. The sodden state of French public opinion is testified to by the extremely small number of newspapers in circulation. True, under the "Restoration" there was, most of the time, a severe press censorship and a tax of ten centimes (two cents) on every copy, also a very heavy postage; still it is an amazing fact that an official report of 1824 makes a formal estimate that there were only 55,000 copies of papers with political articles circulated in all France. These papers it must be admitted were usually stupid and unenlightening enough – but the public for the while seemed hardly eager for anything better.
Of course there was a saving minority in the nation that looked intelligently toward the future – that planned for a better day. These men were as a rule members also of the bourgeoisie, or were scions of the old noblesse who had enlightenment enough to stop plotting reaction and forget their pedigrees. Yet in the main it may be said that what spurred enough Frenchmen to accomplish political changes between 1815 and 1848 were these four factors: (1) The fear lest a complete reaction of the Old Régime (as seemed repeatedly threatened) would upset all the fortunes and property-titles established since 1789; (2) a demand from the property-owning classes that the Government should be efficient, and give stable conditions calculated to promote profitable commerce and industry; (3) a demand from the Parisian industrial classes that something should be done to mitigate their grievously unfavorable conditions of labor; and then (4) a gradual return to the ideas and idealism of a former generation, with the demand for genuinely liberal institutions and a realization of the theories of democracy. All these things combined at length to pull France out of the soulless mire into which she seemed to have been cast in 1815, and to set her on the way to nobler things.
Louis XVIII, installed in 1814 and reinstalled in 1815, had been placed in power by the Allies, because Metternich and Czar Alexander could not find any other possible monarch for France, and they abhorred the idea of admitting that the people could choose their own government. "It would be," affirmed Metternich, "a new breaking forth of the Revolution [to do this]. Besides what question is a [popular] assembly to decide? The legitimate King is here." Louis XVIII had been nominally "king" since 1795 when his nephew, the luckless "Louis XVII," the unhappy Dauphin of the French Revolution, had died in captivity because of the brutality of his keepers. He had lived weary years in exile, mostly in Russia and England, hoping against hope for the ruin of the Corsican and a return to France. Now at last fortune had favored him. The Great Powers twice placed him on the throne. Truth to tell he was not a very majestic substitute for the "Little Corporal." A portrait, published with official consent, shows him fat, gross, and with hands and feet deformed with gout. He was sixty years old in 1815. In 1789 he had been notoriously a champion of absolutism and reaction, but fortunately in his exile he had absorbed not a few useful ideas. He realized that much had happened since he had fled in disguise from France in 1791. As a contemporary well says, "he had in him a very firm desire to die upon the throne"; and obviously the only method by which he could fulfill this wish was by accepting all the more significant innovations which had commended themselves to the nation. During his reign from 1815 to 1824 he showed considerable intelligence and firmness in his policy, and on the whole he left a worthy memory. To the best of his ability he endeavored to unite the champions of the Old Régime and of the New, saying that "he did not wish to be king over two peoples," and that "the children of one fatherland should be a people of brothers."
If, however, Louis XVIII realized that the only condition on which he could remain in France was to recognize what had happened since 1789, very few of his family and personal associates did this. In 1814-15 a great swarm of "emigrant" noblemen had hastened back to Paris. Exile proverbially makes men warped and bitter. The returned outlaws, whose kindred very likely had died under the guillotine, could see nothing good in anything the New Régime had accomplished. They clamored for vengeance, for the return of their lost estates, for the upsetting of every enactment since the good old days of Calonne's and Marie Antoinette's garden fêtes at Versailles. Professing extreme loyalty to Louis XVIII, they were soon disgusted because the King did not at once embark on a policy of extreme reaction. In this they were supported by the King's brother, the Count of Artois, who (since Louis lacked a son) was obviously to be his heir as Charles X. Artois was full of the most absolutist notions conceivable. "He would rather," he later averred, "saw wood than 'reign' in the fashion of a king of England!" On the day Louis XVIII proclaimed a new Constitution (the "Charter"), Artois feigned illness that he might not have to swear fidelity to it. His palace was the constant center for Ultra-Royalist intrigues. The King realized that his brother's influence was malignant and would ruin the dynasty, but for the sake of family peace he often yielded to him. Considering, therefore, the kind of man the future Charles X was, it is perhaps slight wonder that the Bourbon régime lasted as long as 1830.
