The July Monarchy (1830-1848) was a period of liberal monarchy rule of France under Louis-Philippe. Charles X of the House of Bourbon was overthrown in the July Revolution,[1] and was succeeded on August 9, 1830 by Louis-Philippe of the House of Orléans (a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon). Proclaiming himself the "King of the French" (roi des Français) instead of "King of France" (roi de France), thus underscoring the supremacy of popular sovereignty, Louis-Philippe established a moderate, constitutional monarchy. The new regime's ideal was explicated by Louis-Philippe's famous statement in January 1831: "We will attempt to remain in a juste milieu (the just middle), in an equal distance from the excesses of popular power and the abuses of royal power."[2]
Pushed to the throne by an alliance between the people of Paris, the Republicans, who had set up barricades in the capital, and the liberal bourgeoisie, the "Citizen King" was overthrown by similar barricades during the February Revolution of 1848, which led to the proclamation of the Second Republic. After his ousting and subsequent exile to England, the liberal, Orleanist faction, continued to support a return of the House of Orléans to the throne, opposed by the counter-revolutionary Legitimists, but the July Monarchy was to be the last monarchy of France. The Legitimists withdrew from the political stage to their castles, leaving the stage opened for the struggle between the Orleanists and the Republicans.
Louis-Philippe I, King of the French. The King is depicted at the entrance of the Gallerie des batailles which he had amenaged in the Château de Versailles.
The July Monarchy (1830-1848) is generally seen as a period during which the haute bourgeoisie was dominant, and marked the shift from the counter-revolutionaries Legitimists to the Orleanists, who were willing to make some compromises with the changes brought by the 1789 Revolution. Louis-Philippe was crowned “King of the French,” instead of "King of France": this marked his acceptance of the popular sovereignty, which replaced the Ancien Régime 's divine right. Louis-Philippe clearly understood his base of power: the wealthy bourgeoisie had carried him aloft during the July Revolution through their work in the Parliament, and throughout his reign, he kept their interests in mind.
Louis-Philippe, who had flirted with liberalism in his youth, rejected much of the pomp and circumstance of the Bourbons and surrounded himself with merchants and bankers. The July Monarchy, however, remained a time of turmoil. A large group of Legitimists on the right demanded the restoration of the Bourbons to the throne. On the left, Republicanism and, later Socialism, remained a powerful force. Late in his reign Louis-Philippe became increasingly rigid and dogmatic and his President of the Council, François Guizot, had become deeply unpopular, but Louis-Philippe refused to remove him. The situation gradually escalated until the Revolutions of 1848 saw the fall of the monarchy and the creation of the Second Republic.
However, during the first several years of his regime, Louis-Philippe appeared to move his government toward legitimate, broad-based reform. The government found its source of legitimacy within the Charter of 1830, written by reform-minded members of Chamber of Deputies upon a platform of religious equality, the empowerment of the citizenry through the reestablishment of the National Guard, electoral reform, the reformation of the peerage system, and the lessening of royal authority. And indeed, Louis-Phillipe and his ministers adhered to policies that seemed to promote the central tenets of the constitution. However, the majority of these policies were veiled attempts to shore up the power and influence of the government and the bourgeoisie, rather than legitimate attempts to promote equality and empowerment for a broad constituency of the French population. Thus, though the July Monarchy seemed to move toward reform, this movement was largely illusory.
During the years of the July Monarchy, enfranchisement roughly doubled, from 94,000 under Charles X to more than 200,000 by 1848citation needed. However, this represented only roughly one percent of population, and as the requirements for voting were tax-based, only the wealthiest gained the privilege. By implication, the enlarged enfranchisement tended to favor the wealthy merchant bourgeoisie more than any other group. Beyond simply increasing their presence within the Chamber of Deputies, this electoral enlargement provided the bourgeoisie the means by which to challenge the nobility in legislative matters. Thus, while appearing to honor his pledge to increase suffrage, Louis-Philippe acted primarily to empower his supporters and increase his hold over the French Parliament. The inclusion of only the wealthiest also tended to undermine any possibility of the growth of a radical faction in Parliament, effectively serving socially conservative ends.
The reformed Charter of 1830 limited the power of the King – stripping him of his ability to propose and decree legislation, as well as limiting his executive authority. However, the King of the French still believed in a version of monarchy that held the king as much more than a figurehead for an elected Parliament, and as such, he was deeply involved in legislative affairs. One of the first acts of Louis-Philippe in constructing his cabinet was to appoint the rather conservative Casimir Perier as the premier of that body. Perier, a banker, was instrumental in shutting down many of the Republican secret societies and labor unions that had formed during the early years of the regime. In addition, he oversaw the dismemberment of the National Guard after it proved too supportive of radical ideologies. He performed all of these actions, of course, with royal approval. He was once quoted as saying that the source of French misery was the belief that there had been a revolution. “No Monsieur,” he said to another minister, “there has not been a revolution: there is simply a change at the head of state.”citation needed
Further expressions of this conservative trend came under the supervision of Perier and the then Minister of the Interior, François Guizot. The regime acknowledged early on that radicalism and republicanism threatened it, undermining its laissez-faire policies. Thus, the Monarchy declared the very term republican illegal in 1834. Guizot shut down republican clubs and disbanded republican publications. Republicans within the cabinet, like the banker Dupont, were all but excluded by Perier and his conservative clique. Distrusting the sole National Guard, Louis-Philippe increased the size of the army and reformed it in order to ensure its loyalty to the government.
