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CHARLES X. AND THE DAYS OF JULY.

Louis XVIII. in 1815 returned to his throne, borne on the shoulders of foreign soldiers, after the fight at Waterloo. The allied armies had a second time entered France to make her pass under the saws and harrows of humiliation. Paris was gay, for money was spent freely by the invading strangers. Sacrifices on the altar of the Emperor were over; enthusiasm for the extension of the great ideas of the Revolution had passed away; a new generation had been born which cared more for material prosperity than for such ideas; the foundation of many fortunes had been laid; mothers who dreaded the conscription, and men weary of war and politics, drew a long breath, and did not regret the loss of that which had animated a preceding generation, in a view of a peace which was to bring wealth, comfort, and tranquillity into their own homes.

The bourgeoisie of France trusted that it had seen the last of the Great Revolution. It stood between the working-classes, who had no voice in the politics of the Restoration, and the old nobility—men who had returned to France full of exalted expectations. The king had to place himself on one side or the other. He might have been the true Bourbon and headed the party of the returned émigrés—in which case his crown would not have stayed long upon his head; or he might have made himself king of the bourgeoisie, opposed to revolution, Napoleonism, or disturbances of any kind—the party, in short, of the Restoration of Peace: a peace that might outlast his time; et après moi le déluge!

But animals which show neither teeth nor claws are seldom left in peace, and Louis XVIII.'s reign—from 1814 to 1824—was full of conspiracies. The royalty of the Restoration was only an ornament tacked on to France. The Bourbon dynasty was a necessary evil, even in the eyes of its supporters. "The Bourbons," said Chateaubriand, "are the foam on the revolutionary wave that has brought them back to power;" whilst every one knows Talleyrand's famous saying "that after five and twenty years of exile they had nothing remembered and nothing forgot." Of course the old nobility, who flocked back to France in the train of the allied armies, expected 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 to me.' Laffitte still fought shy of it, hesitated, deliberated, and at last decided that he would have nothing at all to do with it."

[Footnote 1: Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Two Hemispheres.]

Here the gentleman to whom Lafayette was speaking exclaimed, "If any one had told me this but yourself, General, I would not have believed it."

Lafayette merely answered, "It was really so,"—a proof, thinks the narrator, how fiercely the fire of revolution still burned in the old man's soul.

The last months of Louis XVIII.'s life were embittered by changes of ministry from semi-liberal to ultra-royalist, and by attempts of the officers of the Crown to prosecute the newspapers for free-speaking. He died, after a few days of illness and extreme suffering, Sept. 15, 1824, and was succeeded by the Comte d'Artois, his brother, as Charles X. This was the third time three brothers had succeeded each other on the French throne.

Charles X. was another James II., with cold, harsh, narrow ideas of religion, though religion had not influenced his early life in matters of morality. He was, as I have said, a widower, with one remaining son, the Duc d'Angoulême, and a little grandson, the son of the Duc de Berri. His two daughters-in-law, the Duchesse d'Angoulême and the Duchesse de Berri, were as unlike each other as two women could be—the one being an unattractive saint, the other a fascinating sinner.

Charles X. was not like his brother—distracted between two policies and two opinions. He was an ultra-royalist. He believed that to the victors belong the spoils; and as Bourbonism had triumphed, he wanted to stamp out every remnant of the Revolution. Constitutionalism, the leading idea of the day, was hateful to him. He is said to have remarked, "I had rather earn my bread than be a king of England!" He probably held the same ideas concerning royal prerogative as those of his cousin, the king of Naples, expressed in a letter found after the sack of the Tuileries in 1848.

"Liberty is fatal to the house of Bourbon; and as regards myself, I am resolved to avoid, at any price, the fate of Louis XVI. My people obey force, and bend their necks; but woe to me if they should ever raise them under the impulse of those dreams which sound so fine in the sermons of philosophers, and which it is impossible to put in practice. With God's blessing, I will give prosperity to my people, and a government as honest as they have a right to expect; but I will be a king—and that always!"

