Revolution and Reaction - A (very) French Victoria II Interactive AAR

[Nax24]

Chateau de Descombes
1828

Robert Descombes enjoyed the garden. It was here that he could collect his thoughts in peace and quiet, and at his age, an opportunity to have both was well appreciated. He was an elderly man, not the vibrant youth that led his company to wealth, not the young man that married and had two children, not the energized adult that had clients from the nobility down to the common merchant. He could never repeat what he did naught thirty years prior.

The roses were as red as he could imagine. Isabelle loved the roses. When he had this estate built, he made sure that a rose garden was built just for her. He missed her dearly, but the rose garden offered a happy reminder of their life together. As he sat at the table that was in the garden, Alexandre proceeded over.

"Whenever you are not in the house, I always end up finding you here." said Alexandre. Robert did not take his eyes off the roses for a second. Alexandre knew that his mother loved roses. "Some days I wonder if she occasionally comes down from heaven and walks through these gardens." he said as he put his hands on the red flower. "I miss her too..." he said.

"Death is not the end, my son. We live on in the hearts and minds of our descendants, of those who cared about us." said Robert. Alexandre put papers on the table alongside a glass of brandy and a cup of tea, his father never really was the drinker. "What news from Paris?" said Robert, looking over at his son.

"Everything is going to utter shit, as one could imagine. I finalized things with Monsieur Duval over us running the Seine Bank in his stead while he goes to serve in the Government. Other then that, Paris is a muck of scandal, and political nonsense. If they are not talking about bills and ordinances they are talking about the Prince of Conde and how there are two disputing wills in regards to who got what." said Alexandre.

"What do you think on that matter?" asked Robert.

"Did you know that Henri Bourbon is losing his home in this will?" asked Alexandre. "Not to mention that his heir's mother is currently dragging the poor boy to Vienna, poor boy." said Alexandre.

"The state stands against the bastards it seems..." said Robert. "Still, you do have a bad tendency for disregarding the intricate political system our Kingdom currently endures."

"It's all bull shit, all of it!" said Alexandre. "They waste their time voting on the tenth censorship law, they vote on how best to keep people from voting, they vote on where and when a bridge is to be built!" said Alexandre. "It is bull shit because throughout all of this, they act like this is some grand democratic society that the King and God blessed us with, when in reality it is just a guy sitting on a fancy chair dictating what is voted on and what is made into actually law!"

"You are beginning to sound like your Uncle Gregor..." said Robert.

"What, revolutionary Uncle Gregor, the one that gutted a Prussian at Valmy only to get guillotined because he had the tenacity to be a Girondist?" asked Alexandre.

"He wasn't the brightest man in the world, I am afraid..." said Robert.

"Politics is stupid, and that is my opinion on it. It will remain stupid until they stop pretending that this whole thing is somehow democratic." said Alexandre. "You know, in England they have a system that doesn't demonize reform, and won't shoot protesters at first sight."

"You hate politics, yet you sound like a Deputy..." says Robert.

"Just because the system is dumb, doesn't stop one from having opinions on things." said Alexandre.

Robert stood up, and walked back over to the roses. "You have never been chastised for having opinions on matters, Alexandre. But keep in mind, we are a family that lives under the Bourbon crown. Do not let your zeal for change lead you down a dark path, for the most appealing roses tend to have the prickliest of thorns." said Robert.

Alexandre drank his glass of brandy. "Sometimes though the prickliest rose is the only rose in the field." said Alexandre, standing up and walking out of the garden.

 

[Marschalk]

The dinner of the two Saints
((Co-IC with @Dadarian))
​

The Duc de Saint-Aignan was resting in his cabinet in front of the already laid table. The candles were lit, and porcelain dishes were placed on a snow-white tablecloth. Several bottles of wine already stood in an ice-filled bucket. However, the servants did not bring the foods yet, so that they do not become cold before the time comes.

In meanwhile the retired minister was smoking a cigar and leafing through the newspaper in anticipation of the arrival of his guest, Monsieur de Saint-Germain, a famous politician and writer. The Duc de Saint-Aignan did not like what he was reading. It seemed that everything in France was smelling of scandals now -and this stench was disgusting. "When Monsieur de Saint-Germain is here, take him directly to me." - ordered the Duke to his majordomo, when the latter entered to ask if everything is in order. "We'll sup right here." The majordomo shook his grey head - he was an old-fashioned person, and believed that the Duc de Saint-Aignan should eat only in the grand dining room, among the statues and the portraits, and in company of no less than two scores of titled guests, instead of one nontitled. However, he received his instructions – and was going to follow them.

Saint Germain, on the other hand, was impressed by the immense wealth that oozed from the scene. Plates imported from the Far East, bottles of wine worth their weight in silver casually resting in a bucket with ice imported from the British possessions in Northern America. Saint Aignan himself, lazing and smoking on a cigar from across the Atlantic and leafing through a broad leaf in a tremendous dining room. It was certainly rich, although much in the fashion of the First Estate.

Saint Germain was quietly directed to his seat by the duc's majordomo, no doubt a live-in servant of familial duties.

"Monsieur de Saint-Germain, glad to see you! Please, make yourself comfortable." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan stood up to greet the well-known author, before returning to his armchair. Then the nobleman extinguished his cigar and shook off the ashes into the nearby snuffbox. It was extremely old and ugly, as nearly everything made in Prussia. However, for the former Minister it was one of the last memorial items that belonged to his father and managed to survive the revolution. Folding his hands on his chest, the Duc de Saint-Aignan said: "I do hope you will like the creations of my chef. To be honest, I prefer a good piece of roast beef to anything else. But my wife says that I need to improve my tastes. According to her, they were spoiled by the military camps and barracks. " Here the servants brought in the hors d'oeuvres, more or less typical for the French dinners. There were the cheese croquettes with black pepper, the small canapes with the pork rillettes pate, the roulades with ham and parmesan, the stuffed olives and so on. "I must say, that my spouse is extremely fond of your books. Please tell me, are you working on something new as well?" The Duc de Saint-Aignan started with the small talk, before moving to more serious topics.

Saint Germain restrains himself from gorging on the myriad of rich and fantastic hors d'oeuvres available. It's most unseemly to become ill from the consumption of a host's food. At the words of Saint Aignan, Saint Germain smiles demurely.

"Only when I take to fancy, such as the recent play or my biography of good duc Sully. Otherwise I keep myself occupied with the more civil matters of private life."

"Ah, I have read this biography. I must say that I found it fair in many of its evaluations." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan noted, as the servant poured the wine into the glasses. He was now looking at the Monsieur de Saint-Germain inquiringly "And here we come to the paradox of the Sully period – it started as something aimed at uniting the pure royalist movement, and succeeded for several years... but has ended with much more division than there was ever before. I might ask – what was the main reason why it happened, you think?"

Saint Germain spoke bluntly.

"Because of the failure of the Ultraroyalistes to put aside personal vendettas, egos, and robber baron policies in dedication to the King. The Sully Ministry collapsed not from active issues on the part of Sully, but a rather unfortunate failure to contain the splintering royalist causes."

"I agree. At one time Sully was appointed, largely, because he was alien to these vendettas, because he was considered as somebody standing above them. But he spent a few years as the President of the Council - and the swamp sucked him in. Is it a never ending cycle?" - the Duc de Saint-Aignan said. Meanwhile, the steaming soups were brought in three bowls - there was the boullabaiise with lagoustinne, red rascasse and crabs, there was the thick garbure with ham and cabbage and the less nourishing, but more healthy ratatouilles stew with eggplants and tomatoes. "Please try the bouilabaiise, M. de Saint-Germain, as a former member for Marseilles you ought to love it." - the Peer of France joked, before taking a spoon and a loaf of bread. "Anyhow, during the time you were one of the disappointed royalists. You have then spoken of the common royalism. Could you please explain to me, which you meant by that and what issues differed it from the previous royalist creeds?"

Saint Germain ate quicker than Saint Aignan, as one had experienced true hunger before and the other didn't. Inbetween bites Saint-Germain spoke in short sentences.

"Still am to be honest. M. de Bersett is a perfect example. The nobility have shown to be ignorant of the Third Estate. Not enough attention to issues that matter. Too much focus on inane demagoguery. Need to expand the electorate to include the Third Estate truthfully. Bring about education to all Frenchmen. Make bread cheap. Keep wages up. Keep robber barons and the robber bourgeoisie at bay."

"M. de Berstett. This affair stinks like a fishmarket, to be honest. The noble King shielded his government, but we do know there is more to it..." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan shook his head, frowning. Here came the next portion of dishes - the pork tenderloin in the cassini mushroom sauce, the ham and cheese casserole and a roast duck with baked camamber and Marsala gravey. But the Duc de Saint-Aignan was now more interested in the conversation than in the meats. "I do agree that we are in need of a closer connection between these who rule and the ruled. But a matter of suffrage is a very difficult one, if I am to be honest. For many the current suffrage laws are like a wall and they do not know what is behind that wall... and may fear that. Fear the situation getting out of control, as it did during the revolution. Fear that these who lack the education may be manipulated by demagogues. But there is another problem.." The crease on the forehead of the Duc de Saint-Aignan became even more deep. He took a bottle himself and poured his interlocutor some more Burgundy. "The problem is up to now "widening the suffrage" usually meant giving more of it to the bigger and smaller borgouise - and, should we walk this road, it would likely be the same. More rights for the liberal industrial populace - but not,say, for the godly and conservative rural peasants. M. de Saint-Germain, you have been the popular voice of the royalism for many years, you know the masses. Tell me, what kind of the suffrage change you would envision for the current period?"

Saint Germain continues to eat, taking note then ignoring that Saint Aignan had stopped eating.

"Fear of the commoner is weakness. The suffrage needs to be expanded past the robber and petty bourgeoisie to the French masses. They love the King, Church, and the tenants of Royalism. But they will turn away if they are ignored and will become the monsters that the aristocrats fear them to be.

What needs to happen is to instill duty. A desire to serve the King through the vote. As is serving in the military is in the interests of all, so is voting. As the culture develops, so this takes a mind of it's own. Fear will kill the Ultraroyalistes as surely as Bersett's ego. There is no doubt."

"Seeing voting as a duty as an idea clearly quite new to France, since up to now it has been primarily considered as a right." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan remarked, while carefully cutting the tenderloin into pieces. He sipped the wine, before continuing: "The question of expansion of suffrage is, actually, one as much of a form as of the essence. Should accord be achieved here, it needs to be clear to all royalists that it would lead to the greater stability of the Monarchy rather than the strengthening of the liberalism. Doubts can only be defeated by fact and knowledge." The Duc wiped his mouth with the napkin and put the fork and knife aside. "Anyhow, M. de Saint-Germain. Surely you would agree that the current factionalism and disunity is killing us, killing the Royalism? While the royalists within the Chamber fight each other, the left is becoming more united and stronger. I wish that we restore the spirit of cooperation between these of the Right. What do you believe needs to be done so that these who now sit with me, these who are with M. de Sully, these who associated with yourself or M. de Chateaubriande once again starting working together? Or, at least, what is needed to create a working relationship with your political group?"

