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. "
At the opening of the next Session (January 1829) the Speech from the Throne proved to be a masterpiece of discretion and propriety. From the list of three candidates, presented to him by the deputies, the King again nominated as their president Royer-Collard, the doctrinaire who was the incarnation of fidelity to the Charter. Finally, the Ministry proposed the law so long demanded, which was to organise the Communal and Departmental Councils. Under the Empire these Councils were only composed of members nominated by the Government, and this belated form of legislation was still flourishing. By Martignac's programme the Councils were to be elective, only reserving to the King the nomination of the mayors. No more honest and decisive measure had yet been passed in the course of democratic progress. At first the Liberals applauded the benevolent action of the Government ; but, inconceivable as it may seem, this feeling was not of long duration. In the Chamber of 1829 parties were more split up than they had ever been before ; they had no leaders, and consequently no discipline. A mischievous and violent Press, that mistook intransigeance for strength and carping for cleverness, picked holes in every clause of the proposed measure, and did its work so thoroughly that failure seemed certain, and the Bill had to be withdrawn. Again, as in the time of Louis XVIII., it was the Government that did its duty and the parties that failed in theirs. History, at least, has avenged Martignac. All the great Liberals — Guizot, Duvergier de Hauranne, even Dupin and Odilon-Barrot — have acknowledged in their Mémoires that they were collaborators in a tremendous blunder.
The failure was not so much the failure of a Bill as the failure of a policy ; the King, if he had stood resolutely by his Ministers, could have given them the time and the means to recover their position ; but he never dreamt of such a thing. If, in the most unexpected manner, he had grown a little wiser in the exercise of supreme powder, he could not rise to the idea of equilibrium which had inspired his brother; he could not acquire a sense of policy which was not in him. He only understood one thing — that Martignac and his colleagues had no majority in the Chamber, and that henceforth he, Charles, could use his popularity with the country to summon his favourite to his side.
The Prince de Polignac was loyal and disinterested enough, but he suffered from a prodigious lack of intelligence ; he had, however, while Ambassador in London, won a great deal of sympathy, notably that of Wellington. It was partly at Polignac's suggestion that the pernicious Droit d'Ainesse had been proposed. Observing the considerable rôle played by the territorial aristocracy in England, he had innocently imagined that nothing would be easier than to have the same sort of thing in France. His naïveté was the more formidable by reason of the mysticism in which he was steeped. He believed himself to be inspired by Heaven in direct answer to prayer. No man in France was more unpopular than he. His very recent profession of attachment to the Charter could not undo the fact that, in 1815, he had refused to support it. Moreover, as everybody was aware of the affection which Charles X. felt for him, the Press had long ago prophesied the formation of a Polignac Ministry, which it represented as an inevitable Coup d'État, a direct attempt on public liberty.
The Ministry was formed in August 1829, and everybody looked out for the prophesied Coup d'État. None came ; and for the best of reasons. The change of Government had been made in a remarkable manner; there never was such an incoherent jumble of proper names. Cheek by jowl with Polignac sat La Bourdonnaye, the typical émigré, conspicuous by his violence, and General de Bourmont, who had been accused of having abandoned his division on the very morning of Waterloo to join Louis XVIII. at Gand. But, on the other hand, Baron de Haussez, a Moderate, had been chosen for the Navy on the refusal of Admiral de Rigny, an advanced Liberal ; portfolios had been given with magnificent impartiality to Chabrol and Courvoisier, who belonged, respectively, to the Right and Left Centres. Finally, when La Bourdonnaye retired, Guernon-Ranville, who was known to be equally attached to the King and to the Charter, entered the Ministry. It was only a year later that Chabrol and Courvoisier were replaced by two exaltés. The presence of such men was a certain pledge that nothing would be done contrary to the Charter; and, indeed, Polignac meditated no illicit adventure of the kind. In a beatitude of self-satisfaction he imagined that, on the contrary, he had united these discordant elements very skilfully ; and he dreamed, moreover, of accomplishing great things abroad. In fact, the situation was unique. After the Treaty of Adrianople, signed on the 14th of September (1829), the alliance of France was simultaneously solicited by Russia and by England, then in agreement with Austria. We were in a position to choose, with the certainty that on either side we had an equal chance of a speedy amendment of the treaties of 1815. The taking of Algiers somewhat strained our relations with England ; so it was towards Russia that our policy had to incline. To do Polignac justice he felt this, and prepared to act accordingly. As for the King, in the joy of possessing a Ministry after his own heart, he asked nothing but that it might last, and he was ready, if necessary, to sacrifice the ideas if he could only keep the men of his choice.
