The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution (1789–1799), the end of the First French Republic (1792–1804), and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804-1814/1815) — when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the heirs of the House of Bourbon who once again became possessors of the Kingdom of France. The Bourbon restoration existed from (about) 6 April 1814 until the popular uprisings of the July Revolution of 1830, excepting the interval of the "Hundred Days"[note 1] less than a full year into the restoration when the Bourbon monarchy again had made themselves so unpopular with the general population of France that the family had to once more flee Paris and France to Ghent ahead of exploding civil disorders and collapsing civil authority.
At the beginning of the hundred days deposed Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte returned triumphantly to Paris from Elba, greeted with dizzy acclaim and joy by French crowds lining the roads coming from far away with advance news spreading of his approach along all the way — crowds swelling his army overnight at his back, growing at every step, even by aggregating the very troops sent to arrest him by the monarchy on several occasions — and with the flight of the king, after reaching Paris, he re-announced and reclaimed his dignities as Emperor. World opinion among Europe's elites was nowhere near as welcoming, and the autocrats quickly mobilized armies once more — so events quickly lead to his decisive defeat in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 deposing him once and for all time.
There is little evidence the Bourbon regime took away any lesson in the aftermath, and became increasingly annoying to the Parisian populace, and around France in general. The pre-revolution problems soon returned with court behavior driving home new hatreds between upper and lower classes.
The new Bourbon regime was however a constitutional monarchy, unlike the ancien régime, which was absolute, so had some limits on its abilities to repress the population at large. The period was characterized by a sharp conservative reaction and the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic Church as a power in French politics,[2] and consequent minor but consistent occurrences of civil unrest and disturbances.,[3] though not as much in the hearts of the people, many of whom retained the new more liberal viewpoints.
- ^ 20 March-8 July 1815, 111 days except in the common acceptable period title inhistoriography, bestowed by committee of historians as a common term.
Historical Overview
The Armies of the Sixth Coalition restored Louis XVIII, called the Bourbon pretender by historiographers, especially by those unfavorable to the restoration of the monarchy, to the throne of France in April 1814. A constitution, the Charter of 1814, was drafted, presenting all Frenchmen equal before the law,[4] but retaining substantial prerogative for the king and nobility.
He was the supreme head of the state, commanded the land and sea forces, declared war, made treaties of peace, alliance and commerce, appointed to all places of public administration, and made the necessary regulations and ordinances for the execution of the laws and the security of the state.[5] King Louis was more liberal than his successor Charles X, choosing many centrist cabinets.[6]
Louis XVIII died in September 1824. He was succeeded by his brother, Charles. Charles X pursued a more conservative form of governance than Louis. His ultra-reactionary laws included the Anti-Sacrilege Act, 1825, which saw his popularity plummet. The king and his ministers attempted to manipulate the outcome of a general election in 1830, through their July Ordinances. The ordinances sparked a revolution against Charles's coup attempt; by 2 August 1830 Charles had fled Paris and abdicated in favour of his grandsonHenri, duc de Bordeaux. Henri's theoretical reign was ended on 9 August when the Chamber of Deputiesdeclared Louis Philippe d'Orléans, who was currently ruling France as regent, King of the French, thus ushering in the July Monarchy.