"I am not some grandiose wielder of power. I have retired from politics. Besides. You and your edges refuse to form a government with Sully and his, so I feel pot and kettle in this matter. Leave it be I continue to work with Sully and M. Chateaubriand in private matters."

"While I am sympathetic towards my brother-in-law and desirious for the unity within the Right, it is hard to overcome the disappointments of the so-called Edges over the last Sully ministry and their distrust towards his person, if not these who are with him. However, I do know that they wish for unity no less than any other royalist grouping." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan noted, as the servants brought in the coffee and desserts. "But perhaps there is a need of a new unifying figure in Presidency, somebody who would not be tarnished by factional politics and disagreements, somebody who is respected by everyone? The leadership of such person could help to once again unify the rightist course and create a stable government."

Saint Germain simply grunted.

"So you feel what we feel. And I imagine."

"I do know that M. de Sully thinks the same. In order to end this deadlock, we need to put aside partisan desires and ambitions. By God, we do not need another royalist majority made useless by our own mistakes." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan suddenly felt very tired, as if the weight of his fifty-seven years suddenly burdened his shoulders. Absent-mindedly. he took a slice of an apple tart poured with whipped cream. "M. de Saint-Germain, it is early to say now, how the events would develop. But I suggest that we, when neccessary, would keep correspondence. The disagreements between these of the Right, should they arise, should be prevented or resolved in the brotherly manner. Otherwise it would only benefit the enemies of the royalism."

St. Germain shrugged.

"Or those within the royalist movement that seek to put themselves forward, ahead of their brothers. I appreciate the words, but I shall treat them as the honey as they are until they are poured onto something sweet to all. I beg you adieu, as I have eaten my due and cannot beg pardon to eat away your imported food any longer.

I will certainly stay in contact however, it should for interesting correspondence."

 

[ThaHoward]

Chamber of Deputies.

"M.President,

Several essays have been written by Deputies and Peers in defense of their proposed legislation or more correct in attack of the Charitsts. The reason I take it to here is so that we can all discuss it under fair terms and not slander eachother through several circulations. One claim Liberalism is a cover for Luciferianism. Such a claim is out of place and I believe we can all condemn such blasphemic comparisons.

His Excellncy Saint-Maurice however is actually at least discussing the topic. However I believe many of the right and left seek to have a few fundamentally differences on what constitutes "liberalization". Many of the left based Deputies have indeed voted in favor of several proposed legislation. They were fitting for our views and agenda and a sound compromise.

The other laws are not. And we made it excpicitly clear we needed concession in order for us to accept them. We are in a situation where both the Chamber of Deputies and the Ministry are hung. As such if we are to pass legisaltion through we need to work across the left and right through the center. We need moderation, compromise and steady governmentship. But such was not offered. Did not the Orléanists go to both Bertstett-Royalists and Chartists and ask what they would need for certain legislation to pass through? We provided you the oppurtinity to sit down and work out the proposed legislation to work for both of you, but you did not take it.

Did not I speak up against the administration law and made it clear we could not accept the administration law in its current reform unless the rural communities were taken into consideration? Many camels were swallowed during that speech, and it was believed the Right who claim to be agrarians and have the landowners in their mind would accept such a compromise. But it was not even worthy for a reply from the Right.

Deputy and Marquess Henri d'Armentiéres made it absolutely clear why he and his Chartists could not support the proposed Administration Law. But instead of discussing it. Instead of meeting in the middle. Instead of attempting to moderate their own views and those of the Marquess, what did the Right do? They followed in the tradition of Sully and did.. nothing!

On this I conclude there is foolish to point fingers to Chartists and blame them for working against liberalization. They made it very clear what they would need for the laws to pass. But no attempt was even made, despite earlier encouragement from the Orléanists, to sit down and debate it. To either cater all of the needs of the Chartists or reach a compromise. You can't expect all Chartists to simply follow your politics just because you wish so, espcially not when they have specifically laid down what they intend to change. Moderation and cooperation are then in order, but none were found.

This session started with great prospects. Both the left and right, here I'm excluding the Edges, nominated Presidents who were known centrist and royalist politicians. It seemed as we were to cooperate across faction lines and come to the middle and find common solutions. But I am dissapointed to say that no such attempt was even met, despite the active encouragement from the Oréleanists, and now his Excellency Berstett make unfound accusations against the Chartists to make it look like they are not accepting the laws just for the sake of it. When the fact is that they made it very clear what they needed for the laws to pass.

And while we sit here. While we argue and slander eachother in the circulations, our poor Greek brethren ar suffering under the Turk yoke. Have we completly neglected them?"

 

[ThaHoward]

((Private letter to @Cloud Strife))

Your Royal Highness,

My correspondence today will start with somewhat of a personal nature. For some reason I am acquainted with Madame Dawes, mistress of the late Prince and mother to some of his children. As it happen I am also to take my family on a short vacation in Vienna in August. If you believe it is beneficial I could visit Sophia Dawes and perhaps encourage her to make yourself or your sister or one of you family the Ward and Guardian of her son Phillipe or his younger brother.

For other discussions I am during the lunches holding several meetings with journalists, editors and writers prying for their support and to join your new publication when it is official. I am considering to send several of the rural Orléanists we have been grooming back to the countryside, specifically in the core areas of the Independent Royalists and Sully Royalists. From there they can join their local circulations, taverns and so on to discuss the current affairs. To argue the Orléanists made specific mentions of the rural communities in their opposition to the Administration Law, but that the right who claim to represent them wouldn't even comment their needs. As such we may slowly be regarded as the true rural party and expand our powerbase and to draw centrist landowners and the alike to the Orléanists instead of to the Edges; to provide a real alternative to them. It might also serve well that I spoke of compromise as it show the Right wouldn't even have very very moderate comromises from the Orléanists giving the Chartists greater legitimacy.

Of course all of this will only be carried out with your blessing.

Your obedient servant,
Deputy Lothaire Lécuyer.

((Private letter to @MadMartigan ))

Friend,

What is your personal take on all of this? Are you in all honesty in agreement with the Ministry or your colleague Henri Bourbon? Your answer will be safe with me.

However I will also make a friendly advise. If you are not in agreement perhaps you and the Chartist ministers should become more hardline? That you argue it is clear you don't have the support of the Deputies, and that you may talk to your own Chartists that if you drop the most controversial legislation (i.e retract it all together) you will get them (e.g Henri Bourbon) to accept the less controversial laws. If that compromise are not met, perhaps you should install an even harder line. To vote against the ministry and then resign. If that is done it will send a clear message to the right that they actually need the support from the left and can't slander them in the circulations and not try to find a middle ground.

Kind regards,
Lothaire.

 

[Eid3r]

La Gazette de France

The Bête Noire of Liberalism: A Cover for Luciferianism​

One can never read the writings of prominent liberal figures in this country or the gutter press in Paris that attack every day the due course of proper and traditional government without coming across the sole bête noire of the liberal mind. The shrill cries against Jesuit influence clamor about the streets and salons of Paris with great regularity that they now have become almost dull. Truly, one will hear the grousing of certain Chartist deputies and political figures attacking the supporters of true governance in France as being the “Jesuit Party.” Such an exclamation is designed as a ploy to avoid attacking the Holy Mother Church by castigating an order only recently returned to existence by the Holy Father and still banned by the King. How can such ire and charges of conspiracy be levelled against such a weak and proscribed band of holy men?

Rather, all these accusations reveal the deeper facets of their philosophy. The liberals are now all crying out in a rage of anticlericalism that has exploded into baying howls for dismantling religious control of the education of French children. How shall we now not see that the liberalism of 1828 is the very same as that of 1793? Has all the world forgotten the great tragedy that took place across all of France, most poignantly expressed in my home, the Vendée? The very same forces that, in a fit of Satanic rage, murdered priests and holy men across France and inspired selfsame acts around the wholeness of the Earth, is now breeding once more in the salons and dark corners of our dear, urbane capital.

Truly the Lord, our God, has granted unto mankind a natural system of authority that has arisen organically. Through the Kingship of God the authority of the King and magistrates is derived while also empowering and confirming the rightness of the clergy. The parish priests hold spiritual sway over the souls of his flock, but is also charged with their earthly guidance and protection. Truly, it is a deistic invention of cretin such as the Citizen of Geneva, to separate the salvation of our souls from the earthly community of faith wherein the true expression of Christianity may come into practice. It is the duty of every Christian to resist the forces of the Devil in whatever form they may find expression, to lay down one’s own life to the preservation of a divinely ordered state is to achieve on Earth a state of martyrdom that in conjunction with a faithful life that will resound through the ages and into the eternity of Heaven and the second coming of Christ.

- Le Vicomte de Saint Fulgent, Maréchal de France

Hôtel de Lassay, Paris
Salon de la Marquise

The ladies were gathered for a leisurely day consisting of talking, gossiping, pretend to be reading novels and more gossiping. Amélie was in the midst of narcolepsy, reading the latest work of Châteaubriand to keep up with the required conversation the next time she was to attend Madame Récamier's salon. Eugénie de Ligny, on her part, was reading the Gazette of France.

Armentières: "What are you read, dear Eugénie?"
Ligny: "It is the most amusing. It appears the Gazette de France is rerunning articles from a century past."
Armentières: "What do you mean exactly?"
Ligny: "The rethoric, it is so antiquated, definitely Louis XV, maybe Louis XIV."

The marquise snatched the newspaper from her friend.

Armentières: "Silly, it says 1828 on it."
Ligny: "Really? It felt really old as I read it."

 

[TJDS]

Law on Public Works: Oui
Law on the Assumption of Pecuniary Control: Oui
Law on the Compagnie des Messageries: Oui
Law Respecting Newspapers and Periodicals: Oui
Law on the Election and Voter Lists: Oui
Law on the Communes, Councils, and Municipalities: Oui
Budget of 1828: Oui

[Redeemed Reformer: +3PP]
[Minister +1PP]
[Nord]

 

[Davout]

Law on Public Works: Oui
Law on the Assumption of Pecuniary Control: Non
Law on the Compagnie des Messageries: Oui
Law Respecting Newspapers and Periodicals: Non
Law on the Election and Voter Lists: Oui
Law on the Communes, Councils, and Municipalities: Non
Budget of 1828: Non

[Chartist - Bonus Le Vrai Ego de Liberal: +1.5PP]
[Somme]


********************************************************************************************
((Private - To M. Duval @MadMartigan ))

My Dear Thibault

Thank you for your message.

The sabotage is entirely regrettable, but rest assured that I have matters in hand. I have been most fortunate to have engaged the services of M. Moisson-Desroches, a well respected mining engineer who rose to distinction in the days of the Empire. He has been assisting me with my scheme to establish a Chemin de Fer which I will be announcing shortly. M. Moisson-Desroches has also kindly agreed to be the principal lecturer at a new Institute for Engineering and Metallurgy which I establishing in Paris so that we can recruit our own French professionals instead of hiring the English.

But I digress. M. Moisson-Desroches assures me that the steam pumps should clear the mine in short order. I will also authorise payment of largesse to the affected local. I will send notice to the syndicate from Lloyds so that we are reimbursed for our expenses.

