Vindictive sentences against men like Ney and Labédoyère were followed by violent and unpunished action by the White Terror, which in the south renewed the horrors of St Bartholomew and the September massacres. The elections of August 14, 1815, made under the influence of these royalist and religious passions, sent the “Chambre introuvable” to Paris, an unforeseen revival of the ancien régime. Neither the substitution of the duc de Richelieu’s ministry for that of Talleyrand and Fouché, nor a whole series of repressive laws in violation of the charter, were successful in satisfying its tyrannical loyalism, and Louis XVIII. needed something like a coup d’état, in September 1816, to rid himself of the “ultras.”
He succeeded fairly well in quieting the opposition between the dynasty and the constitution, until a reaction took place between 1820 and 1822. State departments worked regularly and well, under the direction of Decazes, The Constitutional party’s rule. Lainé, De Serre and Pasquier, power alternating between two great well-disciplined parties almost in the English fashion, and many useful measures were passed: the reconstruction of finance stipulated for as a condition of evacuation of territory occupied by foreign troops; the electoral law of February 5, 1817, which, by means of direct election and a qualification of three hundred francs, renewed the preponderance of the bourgeoisie; the Gouvion St-Cyr law of 1818, which for half a century based the recruiting of the French army on the national principle of conscription; and in 1819, after Richelieu’s dismissal, liberal regulations for the press under control of a commission. But the advance of the Liberal movement, and the election of the generals—Foy, Lamarque, Lafayette and of Manuel, excited the “ultras” and caused the dismissal of Richelieu; while that of the constitutional bishop Grégoire led to the modification in a reactionary direction of the electoral law of 1817. The assassination of the duc de Berry, second son of the comte d’Artois (attributed to the influence of Liberal ideas), caused the downfall of Decazes, and caused the king—more weak and selfish than ever—to override the charter and embark upon a reactionary path. After 1820, Madame du The reaction of 1820. Cayla, a trusted agent of the ultra-royalist party, gained great influence over the king; and M. de Villèle, its leader, supported by the king’s brother, soon eliminated the Right Centre by the dismissal of the duc de Richelieu, who had been recalled to tide over the crisis—just as the fall of M. Decazes had signalized the defeat of the Left Centre (December 15, 1821)—and moderate policy thus received an irreparable blow.
Thenceforward the government of M. de Villèle—a clever statesman, but tied to his party—did nothing for six years but promulgate a long series of measures against Liberalism and the social work of the Revolution; to retain power it had to yield to the impatience of the comte d’Artois and the majority. The suspension of individual liberty, the re-establishment of the censorship; the electoral right of the “double vote,” favouring taxation of the most oppressive kind; and the handing over of education to the clergy: these were the first achievements of this anti-revolutionary ministry. The Spanish expedition, in which M. de Villèle’s hand was forced by Montmorency and Chateaubriand, was the united work of the association of Catholic zealots known as the Congregation and of the autocratic powers of the Grand Alliance; it was responded to—as at Naples and in Spain—by secret Carbonari societies, and by severely repressed military conspiracies. Politics now bore the double imprint of two rival powers: the Congregation and Carbonarism. By 1824, nevertheless, the dynasty seemed firm—the Spanish War had reconciled the army, by giving back military prestige; the Liberal opposition had been decimated; revolutionary conspiracies discouraged; and the increase of public credit and material prosperity pleased the whole nation, as was proved by the “Chambre retrouvée” of 1824. The law of septennial elections tranquillized public life by suspending any legal or regular manifestation by the nation for seven years.
It was the monarchy which next became revolutionary, on the accession of Charles X. (September 16, 1824). This inconsistent prince soon exhausted his popularity, and remained the fanatical head of those émigrés who had Charles X. learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition became conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties, the king and the clerical party surrounding him challenged the spirit of modern France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for re-establishing the right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a milliard francs, which looked like compensation given to the émigrés, and finally by the “loi de liberté et d’amour” against the press. The challenge was so definite that in 1826 the Chamber of Peers and the Academy had to give the Villèle ministry a lesson in Liberalism, for having lent itself to this ancien régime reaction by its weakness and its party-promises. The elections Victory of the constitutional parties, 1827. “de colère et de vengeance” of January 1827 gave the Left a majority, and the resultant short-lived Martignac ministry tried to revive the Right Centre which had supported Richelieu and Decazes (January 1828). Martignac’s accession to power, however, had only meant personal concessions from Charles X., not any concession of principle: he supported his ministry but was no real stand-by. The Liberals, on the other hand, made bargains for supporting the moderate royalists, and Charles X. profited by this to form a fighting ministry in conjunction with the prince de Polignac, one of the émigrés, an ignorant and visionary person, and the comte de Bourmont, the traitor of Waterloo. Despite all kinds of warnings, the former tried by a coup d’état to put into practice his theories of the supremacy of the royal prerogative; and the battle of Navarino, the French occupation of the Morea, and the Algerian expedition could not make the nation forget this conflict at home. The united opposition of monarchist Liberals and imperialist republicans responded by legal resistance, The Revolution of 1830. then by a popular coup d’état, to the ordinances of July 1830, which dissolved the intractable Chamber, eliminated licensed dealers from the electoral list, and muzzled the press. After fighting for three days against the troops feebly led by the Marmont of 1814, the workmen, driven to the barricades by the deliberate closing of Liberal workshops, gained the victory, and sent the white flag of the Bourbons on the road to exile.