[edit]Louis XVIII, 1814–1824
[edit]First Restoration (1814)
See also: Louis XVIII#Bourbon Restoration
Louis XVIII's restoration to the throne in 1814 was effected largely through the support of Napoleon's former foreign ministerTalleyrand who convinced the victorious Allied Powers of the desirability of a Bourbon restoration.[7] The Allies had initially split on the best candidate for the throne: Britain favoured the Bourbons, the Austrians considered a regency for Napoleon's son, François Bonaparte, and the Russians were open to either the duc d'Orléans (Louis Philippe) or Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte(Napoleon's former Marshal, who was in line for the Swedish throne). Napoleon was offered to keep the throne in February 1814, on the condition that France returned to its 1792 frontiers, but he refused.[8] The feasibility of the Restoration was in doubt, but the allure of peace to a war-weary French public, and demonstrations of support for the Bourbons in Paris, Bordeaux,Marseille, and Lyons, helped assure the Allies.[9]
Louis, in accordance with the Declaration of Saint-Ouen,[10]granted a written constitution, the Charter of 1814, which guaranteed a bicameral legislature, with a hereditary/appointiveChamber of Peers and an elected Chamber of Deputies – their role was consultative (except on taxation), as only the King had the power to propose or sanction laws, and appoint or recall ministers.[11] The franchise was limited to men with considerable property holdings, and around 1% of people could vote.[11] Many of the legal, administrative, and economic reforms of the revolutionary period were left intact; the Napoleonic Code[11] (which guaranteed legal equality and civil liberties), the peasants' biens nationaux, and the new system of dividing the country intodépartments were not undone by the new King. Relations between church and state remained regulated by the Concordat of 1801. However, in spite of the fact that the Charter was a condition of the Restoration, the preamble declared it to be a 'concession and grant', given 'by the free exercise of our royal authority'.[12]
After a first sentimental flush of popularity, Louis's gestures towards reversing the results of the French Revolution quickly lost him support among the disenfranchised majority. Symbolic acts such as the replacement of the tricolore with the Bourbon white flag, the titling of Louis as the 'XVIII' (as successor to Louis XVII, who never ruled) and as 'King of France' rather than 'King of the French', and the monarchy's recognition of the anniversaries of the deaths of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were significant; a more tangible source of antagonism was the pressure applied to possessors of biens nationaux by the Catholic Church and returningémigrés to give back their lands.[13] Other groups bearing ill sentiment towards Louis included the army, non-Catholics, and workers hit by a post-war slump and British imports.[14]
[edit]Second Restoration (1815)
Napoleon's emissaries informed him of this brewing discontent,[14] and, on 20 March 1815, he returned to Paris from Elba. On his Route Napoléon, most troops sent to stop his march, including some that were nominally royalist, felt more inclined to join the former Emperor than to stop him.[15] Louis was forced to flee Paris to Ghent on 19 March,[16][17] but returned after the Battle of Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule of the Hundred Days. In Louis's absence, a small revolt in the traditionally pro-royalist Vendée was put down, but there were otherwise fewsubversive acts favouring the Restoration, even though Napoleon's popularity began to flag.[18]
Talleyrand was again influential in seeing that the Bourbons reigned, as was Fouché,[19][20] Napoleon's minister of police during the Hundred Days. This Second Restoration saw the beginning of the Second White Terror, largely in the south, when supporters of the monarchy sought revenge against those who had supported Napoleon's return, killing 200–300 and forcing thousands to flee. The perpetrators were often known as theVerdets because of their green cockets, which was the colour of the comte d'Artois – this being the title of Charles X at the time, who was associated with the hardline ultraroyalists, or Ultras. After a period in which local authorities were powerless to stop the violence, the King and his ministers sent out their own officials to restore order.[21]
A Second Treaty of Paris was signed, which had more punitive terms than the First. France was ordered to pay 700 million francs in indemnities, and the country's borders were reduced to their 1790 level. After theBattle of Waterloo, France was occupied by 1.2 million foreign soldiers; occupation continued until 1818 by around 200,000 Allies, and France was made to pay the costs of their accommodation and rations, on top of the reparations.[22][23] The promise of tax cuts, prominent in 1814, failed to actualize because of these payments. The legacy of this, and the White Terror, left Louis with a formidable opposition.[22]