Though two factions always persisted in the cabinet, split between liberal conservatives like Guizot (le parti de la Résistance, the Party of Resistance) and liberal reformers like the aforementioned journalist Adolphe Thiers (le parti du Mouvement, the Party of Movement), the latter never gained prominence. After Perier came count Molé, another conservative. After Molé came Thiers, a reformer later sacked by Louis-Philippe after attempting to pursue an aggressive foreign policy. After Thiers came the conservative Guizot. In particular, the Guizot administration was marked by increasingly authoritarian crackdowns on republicanism and dissent, and an increasingly pro-business laissez-faire policy. This policy included protective tariffs that defended the status quo and enriched French businessmen. Guizot’s government granted railway and mining contracts to the bourgeois supporters of the government, and even contributing some of the start-up costs. As workers under these policies had no legal right to assemble, unionize, or petition the government for increased pay or decreased hours, the July Monarchy under Perier, Molé, and Guizot generally proved detrimental to the lower classes. In fact, Guizot’s advice to those who were disenfranchised by the tax-based electoral requirements was a simple “enrichissez-vous” – enrich yourself.
Background
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- Further information: France in the nineteenth century
Following the ouster of Napoléon Bonaparte in 1814, the Allies restored the Bourbon Dynasty to the French throne. The ensuing period, the Bourbon Restoration, was characterized by conservative reaction and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as a power in French politics. The relatively liberal Comte de Provence, brother of the deposed Louis XVI ruled as Louis XVIII from 1814–1824 and was succeeded by his more conservative younger brother, the former Comte d'Artois, ruling as Charles X from 1824.
Despite the return of the House of Bourbon to power, France was much changed from the era of the ancien régime. The egalitarianism and liberalism of the revolutionaries remained an important force and the autocracy and hierarchy of the earlier era could not be fully restored. Economic changes, which had been underway long before the revolution, had progressed further during the years of turmoil and were firmly entrenched by 1815. These changes had seen power shift from the noble landowners to the urban merchants. The administrative reforms of Napoleon, such as the Napoleonic Code and efficient bureaucracy, also remained in place. These changes produced a unified central government that was fiscally sound and had much control over all areas of French life, a sharp difference from the complicated mix of feudal and absolutist traditions and institutions of pre-Revolutionary Bourbons.
Louis XVIII, for the most part, accepted that much had changed. However, he was pushed on his right by the Ultra-royalists, led by the comte de Villèle, who condemned the doctrinaires' attempt to reconcile the Revolution with the monarchy through a constitutional monarchy. Instead, the Chambre introuvable, elected in 1815 banished all Conventionnels who had voted for Louis XVI's death and passed similar reactionary laws. Louis XVIII was forced to dissolve this Chamber, dominated by the Ultras, in 1816, fearing a popular uprising. The liberals thus governed until the 1820 assassination of the duc de Berry, nephew of the king and known supporter of the Ultras, which brought Villèle's Ultras back to power (vote of the Anti-Sacrilege Act in 1825, and of the loi sur le milliard des émigrés, Act on the émigrés' billions). His brother Charles X, however, took a far more conservative approach. He attempted to compensate the aristocrats for what they had lost in the revolution, curbed the freedom of the press, and reasserted the power of the Church. In 1830 the discontent caused by these changes and Charles' authoritarian nomination of the Ultra prince de Polignac as minister culminated in an uprising in the streets of Paris, known as the 1830 July Revolution (or, in French, les trois Glorieuses - The three Glorious days - of 27, 28 and 29 July). Charles was forced to flee and Louis-Philippe d'Orléans, a member of the Orléans branch of the family, and son of Philippe Égalité who had voted the death of his cousin Louis XVI, ascended the throne. Louis-Philippe ruled, not as "King of France" but as "King of the French" (an evocative difference for contemporaries).
Initial period (August 1830 - November 1830)
The Symbolic establishment of the new regime
Silver five- franc coin featuring Louis Philippe from 1834. The obverse French inscription is Louis Philippe I, Roi des Français (English: "Louis Philippe I, King of the French."
On August 7, 1830, the 1814 Charter was revised. The preamble recalling the Ancien Régime was suppressed, and the King of France became the "King of the French," (also known as the "Citizen King") establishing the principle of national sovereignty over the principle of the divine right. The new Charter was a compromise between the Doctrinaires opposition to Charles X and the Republicans. Laws enforcing Catholicism and censorship were repealed and the revolutionary tricolor flag re-established.
Louis-Philippe pledged his oath to the 1830 Charter on August 9, setting up the beginnings of the July Monarchy. Two days later, the first cabinet was formed, gathering the Constitutionalist opposition to Charles X, among whom Casimir Perier, the banker Jacques Laffitte, Count Molé, the duke of Broglie, François Guizot, etc. The new government's first aim being to bring back the public order, while at the same time feinting to acclaim the revolutionary forces which had just triumphed. Assisted by the people of Paris in overthrowing the Legitimists, the Orleanist bourgeoisie had to establish its new order.
Louis-Philippe decided on August 13, 1830 to establish the armoiries of the House of Orléans as state symbols. Reviewing on August 29 a parade of the Parisian National Guard which acclaimed it, he in turn exclaimed to its leader, La Fayette: "This is worth more to me than coronation at Reims!".[3] The new regime then decided on October 11 that all people injured during the Three Glorious Days (500 orphans, 500 widows and 3,850 people injured) would be given an award and presented a draft law indemnifying them to the height of 7 million, and created a commemorative medal for the July Revolutionaries.
Ministers lost their style of Monseigneur and Excellence to become simply Monsieur le ministre. The new king's older son, Ferdinand-Philippe, was given the title of duke of Orléans and royal prince, while his daughters and his sister, Adélaïde d'Orléans, were named princesses of Orléans — and not of France, since there was no more any "King of France" nor "House of France."
Unpopular laws taken during the Restoration were repealed, including the 1816 amnesty law which had banished the regicides — apart of its article 4, concerning the Bonaparte family. The Church of Sainte-Geneviève was once again returned to its functions of a laic temple, under the name of Panthéon. Various budget restrictions struck the Catholic Church, while the 1825 Anti-Sacrilege Act which envisioned death penalties for sacrileges was repealed.