As you see, all is not as dire as you might fear.

To protect against any further insurgency, I will arrange for armed guards to be hired to protect all of our mines. There are numerous former Gardes National who would be looking for work and would no doubt appreciate the chance to handle a musket again.

We shall rebuild again, and dig deeper, and greedier.

Finally, I am sorry to hear of your quarrel with that cancer on the soul of France, Sully. And St Germain in the mix. Quel horreur, mon brave. Please, do not hesitate should you require any aid of any kind as I would take great delight in furthering the demise of those two leeches.

Take great care. I am appreciative of your efforts in the Ministry even though I may not appreciate the outcome. Protect yourself at all times and rely on your friends when you are in need.

Yours in fidelity and amity

Jacques de Rothschild


******************************************************************************************************

La Semaine

The Wheels of Progress begin to turn in France
​

After many years of planning, the de Rothschild Freres are delighted to announce successful capital raising for exciting new industrial ventures.

To supplement the successful Chateau de Valence CDR winery, a new glass factory is to be built in Lyon. The Lyon Glass Atelier will produce not only bottles for the highly regarded vintages but supply the national market in commercial and domestic glass products, including fenetrial glazing and lens.

In addition to the cement works in Lille, the de Rothschild Freres will begin work on a foundry based on the scientific principles of the Dowlais Ironworks of M. JJ Guest. The glassworks, cement works and Fonderie de Lille will be powered by the coal which is now being extracted with modern steam pumps of the Carbon Francais SA. Coal is the future of France, and our steel and wine shall be our emissaries to the world that the industrial class is modernising, even if the Government cannot keep pace.

But all of these endeavours are leading to a pinnacle, a summit which is beyond the expectations and dreams of all but the most ambitious of men. Through these works, and with the assistance of a visionary, the de Rothschild Freres are proud to announce that it will be establishing a Road of Iron of the type already in use in Great Britain. France will join the English in laying a Road for the rapid movement of bulk goods, with an initial line from the Carbon Francais mines of Champagne and Picardie to the new Rothschild works in Lille. But one day, they are hopeful of extending their line all the way to Paris, and open services to the public so that all may enjoy the miracle of modern transport through the blessing of coal and the steam engine.

Education for All
​

A recent meeting of the Grand Consistoire consider the issue of education of the Jewish community in France under the legislation previously introduced by the Sully government. The general consensus was that the Roman Catholic Church was ill suited to devise a curriculum appropriate to the Jewish tradition and that the priests attempting to teach the Jewish children, though well intentioned, unfortunately lapsed into a habit of lecturing the children on the "sinfulness" of their Faith instead of respecting their unique heritage.

To this end, M. JA de Rothschild has made an endowment for the establishment of the King David College in Paris, as a model of modern education for the Jewish community. The College will be funded by private fees and with half of the students to attend on scholarships upon completion of competitive examinations, with their tuition to be paid by interest earned on the endowment. Although only 100 students is planned in the initial intake, M. de Rothschild is hopeful that if this school succeeds, the number of students will grow and similar schools may be established in other cities, such as Marseille, Lyon and Metz.

The King David College will teach modern subjects such as Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, History and the languages, French, Latin, Greek, German, English and Hebrew. Students will also be encouraged to engage in vigourous sports in the style of Eton and Harrow.

Digging Deep
​

The mining industry of France has enjoyed a major fillip with opening of the new Institute for Engineering and Metallurgy to be headed by M. PM Moisson-Desroches. The Institute has been funded by the Carbon Francais SA and private benefactors, including the de Rothschild Freres. Although not a college or university, and therefore unable to grant degrees, the Institute plans to provide a comprehensive training in the most modern methods of Civil and Mining Engineering, together with the techniques for metallurgical assaying and processing. A spokesman for the Carbon Francais noted that France has relied too long on the British mining experts, and that with the leading light of M. Moisson-Desroches, we are able to once again lead the way in innovation in the exploration and extraction of valuable minerals which are so vital to the future prosperity of France.

M. Moisson-Desroches has been a renowned engineer for over 15 years and is held in high regard in foreign engineering circles for his great work on the harnessing of the power of steam engines to practical task. He has gone so far as to predict that one day, the steam engine will replace man in the dirty and dangerous work of digging underground, surely a noon for all.

Students who successfully complete a 2 year course at the Institute are guaranteed a one year internship with the Carbon Francais or Fonderie de Lille, as well as the opportunity for further studies in the Institute's laboratories and fieldworks to make new discoveries or provide new inventions for the betterment of the miner's life.

 

[ThaHoward]

((Private letter to @TJDS ))

Your Excellency,

Best of luck in your negotiations with foreign powers regarding Greece. I am to travel in July and August, and perhaps into September, by the Moselle river to the north east, then the Rhine to the south. Then I am to travel by the Danube river from Baden through Bavaria and to Vienna.

In that regard I ask you if there is anything you would like for me to do on my journey. It will be a journey of pleasure for me and my family's part, but I can do your bidding if you wish so. I have heard that the Bavarian King is a Hellenist himself, perhaps a meeting with the Bavarians could be set up.. If you don't see any need for me representing you or France in any capacity, informally of course, no offense will be taken and I will enjoy my vacation instead,

Kind regards,
Deputy Lécuyer.

 

[Marschalk]

((Private - Comité Spécial de 1829))

Testimony from M. Cornett

​

Très-haut et très-puissant seigneurs,

It is my intention, Messieurs, in my subsequent statement to tranquilize all the wild accusations that have affected my person and other associates. The accusations of those who have presented the slanderous indictment against the authentic will must not be received with anything short of scorn, and I shall, in this discourse, scatter all doubt.

For several decades did I serve, with distinction, His Royal Highness, and never did he doubt the trust of my person or the conviction of my veracity. The proof of this claim is in no deficiency; he was my foremost associate, and indeed, dearest friend, when I contested office of the Deputies, and provided generous assistance to the Ministry of Justice. This is no matter of contention—the evidence is clear as day by the credence the late prince vested into my person. Indeed, Messieurs, I revised the will of the prince; but only according to his design, and never without his signature, as the experts, who are so distinguished to be on the King's civil list, have vouched in the previous mee...or so I am told by estimable colleagues of this noble Chamber.

And there are many more sincere gentlemen, even in the Press, who advocate skepticism when evaluating the productions of the marquis d'Arementières. Even so, I shall happily address their complaints. The first, and the foremost, is the distribution of the will; no doubt there are natural disappointments that are conjured in any circumstance that rouse the sentiments of the participants of an uneven will. There is no doubt in my opinion as to the explanation for the distribution, and thus I am confident in my reasoning. For many years His Royal Highness had been urged by the late Sovereign, King Louis XVIII, for a revision of the will, so the properties would remain in the royal family. Seigneurs, I believe our late Sovereign held the prince of Condé, his cousin, to the same standard as his late nephew, His Royal Highness, the duc de Berry. If I might conjecture with sound logic, the late Sovereign had attached first a majorat to the property and the title by ordinance, and it would thus be in the Sovereign's opinion that the title and the property would be compelled to move in the natural-blood direction; the prestigious title that my former Master retained would thus remain in the family at the discretion of His Majesty, the former King, and not separated between bastard blood and pure royal distinction.

It is by this intention that I believe the primary legatee of the will was formed to be the scions of His Royal Highness, the duc d'Orléans. I would be remiss if I did not inform the Chamber that my former Master did indeed oscillate with regard to whom he would name as the primary devisee of his wealth. He wished not to disappoint the former Sovereign, but neither deprive his youngest son, who, he loved dearly, of a comfortable living. It was only recently that my former Master, in confidence, informed me that he wished to see off his youngest with a very lavish inheritance, so that he would want for nothing, while concurrently fulfilling the desire of the late Sovereign for a consolidated property to pass within the royal family with the distinguished title. This is what accounts for the late revisions of the will, and the happy compromise that His Royal Highness reached; indeed, his youngest son is among the wealthiest of France, and the titles and properties remain married to the Crown of France.

What is most astounding to my own person is the credulity of those who have received the will as presented by le marquis d'Arementières in the Chamber of Deputies. They infer why the elder son of the prince of Condé was denied a lion share of the inheritance. Seigneurs, this deserves the last elaboration, as the answer is already known to you all; the disputes between father and son were always privy to the great mass of Parisian society, and they remained, persistently, at the fiercest odds. There were some inconstancies on the resolution of my late Master and his will, in which the prince would arbitrarily increase or decrease the share of his eldest. I do not believe they concluded their affairs on good terms; although the prince did indeed submit certain letters to his son, they have been shamefully misrepresented by the current proprietors of the content. Nonetheless, in the end, my former Master gave a not insignificant amount to the marquis d'Arementière, and I confess, I was somewhat surprised to see the tender heart of His Royal Highness allow for such kindness.

Seigneurs, I have come to the conclusion of my testimony; I would simply conclude on the minor point of the names of the will, which was indeed, a late addition to the will. To this I must simply direct your attention to the whim of His Most Christian Majesty, who deemed the names of the bastard-children to be a manner contrary to that of his late Brother. It is not our position to doubt his will, but insofar that His Royal Highness was concerned; especially given his sentimental relationship with His Most Christian Majesty; I believe he observed the law of his regal cousin out of his due diligence to the family and the law of the King.

Seigneurs, I have no more testimony to give.

((Private - Comité Spécial de 1829))
​

The Duc de Saint-Aignan, without emotion in his eyes, looks at the attorney, before speaking up:

​

"Monsieur Cornett,

You have been the legal notary of His Royal Highness, the Prince of Condé, for years and, therefore, if the testator would have signed the testament and will in 1826, as it is claimed, he would have dealt with you as well. As you know, under the Article 976 of the French Civil Code, in order to make a mystic will valid, "the testator shall present it thus closed and sealed to the notary and to six witnesses at the least, or he shall cause it to be closed and sealed in their presence; and he shall declare that the contents of such paper are his will, written and signed by himself, or written by another and signed by him: the notary shall thereon draw up the act of superscription, which shall be written on the paper or on the sheet which shall serve for envelope; this act shall be signed as well by the testator as by the notary, together with the witnesses."

Therefore I ask you - have you followed this procedure regarding the will of 1829 and can you present the six witnesses that have signed this act of superscription? And do you deny, sir, that you have signed such an act, in the presence of six witnesses, in the case of the will of 1826? You do claim that, should such will contain such a sealed superscription act, it would be a fake?

Here the Duc de Saint-Aignan throws a glance at his colleagues in the committee.

My lords, should the both wills contain the superscription acts.... He asks the secretary to check... Then, I believe, we should summon the witnesses who are supposed to have signed such aсts and demand their confirmation that they have, in 1826 and 1829, been witnesses to the sealing of the wills by Monsieur Cornett or any other notary. If a superscription act has not been signed in relation to one of the wills and if there is no witnesses, it would, under the French Civil Code, make such a will automatically invalid."