Charles X. was on the throne six years. He was a fine-looking man and a splendid horseman—which at first pleased the Parisians, who had been disgusted with the unwieldiness and lack of royal presence in Louis XVIII. His first act was a concession they little expected, and one calculated to render him popular. He abridged the powers of the censors of the Press. His minister at this time was M. de Villèle, a man of whom it has been said that he had a genius for trifles; but M. de Villèle having been defeated on some measures that he brought before the Chamber of Deputies, Charles X. was glad to remove him, and to appoint as his prime minister his favorite, the Prince de Polignac. Charles Greville, who was in Paris at the time of this appointment, writes: "Nothing can exceed the violence of feeling that prevails. The king does nothing but cry; Polignac is said to have the fatal obstinacy of a martyr, the worst courage of the ruat cœlum sort."

CHARLES X.

Six months later Greville writes: "Nobody has an idea how things will turn out, or what are Polignac's intentions or his resources." He appeared calm and well satisfied, saying to those who claimed the right to question him, that all would be well, though all France and a clear majority in the Chambers were against him. "I am told," says Charles Greville, "that there is no revolutionary spirit abroad, but a strong determination to provide for the stability of existing institutions, and disgust at the obstinacy and the pretensions of the king. It seems also that a desire to substitute the Orleans for the reigning branch is becoming very general. It is said that Polignac is wholly ignorant of France, and will not listen to the opinions of those who could enlighten him. It is supposed that Charles X. is determined to push matters to extremity; to try the Chambers, and if his ministers are beaten, to dissolve the House and to govern par ordonnances du roi." This prophecy, written in March, 1830, foreshadowed exactly what happened in July of the same year, when, as an outspoken English Tory told Henry Crabb Robinson, in a reading-room at Florence: "The king of France has sent the deputies about their business, has abolished the d——d Constitution and the liberty of the Press, and proclaimed his own power as absolute king."

"And what will the end be?" cried Robinson.

"It will end," said a Frenchman who was present, "in driving the Bourbons out of France!"

During the last months of Charles X.'s reign France made an expedition against the Dey of Algiers, which was the first step in the conquest of Algeria. The immediate object of the expedition, however, was to draw off the attention of a disaffected nation from local politics. An army of 57,000 soldiers, 103 ships of war, and many transports, was despatched to the coast of Barbary. The expedition was not very glorious, but it was successful. Te Deums were sung in Paris, the general in command was made a marshal, and his naval colleague a peer.

The royalists of France were at this period divided into two parties; the party of the king and Polignac, who were governed by the Jesuits, looked for support to the clergy of France. The other party looked to the army. Yet the most religious men in the country—men like M. de la Ferronays, for example—condemned and regretted the obstinacy of the king.

Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleans, on whom all eyes were fixed, was the son of that infamous Duke of Orleans who in the Revolution proclaimed himself a republican, took the name of Philippe Égalité, and voted for the execution of the king, drawing down upon himself the rebuke of the next Jacobin whose turn it was to vote in the convention, who exclaimed: "I was going to vote Yes, but I vote No, that I may not tread in the steps of the man who has voted before me."

Égalité was in the end a victim. He perished, after suffering great poverty, leaving three sons and a daughter. The sons were Louis Philippe, who became Duke of Orleans, the Comte de Beaujolais, and the Duc de Montpensier. One of these had shared the imprisonment of his father, and narrowly escaped the guillotine.

Louis Philippe had solicited from the Republic permission to serve under Dumouriez in his celebrated campaign in the Low Countries. He fought with distinguished bravery at Valmy and Jemappes as Dumouriez's aide-de-camp; but when that general was forced to desert his army and escape for his life, Louis Philippe made his escape too. He went into Switzerland, and there taught mathematics in a school. Thence he came to America, travelled through the United States, and resided for some time at Brooklyn.