A permanent disorder
Civil unrest continued during three months, supported by the left-wing press. Louis-Philippe's government was not able to put an end to it, mostly because the National Guard was headed by one of the Republican leaders, the marquis de La Fayette. The latter requested a "popular throne surrounded by Republican institutions." The Republicans then gathered themselves in popular clubs, in the tradition established by the 1789 Revolution. Some of thoses were fronts for secret societies (for example, the Blanquist Société des Amis du Peuple), which requested political and social reforms, or the execution of Charles X' ministers (Jules de Polignac, Jean de Chantelauze, the Count de Peyronnet and the Count de Guernon-Ranville). Strikes and demonstrations were permanent.
In order to relaunch the economy and finally establish public order, the government had the Assembly vote in autumn 1830 a credit of 5 million Francs to subside public works, mostly roads. Then, to prevent bankruptcies and the increase of unemployment, especially in Paris, the government granted its guaranty for firms which encountered themselves in difficult situations, granting them 60 million. Those subsidies mainly went in the pockets of big entrepreneurs dedicated to the new regimes, such as the printer Firmin Didot.
The death of the Prince of Condé on August 27, 1830, found hanged, set up the first scandal of the July Monarchy. The Legitimists quickly accused, without proofs, Louis-Philippe and the Queen Marie-Amélie of having assassinated the ultra-royalist Prince, with the alleged motive of letting their son, the duc d'Aumale, to set hands on his fortune. It is commonly accepted that he died following sexual games with his mistress, the baroness de Feuchères.
Purge of the Legitimists
In the meanwhile, the government expelled from the administration all of the Legitimist supporters who refused to pledge allegiance to the new regime, leading to the return to political affairs of most of the staff of the First Empire who had been expelled during the Second Restoration. This renewal of political and administrative staff was humorously illustrated by a vaudeville of Jean-François Bayard [4]. The Minister of the Interior, Guizot, renewed all the prefectoral administration and the mayors of large cities. The Minister of Justice, Dupont de l'Eure, assisted by his secretary general, Mérilhou, dismissed most of the public prosecutors. In the Army, the General de Bourmont, a follower of Charles X who was commanding the invasion of Algeria, was replaced by Bertrand Clauzel. Generals, ambassadors, plenipotentiary ministers and half of the Conseil d'Etat were replaced. In the Chamber of Deputies, a quarter of the seats (119) were submitted to a new election in October, leading to the defeat of the Legitimists.
In sociological terms, however, this renewal of the political staff did not mark any great change of elites: land-owners, civil servants and liberal professions continued to dominate the state of affairs, leading the historian David Pinkney to deny any claim of a "new regime of a grande bourgeoisie".[5] Historian Guy Antonetti also underscores the similar sociological membership of the new elites, the main difference residing in the "substitution, inside the same social group, of the followers of a mentality in favour of the 1789 spirit to those who were opposed to it: socially similar, ideologically different. 1830 has only been a change of team in the same side, and not a change of side.[6]
The "Resistance" and The "Movement"
Although some voices began to push for the closure of the Republican clubs, which fomented revolutionary agitation, le Minister of Justice, Dupont de l'Eure, and the Parisian public prosecutor, Bernard, both Republicans, refused to prosecute revolutionary associations (although the French law prohibited meetings of more than 20 persons).
However, on 25 September 1830, the Minister of Interior Guizot responded to a deputy's question on the subject by stigmatizing the "revolutionary state," conflated with chaos, to which he opposed the "Glorious Revolution.".[7] Two political currents thereafter made their appearance on stage, and would structure political life under the July Monarchy: the "Parti du mouvement" (Party of the Movement) and the "Parti de la résistance" (Party of the Resistance). The first one was reformist and in favor of support to the nationalists which were trying, all over of Europe, to shake the grip of the various Empires in order to create nation-states. Its mouthpiece was Le National. The second one was conservative and supported peace with European monarchs, and had as mouthpiece Le Journal des débats.
The trial of Charles X's ministers, arrested in August 1830 while they were fleeing, became the major political issue. The left requested their heads, but was opposed by Louis-Philippe who feared a spiral of violence and the renewal of revolutionary Terror. Thus, the Chamber of Deputies voted on 27 September 1830 a resolution charging the former ministers, but at the same time invited in an 8 October 1830 address to the king Louis-Philippe to present a draft law repealing the death penalty, at least concerning political matters. This in turn provoked popular discontent on 17 and 18 October, with the masses marching on the Fort of Vincennes where the ministers were detained.
Following these riots, Interior Minister Guizot requested the resignation of the prefect of the Seine, Odilon Barrot, who had criticized the parliamentarians' address to the king. Supported by Victor de Broglie, Guizot considered that an important civil servant could not criticize an act of the Chamber of Deputies, moreover when the latter had been approved by the King and his government. Dupont de l'Eure took Barrot's side, threatening to resign if the King disavowed him. The banker Laffitte, one of the main figure of the Parti du mouvement, thereafter offered himself to coordinate the ministers between themselves with the title of "President of the Council." This immediately led Broglie and Guizot, of the Parti de l'Ordre, to resign, followed by Casimir Perier, André Dupin, the Count Molé and Joseph-Dominique Louis. Confronted to the Parti de l'Ordre 's defeat, Louis-Philippe decided to put Laffitte to trial, hoping that the exercise of power would discredit him. He thus called him to form a new government on 2 November 1830.
The Laffitte government (November 2, 1830 – March 13, 1831)
Although Louis-Philippe strongly disagreed with the banker Laffitte and secretly pledged to the duke of Broglie that he would not support him at all, the new President of the Council was tricked into trusting his king.
The trial of Charles X’s former ministers took place from 15 December to 21 December 1830 before the Chamber of Pairs, surrounded by rioters demanding their death. They were finally sentenced to life detention, accompanied by civil death for Polignac. La Fayette’s National Guard maintained the public order in Paris, affirming itself as the bourgeois watchdog of the new regime, while the new Interior Minister, Camille de Montalivet, kept the ministers in safety by detaining them in the fort of Vincennes.
