History of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles X

Chapter I

TAs-.E Contest and difficult position of the King — Advice of Foreign Courts — Second Ministry of the Duke of Richelieu — Law suspending the Liberty of the Person — Eloquence of Foy — New Law of Election — Madier de Montjau — Royer Collard — False and painful position of Moderates ------------- l

Chapter II

Discontent of the Military — Plots — Birth of the Due de Bordeaux — Villelle and Chateaubriand — De Corbidre — Richelieu offers place to Villele — Policy of Alexander — Intervention and Non-intervention — Insurrection of Spain and Naples — Defects of the Spanish Constitution — Breach between Richelieu and the Royalists — Question of Education — Death of Napoleon -- -----37

Chapter III

Louis XVIII. — Madame du Cayla's influence over him — His System — Its mistake in leaning on a Functionary, not a Middle Class — Royalists gain ground — Negotiation with Villele — Amendment to Address carried by Opposition — VilltBle forms a Ministry — Violent Opposition which it excites --------- 75

Chapter IV

Villele ; his moderation, his Financial System — His Economy disturbed by the Spanish Revolution— Ferdinand and the Moderados — The Trappist's Capture of Urgel — Insurrection of Madrid — Congress of Verona — Proposals of, and Intervention — Montmorency resigns — Chateaubriand, as Minister, precipitates Intervention — Passion in the Chamber — Expulsion of Manuel * - - - - CONTENTS.

Chapter V

l'AG F. Varieties of Despotism— That of the Bourbons— The Reactionary- Carbonari Plots— That of Befort— Conspiracy and Death of General Berton — Trial and Execution of the four Serjeants of La Rochelle - 148

Chapter VI

Difficulties in the way of the French Army entering Spain — Fabvier's attempt defeated — Ouvrard and his Contracts — Invasion of the Peninsula — Surrender of Cadiz — Liberation of the King — His vindictive measures — Execution of Riego - - - - - -178

Chapter VII

Views of Chateaubriand and Villele — The Septennial Act — Opposition of the Judges — Conversion of the Five per Cent. Stock — Its rejection by the Peers — Dismissal of Chateaubriand — New Ministerial Appointments — Decline of Louis XVIII. — His Habits, Character, and Death ------------- 206

Chapter VIII

Accession of Charles, his Graciousness and would-be Liberalism — This soon belied by Ministerial Measures — Law of Mortmain, of Sacrilege —Indemnity to the Emigrants — The Coronation — Death of General Foy---------- -__-249

Chapter IX

Villele's neglect of Foreign Politics — Death of the Emperor Alexander . — Recognition of Haytian Independence — Law to favour Heritage of Eldest Sons, rejected by the Peers — The Jubilee — Montlosier's denunciation of the Jesuits— Mr. Canning in Paris; his Policy and Language --------_____ 276 CHAPTEIt X. Unpopularity of Ministers— Peyronnet's new Press Law— Royer Collard's denunciation of it— Protest of tho Academy— Villele's Defence— Riot at the Funeral of the Due de la Rochefoucalt— Press Law withdrawn— Review of the National Guard— They cry "Down with the Ministers !" and are dissolved— Intervention for Greece- New Elections— First Barricade— Fall of Villele - - - - 299

Chapter XI

The Martignac Ministry ------____ «, CONTENTS. V

Chapter XII. Page

Martignac's hope of contenting the Liberals and satisfying the King — His Municipal Law— The King's Journey to Alsace — Polignac's attempt to enter the Cabinet — The Left oppose Martignac's Municipal Law, who, in anger, withdraws it — Fall of Martignac, and appointment of the Polignac Ministry— The King opens the Session — Is met by the celebrated Address of the 221 — The Chamber prorogued ------------- 300

Chapter XIII

The Expedition to Algiers under Bourmont — Its Success — Ministers meditate a coup d'etat — Modification of the Ministry — Preparation of the Ordonnances — They are issued ------- 339

Chapter XIV

Resistance of the Journals, and of the Printers — Commencement of the Insurrection — Marmont's first measure, withdraws his Troops, and then orders his column to recapture the city — Successful Resistance of the Populace — Meeting of the Deputies — Some of them proceed to Marmont, who is inclined to treat, but Polignac remains obstinate ----------- 4^.;