In 1808 he went out to the Mediterranean in an English man-of-war in charge of his sick brother, the Comte de Beaujolais. The same vessel carried Sir John Moore out to his command, and landed him at Lisbon. Louis Philippe could not have had a very pleasant voyage, for the English admiral, on board whose ship he was a passenger, came up one day in a rage upon the quarter-deck, and declared aloud, in the hearing of his officers, that the Duke of Orleans was such a d——d republican he could not sit at the same table with him.[1]

[Footnote 1: My father was present, and often told the story]

There used to be stories floating about Paris concerning Louis Philippe's birth and parentage—stories, however, not to be believed, and which broke down upon investigation. These made him out to be the son of an Italian jailer, exchanged for a little girl who had been born to the Duke of Orleans and his wife at a time when it was a great object with them to have a son. The little girl grew up in the jailer Chiappini's house under the name of Maria Stella Petronilla. There is little doubt that she was a changeling, but the link is imperfect which would connect her with the Duke and Duchess of Orleans. She was ill-treated by the jailer's wife, but was very beautiful. Lord Newburgh, an English nobleman, saw her and married her. Her son succeeded his father as a peer of England. After Lord Newburgh's death his widow married a Russian nobleman. Chiappini on his death-bed confessed to this lady all he knew about her origin, and she persuaded herself that her father must have been the Duke of Orleans. She took up her residence in the Rue Rivoli, overlooking the gardens of the Tuileries, and received some small pension from the benevolent royal family of France. She died in 1845.

But whoever the mother of Louis Philippe may have been, she whom he and Madame Adélaide looked up to and loved as though she had been their second mother, was Madame de Genlis. In her company Louis Philippe witnessed, with boyish exultation, the destruction of the Bastile. To her he wrote after the great day when in the Champ de Mars the new Constitution was sworn to both by king and people: "Oh, my mother! there are but two things that I supremely love—the new constitution and you!"

On Christmas Day, 1809, he married at Palermo the Princesse Marie Amélie, niece to Marie Antoinette, and aunt to the future Duchesse de Berri.

No breath of scandal ever disturbed the matrimonal happiness of Louis Philippe and Marie Amélie. They had a noble family of five sons and three daughters, all distinguished by their ability and virtues. I shall have to tell hereafter how devotion to the interests of his family was one cause of Louis Philippe's overthrow.

In 1814, when Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau; Louis Philippe left Palermo, attended only by one servant, and made his way to Paris and the home of his family, the Palais Royal. He hurried into the house, and in spite of the opposition of the concierge, who took him for a madman, he rushed to the staircase; but before he ascended it he fell upon his knees, and bursting into tears, kissed the first step before him.

This was probably the most French-like thing in Louis Philippe's career. He was far more like an Englishman than a Frenchman. Had he been an English prince, his faults would have seemed to his people like virtues.

Of course the son of Égalité could be no favorite with the elder Bourbons; but he soon became the hope of the middle classes, and was very intimate with Laffitte the banker, and with Lafayette, who, as we have seen, were both implicated in conspiracies seven years before the Revolution of 1830. He was for many years not rich, but he and the ladies of his house were very charitable. Madame Adélaïde, speaking one day to a friend[1] of the reports that were circulated concerning her brother's parsimony, said—

"People ask what he does with his money. To satisfy them it would be necessary to publish the names of honorable friends of liberty who, in consequence of misfortunes, have solicited and obtained from him sums of twenty, thirty, forty, and even three hundred thousand francs. They forget all the extraordinary expenses my brother has had to meet, all the demands he has to comply with. Out of his income he has furnished the Palais Royal, improved the apanages of the House of Orleans; and yet sooner or later all this property will revert to the nation. When we returned to France our inheritance was so encumbered that my brother was advised to decline administering on the estate; but to that neither he nor I would consent. For all these things people make no allowances. Truly, we know not how to act to inspire the confidence which our opinions and our consciences tell us we fully deserve."