The European Allies had brought back the Bourbons, but they did not try to bring back Absolutism. Metternich wished to have no constitution in his own Austria, but he assented to the suggestion that if France were forced back under a purely autocratic rule, there would soon be a new revolution which would menace the peace of other countries. Louis XVIII was therefore very strictly compelled to publish a constitution for France, as a condition to being set upon the throne. This Constitution was the once famous "Charter." Circumscribed as it now seems, in its day it gave France, on the whole, a more liberal government than that of any other kingdom except England, and it was very decidedly more liberal than the system in France under Napoleon.
From 1815 to 1848 France was governed by this "Charter," although very important changes were made in that document in 1830. Since nearly all public life in that time revolved around the attacks upon or the defense of the document, we cannot avoid discussing its main provisos.
Louis XVIII claimed to reign "by the grace of God" even as had his unlucky brother, and the Charter was declared to emanate "from the free exercise of the royal authority." It was therefore in theory the gracious concession of an autocrat, not the expression of the popular will. Also it was dated from "the nineteenth year of the reign," as if Louis XVIII had been a ruling monarch since 1795 when his nephew died. The theory of the Charter was thus wholly illiberal. Yet in its text are contained clauses that made it possible to argue that France was a somewhat limited monarchy; and the chief flaw in the letter of the document was not the great powers granted the King, but the great powers it granted the wealthy classes.
The King was, of course, the head of "the executive power." He led the armies, declared war, made peace, signed treaties, and (an ambiguous clause destined to work mischief) "made the regulations and ordinances necessary for the execution of the laws and the safety of the State." He named all the public officials, and governed through "responsible" ministers. If the latter misbehaved, they could be indicted by the lower house of the legislature and tried before the upper house.
The "legislative power" was shared by the King with the "Chamber of Peers" and the "Chamber of Deputies." The King initiated the proposal of laws. They had to be discussed and ratified by the two Chambers, then the King promulgated them. The "peers" seem to have been an obvious imitation of the British House of Lords. They were at the outset all named by the King from among the great personages, marshals, civil notables, etc., of France. Some were appointed simply for life. Others could transmit their honor by hereditary succession. The "deputies" were elected for a term of five years, one fifth of the Chamber to be chosen annually so that there should not be too many sudden changes. No tax could be established or levied without the consent of the Chambers, which consent must be annually renewed; and this in theory should have given the new parliament a very heavy hand upon the Crown: but all this apparent evidence of liberalism was vitiated by the one important fact that only the well-to-do and wealthy were allowed to vote for members of the Chamber of Deputies.
To be an elector a Frenchman must be thirty years of age and must pay a direct tax of 300 francs ($60). To be eligible to be chosen a member of the lower House himself, he had to be forty years old and to pay a direct tax of 1000 francs ($200). Under such a franchise, to be known as a "voter" would be a somewhat conspicuous honor: in a rural community probably it would come to only two or three of the most important landowners. There were in 1815 in all France only above 90,000 ordinary electors, and of these less than 12,000 were qualified to be sent to Paris. A new kind of privilege was thus arbitrarily created: one of the most obnoxious varieties and sure to awaken heartburnings – the privilege of wealth.
Apart from this great error the Charter contained many excellent provisions. The judicial organization of the Empire was maintained and the judges were given self-respect and proper power by their irremovability save for direct crimes. Individual liberty was guaranteed, as well as religious liberty, although Catholicism was declared the religion of the State. Also liberty of the press was affirmed, provided it "conformed to laws which should repress the abuse of that liberty" – a qualification destined to breed much woe.
No property was to be seized without compensation, and as a concession to the popular feeling which had helped to pull down Napoleon, conscription for the army was abolished. Special laws were to provide for military reorganization.