But by demonstrating the National Guard’s importance, La Fayette had made his position fragile, and was quickly forced to resign. This led to the Minister of Justice Dupont de l’Eure’s resignation. Furthermore, in order to avoid exclusive dependence on the National Guard, the “Citizen King” charged Marshal Soult, the new Minister of War, of reorganizing the Army. Soult presented in February 1831 his project aiming to increase the militaries’ effectives and passed, among other reforms, the 9 March 1831 law creating the Foreign Legion.
In the meanwhile, the government enacted various reforms demanded by the Parti du Mouvement, which had been registered in the Charter (art. 69). The 21 March 1831 law on municipal councils reestablished the principle of election and enlarged the electoral base (founded on census suffrage) which was tenfold increased in comparison with the legislative elections (approximatively 2 million to 3 million electors on a total population of 32,6 million. The 22 March 1831 law re-organized the National Guard; the 19 April 1831 law, voted after two months of debate in Parliament and promulgated after Laffitte’s downfall, decreased the electoral cens from 300 to 200 Francs and the eligibility cens from 1,000 to 500 Francs. The number of voters increased from a number of less than 100,000 to 166,000: one Frenchman on 170 possessed the right to vote.
The February 1831 riots
Despite these reforms, which targeted the bourgeoisie rather than the people, Paris was once again rocked by riots on 14 February and 15 February 1831, leading to Laffitte’s downfall. The immediate cause of the riots was to be found in a funeral service organized by the Legitimists at Saint-Germains l’Auxerrois Church in memory of the ultra-royalist duke of Berry, assassinated in 1820. The commemoration turned into a political demonstration in favour of the count of Chambord, Legitimist pretender to the throne. Seeing in this celebration an intolerable provocation, the Republican rioters ransacked the church two days in a row, before turning towards other churches. The revolutionary movement spread to other cities.
Confronted to renewed unrest, the government abstained from any strong repression. The prefect of the Seine Odilon Barrot, the prefect of police Jean-Jacques Baude, and the new commandant of the National Guard, General Mouton, remained passive, triggering Guizot’s indignation, as well as the Republican Armand Carrel’s criticisms against alleged demagogy of the government.[8] Far from repressing the crowds, the government had the Archbishop of Paris Mgr. de Quélen arrested, as well as the friar of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois and other priests accused, along with some other monarchists, of having provoked the masses.
In a gesture of appeasement, Laffitte, supported by the royal prince Ferdinand-Philippe, duke of Orléans, proposed to the king to suppress the fleur-de-lys, symbol of the Ancien Régime, on the state seal. With obvious discontent, Louis-Philippe finally signed the 16 February 1831 ordinance substituting to the armoiries of the House of Orléans a shield with an open book, on which could be read “Charte de 1830”. Another symbol of the monarchy, the fleur-de-lys, was removed from public buildings, etc. This new defeat of the king sealed Laffitte’s fate.
On 19 February 1831, Guizot verbally attacked Laffitte in the Chamber of Deputies, daring him to dissolve the Chamber and present himself before the electors. Laffitte accepted, but the king, who was the only one entitled to dissolve the Chamber, preferred to wait some more days. In the meanwhile, the prefect of the Seine Odilon Barrot was replaced by Taillepied de Bondy at Montalivet's request, and the prefect of police Baude by Vivien de Goubert. To make matters worse, in this insurrectionary climate, the economic situation was fairly bad.
Louis-Philippe finally tricked Laffitte into resigning, by having his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Horace Sébastiani, pass him a note written by the French ambassador to Vienna, Marshal Maison, and arrived in Paris on 4 March 1831, which announced an imminent Austrian intervention in Italy. Taking knowledge of this note in Le Moniteur of 8 March, the President of the Council Laffitte requested immediate explanations from his Minister Sébastiani, who disclosed to him that he had followed royal orders. After a meeting with the king, Laffitte submitted to the Council of Minister's a belligerent program, and was subsequently disavowed, forcing him to resign. Most of his ministers had already negotiated their positions in the forthcoming government.
The Casimir Perier government (March 13, 1831 – May 16, 1832)
Having succeeded in outdoing the Parti du Mouvement, the "Citizen King" called to power the Parti de la Résistance. However, Louis-Philippe was not really much more comfortable with one side than with the other, being closer to the center. Furthermore, he felt no sympathy for its leader, the banker Casimir Perier, who replaced Laffitte on 13 March 1831 as head of the government. His aim was more to re-establish order in the country, letting the Parti de la Résistance assume the responsibility of unpopular measures.
Perier, however, managed to impose to the king his conditions, among which the pre-eminence of the President of the Council over other ministers, and his right to call cabinet councils outside of the effective presence of the king. Furthermore, Casimir Perier obtained that the liberal royal prince, Ferdinand-Philippe d'Orléans, ceased to participate to the Council of Ministers. Despite this, Perier valued the king's prestige, haling him, on 21 September 1831, to move from his family residence, the Palais-Royal, to the royal palace, the Tuileries.
The banker Perier established the new government's principles on 18 March 1831: ministerial solidarity and authority of the government on the administration: "the principle of the July Revolution... is not insurrection... it is resistance to the aggression of the power"[9] and, on the external plan, "a pacific attitude and the respect of the non-intervention principle." The vast majority of the Chamber applauded the new government and granted him a comfortable majority. Perier garnered the support of the cabinet through oaths of solidarity and strict discipline for dissenters. He excluded reformers from official discourse, and abandoned the regime’s unofficial policy of mediating in labor disputes in favor of a strict laissez-faire policy that favored employers.
Civil unrest (Canut Revolt) and repression
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Main article: Canut revolts
On 14 March 1831, under the initiative of a patriotic society created by the mayor of Metz, Jean-Baptiste Bouchotte, the opposition's press launched a campaign in order to gather funds to create a national association aimed at struggling against any Bourbon Restoration and the risks of foreign invasion. All of the major figures of the Republican Left (La Fayette, Dupont de l'Eure, Jean Maximilien Lamarque, Odilon Barrot, etc.) supported it. Local committees were created all over France, leading the new president of the Council, Casimir Perier, to enact a circular prohibiting civil servants to take membership in this association, charged of rivaling the state itself by implicitly accusing it of not complying with its duties.