[Footnote 1: M. Appert, chaplain to Queen Marie Amélie.]

LOUIS PHILLIPPE. (Duke of Orleans.)

It is not necessary in a sketch so brief to go minutely into politics. Prince Polignac and the king dissolved the Chambers, having found the deputies unwilling to approve their acts, and a few days afterwards the king published his own will and pleasure in what were called Les Ordonnances du Roi. One of these restricted the liberty of the Press, and was directed against journalism; another provider new rules, by which the ministry might secure a more subservient Chamber.

As we have seen, these ordonnances even in foreign countries spread dismay. The revolution that ensued was the revolution of the great bankers and the business men—the haute bourgeoisie. In general, revolutions are opposed by the moneyed classes; but this was a revolution effected by them to save themselves and their property from such an outbreak as came forty years later, which we call the Commune. The working-classes had little to do with the Revolution of 1830, except, indeed, to fight for it, nor had they much to do with the Revolution of 1848. It was the moneyed men of France who saw that the resuscitated principles of the old régime had been stretched to their very uttermost all over Europe, and that if they did not check them by a well-conducted revolution, worse would be sure to come.

On July 26, 1830, the ordonnances appeared. The working-classes seemed to hear of them without emotion; but their effect on all those who had any stake in the prosperity of the country was very great. By nightfall the agitation had spread in Paris to all classes. King Charles X. was at Saint-Cloud, apparently apprehending no popular outbreak. No military preparations in case of disturbances had been made, though on the morning of the 26th the Duc d'Angoulême sent word to Marshal Marmont to take command of the troops in Paris, "as there might be some windows broken during the day."

The next morning trouble was begun by the journeymen printers, who, as the newspapers on which they worked had been prohibited, were sent home from their printing-offices. Before long they were joined by others, notably by the cadets from the Polytechnic School. Casimir Perrier and Laffitte were considered chiefs of the revolution. The cry was everywhere "Vive la Charte,"—a compendium that had been drawn up of the franchises and privileges of Frenchmen. M. Thiers, then young, counselled moderation in the emergency.

On July 28 the tricolored flag was again unfurled in Paris—those colors dear to Frenchmen, who had long hated the white flag, which represented in their eyes despotism and the rule of the Bourbons! The National Guard (or militia) was called out, and the populace began erecting barricades.

It is surprising how rapidly in an emergency a barricade can be formed. A carriage or two is overturned, furniture is brought out from neighboring houses, a large tree, if available, is cut down, and the whole is strengthened with paving-stones. By night all Paris had become a field of battle.

In vain Marshal Marmont had sent courier after courier to Saint-Cloud, imploring the king and his ministers to do something that might allay the fury of the people. No answer was returned. The marshal went himself at last, and the king, after listening to his representation of the state of Paris, said calmly: "Then it is really a revolt?" "No, sire," replied Marmont; "it is not a revolt, but a revolution."

As soon as the idea of ruin broke upon the royal household, everything at Saint-Cloud became confusion and despair. The Duchesse de Berri wanted to take her son, the Duc de Bordeaux, into Paris, hoping that the people would rally round a woman and the young heir to the throne. Some implored the king to treat with the insurgents; some to put himself at the head of his troops; some to sacrifice the ordonnances and the most obnoxious of his ministers.

The Parisian mob by this time had its blood up. It fought with any weapons that came to hand. Muskets were loaded with type seized in the printing-offices. At the Hôtel-de-Ville, Laffitte, Lafayette, and other leading men opposed to the policy of Charles X. were assembled in council.

The troops at first fought in their king's cause bravely, but without enthusiasm. Subsequently the Duke of Wellington was asked if he could not have suppressed the revolution with the garrison of Paris, which was twenty thousand men. He answered, "Easily; but then they must have been fighting for a cause they had at heart."