But the nation could not be expected to know these things. During the end of 1829, and the beginning of 1830, the great topic in the journals, and the groups of the Right and Left, was the Coup d'État, and the various ways in which it might be accomplished. Nobody talked about anything else. If the result had not been so serious there would have been some humour in the spectacle of a nation obstinately crediting its Government with all manner of dangerous projects, which had never entered into its head, and in a measure foisting them on it whether it would or no. Having made up their minds that the deputies would not be convoked, that the Budget would not be carried, and that taxes would be levied by a simple Ordinance (an illegal measure, if it came to that), the Liberals went about excitedly forming leagues in the provinces, and generally organising themselves all over the country with a view to resisting the taxes thus scandalously imposed. But the Chambers were convoked in the most regular manner, to the surprise of everybody who was looking out for the famous Coup d'État.
Now two lines of conduct were open to the Opposition: either to wait for the proposals of the Ministry and reject them one by one, or refuse to support it absolutely and à priori by inserting a clause to this effect in the answer to the Speech from the Throne. A more experienced party would have adopted the former course without hesitation ; the Left adopted the latter. It was the honester and the clearer course, but it had this disadvantage, that it precipitated the conflict, and caused the King to be mixed up in it. Otherwise the Address was couched in the most respectful language, and was very well drawn up. But it positively insisted on a change of Ministry.
Charles X., whose Speech from the Throne bad been unnecessarily irritating in its tone, at once took up the challenge. He had a certain militant temperament that even age had not subdued. The very next morning he announced to his Ministers his resolution to prorogue the Chambers till the 1st of September; it was now the 17th of March (1830). The dissolution of the Chamber seemed inevitable ; although the Ministers were by no means agreed upon that point, the King was determined, and the dispute became more and more his private quarrel. Thus it was at the Court and in the neighbourhood of the Palace that anxiety was most intense. The frequenters of the Tuileries felt a lively alarm ; so did the Ministers, strangely enough. The majority of them had no illusions on the subject, and several remained at their posts as a point of honour. But there were many deputies and officials, especially in the provinces, who by no means shared these apprehensions. Fear grew fainter as it reached the lower ranks of society, the great body of the people remaining cool and tranquil.
The watchword of the Liberals was re-election of the 221 deputies who had voted for the Address. The elections took place on the 23rd of June and the 4th and 5th of July, and their result was decisive : 270 of the Opposition to 145 Ministerials. In many towns the results hostile to the Cabinet were proclaimed amid cries of " Vive le Roi ! " and even M. Guizot wrote that in that Chamber of 415 members there were not 50 who desired a change of dynasty.
It was certainly not for want of hearing about the English Revolution of 1688. Writers of the Opposition had been harping on this theme since 1820, but without any great success. It had been taken up with frenzy by a young man, hitherto unknown, whom it is well to mention here, because of the tremendous part he was suddenly about to play. That young man was Thiers. Born at Marseilles in 1797, Thiers came to Paris with his friend Mignet in 1821, and was not long in making a place for himself in the ranks of Liberal journalism. At that time he possessed all the lightness of the typical Frenchman, without his generosity. An enormous facility for assimilating the most various subjects, a factitious but extremely seductive personality were the instruments of his egoistic vanity and boundless ambition. That ambition aimed at nothing less than the Government ; to be Minister seems to have been his earliest dream. He was aware that the Restoration offered him no chance of realising it except in very remote contingencies. His constant attitude towards that régime was one of jealous hatred, which made him desire to see it overthrown, and help it to its downfall. Therefore he lost no opportunity of reviving the memory of 1688. It is a long-standing belief that this memory so perseveringly evoked was a factor in the Revolution of 1830. The belief was natural, events turning out as they did But a deeper study of the national psychology at that time does away with this idea. The date 1688 meant nothing to the people ; they knew nothing about English history ; they only understood one thing : that there was to be a new revolution, in which they were not in the least interested. As for the bourgeoisie, no encouragement could have induced it to attempt a 1688 on its own account ; therefore the tendency was, amongst the advocates of a French 1688, to represent such an eventuality as ominous, and to express a pious hope that the Royal policy would not make it necessary ; with the result that a French 1688 became a more terrifying thing than its advocates meant it to be. One thing is certain : under the Martignac Ministry, and in the face of the unmistakable proofs of the nation's growing loyalism, Thiers at last lost heart. Disgusted with an insignificant part in a hopeless struggle, he had asked and obtained leave to accompany an officer bound for the tour of the world on scientific service. He was on the point of starting when the rise of the Polignac Ministry changed his determination. The desired horizon was open to him. Only a little way, however. Up to the 29th of July he was sceptical as to the change of dynasty, in spite of Ordinances and revolt.