Chapter XV

Last day of the Revolution — Ministers at the Tuilewes — De Semonville '» interference — Ministers at St. Cloud — Capture of the Louvre — Due de Mortemart appointed Minister — Refusal of Authorities in Paris to treat with the King --------- 429

Chapter XVI

Alternatives on the Fall of Charles X. — The Duke of Orleans, the Republic — Mission of Thiers to Neuilly— The Peers propose appointing the Duke Lieutenant-General — Universal adhesion, except from the Young Republicans— The Duke comes to Paris, accepts, and proceeds to the H6tcl de Ville— March of the Parisians on Rambouillet — Abdication aud Desertion of Charles X. - - - THE niSTORY or THE REIGNS OF LOUIS XVIII. AND CHARLES X. From 1815 to 1830.

Chapter I. Contest And Difficult Position Of The King

— ADVICE OF FOREIGN COURTS — SECOND MINISTRY OF THE DUKE OF RICHELIEU — LAW SUSPENDING THE LIBERTY OF THE PERSON — ELOQUENCE OF FOY — NEW LAW OF ELECTION — MAD1ER DE MONTJAU — ROYER COLLAKD — FALSE AND PAINFUL POSITION OF MODERATES. It is unavoidable in a people, newly called to a participation in public affairs, and endowed with freedom to discuss and influence them, that they should be guided more by passion than by reason, and by strong personal sympathies and antipathies rather than by fixed principles and wisely-contemplated aims. It is scarcely attributable to any mercurial or highly-sensitive character in the French, that after such a quarter of a century as they had spent, they should have been struck more by horror and hate or by admiration and respect, for the revolution and for Napoleon on the one hand, and for the old revived Monarchy and the Bourbons on the other, than that they should have weighed and compared the relative advantages of the two systems.

Certainly the moderate liber- VOL. II. B ties, which had been enjoyed during the last three years, the freedom of the press and of letters, the eminent position created in the Representative Assembly of the nation for the statesmen and orators of every way of thinking, their rights and privileges so new to the French, joined with the large development afforded to industry and material interests, ought to have rendered the French more grateful or more considerate towards their wise and well-intentioned monarch, and less wrong-headed, so many of them, in celebrating and praising the majesty of the Empire as preferable to the mild and constitutional rule under which they lived. But there are times, when nations, as well as individuals, live in ideality and sentiment, when they loathe the real and turn from the rational, and when even politics is looked upon as a kind of poetry in which heroism is indispensable, in which liberty is not prized, except in the attitudes of extravagance and distortion, and material prosperity itself is contemned as the satisfaction of a vulgar appetite.

The biggest children in this respect were the Royalists, who instead of taking the country and circumstances as they were, elements out of which, Heaven knows, a system amply conservative and sufficiently aristocratic might have been formed, would on the contrary not only build up a new edifice of govern ment, but a new French people to govern. Chateaubriand the poet, neglected and flung into ultra-Royalism by Decazes and Louis XVIII., was the politician, who, at this time, drew up the programme of what the party desired and intended, now that government had fallen into their hands. General Foy could make no more bitter or over whelming denunciation of the designs of the retrograde party than by reading this programme. It not only demanded the change of the law of elections, so as to throw entire control and influence into the hands of the wealthy proprietors, but it demanded, what the French public most abhorred, the immobilization of landed pro perty, by the abrogation of the law compelling its division amongst heirs, and the substitution for it of entail in favour of the eldest born.

Religion too was to be placed on its old pedestal, predominant over education, and tabooed against criticism. Centralization broken up, and clergy and aristocracy raised each to a power equal with the Government or its functionary class. It was in pursuit of this Utopia, that the ultra-Royalist party set forth in Parliament: it was this that they blazoned and celebrated in the mingled prose and verse of their pub lications. In opposition to this restored royalty of Louis XIV., the Liberals, or Independents, as they as yet styled themselves, drew and held up a picture, quite as ideal and untrue, of the Revolution and the Empire, taking the glory of the latter, the freedom and emancipation of the former, glossing over the crimes of 1792 and the tyranny of 1804, but holding the Bonapartist regime as glorious and rightful, whilst that which existed was disgraceful and usurping.

