Louis Philippe

Chapter X

The Adventures of the Duchessde Berri

Louis Philippe had scarcely taken his seat upon the throne ere he found himself involved in apparently inextricable embarrassments. Legitimists and Republicans were alike hostile to his reign. That he might conciliate the surrounding dynasties, and save himself from such a coalition of crowned heads as crushed Napoleon I., he felt constrained to avow political principles and adopt measures which exasperated the Republicans, and yet did not reconcile the Legitimists to what they deemed his usurpation. Notwithstanding the most rigid censorship of the press France has ever known, the Government was assailed in various ways, continuously and mercilessly, with rancor which could scarcely be surpassed.

Death of General Lamarque.

On the 1st of June, 1832, General Lamarque died – one of the most distinguished generals of the Empire. He had gained great popularity by his eloquent speeches in the tribune in favor of the rights of the people. Napoleon, at St. Helena, spoke of him in the highest terms of commendation. His death occurred just at the moment when Paris was on the eve of an insurrection, and it was immediately resolved to take advantage of the immense gathering which would be assembled at his funeral to raise the banner of revolt. A meeting of all the opposition had just been held at the house of the banker, M. Lafitte, who had been so influential an agent in crowning the Duke of Orleans. A committee had been appointed, consisting of Lafayette, Odillon Barrot, M. Manguin, and others of similar influence and rank, to draw up an address to the nation. All the leaders of the popular committees were very busy in preparation for the outbreak, and arms were secretly distributed and officers appointed, that they might act with efficiency should they be brought into collision with the royal troops.

The funeral.

The funeral took place on the 5th of June. It was one of the most imposing spectacles Paris had ever witnessed – assembling, apparently, the whole population of the metropolis, with thousands from the provinces. A magnificent car, decorated with tri-color flags, bore the remains. The procession moved from the house of the deceased through the Rue St. Honoré to the Church of the Madeleine, and thence, by way of the teeming Boulevards, to the Place of the Bastile, where several funeral orations were pronounced, and where the body was received, to be taken to its place of burial in the south of France. All the Republican and Democratic clubs turned out in full strength. The Chamber of Deputies was present. Banners, inscribed with exciting popular devices, floated in the air.

Strength of the royal forces.

The police of Paris was maintained by two thousand municipal guards. In anticipation of an outbreak, the Government had summoned into the squares of the city an additional force of twenty-two thousand troops, consisting of eighteen thousand infantry, four thousand cavalry, and eighty pieces of cannon. And, as an additional precaution, there was a reserve of thirty thousand troops stationed in the vicinity of Paris who could in an hour be brought into the streets. Apparently here was ample force to crush any uprising of the populace.

But, on the other hand, the populace could easily rally an enthusiastic mass of one hundred thousand men. Large numbers of these were accustomed, in their clubs, to act in concert. Their leaders were appointed – each one having his special duty assigned to him. Not a few of these were veteran soldiers, who had served their term in the army, and there were military men of distinction to lead them. The forces, therefore, which might be brought into collision were not very unequal.

Movement of the procession.

The immense procession commenced its movement at ten o'clock in the morning. The whole city was in excitement. All hearts were oppressed with the conviction that tumultuous scenes might be witnessed before the sun should go down. When the head of the procession reached the Place Vendôme, it was turned from its contemplated course, so as to pass up through the Place and the Rue de la Paix to the Boulevards, thus marching beneath the shadow of the magnificent column of Austerlitz, which has given the Place Vendôme world-wide renown.

Cries of Vive la République began now to be heard. A hundred and fifty pupils of the celebrated military school, the Polytechnic, joined the procession, shouting "Vive la Liberte!" These shouts were soon followed by the still more ominous cry, "A bas Louis Philippe!" "Vive Lafayette!" The storm of popular excitement was rapidly rising.

When the funeral-car had reached its point of destination, near the bridge of Austerlitz, where the remains were to be transferred to those who would carry them to their distant place of burial, several brief funeral orations were pronounced, adroitly calculated still more intensely to arouse popular feeling. A Polish refugee, General Uminski, in an impassioned harangue, said:

Speech of General Uminski.

"Lamarque, you were the worthy representative of the people. You were ours. You belonged to the human race. All people who love freedom will shed tears at your tomb. In raising your noble voice for Poland, you served the cause of all nations as well as France. You served the cause of liberty – that of the interests dearest to humanity. You defended it against the Holy Alliance, which grew up on the tomb of Poland, and which will never cease to threaten the liberties of the world till the crime which cemented it shall have been effaced by the resurrection of its unfortunate victim."29

Advance of the cuirassiers.

