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Armentiéres replies, apparently having nothing better to do.

"My thanks to M. Merivée for his words.

I must first congratulate M. Merivée on his defense, passionately argued and logically construed, for the defense of the previous ministers. To take such a stand in favor of the rule of law, to hold fast against the sanguinary desire in the name of the Nation, is indeed laudable. It is unfortunate that he has construed my own defense of the popular will as regards the fate of the ministers as an endorsement of that wish for blood. Just as M. Merivée does not endorse the actions of the ministers but rather defends their right to take those actions, so do I defend the right of the public to express their anger while declining to endorse their desire for extralegal justice. I only wish that M. Merivée, having passionately stood for the rule of law in his defense, would accept the justice of the verdict, which refutes the sanguinary desire, with equal conviction. Perhaps his passion cannot be so easily channeled. So it is with the public.

However, I am taken by surprise that, by defending the cause of the public and explaining the source of their grievance, I have somehow injured or infringed upon his right to express his opinion on the subject. I had not contemplated that my colleague's dignity was so fragile that, in stating that he had not bled and thus could not understand the impulse for blood in kind, I might have caused him some great psychic wound. At no point did I mean to cause him such harm, for I had not contemplated that harm could be thus incurred, nor to threaten his right to participate in our political process. For that, I apologize.

Returning to the topic at hand, it is M. Merivée's wish that the Revolution not receive its glory that I must oppose most ardently. The Revolution was glorious. The people, united in conviction against tyranny, devoid of legal option or the right to express their desires non-violently, rose up and overthrew absolutism. In its place, a renewed commitment to the constitutional order, to representation, to equality and rights. Those who participated, most of whom gave far more than I and who deserve much more than I, should be honored and praised.

However, I believe there is an inkling of truth lurking somewhere in his statement. If I may reach for it, it would be thus: The Revolution was glorious, it was necessary, and it is now over. The previous holder of the Crown has fled in ignominy, the present holder is committed to equality and justice, the Charter has been amended, and the bad actors of the previous regime have been sentenced lawfully and justly. Now we must set aside violence and extraordinary measures and commit ourselves to upholding the constitutional order for which we fought, argued, and bled. In that desire, I believe that the opposition and I shall be in full accord."
 
M. Barante in the Deputies

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M. le Président,

I rise now, in the afterglow of disturbances, addressing a Chamber that purports itself as the bulwark of the law, as the principal source of statutory authority, as the fountain of liberty, and the provenance of order. In the past, perhaps, the sobriquets just related informed the truth; against the despotism of the former ordinances, against the reactionary whims of the ultra-royalists, against the excesses of the Jesuits and the Church, and against all infringements on liberty, the Chamber was as distinguished as a Herculean sentinel. It knew resistance in the spoken word and the written print, and no sanction was offered to violence. Individuals, such as you, M. le Président, united by circumstance, gave inspirational defense to a tyrannical slip. As a whole, Messieurs, distinction and esteem were not undeserved honours for the Chamber.

But having come into the possession of governance, and charged with the duties of foremost importance, that is, the defense of property, the preservation of good order, the cautious adoption of reform, and an uncompromising disdain of contraventions to the national law, the ministerial deputies have proven themselves deficient of conviction and force of will. They believed that their reforms, permissible as they were, would sedate the fickle mass, like a peasant bribed for his vote. M. le Ministre des Finances, bubbling with haughty self-righteousness, scolded my protestations; he said that the proposed reforms would silence the Deputies, and tranquilize the national mood. Well, M. le Président, I think it is quite clear that Monsieur le Minister was quite mistaken in his presumptions…

In my humble opinion, Messieurs, the sentiments of the Ministry are grossly unsuited for governance; they hope first that their revolutionary attachments, earned during the June days, will imbue popularity; realizing this is erroneous, and that insurrectionists are volatile in their loyalty, they move to appeasement; in appeasement they conjecture that certain reforms, well-timed and sufficiently considered, will soothe their agitation, but realizing that revolutionary sentiments are inspired by insatiable rage, and not reason, they shift to dependence; they wish the instruments of revolutionary birth, the National Guard, will reciprocate their patronage, and defend them from the public beast, born from rage and rebellion; realizing that revolutionary instruments are inseparable from revolutionary sentiments, and that homage is not a comprehensible concept to these institutions, they slip into complacency; what would go wrong, they surmise, from simply deferring these matters of defection and insurrection to the participants? Surely we cannot oppose these brigands, they suggest, for it is them whom our present power owes homage!

It is no wonder that there is an inadequacy in ministerial riposte to the insurrectionists—the ministers are mere scions of their rage. Everywhere this is indicated. His Majesty, in what I believe are ill-advised delegations, and pray is the consequence of poor judgement from the ministers, continues to lavish honors and titles on revolutionaries. We have just heard that another insignificant, M. Descombes, who has done nothing for France, aside from act as demagogue during the revolution, and pamperer of rabble furor, has been awarded with a barony. How long until the Ministers give dukedoms to the gentlemen who put them on the scaffold? How long until proper advice is served to His Majesty? How long until authority is restored in France? Why do we award the destroyers of the system of law, with positions of cabinet, with titles of nobility, with offers of pension? Messieurs, the signs of seventeen ninety-two are everywhere. Only a fool would ignore it.

Action must be endorsed; against the insurrection, against the excesses of the Guard, and against the complacency of state. A new course, Messieurs, will be the only course suited for salvaging the monarchy from the republican gutter.

Monsieur President,

I will not hear an ill word of Baron Descombes or of the Revolution. The honorable Monsieur Barante didn't fight in it. Rather than the revolution consuming its own young, we have every passive bystander who idled the days of June away in safety emerging to tear down men who risked it all and only wish to participate in civil society with the dignity they have earned in service to their nation. Was it not enough that the chattering classes sought to destroy Monsieur Rothschild, who fought at the barricades only to be scorned for his religious convictions?

Let those who lead idle lives stay idle and leave the governance of France to the "rabble" and "insignificants" who have demonstrated true loyalty to the Charter and the French nation. Not a fantasy land that no longer exists, but a real country filled with people who have changed in numerous ways since the turn of the century and will keep changing, striving, and growing.

It would be one thing for the drafter of the Charter of 1830, Monsieur-Minister Armentiers, to offer forth resistance to change. He fought at the front lines, was targeted for assassination by the Ministers who now rot in prison, and then delivered upon to his country a document worth what we lost, what we risked.

But for nameless, faceless men with no reputations to speak of, outsiders whose only merit is not having been active participants in the old regime, to come out of the cracks in the walls of the Legislature and act as if they know what and who serves France? That is an insult.

Some will say that I am too fervent, that I stoke the flame of the Glorious Days, that I don't want to move on. But I say that it is the men who seek to hold us back that are stuck. While the Sons of June push forward against the chains of the past to bring progress, the nobodies try to sabotage it every step of the way. Men who fought in the Revolution favor the expansion of the franchise from taxpayers of 250 Francs to 200. The nobodies would have replaced that with the generous offering of franchise to those who pay 240 Francs annually.

This Ministry has overseen civil servants do their duty to prosecute the crimes of the previous regime and risk the slings and arrows of those who would not accept the verdict. What answer do the nobodies have when life imprisonment was not enough to prevent rioting from those who suffered at the hands of those criminals? Why, to not try them for those crimes in the first place. Surely that would have angered the people less! Surely that would have been less offensive, to not even admit in public the crimes which were committed against the Parisians! If this is the kind of wisdom the more conservative establishment of the back benches have to offer, they should stay on the backbenches and learn to watch and listen instead of speak!