 

[Qwerty7]

Law on Public Works: Yes
Law on the Assumption of Pecuniary Control: No
Law on the Compagnie des Messageries: Yes
Law Respecting Newspapers and Periodicals: Yes
Law on the Election and Voter Lists: Yes
Law on the Communes, Councils, and Municipalities: No
Budget of 1828: No

[Liberal Ideologue +1PP]
[Loire]

 

[Rolman99]

Le Voyageur Paysan​

The novel Le Voyageur Paysan, “The Peasant Traveller”, was Jean-Alexandre Renaudin’s first real foray into fiction, written under the pen name of “Philippe Brisbois”. It was written entirely in the summer of 1827, when Renaudin was garrisoned in the Department of Haute-Loire in Southern France. Le Voyageur Paysan is generally regarded, by the few who can remember it, as an easy-to-consume, relatively short, thematically shallow and arguably mediocre adventure story that mainly capitalized off of the growingly literate French masses as a market.

Le Voyageur Paysan told the story of Henri Faucher, of the little village of Rauret in the modern department of Haute-Loire. Taking place in 1709 or 1710, during the Grande Famine brought about by the War of Spanish Succession, Henri elects to find a better life and a new home in the city of Marseille. He encounters a soldier on the road to Marseille, who warns him of there being nothing for him in the city, but Henri continues anyway. He arrives in Marseille, and when walking down a coastal thoroughfare is solicited by a recruiter for a merchant ship. Henri lies about his experience at sea (he has none) and is recruited.

Henri and his crew sets off, and he quickly makes friends with the older Robert and enters into a rivalry with the corpulent, “vaguely porcine” Parisian referred to only as Charrier or Le Cochon-- the Pig. Henri, meanwhile, launches multiple schemes to avoid more skillful work, in particular rigging the sails, which he certainly does not know how to. In Naples, Henri crosses and his chased by a magistrate after drunkenly flirting with his daughter, and escapes by hopping from rooftop to rooftop. A still-drunk Henri confesses to Robert that he “knows not the slightest thing of a sailor’s life”, a confession Le Cochon overhears. Le Cochon attempts to blackmail Henri, but he turns the tables by threatening to display Le Cochon’s collection of “cuts of wood with illustrations engraved into them most rude”-- pornographic woodcuts, in order to humiliate him. That night, Le Cochon attempts to strangle Henri to death in his sleep, which he nearly does, but before Henri can be killed the alarm is raised at the sighting of Barbary pirates. The pirates board the merchant ship and defeat the crew with ease in hand-to-hand combat. Le Cochon is beheaded, Robert is shot, and Henri is taken as a slave.

He works the oars of a pirate galley before being thrown overboard in a storm, before which Henri uses a scimitar dropped in the chaos of the storm to cut his chains. He swims towards the direction he sees a collection of birds flying towards, and after six-hour, grueling swim, he arrives ashore on the North African coast. He wanders the alien countryside before being taken in by seemingly friendly Arab traders. Instead, after travelling for some days, he’s taken to Algiers where he’s sold in the great slave market, revealing the jovial, obese lead trader, Mahomet, to actually be a cunning, hashish-smoking businessman.

Henri is shipped to another slave market in Constantinople. When a very wealthy, regal-looking man walks through the market, he begins to dance and sing French folk songs, and is sold as an entertainer to the wealthy man. Henri is taken to a great palace, and eventually figures out that he was sold directly to the Ottoman Sultan. Each day he sings and dances before the Sultan, and is treated as a court fool. However, after each performance he steals some sort of trinket or coin on his way out. He accumulates enough money to bribe a crooked janissary into allowing him to escape. Henri leaves Constantinople and eventually makes his way back to Naples, where he gets in touch with the magistrate’s daughter, who agrees to come back to France with him in spite of her father’s hatred of Henri. The two return to Marseille and Henri uses his remaining Ottoman goods to open a bakery in the city.

Below is the first chapter of Le Voyageur Paysan.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the days of the Sun King, in the town of Rauret, Haute-Loire, lived a farming man, alone save for his chickens. This man was named Henri Faucher, and for half a year or so there was hardly any food for him. For this was the time of the War in Spain, and so all the peasants were famished and gaunt. He, like his provincial peers, always hungered and grew thin, and a hatred of the farming life swept over him, yet it was the only thing he had ever done. For some days he mulled that thought-- an escape from the fields, but there was no home for him save those same confining, cursed furroughs. So Henri, who was of the disposition of ambition and ruggedness, resolved to create a new home for himself somewhere else, and somewhere better.

He packed all his valuables: his sole precious Louis d’Or, inherited from some uncle, his two shirts, two pairs of pants, and his hat and clogs. His chickens he sold for an ecu, and his farm he gave to his drunkard cousin Pierre. Henri walked from little Rauret to the great city of Marseille, for he had resolved to find his wealth and his new home there. He walked for three days and two nights, and once he came across a soldier on the road.

The soldier spoke to him, “Where do you go, peasant?”

Henri gave him a smile and responded, in his chipper fashion, “To be born once more, sir.”

“A baptism, then?”

Henri chuckled at the confusion and responded “No sir, it’s city life for me. Bread in the gutter and wine in the sewers! Livres for all! I’ve got to get out of those wretched fields, I shall never again form another berm for all my days, sir, I would rather myself be dead before it comes to that.”

The soldier nodded his head, grinning, and in his cynicism tried to dash Henri’s hope. “Silly farm boy. Have you not heard that the townsfolk starve the most of all the people these days? Go back home, there is not a thing for you there. God forbid, some rude type will send you to the Lord much too early for your coin.”

Henri laughed in the soldier’s face. “Coins, sir? I’m a peasant, sir!”

The soldier grew angry at the insolence of Henri: “Laugh not at me, you vagabond! If you won’t heed my warning, then be on your way. You will regret leaving for the city, I’ll not try to stop you from being a fool anymore.”

Henri simply laughed some more at the man, and continued on his way.

Eventually, with his feet aching, Henri beheld Marseille. The buildings were larger and more beautiful than any he had seen, the people more varied and numerous. Henri was awestruck, for he had never left Rauret or Haute-Loire, so the city amazed him in every regard. That night, he slept in a flea-filled straw bed in some disreputable inn. Henri cared not, for that day he had found his city of gold.

In the morning, Henri walked down the Chemin du Littoral. A burly sailor called out to him. “You, sir! You look cut out for life on the seas, I’d say! Come here for a better life!”

Henri’s mind was drawn back to Arnaud, who went to sea when he was but a boy. He returned riding a horse, dressed as a dandy, and with a Spaniard wife-- he had amassed quite a fortune plying the seas. Now, Henri knew not the first thing of the sea, for he had never even seen it before he came to Marseille. Just because he knew not of what he would have to do or what he would have to learn as a mariner, but his inexperience now would not stop him. He approached the recruiter and said “Monsieur, I’d like to sign aboard. I’ve come from up north where I fished since I was a little lad. I’ve got my knowledge of the sea and the needs of a sailor, monsieur, I’ve got it.”

The recruiter believed his lie, but wanted to see if he lived hard on the seas as he claimed. “Show me your palms, friend.” Henri showed him his hands, cracked and calloused from years of tilling the fields. “And your name?”

Henri grinned, “Henri Faucher, monsieur.”

The recruiter started once more “Stop with the monsieur this, monsieur that, friend. I’m no baron. But, I think we’ll sign you aboard. Listen now, you’ll be a standard man of the crew, twelve months aboard, a half-ecu each month. We sail from Marseille out to Naples, Trieste, Constantinople, Alexandria, Tunis, Barcelona, and back again to Marseille.”

Henri still smiled, and answered “That contract sounds awfully fine to me.”

The recruiter chuckled and gave a pat to Henri’s shoulder. “Good man. We depart in a week, our ship is the Toulon, she’ll be docked up the Chemin here. Come a few days early so you can get your things and get acquainted with your hammock.”

And so Henri went back to that boarding house that night, anticipating a life on the water.

 

[Sneakyflaps]

(Last minute vote change for the Prince of Condé)
Law on Public works: Oui
Law on the Assumption of Pecuniary Control: Oui
Law on the Compagnie des Messageries: No
Law Respecting Newspapers and Periodicals: No
Law on the Election and Voter Lists: No
Law on the Communes, Councils, and Municipalities: No
Budget of 1828: No

[The Condé wealth +3pp (last wish of the Prince)]
[Oise]

Louis Henri Joseph de Bourbon, Prince of Condé

 

[99KingHigh]

Voting very much closed.

 

[Qwerty7]

Monsieur President,

Since I have arrived in this Chamber I have considered it to be my firm and emphatic duty to advance the extension of liberty to all Frenchmen. It is a duty which I have taken it very seriously, and one which I have not departed from despite all the more practical and temporary concerns that might compel one to be led astray.

I shall attempt to deliver my speech with a sense of moderate urgency, aware that several members of this Chamber have suggested that I speak much yet say little. Although I would disagree with this proposition, I suppose I prove their point by digressing.

The most pressing affair which has been discussed rather heatedly in this Chamber recently is that of the newest incarnation of press law. Now, I should say that I believe strongly in the freedom of the press and of the freedom of speech. I think that the best press law is no press law. And I too was rather suspicious of the Ministry's motives in offering this liberalization of the press law, knowing full well that this Ministry is not known for being the greatest friend of the press, especially when the press disagrees with it. So I can sympathize with M. de Bourbon in his accusation that the Ministry is attempting to gain electoral support which it would then be able to abuse to rescind the press reforms.

Yet I believe it would be too opportunistic, too hypocritical, and too contradictory to oppose genuine reform when it is presented. While some in this Chamber believe that passage of the press law will be a political victory for the conservative Ministry, I believe quite the opposite. By giving the people a taste of liberty, the Ministry shall find it very difficult to take it away from the people. For once a person has enjoyed true liberty, they will forget entirely how they were able to live and prosper without it. Liberty expanded anywhere is always a defeat for liberty restricted everywhere. For it is the inevitable path of history to always progress, if at times gradually, to greater and greater liberty and freedom. And nothing, no matter how clever or strong or cemented it may be, nothing shall be able to stop the slow march of history towards the liberation of humanity.

The Ministry may claim victory on the press law should it pass, but they may only do so temporarily. For the behemoth of History shall always prove them to be wrong. It is for this reason that I must not vote on this press law with party, nor with practicality, nor with keen political sense, but I must vote with liberty, with history. For in time I shall prove to be vindicated in my cause.

Claude Artaud ​

 

[99KingHigh]

CHAPTER 16: The Rising Tide
(Feb 1828 - Feb 1830)

The new Ministry, unlike its predecessors, enjoyed none of the enthusiasm that had inaugurated the previous council. The situation in Paris was precarious at best, and the mood was decidedly against the preceding administration. For Charles X, the Ministry of Berstett was an expedient Ministry for interim purposes, and in the drafting of its composition, the King, perhaps naively, had hoped for equal faith in the Left and the Right in this regal patchwork. In the end, the King was not contented with his own production, but nonetheless, he knew that his Ministers were estimable and loyal servants of the Crown, and that they deserved, even in the bare minimum, his confidence. He gave it to them in order to calm public opinion and were quick to make personnel concessions. Several of Sully’s henchmen were sacrificed, among whom were Franchet d’Esperey, director of the Division of Internal Security, whose position was abolished; his friend Delavau, Paris prefect of police, who was considered a tool of the Congregation, and restored three Academicians to their place—Michaud, Lacretelle, and Villemain—who had previously been dismissed for having protested against the infamous “law of justice and love.” Further compensations were provided in regal ordinances; the king dispatched a commission to examine the laws ruling the ecclesiastical secondary schools, and (all the more important), detached public instruction from the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs, and this new portfolio was given to the former judge, Lefebvre de Vatimesnil. It was with these initial actions that the King attempted to give purpose to his Ministry, and alleviate the pressures that had begun to weigh on his person and his precarious position.

