Prologue II - Consolidation (1830-1836)
The reign of Louis Philippe I, as King of the French, had lasted a total of 17 days, from the abdication of Charles X, to the capture of Paris on the 15th of August. Louis Philippe managed to escape the advancing Bourbon armies, fleeing Paris by the Marne, and entering exile in Great Britain. The defeat of the revolutionaries was resound, as the Dauphin managed to twist the loyalty of many rebel leaders, and most importantly, the merchant bourgeoisie with placated promises. The brief July Monarchy was dissolved, and
Louis Antoine of France, Duke of Angoulême, was crowned
Louis XIX, King of France and Navarre.
King Louis XIX, King of France.
In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, sporadic outbreaks of violence continued across the urban centers of France, as devoted rebels intended to shower themselves in a glorious last stand. Louis, refusing to make martyrs, starved out the last remaining rebels and forced them to submit surrenders to the Royal Army, shedding little blood. In Paris, a host of emotions had gripped the city, as bodies were swept up from the pavement, and the blood-stained streets were drowned with a summer rain. Louis XIX, aged at 52, and childless, went quickly to work to resolve the issues that faced his Kingdom.
The Four Ordinances of Saint-Cloud were partially repealed, especially the terms that corresponded with the appointment of Ultra-Royalist members into the Chambers. As Parliament had been dissolved, Louis sought support through a relaxing of electoral restrictions, and a resumption of elections to be held at the conclusion of the month. The majority of such policies shocked the royalist core of the Kingdom, as Louis had usually been aligned with his father in terms of political opinion. As France was engulfed in chaos, Louis deemed it necessary to implement such reforms, and patch the political differences between the left and right. The Count of Artois was especially opposed to these alterations, and soon there were talk amidst the nobility about a possible restoration of Charles X. Charles Philippe refused to betray his son, resigning from politics, and moving to the territory of his title.
In addition, Louis XIX was faced with the issue of succession, as Marie Thérèse Charlotte, Queen Consort of France and Navarre had not borne any children to her spouse. Thus, the Dauphine of Viennois passed to
Henri Charles Ferdinand Marie Dieudonné d'Artois, duc de Bordeaux, comte de Chambord, the ten year old posthumous son of the murdered Duke of Berry. France, henceforth, had miracoulsly secured the line of Bourbon, though it would come down to the election, to see if the restoration would be sustained. Three factions had emerged in the aftermath of the July Revolution, the Ultra-Royalists, the Decazes, and the Orleanists. The latter faction, had been permitted into the election by Louis, allowing them to legislatively peruse liberal reforms as long as they retained loyalty to the Bourbons.
The election of 1830 was convened on the 1st of September, and displayed a moderate return to centrist policy. The Orleanists were able to steal second place from the Ultra-Royalists, whilst the Decazes just skimmed a majority. Nonetheless, Louis permitted Élie Decazes to form a ministry, appointing the Duke as Prime Minister for the second time. Jules de Polignac, was especially angry at the apparent betrayal of Louis’s root opinions, though the Prince agreed to collaborate with Decazes in opposition to the Orleanists. The Prime Minister was forced to compromise with the Ultra-Royalists, enforcing the
Édit de Septembre, a general ban on Republican and Bonapartiste parties, from participating in the successive elections. Louis portrayed reluctance to the act, whilst in truth, the motion was signed almost immediately after it entered the Tuileries Palace.
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, widely considered the father of Romanticism and popular supporter of Freedom of the Press, venomously opposed the Edict, and soon turned on the Royalist Decazes of which he was previously aligned.
The vicomte retained his beliefs as a moderate conservative, eventually rising to prominence as the leader of the Orleanists.
François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand, leader of the Orleanists and then the Doctrinaires.
The economic situation remained delicate, despite the efforts of Louis to slowly erode tariffs that assisted the wealthy landowners alone, prices fluctuated as a result of these policies. Incurring the wrath of many Ultra-Royalists for these policies, Louis reversed his stance towards the indemnities paid to the emigres, a policy that Charles had enforced, patching together the relations that were beginning to splinter amongst the royalists. In the interests of preserving the faltering Industrial status of France, François-René reformed the Orleanists into a remodeled faction:
the Doctrinaires, which remained the prominent Centro-liberal party. This reformation allowed the dispersed Deputies to come to a general consent, promoting interventionist policies that allowed the Monarchy to halt the repression of the economy.
Prime Minister Élie, duc Decazes, had secured the domestic front, forming a joint unity coalition of Ultra-Royalists, Moderate Royalists, and Centro-Liberals. Many with elitist Parisian circles were astonished at the political unity that existed in 1831, but in truth, Decazes had formed the coalition for a separate reason. On the North-Western border of France, revolution and rebellion had been brewing across the southern territories of King William I. Following the apparent success of the July Revolution during the previous year, Wallonian and Flemish rebels had engaged in a general rebellion against the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, forming a brief establishment, Belgium. In August of 1831,
Prince Willem Frederik George Lodewijk van Oranje-Nassau invaded the Belgian state and managed to suppress the rebellion in ten days.
Leopold Georg Christian Friedrich, King of Belgium, requested intervention by Louis and the Royal Armies. Many within the Chamber of Deputies were reluctant for the motion, especially Jean-Baptiste de Villèle.