The fight continued all the night of the 28th, bloody and furious. By morning the soldiers were short of ammunition. As usual, the Swiss Guard was stanch, but the French soldiers faltered. About midday of the 29th two regiments went over to the insurgents.

Two peers were at this juncture sent to negotiate with the royal family. The ministers, with Polignac at their head, went out also to Saint-Cloud. "Sire," said one of the negotiators, "if in an hour the ordonnances are not rescinded, there will be neither king nor kingdom." "Could you not offer me two hours?" said the king, sarcastically, as he turned to leave the chamber. The envoy, an old man, fell on his knees and seized the skirt of the king's coat. "Think of the dauphine!" he cried, imploringly. The king seemed moved, but made no answer.

In Paris, Marmont, whose heart was with the insurgents, endeavored nevertheless to do his duty; but his troops deserted him. On learning this, Talleyrand walked up to his clock, saying solemnly: "Take notice that on July 29, 1830, at five minutes past twelve o'clock, the elder branch of the Bourbons ceased to reign."

The Louvre was taken, and the Tuileries. There was no general pillage, the insurgents contenting themselves with breaking the statues of kings and other signs of royalty.

One of the most obnoxious persons in Paris was the archbishop. The mob fought to the music of "Ça ira." with new words:—

"C'est l'Archevêque de Paris

Qui est Jésuite comme Charles Dix.

Dansons la Carmagnole; dansons la Carmagnole,

Et ça ira!"

There were deeds of heroism, deeds of self-sacrifice. deeds of loyalty, deeds of cruelty, and deeds of mercy, as there always are in Paris in times of revolution. By nightfall on the 29th the fighting was over. It only remained to be seen what would be done with the victory. The evening before, Laffitte had sent a messenger to Louis Philippe, then residing two miles from Paris, at his Château de Neuilly, warning him to hold himself in readiness for anything that might occur. Lafayette had been made governor of Paris, and thus held in his hand the destinies of France. Under him served an improvised municipal commune.

By this time Prince Polignac had been dismissed, and the Duc de Montemart had been summoned by the king to form a more liberal ministry. Everything was in confusion in the palace. The weary troops, who had marched to the defence of Saint-Cloud when the struggle in Paris became hopeless, were scattered about the park unfed and uncared-for.

The king, having at last made up his mind to yield, sent the envoys who had been despatched to him, back to Paris, saying: "Go, gentlemen, go; tell the Parisians that the king revokes the ordonnances. But I declare to you that I believe this step will be fatal to the interests of France and of the monarchy."

The envoys on reaching Paris were met by the words: "Too late! The throne of Charles X. has already passed from him in blood."

The king, however, confident that after such concessions the revolt was at an end, played whist during the evening, while the Duc d'Angoulême sat looking over a book of geography. At midnight, however, both were awakened to hear the news from Paris, and then Charles X.'s confidence gave way. He summoned his new prime minister and sent him on a mission to the capital. The Duc d'Angoulême, however, who was opposed to any compromise with rebels, would not suffer the minister to pass his outposts. The Duc de Montemart, anxious to execute his mission, walked all night round the outskirts of Paris, and entered it at last on the side opposite to Saint-Cloud. The city lay in the profound silence of the hour before day.[1]

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc, Dix Ans. Histoire de trente heures, 1830.]

The question of who should succeed Charles X. had already been debated in Laffitte's chamber. Laffitte declared himself for Louis Philippe, the Duke of Orleans. Some were for the son of Napoleon. Many were for the Duc de Bordeaux, with Louis Philippe during his minority as lieutenant-general of the kingdom. "That might have been yesterday," said M. Laffitte, "if the Duchesse de Berri, separating her son's cause from that of his grandfather, had presented herself in Paris, holding Henri V. in one hand, and in the other the tricolor." "The tricolor!" exclaimed the others; "why, they look upon the tricolor as the symbol of all crimes!" "Then what can be done for them?" replied Laffitte.

