Writing in the Revue des Deux Mondes four years after Louis Philippe’s election to the throne, Chateaubriand reproached the reigning king with being the son of a regicide. Arguing that since the execution of Louis XVI., and as a punishment for that crime, it had become impossible to establish monarchy in France, Chateaubriand added: “Napoleon saw the diadem fall from his brow in spite of his victories; Charles X. in spite of his piety. To discredit the crown finally in the eyes of the nations, it has been permitted to the son of the regicide to be for one moment in the blood-stained bed of the murderer.” That Louis Philippe suffered this outburst to be published unchallenged has been regarded as a proof of his extreme tolerance in press matters.
Probably, however, he thought it prudent not to invite general attention to words which by a large portion of his subjects would have been accepted as true. It has been said by the defenders of the “regicide” that Philippe Égalité did his best not to be present at the sitting of the Convention when sentence had to be passed on the unfortunate king; and that he was threatened by his friends of the Left with assassination unless he voted with them for the “death of the tyrant.” However that may be, he took his seat among the judges by whom the fate of his royal kinsman was to be decided; and when it came to his turn to deliver his opinion, he did so in these words: “Occupied solely with my duty, convinced that all those who have attacked or might afterwards attack the sovereignty of the people deserve death, I pronounce the death of Louis.” Philippe Égalité had looked for general approval, and had voted in fear of that death which awaited him nevertheless, and which came to him in the very form in which a few months before it had been inflicted on the unhappy Louis. When his vote was made known, cries of indignation from all sides warned him that he had transgressed one of the great {152} moral laws which are observed even by men who violate all others. A former soldier of the king’s body-guard, hearing of Philippe Égalité’s unnatural offence, resolved to kill him; but not being able to find him, killed another less guilty “regicide” in his place.
Very different was the feeling excited by the conduct of Philippe Égalité in the breast of the king himself. “I don’t know by what chance,” says the Abbé Edgeworth in his “Relation sur les derniers Moments du Roi,” “the conversation fell upon Philippe. The king seemed to be well acquainted with his intrigues, and with the horrid part he had taken at the Convention. But he spoke of him without any bitterness, and with pity rather than anger. ‘What have I done to my cousin,’ he exclaimed, ‘that he should so persecute me? What object could he have? Oh, he is more to be pitied than I am. My lot is melancholy, no doubt, but his is much more so.’”
Under the Directory, when the worst period of the Revolution was at an end, and the Republic itself was disappearing, the Place de la Révolution was called Place de la Concorde, and this name was preserved under the Consulate and the Empire.
At the time of the Restoration, when endeavours were made to revive in every form the associations of the old French monarchy, the name of Place de la Concorde was set aside for the original one of Place Louis XV., which, however, in obvious reference to the execution of Louis XV’s successor, was changed in 1826 to Place Louis XVI. It was at the same time decreed that a monument should be erected to the memory of the unfortunate monarch, but the decree was never acted upon.
Soon afterwards, in 1828, an order signed by Charles X. gave the place of many names to the town of Paris on condition that it should spend within five years, in completing the architectural and other decorations of the square, a sum of at least 2,230,000 francs.
After the Revolution of 1830 the name of Place de la Concorde was re-adopted; and the Municipality was proceeding as rapidly as possible with the works ordered under the previous reign, when the cholera broke out, causing to the town an expenditure which rendered it necessary to {154} stop the completion of the improvements.