Belgian Revolution of 1830
Desperate to escape the yoke of Dutch rule, King Leopold struck a secret agreement with the Chamber of Peers on the 21st of August, which was ratified by Louis XIX the following morning. The King of France, intent on displaying his valor and popularity amongst the indifferent population, placed the Royal Army under his direct authority. King Louis, accompanied by Étienne Maurice Gérard, comte Gérard, Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, 1st Duke of Dalmatia, and the Chief of General Staff, Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont, amassed a force of 60,000 soldiers and marched towards Belgium. Armée du Nord, as it was called, did not face initial resistance during its offensive in September, nearing Ghent and Brussels. The Prince of the Netherlands, however, denied the French forces an oppurtunity to swiftly split their forces and march on each city, positioning an army of 47,000 just west of Aalst.
King Louis, Soult, and Victor prepared to take the initiative, approaching Haaltert, and fortifying their position. As the night drew to a close, Louis was joined by Leopold I, whom was preparing to establish the head of the Belgian Government in Brussels. The camp, swollen with Royal and Belgian soldiers, slept silently through the night, to the surprise of the leaders, but by morning, Dutch artillery barrages had forced the Armée du Nord into a swift march. The Orange soldiers greeted the French Army at the Battle of Aalst, igniting three consecutive days of slaughter. The former Duke of Dalmatia, was to make the decisive tactic, shattering the right flank of the Prince's army with a combined arms offensive, driving the tattered Dutch army off the field. At the day's conclusion, 9,000 casualties had been delivered to the Dutch, whilst Louis had suffered 2,500 less. In the following days, Franco-Belgian forces occupied Ghent and Brussels, whilst the bulk of the Dutch Army withdrew to Antwerp.
The Battle of Aalst, September 15th 1831
Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult led a French detachment to Luxembourg, where he defeated a surrounded Dutch Army under the command of David Hendrik, Baron Chassé. Dutch forces managed to grasp control of Antwerp through the early months of 1832, culminating in a series of tactically indecisive maneuvers that brought the front to a relative stalemate. Eventually, Soult managed to subdue all of Luxembourg, and then joined up with the triumvirate of officers, marching on Antwerp in the early months of Summer. After a prolonged siege of the city, Prince William surrendered Antwerp to Franco-Belgian forces in September, thus concluding the war.
Joseph-Marie, comte Portalis, Foriegn Minister of France, and King William I, convened in Amsterdam to discuss the terms of peace. At the conventions conclusion, King William was forced to recognize the total independence of Belgium, and the annexation of Luxembourg to France, before the Great powers could even reply. Suddenly, France had reasserted itself as a European Powerhouse, though the great diplomacy of Louis was far from concluded. Belgium was proclaimed a protectorate of France, with constitutional rights enshrined in the Constitution of Belgium to the King of France, including limited veto powers on certain legislation. Leopold could rule Belgium, but so could Louis.
In 1834, Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont announced his candidacy for Prime Minister of France, acting as a independent, with wide support from the Army and Moderate Royalists. The Prime Minister, intent on maintaining his position, sought allies within the Doctrinaires, gaining a important endorsement from liberal politician, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot . In order to grapple support from the wealthy bourgeois class, that had earned the right to vote, Élie embraced the liberal economic policy, Laissez-faire. The impact resulted in a slight economic boost, much to the pleasure of the Prime Minister, though stirring unrest in poor urban areas grew stronger, especially after the Prime Minister eliminated the economic barriers in Belgium, sparking unrest and uprising in Flanders.
Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont, Marshall of France, Prime Minister of France (1834-1836)
Many within the court of Louis were surprised that the King allowed the radical polices of the Minister to drag on for such a extended period of time. As rumors spread across the aristocracy about the King's indecisive action, Louis became infuriated, dismissing Parliament and calling for fresh elections, just three months prior to the date they were planned. Amidst the excitement of the electoral season, dissent grew stronger in Belgium, and especially in Flanders, where hostility was building against the apparent French (Walloon) domination of Flemish factories. Finally, as the electoral results streamed in across France, proclaiming the election of the Louis-Auguste-Victor, Count de Ghaisnes de Bourmont, Flanders (and some sections of Wallonia) erupted into rebellion against France. Leopold quickly found himself overwhelmed by angered mobs and rebellious organizations, lacking swift French military support. Jan Frans Willems, father of the Flemish independence movement, petitioned the Dutch and British intervene. William I, bound by the Treaty of Paris, was unable to respond, allowing the British to take the matters into their own hands. George Augustus Frederick FitzClarence, 1st Earl of Munster, landed in Flanders and officially recognized Jan Willems as Prime Minister of Flanders, bringing the eastern state into effective occupation.
Marshal General Jean-de-Dieu Soult, was dispatched with a sizable army to repress the uprising in Wallonia. Angered landowners, calling for the dissolution of Belgium and the establishment of a Wallonian state, managed to hold Leopold hostage in his own palace. Royalist Forces attempted to rescue the King of Belgium, storming through rebellious territories and putting down uprisings across the country, especially in areas where Flemish workers resided. By the turn of the year, Wallonia had been pacified, but the trouble caused by the rebellious northern state was enough for Louis; declaring it annexed into the realm of France, with Leopold I as its Duc.