King Charles X of France and Navarre in 1827.​

However, when the King opened the parliamentary session on February 5 1828, the confusion of the parties was all to behold. The factions were convoluted, intertwined, uneven, and very much in bad faith with each other. Such a distressful mess of incertitude was confirmed when the Chamber of Deputies gathered to vote for the officials of the lower house. The conservative royalists, rallying behind the Prime Minister, put themselves behind the always eloquent Jean Joseph Antoine de Courvoisier. From the Right, the Edges and the Ultra-Royalists, who were not contented with the present Ministry, the sentiment was one of general unease; the Edges were eager to see François-Régis de La Bourdonnaye at the presidential podium, but the Ultra-Royalists who were loyal to Sully were not eager to see La Bourdonnaye awarded for his participation in the counter-opposition Right, nor Berstett for his double-dealing and intrigues. These Ultra-Royalists refused attendance during the vote, and complicated the factional complexities by their absence. The Left, yet unaffected by the severe animosities that afflicted the Ultras, gave unanimous support to the praiseworthy Pierre Paul Royer-Collard, proposed by the newly elected Marquis d'Armentiéres. A standard-bearer of the Doctrinaire ideology that had dominated the reign of King Louis XVIII, Royer-Collard was candidly backed by the leading newspapers, and especially, the Journal des débats and Le Dioclétien. In the first round, Royer-Collard fell just short of the goal-post with the (near)-unanimity of the Liberals. It was thus presumed that Courvoisier, who was incrementally ahead of La Bourdonnaye, would pass Royer-Collard. But after the personal intervention of Chateaubriand, and the permitted flexibility of the “Saint Germain Royalists,” several gentlemen of the independent Right went to Royer-Collard, and gave him a slim victory in the Chamber. This Saint Germain “defection” joined the Left again in the phrasing of the reply of the King’s speech, given by d'Armentiéres, which unanimously defamed the Sully Ministry as “a deplorable system” and warned that the new Ministry would provide nothing but disharmony and inefficiency.” “Charles X was so offended by this for a moment he thought of refusing to hear it. It was not a perfect start to a new Government.

Pierre Paul Royer-Collard, President of the Chamber of Deputies.​

From then on, however, the parliamentary situation was a little clearer. The Left found itself in a position to impose its program on the Ministry, but on the condition that it could retain the support of the “defection,” which was to keep its demands within certain limits. The opposition to the Ministry was to be found by Sully Right; and it was to be joined by the old rightist counter-opposition which was following La Bourdonnaye in the Deputies and Saint-Aignan in the Peers. Partly because of thwarted ambition, partly from loyalty to principle, they were going to refuse to associate themselves with the measures proposed by the Center Left, and they were to move closer, by this act of opposition, closer to their previous adversaries. Parleys even took place between Sully and La Bourdonnaye, and the latter on several occasions defended the conduct of the previous government, although in privately, his overt return to the council could never be sanctioned. All of this did not make the government’s position any more together. Put together as a derivative of the former ministry, Berstett was gradually forced, in order to prolong its life, to renounce its origins and rely resolutely on the generosity of the Left. But neither could it absolutely satisfy the Left without losing the confidence of the King. The King, disappointed in this unforeseen turn of events, decided to wait and see what would happen. He withdrew into an attitude of neutrality and ostensible indifference, privately hoping that the increased demands of the Left might forge again the union of all the rightist elements. Berstett himself was not inimical to political reliance on the Left. Even in session he went so far as to project Charter revisions (if not a wholesale replacement) to the Council. The King perhaps would been have amicable to these revisions; if there was no replacement. The regal indifference produced only a stern rejection of the principle, and Berstett’s hope to salvage the integrity of the constitutional system was utterly sapped.

Arnaud Alexandre Saint-Maurice de Loritz, comte de Berstett, Prime Minister (sorta)
​

Domestic and foreign policy had been organized, in the King’s estimation, for the most cautious progress. Durand was placed in the Foreign Ministry channel his brilliance into “illiberal pursuits” that would save Charles X from serving as the obstructionist force to his long-awaited liberal reforms. Indeed, Durand’s position was somewhat prickly; in Greece, he was caught between public opinion, the ineluctable opposition of Metternich towards Greek nationalism, and the dances of the Anglo-Russian governments. In April 1828, Nicholas I, taking note of the fact that the Treaty of Ackerman had not been carried out, declared war on the Sultan and moved his troops into Moldavia, although the bulk of his army was busy with Persian skirmishes. British opinion became aroused, and the new English governments, led by the unimaginative Goderich and Wellington, reinforced its Mediterranean squadrons in a menacing gesture. Durand and his ambassador in London, Polignac, did all they could to convince the English that they could not stop the Russians from overexploiting the situation unless they associated themselves with Russia’s move to some extent. Charles X, in this regard, was wholly supportive of the Ministry, and earned the acquaintance of the Tsar to this approach. It was in a sense that Durand proposed a division of operations; the Russians in the northern Balkans, the Anglo-French in the Mediterranean. But Wellington balked; he did not want any English against Turkey at any price. Then Marshal Moncey boldly proposed that France might take the responsibility for all the military operations—England could limit herself to the transport. The English did not like this either; they were resolutely opposed to do anything themselves. Finally, Durand and Moncey gave to Wellington their firm opinion; come now, or come not at all, nonetheless, France will be heard!

Victor Durand, Foreign Minister of France.​

It was during these deliberations that Berstett was planning to placate the constituency upon which he depended. He offered to the Chamber a bill which changed the existing provisions on drawing up the voting lists [1]. The idea was to do away with abusive practices of the prefectural administrations, practices of which numerous examples were to be revealed by the verification of election credentials at the beginning of the session. Henceforth, electoral lists were to be permanent. Drawn up on the first of January each year, these were posted in every commune; now the name of each voter was to be accompanied by the sum of his duties and a detailed list of the places where he paid them. Any citizen on the electoral list would have the right to ask for third parties’ inclusions or exclusions, and tax collectors were obliged to release extracts from the tax rolls and certificates were to be asked of them in support of such complains. The Chamber added a provision that would permit an appeal to the royal courts against a decision by the prefectural council. The Right protested in vain that the bill legalized the removal of the legitimate influence of the government in favor of the electoral committees that corrected an abuse by resorting to a usurpation and removed a scandal by igniting civil war. The Ultra paper, the Gazette de France, moaned: “It is the enactment of the democratic principle, the permanent enrolling and recruiting of the militia of revolutions.” The opposition, which could amass no more than one-hundred votes, especially with the Chateaubriand/Saint Germain Royalists and the Berstett Royalists behind the Ministry, failed to obstruct the law, and the Liberals passed the bill with little fanfare. Duval, for his own part, who was starting to seem the second-in-command of the Ministry, managed to reverse the initial attitude towards the Ministry among the Left. Armentiéres, above all, required the most shrewd politicking; he had started the Ministry with a disgruntled attitude towards the King’s speech, and snubbed the King with his own petitions that earned acclaim from everyone between Lecuyer and Constant. Duval gently guided him to initial support for the Ministry, although this support was tenuous, and always contingent on the legislation before his person.

Place Louis XVI, in 1829.​

After revision of the electoral system came that of the press. On April 14, Portalis presented a bill which reflected the wishes expressed by certain members of the opposition during the previous year in the discussion of the clumsy laws of the old Ministry. They removed three instruments of repression which Sully had found in the old Decazes laws; the right to impose censorship between parliamentary sessions, the requirement for advanced approval, replaced by a single declaration, and finally the prosecution for the ideas implied in the paper. At first the chamber and the press greeted the bill favorably, and it seemed that there would be no difficulty in proceeding through these news laws, but soon they discovered other provisions in the bill which cancelled out the announced concessions. There would be a responsible director required to be chosen from among the owners of each paper. There would be a higher deposit in the form of a security, and this deposit would be extended to literary journals. And these repressions were tied like a boe to heavier fines. The correctional courts would continue to have sole jurisdiction over press law infractions, and besides, they would have the right to suspend for three months any paper guilty of a second offense. Charles X viewed this bill as “his gift” to the people and the Liberal deputies. In his own estimation he was the generous monarch who would bestow liberties, where deserved, on those who earned them. The Ministry was confident, despite the opposition of the extreme Right and the extreme Left, that the Law on the Newspapers and Periodicals would proceed with little fanfare. It was on this presumption of comfortability that the l'Élan Journal struck against the Ministry. Saint Germain was no sincere opponent of the Ministry, and indeed, he supported it with near unanimity, but he was also not a person to give license to injustices of the moral variety. In the late spring, Saint Germain published the infamous leaks of Berstett. That previous year, when the Sully Ministry had dangled by a thread, Berstett and other compatriots had conspired to reform the Charter, but had been told by others in the Ministry that the King would not hear it. l'Élan Journal accused Berstett of leaking to that aforementioned journal the frustrations of the Ministry, and even blaming the King for the obstructions. Le Constitutionnel and Le Dioclétien republished the story after the public outcry enervated the willpower of the Ministry of Justice to contain such an outrage by authorization. Without the permission of the Sovereign, Berstett went before the Chamber of Deputies, and gave his speech. The speech, in abbreviated form, is presented below.

"That there have been allegations raised by both the radical left and right against my person is a mark against not only them, but the very ethics which they claim to uphold. Indeed, the whole affair reveals a scheme of a particularly disgraceful manifestation, and a contrived effort by both the liberals and reactionaries of this chamber to demolish His Majesty's present Ministry. While I am unsure as to who provided the leak to Monsieur de Saint-Germaine, I can assure this Chamber, as well as the people of France, that it was not me. "Indeed, while I am not one to make accusations of conspiracy, I can only fear that, in an effort to damage and damn the capacities of this government, and to sacrifice it to the dogs, I can only imagine that this is the crude machination of an alliance between the far extremes of the Edge and closet républicains, seeking solely to discredit my character and the character of this Ministry."