Louis's chief ministers were at first moderate,[21][24][25] including Talleyrand, theduc de Richelieu, Élie Decazes; Louis himself followed a cautious policy.[26]The chambre introuvable, elected in 1815 and given the nickname "unobtainable" by Louis due to the overwhelming ultraroyalist majority, threw out the Talleyrand-Fouché government and sought to legitimize the White Terror, passing trial against enemies of the state, sacking 50,000–80,000 civil service members, and dismissing 15,000 army officers.[22] Richelieu, an émigré who had left in October 1789, who "had had nothing at all to do with the new France",[26] was appointed Prime Minister. The chambre introuvable, meanwhile, continued to aggressively uphold the place of the monarchy and the church, and called for more commemorations for historical royal figures.[27] Over the course of the parliamentary term, the ultraroyalists increasingly began to fuse their brand of politics with state ceremony, much to Louis's chagrin.[28] Decazes, perhaps the most moderate minister, moved to stop the politicization of the National Guard (many Verdets had been drafted in) by banning political demonstrations by the militia in July 1816.[29]
Owing to contrasting standpoints of the chamber and the King, the ultraroyalists began to assert the Chamber of Deputies' rights. This resulted in a concession from the government that the chamber had the right to approve state expenditure, granted after the ultraroyalists attempted to obstruct the 1816 budget. However, they were unable to gain a guarantee from the King that his cabinets would represent the majority in parliament.[30]
In September 1816, the chamber was dissolved by Louis for its reactionary measures, and electoral manipulation resulted in a more liberal chamber in 1816 (see: French legislative election, 1816). Richelieu served until 29 December 1818, followed by Jean-Joseph, Marquis Dessolles until 19 November 1819, and then Decazes (in reality the dominant minister from 1818 to 1820)[31][32] until 20 February 1820. This was the era in which the Doctrinaires dominated policy. The following year, the government changed the electoral laws, resorting togerrymandering, and altering the franchise to allow some rich men of trade and industry to vote,[33] in an attempt to prevent the ultras winning a majority in future elections. Press censorship was clarified and relaxed, some positions in the military hierarchy were made open to competition, and mutual schools were set up that encroached on the Catholic monopoly of public primary education.[34][35] Decazes purged a number of ultraroyalist prefects and sub-prefects, and in by-elections, an unusually high proportion of Bonapartists and republicans were elected, some of whom were backed by ultras resorting to tactical voting.[31] The ultras were strongly critical of the practice of giving civil service employment or promotions to deputies, as the government continued to consolidate its position.[36]
By 1820, the opposition liberals (who with the ultras made up half the chamber) proved unmanageable, and Decazes and the King were looking for ways to revise the electoral laws again, to ensure a more tractable conservative majority. The assassination of the duc de Berry, the ultrareactionary son of Louis's ultrareactionary brother (and heir-presumptive) the future Charles X, by a Bonapartist in February 1820, triggered Decazes's fall from power and the triumph of the Ultras.[37]
Richelieu returned to power for a short interval, from 1820 to 1821. The press was more strongly censored, dentention without trial was reintroduced, and Doctrinaire leaders such as François Guizot were banned from teaching at the École Normale Supérieure.[37][38] Under Richelieu, the franchise was changed to give the wealthiest electors a double vote, in time for the November 1820 election. After a resounding victory, a new Ultra ministry was formed, headed by the Comte de Villèle, a leading Ultra who served for six years. The ultras found themselves back in power in favourable circumstances: Berry's wife, the duchesse de Berry, gave birth to "miracle child" Henriseven months after the duc's death; Napoleon died on St. Helena in 1821 and his son, the duc de Reichstadt, remained interned in Austrian hands; and literary figures, most notably Chateaubriand, but also Hugo, Lamartine, Vigny, and Nodier rallied to the ultras' cause (both Hugo and Lamartine later became republicans, whilst Nodier was formerly).[39][40] Soon, however, Villèle proved himself to be nearly as cautious as his master, and, so long as Louis lived, overtly reactionary policies were kept to a minimum.
The ultras broadened their support, and put a stop to growing military dissent, in 1823, when intervention in the Spanish Civil War in favour of Spanish Bourbon King Ferdinand VII fomented popular patriotic fervour. Despite British backing for the military action, the intervention was widely seen as an attempt to win back influence in Spain, which had been lost to the British under Napoleon. The French force, called The Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis, was led by the duc d'Angoulême, the comte d'Artois's son. Support for the ultras was further strengthened by doling out favours in a similar fashion to the 1816 chamber, and fears over the charbonnerie, the French equivalent of the carbonari. In the 1824 election, another large majority was secured.[41]
Louis XVIII died on 16 September 1824, and was succeeded by his brother, the comte d'Artois, who took the title of Charles X.
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