[172] When M. de Polignac became President of the Council, on the 17th of November 1829, M. de La Bourdonnaye sent in his resignation as Minister of the Interior. One of his friends asked him the reason of his resignation:
"They wanted to make me stake my head," was his reply. "I wanted to hold the cards." (Villèle's Political Papers).—B.
[173] Martial Côme Annibal Perpétue Magloire Comte de Guernon-Ranville (1787-1866), a distinguished lawyer. After the Revolution of July, he was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment and confined at Ham, where he remained until the amnesty of 1836. He then withdrew to the Château de Ranville, in Calvados, where he died in November 1866.—B.
[174] The National, the first number of which was published on the 3rd of January 1830. It was founded by Messieurs Thiers, Mignet and Armand Carrel, each of whom was to have the management of the paper for one year, commencing with M. Thiers.—B.
[175] Sautelet (d. 1830), the publisher, did in fact commit suicide a few months after the founding of the National.—B.
[176] Louis Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) occupied Cabinet positions from 1832 to 1836, and was Prime Minister from May to October 1840. His Histoire du consulat et de l'empire was published from 1845 to 1862. He was a conspicuous member of the Constituent and Legislative Assemblies from 1848 to 1851, and was arrested by Louis Napoleon at the time of the coup d'État. In 1863, he was elected to the Legislative Body, and led the opposition against the Imperial Government. On the 31st of August 1871, he was declared President of the French Republic for a term of three years, but resigned on the 24th of May 1873. Thiers had been a member of the French Academy since 1834.—T.
[177] Franços Auguste Marie Mignet (1796-1884), author of the Histoire de la révolution française de 1789 à 1814 (1824) and a number of other notable historical works. He was received into the French Academy in 1836.—T.
[178] Nicolas Armand Carrel (1800-1836), an historian and journalist, killed in a political duel on the 22nd of July 1836.—T.
[179] On the 5th of May 1830, the Duc d'Angoulême held a review at Toulon of the fleet which was about to set sail for Algiers. It consisted of 675 men-of-war and merchant-ships, including no less than 11 battle-ships, 24 frigates and 70 war-ships of lesser strength. This day represented Fortune's last smile upon the House of Bourbon, which found France exhausted, impoverished, crushed beneath the weight of unutterable disasters and was about to leave her free, prosperous and powerful, with admirable finances and a superb fleet; which found her vanquished, humiliated, trodden under foot by four hundred thousand invaders and was about to bequeath to her the surest and fairest of all conquests, accomplished under the eyes and despite the threats of trembling England.—B.
[180] Charles V. lost a fleet and an army at Algiers in 1545.—T.