The Boulevard of Saint-Martin, where l'Élan Journal was historically printed.​

So outrageous were the counter-accusations of the Interior Minister that the Liberal press could not resist but to publish the proceedings of the Deputies in accordance with their uncensored privilege to print such activities in the legislature. Berstett, fearing the King’s wrath, decided that all parties were worth of equitable blame. According to his own defense, he was resolutely uninvolved in this treachery. The next day, l'Élan Journal produced more evidence that swamped Berstett with fiercer accusations of deception. Saint-Aignan was wise to state in the Peers that the presented evidence came neither from the extreme Right or the extreme Left, but from the ranks of sympathetic royalists who held the veracity of principle above all other political considerations. Armentiéres mirrored the defense of the Left, and gave further credence to the evidence as presented by Saint Germain. He accused Berstett of the most blatant slander, and offered the same counter-accusations against the Interior Minister. Until then, King Charles X had been skeptical. After Armentiéres’ speech, he was resolutely sure of Berstett’s innocence. Charles knew that Berstett’s position as Prime Minister was untenable, but the King had no intention of throwing his Minister “to the dogs.” For him such a banishment would be tantamount to defeat, and Charles was anything but conciliatory. The position of Prime Minister was thereafter nominally occupied by Marshal Moncey, who operated as the Ministry’s spokesman from his position as Minister of War. Moncey was a constitutionalist of the conservative variety, and was a political ally to Berstett and the independent royalists. He had endured a turbulent political career, having been deposed twice for inefficacious administration, but was nonetheless always on the rise. He bore the sword of the constable at the coronation of Charles X, and was never out of favour with the King. Marshal Moncey was no master of domestic politics, but he was a sure and assured face as the Ministry faced the prospect of disintegration. In an effort to shore the constancy of the Ministry, Moncey turned to defend the press law, and reverse the ill-fortune that had afflicted its procedure since its conception. Despite his admitted ignorance of political affairs, the Minister of War remained resolutely attached to the charge of his duty, and he gallantly defended the law in the Deputies and the Press as a digestible progressive reform.

Marshal Moncey in 1805 during the Napoleonic Empire. ​

The Left, however, viewing the press law as the political progeny of Berstett, were determined in principle and policy to bring it down. They already knew that the extreme Right would not tolerate the press law, and so they were right when Saint-Aignan and the Ultras railed against the liberalization. Duval was firmly supportive of the law, but there was no unanimity on the Left. Armentiéres published in Le Dioclétien his principled opposition to the press law, called In Opposition to Lateral Reform, which became the rallying point for the extreme Right; the obstructionist approach was rooted in liberal disgust for the rotating cycle of press laws. They were to have freedom, or they were to not submit to the illegitimate impressions of the censorship, in any variety. The split of the extreme Left, between Artaud and Constant, gave a fleeting moment of hope to the Ministry, who attempted a final effort to secure the passage. Berstett harangued the Liberals for the betrayal of their reformist principles, and their outright concession to the Republicans and the Bonapartists, but he could not salvage the bill in the Chamber of Deputies when in a patch-work of alliances the press law was defeated by ten votes. The defeat was marginal and specific enough not to frighten Charles X, but the King was now resolutely sure that the Left was his foe, and that he would have to exert himself to cease their advances. He first gave to Sully the Presidency of the Peers as Chancellor of France, and began to covertly build a Ministry of the Right behind the backs of the incumbent Ministry. The press law, his gift to the opposition, had been rejected crudely by its intended recipients. It would not be unfair to say that Charles had been sincere in his generosity towards the opposition. On April 28 1828, he took away from the bishops some of the power over primary schools given to them in Bourget’s great law, and even took action against the houses of secondary education run covertly by the Jesuits. An evaluation had shown that fifty-four out of 126 ecclesiastical schools had evaded the supervision of the Conseil Royal des Études de France, and this evaluation proposed various measures to end the abuse of admitting to the small seminaries students who had not the least intention of entering holy orders.

The insignia of the Jesuits.​

The question of the Jesuits divided the committee that analyzed the issue, but the majority of its members, representing the composition of the Chamber of Deputies, claimed that the bishops had the right to call on anyone they pleased to direct the small seminaries. The Jesuits, it said, had been chosen as individuals, and not as members of a society not recognized by the law. This declaration aroused the fury of the Left, and its dissatisfaction was shown in the debate on the press law. The ministry, fearing it might be put in a minority over the controversy of the Jesuits, sought compromise with the King. Ecclesiastical schools that were not genuine small seminaries, or which were run by “persons belonging to a religious order not legally established in France,” would henceforth come under the supervision of a new Royal Council of Public Instruction, thereby abolishing the Conseil Royal des Études de France. In the future, no one could exercise any teaching function unless he signed an affidavit that vouched he did not belong to an unauthorized religious order. This second ordinance regulated the system of small seminaries in such a way that prevented the bishops from using these establishments as covert secondary colleges; the overall number of students was not permitted to exceed 20,000, which was a large enough quantity to allow for the normal recruiting of the new clergy; the ecclesiastical schools would only receive “boarding” (residential) students, and those over fourteen years of age and two years of attendance would take the clerical garb; the appointment of professors was to be determined by the Minister of Ecclesiastical Affairs. Finally, 1,200,000 francs would be set aside as scholarship for the exclusion of a category of students. The conscience of the ing was much affected in the evaluation of these ordinances. He hesitated for a long time, consulted Frayssinous and even Father Ronsin, the provincial leader of the Jesuits. His refusal might have cost him the support of the left, and so he conceded. The Left was exultant; “the scepter of the Inquisition is broken!” cried the Journal des débats. Rothschild thought this might mean a loosening of the establishment, and lavishly distributed grants for proper Jewish instruction. The Gazette de France, or rather the pseudonymous Saint-Aignan, penned “Revolution has triumphed...all that is needed now is to go through the restoration of the Republic and the erection of altars to the Goddess of Reasons.” The Jesuits, accustomed to adapting, submitted without protest and scattered to small residences where they carried on other ministrations. Others were not so flexible; the Archbishop of Paris drew up a protest that was signed by seventy prelates. Charles X, upset by this challenge, sent a secret emissary to the Pope, and Leo XII said that the ordinances did not violate episcopal rights, and ordered his bishops to “walk in accord with the throne.” Charles X engaged his close collaborator, Mgr. Bourget, Archbishop of Reims, to work on each of his colleagues individually. Most of them, barring the Cardinal Archbishop of Toulouse, conceded. Clermont-Tonnerret, the Cardinal-Archbishop replied to the Ministry: “Monsignor, the motto of my family, given to it by Callistus II in 1120 is this; Etiamsi omnes ego non (even if everyone else [does], I won’t). This is also the motto of my conscience. I have the honor to be, etc.”

Anne-Antoine-Jules de Clermont-Tonnerre, Cardinal-Archbishop of Toulouse.​

With Marshal Marmont firmly concentrated on external affairs, Roy, Berstett and Durand proceeded from the disastrous press law undeterred. Tensions between the factions in the council were not negligible, but the difficulties in the Deputies had strengthened the fraternal spirit of the Ministry. Despite his official presidency, the King remained somewhat removed from the everyday proceedings of the Ministry, and forfeited the administration of the country to a Ministry that he viewed with vague indifference. From these indifferences, Roy, Duval and Berstett produced several reforms that invoked, at least in style, if not in content, the reforms of Durand. Roy and Durand, akin in style and politics, worked flawlessly in congruence to bring the sorry state of finances back into an austere and rigorous condition. Fresh tariffs of a hefty disposition were imposed on a variety of goods—wool, cotton, pig iron, glass, etc—proved as profitable as they were controversial. The wool and cotton duties especially were despised with near universal conviction from the bourgeoisie as they sharply wounded the profitability of the rural mills and juvenile textile industries. Nonetheless, these impositions presided over the return to a surplus on products, even if they dampened the popularity of the participants. Indeed, it would be voices on the classical left, represented by Rothschild, who would prove the most concerned critics of economic management. Ever undaunted by the prejudices of his age, Rothschild minutely examined the policies of the Ministry, and was among the most formidable opponents of the comte Roy and Duval. Particularly of a hostile nature to the constituency of monied men, especially M. Laffitte, who was very much ingrained with the Bank of France, was the limitation imposed on the matriculation of specie, which restricted the circulation and production of banknotes to those issued by the state. The new statute gave hegemonic power to the Monnaie de Paris, France’s ancien monetary institution, and therefore forced private banks to foster a natural dependence on the state for circulation. The monopolization of state currency remained a primitive concept in the imagination of the majority of European states, and indeed, damaged the livelihoods of many bankers who had depended upon the issuance of private banknotes. Whatever the benefit to the treasury, the bourgeoisie was none the more loyal to the Bourbons for their abrupt intervention into their occupations. Other reforms were more warmly received, such as the Law of Public Works, which allocated stipends for the first organized stipend (albeit one of pricey investment) to the national infrastructure in nearly a decade.

Durand and Moncey; War in the Balkans
​

The return of the Spanish occupying force, coupled with a contracted loan from the Bank of France [3] to the Hacienda of King Ferdinand VII, gave all the advantage to decisive action to contain the imminent Russian invasion of the Ottoman Empire. Without any delay or vacillation from Moncey, the government of Charles X organized a large expeditionary corps of sixty thousand men, commanded by General Maison. It was landed on the Morea in September 1828; its first mission was to obtain the withdrawal of the Egyptian forces by friendly agreement as much as possible. When this agreement failed, supplementary corps were called from Spain, and another large force was provided by King William I of the Netherlands, and these forces landed in Crete and spent the next two years in occupation of that island. In the Peloponnese, Turkish leaders, who pretended to put up a token resistance in some of the citadels, were eager to be relieved; they exerted all face-saving displays to be saved from the anger of their Lord and were happy to see the French return the kindness with tranquil surrenders. The French officers wanted very much to cross the Isthmus of Corinth and liberate Athens, but the King, anxious to get along with England forbade them to do so. However, when it seemed that tumultuous occurrences in Westminster regarding Catholic Emancipation detained the attention of Wellington, Maison crossed the Isthmus and entered Athens on December 18 1828. With Morea and Attica they had sufficient hostage to impose the solution of her choice on all parties concerned; and all that without a single battle. [4] And in fact, a string of conferences now took place, first in Poros in December, and again in London in early January, and it was here that France’s point of view on the territorial boundaries of France won out. It was first agreed, by Metternich's insistence on the French position, that Greece be made autonomous under normal suzerainty of the Sultan, but under the real authority of a Christian prince.

Capture of Koroni by General Sebastiani (1828).​

When the Sultan rejected to the terms of March 22, 1829, the Russian troops, who had halted at the Danube, resumed their operations, and pushed near Constantinople during the approach of August. General Maison also threatened his own incursion northward, and began a congratulatory march through Thrace where he encountered the same resigned opposition as he had in Morea. Finally, the Sultan resigned himself to accepting the terms of the conquerors, and signed the Treaty of Adrianople on 14 September 1829. This settled the status of the Romanian and Serbian provinces according to the wishes of the Tsar. As to the Greek question, which remained consistently secondary to the priorities of Nicholas I, and primary to the priorities of Charles X, the Porte obliged the terms of the preceding accord of March 22. Thus modern Greece was born. The heroism of its people and the weight of Russian arms had no doubt been the foremost principal factors leading to its independence; but the France of Charles X, by is successful intervention at just the right time, had avoided a European crisis, and facilitated the reasonable and humane solution which prevailed. This success, unsullied by any selfish motives, cast new splendor on France’s diplomacy and completed her readmission to the ranks of the great powers...