In spite, then, of many limitations and of one grand fault, the Charter was a document which, if handled and developed in a proper spirit, would have given France contentment and prosperity. The essential conquests of 1789 had been preserved, liberty, equality in all private rights at least, and the theoretical right to a share in the government. The practical effect of the Charter was, of course, to entrust the franchise to the upper bourgeoisie, usually landowners, but also often mill-owners and bankers. These men were naturally devoted to the "rights of property," but they were no friends to the claims of the noblesse who talked wildly of reëstablishing the Old Régime. They were not inaccessible to new ideas, and small a fraction as they were of the total manhood of France, they were presently to show themselves conscious of the drift and force of public opinion. The result was that following 1815 we have something very like a real limited monarchy, with parties, programmes, an "opposition," elections, etc., although the whole scheme of government was anything but democratic. The "Restoration" had not lasted long before three parties were developing rapidly in French political life: (1) the Ultra- Royalists; (2) the Independents; (3) the Constitutional Royalists. The first element was frankly reactionary. It regarded everything that had happened since June, 1789, as a crime, and the granting of the Charter as a direful blunder. This was the party of the returned exiles, and its whole ambition was to turn back the clock of history just as far as possible. The Independents also regarded the Charter with extreme dissatisfaction. It did not grant enough of popular liberties, and the Independents nursed the secret desire of sending the Bourbons again upon their travels. This party was, of course, the child of the old Republicans and the father of the later Republicans. With it lay the future; but for the moment it was very weak. The whole current of the reactionary epoch was against it. Midway between these disturbing elements were the Constitutional Royalists. They believed the Charter presented a good working scheme calculated to satisfy France, and they were resolved to keep it in operation with practically no changes. Whether they could succeed or not, largely depended on the support they might receive from the King.
If Louis XVIII had been left to himself there is little doubt he would have tried earnestly to make the Charter a success. He had found the throne "a most comfortable easy-chair," and wished to do nothing to send himself on another flight to Ghent, chased out by a new uprising. But he found poor enough allies in the returned "emigrants," the "Ultras." More absolutist than the King, these noblemen who surrounded him, and whom he could not disregard, avowed they wanted an Absolute Monarchy – then they could get whatever they wanted. They demanded a complete "purification" of the civil and military service, the dismissal of all the parvenu Napoleonic prefects, generals, etc., and their replacement by aristocrats who suffered poverty and exile "for the good cause." They demanded, too, huge indemnities for their lost estates. The press and education were likewise to be entrusted only to reliable Royalists, or to their very ardent and reliable helpers, the clergy. When the King failed to endorse these projects, the full acceptance of which would have cost him his throne, they wrathfully drank to the toast, "The health of the King in spite of everything," and hopefully looked ahead for the day when the Count of Artois would take the royal seat.
When after the "Hundred Days," the Chamber of the new legislature assembled, it was speedily evident that in the confusion attending the fall of the Empire the Ultras had won a great majority among the deputies. In the South Country the Royalists were conducting wholesale rabblings and lynchings of their opponents in a regular "White Terror." At Paris the new Chambers were hardly less ardent for swift and bloody revenge upon the men who had again set up the hated Corsican. Everything in France was to be "purged"; and as Louis XVIII angrily declared, "If these gentlemen had their way completely, they would end even by purging me!" The King strove to moderate them, but he could not save some of their victims. Marshal Ney had earned their particular wrath because he had deserted to Napoleon after promising the Bourbons to arrest him. When the Royalists returned to Paris, Ney failed to take warning promptly and to escape. He was seized, to the great disgust of the King: "By letting himself be caught, he has done us more harm than he did on March 13 [when he deserted]," exclaimed the Monarch testily. But Louis could not rescue Ney. The "Bravest of the Brave" was dragged before a court of generals who were completely intimidated by the cries for blood rising from the salons of the noblesse and from the Chambers. Ney was convicted of treason, and was shot on December 7, 1815, in the Luxembourg Gardens. Thus ended the career of one of the most distinguished officers who ever fought for France. His fate left a stigma upon the Restoration that did nothing to lessen its unpopularity; and for this stigma not the King, but his "loyal" nobility were responsible. Truth to tell the Ultras were without the least rational political programme, and after having thus destroyed Ney and certain other objects of especial vengeance, they made haste to weave their own rope. They foolishly rejected the budget, thus striking fear into every wealthy magnate interested in French financial stability. The King promptly dissolved the Chamber, and the electors, terrified at the storm of sanguinary passions that had been loosed, returned a "moderate" majority. France was thus saved from another spasm of revolution, with possible foreign intervention.