If the current Ministry is one of Insignificants, let us hope insignificant men continue to serve France for many years to come.
 
Merivée rises in reply


M. le Président,

I must apologise to M. le Ministre, for in my passion I misconstrued certain of his words. If it was a passion unchanelled, I beg the gentleman forgive me; poor is the advocate who is not troubled when his pleading is insufficient. It was certainly not my intention to accuse M. le Ministre of wishing for blood, which given the his record is evidently absurd.

Nevertheless, if it is less the substance of his words then it is their implication which peturbs. M. le Ministre has stated that we who have not bled cannot understand the popular desire for vengeance. He does so in casual terms, asking whether this insufficiency is the source of some “great psychic wound”. It may reassure the Minister, evidently worried and sympathetic as he has been, to learn that no such wound exists. I would hazard that every man here can be proud of the role he played in opposing tyranny, however humble. Yet in his statement, M. le Ministre has intimated that there exists between him and his comrades in arms an unknowable bond, which now grants these men a monopoly over public opinion. I do not doubt for one second that such a bond exists, but these men would be well served in remembering that, however amplified their actions by the force of history, those who fought and bled are in the minority. Public opinion is not their singular privilege.

To this end, allow me to address once more the matter of glorification. If I believe that the Revolution should be treated with less ardent ceremony, it is because I am wary of the risk of exaggeration. The ministry seeks to have it both ways, pronouncing the Revolution to have been a moment of monumental importance and prolonging its memory, whilst concurrently announcing it to be over and done with, reassuring doubters that much is as it was, only slightly different. What happened in June? Following three days of effort and frenzy, the people of France reasserted the primacy of their constitutional rights. An unfortunate monarch fled, and France was given instead a monarch who, we are assured, will be more assiduous in upholding his contract with his people. There will have been people in the provinces who first learnt of events long after the dust had settled! Paris stirred, briefly and brilliantly, and then all was still before France could notice.

Where there was heroism, of course it must be honoured, but we cannot allow this to spiral into a process of glorification. Revolutions are only glorious when the legitimacy of a regime depends upon one; when the myth of foundation must be beyond reproach. Such was the case in England in 1688, such that opponents of the new king might be discredited not by political argument but by history itself. I trust that the new regime does not feel itself so fragile that it must follow suit.

The reward, surely, for all who fought to oppose the excess of Charles and his ministers is a better France; a return to a system of government by Charter; a Charter nobler in its intentions and stronger in its formulae? Find me the student who stood at the barricades in the hope of a medal and a pension. Whilst Paris honours itself and calls itself glorious, France watches, and the people of the provinces stand expectant and waiting for their turn in the good graces of the ministry.

It is incumbent upon each and every one of us to work now to end decades of turmoil, and if the Minister truly agrees that it is time to end the Revolution, I will be happy to join with him in doing so. He will forgive me, however, if I in my work I maintain my concern that the settlement should work on behalf of all.
 
Monsieur President,

I will not hear an ill word of Baron Descombes or of the Revolution. The honorable Monsieur Barante didn't fight in it. Rather than the revolution consuming its own young, we have every passive bystander who idled the days of June away in safety emerging to tear down men who risked it all and only wish to participate in civil society with the dignity they have earned in service to their nation. Was it not enough that the chattering classes sought to destroy Monsieur Rothschild, who fought at the barricades only to be scorned for his religious convictions?

Let those who lead idle lives stay idle and leave the governance of France to the "rabble" and "insignificants" who have demonstrated true loyalty to the Charter and the French nation. Not a fantasy land that no longer exists, but a real country filled with people who have changed in numerous ways since the turn of the century and will keep changing, striving, and growing.

It would be one thing for the drafter of the Charter of 1830, Monsieur-Minister Armentiers, to offer forth resistance to change. He fought at the front lines, was targeted for assassination by the Ministers who now rot in prison, and then delivered upon to his country a document worth what we lost, what we risked.

But for nameless, faceless men with no reputations to speak of, outsiders whose only merit is not having been active participants in the old regime, to come out of the cracks in the walls of the Legislature and act as if they know what and who serves France? That is an insult.

Some will say that I am too fervent, that I stoke the flame of the Glorious Days, that I don't want to move on. But I say that it is the men who seek to hold us back that are stuck. While the Sons of June push forward against the chains of the past to bring progress, the nobodies try to sabotage it every step of the way. Men who fought in the Revolution favor the expansion of the franchise from taxpayers of 250 Francs to 200. The nobodies would have replaced that with the generous offering of franchise to those who pay 240 Francs annually.

This Ministry has overseen civil servants do their duty to prosecute the crimes of the previous regime and risk the slings and arrows of those who would not accept the verdict. What answer do the nobodies have when life imprisonment was not enough to prevent rioting from those who suffered at the hands of those criminals? Why, to not try them for those crimes in the first place. Surely that would have angered the people less! Surely that would have been less offensive, to not even admit in public the crimes which were committed against the Parisians! If this is the kind of wisdom the more conservative establishment of the back benches have to offer, they should stay on the backbenches and learn to watch and listen instead of speak!

If the current Ministry is one of Insignificants, let us hope insignificant men continue to serve France for many years to come.

M. Barante in the Deputies

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M. le Président,

I admit, Messieurs, I could not have asked for a better response. In every instance, M. le Ministre des Finances, has confirmed my accusation. He adulates insurrection without reservation, and he defends participants, as if a slain hero against some foreign foe.

A question, Monsieur. Since M. le Ministre des Finances is so openly, and indisputably, in favor of revolution, when can we expect his support for the next one?
 

Monsieur President,


Since the good Deputy is so openly, and indisputably, in favor of standing on the sidelines as governments fall, where can we expect him to be summering when Lamarque tries to have the rest of us guillotined?
 
Monsieur President,

Since the good Deputy is so openly, and indisputably, in favor of standing on the sidelines as governments fall, where can we expect him to be summering when Lamarque tries to have the rest of us guillotined?

M. Barante in the Deputies

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M. le Président,

A question for M. le Ministre des Finances, who has so graciously illuminated the faults of the Ministry on his own. Is this the same M. Lamarque that the Ministry first attempted to grant military command, decided against it, proceeded to liberate, and failed to detain?

If so, I'm so glad he's finally acknowledged the possible consequences of his Ministry's dangerous failure.
 
Not dignifying the comments with a response any further, the Finance Minister maintains his seat and can be heard faintly, murmuring with other Deputies, something about "if only it were my Ministry!"
 
Interior Minister Armentiéres stands before an assembly of the Parisian National Guard's officers and a cross-section of the regular Guardsmen on a fine autumn day. It is perhaps no coincidence that his customary habit while in government is to wear a dark blue frock coat with red collar and cuffs, though the trousers are somber black.

"I am pleased to see you all here. Thank you for accepting my invitation and liberating me, if only for an afternoon, from the burdens of the Ministry. I look upon this group of fine men, and though I remember the pain and the difficulty of those days, more clearly still do I recall the great camaraderie. I am quite overcome."

Armentiéres pauses, briefly, before resuming.