The agitation was now indescribable. General Lafayette was urged to repair to the Hôtel de Ville and organize a provisional government. The crowd unharnessed his horses and began, with shouts, to draw him in his carriage through the streets. Suddenly the cry was raised, "The Dragoons!" A mounted squadron of cuirassiers, with glittering swords and coats of mail, in a dense mass which filled the streets, came clattering down at the full charge upon the multitude, cutting right and left. Blood flowed in torrents, and the wounded and the dead were strewn over the pavements. The battle was begun. Fiercely it raged. Barricades were instantly constructed, which arrested the progress of the troops. As by magic, fire-arms appeared in the hands of the populace. Notwithstanding the general tumult and consternation, order emerged from the chaos. Every house became a citadel for the insurgents, and two armies were found confronting each other.

The king and his council, in session at the Tuileries, were greatly alarmed. At three o'clock the tidings were brought that one-third of the metropolis, protected by barricades, was in the possession of the insurgents, and that the aspect of affairs was threatening in the extreme. Orders were transmitted for all the royal troops within thirty miles of Paris to hasten to the capital. The night passed in tumult and terror. Armed bands were surging through the streets. The solemn boom of the tocsin floated mournfully through the air. The shoutings of the populace, and the frequent explosions of artillery and musketry, added to the general dismay and gloom. There was no sleep in Paris that night. Fifty thousand troops of the line and fifty thousand of the National Guard were marching to their appointed places of rendezvous in preparation for the deadly strife which the morrow would certainly usher in. The populace were no less busy, organizing in military bands, collecting arms, throwing up barricades, and seizing important posts. Both parties were alike aware that the Government could place but little reliance upon the National Guard, as many of them were known to be in sympathy with the people.

The Provisional Government.

A provisional government had in reality, as it were, organized itself. While Louis Philippe and his ministers were in session at the Tuileries, Lafayette, M. Lafitte, and other distinguished men, who but a few months before had placed Louis Philippe upon the throne, were in secret assembly at the mansion of M. Lafitte, issuing orders for the overthrow of that throne. Their orders were received by the leaders of the populace, and thus there was unity and efficiency of action.30

During the night there were several bloody conflicts, in which the populace were generally successful. With their head-quarters at the Porte St. Martin, and pushing out their intrenchments on both sides of the river, before the dawn a large part of the city was under their control. The Government forces were mainly concentrated at the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the Hôtel de Ville.

Marshal Soult in command.

Marshal Soult was in command of the royal troops. Wherever his sympathies might be in the peculiar emergency which had risen, he felt bound to be true to his oath and his colors. By ten o'clock in the morning he had eighty thousand men under his command, including six thousand cavalry, with one hundred and twenty pieces of artillery. Strong as this force was, it was none too strong for the occasion. There was great consternation at the Tuileries. To prevent the soldiers of the National Guard from passing over to the people, they were intermingled with the troops of the line.

The conflict.

The conflict which ensued was one of the most terrible ever recorded in the history of insurrections. Thirty thousand compact royal troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, slowly marched along the Boulevards, battering down the barricades, and sweeping the streets with musketry and grape-shot. Another band of thirty thousand traversed, in an equally sanguinary march, the streets which bordered the banks of the Seine. They were to meet at the bridge of Austerlitz.

The houses of Paris are of stone, five or six stories high. Each house became a citadel filled with insurgents, which kept up a deadly fire upon the advancing columns. The slaughter on both sides was dreadful; on either side was equal courage and desperation. A very bloody struggle took place at the Cloister of St. Meri, which strong position the insurgents held with the utmost determination.

The conflict at St. Meri.

"The tocsin," writes Sir Archibald Alison, "incessantly sounded from the Church of St. Meri to call the Republicans to the decisive point; and they were not wanting to the appeal. Young men, children of twelve years of age, old men tottering on the verge of the grave, flocked to the scene of danger and stood side by side with the manly combatants. Never had there been, in the long annals of revolutionary conflicts, such universal enthusiasm and determined resolution on the part of the Republicans."

Before the terrific fire from the windows and from behind the barricade the whole column of royal troops at first recoiled and fled back in confusion. But heavy artillery was brought forward; a breach was battered through the barricade; shells were thrown beyond to scatter the defenders, while an incessant storm of bullets penetrated every window at which an assailant appeared. The royal troops rushed through the breach. Quarter was neither given nor asked. On both sides the ferocity of demons was exhibited. This closed the conflict. The insurrection was crushed. The royal troops admitted a loss in killed and wounded of 417. The loss of the insurgents can never be known, as both the dead and the wounded were generally conveyed away and secreted by their friends.

The insurrection quelled.

On the morning of the 6th, the leaders of the Liberal party were sanguine of success. But the unexpected display of governmental force rendered the revolt hopeless. The leaders, who had been acting in entire secrecy, dispersed, and Alison says that they quietly slipped over to the other side, and sought only to mitigate the victor's wrath. A deputation was appointed by some of the citizens to call upon the king, congratulate him upon his victory, and implore him to temper justice with mercy.