In the beginning of April 1831, the government took some unpopular measures, forcing several important personalities to resign: Odilon Barrot was dismissed from the Council of State, General Lamarque's military command suppressed, Bouchotte and the Marquis de Laborde forced to resign. When on 15 April 1831 the Cour d'assises acquitted several young Republicans (Godefroy Cavaignac, Joseph Guinard and Audry de Puyraveau's son), mostly officers of the National Guard who had been arrested during the December 1830 troubles consecutive to the trial of Charles X's ministers, new riots acclaimed the news on 15-16 April. But Perier, implementing the 10 April 1831 law outlawing public meetings, used the military as well as the National Guard to dissolve the crowds. In May, the government used for the first time firehoses as crowd control techniques.
Another riot, started on the rue Saint-Denis on 14 June 1831, degenerated into an open battle against the National Guard, assisted by the Dragoons and the infantry. The riots continued on 15 June and 16 June.
The major unrest, however, took place in Lyon with the Canuts Revolt, started on 21 November 1831, and during which parts of the National Guard took the demonstrators' side. In two days, the Canuts took control of the city and expelled General Roguet and the mayor Victor Prunelle. On 25 November, Casimir Perier announced to the Chamber of Deputies that Marshal Soult, assisted by the royal prince, would immediately march on Lyon with 20,000 men. They entered the former capital of the Gaul on 3 December, re-establishing order without any bloodshed.
Civil unrest, however, continued, and not only in Paris. On 11 March 1832, sedition exploded in Grenoble during the Carnaval. The prefect had canceled the festivities after that a grotesque mask of Louis-Philippe had been shown, leading to popular demonstrations. The prefect then tried to have the National Guard dissolve the masses, but the latter refused, forcing him to call on the army. The 35th regiment of infantry (infanterie de ligne) obeyed the orders, but this in turn led the population to request their expulsion from the city. This was done on 15 March, and the 35th regiment replaced by the 6th regiment, from Lyon. When Casimir Perier learnt the news, he dissolved the National Guard of Grenoble and immediately recalled the 35th regiment to Grenoble.
Beside this continuing unrest, present in all of the provinces, Dauphiné, Picardie, in Carcassone, Alsace, etc., various Republican conspiracies threatened the government (conspiracy of the Tours de Notre-Dame in January 1832, of the rue des Prouvaires in February 1832, etc.) Even the trials were seized by the Republicans as a tribune opportunity: at the trial of the Blanquist Société des Amis du peuple in January 1832, Raspail harshly criticized the king while Auguste Blanqui gave free way to his socialist ideas. All of the accused denounced the government's tyranny, the incredibly high cost of Louis-Philippe's civil list, police persecutions, etc. The omnipresence of the French police, organized during the French First Empire by Fouché, was depicted by the Legitimist writer Balzac in Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. The strength of the opposition led the royal prince to shift a bit more to the right-wing.
Legislative elections of 1831
- Further information: French legislative election, 1831
In the second half of May 1831, Louis-Philippe, accompanied by Marshal Soult, started an official travel to Normandie and Picardie, where he was well received. From 6 June to 1 July 1831, he traveled in the east, where there was stronger Republican and Bonapartist activity, along with his two elder sons, the royal prince and the duke of Nemours, as well as with the comte d'Argout. The king stopped in Meaux, Château-Thierry, Châlons-sur-Marne (renamed Châlons-en-Champagne in 1998), Valmy, Verdun and Metz. There, in the name of the municipal council, the mayor made a very political speech where he expressed the wish to have the Peers' heredity suppressed, adding that France should intervene in Poland to assist the November Uprising against Russia. Louis-Philippe flatly denied all of these pretensions, stating that the municipal councils or the National Guard had no legitimacy in such matters. The king continued his visit to Nancy, Lunéville, Strasbourg, Colmar, Mulhouse, Besançon and Troyes, and his travel was, on the whole, an occasion to re-affirm his authority.
Louis-Philippe had decided in the château de Saint-Cloud, on 31 May 1831, to dissolve the Chamber of Deputies, fixing legislative elections for 5 July 1831. However, he signed another ordinance on 23 June in Colmar in order to have them advanced to 23 July 1831, so as to avoid the risk of Republican agitation during the commemorations of the July Revolution. The general elections took place without incident, according to the new electoral law of 19 April 1831. However, the results disappointed the king and the president of the Council Perier: more than half of the deputies were re-elected, and their positions were unknown. The Legitimists obtained 104 seats, the Orleanist Liberals 282 and the Republicans 73.
On 23 July 1831, the king developed Casimir Perier's program in the speech from the Throne: strict application of the Charter inside, and strict defense of the interests of France and its independence abroad.
The deputies elected in the second round baron Girod de l'Ain, the government's candidate (181 votes), as president of the Chamber of Deputies, against the banker Laffitte (176 votes). But Dupont de l'Eure gained the first vice presidency with 182 voices (on a total of 344), while the government's candidate, André Dupin, lost with 153 voices only. Casimir Perier, who considered that his parliamentary majority was not strong enough, decided to resign.
Louis-Philippe thereafter turned towards Odilon Barrot, who refused to assume governmental responsibilities, pointing out that he had only a hundred voices in the Chamber. However, during the 2 and 3 August 1831 elections of questeurs and secretaries, the Chamber elected mostly governmental candidates such as André Dupin or Benjamin Delessert, who obtained a strong majority against a far-left candidate, Eusèbe de Salverte. Finally, William I of the Netherlands's decision to invade Belgium — the Belgian Revolution had taken place the preceding year — on August 2, 1831, constrained Casimir Perier to remain in power in order to respond to the Belgian's assistance request.