At this crisis the poet Béranger threw all his influence into the party of the Duke of Orleans, and almost at the same moment appeared a placard on all the walls of Paris:—

"Charles X. is deposed.

A Republic would embroil us with all Europe.

The Duke of Orleans is devoted to the cause of the Revolution.

The Duke of Orleans never made war on France.

The Duke of Orleans fought at Jemappes.

The Duke of Orleans will be a Citizen-King.

The Duke of Orleans has worn the tricolor under fire: he

will wear the tricolor as king."

Meantime, early on the evening of the 29th, Neuilly had been menaced by the troops under the Duc d'Angoulême, and Madame Adélaïde had persuaded her brother to quit the place. When M. Thiers and the artist, Ary Scheffer, arrived at Neuilly, bearing a request that the Duke of Orleans would appear in Paris, Marie Amélie received them. Aunt to the Duchesse de Berri and attached to the reigning family, she was shocked by the idea that her husband and her children might rise upon their fall; but Madame Adélaïde exclaimed: "Let the Parisians make my brother what they please—President, Garde National, or Lieutenant-General—so long as they do not make him an exile."

Louis Philippe, who was at Raincy (or supposed to be there, for the envoys always believed he was behind a curtain during their interview with his wife and sister), having received a message from Madame Adélaïde, set out soon after for Paris. The resolution of the leaders of the Revolution had been taken, but in the Municipal Commune at the Hôtel-de-Ville there was still much excitement. There a party desired a republic, and offered to place Lafayette at its head.

At Saint-Cloud the Duchesse de Berri and her son had been sent off to the Trianon; but the king remained behind. He referred everything to the dauphin (the Duc d'Angoulême); the dauphin referred everything to the king.

The dauphin's temper was imperious, and at this crisis it involved him in a personal collision with Marshal Marmont. In attempting to tear the marshal's sword from his side, he cut his fingers. At sight of the royal blood the marshal was arrested, and led away as a traitor. The king, however, at once released him, with apologies.

When the leaders in Paris had decided to offer the lieutenant-generalship of France to Louis Philippe during the minority of the Duc de Bordeaux, he could not be found. He was not at Raincy, he was not at Neuilly. About midnight, July 29, he entered Paris on foot and in plain clothes, having clambered over the barricades. He at once made his way to his own residence, the Palais Royal, and there waited events.

At the same moment the Duchesse de Berri was leaving Saint-Cloud with her son. Before daylight Charles X. followed them to the Trianon; and the soldiers in the Park at Saint-Cloud, who for twenty-four hours had eaten nothing, were breaking their fast on dainties brought out from the royal kitchen.

The proposal that Louis Philippe should accept the lieutenant-generalship was brought to him on the morning of July 30, after the proposition had first been submitted to Talleyrand, who said briefly: "Let him accept it." Louis Philippe did so, accepting at the same time the tricolor, and promising a charter which should guarantee parliamentary privileges. He soon after appeared at a window of the Hôtel-de-Ville, attended by Lafayette and Laffitte, bearing the tricolored flag between them, and was received with acclamations by the people. But there were men in Paris who still desired a republic, with Lafayette at its head. Lafayette persisted in assuring them that what France wanted was a king surrounded by republican institutions, and he commended Louis Philippe to them as "the best of republics." This idea in a few hours rapidly gained ground.

By midday on July 30th Paris was resuming its usual aspect. Charles X., finding that the household troops were no longer to be depended on, determined to retreat over the frontier, and left the Trianon for the small palace of Rambouillet, where Marie Louise and the King of Rome had sought refuge in the first hours of their adversity.

The king reached Rambouillet in advance of the news from Paris,[1] and great was the surprise of the guardian of the Château to see him drive up in a carriage and pair with only one servant to attend him. The king pushed past the keeper of the palace, who was walking slowly backward before him, and turned abruptly into a small room on the ground floor, where he locked himself in and remained for many hours. When he came forth, his figure seemed to have shrunk, his complexion was gray, his eyes were red and swollen. He had spent his time in burning up old love-letters—reminiscences of a lady to whom he had been deeply attached in his youth.