It may be easy for an Englishman, accustomed to the working of constitutional machinery, to come to the con clusion, that Louis XVIII. needed no more than to allow his law of direct election to produce its last result, and return, as it threatened, a decidedly liberal majority to the Chamber. Accepting so great a fact as the result of free opinion and free election, and acting upon it according to constitutional rules to form a liberal ministry, comb posed of such men as Foy and Perrier, and the Doc trinaires, such of them as would enter into the combination, the King would have thereby rendered his name popular, demonstrated that his dynasty was not incompatible with the national party and sentiment, and would infallibly have silenced and thrown into disuse and disrepute all that mass of Bonapartist exaggeration and falsehood, which hitherto succeeded in depicting Napoleon as the hero of democracy, the Bourbons as the restorers and champions of aristocracy.

The tenure of office by such men as Foy, Perrier, and even Laffitte, for ever so short a time, would have made them acquainted with the diffi culties and responsibilities of Government, and compelled them to look at public affairs from the side of the throne and the administration, as well as from that of the people and of progress. Such experience is alone sufficient to infuse a large dose of conservatism into the most head strong Liberal, provided he has the sense and talent to appreciate and discern things as they are. And after wards the Bourbons, instead of surrounding themselves with a mere coterie of interested men, seeking to recover lost positions and lost advantages for themselves, would have rallied round the throne the true capacities of the country, and amongst them the representatives of the middle, the industrious, and capitalist classes.

All those, in fact, whom the Orleans dynasty made their friends, Louis XVIII. might have had on easier terms. But all this, which seems such obvious wisdom, and such self evident truth to us of the middle of the century, was, in 1820, by no means clear to Louis XVIII. He saw plainly and foretold emphatically the self-destruction to which the ultra-Royalists were tending. He accordingly resisted them, and kept power from falling into their hands, as long as he found a mere functionary Govern ment, such as that of Decazes and Pasquier, capable of holding its ground, and balancing the Liberals against the Royalists, without throwing influence and predominance into the former. But when he saw the Liberals gradually gaining the majority in Parliament, and at the same time not moderating their tone or their acts, but indulging daily in panegyrics of the Revolution and of Napoleon — thus carrying on not merely a constitutional opposition to the Ministry, but a revolutionary antago nism to the dynasty, committing personal outrage upon the King and his family by the election of such men as Gregoire — then Louis feared lest he might, like his un fortunate brother, when he intrusted the ministry to Roland and the Girondists, be giving up himself and his throne to the Foys and Perriers, as preparatory to the re erection of the revolutionary scaffold and the simultaneous downfall of the Crown itself, along with its would-be moderate and powerless minister.

That Louis was wrong, there can be now no possibility of doubting. But a wise man might have erred, as he did ; and when the too natural rage and terror of the Count D'Artois, of all the royal family and their followers, after the murder of the Duke de Berri is taken into account, one can scarcely censure the King for leaning more to the Conservatives, satisfying the grief and the entreaties of his brother, and recurring to a Ministry, which he might consider able to check the rapid and menacing advance of a party, apparently so hostile to the dynasty and so indulgent to its rivals, as the French liberals of the day. There was another influence brought to bear upon Louis XVIII., which he could not altogether set at nought. This was the opinion and counsels of the great governments, kings, and statesmen of Europe, who had set him on the throne, and who had so lately been induced to withdraw their army of occupation, on the assurance that the government of France was powerful and stable.

The events of Germany had alarmed the potentates of Austria and Russia. The outburst of Spain had filled them with fears not only for the Peninsula but for France itself, where there were abundant elements for an imitation of Spanish mutiny and democracy. Metternich had pro posed a joint representation of all the Courts to France, which Lord Castlereagh dissuaded him from. And although Sir Charles Stuart, the British ambassador in Paris, had faith in Decazes, and dreaded the consequence of ultra- Royalist reaction, still the English Cabinet, and even the Duke of Wellington, as we have seen, recommended Louis to become reconciled to the Royalists, rather than go with the Liberals. If Louis erred, therefore, he erred by the advice, not merely of many despots, but of the constitutional states men of England.