During the parliamentary debates concerning France's imminent intervention in Belgium, several deputies, led by baron Bignon, unsuccessfully requested a similar intervention to support Polish independence. However, on the domestic level, Casimir Perier decided to back up before the dominant opposition, and satisfied an old claim of the Left by repealing the Peers' heredity. Finally, the 2 March 1832 law on Louis-Philippe's pension fixed its amount to 12 million Francs a year, and one million for the royal prince, the duke of Orléans. The 28 April 1832 law, named after the Justice Minister Félix Barthe, reformed the 1810 Penal Code and the Code d'instruction criminelle.
The 1832 Cholera epidemic
The cholera pandemic, originated in India in 1815, reached Paris around 20 March, 1832 and killed more than 13,000 people in April. The pandemic would last until September 1832, killing in total 100,000 with 20,000 of that in Paris alone.[10] The disease, which origins were unknown at the time, provoked a popular panic. The people of Paris suspected poisoners, while the scavengers and mendiants revolted against the authoritative measures of public health. According to the historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, the cholera outbreak was first fought by what he called "social medicine," which focused on flux, circulation of air, location of cemeteries, etc. All those concerns, born of the miasma theory of disease, were thus mixed with urbanistic concerns of the management of populations.
The cholera also struck the royal princess Madame Adélaïde, as well as d'Argout and Guizot. Casimir Perier, who went to visit on 1 April 1832, with the royal prince, the patients at the Hôtel-Dieu, was also infected, leading him to stop his ministerial activities, before dying on 16 May 1832.
The consolidation of the regime (1832 - 1835)
King Louis-Philippe was not unhappy to see Casimir Perier withdraw from the political scene, as he complained that Perier assumed all of the credits of the government's policies, while he himself had to assume all of its defaults.[11] The "Citizen King" was therefore not pressed to find a new president of the Council, all the more since the Parliament was in vacation and that the troubled situation requested energical and swift measures.
Indeed, the regime was attacked on all sides. The Legitimist duchess of Berry attempted an uprising in spring 1832 in Provence and Vendée, a stronghold of the ultra-royalists, while the Republicans headed an insurrection in Paris on 5 June 1832, on the occasion of the funerals of one of their leaders, General Lamarque, also struck dead by the cholera. General Mouton crushed the rebellion, killing 800. The scene was later depicted by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables, and is where Gavroche died.
This double victory, both on the Carlists Legitimists and on the Republicans, was a success for the regime.[12] Furthermore, the death of the duke of Reichstadt (Napoléon II) on 22 July 1832, in Vienna, marked another defeat for the Bonapartist opposition.
Finally, Louis-Philippe had his elder daughter, Louise d'Orléans, married to the new king of the Belgians, Leopold I, on the anniversary of the establishment of the July Monarchy (9 August). Since the archbishop of Paris Quélen, a Legitimist, refused to celebrate this mixed marriage between a Catholic and a Lutheran, the wedding took place in the château de Compiègne. This royal alliance strengthened Louis-Philippe's position abroad.
First Soult Government
Louis-Philippe called a trusted man, Marshal Soult, to the presidency of the Council in October 1832. Soult was supported by a triumvirate composed of the main politicians of that time: Adolphe Thiers, the duke de Broglie and François Guizot. The conservative Journal des débats spoke of a "coalition of all talents",[13] while the King of the French would eventually speak, with obvious deception, of a "Casimir Perier in three persons." In a circular addressed to the high civil servants and military officers, the new President of the Council, Soult, stated that he would explicitly followed the policies of Perier ("order inside", "peace abroad") and denounced both the Legitimist right-wing opposition and the Republican left-wing opposition.
The new Minister of Interior, Adolphe Thiers, had his first success on 7 November 1832 with the arrest in Nantes of the rebellious duchess of Berry, detained in the citadel of Blaye. The duchess was then expelled to Italy on 8 June 1833.
The opening of the parliamentary session on 19 November 1832, was a success for the regime. The governmental candidate, André Dupin, was easily elected in the first round as President of the Chamber, with 234 votes against 136 for the candidate of the opposition, Jacques Laffitte.
In Belgium, Marshal Gérard assisted the young Belgian monarchy with 70,000 men, taking back the citadel of Antwerp, which capitulated on 23 December 1832.
Strengthened by these recent successes, Louis-Philippe initiated two visits in the provinces, first in the north to meet with the victorious Marshal Gérard and his men, and then in Normandie, where Legitimist troubles continued, from August to September 1833. In order to conciliate themselves to public opinion, the new government took some popular measures, such a program of public works, leading to the achievement of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, or the re-establishment, on 21 June 1833, of Napoleon I's statue on the Colonne Vendôme. The Minister of Public Instruction and Cults, François Guizot, had the famous law on primary education voted in June 1833, leading to the creation of an elementary school in each commune.
Finally, a ministerial change was enacted after duke de Broglie's resignation on 1 April 1834. Broglie had been put in minority in the Chamber concerning the ratification of a treaty signed with the United States in 1831. This was a subject of satisfaction for the king, as it took out of the triumvirate the individual he disliked the most.
April 1834 insurrections
The ministerial change coincide with the return of insurrectionary troubles in various cities of France. At the end of February 1834, a law submitting to public authorization the activities of the town criers, leading to several days of confrontations with the police. Furthermore, the 10 April 1834 law, primarily aimed against the Republican Society of Human Rights (Société des Droits de l'Homme), envisioned a crack-down on non-authorized associations. On April 9, 1834, when the Chamber of Peers was to vote the law, the Second Canut Revolt exploded in Lyon. The Minister of the Interior, Adolphe Thiers, decided to abandon the city to the insurgents, taking it back on 13 April, with casualties of a 100 to 200 dead on both sides.
