France since 1814/Chapter 3

CHAPTER III

THE GREAT JUGGLING OF 1830

" Charles X. must take care of this child's crown," said Louis XVIII. on his death-bed, as he laid his hand on the head of the little Duc de Bordeaux. The foreboding implied in this warning was not felt by the old King alone ; it was partly shared by public opinion, not only in France, but abroad. To judge by the case of the Comte d'Artois, it seemed impossible that Charles X. could keep his crown, even if he succeeded in governing for a little while ; but, as it happened, the prophets of evil were wrong. They were not mistaken in the King ; his very ordinary character was supplemented by a very ordinary intellect. They were mistaken in the nation. They had forgotten the happy results of the preceding reign. It is not always the sower who reaps ; Charles X. was to reap what Louis XVIII. had sown. They had also forgotten that the new sovereign had some advantages which his brother had not, advantages to which France is peculiarly sensitive. He was amiable, he was cheerful, his manner was a happy mixture of personal charm and kingly majesty. He was never at a loss for the apt or witty word which is a sure passport to popular favour. In spite of his age, he had preserved the light build and the activity of youth, and when he showed himself on horseback at the head of his troops, surrounded by a staff no less brilliant than himself, Charles X. was greeted with enthusiastic acclamations. He had longed for them, and he was immensely pleased when they came. His brief day of popularity in 1814 had left behind it an inextinguishably delightful memory; but his thirst for admiration was honest, and it served the interests of the country. It would give the French people a hold on their King, and enable them to undo the effects of his terrible obstinacy.

That obstinacy was engaged from 1824 to 1828 in supporting the Villèle Ministry, which Ministry he abandoned when he perceived that it was endangering his popularity, and accepted Martignac, a Liberal. And then he found himself so popular that he thought he could do anything he pleased ; so he realised his long-cherished desire of entrusting power to his favourite Polignac. We shall see how the insurrection provoked by that Minister became a revolution.

The laws proposed by the Villèle Ministry, after the accession of Charles X., would have been quite enough to weaken a régime with a less inviolate and venerable principle behind it. Under the increasing pressure of the ultras, the Cabinet proposed, first, the ridiculous law of sacrilege, by which special penalties were instituted for robberies committed in churches. (That law was obviously based on the doctrine of the Real Presence, and thus dogma was introduced into legislation.) Then came the law opening a credit of a thousand millions of francs to indemnify the emigrés; it was a wise measure in itself, and as it in a manner sanctioned the confiscations of the Revolution, it was calculated to reassure the holders of so-called " national property " ; but the public discussion of it also helped to revive all the old passions and grievances of the past. Lastly, there was the " Droit d’Ainesse," which decreed that the eldest son of wealthy families should have the advantage if the testator had expressed no wish to the contrary. In the existing state of things, seeing that the nation had a passion for equal inheritance as established by the Revolution, such a law came like a blow in its face.

But all these measures, even the consecration of the King in the cathedral at Rheims, the superannuated title of Dauphin bestowed upon the Due d'Angoulême, and other little anachronisms of the kind, were not enough to turn the nation's discontent into downright hostility against the throne. True, the nation was more or less reassured by seeing the magistrature, the Institut, and, above all, the Chamber of Peers — that hereditary and aristocratic power — constituting themselves the defenders of moderation and a wise Liberalism. The Upper Chamber had already mitigated some of the strong measures voted by the Deputies when it forced the Cabinet to withdraw a Draconian law destined to sweep clean, not to say annihilate, the Press. That evening Paris was illuminated amid cries of " Vive le Roi ! Vivent les Pairs ! "

The censure of the Press was restored by way of retaliation for this failure (June 1827) ; but it was well known that the Duc d'Angoulême, the heir to the throne, who at this time took part with his father in the Ministerial councils, had plainly declared himself against the measure. It was not forgotten that after his accession Charles X. had, by his own authority, suppressed this very law passed by Villèle in the latter months of Louis XVIII.'s reign. So it was to the Minister, and not to the King, that the grudge was owing. The dissolution of the National Guard had been for the Parisian bourgeoisie (of which it was almost entirely composed) a still severer blow. On the 29th of April the King reviewed the National Guard on horseback in the Champ de Mars, when he was received with mingled cries of " Vive le Roi ! À bas Villèle ! " The next day this outburst of political emotion was punished with an order for dissolution.

Nevertheless, when in the autumn of the same year Charles X. visited the camp at Saint Omer, and made a tour of the principal towns in the North of France, he was greeted with enthusiastic loyalty. Shortly afterwards news arrived of the glorious battle of Navarino, which gave Greece her independence, and threw new splendour on our Navy. Villèle now thought that the time had come to steady his tottering power. He obtained an order from the King for the dissolution of the Chamber of Deputies and the creation of no less than seventy-six peers. This last measure was designed to modify the majority in the Upper Chamber.

What happened then is noteworthy. Nothing could better show the amazing and rapid progress of monarchical stability since the death of Louis XVIII. ; it went hand in hand with the development of a political sense in the electoral body. Villèle brought a lively pressure to bear on the electors ; administrative centralisation gave him the means and he had no scruples in using them. In spite of that, the Ministry obtained only 170 seats; the Extreme Right 70 ; and the Left 180. On the other hand, it was felt that the new peers, some of whom had been rather unhappily chosen, so far from exercising any influence on their colleagues, were influenced by them in the most wholesome manner, and were changed by contact with that chastened and moderate milieu. At Paris something very like a revolt broke out, and professional agitators suddenly appeared on the scene. They had always been there, but now it seemed that they had lost much of their determination and self-confidence. The revolt was easily suppressed. At last an obscure pamphleteer, called Cauchois-Lemaire, published an appeal to the Duc d'Orleans, in which he adjured this Prince to form some sort of government in place of the Bourbon régime ; he only succeeded in raising an explosion of indignant protestation felt by all parties. Thus, after three years and a half (September 1824 to December 1827) of a policy disapproved by the majority, the nation showed no sign of disaffection to the throne. Nothing but a slight coolness in the attitude of the crowd when in the presence of its sovereign — and this chiefly in Paris. But it was quite enough to grieve the monarch. It made him inclined to refuse his support to the proposals of Villèle ; Villèle, who clung to power in a very undignified fashion, to keep himself in office would have thought nothing of another dissolution of the Chamber ; instead of that he had to resign, having remained seven years in office.