The Left Against the King

​

The operations of the Greek intervention were a fait accompli by March 1829 with the ratification of the London Protocol. In a brief moment, it seemed that Moncey had, by this intervention of Christian virtue, restored bipartisan esteem in the Ministry and the Crown. The laudatory reception of the press might have given implication that the Ultra-Royalist triumph in 1824 was about to be replicated by the personages of the present Ministry. There was evidently no need for excessive humility; the government had come on top with the education ordinances, the financial reforms, and had recalibrated itself away from the abuses of the press law. Victory in Greece, and in such a bloodless manner, showed that the Ministry might endure the skeptical hisses of their foes. But if the ministry thought it could obtain the unqualified good-will of the Left by these measures, it was woefully mistaken. The parliamentary recess had exposed the Ministry to a flurry of abuses from the Left, and the Ministry had been compelled in August 1828 to describe that it had come to depend on the Left, and not the dual partisan centers as they had anticipated. If the King wished for a change in direction, there would have to be forged a new path by an election. They were certain that new elections would only improve the Left. “And then what?” asked the King. “Then,” they concluded prophetically, “Your Majesty would have this double alternative left; either of lowering your august head before the chamber or of having recourse to the constitution-making power which the Charter had forever taken from you, and that you could be hazardly invoked again only by plunging France into the deepest distresses…” Charles X was less than ever inclined to bend before parliament. Early in September 1828 he had made an official trip to the liberal provinces of the east; everywhere he had been greeted by a show of enthusiasm and affection. Instead of giving the Ministry for the reversal of fortunes, the king came to the conclusion that he would have recourse to the support of the people and the army wherever he wished. A remark escaped his lips that if he had known what he had just now learned in the East, he would not have agreed to certain things.

Behold me, for I am your King and Sovereign, and I am absolute.​

So when Portalis asked for a reshuffling of the prefects, Charles X agreed only to the sacrifice of nine Pro-Sully prefects and four councillors of state. However, even more than the legislative measures, these dismissals made it impossible to bring about a reconciliation with the Ultra-Royalists. Already the Berstett-Duval-Moncey government and its policy were just about repudiated in the mind of the King, and from 1828 on, he was thinking of going in reverse. To do this he would have to find a new majority and new men. He could count on the Chamber of Peers where Sully had swamped the old constitutional majority under a flood of rightist elements drawn from the Chambre Retrouvée. In the Chamber of Deputies it was not impossible to find a rightist majority if they succeeded in bring about a union of the Sulleyites with the Right-Center and all the factions of the old counter-opposition. The booting of Sully away from ministerial politics guaranteed the possibility of this attempt. The key man on this team would have to be Saint Fulgent, a man who alone was capable of understanding and achieving his conception of monarchical government. An unforeseen situation forced the king to unveil his scheme prematurely, which brought about its temporary failure. There was a murmur of ministerial change when Polignac returned from London, but the liberal press would have none of it; and neither was there sufficient time to form a new ministry without more ado before the opening of the session on January 27. The King could not present to the Chamber a Ministry still in the process of being formed; so he decided to deny the rumors of a ministerial change by ordering Polignac back to his post. Nevertheless, before the crestfallen aspirant departed, he gave a great speech in which he protested attachment to the Charter and to parliamentary institutions.

Polignac, currently Ambassador to the United Kingdom.​

The Ministers had thus had a chance to see how weak their position was in respect to the throne. The liberal sympathizers in the Ministry at least wished to satisfy the demands of the Left with regard to administrative reform. Reform of the localities had been debated since the inauguration of the Restoration, but it had always been presumed that the constitutional monarchy would unshackle France from the centralizing straightjacket of the imperial system. The Left saw opportunity in this moment of vulnerability to succeed against the Bonapartist system of prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors. It was eager to see elections intervene in local affairs as royal dictatorship looked more and more plausible; for this same reason Charles X was in no haste to introduce politics and electoral campaigns on the local level. A compromise was made the previous year to investigate the cut of these reforms, but the conservatives had succeeded in making their ranks well-represented in this commission. The reforms they proposed were considerably below the aspirations of the Left. At all levels, administrative centralization was continued, and prefects, sub-prefects, and mayors were all to be appointed by the central government. The authority of the local councils, although they were to be elected, was not to be increased, and they remained purely consultative. But even in elections the timidity of the law was obvious and highly restrictive. It was therefore no surprise that the Left protested against the inadequacy of these provisions. Some gentlemen, particularly the agents of Louis-Philippe, were eager to see amendments added to the Law, and by that policy, restore the Law to a principled liberal purpose. But the Right knew that the King was not going to tolerate any important amendments to the ministerial bill and that he would withdraw the whole reform rather than consent to it. And it was in this atmosphere, when France debated the future of the government of the kingdom, that the most spectacular scandal apprehended the Kingdom.

The centralization of France placed the administration of places such as this at the whim of Paris.​

For now came upon Paris the most obscene, complex, and infamous scandal in the history of the Bourbon Restoration. It had begun, as the nobility anticipated, with the suspicious death of Louis VI Henri de Bourbon-Condé on March 29 1829. His death, by the means of asphyxiation, was presumed not a suicide by the authorities, and it was thus suspected, by virtue of the cause, that Condé had perished in pursuit of a peculiar coquettish fetish or by foul play. Suspicion fell on Sophia Dawes, comtesse de L'Isle Jourdain, the subject of desire in the Affair of the 17th, who was known to be mistress of the old prince, and very much “involved” with several esteemed persons in Paris. Charles X gave his reason for her restoration to esteem as his sympathy for the morbid escutcheon that seemingly traced her every move. The liberal press was not so convinced, and gave implicit advertisements of her guilt, although most of Paris was ignorant to these suggestions, as the press law remained stringent and overt accusation would not earn the Justice’s authorization. The production of the infamous princely will at Court did nothing to tranquilize the sentiments of the opposition, despite the general conviction that the entire issue would simmer into silence. Henri d'Armentiéres, and his wife, the marquise d'Armentiéres, however, were in no mood to be so snubbed their inheritance, and suspected everywhere conspiracy against their persons. Their position was abruptly, and surprisingly, improved by the production of a new will from M. Richard, the late prince’s majordome. The liberal newspapers shot out in rage about the supposed fabrication presented to the King, but the Ministry remained indifferent to the whole affair, concerned as it was with the formulation of a new administrative law for the communes. And then, instantaneously, on April 18 1829, the entire political order was frozen; Armentiéres went before the Chamber of Deputies, and accused, in terms that only a child could misunderstand, the King of France of conspiratorial complicity, or even, active conspiracy. The Ultra-Royalists, in their anticipated outrage, attempted to censure Henri from the Chamber, but the Left decided to stand resolutely with their colleague, and declared themselves for Armentiéres. In no uncertain terms, it was now the Left against the King.

The scene of the death of the Prince.​

The liberal press could no longer escape the authorization of the Justice, and several slanders of the comtesse de L'Isle Jourdain, who had become the baronnes de Feuchères by her new husband, were blocked by a Ministry nervous about escalation. Only in the Deputy speeches of the Left, protected from censorship on principle (although not in law), were the remonstrations of the Liberals projected. But there was equal apprehension on the Left as there was on the Right that this affair might splinter their loyalties; the main legatee of the presented will, claimed illegitimate by the Left, was none other than the duc d'Aumale, the son of the duc d’Orléans. Louis-Philippe, or rather, Adélaïde of Orléans, was determined to prevent a dissolution of the Left, which Armentiéres was prepared to endure for the integrity of his father’s name. Concurrently, Rothschild, who was not reticent in the Chamber of Deputies about his belief in the factor of foul-play in this scandal, called for an investigatory committee of the Deputies to investigate the matter. The duc d’Orléans consented to submit the issue to legal arbitration, and this news immediately incurred reaction in the studied corridors of France. But contrary to Rothschild’s desire for the lower chamber to handle the matter, the Chamber of Peers was the supreme jurisdiction beneath the Sovereign, and furthermore Condé was a Peer of France, and therefore Sully was legitimate in his establishment of a “special committee” to investigate the ordeal. But the Peers conducted their affairs in private, and although leakages were not uncommon, the matter was somewhat burdened by formalism. The process was slow, although certainly not lacking diligence; Saint-Aignan took an active interest in the proceedings, and vigorously interrogated the witnesses. He had concluded by the presentation of two separate notaries by two separate collectives of witnesses, each vouching for the different wills, that the legal documents were not simply of conflicting dates, as some had presumed, but an active fabrication. But Saint-Aignan’s legal diligence gave no relief to Article XXXII of the Charter of 1814, which frustrated the liberal Deputies about their presumed exclusion from the process, and aggravated existing complaints of corruption by those who presumed such kleptocratic happenings were occurring in the upper chamber.

The Peers debate the establishment of a special committee.​

Meanwhile, the Ministry had dragged the administrative law out of committee and towards a vote. The Left saw in its convictions an outlet to cast its furor on the Condé inheritance against the King and his Ministry. Armentiéres made his convictions—unrelated to the inheritance and related to the inheritance—unabashedly known. The Left gathered behind him, and demanded for a revision of the act to dilute the corruptible influence of the prefects. The Right saw in the opposition of the Left an attempt to sink the bill before the Left could force the Ministry to revise the law to their own interests; the King saw only the loathing of the extreme Left in Armentiéres’ opposition. It would be impossible to separate in the imagination of the King, and indeed, in the imagination of the Left, the issue of the unaltered administrative law with the presumed lethargy of the Special Committee. The Law(s) on the Communes and the Departments were defeated by a wide-margin, and the ministers of the King, resigned to the King’s satisfied belief in the obstruction of the Left, simply withdrew the Laws from consideration. The Left, which perhaps believed they it had cast a punitive blow onto the King, had simply accelerated his desired outcome; the change of the Ministry.

As soon as the session ended, Saint Fulgent, who had kept informed, arrived in Paris from his recess, and connected with the King. It became suddenly obvious to Paris that there would be a new majority of the Ultra-Royalists, and that even the Right-Center, such as Berstett and Moncey, would be brought into the administration. The list of ministers was drawn up on August 8, and the next day, the Moniteur brought an end to public uncertainty by announcing the formation of the new government. First, a few notes on the fallen Ministry; it was somewhat of an experiment, between monarchist and liberal, between permanence and expedient. From the perspective of the Sovereign, it had been nothing more than an expedient made necessary by Sully’s retreat, and the liberal orientation, imposed on Berstett and Moncey by the situation, never had the regal approval. The radicalization of the Left had made this project all the more difficult; impatient to attain their objective, they let themselves be carried along too easily by extremists. They could not forget their old resentments, and they could not overcome the King’s sentiments towards that segment of society which saw in them harbingers of revolution. In the end, adhering to no doctrine, the Ministry had left the regime in a worse state; it had not succeeded in setting up a centrist and moderate majority, whose elements did nevertheless exist, and its weakness, leaving to the King the responsibility for his government, exposed the crown to the direct shock of unpopularity, which Sully, at least, had claimed as his own.