[Footnote 1: All the Year Round, 1885.]

The mob of Paris having ascertained that the fugitive royal family were pausing at Rambouillet, about twelve miles from the capital, set out to see what mischief could be done in that direction. The Duchesse de Berri, her children, and the Duc d'Angoulême were at the Château de Maintenon, and the king, upon the approach of the mob, composed only of roughs, determined to join them. As he passed out of the chateau, which he had used as a hunting-lodge, he stretched out his hand with a gesture of despair to grasp those of some friends who had followed him to Rambouillet, and who were waiting for his orders. He had none to give them. He spoke no word of advice, but walked down the steps to his carriage, and was driven to the Château de Maintenon to rejoin his family.

The mob, when it found that the king had fled, was persuaded to quit Rambouillet by having some of the most brutal among them put into the king's coaches. Attended by the rest of the unruly crowd, they were driven back to Paris, and assembling before the Palais Royal, shouted to Louis Philippe: "We have brought you your coaches. Come out and receive them!" Eighteen years later, these coaches were consumed in a bonfire in the Place du Carrousel.

At the Château de Maintenon all was confusion and discouragement, when suddenly the dauphine (the Duchesse d'Angoulême) arrived. She, whom Napoleon had said was the only man of her family, was in Burgundy when she received news of the outbreak of the Revolution. At once she crossed several provinces of France in disguise. Harsh of voice, stern of look, cold in her bearing, she was nevertheless a favorite with the household troops whose spirit was reanimated by the sight of her.

From Rambouillet the king had sent his approbation of the appointment of the Duke of Orleans as lieutenant-general during the minority of Henri V. Louis Philippe's answer to this communication so well satisfied the old king that he persuaded the dauphin to join with him in abdicating all rights in favor of Henri V., the little Duc de Bordeaux. Up to this moment Charles seems never to have suspected that more than such an abdication could be required of him. But by this time it was evident that the successful Parisians would be satisfied with nothing less than the utter overthrow of the Bourbons. Their choice lay between a constitutional monarchy with Louis Philippe at its head, or a renewal of the attempt to form a republic.

The populace, on hearing that the abdication of the king and of the dauphin had been announced to the Chamber of Deputies, assembled to the number of sixty thousand, and insisted on the trial and imprisonment of the late king. Hearing this, the royal family left the Château de Maintenon the next morning, the king and the Duchesse d'Angoulême taking leave of their faithful troops, and desiring them to return to Paris, there to make their submission to the lieutenant-general, "who had taken all measures for their security and prosperity in the future."

During the journey to Dreux, Charles X. appeared to those around him to accept his misfortunes from the hand of Heaven. The Duchesse d'Angoulême, pale and self-contained, with all her wounds opened afresh, could hardly bring herself to quit France for the third time. Her husband was stolid and stupid. The Duchesse de Berri was almost gay.

Meantime old stories were being circulated throughout France discrediting the legitimacy of the Duc de Bordeaux, the posthumous son of the Duc de Berri. He had been born seven months after his father's death, at dead of night, with no doctor in attendance, nor any responsible witnesses to attest that he was heir to the crown. Louis Philippe had protested against his legitimacy within a week after his birth. There was no real reason for suspecting his parentage; nobody believes the slander now, but it is not surprising that in times of such excitement, with such great interests at stake, the circumstances attending his birth should have provoked remark. They were both unfortunate and unusual.

Charles X. was the calmest person in the whole royal party. He was chiefly concerned for the comfort of the rest. The dauphine wept, her husband trembled, the children were full of excitement and eager for play. Charles was unmoved, resigned; only the sight of a tricolored flag overcame him.

