Aspects of the Bourbon Restoration

Whilst looking online into background for my post about King Louis XVIII I came upon these articles which may interest readers. They not only illustrate specific aspects of French political life in the King’s reign but help to indicate the tensions that ran through France at so many levels. Maintains national cohesion was no mean achievement.

Wikipedia has a good entry about the 1814 Charter granted by the King. The article gives a good introduction to its provisions, .points to its similarity to the British constitutional  arrangements at the time, and its status as a document - was it a Fundamental Law or a description of how the legislative life of the country was to be conducted? The article can be read at Charter of 1814

There is a short piece about a real risk to the survival of the main Royal House caused by the assassination of the Duc de Berry, nephew to King Louis, and third in line to the throne in 1820, and the pregnancy of his widow. It is from Elena Maria Vidal’s Tea at Trianon blog and can be seen at The Murder of the Duc de Berry and the Miracle Child

The third is an excellent article, the transcript of a podcast from The Siècle 1814-1914 and looks at the underground opposition to the Restoration in the early 1820s and the reaction to that of the government. Entitled ‘Charbonnerie’ it is a well researched and balanced account of the secret radical groups, imitating contemporary Italian examples, and  which sought to overthrow the Restoration. It describes the response of the government to their discovery,  and their signal failure to incite revolt in those years. Being in print rather than just a sound broadcast it boasts those academic desiderata of having both illustrations and footnotes. It is well worth reading and can be seen at  Episode 23: Charbonnerie

The entry of King Louis XVIII into Paris 1814

Today is the bicentenary of the entry into his capital city of King Louis XVIII in 1814. I posted about his arrival in France in Return of the Bourbons in 1814 - post I have revised slightly by adding another image.

The Senate having offered to Crown to King Louis XVIII on April 6th, on April 12 his brother the Count of Artois, who had been in France since earlier in the year, entered Paris in state as Lieutenant General of the Realm and what the Count described as the happiest day he had known for thirty years. On April 24th King Louis travelled from Dover to Calais accompanied by other members of the Royal family.

On the 2nd of May 1814 King Louis stopped in Saint-Ouen where, under pressure from Tsar Alexander I and urged on by Talleyrand, he signed the Saint-Ouen Declaration, re-establishing the monarchy whilst recognising significant constitutional changes established under the Revolution and the Empire.There is more about the Declaration here. This can be seen as similar to the Declaration of Breda by King Charles II in 1660, and the terms in respect of land confiscated and sold during the Revolutionary regime similar to the acceptance of the sale of monastic estate sin the 1554 English return to the Roman obedience.

The French Royal family in 1814

King Louis XVIII in the centre, with top left Madame Royale, daughter of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, top right the Count of Artois, the King's brother and successor as King Charles X, and at the base his two sons, the Duke of Angoulême, husband of Madame Royale, and later King Louis XIX, and the Duke of Berry, father of King Henri V

Image: Tea at Trianon

The Duke of Angoulême at the Barriere Vaugirard

 by Nicholas Joseph Vergnaux

Musee Carnevallet

Image:1st-art-gallery

Presentation of the keys of the city at the Barriere Saint Denis to the King

by Henri Courvoisier-Voisin

Biblioteque des Arts Decoratifs, Paris

Image:mystudios.com

Entry of the King at the Porte Saint-Denis

 by Nicholas Joseph Vergnaux

Musee Carnevallet

Image:1st-art-gallery
                                                

  
The ceremonial entry of King Louis XVIII into Paris  A detail of  Melling’s painting of the scene. Brunot's equestrian statue of King Henri IV on the Pont Neuf as seen  here replaced the seventeenth-century original that was destroyed during the Revolution.

Image:sites.google.com

A contemporary French print of the entry of the King and Royal Family

Image: Bridgeman art Callery/ easyart.com

The procession through the streets
Drawn by Courvoisier, engraved by Dubois 

Image: gallica.bnf.fr 

The Duke of Berry returns to the Tuilleries through the Place Vendome

 by Nicholas Joseph Vergnaux

Musee Carnevallet

Image:1st-art-gallery
                              

When the Royal party finally arrived at the Tuilleries the emotion of the occasion was to prove too much for Madame Royale on her return to the city which had seen the murder of her parents, aunt and brother by the revolutionaries and she fainted. One can hardly be surprised considering what she had witnessed or been subjected to in the city in the years after 1789 before her release from the Temple in 1795. 

Nonetheless the Restoration had taken place. The next year witnessed the Hundred Days, but the Bourbons were to return again. Asked if the Crown was secure King Louis opined, in his mordant fashion, that if he outlived his brother it was, but if his brother outlived him he could not be sure. The pity is that there was the 1830 revolution, and no satisfactory Restoration after that  - well not so far...

Image:Wikipedia

Vive Le Roi!

Return of the Bourbons in 1814

Allegory of the Return of the Bourbons on 24 April 1814:Louis XVIII Lifting France from Its Ruins 

A painting by Louis-Philippe Crépin at Versailles

Image:Wikipedia

Today is the two hundredth anniversary of the return of the Bourbon dynasty to France in the restoration of 1814. King Louis XVIII returned to his kingdom at Calais, entering Paris on May 3rd.

In this allegorical painting the King, robed and crowned - he was in fact never to be have a coronation at Rheims due to his physical incapacity - is shown raising a somewhat distree personification of France. He is surrounded by his relatives, with, on the left, the seated figure of Madame Royale, Marie-Thérèse, daughter of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, who had been married to her cousin Louis, Duc d'Angoulème, who stands beside her, and who was the elder son of the King's younger brother Count of Artois, the future King Charles X, who was acting as Lieutenant -General of the Realm in anticipation of King Louis' return.

The Royal Sovereign conveying King Louis XVIII to France 24 April 1814

 Nicholas Pocock

Image; Magnolia Box

At Burton Constable Hall in Yorkshire there is a small painting of the return of the French royal family which is not an allegory but appears to be a more direct, if dramatic, representation of the return. In it the seated King Louis XVIII and Madame Royale are presented with three lilies, symbolic of the kingdom whilst still on board their ship, the Royal Sovereign. A fascinating little picture to find amongst the other treasures of that very interesting country house.

 

The Arrival of King Louis XVIII at Calais in 1814

Edward Bird (1772-1819)

Image: BBC Your Pictures

The misfortune of France, in my opinion, since 1814 is that the Restoration celebrated in these images was not to last - consolidated under King Louis XVIII, jeopardised by King Charles X and his advisors, but not such that it might not have endured it was to be followed by a whole series of constitional experiments from 1830 onwards that have done little for the country, and at times its survival has indeed been in question. It is the enduring strengths of France, and they are far older than anything set off in 1789, which have enabled it to survive, and it is those which attract me on my visits.

Vive le Roi!