The king angrily replied, "Who is responsible for the blood which has been shed? The miserable wretches who took advantage of the funeral of General Lamarque to attack the Government by open force. The cannons you have heard have demolished the barricades of St. Meri. The revolt is terminated. I do not know why you should suppose that violent measures are to be adopted; but, rely upon it, they are loudly called for. I know that the press is constantly endeavoring to destroy me; but it is by the aid of falsehood. I ask you, is there any person of whom you have ever heard, against whom a greater torrent of calumny has been poured forth than against myself?"31

Severity of the Government.

The next morning a decree was issued ordering all the printing-presses opposed to the Government to be broken to pieces, and substituting courts-martial instead of the ordinary tribunals to try all cases connected with the insurrection. The Government regarded the movement as a combined attempt of the Republicans and the Legitimists. Hence Garnier Pagés, the Democrat, and Viscount Chateaubriand, the Bourbonist, found themselves arrested as accomplices in the same rebellion.

Three days after, on the 10th of June, Chateaubriand wrote from his prison to M. Bertin, editor of Le Journal des Débats, that he had refused to take the oath of allegiance to Louis Philippe, first because his government was not founded upon legitimate succession, and second, that it was not founded on popular sovereignty.

A few weeks after this, upon his release, Chateaubriand visited the young prince, Louis Napoleon, who, in studious retirement, was residing with his mother, Queen Hortense, in their beautiful retreat at Arnemberg, on the Lake of Constance. The prince had just published a work entitled "Political Reveries," in which he took the ground that the voice of the people is the legitimate foundation of all government; that the people, in the exercise of universal suffrage, should decide upon their form of government and choose their rulers. Chateaubriand read this treatise with much interest, suggested the substitution of the word nation for that of people, and became personally the warm friend of the young prince, though still adhering to the doctrine of legitimacy and to his allegiance to the Bourbons.32

Numerous prosecutions.

The government of Louis Philippe pursued and punished with the greatest energy those engaged in the revolt. "The number of the prosecutions," writes Alison, "exceeded any thing previously witnessed, not merely in French, but in European history. The restrictions complained of during the Restoration were as nothing compared to it. From the accession of Louis Philippe to the 1st of October, a period of a little more than two years, there occurred in France 281 seizures of journals and 251 judgments upon them. No less than 81 journals had been condemned, of which 41 were in Paris alone. The total number of months of imprisonment inflicted on editors of journals during this period was 1226, and the amount of fines levied 347,550 francs [$80,000]. This is perhaps the hottest warfare, without the aid of the censorship, ever yet waged, during so short a period, against the liberty of the press. The system of Louis Philippe was to bring incessant prosecutions against the parties responsible for journals, without caring much whether they were successful or not, hoping that he should wear them out by the trouble and expense of conducting their defenses."33

The Duchess de Berri.

Thus terminated the Republican attempt to overthrow the throne of Louis Philippe. And now let us turn to an attempt of the Legitimists to accomplish the same end. About eleven months after the enthronement of Louis Philippe, in March, 1831, the Duchess de Berri, having obtained the reluctant consent of Charles X., set out from Scotland for the south of France, to promote a rising of the Bourbon party there in favor of the Duke of Bordeaux – whom we shall hereafter call by his present title, the Count de Chambord – and to march upon Paris. The Legitimist party was rich, and was supported generally by the clergy and by the peasantry. In the south of France and in La Vendée that party was very strong.

Statement of Louis Blanc.

"The idea of crossing the sea at the head of faithful paladins; of landing after the perils and adventures of an unexpected voyage, in a country of knights-errant; of eluding, by a thousand disguises, the vigilance of the watchful enemies through whom she had to pass; of wandering, a devoted mother and banished queen, from hamlet to hamlet, and chateau to chateau; of testing humanity, high and low, on the romantic side, and, at the end of a victorious conspiracy, of rearing in France the standard of the monarchy – all this was too dazzling not to captivate a young and high-spirited woman, bold through very ignorance of the obstacles she had to surmount, heroic in the hour of danger through levity; able to endure all but ennui, and ready to lull any misgivings with the casuistry of a mother's love."34

The ex-king, Charles X., who, having abdicated, had no power to nominate to the regency, still issued a decree, dated Edinburgh, March 8th, 1831, by which he authorized "a proclamation in favor of Henry V., in which it shall be announced that Madame, Duchess de Berri, is to be regent of the kingdom during the minority of her son."35

The reception of the duchess in Italy.

The duchess, assuming the title of Countess of Segana, crossed over to Holland, and, ascending the Rhine and traversing the Tyrol, safely reached Genoa. The King of Sardinia, Charles Albert, received her kindly, and loaned her a million francs. But the French consul discovered her through her disguise, and by order of the French Court the Sardinian king felt constrained to request her to withdraw from his domains.