Moreover the King hoped not to give up all. He peremptorily refused admitting into the Cabinet the coun cillors of his brother. He insisted on recalling the Due de Richelieu who had governed so long, in manifest mistrust of the ultra-Royalists, who had indeed consented to gratify them by changing the electoral law, but who might be ex pected to hold firm against them on other important points. In this the King was mistaken. The electoral law was the pivot upon which parties turned. The present electoral law, which gave the franchise to all who paid three hundred francs of annual taxes, would inevitably produce a Liberal majority, and for no other reason, than that the ultra-Royalists were a minority in the nation. The con stitutional principle commanded the King to follow at least a majority like this, elected by the propertied class.

If the King could not trust them, there was no class to be trusted, and a constitution itself could only have worked as a deception, and been preserved as a semblance, not prac tised as a reality. In giving the Royalists or the Due de Richelieu power to alter the electoral law in such a manner as to produce a Royalist majority, the King inevitably placed himself in the hands of that majority, even more irrevocably than his continuing to govern with the present electoral law would place him in the hands of the Liberals. It was making over the Government to the Count d'Artois, however moderate and fair he might at first promise and appear. And as to the Due de Richelieu, who was a mere cipher in constitutional and domestic politics, he, by accepting office, was merely placing a convenient step ping-stone for the ultra-Royalists to cross upon at their leisure to the conquest of office and authority, and to the permanent seizure of the Government.

The Duke de Richelieu seemed aware of this. When the Duke Decazes (the King had already presented his ex minister with a ducal coronet, and appointed him ambas sador to London) first came to ask him to resume his old post of Prime Minister, Richelieu exclaimed, " That it was too much to demand such a sacrifice of him ; that he could not have the repose of his life disturbed ; and that he would never again accept office." His friends, Laine and Rayneval, came to repeat Decazes' request, no longer in the King's name, but in their own. Richelieu's acceptance of office was of course the reappointment of all his friends, and he could not deny them this natural gratification. He refused, however, to undertake the ministry, unless the Count d'Artois would frankly promise his support — thus admitting to what Parliamentary party he looked.

Mon sieur gave the promise, which of course he never intended to be more than limited and temporary support. The great object with the ultra-Royalists was to obtain the repeal of the electoral law, which was to transfer majority and power to them. This the Due de Richelieu and his friends, criminally as constitutionalists, and suicidally as politicians, undertook. This condition being complied with, the Duke de Richelieu accepted the post of Prime Minister, which he occupied as President of the Council. Foreign affairs, no longer so important as under his previous ministry, the Duke left in the hands of M. Pasquier, who had been so influential in demonstrating the necessity of a change in the electoral law. M. de Serre, absent at the time, was con tinued in his office of Minister of Justice, and M. Simeon was appointed Home Minister.

Neither of them were men in whom the ultra-Royalists had confidence. But to conciliate them, and give them guarantees, the under secretaryships in both departments were given to Ultras, Portalis and Baron Cappelle : the latter was entrusted with the personnel in the department of the Interior; in other words, with the appointment of prefects and functionaries. So that from the very first, the Duke de Richelieu gave up the chief patronage and political management over the de partments to the Count d'Artois. These ultra-Royalist nominations of course compelled such men as Guizot and Villemain to resign, as Royer Collard had done some time before. The Doctrinaires were indeed ejected from all offices. At first they remained silent labourers in the Conseil d'Etat, and more ambitious ones in their professorial chairs.

But as even their philosophy was a kind of opposition to the thenceforward retrograde spirit of the dominant faction, they were soon ousted from the adminstration, and silenced in their University places. The Restoration thus came to quarrel with the intelligence as well as with the liberties of the nation, giving to the former that popular vigour and support requisite to make it formidable, and at the same time giving to the Liberals, as auxiliaries and allies, those thinkers and philosophers, who represented the maturity of the national mind, whilst the Royalists expressed but the fatuity and puerile extravagance of a retrograde party. The most unfortunate position, however, was that of the ministry from which M. Decazes had escaped. The leading speakers had to support, in the Chamber, the very laws and that line of policy which in 1815 and the subsequent year they had combated and denounced.

