In the evening the Hôtel de Ville was captured. That evening the Ministers tried to enlighten the King, but he only replied: "Let the insurgents lay down their arms." While the discharges of artillery shook the windows of Charles X. obstinate the palace the King played whist. Next day two line regiments openly joined the revolt. The Louvre was stormed. Still the King at St. Cloud would not yield. "They exaggerate the danger," said he. "I know what concessions would lead to. I have no wish to ride like my brother on a cart." Instead of concessions he vested the command in the Dauphin, having grown suspicious of Marmont. The mob sacked the Tuileries and hoisted the tricolor flag on the clock tower. At the Hôtel de Ville a municipal Fall of Ministry commission was installed, composed of Lafayette, Casimir Périer, General Lobau and Audry de Puyraveau. At last, when it was too late, the King countermanded his obnoxious orders and dismissed Polignac with his Ministry. The people no longer paid attention to the King's acts. He was declared deposed. A republic was proclaimed and its presidency offered to An interim republic Lafayette. But the old hero declined the honor. With Thiers he threw his influence in favor of the Duke of Orleans. The Duke of Orleans, the son of Philip Egalité, of Revolutionary fame, was invited to Paris to exercise the functions of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. The deposed King at St. Cloud hastened to confirm the appointment. The Duke of Orleans respectfully Duke of Orleans summoned declined the royal appointment. "You cannot receive things from everybody," said Dupont. General Lafayette soon came to pay his respects. "You know," said he, "that I am a republican, and consider the Constitution of the United States as the most perfect that has been devised." "So do I," replied the Duke; "but do you think that in the present condition of France it would be advisable for us to adopt it?" "No," answered Lafayette; "what the French people must now have is a popular throne, surrounded by republican institutions." "That is just my opinion," said Prince Louis Philippe.
Lafayette's conversation with the prince led to the so-called programme of the Hôtel de Ville. "I shall not take the crown," said the Duke of Orleans, "I shall receive it from the people on the conditions it suits them to impose. A charter will henceforth be a reality." At last Charles X. Charles X. abdicates abdicated in favor of his grandson, the Duke of Bordeaux. The Duke of Orleans refused to recognize the claims of Henri V., and France and Europe were with him. Charles X. relinquished further hopes.
The Dauphin, formerly Duke of Angoulême, in like manner resigned his rights to his nephew. The act was signed on the 2d of August. Charles X. now set out for Normandy with his guards, commanded by Marmont, and, on August 16, embarked at Cherbourg in two American vessels, with the Dauphin and Louis Philippe, King of France Dauphiness, the Duchess of Berry, the Duke of Bordeaux, and a numerous suite of attendants. The ships sailed for England, and, anchoring at Spithead, the royal fugitives took up their residence at Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire, but eventually removed to Holyrood Castle at Edinburgh, which was placed at their disposal by the British Government. On August 9, Louis Philippe, on the formal request of the two Chambers, accepted the crown of France with a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution.
The overthrow of the Bourbons was not a revolution in the sense of the great French Revolution of the previous century. It resulted chiefly in the transfer of government from one political faction to another. Louis Philippe, raised to the throne by reason of his supposed democratic principles, rather than for his royal lineage, was a Republican only in name. His early education, together with that of his brothers, was directed Louis Philippe's previous career by the Countess of Genlis. On the outbreak of the Revolutionary war, the young Prince, then Duke of Chartres, fought with distinction by the side of Kellermann and Dumouriez at Valmy and Jemmapes. He accompanied the latter when he took refuge in the camp of the imperialists in April, 1793. After the death of his father, Philippe Egalité, refusing to bear arms against France, he joined his sister and Madame de Genlis in Switzerland, where Sojourn in America they lived for some time under an assumed name. In 1795 he travelled into the north of Germany, Sweden and Norway, and in the following year sailed from Hamburg for the United States of America. Here he was joined by his two brothers, and after some years in America, during which they were often in distress, the three princes went to England in 1800. The Duke of Orleans now obtained a reconciliation with the heads of his family, Louis XVIII. and the Count of Artois. Subsequently he became a guest at the court of Ferdinand IV., the dispossessed King of Naples, at Palermo; and here was celebrated, in November, 1809, his marriage with the Princess Marie Amelie, daughter of that monarch. Upon the restoration of Louis XVIII. he re-entered France, and took his seat in the Chamber of Peers; but having fallen under suspicion of disaffection, he once more retired to England and "Le Roi Citoyen" did not reappear in France till 1817. During the remainder of the reign of Louis he took no part in public affairs and lived in tranquillity at his favorite villa of Neuilly. He was a "citizen king," only in so far as he sent his children to the public schools and walked about the streets of Paris with an umbrella under his arm. The most lasting effect in France of the July revolution was the obliteration of clerical influences in the administration and public education. The Royalist nobility likewise lost what political ascendency they had regained during the Restoration. Henceforth A new power in France the party in power was that of the bourgeoisie or great middle class of France, of which Louis Philippe himself was the self-constituted representative.