It was on the 26th of July that the famous Ordinances, signed the day before, appeared in the Moniteur, causing a fall on the Bourse of from three to four francs. To tell the truth, they hardly constituted a Coup d'État ; no state of siege was proclaimed, nobody was arrested, and no troops were called out to support the evil designs of the Government. The first of the Ordinances suppressed the liberty of the Press, and to that measure, pernicious as it was, people were more or less accustomed. It was the same with the dissolution of the Chamber, proclaimed by the second Ordinance, which at the same time convoked the electors for the month of September, thus implying that at any rate there was no idea of dispensing with their support. The third Ordinance was more serious, for it completely modified the electoral law ; still it is to be noted that it restored most of the regulations of 1814 relating to the composition of the Chamber, regulations that had been afterwards modified in a larger and more liberal sense. The fourth merely recalled the majority of the members who had been removed from the Council of State for the last two years.
The Ordinances were inspired by a fatuous policy ; they were illegal, if not in the letter, at any rate in the spirit ; but it is difficult to construe them into treason or even attempt against the country. The same evening, whilst a harmless ebullition of popular feeling was going on in the street, Casimir-Périer and General Sebastiani, together with some other deputies, examined the situation, and formally expressed their opinion that one ought to abide by the letter of the law. At the same moment, Thiers was holding forth in the office of the Constitutionel, and drawing up a protest exhorting the newly-elected Chamber to take no notice of the Ordinances, but to meet on the 3rd of August as if nothing had happened. The whole of the next day (27th of July) passed without bringing about any change. Printers, touched in their material interests by the suppression of several newspapers, and students, always enamoured of desperate solutions, went about stirring up the mob. Three meetings were held in the afternoon and evening. The deputies, together with some sections of the electors, thought of nothing but organising la résistance légale ; there was some talk of refusing to pay a tax, as the very utmost that could be dared ; there was also some idea of reorganising the old National Guard, which, though disarmed, could still muster, it was said, nearly 30,000 muskets. Those who made this proposal looked to the National Guard as a defence against a possible insurrection rather than as a weapon of offence against the Government. The Ministers resolved to proclaim a state of siege, while showing a conceited security before the King, who was all the time at St. Cloud, quietly resting.
On the morning of the 28th the professional agitators made their appearance. It was just three days since the Ordinances had been signed, two days since they had been published ; and in spite of Thiers' zeal, the throne had not yet been threatened. That morning, in their walks abroad, the mob — up till then having contented itself with raising one barricade and smashing a few lampposts — the unemployed artisans, enthusiastic students, Republicans, and old " Carbonari," and everybody, in short, who had private reasons for desiring a crisis, noticed that no resistance was prepared ; therefore they foresaw a glorious opportunity for revolt, and their hopes were kindled. They organised themselves during the night, and at dawn began the campaign. The Hôtel de Ville was guarded by sixteen men, all told. They took possession of it. An unknown hand hoisted an enormous tricolour flag on the towers of Nôtre Dame ; it was pointed out by the people below with more surprise than enthusiasm. In the presence of the deputies reassembled at the house of one of their number, General Sebastiani exclaimed that "he, for his part, would never know any national standard but the white standard." In the mouth of a representative of the Advanced Left such language was significant. The prevailing opinion in Parliamentary circles was that the King should be induced to withdraw the Ordinances and change the Ministry. Marshal Marmont, Commander of the Forces, wrote as much to the King. Charles X., still at St. Cloud, and still lulled into a sense of security, vouchsafed no answer but "Wait till to-morrow." It had been a bad day ; ill-disciplined soldiers had Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/105 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/106 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/107 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/108 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/109 ing them. His sense of honour was not fine enough, his patriotism not sufficiently enlightened, to restrain him. Like a good old paterfamilias, he thought of the children. He had those great bourgeois virtues which in a prince so easily degenerate into vices.
His decision must have been made from the moment when, on the 30th of July, he suffered himself to be led to the Hôtel de Ville, where he received the compromising blandishments of Lafayette, who had made up his mind to support him. But that was not all. On the 1st of August Charles X., who had removed from St. Cloud to Rambouillet, there convoked the Chamber for the 3rd, and ratified the Duke's title of Lieutenant-General. This was tantamount to constituting a Regency, the more so as the next day the King abdicated; and, with a boundless self-abnegation, and magnificent patriotism, the Duc d'Angoulême followed his father's example. This noble Prince thus suffered the Duc d'Orleans to become Regent during the minority of Henri V., and paved the way for conciliation.
He was not understood. The deputies, who do not seem to have had any of the Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/111 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/112 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/113 Page:Coubertin - France since 1814, 1900.djvu/114