"You may have heard of the concern emanating from the halls of government regarding the recent disorders. They believe that the Guard is unreliable, likely because they have never served alongside it. I believe that the Guard responds to the popular will, that they echo the concerns of the public. That is all to the good.

But we must not allow ourselves to slip into old habits, nor to give way to base passions. Our freedom is recent and hard-won, but part of that freedom is the establishment of just laws that are to be respected. Part of our liberty is the fundamental order that permits liberty to thrive and grow. The very foundation of our Nation is that of order, liberty, and justice, and the Guard is an essential part of that foundation. I believe that. I believe in the Guard.

So I ask the National Guard, a pillar of the Nation and an emanation of the popular will, to stand firm on behalf of our Nation, on behalf of the Crown, and in support of public order. I ask that, as we entrust our safety to the Guard as the defender of liberty, so the Guard entrusts us with creating a stable and enduring foundation upon which a free and just Nation can rest.

I do not believe that such service should go unrecognized, nor should the sacrifices of the Revolution go unrewarded. In the coming legislative term, I intend to propose a bill extending the franchise to every Guardsman, to every recipient of the June Cross and the June Medal, and to the adult heirs of those heroes and martyrs who predecease the passage of that bill.

The Crown, the Guard, the Nation, the People. All indivisible, all in support of France. Together, we are strong. Together, we are free!"
 
Deputé Larousse rises in the Chamber

"M. le Président, I must voice my extreme disappointment that the good M. le Ministre des Finances, who I respect very much for his actions before the June Days and during them, has seen fit to denigrate the proper role of this Chamber in the governance of France. Is it not the question of this Chamber being utterly opposed to the legislative agenda and legitimacy of the Saint-Fulgent Ministry that first set us all out on the path that has led us to the gracious rule of His Majesty and the prudent rule of the Charter? The Ministers of Charles X acted in an attempt to contravene the Deputies, shall we expect the same thing from an increasingly hostile Ministry? Truly, for a Ministry so exulting in the revolutionary fervor, it amazes me that they have so lost the purpose of the June Days and our principled opposition to the King's Ministry under Saint-Fulgent and the so-called Headless Ministry.

In the oratory of the good M. le Ministre des Finances I find a threat to now begin a process by which to radicalize the government of France, invite and kow tow to mob rule, and to reenact the brazen destruction of France under the terrors of the Republican regime in 1792. Truly, if the will of this Chamber is to be contravened in favor of radical politics and a dictatorial ministry we will walk once more down that dark road that all true Frenchmen fear. Gentlemen, we have had our 1789, let us Deputies not allow anything that may point us towards 1792."
 
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Voting closed. A small update forthcoming.
 
To Jacques de Rothschild ((PRIVATE - @Davout))

My dear Rothschild,

I hope that this letter finds you well and that your travels proceed with utmost felicity. Alas, the burdens of government weigh heavily indeed, and I envy your present liberty tremendously.

I write you today because I find myself the recipient of a finalized inheritance. By now you should be aware of the terms.

Though my late father was content to allow his funds to endlessly accrue, I find myself without his estates and thus no means of future income. Moreover, I am very interested in serving as patron for those innovative enterprises that are presently springing up in the north. Such interest much also be leavened with caution and the desire for well-tested ventures, of course, but I find myself fascinated by the chemins de fer and other industries which we have discussed.

To cut to the heart of the matter, my friend, I wish to retain the services of your esteemed family, and you in particular, to handle my business affairs and investments. I shall retain my present banker to handle my joint and entailed properties, as well as my family funds, but I had hoped to deposit ten or fifteen million with Rothschild Frères. Two-thirds should be earmarked initially for conservative investments -- land, basically -- but the other third is for the aforementioned innovations. We shall discuss the particulars upon your return to France, but I hope to shift the ratios if the new ventures are as productive as hoped.

Moving to politics, I had hoped to prevail upon you for your support in the present slate of legislation before the Chamber. Undoubtedly you are aware of it, and your support of the government's position would be invaluable. I regret that we could not include the support for the rabbinate in the Charter; in that respect my caution and desire for its passage outweighed the obvious justice of your case. I therefore hope to present a bill before the Chamber in the coming session, should the government be sustained, to rectify the matter. Circumstance and misunderstanding have led to a great deal of injustice for you to endure, and my desire is that all such injustices be set aright in the coming term.

Please give my best to your wife and family. Do call upon us at the Hôtel when you return to Paris.

Fond regards,
Armentiéres

((To the Marquis d'Armentieres @etranger01 ))

My dear Marquis

Your correspondence has finally caught up with me in London.

Of course, I would be delighted for the Rothschild Freres to assist you in the investment of your funds. I must say that the investment strategy you propose is most wise in spreading the risk whilst encouraging a decent return from investing in the innovations which seem to be emerging every day now.

I anticipate returning to France soon and will gladly take you up on the invitation to visit your residence to enjoy the company of your self and your gracious wife. Betty has told me much of the influential salon which the Marquise holds court in. It far exceeds any that I have seen in either Vienne or Londres on our travels.

I also must congratulate on your adroit handling of the political affairs to date. The legislative reforms may have been obvious but the Government has shown considerably more resolution that its predecessors in taking these steps and should be applauded accordingly. The result of the trials is also most pleasing. As much as the crowd may have sought blood to revenge their loss, the trials and sentences have the desired effect of drawing a line under the past and ensuring that those individuals will never again trouble France.

Through the good graces of my brother, Nathan, I have met a most engaging individual in Londres, M. Disraeli. The young man is highly intelligent although we have had considerable debates on the merit tariffs, a topic which you know to be dear to my heart. As his name suggests, M. Disraeli is a fellow Jew, or rather was until his conversion. I understand that notwithstanding his Christian profession, the populace still will not support his political ambitions. He reminds me much of myself in both his determination and frustration that the bigoted will listen to a folloish Christian before they will listen to a clever Jew. But I digress.

My brother has also kindly referred me to the works of the late M. Ricardo. I must inform you of his magnificent writings upon my return to Paris as I find his view of labour and the value of land to be a revelation. He has gone beyond the Baron Turgot and laid bare the muscles and sinews which move the economy and generates or dissipates wealth. I believe that adopting his views in reforming the entire basis of our taxation system, to value production rather than consumption, will place France on such a financial footing that we will be the envy of Nations.

I look forward to returning to the fray by your side upon my return to France so that we may continue together with the impressive strides you have taken towards rebuilding our nation.

I remain, dear Marquis, your devoted servant,

Jacques de Rothschild
 
CHAPTER 2: Juste Milieu
(December 1830 - June 1831)


The ashes of the Bourbon Restoration were not interred with a gentle whisper. The blistering heat of their residue continued to scorch the hand that dared put the residue into good order. This reincarnated monarchy, the successor to the cremated ancien regime, became more a monstrosity of compromise and patchwork than a realized establishment. A procedure of such questionable legality had enthroned a monarchy that could only be so eloquently described by Thiers as “quasi-legitimate.” Orléans’ assumption of the title Philippe VII illustrated perfectly the confusion; it was a violent disappointment to the leftist class of Orléanists as it legitimized the predecessors who had bore the royal crown, while contrarily, the mark of continuity appeased the conservatives who sought confidence of course and national stability. He was, in their estimation, a monarch who “could search for his legitimacy only in that of the nation” and was a monarch “although a Bourbon” and not “because a Bourbon.” Elsewhere the leftist modernizers scored victories. The Chamber of Deputies discarded their ceremonial costume and debated in frock-coats. They gained full power to elect a president and the King lost the role he had previously played in the selection. Nobles, who were forty-one percent of the Chamber in the Restoration, became thirty-five percent after the partial elections. The distinguished revolutionaries, much to the horror of the conservative Orléanists, and especially to the few parliamentary legitimists, were adorned with the drapings of nobility and civic honor. The civil list of the King (uncombined) was 18 million francs, a sum slightly more than half that received by Charles X, although many liberals wished to see it below twelve, despite the opposition of the King to further reductions. And the Ministry, although led by a moderate, was indisputable a liberal ministry. It governed with liberal sentiments, found more sympathy with the instruments of the Revolution, and sought to move towards the revocation of the old restrictions and towards reforms.