The Republicans attempted to spread the insurrection to other cities, but failed in Marseille, Vienne, Poitiers and Châlons-sur-Marne. The threat was more serious in Grenoble and especially in Saint-Etienne on 11 April, but finally public order was swiftly restored. The greater danger to the regime was, as often, in Paris. Expecting troubles, Thiers had concentrated 40,000 men there, visited by the king on 10 April. Furthermore, Thiers had made "preventive arrests" against the 150 main leaders of the Society of Human Rights, and outlawed its mouthpiece, La Tribune des départements. Despite these measures, barricades were set up in the evening of 13 April 1834, leading to a harsh repression, including a massacre of all the inhabitants of a house (men, women, children and elders) from where a shot had been fired, immortalized by a lithography of Honoré Daumier.
To express their support to the monarchy, both Chambers gathered themselves in the Palace of the Tuileries on 14 April. In a gesture of appeasement, Louis-Philippe renounced to his feast-day celebration on 1 May, and publicly announced that the sums that were to be engaged in these festivities would be dedicated to the orphans, widows and injured. In the same time, he ordered Marshal Soult to make wide publicity of these events in all of France (the provinces being more conservative than Paris), to convince them of the "necessary increase of the Army.".[14]
More than 2,000 arrests were made following the riots, in particular in Paris and Lyon. The suspects were deferred to the Chamber of Paris, in accordance with art. 28 of the Charter of 1830, for conspiracy against state security (attentat contre la sûreté de l'État). The Republican movement was decapitated, so much that even the funerals of La Fayette on 20 May 1834, were quiet. As soon as 13 May, the Chamber of Deputies voted a credit of 14 million in order to increase the army to 360,000 men. Two days later, they also adopted a very repressive law on detention and use of military weapons.
Legislative elections of 1834
- Further information: French legislative election, 1834
Louis-Philippe decided to seize the occasion to dissolve the Chamber and organize new elections, held on 21 June 1834. However, the results were not as good as expected: although the Republicans were almost excluded, the Opposition retained around 150 seats (approximatively 30 Legitimists, the rest being followers of Odilon Barrot, who was an Orleanist supporter of the regime, but headed the Parti du mouvement). Furthermore, in the ranks of the majority itself, composed of about 300 deputies, a new faction, the Tiers-Parti, led by André Dupin, could on some occasions defect to the majority and give its voices to the Left. The new Chamber re-elected on 31 July 1834 Dupin as President of the Chamber with 247 voices against 33 for Jacques Laffitte and 24 for Pierre-Paul Royer-Collard. Furthermore, a large majority (256 against 39) voted an ambiguous address to the king which, although polite, did not abstain from criticizing Louis-Philippe. The latter immediately decided, on August 16, 1834, to put the Parliament in vacation until the end of the year.
Short lived governments (July 1834 - February 1835)
Thiers and Guizot, who dominated the triumvirate, decided to get rid of Marshal Soult, appreciated by the king for his compliance to his will. Seizing the opportunity of an incident concerning the French possessions in Algeria, they pushed Soult to resign on 18 July 1834. He was replaced by Marshal Gérard, the other ministers remaining in place. Gérard, however, was forced to resign, on 29 October 1834, over the question of an amnesty concerning the 2,000 prisoners detained in April. Louis-Philippe, the Doctrinaires (among whom Guizot and Thiers) and the core of the government opposed it, but the Tiers Parti managed to convince Gérard to pronounce it, underscoring the logistical difficulties in organizing such a large trial before the Chamber of Peers.
Gérard's resignation opened up a four month ministerial crisis, until Louis-Philippe finally composed a government entirely issued from the Tiers Parti. However, after André Dupin's refusal to assume its presidency, the king made the mistake of calling, on 10 November 1834, a figure of the First Empire, the duc de Bassano. The latter, crippled with debts, became the object of public hilarity after that his creditors decided to seize his ministerial salary. Frightened, all of the ministers decided to resign, three days later, without even advising Bassano, whose government became known as the "Three Days Minister." On 18 November 1834, Louis-Philippe called Marshal Mortier, duke of Trévise, to the Presidency, and the latter formed exactly the same government as Bassano. This crisis ridiculed the Tiers Parti while the Doctrinaires triumphed.
On 1 December 1834, Mortier's government decided to submit a motion of confidence to the Parliament, obtaining a clear majority (184 voices against 117). Despite this, Mortier had to resign two months later, on 20 February 1835, officially for health reasons. The opposition had denounced a government without a leader, accusing Mortier of being Louis-Philippe's puppet. The saying that Thiers had opposed to Charles X, "the king rules but does not govern" (le roi règne mais ne gouverne pas), was addressed this time to the "Citizen King".
Evolution towards Parliamentarism (1835 - 1840)
The polemics which led to Marshal Mortier's resignation, fed by monarchists such as Baron Massias or the Count of Roederer, all turned around the question of the Parliament's prerogatives. On one hand, Louis-Philippe wanted to be able to follow his policy, in particular around "reserved domains" such as military affairs or diplomacy. Head of the state, he also wanted to be able to lead the government, if need by bypassing the President of the Council, the first of all ministers. On the other hand, part of the deputies stated that the ministers needed a leader issued from the parliamentary majority, and thus wanted to continue the evolution towards parliamentarism which had only been sketched with the Charter of 1830. The Charter did not include any mechanism of political responsibility of the ministers towards the Chamber (confidence motion or censorship motion). Furthermore, the function of a President of the Council itself was not registered in the Charter.
The Broglie minister (March 1835-February 1836)
In this context, the deputies decided to support Victor de Broglie as head of the government, mainly because he was the king's less likely choice, as Louis-Philippe disliked both his anglophilia and his independence. After a three weeks ministerial crisis, during which the "Citizen King" successively called forth the count Molé, André Dupin, Marshal Soult, General Sébastiani and Gérard, he was finally forced to rely on the duc de Broglie and to accept his conditions, which were close to those imposed before by Casimir Perier.
As in the first Soult government, the new cabinet rest on the triumvirate Broglie (Foreign affairs) - Guizot (Public instruction) - Thiers (Interior). Broglie's first act was to take a personal revenge on the Chamber by having it ratified (by 289 votes against 137) the 4 July 1831 treaty with the United States, something which the deputies had refused him in 1834. He also obtained a large majority on the debate on the secret funds, which worked as an unofficial motion of confidence (256 voices against 129).