The first proposal, that for the suspension of the laws guaranteeing, however imperfectly, the liberty of the person, opened the whole question of Ministerial changes, of the King and M. De Richelieu having shaken off every semi-liberal supporter, and having delivered over the Government to a party, bent not merely on temporary rigours, but upon a gradual reintroduction of the regime of absolutism. M. Pasquier was the chief Ministerial champion. Though in genious and able, he made but a very poor resistance to the eloquent and overwhelming attacks of such adversaries as Foy and Constant. Foy was searchingly true and magnificently prophetic. He denounced the Ministry, as ignorautly asking for arbitrary power, which they would not be allowed to wield themselves, or keep in their own hands. There was a party superior to theirs, dominant in the Court and in the provinces, to which every functionary would look, and in whose retrograde spirit the Government would be carried on, and these severe laws put in practice, whether Ministers desire it or not.

What was the use of such tyrannical power, unless it was exercised, and how could it be exercised against individuals, without informa tion respecting their thoughts and actions ? These informers would undertake to supply, and the new laws called into existence, a new class and profession, that of the informer. In the provinces every one who had been guilty of a liberal act, or of one which could be construed as such, would be denounced ; and the country would be divided into two parties, the accusing and attacking on the one side, that defending the traditions, principles, properties, and any thing that had taken root within the last half century upon the other. Moderate and middle parties would disappear; for there would not be even safety in belonging to them, and civil war thus commenced, in however severe a manner, the nature, the inveteracy, and the inevitable result of the struggle, however prolonged, could not but be foreseen.

In opposition to such arguments, Ministers could but take the ungracious theme of representing France as largely participating in the crime of Louvel, or at least in too many instances expressing approbation of it. These arguments tended to consider and to treat the French as frenzied individuals, who required coercion and the strait waistcoat. Benjamin Constant eloquently repelled the injustice, depicting France as an utter stranger to the monomania of an assassin, progressive in the ways of industry and tranquillity, until Ministers chose to bring in the whole country guilty of the assassination of an unfor tunate prince. Ministers asked for these exceptional powers as a mark of confidence. But who are the Ministers, asked Con stant, but men who have already executed the most severe laws, with complaisance and zeal, for that very military despot whom they now denounce ?

It would be some thing, if those on the ministerial bench could come forward with pure hands and say, that they had never been guilty of an arbitrary act, nor signed a cruel order, nor encou raged spies, nor acted the part of informer in order to exile and imprison patriots. Such apostrophes were chiefly directed against Pasquier. General Foy, more Imperialist and more prudent than Constant, avoided accusing the Bonapartists. He even spared the Ministry, and represented them not so guilty as weak, and as certain to be instruments of other parties more retrograde and more designing. Ministers must lean to one side or to the other, said Foy ; they must either take the position of representing current ideas and genera] interests, or they must fall back to lean on that ultra-Royalist body, which is too weak and too insignificant in the country to resist or to govern without the aid of foreigners.

" It was only by the support of foreign soldiers," continued Foy, " that they were able to subject the country to the terror of 1815. But for foreign armies at that time occupying the soil of France, there would have been an hundred insurrections." Here the ultra- Royalists in the Chamber broke into loud murmurs and denials. " Do you think," repeated Foy, addressing them, " that, were it not for your foreign allies, we should have, like cowards, put up with the insults and the outrages heaped upon us by a handful of wretches (miserables) whom we had seen grovelling in the dirt for the thirty years previous ?" This rude and unwarrantable apostrophe of Foy made all the Royalists start up in commotion. They called him an insolent fellow. He added, that he had himself suffered outrages, such as could only have been possible under foreign bayonets.

He had hoped to see such times and such acts impossible of return ; but the policy and the persons, now resuming sway in the country, would bring all back once more. The reproach of miserable, and the rejoinder of insolent, occasioned a duel between M. de Corday, relative of Charlotte Corday, and General Foy. The latter received his adversary's fire, discharged his own pistol in the air, and then with the nobleness of his character, apologized for confounding in an epithet the informers and oppressors of 1815 along with those honourable men, who as Royalists had never lost or deserved to lose respect. This apology which was no more than due, was nevertheless very ill received, and unfavourably judged by the Liberals, who would now listen to no terms with the royalists, save those of war to the extreme.