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Jean-Gaspard Deburau as Pierrot at the Théâtre des Funambules c. 1830.

The parliamentary situation immediately before the partial elections was anything but clarified. Durand was the figurehead president, but lacking his former vivacity, he acquiesced unashamedly to the impressions of his liberal ministers, M. de Armentiéres and M. Duval, still very much in their prime, and eager for change. The Chamber of Deputies was exclusively sympathetic to the new order; the loyalists of the old regime had retreated from Paris to retire or regroup. But despite the honeymoon, there were schisms between the factions. Duval’s parliamentary supporters were especially skeptical of Article 26 of the Charter, and suspected personalist motivations from Armentiéres. Above personalist considerations, each Deputy was searching desperately for a local constituency. Where would support for this new establishment come from? It had already been presumed that the vague “middle-class” would lend support, but what was the middle class? What were, essentially, the “doctrines of Orléanism?” In the early days, King Philippe VII, perhaps to his later regret, or glory, did not forget that his throne came from the insurrection. It was necessary to mold this into some discernible ideology; if the old Bourbon Restoration had the right of lineage and antiquity, the new restoration needed something to justify its existence. It found this in the term juste milieu, translated as the “happy medium.” Duval and Armentiéres were not ignorant to this term. They knew that the “juste milieu is the jury; it is the National Guard; it is the electorate.” The belief in government from the center was a distinguishing factor of Orleanists; unfortunately the participants in this ideological experiment differed as to where the center resided.It was nonetheless natural that the Orleanists would find a base in the middle orders of society; assuredly the leaders of the republican societies were middle-class, and there were plenty of bourgeois legitimists, but the bulk of the intermediate class preferred the Orléanist juste milieu. The laissez-faire economics of its academics, its anti-clericalism and Catholic skepticism, and its adherence to “source revolution,” combined with a proclivity for order, contented a constituency that lacked loyalty to the past or radical demands for the future. Thus it was presumed that the grand notable class, which comprised of new wealth in land and commerce, combined with the liberal nobility, would depose the former elite.

Not all the aristocratic Orléanists fully accepted such a favourable view. Men such as Barante and Mole held a public disdain for expedited reform, while gentlemen with democratic ideas, like Tocqueville and Artaud, retained a personal aversion to the bourgeoisie and lower classes. But a universal disdain was somewhat difficult; the bourgeoisie class was extremely complex, it had divided loyalties, splintered across wealth and with little uniformity. To one deputy the bourgeoisie might mean an intellectual elite, to another it might mean a radical petit bourgeoisie. It the words of H.A.C Collingham, it was the Orleanist who invented his middle classes, not Orléanist which was the simple product of a class. This new Orléanist bourgeoisie could tolerate, or even admire, aristocratic individuals, while holding in contempt aristocracy, courtships, and the culture of royalism. They were divided between elevation to the old nobility and the reduction of monarchy to a political stage “without royalism.” There would be, for example, no more Deputies remembering Louis XVI’s execution, and although the Peers upheld the conservative traditions, the Deputies led the nation. Orléanism was yet to attempt a mass following; the King himself, ever since his return, had held that the petit bourgeoisie of Paris was the main bulwark of his reign and rule. But personally averse to their participation, he preferred to uphold their interests via proxy notables, such as the (now) exorbitantly wealthy, M. de Armentiéres. Lacking the support of countryside Carlism, or northeastern republican towns, the support for Orléanism was owed to the strength of indifference, and the popular desire (outside the riotous Parisians) for order and prosperity. Divided into two political generations, those who had operated in the imperial system, and those who had been born into it, Orléanism’s cradle was the Empire; there were rarely any émigré’s among their ranks. But there were also two branches of intellect that viewed Orléanism, and bonded momentarily; the side that viewed constitutionalism as having been attained, and the side that argued the entire system was an embodiment of “liberalism.” One side was moral in nature, basing their constitutionally guaranteed freedoms upon religious concepts of freedom of conscience, the other anticlerical, anti-aristocratic, and for liberties only so far as autocracy was associated with the Bourbons. A tertiary body, known as the rallied legitimists, participated, including such distinguished persons as President Royer-Collard; they played a constructive role in the parliamentary program, but often refused to go visit the Tuileries.

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M. Duval and M. de Armentiéres; the leaders of the Ministry.
The appellation “doctrinaire” was far narrower, and it was not naturally associated with conservatism. Despite overlapping convictions with the conservatives, who regretted the fall of the Restoration, but were loyal to the new monarchy, Doctrinaires believed that the June Monarchy and its Charter were a consummation, and not a beginning. For Guizot, their thought was a “mixture of philosophical elevation and political moderation.” They mixed German philosophy with English political theory, and often with a Protestant membership. They did not exceed more than thirty deputies, but they exercised much influence due to their indisputable intellectual superiority. As the duc de Broglie said, if 1793 was the year of the Jacobin, the Revolution of 1830 was that of the Doctrinaire. The rest of the Orleanists, in fact, the majority of Deputies in this inaugural legislature, was not a party, but a large group of persons whose dominant characteristic was interest in quiet government, and broad but undogmatic loyalty to the 1830 settlement, and frequently a motivation to gain or retain profitable posts. They had spokespersons, but their leadership tended to come from without, from individuals whose membership was in the “ideological” constituencies who had no real party, or from groups like the doctrinaires. Unlike the political setup of the Bourbon Restoration, when Ultra-Royalists and Liberals battled in full view with clear divisions, the Parti de la Résistance and the Parti du Mouvement were charged with swaying a rather static constituency one way or another.

The partial elections of 1830, returning mostly Orleanists to that large static body, known as “ministerialists” or “politiques,” gave way to the thunderous events that proceeded across Paris. Republicans throughout the country had almost universally refused to licence the oath of loyalty; they sacrificed their parliamentary influence in an effort to score clout and favor in civil society. But they had badly misjudged the mood of the middle classes, and were reduced to fanning the flames of ongoing discontent; threatening as they were, revolutions always require the support of a political class, and they failed at first chance to seize a sympathetic constituency. Nonetheless, the Republicans, particularly Lamarque, proved adept at provocation, and persistently embarrassed the Ministry by its supposed inaction. In every instance they failed to produce a response. Politically apprehensive against action, lacking strength in leadership, and seemingly unresponsive to the wild sentiments of the post-revolutionary insurrections, the Ministry created its own opposition. Under these conditions of regime duress, the conservative tendency emerged with spectacular acuity. Jacques-Charles François Sauzet Barante, a former imperial Prefect, Councillor of State, and Deputy for Charente-Inférieure, discerned the lack of leadership on the opposition benches; Durand had been “co-opted” into liberal company and many of his backbenchers were eager for a patron. An expert parliamentarian, a sharp orator, and a master of wit, Barante asserted his dominance in the weeks preceding, during, and succeeding the trial of the ministers. His politics were conservative, but not particularly distinctive. He owed his fame to a particular class of persons who, whilst in the position of serving the Empire and the Restoration, had not only rallied to its successor but obtained high office in the new regime. A name had to be found for them, and men such as Talleyrand, Decazes, Pasquier, d’Argout, Sémonville, and Molé were lumped together in “the governmental party.” These men believed in order, without possessing the dogmatic philosophy of the Doctrinaires. Indeed, with the exception of Talleyrand, they regretted the fall of the Restoration and ascribed to the doctrinaires some of the blame, but they were, despite their reservations, absolute loyalists to the new Orleanist monarchy. Barante, who did not achieve great distinction in the Restoration, was the recipient of this “governmental” grace, and he rose with impressive rapidity to become the leader of the Résistance.