He complained much of the haste with which he was escorted through France to Cherbourg; but that haste probably insured his safety. At Cherbourg two ships awaited him—the "Great Britain" and the "Charles Carroll;" both were American-built, and both had formed part of the navy of Napoleon.

The day was fine when the royal fugitives embarked. In a few hours they were off the Isle of Wight. For several days they stayed on board, waiting till the English Government should complete arrangements which would enable them to land. They had come away almost without clothes, and the Duchesses of Angoulême and Berri were indebted for an outfit to an ex-ambassadress. The king said to some of those who came on board to see him, that he and his son had retired into private life, and that his grandson must wait the progress of events; also, that his conscience reproached him with nothing in his conduct towards his people.

After a few days the party landed in England and took up their abode at Ludworth Castle. Afterwards, at the king's own request, the old Palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh, was assigned him. There was some fear at the time lest popular feeling should break out in some insult to him or his family. To avert this, Sir Walter Scott, though then in failing health, wrote in a leading Edinburgh newspaper as follows:—

"We are enabled to announce from authority that Charles of Bourbon, the ex-king of France, is about to become once more our fellow-citizen, though probably only for a limited space, and is presently about to inhabit the apartments again that he so long occupied in Holyrood House. This temporary arrangement has been made, it is said, in compliance with his own request, with which our benevolent monarch immediately complied, willing to consult in every way possible the feelings of a prince under pressure of misfortunes, which are perhaps the more severe if incurred through bad advice, error, or rashness. The attendants of the late sovereign will be reduced to the least possible number, and consist chiefly of ladies and children, and his style of life will be strictly retired. In these circumstances it would be unworthy of us as Scotchmen, or as men, if this unfortunate family should meet with a word or a look from the meanest individual tending to aggravate feelings which must be at present so acute as to receive injury from insults, which in other times would be passed over with perfect disregard. His late opponents in his kingdom have gained the applause of Europe for the generosity with which they have used their victory, and the respect which they have paid to themselves in their moderation towards an enemy. It would be a great contrast to that part of their conduct which has been most generally applauded, were we, who are strangers to the strife, to affect a deeper resentment than those concerned more closely. Those who can recollect the former residence of this unhappy prince in our Northern capital cannot but remember the unobtrusive, quiet manner in which his little court was then conducted, and now, still further restricted and diminished, he may naturally expect to be received with civility and respect by a nation whose good will he has done nothing to forfeit. Whatever may have been his errors towards his own subjects, we cannot but remember in his adversity that he did not in his prosperity forget that Edinburgh had extended him her hospitality, but that at the period when the fires consumed so much of our city, he sent a princely benefaction to the sufferers. … If there be any who entertain angry or invidious recollections of late events in France, they ought to remark that the ex-monarch has by his abdication renounced the conflict, into which perhaps he was engaged by bad advice, that he can no longer be an object of resentment to the brave, but remains, to all, the most striking example of the instability of human affairs which our unstable times have afforded. He may say, with our own deposed Richard—

'With mine own hands I washed away my blame;

With mine own hands I gave away my crown;

With my own tongue deny my sacred state.'

"He brings among us his 'gray, discrownèd head,' and in a 'nation of gentlemen,' as we were emphatically termed by the very highest authority, it is impossible, I trust, to find a man mean enough to insult the slightest hair of it."

Charles X. was greatly indebted to this letter for the cordiality of his reception at Edinburgh, where he lived in dignified retirement for about two years; then, finding that the climate was too cold for his old age, and that the English Government was disquieted because of the attempts of the Duchesse de Berri to revive her son's claims to the French throne, he made his way to Bohemia, and lived for a while in the Castle of Prague. At last he decided to make his final residence in the Tyrol, not far from the warm climate of Italy. It is said that as the exiled, aged king cast a last look at the Gothic towers of the Castle of Prague, he said to those about him: "We are leaving yonder walls, and know not to what we may be going, like the patriarchs who knew not as they journeyed where they would pitch their tents."[1]

[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.