France in the Nineteenth Century. Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer
[Footnote 1: Memoirs of the Duchesse d'Angoulême.]
On reaching the Baths of Töplitz, where the waters seemed to agree with him, and where he wished to rest awhile, he found it needful to "move on," for the house he occupied had been engaged for the king of Prussia. The cholera, too, was advancing. The exiled party reached Budweiz, a mountain village with a rustic inn, and there it was forced to halt for some weeks, for the Duc de Bordeaux was taken ill with cholera. It was a period of deep anxiety to those about him, but at last he recovered.
After trying several residences in the Tyrolese mountains, to which the old king had gone largely in hopes that he might enjoy the pleasures of the chase, the exiled family fixed its residence at Goritz towards the end of October, 1836. The king was then in his eightieth year, but so hale and active that he spent whole mornings on foot, with his gun, upon the mountains.
The weather changed soon after the family had settled at Goritz. The keen winter winds blew down from the snow mountains, but the king did not give up his daily sport. One afternoon, after a cold morning spent upon the hills, he was seized at evening service in the chapel with violent spasms. These passed off, but on his joining his family later, its members were struck by the change in his appearance. In a few hours he seemed to have aged years. At night he grew so ill that extreme unction was administered to him. It was an attack of cholera. When dying, he blessed his little grandchildren, the boy and girl, who, notwithstanding the nature of his illness, were brought to him. "God preserve you, dear children," he said. "Walk in paths of righteousness. Don't forget me. … Pray for me sometimes."
He died Nov. 6, 1836, just one week after Louis Napoleon made his first attempt to have himself proclaimed Emperor of the French, at Strasburg.
He was buried near Goritz, in a chapel belonging to the Capuchin Friars. In another chapel belonging to the same lowly order in Vienna, had been buried four years before, another claimant to the French throne, the Duc de Reichstadt, the only son of Napoleon.
On the coffin of the ex-king was inscribed—
"Here lieth the High, the Potent, and most Excellent Prince, Charles Tenth of that name; by the Grace of God King of France and of Navarre. Died at Goritz, Nov. 6, 1836, aged 79 years and 28 days."
All the courts of Europe put on mourning for him, that of France excepted. The latter part of his life, with its reverses and humiliations, he considered an expiation, not for his political errors, but for the sins of his youth.
As he drew near his end, his yearnings after his lost country increased more and more. He firmly believed that the day would come when his family would be restored to the throne of France, but he believed that it would not be by conspiracy or revolt, but by the direct interposition of God. That time did almost come in 1871, after the Commune.
CHAPTER II.
LOUIS PHILIPPE AND HIS FAMILY.
Louis Philippe, after accepting the lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom, which would have made him regent under Henri V., found himself raised by the will of the people—or rather, as some said, by the will of the bourgeoisie—to the French throne. He reigned, not by "right divine," but as the chosen ruler of his countrymen—to mark which distinction he took the title of King of the French, instead of King of France, which had been borne by his predecessors.
It is hardly necessary for us to enter largely into French politics at this period. The government was supposed to be a monarchy planted upon republican institutions. The law recognized no hereditary aristocracy. There was a chamber of peers, but the peers bore no titles, and were chosen only for life. The dukes, marquises, and counts of the old régime retained their titles only by courtesy.
The ministers of Charles X. were arrested and tried. The new king was very anxious to secure their personal safety, and did so at a considerable loss of his own popularity. They were condemned to lose all property and all privileges, and were sent to the strong fortress of Ham. After a few years they were released, and took refuge in England.
There were riots in Paris when it was known that the ministers and ill-advisers of the late king were not to be executed; one of the leaders in these disturbances was an Italian bravo named Fieschi—a man base, cruel, and bold, whom Louis Blanc calls a scélérat bel esprit.
The émeute which was formidable, was suppressed chiefly by a gallant action on the part of the king, who, while his health was unimpaired, was never wanting in bravery. "The king of the French," says Greville, "has put an end to the disturbances in Paris about the sentence of the ministers by an act of personal gallantry. At night, when the streets were most crowded and agitated, he sallied from the Palais Royal on horseback, with his son, the Duc de Nemours, and his personal cortège, and paraded through Paris for two hours. That did the business. He was received with shouts of applause, and at once reduced everything to tranquillity. He deserves his throne for this, and will probably keep it."
The next trouble in the new reign was the alienation of public favor from Lafayette, who had done so much to place the king upon the throne. He was accused by one party of truckling to the new court, by the other of being too much attached to revolutionary methods and republican institutions. He was removed from the command of the National Guard, and his office of commander-in-chief of that body was abolished.
All Europe becomes "a troubled sea" when a storm breaks over France. "I never remember," writes Greville at this period, "days like these, nor read of such—the terror and lively expectation that prevails, and the way in which people's minds are turned backward and forward from France to Ireland, then range exclusively from Poland to Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings, riots, and executions that are going on in England."
Meantime France was subsiding into quiet, with occasional slight shocks of revolutionary earthquake, before returning to order and peace. The king was le bon bourgeois. He had lived a great deal in England and the United States, and spoke English well. He had even said in his early youth that he was more of an Englishman than a Frenchman. He was short and stout. His head was shaped like a pear, and was surmounted by an elaborate brown wig; for in those days people rarely wore their own gray hair.
He did not impress those who saw him as being in any way majestic; indeed, he looked like what he was—le bon père de famille. As such he would have suited the people of England; but it was un vert galant like Henri IV., or royalty incarnate, like Louis XIV., who would have fired the imagination of the French people. As a good father of a family, Louis Philippe felt that his first duty to his children was to secure them a good education, good marriages, and sufficient wealth to make them important personages in any sudden change of fortune.
At the time of his accession all his children were unmarried—indeed, only four of them were grown up. The sons all went to collège—which means in France what high-school does with us. Their mother's dressing-room at Neuilly was hung round with the laurel-crowns, dried and framed, which had been won by her dear school-boys.
The eldest son, Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, was an extraordinarily fine young man, far more a favorite with the French people than his father. Had he not been killed in a carriage accident in 1842, he might now, in his old age, have been seated on the French throne.
One of the first objects of the king was to secure for his heir a suitable marriage. A Russian princess was first thought of; but the Czar would not hear of such a mésalliance. Then the hand of an Austrian archduchess was sought, and the young lady showed herself well pleased with the attentions of so handsome and accomplished a suitor; but her family were as unfavorable to the match as was the Czar of Russia. Finally, the Duke of Orleans had to content himself with a German Protestant princess, Hélène of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a woman above all praise, who bore him two sons—the Comte de Paris, born in 1838, and the Duc de Chartres, born a year or two later.
The eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Louise, was married,