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Jacques-Charles François Sauzet Barante, and Deputy for Charente-Inférieure, leader of the conservatives.
Barante opened his political leadership with an essay in the Journal des Débats, which had become the mouthpiece for Doctrinaire Orléanism. The Constitutionnel preferred Duval and the liberals, Le Courrier français embraced a distinguished republican position, National was moderate and republican, Quotidienne embraced parliamentary legitimism, and the Gazette expressed radical legitimism. The press was as varied as the parliament, and certainly as vitriolic. When Barante came before the Chamber of Deputies with genius on his expression, the newspapers were eager to relay and debate. His first speech from the leadership was no disappointment; he questioned the adornment of the revolutionaries as an imprudent course for the future, and shamed the Ministry for its controversial engagements with General Lamarque. He was reproached instantaneously by M. Duval, but never lacking a witticism or rejoinder, Barante disarmed his opponent. Barante’s speech, if distasteful to revolutionary Paris, assured the Ministry that Barante was consolidating his control over the disgruntled Deputies. His attack on Gerard’s offer to Lamarque, supposedly on the wishes of the King, proved especially poignant. Not ignorant of the pressure, the Ministry backtracked, and played off the whole affair as if their offer had been a ploy in the first place. Barante’s speeches had other unintended consequences. After the trial of Charles’ ministers, and influenced by the opinion of the haute bourgeoisie, which found Barante in increasing good taste, the Cour of Cassation issued its first severe penalties to the participants of Les Hommes’ revolutionary rage. The “Grand-Master” was found innocent of murder on the account of lack of evidence, but was sentenced to twenty-five years nonetheless for attempted murder, conspiracy, etc. Barante complained that this precedent was not being replicated elsewhere; the mobs acted with impunity during the trial, and Armentiéres’ only reaction (he complained) was to coddle with the National Guard when it felt threatened by conservative discontent. This argument was later to be assumed by the legitimist orator, M. Merivée, in his speech against the imbalanced execution of the law. He noted in a late December speech: “evolution may prosper only when it is settled in the favour of the whole nation, and not merely in the favour of the victors—yet this appears at odds with the view taken by some present, who hold that political participation is a privilege earned through sacrifice.”

When Duval attempted to counter Barante’s complaints in the Chamber, the leader of the Mouvement was utterly routed by his entertaining orations; only Armentiéres seemed sufficiently equipped to constrain Barante and the conservative mood. But Armentiéres’ relationship with Duval and the Mouvement was fraught with distrust. Throughout the early session, the two giants of the first ministry had proceeded with legislative ease. Attacked as they were for ignoring civil dissent, Duval and Armentiéres initially shrugged off the pressures of the opposition, and forged ahead with an ambitious legislative agenda. A new electoral law was proposed, reducing the franchise fifty francs to the cumulative 200 franc tax, and an electoral committee was formed to resolve the amount of arrondissement (and therefore deputies) in accordance with the their reviews. The conservatives attempted amendment, but failing, preferred not to see reform in this capacity fail, and risk an aggravation of popular unhappiness. The Orléanists therefore pushed a united front on a great majority of the new legislation; the revocation of the old instruments of suppression, the reform of the electoral lists, the establishment of a communal legislature, and so forth. More treacherous waters were to be found in finance. Duval, confronted with the most serious economic crisis in fifteen years, attempted to patch together the old Rothschild laws. The deficit remained a frightening figure of seventy million francs, and to make matters worse, the ministerial personnel was not immune; the Seine Bank was nearing insolvency, and Jacques Laffitte was nicknamed “Jacques Laffaillitte” (Jacques the Bankrupt) as his assets dried. Despite the obstacles, Duval was not complacent; the abolition of the restrictive laws on the financial prevented immersion into a far more serious recession, and rescued France from sheer insolvency, although fiscally, this fact remained unknown to everyone, and Duval remained unpopular with the skeptics, if only because the weighty deficit prevailed in these circumstances. The controversy of the laws did not halt their progress and the conservatives, preferring to have the weight of culpability on the Minister of Finance, submitted without objection to these laws. Despite the discernible tensions within the Orléanist ranks, the ideological wings seemed to give credence and sanction to the progressive reforms of the Mouvement.

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This peace was not long in duration. The defection of the National Guard outside the Palais du Luxembourg had struck panic at the Mouvement. M. Barante and his colleagues were inconsolably outraged; Lamarque and the revolutionaries continued to harass Paris as if inviolable; every day that the Ministry remained silent on the issue compounded their weakness and increased Barante’s strength. He demanded to know why the Ministry continued to coddle the National Guard, and lavish the revolutionaries of 1830 with distinctions, while the mob persisted in its violence. Even in this regard he was supported by the legitimists, and M. Merivée, who pressed with equal confusion at this ‘selective application of the law.’ With no statement of repression against Lamarque and his crowds, Barante grew more vitriolic, until a famous exchange with M. Duval, when Barante achieved a momentous political victory of discursus against the Finance Minister, who was lead by his anger to give a rousing defense of revolution in the Chamber of Deputies. From this moment, the unconditional conservative support of the inaugural Ministry ceased. The deputies reacted by (re)-electing the right-wing Royer-Collard to the presidency. The King, perceptive of the possibilities, was torn for direction; Armentiéres’ tried to rouse the National Guard to his side, with modest success, but the mere attempt of flattery at this body of soldiers, participants in the recent defection, strengthened the moral position of the Résistance. Bereft of alternatives, King Philippe VII decided to remove La Fayette from the National Guard, and supported by the Résistance, who were upset that this great rabble-rouser had been indispensable, ruined his hopes for a citizen army ready to fight counter-revolutionary Europe, although this illusion had already been ruined by the pacifism of King’s foreign policy. The sovereign, taking the first action against the Guard, had armed his loyal conservatives with the political weaponry required to restrain the National Guard. In all arenas of political life, the conservatives were on the advance against the mob; and thus La Fayette moved into the opposition.

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The National Guard in 1831.

