France in the Nineteenth Century. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
the restoration of their estates. The king had got his own again—why should not they get back theirs? And they imagined that France, which had been overswept by successive waves of revolution, could go back to what she had been under the old régime. This was impossible. The returned exiles had to submit to the confiscation of their estates, and receive in return all offices and employments in the gift of the Government. The army which had conquered in a hundred battles, with its marshals, generals, and vieux moustaches, was not pleased to have young officers, chosen from the nobility, receive commissions and be charged with important commands. On the other hand, the Holy Alliance expected that the king of France would join the despotic sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in their crusade against liberal ideas in other countries. Against these difficulties, and many more, Louis XVIII. had to contend. He was an infirm man, physically incapable of exertion—a man who only wanted to be let alone, and to avoid by every means in his power the calamity of being again sent into exile.
He placed himself on the side of the stronger party—he took part with the bourgeoisie. His aim, as he himself said, was to ménager his throne. He began his reign by having Fouché and Talleyrand, men of the Revolution and the Empire, deep in his councils, though he disliked both of them. Early in his reign occurred what was called the White Terror, in the southern provinces, where the adherents of the white flag repeated on a small scale the barbarities of the Revolution.
The king was forced to put himself in opposition to the old nobles who had adhered to him in his exile. They bitterly resented his defection. They used to toast him as le roi-quand-même, "the king in spite of everything." His own family held all the Bourbon traditions, and were opposed to him. To them everything below the rank of a noble with sixteen quarterings was la canaille.
Louis XVIII.'s favorite minister was M. Decazes, a man who studied the interests of the bourgeoisie; and the royal family at last made the sovereign so uncomfortable by their disapproval of his policy that he sought repose in the society and intimacy (the connection is said to have been nothing more) of a Madame de Cayla, with whom he spent most of his leisure time.
Before the Revolution, Louis XVIII. had been known sometimes as the Comte de Provence, and sometimes as Monsieur. Though physically an inert man, he was by no means intellectually stupid, for he could say very brilliant things from time to time, and was very proud of them; but he was wholly unfit to be at the helm of the ship of state in an unquiet sea.
He had passed the years of his exile in various European countries, but the principal part of his time had been spent at Hartwell, about sixty miles from London, where he formed a little court and lived a life of royalty in miniature. Charles Greville, when a very young man, visited Hartwell with his relative, the Duke of Beaufort, shortly before the Restoration. He describes the king's cabinet as being like a ship's cabin, the walls hung with portraits of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, Madame Elisabeth, and the dauphin. Louis himself had a singular habit of swinging his body backward and forward when talking, "which exactly resembled the heavings of a ship at sea." "We were a very short time at table," Greville adds; "the meal was a very plain one, and the ladies and gentlemen all got up together. Each lady folded up her napkin, tied it round with a bit of ribbon, and carried it away with her. After dinner we returned for coffee and conversation to the drawing-room. Whenever the king came in or went out of the room, Madame d'Angoulême made him a low courtesy, which he returned by bowing and kissing her hand. This little ceremony never failed to take place." They finished the evening with whist, "his Majesty settling the points of the game at a quarter of a shilling." "We saw the whole place," adds Greville, "before we came away; they had certainly shown great ingenuity in contriving to lodge so great a number of people in and around the house. It was like a small rising colony."
Louis XVIII. was childless. His brother Charles and himself had married sisters, princesses of the house of Savoy. These ladies were amiable nonentities, and died during the exile of their husbands; but Charles's wife had left him two sons—Louis Antoine, known as the Duc d'Angoulême, and Charles Ferdinand, known as the Duc de Berri. The Duc d'Angoulême had married his cousin Marie Thérèse, daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. Their union was childless. The Duc de Berri had married Marie Caroline, a princess of Naples. She had two children—Louise, who when she grew up became Duchess of Parma; and Henri, called variously the Duc de Bordeaux, Henri V., and the Comte de Chambord.
All Louis XVIII.'s efforts during his ten years' reign were directed to keeping things as quiet as he could during his lifetime. He greatly disapproved of the policy of the Holy Alliance in forcing him to make war on Spain in order to put down the Constitutionalists under Riego and Mina. The expedition for that purpose was commanded by the Duc d'Angoulême, who accomplished his mission, but with little glory or applause except from flatterers. The chief military incident of the campaign was the capture by the French of the forts of Trocadéro, which commanded the entrance to Cadiz harbor.
The Duchesse d'Angoulême, that filia dolorosa left to languish alone in the Temple after her parents and her aunt were guillotined, had been exchanged with Austria for Lafayette by Bonaparte in the treaty of Campo-Formio; but her soul had been crushed within her by her sorrows. Deeply pious, she forgave the enemies of her house, she never uttered a word against the Revolution; but the sight of her pale, set, sad face was a mute reproach to Frenchmen. She could forgive, but she could not be gracious. At the Tuileries, a place full of graceful memories of the Empress Josephine, she presided as a dévote and a dowdy. She could not have been expected to be other than she was, but the nation that had made her so, bore a grudge against her. There was nothing French about her. No sympathies existed between her and the generation that had grown up in France during the nineteenth century. Both she and her husband were stiff, cold, ultra-aristocrats. In intelligence she was greatly the duke's superior, as she was also in person, he being short, fat, red-faced, with very thin legs.
The Duc de Berri was much more popular. He was a Frenchman in character. His faults were French. He was pleasure-seeking, pleasure-loving, and he married a young and pretty wife to whom he was far from faithful, and who was as fond of pleasure as himself.
The Duc de Berri was assassinated by a man named Louvel, Feb. 13, 1820, as he was handing his wife into her carriage at the door of the French Opera House. They carried him back into the theatre, and there, in a side room, with the music of the opera going on upon the stage, the plaudits of the audience ringing in his ears, and ballet-girls flitting in and out in their stage dresses, the heir of France gave up his life, with kindly words upon his dying lips, reminding us of Charles II. on his deathbed.
As I have said, Louis XVIII.'s reign was not without plots and conspiracies. One of those in 1823 was got up by the Carbonari. Lafayette was implicated in it. It was betrayed, however, the night before it was to have been put in execution, and such of its leaders as could be arrested were guillotined. Lafayette was saved by the fact that the day fixed upon for action was the anniversary of his wife's death—a day he always spent in her chamber in seclusion.
It may be desirable to say who were the Carbonari. "Carbone" is Italian for charcoal. The Carbonari were charcoal-burners. The conspirators took their name because charcoal-burners lived in solitary places, and were disguised by the coal-dust that blackened their faces. It was a secret society which extended throughout France, Italy, and almost all Europe. It was joined by all classes. Its members, under pain of death, were forced to obey the orders of the society. The deliverance of Italy from the Austrians became eventually the prime object of the institution.
Lafayette, during his visit to America in 1824, expressed himself freely about the Bourbons. "France cannot be happy under their rule," he said;[1] "and we must send them adrift. It would have been done before now but for the hesitation of Laffitte. Two regiments of guards, when ordered to Spain under the Duc d'Angoulême, halted at Toulouse, and began to show symptoms of mutiny. The matter was quieted, however, and the affair kept as still as possible. But all was ready. I knew of the whole affair. All that was wanted to make a successful revolution at that time was money. I went to Laffitte; but he was full of doubts, and dilly-dallied with the matter. Then I offered to do it without his help. Said I: 'On the first interview that you and I have without witnesses, put a million of francs, in bank-notes, on the mantelpiece, which I will pocket unseen by you. Then leave the rest