Although Louis's ministers had had to wrestle with this intractable element, they were not unsuccessful in handling the grave problem of rehabilitating the nation. Once again the enormous practical genius of the French people asserted itself. Mere conditions of peace, law and order, gave back a large measure of prosperity. The heavy indemnity due to the Allies was paid off steadily, and in 1818 the last of the foreign armies of occupation quitted French soil, instead of going in 1820 as had been originally expected. "I can die in peace," said the King, "since I shall see France free, and the French flag floating over every city of France."
Another problem not unwisely handled was that of the army. The Napoleonic conscription had been abandoned, and the magnificent fighting machine (or rather all of it that had survived Waterloo) was being allowed to dwindle away. But the nation could not hold up its head again in Europe without an efficient military force. There was nothing for it but to go back to a form of conscription. As many troops as possible were to be recruited by volunteering; then for the remainder all the young men of twenty were to draw lots, and those receiving "bad numbers" (a small proportion) were obliged to serve six years with the active army and six years more in the reserve. In this way an army of about 240,000 was provided, nearly all of them long-service, professionalized soldiers. Compared with other European armies, this was a sufficient force; but it was very easy for a young man of good family to avoid this kind of conscription, and the bourgeoisie usually hated military service. France thus drifted onward, almost until 1870, with the bulk of her youth untrained, while Prussia was making "universal service" a reality. This danger, however, did not become pressing until the 1860's. What awakened controversy at the time was the proviso in the new law that promotion and appointments as officers were equally open to all classes. This blasted the Ultras' hopes of monopolizing again the officers' corps in the army, and drew their violent though useless protest. The measure passed in spite of them, and another rock had been set in the path to reaction.
The thing which did, however, for the moment tend to promote reaction was the evidence that the "Independents" – the radical party which talked of the tricolor flag and even of a republic – were again becoming a serious factor in the Chamber of Deputies. In 1817 they had had only 25 voices out of 258; in 1818 they had had 45; in 1819, at least 90. One of their leaders was the notorious Grégoire; a bitter foe of the Catholic Church, an ardent old-line Jacobin and member of the Convention, who had said that "kings were to the moral world what monsters were to the physical." Even the moderate "Constitutionalists" joined with the Ultras in voting to banish him from the Chamber. On top of this excitement came the murder by an isolated fanatic of the Due de Berry, the son of the Count of Artois, and a presumable heir to the crown. The Republicans had had no part in the crime, but of course they reaped in full its unpopularity. In 1820 there was another inevitable Royalist reaction, which Louis XVIII could not withstand. "It is all over with me," remarked the King gloomily, meaning that he could no longer hold back the pressure of the Ultras. The result was ten years of steady tightening of autocracy, and then the cord snapped: France escaped to a somewhat more liberal régime by the bloody road of revolution.
Just before 1820 there had been signs of a gradual liberalizing of the Government. In 1819 a law had been passed permitting trial by jury for press cases, and doing away with the censorship, although newspapers were still subject to a heavy tax and had to make a deposit of money ($40,000) as security for good behavior. Now all this came to an end. The Ultras reëstablished the control of the press, and then proceeded (1820) to juggle with the organization of the deputies to their own great advantage. The membership of the lower Chamber was increased to 430. Only the original 256 could be voted for by the ordinary 300-franc taxpayers. The remainder, 172, were to be chosen solely by the ballots of the 1000-franc taxpayers who were themselves eligible as legislators. This practically gave a double vote to the very rich. The new elections (November, 1820) rejoiced the Ultras with an enormous majority. The Independents (the "Tricolor Party") sank to a helpless handful in the Chambers. The Royalists, of course, were enchanted. They seemed to have crushed opposition. As a matter of fact the radicals – denied now the ordinary means of pressing their cause – fell back on good revolutionary expedients – secret societies, intrigues, and presently on downright conspiracies. In 1830 they were to show their power at the barricades.