In January 1828 M. de Martignac became Prime Minister. In MM. Roy, Portalis, and La Ferronays (Minister of Foreign Affairs), he found distinguished collaborators. He himself was a man of great merit. His good sense, his integrity, his clear intellect, were helped by his fascinating personality. There was an irresistible charm both in the things he said and in the manner of the saying. Up to that time almost unknown, he soon made his individuality felt in the Parliament and the country, and he succeeded in holding office for eighteen months. Such a career seemed most unlikely at the beginning of his Ministry, which bid fair to be a very ephemeral one. It has been said that M. de Martignac was even less known to his King than to his colleagues, and that the King was mistaken when he chose him on account of his opinions. This is the less likely seeing that Martignac was hardly in office before he easily obtained the King's consent to measures which plainly showed how far the Cabinet had changed its point of view. M. Guizot and M. Cousin were allowed to begin again their lectures at the Sorbonne. Villemain and Chateaubriand recovered their salaries which had been withdrawn. Moderate instructions were issued to all functionaries ; seventeen prefects were dismissed, others suspended ; finally, Parliament was presented with a Liberal law in favour of the Press.

Still more amazing was the religious policy of the Cabinet. First roughly handled by the Revolution, then severely restricted by Napoleon, religion had been reduced to the level of a public institution, like the Board of Works or the Post Office. A reaction in its favour could not fail to arise ; it arose about 1848, and it might have arisen any time after 1815 but for the disastrous alliance, by which " the throne and the altar " managed to compromise each other. Clergy and noblesse, victims alike of the Revolution, joined together in mutual adulation and support. The religious orders, at any rate the more active and powerful of them, worked hard to repair their fortunes. The experiment was enough to make Voltaire turn in his grave. It so happened that an anti-religious tendency set in, and it grew. The extraordinary indiscretions of the other side helped to strengthen it ; notably the interference of the Congrégation in political matters. The most absurd fictions have been invented on this subject, there being no limit to the credulity of the public. But if no historian can take these exaggerations seriously, neither can he accept the disclaimers of the interested party. The truth being that the clergy and the Jesuits interfered enormously, and their pretensions were at times intolerable.

What seems to have roused to the utmost the national discontent was the part that the King took in the religious ceremonies. Louis XVIII. had been more or less sceptical, not to say Voltairian, in his views ; Charles X. saw fit to follow the processions from one end of his capital to the other, and Yillèle admits, in his Mémoires, that the Parisians were much pained by this spectacle of their sovereign " walking in humility behind the priests. " What was odd, this quarrel was with the priests rather than the King. The unpopularity of the Jesuits became such that the name of Jesuit served as a handy weapon of abuse among the lowest classes and even the Bourgeoisie. An enraged man could fling no more opprobrious epithet at his neighbour.

Curious to relate, the same hand that so devoutly held the sacred candle, signed, at the proposal of Martignac, and without very many scruples of its own, the famous Ordinances of 1828. They were countersigned, it is true, by a Liberal prelate, Monseigueur Feutrier, Bishop of Beauvais, who had then become Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs in the place of Monseigneur Frayssinous. The Ordinances of the 16th of June, 1828, aimed at regulating the small seminaries, institutions where, in every diocese, the young men destined for the priesthood were prepared for their office. Seven of those small seminaries had passed into the hands of the Jesuits, whose order had formerly been suppressed in France and had not been re-established by law. Their position was therefore illegal. The Ordinances placed the seminaries under the control of the University, and provided that the directors and professors were not to be attached to " any unauthorised Congregation. " This amounted to the exclusion of the Jesuits, and the measure was immensely applauded. But the Bishops, who were nearly all anti-Liberals, united to oppose it ; they refused to submit to the Ordinances. The Government very cleverly obtained a brief from the Pope requiring them to do so. Charles X. does not seem to have hesitated as to his duty on this occasion ; when the Cardinal of Clermont-Tonnerre persisted in his opposition — holding by the motto of his house, " Etiam si omnes, ego non " — the King forbade him to appear in his presence.

Not long after, on the 17th of August (1828), by virtue of an agreement concluded in London a month before, 14,000 men embarked at Toulon for Greece. They soon took Patras and occupied the whole of the Morea. The expedition was accompanied by a scientific commission, which had the honour of being the first to ransack the spoils of Olympia. France was thus still more deeply pledged to the work of Greek emancipation. In her foreign as in her home policy, she showed herself, officially speaking, Liberal. The King soon reaped the advantage of his attitude. While the Duchesse de Berry, on her way through Vendée, Bordelais, and the departments of the south, met with the most flattering reception, Charles X. and the Duc d'Angoulême also made their progress through the east of France. Liberal Alsace gave the King a triumphal welcome ; the journey was one unbroken ovation, and in every town the deputies of the Left took a warm part in the demonstrations. One of their number could declare, amid the plaudits of the Chamber, that " henceforth the Bourbon Government was incontestable, and that revolution was no longer possible. "

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.