There was yet reason to disturb the political order. The refusal of the Right to accept with complacency the legislation of the Left did not amount to the forfeiture of selective cooperation. The relative anti-clericalism of all Orléanists factions ensured that the education bill was intensely watched as the session proceeded into 1831. Barante, lacking in ideological devotion, was eager to see the reform successfully executed, and pressed Armentiéres at every turn to be prudent with the statute’s secular proclivities. Concerned that the statute might become impractical as a consequence of excessive anti-clerical prejudice, Barante was able to moderate Armentiéres’ reform to a digestible conclusion. But in the streets, moderation was viewed with hostility, and nothing was more hated in Paris among certain classes than the Catholic Church, viewed as it was as owning legitimist sympathies. Crosses were destroyed, and pamphlets were published, attacking Bourbons and clergy, alleging that Charles X had become a Jesuit or retailing obscene libels concerning the Archbishop of Paris, Hyacinthe de Quelen. On 14 February was performed the annual rite commemorating the assassination of Berry, but as the father of Henry V, the requiem could hardly be separated from political affairs. Liveried carriages outside the church produced an atmosphere of public attention, but the ceremony was unproductive until the end, when one of the congregationalists laid a portrait of Henry V on the catafalque. When news reached the crowds, mixed with falsified clericalism of the education law (slander inspired by the republican press), their was a wave of anger and hatred. The crowd became to sack the neighbouring vicarage and then the Church of Saint-German l’Auxerrois, opposite the Louvre. Altars were overturned, paintings slashed, statutes and stained glass shattered and the cross on the roof torn off. The congregation escaped and the clergy were escorted to saftey by the National Guard, but the latter made no attempt to prevent the destruction of the Church. The mayor of Paris seemed to take pleasure in the scene, whilst Baronte and Baude, the prefect of police, watched with varying degrees of political vindication and indifference from the balcony of the Hotel de Ville.

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Baude had taken no precaution, nor did he, after this, obliging the mood of the Ministry, which in his opinion was to remain conciliatory to the mob. The next day, the mob burst into the Archbishop’s palace, burst in and threw furniture, sacred ornaments, vestments, and manuscripts into the river. The destruction of the residence did not end the day’s affair, and the crowd pursued their hatred of them as far as Conflans to sack his country retreat. Other Parisian churches were damaged and ecclesiastic property threatened throughout the countries, but nowhere did the prefects attempt to prevent the devastation. However, republican agitators were unable to turn this violent anticlericalism in an attack on the regime; perhaps the authorities were wise not to associate themselves with the unpopular Church? The localities blamed the destruction on the Church’s association with Carlism. To certain anti-clericals, especially among the ranks of Duval, the populace had been provoked. The Church was not recompensed by the municipalities, and the fleur-de-list was hastily erased from any remaining public places less its Bourbon associations angered the mob. There were whispers that the resignation of the Ministry was imminent, but nothing was certain. Sensing impending eviction, the supporters of Duval attempted to take advantage of their fleeting power, and satiated their discontent with Armentiéres by motioning an amendment that seemed intended to imply corruption in his construction of the Charter of 1830. Deputies looked at the sensationalized controversy of the Condé inheritance with mounting disgust. Neither side was satisfied with the chronology of events, nor about the undue attention afforded to the whole affair. With Armentiéres as the Interior Minister, accusations of conflicted interest and corruption were never far beyond. Clamouring for some preventative measure against the hated Article 26, Duval’s lackeys pressed amendments that implicated that he had added the Charter’s amendment for his own advantage. Armentiéres was horrified by the charge, and forced Duval to turn it back, hastily repairing the situation with a counter-amendment and salvaging the Ministry from immediate collapse. Durand, afflicted in his residence with undulations of gout, was little help, but Armentiéres speed had managed to rescue the Ministry from doubt. Nonetheless, the right was keen to widen the divide, and opposed the amendment. The two-thirds majority was secured by the help of the static majority “ministerialists”, but whether His Majesty, the King, would approve it, was another matter entirely…

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Philippe Henri de Bourbon, the bastard son of the Prince.
In London, Talleyrand witnessed proceeding events in Paris with glum satisfaction. A genius of political patience and fabrication, he waited for the leadership in the Ministry to fall in disarray before moving towards his objective. His success would dislodge the complaints issued against him and enliven his conservative benefactors in the Chamber of Deputies to political success. A fortuitous change of Ministry in London had deposed the June-skeptic Tory, the Duke of Wellington from the Premiership, and had placed the more amicable Lord Grey in possession of King William’s confidence. Talleyrand was eager to delay the proceedings, and his partition plan was adjusted from an ancillary suggestion [motivated by a desire to prod the British into recognition of independence] towards the insisted policy of the Kingdom of France. The old diplomat’s maneuvering, and the impending distraction on the eastern border, invoked by insurrection in Warsaw on 28 November, breathed new life into Talleyrand’s programme. To the continentals he breathed false life into the bellicosity of France; to Britain he promised the uncompromising suzerainty of the independent Flemish state; to the Netherlands he threatened to assume the entirety of the territory with Belgian support. The implausibility of his original partition seemed improved by the longevity of the debate and the intensity of the rebellion in Poland, which threatened to spill into Austria and Prussia. Granted, Talleyrand had not considered with great depth the consequences of such a partition, particularly on the Flemish population, but was drawn towards the partition as a glorification prize. The Belgian Congress had notified the Congress in London that if independence was not recognized, the revolutionaries would defer to annexation by France. But this option was not conceivable for England, and neither was partition amenable to the anti-Francophone Flemish. The recognition of Polish enjoys in Paris indicated that France’s new establishment was not adverse to aggression, although in reality, it was disposed politically to a more pacifistic position.

The other delegates, fainting for the faux-belligerence of Talleyrand, and believing that La Fayette and his meliorist Mouvement revolutionaries might impose their military judgements on the reactionary regimes, decided it was preferable to saturate France’s territorial ambitions with appeasement, and strike to a compromise that would maintain the status quo and protect the sovereignty of their borders amidst domestic insurrection. The memory of the Revolutionary Wars was ripe in their memory. In the pursuit of this peaceable conclusion, the four powers consented to the Talleyrand partition, and signed mutual recognitions. Even the King of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands balked from belligerence in the face of French arms, and with disgruntled defeatism, accepted the delegated partitions, and signed the conventions of the Congress of London on March 11 1830. If Talleyrand had played masterfully the part of the Mouvement with his sabre-rattling, the attainment of a peaceable outcome to the advantage of France was a resolute conservative triumph. His partition returned home as an emblem of that diplomatic order of Vienna; national interest, professional acumen, and Great Power hegemony. The illusions of the diplomatic liberal optimists, aspiring for grand campaigns against Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, etc were shuttered close by this achievement that invoked all the resplendence of the Congress of Vienna.

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The new annexation, once ratified by the regal signature, placed in France’s possession somewhere between a million and a million and a half francophone citizens of France; many discontented by the division of their fatherland, and many more desirous of immediate representation to satisfy their revolutionary impulse. The electoral commission—revising their arrondissement reform to include twenty-five new Wallonian arrondissements, and three new departments, presented to the Chamber a prospective legislature of four-hundred and ninety deputies. The King, desirous of consolidating his new territories, and preventing a prospective rebellion in the lowlands, resolved that he would call an election, and performed the dissolution of the Chamber on June 1 for a nation-wide election three weeks later.

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The King has called an election; you know the drill. Probably 36 hours of campaign, and 24/36 of voting.

Also, I'll try and get a thing up about Walloon politics. And another about Algeria.
 
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Facing the Whirlwind

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The King was most displeased with how events were transpiring.