Surrounded by such reactionary influences in 1823, Louis XVIII was induced to intervene in Spain to overthrow an attempt of the Liberals in that much-vexed country to compel their tyrannous King to establish Constitutionalism. It is true Metternich would have probably induced some other autocratic power to intervene if France had hung back, but it irked patriotic men sorely that the country, which in 1793 had endeavored to carry liberty to all the oppressed lands of Europe, should now seem the servile gendarme of Absolutism. In 1824 the Ultras had such success in a new election that there were only 19 Liberals in the entire Chamber, and the majority openly entertained schemes to reëstablish a landed aristocracy and the authority of the clergy. The Royalists were thus in a mood to disregard jauntily the warnings of such old but still venerated leaders as Lafayette. In 1824 that famous general revisited the country where he had first drawn the sword for liberty, America, and was received with unparalleled honors and rejoicings. To his American friends Lafayette spoke his mind very freely: "France," he declared, "cannot be happy under the rule of the Bourbons; and we must send them adrift!"
Lafayette's desires were greatly promoted that same year by the death of Louis XVIII and the accession of his brother as Charles X (1824-30). The new King never attempted like his predecessor to steer a middle course between the Moderate Royalists and the Ultras. Charles was always avowedly an Ultra. He hated Constitutionalism and doubtless would have restored the Monarchy of Louis XIV the instant that it might have become possible. He was also an extreme partisan of the Church. It was to this Prince "who never learned anything and never forgot anything," that there was very largely due that fatal alliance of "the Altar and the Throne" which was to afflict alike French political life and the Catholic Church of France down to the very eve of 1914. For practical purposes, after 1815 the ecclesiastics of France had entered into a working agreement with the Ultras. The churchmen were to do everything possible to promote a return to Autocracy. The Ultras were to secure to the clergy a complete control of education, and to get back for them, if possible, all the wealth and influence they had possessed before 1789. Charles X, as Crown Prince and as King, never concealed his intense sympathy with this movement.
The new King, indeed, at his accession announced his intention to "maintain the Charter." Political prisoners were released, even the press censorship was for a little while reabolished. Every sovereign is naturally gracious and popular the week after he comes to power; but Charles soon showed hopelessly mediæval temper. In 1825 he had himself crowned at Reims with all the elaborate ceremonial used before 1789, and in the precise costume of the ancient kings – tunic, dalmatic, golden scepter, and the rest. Frenchmen had a keen sense of the ludicrous. It did not add to the prestige of the Monarch in the nineteenth century to have himself "anointed on seven parts of his person with sacred oil, 'miraculously preserved,' and dating from the time of Clovis." Nor did many of Charles's subjects take seriously his claim to heal the sick "by the King's touch." Such proceedings only moved the godless to laughter, but there was worse than laughter when this "Son of St. Louis" undertook to urge his ministers to execute a violently reactionary political programme.
The returned noblemen had long demanded compensation, if not actual restoration, for their confiscated estates. This was now done by voting them 1,000,000,000 francs indemnity; but to raise the money the interest on the earlier public debt was "converted" from five per cent to three per cent. The numerous and powerful bondholders were enraged at the change, and were more distrustful of the Restoration than ever. The ecclesiastics everywhere showed their hand in the Government. The death penalty was established for stealing sacred vessels from churches. The number of bishops increased. The teachers in the State educational system were put under the supervision of the Church authorities, and there were general dismissals of civil officials who did not show zeal for the new policy.
Inevitably all these undertakings raised up enemies right and left. The electoral body in France had been a small enough part of the nation in any case; now even the electors began to desert the Government. To the Liberals were joined many great manufacturers and bankers – wealthy, powerful men despite their short pedigrees, who were furious at the way things were going. An attempt to carry a law reëstablishing primogeniture in the transmission of large estates, a necessary preliminary to reëstablishing a privileged aristocracy, broke down in the Chamber of Peers. Another attempt to carry a press law, which would have required every newspaper to deposit with the Government the manuscript copy of every issue five days before publication, was similarly thwarted.