The rapid success of the “Three Glorious Days” (“les Trois Glorieuses”), as the July Days were called, put the leaders of the parliamentary opposition into an embarrassing position. While they had contented themselves with words, Republican and Orleanist parties. the small Republican-Imperialist party, aided by the almost entire absence of the army and police, and by the convenience which the narrow, winding, paved streets of those times offered for fighting, had determined upon the revolution and brought it to pass. But the Republican party, which desired to re-establish the Republic of 1793, recruited chiefly from among the students and workmen, and led by Godefroy Cavaignac, the son of a Conventionalist, and by the chemist Raspail, had no hold on the departments nor on the dominating opinion in Paris. Consequently this premature attempt was promptly seized upon by the Liberal bourgeoisie and turned to the advantage of the Orleanist party, which had been secretly organized since 1829 under the leadership of Thiers, with the National as its organ. Before the struggle was yet over, Benjamin Constant, Casimir Périer, Lafitte, and Odilon Barrot had gone to fetch the duke of Orleans from Neuilly, and on receiving his promise to defend the Charter and the tricolour flag, installed him at the Palais Bourbon as lieutenant-general of the realm, while La Fayette and the Republicans established themselves at the Hôtel de Ville. Louis Philippe. An armed conflict between the two governments was imminent, when Lafayette, by giving his support to Louis Philippe, decided matters in his favour. In order to avoid a recurrence of the difficulties which had arisen with the Bourbons, the following preliminary conditions were imposed upon the king: the recognition of the supremacy of the people by the title of “king of the French by the grace of God and the will of the people,” the responsibility of ministers, the suppression of hereditary succession to the Chamber of Peers, now reduced to the rank of a council of officials, the suppression of article 14 of the charter which had enabled Charles X. to supersede the laws by means of the ordinances, and the liberty of the press. The qualification for electors was lowered from 300 to 200 francs, and that for eligibility from 1000 to 500 francs, and the age to 25 and 30 instead of 30 and 40; finally, Catholicism lost its privileged position as the state religion. The bourgeois National Guard was made the guardian of the charter. The liberal ideas of the son of Philippe Égalité, the part he had played at Valmy and Jemappes, his gracious manner and his domestic virtues, all united in winning Louis Philippe the good opinion of the public.
He now believed, as did indeed the great majority of the electors, that the revolution of 1830 had changed nothing but the head of the state. But in reality the July monarchy was affected by a fundamental weakness. It sought The bourgeois monarchy. to model itself upon the English monarchy, which rested upon one long tradition. But the tradition of France was both twofold and contradictory, i.e. the Catholic-legitimist and the revolutionary. Louis Philippe had them both against him. His monarchy had but one element in common with the English, namely, a parliament elected by a limited electorate. There was at this time a cause of violent outcry against the English monarchy, which, on the other hand, met with firm support among the aristocracy and the clergy. The July monarchy had no such support. The aristocracy of the ancien régime and of the Empire were alike without social influence; the clergy, which had paid for its too close alliance with Charles X. by a dangerous unpopularity, and foresaw the rise of democracy, was turning more and more towards the people, the future source of all power. Even the monarchical principle itself had suffered from the shock, having proved by its easy defeat how far it could be brought to capitulate. Moreover, the victory of the people, who had shown themselves in the late struggle to be brave and disinterested, had won for the idea of national supremacy a power which was bound to increase. The difficulty of the situation lay in the doubt as to whether this expansion would take place gradually and by a progressive evolution, as in England, or not.
Now Louis Philippe, beneath the genial exterior of a bourgeois and peace-loving king, was entirely bent upon recovering an authority which was menaced from the very first on the one hand by the anger of the royalists at their failures, and on the other hand by the impatience of the republicans to follow up their victory. He wanted the insurrection to stop at a change in the reigning family, whereas it had in fact revived the revolutionary tradition, and restored to France the sympathies of the nationalities and democratic parties oppressed by Metternich’s “system.” The republican party, which had retired from power but not from activity, at once faced the new king with the serious problem of the acquisition of political power by the people, and continued to remind him of it. He put himself at the head of the party of progress (“parti du mouvement”) as opposed to the (“parti de la cour”) court party, and of the “resistance,” which considered that it was now necessary “to check the revolution in order to make it fruitful, and in order to save it.” But none of these parties were homogeneous; The parties. in the chamber they split up into a republican or radical Extreme Left, led by Garnier-Pagès and Arago; a dynastic Left, led by the honourable and sincere Odilon Barrot; a constitutional Right Centre and Left Centre, differing in certain slight respects, and presided over respectively by Thiers, a wonderful political orator, and Guizot, whose ideas were those of a strict doctrinaire; not to mention a small party which clung to the old legitimist creed, and was dominated by the famous avocat Berryer, whose eloquence was the chief ornament of the cause of Charles X.’s grandson, the comte de Chambord. The result was a ministerial majority which was always uncertain; and the only occasion on which Guizot succeeded in consolidating it during seven years resulted in the overthrow of the monarchy.