It was problematic serving as a symbol when no one could agree upon meaning. Philippe VII's was not caught between ideas. He had very definite ideas on how the world should work. His dilemma was entirely different; in a system built upon a presumption of righteous protest against stagnant order, channeling legitimacy through the maintenance of order turned him into an enemy of the forces of change that had animated his rise to power. In many respects La Fayette for all his faults had been right. The days of personal rule were over. The evidence could be seen on the floor of the Deputies and in the streets of Paris. The sentiments of the people in flocking to decisive leadership under the King were only good for the duration of the disturbances. Once the Republican opposition learned how to protest without setting the country on fire the people would tire of the King's personal direction and demand their own agency take center stage.

Perhaps the King was prematurely worried but he had found success throughout his life by being one step ahead of the rest. History had proven that those who accepted the inevitably of change had the opportunity to channel it on their own terms. Did not Washington shape the American Presidency into being both respectable and potent by bowing to the checks and balances lain upon it the American Constitution? Could he not do the same with the Charter for the Monarchy?

One could already see the battle over agency taking place between the "wings" of Orleanism in the legislature. Duval and Barante were but two sides of the same coin and their supporters would only suffer the King's will if it fit their vision of responsible government. To salvage the Monarchy the excuse of Belgian annexation provided a reason to call general elections to place a fire under his so-called supporters, in order so that they may rejoin hands in cooperation or suffer the consequences. In regards to the other pressing issue, since La Fayette was set in his ways he would have to be removed, so sad, the King thought. La Fayette's advice to surround the Monarchy with popular institutions was not necessarily a bad idea; it was unfortunate that his other objective was to entangle France in military actions against the rest of Europe. When he was still merely the duc de Orleans, he had stressed that the King's will should function as a buttress against potential ministerial tyranny, a last resort against bad decisions, without having to lower itself to the normal thrust and parry of horsetrading. He had decried Charles X's regular meddling in state affairs and he had now succumbed to the temptation himself, he bitterly realized.

Long before the crowds had chanted "Down with the Bourbons" they had chanted "Down with the Ministers." Attaching himself too closely to any one faction would be from this point on dangerous to his family's hold on the Crown. The purpose of the Monarchy would have to shift and his power to influence policymaking voluntarily limited before the radicals or reactionaries took it away entirely, for whatever reason du jour prevailed. The people would have to be encouraged to identify particular policies with the ministers who introduced them, not the King. The King needed to be above blame. If there were disputes the King would arbitrate, encourage compromise, and help find common ground but he would not initiate the process. This was a very different vision of Monarchical Constitutionalism from the King's sister, who saw Orleanism as a form of liberal paternalism with the Royal will exercised through chosen favorites, such as Armentieres. Due to the Conde affair sparking problems left and right Philippe VII had begun to rely less on her advice and leaned more on his wife.

Through his wife's circle the King indicated he would appoint a new ministry with an eye towards the result of the elections. He would work with those who could command the confidence of the Deputies but stressed the need for the leaders of the various Orleanist factions to accept the facts on the ground. He could and would provide advice and thoughts of a general nature. Indeed, there was a strong need to alleviate the conditions of the workingman that formed the backbone of any potential insurgency against the Throne. However, the King made it clear that particular policies to be adopted would have to come from the minds of the ministers and that they would have to accept responsibility for their outcome. To underline this point he would no longer attend cabinet meetings in person and forbade his sons from sitting in on them as well.

At his wife's urgings that he might as well heed the lessons of the Glorious Revolution in Britain and its implications for the June Revolution, he agreed to this fairly strong change in course. His wife was a Legitimist par excellence and had warned her husband of all the troubles that would come with seizing the Throne. The then duc de Orleans ignored her and in some respects came to regret his decision. His wife's solution to his quandary was either to abdicate to Prince Henri or to fully embrace the restraint that came with a "Glorious Revolution." Indeed, the British, once known for replacing Monarchs with regularity, had not overthrown their rulers for over a century and a half or suffered from palace coups.

His wife had thus convinced him that remaining with one foot in the Bourbon Restoration and one foot in this New World would only bring confusion and his downfall.
 
Grenoble, Department of Isère, salon at the house of Larousse,

“Messieurs, I welcome all of you to my home. I am most happy to see all of you well to do men of this city once again after my long stay in Paris since 1828. Truly, times have changed since I have last returned to the city. The days in June were quite fraught with rebellion and danger, but we have persevered and established in France a new regime that can better secure both freedom and the general order. As you all know, a new election has been called and we must now secure this department in the interests of responsible government. I have heard that the Legitimists and Republicans will seek to contest elections here in the city and across the department. Truly, we must prevent the election of these dangerous forces of the extreme right and the extreme left. Only chaos will be sown by those who seek the fundamental alteration of the governing system. The goal that we men of good birth, wealth, and honest repute must adopt is to secure in our present Charter and the reign of our good King Philippe VII a system that maintains the twin pillars that France shall rest upon for ages to come. The twin pillars I speak are those of order and liberty.

Truly, France cannot live without the breath of liberty in her lungs. We as a people have in the last century grown drunk on liberty, so much so that we were incapacitated by its ill effects. However, now in France we have realized that a prudent middle road of freedom is best suited to our lives as we seek to live in ways that will not step upon the toes of one another. To ensure the freedom of the French we must gradually and carefully open our markets. To never abandon the agrarianism of our national character, but to adapt to the modern world in a way that will secure the strength, prestige, and prosperity of our nation unto posterity. If I am returned to the Chamber of Deputies to represent you good men and all of this great department I shall endeavour to do just that. We shall lower tariffs when needed to encourage trade, but raise tariffs when needed to encourage industry. Particularly we must raise tariffs on pig iron, so as to increase the domestic industry in iron and create a self-sufficient system of production so as to improve the wealth and security of the nation. I have been working on an article for the Journal des Débats on this very subject of the tariff question.

On the subject of order, I have heard grave tidings that the Ministerial party is planning on introducing legislation to enfranchise every member of the National Guard. While this proposal may have merit we shall need to look very carefully into reforming this institution if it were to be fully enfranchised. While we certainly owe a good deal to the National Guard in the June Days, we must never forget that the actions of the disbanded Guard and the Parisian revolutionaries were beyond illegal. Undue celebration and deference to revolt shall only bred an attitude of mob rule whereby the underclass of Paris will think themselves able to bully the Chamber and Ministry into whatever action by the force of violence. This cannot be allowed and my promise to you is to examine the loyalties of the National Guard and to recommend needed reforms to secure this institution not as a Praetorian Guard, but as a bedrock of order. Intrigue by city militias in the governing halls of our nation cannot be accepted and the Ministerial party must be opposed on this front.

Well friends, I invite anyone who wishes to speak to come and take the floor, after that we shall have a dinner and cigars where I invite everyone to debate the issues of our day, to enjoy ourselves, and most especially to discuss the opera that was put on last week.”
 
Pantheon, Paris 29th of June 1830.

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One year had passed. One year since that glorious, yet dreadful day when his father had fallen, but France had been reborn. Reborn by Marianne and guided by the illustrious and liberal King Philippe. And here Joachim was with his family and the closests friends of his father. Here he was attending to the final resting place of his father. It was sad yet he felt a great pride. A cold shiver foundi its way through his body as he reflected upon what this resting place really meant. Here his father rested among notable figures such as Voltaire, Rosseau and Mirabeau. But it also made for a tremendous burden upon his shoulders. He was expected to follow in his father's footsteps, yet would he ever be able to step out of his shadow or would he forever be held back by his legacy?