In anger the Ultra prime minister Villèle proceeded to swamp the Liberal majority in the Chamber of Peers by getting the King to name 73 new peers from among picked reactionaries. But the Government went on to dissolve the lower Chamber and precipitated a new election (1827), hoping to get a wholly tractable parliament. Instantly it was discovered how utterly out of touch ministers and King had become with even the most privileged classes in the nation. A strong anti-Ultra majority was returned, despite the very limited franchise. To Charles's open sorrow Villèle resigned, and the King in order to do business had to take the Moderate Martignac as his prime minister.
But Charles hated the Martignac policies and he quickly showed his hand. The last thing he desired was to play the part of a genuinely constitutional king. In 1829 he deliberately dismissed his Moderate ministers and gave the power to a personal friend, the "emigrant" Count Polignac, who was to help him most admirably in pulling down the dynasty. He was a narrowminded Ultra, "with the fatal obstinacy of a martyr, and the worst courage of the 'let the heavens fall' sort." Minister and King charged cheerfully ahead, confessing that a majority of the Chamber was now against them, but resolved to let nothing swerve their purpose. Such statesmen seldom fail to precipitate revolutions.
The great weakness of Polignac's position was that he could not legally collect taxes without the consent of the Chambers. Men began to talk of "legal resistance." The Liberal Journaldes Débats des Débats, in August, 1829, flatly said, "The people will pay a thousand millions to the law: they will not pay one franc to the ordinances of a minister"; and wound up its warning article with "Unhappy France! Unhappy King!" The minister and the Monarch, however, seem to have hugged the delusion that since only the well-to-do and wealthy could vote for deputies, the rest of the nation had no interest in how the administration might coerce the parliament. As a matter of fact, serious schemes were now on foot for effecting a radical change in the Government, and the rights of the deputies were being generally felt to be identical with the rights of the people. Associations began to be formed to resist the payment of taxes in case the ministers should try to collect them illegally, and to one of these bodies joined the famous historian and "Constitutionalist" Guizot, possibly the leading literary man of France, who had been dismissed from the University because his lectures had not been reactionary. Lafayette made a tour of the South Country. The acclamations which greeted him showed how numerous were the Liberals and the violently anti-clerical Free Masons. In Paris the hitherto feeble little Republican clubs took courage and began to form schemes to throw up barricades. The clever young political writer Thiers also lent his pen to an organized attack on the policy of the Government. And so Polignac and Charles X marched onward to their fall.
In March, 1830, the deputies by a formal vote declared their lack of confidence in the Polignac Ministry. Charles retaliated by dissolving the Chamber and ordering a new election. "This is not a question of the Ministry, but of the Monarchy," he said bluntly. Hitherto it had been possible to claim that the King was merely the victim of bad advisers. Now he invited all criticisms directly upon himself. The King himself went into the political lists to get a favorable majority. "Perform your duty," he told the electors, "and I will do mine." Louis XIV had been charged with saying, "I am the State." Charles X was practically saying, "I am the Ministry."
The instant the election was held, the eyes of the Ultras should have been opened. Public opinion had the few electors in its clutches. In place of a majority of 221 against Polignac in the Chamber, there was now one of 274. Talleyrand, the time-serving minister of Napoleon, who had done so much to secure the recall of the Bourbons and who was now shrewdly watching events in retirement, summed up the situation very crisply. "In 1814 the return of the Bourbons secured the repose of Europe. In 1830 or 1831 their departure will secure the repose of France." But the King and his myrmidon did not allow matters to drag out until 1831.
The last events in the Bourbon Monarchy were so inevitable they need not detain us long. Only with the aid of a great and loyal army could Charles X have adhered to his policy and kept his throne. On the strength of a vague clause in the Charter which gave the King power to issue ordinances "for the safety of the State," on July 26, 1830, Polignac suddenly placarded Paris with four "ordinances" that changed the fundamental laws of France. The first ordinance completely suppressed the liberty of the press. The second dissolved the Chamber just elected. The third modified the electoral law so drastically that practically only great landed proprietors could vote, barely leaving some 25,000 "electors" in all France. The fourth ordered new elections and the convocation of a Chamber elected as prescribed in the third ordinance. Four days later the Government and the dynasty had been overthrown by armed insurrection.