The law suspending the liberties of the person, passed by 134 votes against 115, the junction of the Ministerialists with the Royalists securing this majority. The inutility of the law was proved by the circumstance of its not being made the least use of, neither conspiracy nor danger of any kind menacing, until they were produced by the retrograde acts of the session. The law, suspending the liberty of the press, and re-establishing the censorship, was more efficient, although it called forth less resent ment and passion. It would almost seem that the Chamber of Peers, which had been foremost in provoking the fall of Decazes and the change of the electoral law, was alarmed at the extent of the menaced reaction. The Commission, whom it chose to report upon the law of the press, objected to its more severe enactments, and recommended the modification of them.

It even sought to abate the rigour of the censorship by subjecting it to a Commission of Revisal or surveillance. When brought before the Chamber of Deputies, all the chiefs of the Liberal party regarded it as an infraction of the Charter, as a flagrant breach of the contract between prince and people, and of the peace which prevailed betwixt them. Lafayette declared frankly, that it set men free from their promise of allegiance, and left no option but to look to force and to measure it. As long as Government was strong enough, it would enforce its tyranny and succeed ; the moment the people found themselves strong, they would resist and overturn the Government. This plain speaking, taken for rhodomontade, but unfortunately true as well as just, merely exasperated the Ministerialists and Royalists.

It was in this debate that the Doctrinaires seized the opportunity of declaring their hostility to the Government. Camille Jordan denounced it in an eloquent speech ; and said that his objections and his fears were not provoked so much by this law or by that, as by the new spirit which evidently meditated a change in every law and in the whole system of administration, and commenced an era of coercion and force exercised upon even the enlightened public, instead of founding a constitutional government on their intelligence and support. Royer Collard gave more philosophic reasons for his opposition. He said that the present Government placed itself at the head of a party to go forth and combat anarchy and faction. For his part he saw no symptom of either in the nation. He saw them merely in the Government, and introduced by Govern ment into the Chamber.

The Ministry seems to have no force of its own and no consciousness of any. Instead of dominating parties and making use of them, Govern ment has either let them escape its influence, or has undergone their denunciation. The electoral ordonnance and law of M. Decazes planted the royal standard in the midst of the nation. But where was it to be looked for now? There was no united will, no clear aims. They were assisting at the funeral of the public liberties. No one could tell why, or point out what kind of Government was to succeed. With respect to the present motion, Ministers ought to be compelled to make use of the laws which exist, and amend them if necessary, instead of having recourse to the clumsy and barbarous expedient of knocking the brains out of all liberties, whether of freedom or of the person, merely because they did not know how to devise a plan reconciling liberty with restriction.

He proposed with M. de la Bourdonnaye merely voting the law for a few months. Ministers, however, carried their measures ; and thus after brief enjoyment of the liberty of the press, which served but to enhance the public enjoy ment of it, and determination to recognize it, the censor ship was re-established. At the moment the organ of even the great parties ceased to appear. The " Minerve" was published no more. Even the " Conservateur." in which Chateaubriand wrote, was discontinued, not so much from fear of the censors, as that the Royalist party would no longer support an organ which accepted constitutional principles. The political philosophy of Bonald and De Maistre, who preferred the restoration of the ancient monarchy and its States-General, were now to be brought forward ; and, strange to say, amongst the names of those who were to write a new " Conservateur " of this kind appears that of Lamartine.

The Liberal journals were, at the same time, obliged to furl their sails, to diminish their numbers, give up their warmth, and abandon argument as prohibited. Opposition took refuge in epigram. The " Minerve" could no longer fire its monthly cannon. But Beranger could pour forth his weekly song, in which the Bourbons were ridiculed and their Ministers execrated ; and the pithy rhyme fed public indignation for the time as powerfully as the daily or monthly diatribes of the press. The denying to public opinion its expression, and to private life its security, were not sufficient for the ultra- Royalists. To obtain a majority in the Chamber of Deputies was their vital object: and they judged at once, that the new electoral law, which M. Decazes had con cocted and introduced, would by no means be sufficient for their purpose.