Louis Philippe first summoned to power the leaders of the party of “movement,” Dupont de l’Eure, and afterwards Lafitte, in order to keep control of the progressive forces for his own ends. They wished to introduce democratic reforms and to uphold throughout Europe the revolution, which had spread from France into Belgium, Germany, Italy and Poland, while Paris was still in a state of unrest. But Louis Philippe took fright at the attack on the Chamber of Peers after the trial of the ministers of Charles X., at the sack of the church of Saint Germain l’Auxerrois and the archbishop’s palace (February, 1831), and at the terrible strike of the silk weavers at Lyons. Casimir Périer, who was both a Liberal and a believer in a strong government, was then charged with the task of heading the resistance to advanced ideas, and applying the principle of non-intervention in foreign affairs (March 13, 1831). After his death by cholera in May 1832, the agitation which he had succeeded by his energy in checking at Lyons, at Grenoble and in the Vendée, where it had been stirred up by the romantic duchess of Berry, began to gain ground. The struggle against the republicans was still longer; for having lost all their chance of attaining power by means of the Chamber, they proceeded to reorganize themselves into armed secret societies. The press, which was gaining that influence over public opinion which had been lost by the parliamentary debates, openly attacked the government and the king, especially by means of caricature. Between 1832 and 1836 the Soult ministry, of which The Republicans crushed. Guizot, Thiers and the duc de Broglie were members, had to combat the terrible insurrections in Lyons and Paris (1834). The measures of repression were threefold: military repression, carried out by the National Guard and the regulars, both under the command of Bugeaud; judicial repression, effected by the great trial of April 1835; and legislative repression, consisting in the laws of September, which, when to mere ridicule had succeeded acts of violence, such as that of Fieschi (July 28th, 1835), aimed at facilitating the condemnation of political offenders and at intimidating the press. The party of “movement” was vanquished.
But the July Government, born as it was of a popular movement, had to make concessions to popular demands. Casimir Périer had carried a law dealing with municipal organization, which made the municipal councils The bourgeois policy. elective, as they had been before the year VIII.; and in 1833 Guizot had completed it by making the conseils généraux also elective. In the same year the law dealing with primary instruction had also shown the mark of new ideas. But now that the bourgeoisie was raised to power it did not prove itself any more liberal than the aristocracy of birth and fortune in dealing with educational, fiscal and industrial questions. In spite of the increase of riches, the bourgeois régime maintained a fiscal and social legislation which, while it assured to the middle class certainty and permanence of benefits, left the labouring masses poor, ignorant, and in a state of incessant agitation.
The Orleanists, who had been unanimous in supporting the king, disagreed, after their victory, as to what powers he was to be given. The Left Centre, led by Thiers, held that he should reign but not govern; the Right The socialist party. Centre, led by Guizot, would admit him to an active part in the government; and the third party (tiers-parti) wavered between these two. And so between 1836 and 1840, as the struggle against the king’s claim to govern passed from the sphere of outside discussion into parliament, we see the rise of a bourgeois socialist party, side by side with the now dwindling republican party. It no longer confined its demands to universal suffrage, on the principle of the legitimate representation of all interests, or in the name of justice. Led by Saint-Simon, Fourier, P. Leroux and Lamennais, it aimed at realizing a better social organization for and by means of the state. But the question was by what means this was to be accomplished. The secret societies, under the influence of Blanqui and Barbès, two revolutionaries who had revived the traditions of Babeuf, were not willing to wait for the complete education of the masses, necessarily a long process. On the 12th of May 1839 the Société des Saisons made an attempt to overthrow the bourgeoisie by force, but was defeated. Democrats like Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin and Lamennais continued to repeat in support of the wisdom of universal suffrage the old profession of faith: vox populi, vox Dei. And finally this republican doctrine, already confused, was still further complicated by a kind of mysticism which aimed at reconciling the most extreme differences of belief, the Catholicism of Buchez, the Bonapartism of Cormenin, and the humanitarianism of the cosmopolitans. It was in vain that Auguste Comte, Michelet and Quinet denounced this vague humanitarian mysticism and the pseudo-liberalism of the Church. The movement had now begun.