The fighting was confined to Paris, and its episodes can be omitted. It was merely a case of spontaneous combustion.
When the unconstitutional ordinances were issued, the editors of the liberal papers of Paris issued a protest. "The Government has violated the law. We are under no obligation to obey. . . . We shall resist [the Government]. It is for France to judge how far the resistance shall extend." The editors by themselves were, of course, physically helpless, but now, as in 1789, the populace of Paris came to the rescue with a fighting force. The "Party of the Tricolor" arose. Its leader, Cavaignac, the son of a member of the Convention, wished clearly to establish a republic: many who followed him had no exact programme, but "hatred of the Bourbons and love of the Tricolor flag kept them together." Not more than 8000 to 10,000 men took arms against the Government at first, but physical conditions in Paris greatly favored them. Many of the wards of the capital formed labyrinths of crooked lanes lined with tall old houses. A few pavingstones, an upturned cart, some chairs flung into the street with their legs pointing outward, made a formidable barricade. It was before the days of machine guns and shrapnel. The soldiers could use little except their muskets in forcing their way down streets cut up, block by block, with barricades, and with the insurgents pouring in flanking volleys from every window. Marshal Marmont, who commanded the King's troops, was very unpopular in Paris. He had commanded in the city when it was surrendered to the Allies in 1814. He had only 14,000 available men. The troops were neither cowardly nor mutinous, but they had no such love for the Bourbons that they would make reckless sacrifices to aid them, and they hated to fire on the beloved Tricolor flag which the insurgents everywhere hoisted. The result was that while Charles X complacently played cards at his suburban palace, the capital and then the throne was lost to him.
On the 26th of July, 1830, had appeared the illegal ordinances. On the 27th the barricades were springing up over Paris by magic. On the 28th the insurgents held the City Hall and Notre Dame and were yelling, "Down with the Bourbons!" Marmont's men were being driven out of the east of the city and were taking refuge near the Louvre. On the 29th the insurgents were on the offensive, and an executive committee in the City Hall was organizing again the "National Guard," to protect life and property, and was putting it under the command of its old leader Lafayette. As for Charles X, he was at last terrified enough to dismiss Polignac and to announce that the fatal "ordinances" were repealed. When his envoys reached the City Hall they were not received. "Too late," was the answer, "the throne of Charles X has already passed from him in blood."
The moment the Republican insurgents had sent Marmont's legions skulking backward the liberal Royalists acted. They had taken possession of the Chamber of Deputies and affected to represent legal authority. They had a candidate for the throne of a strictly constitutional monarchy, Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, of whom more hereafter. A proclamation, drafted by the skillful Thiers, was posted, urging all Frenchmen to compromise on the Duke. "He awaits our call. Let us issue this call, and he will accept the Charter as we have always wished it to be. It is at the hands of the French nation that he will receive his crown."
The Duke of Orléans took possession of the royal palace, although for the moment he only affected to be "Lieutenant- General of the Kingdom." He made the famous promise, "The Charter shall henceforth be a reality."
Cavaignac and his Republican committee still held the City Hall. They had wished, not for a better king, but for no king at all; however, it was clear enough that they only represented a minor fraction of the nation. Louis-Philippe rode across the city to their stronghold, praised and cajoled them, embraced Lafayette, and stood out with him upon the balcony of the City Hall, draped in the Tricolor and receiving the applause of the people (July 31). The Republicans perforce made the best of the situation. As Cavaignae said frankly: "You are wrong in thanking us [for retiring]: we have yielded because we are not ready for resistance."
The rest of France cheerfully accepted the decision of the capital. Charles X vainly tried to abdicate in favor of his grandson, but the Chamber promptly declared Louis-Philippe "King of the French" (August 7, 1830). The deposed monarch then retired wearily to England and ended his days in exile, dying at Goritz in Austria, in 1836. No king was ever more clearly the author of his own troubles than he.
And so the nation was to have another government and another dynasty. Louis-Philippe, "the King of the Barricades," was to substitute for the rule of the Ultras the reign of the bourgeois.