Trial of the April insurgents
Broglie's most important task was the trial of the April insurgees, which began on 5 May 1835 before the Chamber of Peers. The Peers finally inculpated only 164 detainees on the 2,000 prisoners, of which 43 were judged in absentia. Those defendants who were present for their trial multiplied incidents of procedure, and attempted by all means to transform the trial into a tribune for Republicanism. On 12 July 1835, parts of them, among which the main leaders of the Parisian insurrection, escaped from the Prison of Sainte-Pélagie through an underground tunnel. The Court of Peers gave its sentence against the insurgees of Lyon on 13 August 1835, and against the other defendants in December 1835 and January 1836. The sentences were rather mild: a few condamnations to deportation, and lots of short-term prison sentences and some acquittals.
The Fieschi attentat (28 July 1835)
Against their hopes, the trial finally turned to the Republicans' disadvantage, by giving them a radical image which reminded the public opinion of the excesses of Jacobinism and frightened the bourgeois. The Fieschi attentat of July 1835, which took place during a review of the National Guard in Paris by Louis-Philippe for the commemorations of the July Revolution, further scared the notables. On the boulevard du Temple, near Place de la République, a machine infernale composed of tens of guns shot on the king. The latter, however, was only lightly injured, while his sons, Ferdinand-Philippe, duc d'Orléans, Louis-Charles d'Orléans, duc de Nemours and François d'Orléans, prince de Joinville, escaped uharmed. However, Marshal Mortier and ten other persons were killed, while tens were injured (among which seven died in the following days).
The conspirators, the adventurer Giuseppe Fieschi and two Republicans (Pierre Morey and Théodore Pépin) members of the Society of Human Rights, were arrested in September 1835. Judged before the Court of Peers, they were sentenced to death and guillotined on 19 February 1836.
The September 1835 laws
The Fieschi attentat shocked the bourgeois' and most of France, generally more conservative than the people of Paris. The Republicans were discredited in the country, and the opinion ready for energical measures.
The first law reinforced the powers of the president of the Cour d'assises and of the public prosecutor against those accused of rebellion, detention of prohibited weapons or insurrectionary attempts. It was adopted on August 13, 1835, by 212 voices against 72.
The second law reformed the procedure before the jurys of the Assises. The 4 March 1831 law restricted the declaration of innocence or culpability to the sole juries, excluding the professional magistrates belonging to the Cour d'assises, and requested a 2/3 majority (8 voices against 4) for a culpability sentence. The new law changed that to a simple majority (7 against 5), and was adopted on 20 August 1835 by 224 voices against 149.
The third law restricted freedom of press, and provoked passionate debates. It aimed at outlawing discussions concerning the king, the dynasty and constitutional monarchy, accused of having prepared the grounds for the Fieschi attentat. Despite a strong opposition to the draft, the law was voted on 29 August 1830 by 226 voices against 153.
The definitive consolidation of the regime
These three laws were simultaneously promulgated on 9 September 1835, and marked the definitive success of the policy of Résistance engaged since Casimir Perier against the Republicans. The July Monarchy was thereafter assured of its grounds, discussions concerning its legitimity being outrightly outlawed. The Opposition could now only discuss of the interpretation of the Charter and claim an evolution towards parliamentarism. Demands for the enlargement of the electoral base became more frequent, however, in 1840, leading to the re-appearance of Republican Opposition through the claim to universal suffrage.
The Broglie minister, however, finally fell on a question concerning public debt. The Minister of Finances, Georges Humann, announced on 14 January 1836 his intention to proceed to a conversion of the rent in order to lighten the public debt, a very unpopular measures among the supporters of the regime, since the rent was a fundamental component of the bourgeoisie's wealth. Thereby, the Council of Ministers immediately disavowed Humann, while the Duke de Broglie explained to the Chamber that his proposition was not supported by the government. However, his tone was judged insulting by the deputies, and one of them, the banker Alexandre Gouin, immediately deposed a draft law concerning the conversion of the rent. On 5 February 1836, a short majority of deputies (194 against 192) decided to continue the examination of the draft, thus disavowing Broglie's cabinet. The government immediately resigned: for the first time, a cabinet had fallen after having been put in minority before the Chamber of Deputies, a sure victory of parliamentarism.
The first Thiers government (February-September 1836)
Louis-Philippe thus decided to pretend to play the parliamentary card, with the secret intention of neutralizing it. He took advantage of the ministerial crisis to get rid of the Doctrinaires (Broglie and Guizot), called some Tiers Parti politicians to give an illusion of an opening to the Left, and finally called forth Adolphe Thiers on 22 February 1836, in an attempt to achieve of convincing him to take his distances with the liberal Doctrinaires, and also to burn his legitimity in government until the time came to call forth the Count Molé, whom the king had decided since a long time to make his President of the Council. Louis-Philippe thus separated the center-right from the center-left, strategically attempting to dissolve the Tiers Parti, a dangerous game since this could also lead to the dissolving of the parliamentary majority itself and create endless ministerial crises. Furthermore, as the duc de Broglie himself warned him, when Thiers would eventually be pushed out, he would fatally shift to the Left and transform himself in a particularly dangerous opponent.
In the Chamber, the debate on the secret funds, marked by a remarked speech by Guizot and an evasive response by the Justice Minister, Sauzet, was concluded by a favorable vote for the government (251 voices against 99). On the other hand, the draft proposition on the conversion of the rents was easily postponed by the deputies on 22 March 1836, another sign that it had been only a pretext.
Thiers' motivations for accepting to be head of government and to take the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were to enable him to negotiate the Duc d'Orléans' wedding with an Austrian archduchess. Since the Fieschi attentat, Ferdinand-Philippe's wedding (he had just reached 25) had became an obsession of the king, and Thiers wanted to be the operator of a spectacular reversion of alliances in Europe, as Choiseul had done before h |