Outside of France, on the contrary, the effects of the short revolution were far-reaching. In the Netherlands ever increasing friction between the Dutch-speaking Protestants of Holland and the French Catholics of Belgium Revolution in Belgium had excited the country to the point of revolution. Recent repressive measures on the part of the Dutch Government made matters worse. On August 25, the performance, at the Brussels Opera House, of Auber's "La Muette di Portici," with its representation of a revolutionary rising in Naples, gave the signal for revolt. From the capital the insurrection spread throughout Belgium. The King summoned the States-General to The Hague and agreed to an administrative separation of Belgium and Holland; but the storm was not quelled. On the appearance of Dutch troops in Brussels, barricades were Bombardment of Antwerp erected and the insurgents drove the soldiers out of the city. For several days fighting continued in the outskirts. A provisional government declared the independence of Belgium. Mediation by a conference in Holland was frustrated by the bombardment of Antwerp by its Dutch garrison. The French Liberals were burning to give assistance. Austria and Russia stood ready to prevent their intervention by force of arms. Louis Philippe, while holding the French war party in check, felt constrained to look about him for an ally. In this extremity Talleyrand's last mission Prince Talleyrand, the old-time diplomat of the Bourbons, the Republic, the Empire and the Restoration, now in his eightieth year, was sent to London. He approached Wellington and the new King with such consummate address that an understanding was soon reached with England, which set at naught all projects of European armed Belgian Independence recognized intervention on behalf of the Prince of Orange. Such intervention could not have failed to drag the French into war. Now it was agreed that the regulation of Belgian affairs should be submitted to a conference at London. In the interim Belgian independence was accepted in effect and hostilities ended.
In Greece, the government of Capodistrias was beset with such difficulties Leopold of Coburg declines Greek crown that it was decided to invite some European prince to set up a constitutional monarchy. The throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Coburg, the husband of the late Princess Charlotte of England. Leopold accepted, but when he learned that the Powers would not grant complete independence to Greece, without restoring Ætolia, Thessaly and the fertile islands of Samos and Candia to the Sultan, he withdrew his acceptance.
Peace had scarcely been restored in the Netherlands when the spirit of revolt, travelling northward, seized the ardent people of Poland. Alexander's recognition of home rule in Poland had given the Poles a parliament and army of their own. After the Polish conspiracies at the outset of Nicholas's reign, Alexander's successor would no longer invoke the Polish Diet, and Russian troops and officers were sent into Poland. Of course this was bitterly resented. Plans for an uprising had already been Revolution in Poland made in 1828 during the Turkish war. The example of the successful risings in Paris and Brussels now brought matters to a head. On November 29, the revolt broke out in Warsaw. The Polish regiments of the garrison joined the insurgents. The Russian troops, finding the odds against them, withdrew. Grandduke Constantine narrowly escaped with his life. A provisional Polish Diet was convoked. Prince Czartoryski was elected President. The Poles, in remembrance of the late Czar's kindly attitude toward them, flattered themselves that the fruits of their revolution might be left to them. Lubecki, the former chief of the Imperial Council in Poland, with two associates, set out for St. Petersburg to voice the Polish demands for constitutional government before the Czar. It was even proposed that constitutional government should be conceded to those Russian provinces that had formerly belonged to Poland. On the way to St. Petersburg the eyes of the envoys were opened as they met the formidable columns of Russian troops marching to the Polish frontier. Forthwith, Lubecki forsook the cause of Poland. His colleagues found difficulty in obtaining a hearing from the Czar. When they were finally admitted to the imperial palace, Nicholas gave them clearly to understand that Poland had but two alternatives, unconditional submission or complete subjugation. When this answer reached Warsaw it was too late to swing the outside Polish provinces and Lithuania into the movement. War declared on Russia Yet the Polish Diet, in a spirit of patriotic frenzy amounting to national suicide, passed a resolution declaring that the House of Romanoff had forfeited the Polish crown. Feverish preparations were made for a life and death struggle with Russia.
The fall of the Bourbons in France had once more raised the hope of the Spanish Liberals. On the other hand, King Ferdinand's abolition of the Salic law of succession in Spain, so as to assure the throne to his new wife, raised up a party of absolutists against him. His brothers, Don Revolt in Spain Carlos and Francisco, became the heads of this movement and rallied their supporters around them, in the Basque provinces. In Portugal kindred dissensions rent the land in twain. Dom Miguel's claims to the crown were disputed on behalf of the constitutional government by the Duke of Palermo. Across the seas, Dom Pedro of Brazil proclaimed himself the legitimate heir to the throne of Braganza.
Like other South American States, Brazil was itself a prey to internal dissensions and civil strife. To put an end to the recurrent revolutions of South America, Simon Bolivar conceived a scheme for a Pan-American Congress to weld together all the quasi-republican governments of the Southern Hemisphere and Central America. Unfortunately for this project, Bolivar's own aspirations to dictatorial rule told against him. His chief opponents were those who were striving for a disruption of the Colombian Union. His own States, Peru and Bolivia, had already declared against him. The Congress finally voted to give Bolivar a pension of $3,000 a year on Death of Bolivar condition that he should leave America forever. Bolivar's pride was stung to the quick. He resigned all public offices and honors, and went to Caracas to sail for England. He died at Santa Marta, on the sea-shore, on December 17. His last words were: "The people send me to the tomb, but I forgive them."
In Bolivar, South America lost the most fiery of her liberators. Born at Caracas, in 1783, he was pre-eminently a child of the modern spirit engendered by the French Revolution of 1792. He saw Spain in the days of its quasi-medieval darkness, and was in Paris at the close of the great Bolivar's career revolution. Later he was a witness of Napoleon's coronation as King of Italy, and saw for himself the benefits of republican institutions in North America. The turning-point in his career was the loss of his young wife after two years of domestic happiness. As he said himself: "I loved my wife so much that at her death I made a vow never again to marry. I have kept my oath. Perhaps, had I not lost her, my career would have been different. I might not, then, have been General of the Liberators. My second visit to Europe would never have been made. The ideas which I imbibed during my travels would not have come to me, and the experience I have had, the study of the world that I have made, and of men and things—all this, which has so well served me, would never have been. Politics would never have attracted me. But the death of my wife caused the love of my country to burn in my heart, and I have followed the chariot of Mars rather than Ceres' plow."