The New Ministers
​

The idea of the King and his secret advisors had been to form a ministry which could bring together all the shades of the Right with the purposes of stopping liberalism and ensuring that the monarchical interpretation of the Charter prevailed. The Vicomte de Saint Fulgent, who was its standard-bearer rather than its real leader, had already accumulated enough number of causes for his unpopularity. He was an estimable person, sensitive and wary, a perfect man of the world, having an agreeable and charming approach, sincerely religious, with an enlightened spirituality that did not impose upon any person. He was, however, a product of the Vendée, raised from minor nobility to supreme distinction, and that this background had given him a propensity to live in a dream world, where realities were far from observed. He had a sort of lofty melancholy, but above anything else, he was extraordinarily stubborn, and held an imperturbable confidence in himself and in his King. In spite of all this, his rise to power surprised no one; it had been furtively heralded by the Chancellor of the France, assisted by his own military skill, and ushered along at every opportunity by Saint-Aignan. One thing was evidently clear; if Saint-Aignan was to become the President, an iron will of ancien quality would dangle over France.

​

Saint-Aignan and Charles X, during their previous intrigues, cobbled together what one might only described as an “ill-advised” Ministry. The assignments of La Bourdonnaye to the Ministry of Justice were more unexpected and shocking in the eyes of public; this was the royalism incarnate of the White Terror of 1815 in all of its odious and violent aspects. “The very name of this man [La Bourdonnaye] was enough to wrench a cry of terror from France,” wrote the Journal des débats. In the Chamber, he made a speciality of using the most intransigent language, and no Minister had found him worthy of pity. The return of Saint-Aignan, and this time to the Interior Ministry, calmed no fears from the previous appointment; he was surely held in higher esteem than the Justice Minister, but there were few others who commanded such frightful influence over the King and the Ministry. Saint Fulgent had managed, perhaps by fortune alone, or perhaps by “other persons,” to bring the Independent Royalists back into the fold; Berstett was returned to the Ministry, now as the Foreign Minister, and Moncey kept his portfolio. In the Ministry of Finance, Villèle made his triumphant return, and almost as heart-warming for the Ultras was the restoration of Bourget to the Education Ministry. De Quelen, the Archbishop of Paris, received the Ministry of Religious Affairs; there was no Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The immediate outcry of the press against the ministry exceeded in violence their worst fears, and the King himself did not escape attack. The Globe remarked “In our simple-mindedness we could not believe that they are up to schemes still more stupid than they are reprehensible.” The Journal des débats declared: “No matter how you squeeze or wring this ministry, all that drips out is humiliation, and danger.” In the provinces, loud liberal protests appeared in the southeast, where La Fayette made popular processions. At the same time, the Dauphin, visiting Normandy, was given a completely cool reception. A more disquieting sign, a certain number of people who would defect away from this new Ministry. The most disturbing was that of Chateaubriand; although at first he had shown himself favourable to Saint Fulgent, as he wanted to keep the position of Ambassador to Rome. But when he returned to Paris on vacation, his supporters assaulted him with entreaties that his popularity would be finished if he sided with Saint Fulgent. With the careful plans of the Ministry dependent on his acquiescence, Chateaubriand’s Deputies defected away, and denied the Ultra-Royalists their majority. Under these conditions it was absolutely impossible to govern constitutionally—that is, with the support of the Chamber...


[1] The following description is an excerpt from The Bourbon Restoration by Bertier de Sauvigny.
[2] I am a merciful and forgiving Sun King.
[3] To save the from bankruptcy that is.
[4] A generous interpretation, for all the Turks were indeed fighting the Russians.

--
Wait, I suppose. Cultural update probably tomorrow. It is 4:20 AM you know, need sleep first.

Don't complain I don't give long enough updates.

 

[99KingHigh]

The ball is in the Ministry's court. Feel free to resume ICing; the cultural update is mostly done and will be posted today.

 

[Eid3r]

​

Hôtel de Lassay, Paris
The Masquerade Ball

The Hôtel de Lassay has been the site of much work in the past few days, as the preparations for the Masquerade Ball were conducted. Faux columns in the Doric style had been installed on the walls of the Ballroom, and many plants brought in to create lush scenery of vines and green. The servants had received new garbs, in the Greek fashion and the kitchens had been busy all days with the preparations for a large banquet, to be held followed by a ball. Contrary to the normal usage, the guests would not be announced by their rank and name, but rather by the identity of their disguise.

And the guests started to arrive...

 

[ThaHoward]

The family adventure, June-August 1829.

By end of June Lothaire took his family out on a little trip. Initially they would spend the remainder of June, and beginning of July, in eastern France. Lothaire capitalised on the political instability in the Chamber of Deputies and the Council to hold several public meetings and hold lunches with important figures. The Departments that was visited was the ones east of Seine, but the point of focus would be in the cities of Reims, Nancy, Strasbourg and Metz. There he would capitilis among the landowners, and those who were generally skeptical to central power, upon the recent centralization efforts of the Ministry and the King. Lothaire knew that the landowners were the traditional powerbase among the Ultraroyalist, and in turn an absolute monarch, and that he had to gain their trust and support (or make them question their traditional ally) in order to weaken the Right as a whole and reactionism. During his travel through France several Orléanists joined with him and writers Lothaire was to groom for the publication the Duke was joining in his company, writing down what they observed for future articles. They would join Lothaire in his efforts to court the several landowners and middle class men he met to steer them away from the ministry and toward Orléanism. They would also look out for who was to represent the Orléanists in these Departments and join the festivity committee - which in truth was a proto-party committee. Lothaire would also play upon the feelings of merchants, bankers and industrialists in the areas he visited. He played upon their general inclination toward liberal values, their ambition to take a grander role in society and cited the new law the ministry proposed to put monetary policies in the hands of the King and making the private banks reliant upon the government. During his days of travel in eastern France Lothaire hoped he managed to capitalise on the resentment of the districts toward the ministry. Tradionalists who opposed the centralization efforts, and the haute borogouise who now were under a prospect of losing several priveledges. During his travels many of the Orléanists Lothaire brought with him were left behind to further their agenda and networking. This was all part of the efforts by the Orléanists to expand their powerbase from Paris and to other districts.

Lothaire left Paris and the Orléanists in the capable hands of Laffitte. Even if the summer would most likely be qiuet and the Deputies should recieve a well earned summer break, alltough Lothaire took upon his journey relatively early. Laffitte would assume, again, the tempoairly position of the floor speaker of the Orléanists (which in truth already was a very unformal position) and continue the work for the festivity committee in Paris. There he would welcome many who were reffered to Paris by Lothaire on his travel, and many would gain audience with the Duke's sister or the Duke himself.

But after a few weeks of travel, and mostly public meetings and other meetings, in eastern France Lothaire and hs family would finally commence on their vacation in earnest. First Lothaire would show his family many famed battlesites in France and tell them vivid stories of his own and general war stories. Central themes was French nationalism and strive for liberty and freedom. Over the next days the family of seven (Lothaire, his wife and his five children) would travel upstreams in the Moselle river. There they would enjoy the beautiful scenery of the Moselle valley and spend several nights there. Lothaire made a point to his children that this was indeed all French. That they were to travel to th Rhine which was the natural borders of France, but that France had been deprived of much of their lands - and liberties - following the end of the Frenc Empire. This of course was only said to his family members in private. Yet the travels was mostly apolitical and Lothaire thoroughly enjoyed spending time with his family. His family that had always come in secondary first because of his political career, his military career and when they were sent to exile following the assassination attempts those many years ago in 1820. He was to finally spend months with his family and dedicating his life to them.

Followin the travel from the Moselle the family got to the Rhine. There they would as with the moselle they would travel along the river. The natural first stop was Koblenz as it was the confluence between the two rivers. The city was rich in history and the family would spend some time there. The remainder of July would be spent traveling along thse two rivers and exposing the kids to German culture and history - and with the revisionist version that everything west of the river was in fact French.

Sometime in the start of August they reached the Grand Duchy of Baden and Donauschingen. There Lothaire told his family the source of the Danube was to be found. He made quite the exaggerations of what they were to witness, as afterall it was the second greatest river in Europe. The source itself was a dissapointment, from all of the tales said by Lothaire, which earned the laughter and mocking of his children. Yet they traveled on. They traveled along the Danube river and Lothaire showed them southern German culture and spoke of their role in the German Confederation. Soon they visited the Kingdom of Bavaria. Despite Lothaire being a French nationalist he grew to love the Bavarian countryside and culture. He was quite fascinated by it. Of course it helped with their visit to Munich.

He was in awe of its splendor, and loved their beer and that they were served in gigantic mugs and not the ones he was used to at home. Of course it helped that the King of Bavaria was a man who supported Greek indepence, and the family spent a few days in the capital. There Lothaire would mostly be on his own, meeting several Francophiles. He attended to beerhalls and other meeting places for the Bavarians. The topics mostly included current affairs and especially the Greek one. Lothaire's German was quite broken and even then it was of the Berliner-Prussian variant (from his time occupying the Prussian capital) which gave him troubles understanding their variant of German. Fortunately he got help from many who knew both languages. Lothaire would even go as far to hold guest lectures by the University in Munich. However he would only comment the Greek war and said he hoped the Christian powers would impose harsher conditions on the Ottomans and strive for Greek indepence instead of autonomy.

The travel would continue through Bavaria, visiting various cities, towns and points of interest. Soon they entered into Austria. And Lothaire who for most of his life had despised the Austrians, mostly because of the wars and what they stood for, grew fond of their country as he grew fond of Bavaria. He found the country beautiful and the German population of Austria and Bavaria did not fit the propaganda he had been served during his service in the Army. The family would set sail for Vienna, and there they would visit a friend of Lothaire.. His children were set up with playdates with the late Prince of Conde and Lothaire and his wife was to meet Sophia Dawes..

 

[DensleyBlair]

Au banquet, Hôtel de Lassay

How ironic, perhaps, for a man so vested in the Roman to be vested—literally now—in the Greek. Ah, the games played by Fate. Hence, walking into the Classically-decked salon, admiring the kitschy opulence of the faux Doric ordering, his eyes straining through his heroic mask, under his winged helmet, strode …

Actually, best leave that to the major-domo:

‘My Lords and Ladies, announcing the God of Travellers, of Herdsmen, of Literature; Messenger of Olympus, Intercessor between the Mortal and the Divine; His Omnipotence, Hermes’

 

[Nax24]

Hôtel de Lassay
1830

Out of all the possible forms of social gatherings in the world, masquerades were Alexandre's least favorite out of all of them. The idea of people hiding who they are as a form of social entertainment was a silly idea. The only good thing about these masquerades was the fact that politicians and men of state would probably stay away from them. After all, what's the point of attending events like this if no one knows who you are in conversation? So Alexandre properly bought himself a mask, a golden one. If Alexandre was to go to this party, his mask and identity would have to be something relate-able to his social position.

The mask was rather tight on his face as he entered de Lassay. All the servants were dressed as if they came crawling out of a Homer story. As he entered the hall, he attempted to identify as many people as possible. After all, just because a mask covers your eyes or face doesnt mean people dont know who you are.

"My Lords and Ladies, announcing the God of Wealth, son of Demeter and Iasion, the Divine Child, Plutus"