The year had been interesting. Joachim had access to the finest tutors and he resided in the Palais-Royal. Although he was not personally in the center of politics nor any important figure, he found himself in central events. He observed the events that unfolded itself with great interest and listened to the various politicians and rumors. It also seemed as if the King relied less upon his sister, which in provided young Joachim with the chance to visit his guardian more often. He developed a great admiration for the woman and his young and immature mind soaked up her philosophy like a swamp. Yet he had to question why the King pushed her aside, perhaps she was not the sage he had believed she was?

Still most of the year Joachim had spent studying by the École polytechnique. He'd associated himself with many students. Many who were luminious in the field of science, and others who excelled in the more military orientated subjects. Joachinm found the subjects orientated on science was the most interesting, still he took great efforts to come out as a pattern officer. His motivation was something as simple as that he looked up to Ferdinand Philippe and wanted to follow in his steps. He believed if he distinguished himself (or rather get top grades) he could follow him and join the ranks of the 1st Hussar Regiment - despite knowing chances of joining this regiment was slim from the academy he attended to. However during his studentship he still followed the 50 students (those left of them..) who participated during the Three Glorious Days. Not really because he actually agreed with them, but because they were a link to his father. And he knew his father was some revolutionary leader. Perhaps if he hanged aorund with these radicals he might grow closer to his father, develop his own ideology and perhaps by networking with these revolutionaries he could get some followers of his own?

He didn't know, but he did feel torn. The students seemed a little too radical to Joachim who still was shocked by the actions of the National Guard and the people of Paris. He sincerly believed that King Philippe was the embodiment of the people and French liberalism. He coudln't grasp, as of yet, on how the National Guards and people could so openly defy the monarchy. Perhaps it was in need of reform? He was a staunch supporter of the Orléanists (not so exceptional seeing he wanted to follow in his father footsteps and the fact that he was living in the Palais-Royal) and supported them, but his time among Adélaïde and the students made him believe reforms should be in place, yet not at the cost of the King. Joachim would spend several hours a day debating politics and philosophy among his students. Most of them were indeed more learned and had a greater grasp on history, philosophy and politics than him, but he took it as a chance to develop. And after the many hours in the Cafés debating concurrent politics he would return home to his guardian and discuss it with her.

And now he stood here before his father. France under the leadership of Orléans was liberating the Walloons and Flemish from the reactionary Dutch. This had sparked many debates among his friends and the circulations they read (mostly the National, but also Constitutionnel and Le Courrier français, and the editorials of Journal des Débats and Quotidienne). Joachim was uncertain on his view on the whole affair. Some of his friends believed in nation states and that France should be the torch of liberalism and wage war to liberate the various oppressed people in Europe. They again were divided on the issue wether the annexation of Wallonia was the liberation of the French living there, or oppression of the Walloons. Others again believed France should not wage war at all and focus on herself. Joachim, however, was undecided on the whole issue and more or less relied upon his guardian to settle the issue for him and took her view on the whole matter.

Joachim was torn between the loyalties to his students, to his mother, the Orléans' and Adélaïde and really didn't know who he should lean toward to honor his fathers legacy. All he could formulate now as he stood before the tomb of his father he vowed "I will finish what you started" - however Joachim didn't even know himself what that really meant. He had to forge his won path.
 
For the record, I'm basically thinking the following Victoria 2 breakdown. The party system (obviously) is still not very clear to me with regard to all the players, so I'm going to stick with the vague ideological "groupings" that existed in the beginning of the regime, before the parties became more fractured.

Feel free to mold your parties as you wish with Victoria 2 ideologies; be cautious, however.

Mouvement: Free-Trade, Laissez-Faire, Secularized, Full Citizenship, Jingoism/Pro-Military [Pro-Suffrage, Pro-Reform, Pro-"Republicanism with Monarch"]
Resistance: Free-Trade, Laissez-Faire, Pluralism, Limited Citizenship, Pacifism/Anti-Military [Anti-Suffrage, Cautious Reform, Pro-Constitutonalism]
Legitimists: Protectionism, Agrarianism, Moralism, Residency, Pacifism/Anti-Military
Republicans: Free-Trade, Interventionism, Secularized, Full Citizenship, Jingoism





 
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Monsieur Barante, safekept in his Paris residence, dwelling alongside the middle-class notables of the Boulevard Saint-Honoré, decided against a hurried retreat back to Poitou-Charentes. He preferred, almost without exception, the capital senses, and feared a hastily withdraw to Charente-Inférieure might do him little good. Confidence in the security of his seat, earned by familial patronage and the veneration of municipal haute bourgeois notables, Barante resolved to take the pen, and spend the election with the vehemence and controversy that he knew some of his legislative adversaries were already anticipating. But rather than plunge into the politics of disorder and coercion, where opposition of furor was the exclusive pathway, Barante fixed his attention on extraditing the ministers from the success of the Wallonia annexation. He believed that the lessons learned from this external success could accredit the temperance and prudence he had long advertised.



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A Eulogy to Peace

Monsieur Talleyrand departed France the first week of September. His appointment was greeted with the most outrageous vociferations of admonishment and disbelief. Carried on the bubble of idyllic sentiments, Monsieur le duc de Talleyrand, Monsieur le duc de Dino, Monsieur le Pair de France, encountered the fiercest opposition conceivable to his person. What purpose could this representative of the continental system, clandestine and compromising, provide to France, aroused to revolutionary ideas and noble purposes? No sentiments were too strong for the expression of popular disquiet. He was everything the utopians adored to scorn; an admirer of peace, a personage of patrician elegance, and an inhibitor of the coeval order of things. He might, in their idealistic estimations, exhale all the corruptions of the ancien regime. The doggerel of Barthélemy, suspicious of all French ambassadors and “their hidden policy in accord with the soverigns,” reached a peak of vitriolic disgust. He penned in rhythmic form: “the lie incarnate, the living perjury, Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince of Benevento!” No matter for his virtues, and his successes, his constant devotion to nation, his triumphs of compromise, and his salvations of France, Monsieur le prince was worthy, in such distinguished company, only of their unrequited disgust and unhappiness. Assuredly, he has danced with sovereigns, and frolicked with Emperors, no doubt, but has this been performed with any motivation but for the welfare of the nation? His devotion is undisputable; no man has done more to protect the nation from the despotism of the past.

His opponents, finding in his ambitions only a love of constancy, detest any success, and were bound more to the legacy of Valmy than the legacy of the long continental tranquility that protects France from her unfortunate impulse towards belligerence. Monsieur le Marquis de La Fayette has been the pontificator of this radical intention; he wishes the armies of France to sweep across France, invoking the horror of republican despotism. The new monarchy, in their estimation, is not a correction of the former monarchy, it is an instrument to inspire belligerence. A citizen army, inflamed by the basest sentiments, marching through Vienna and Berlin, not endowing their persons with liberal virtues, but arousing the hatred of other peoples, and risking another defeat that shall reproduce the cyclical system of constitutional aspiration and autocratic tyranny. This is the foreign policy of brigands and fools. It has been tested and tired by the utopians, consumed with their delusions of grandeur and ambition, and it has once before proved the ruin of our people, our commerce, and our sovereignty. Change happens with temperance, it requires appropriate circumstances, and it is never sustained by warfare. A revolution perpetuated by the continued application of force becomes dependent on that exertion, and evolves into a state sustainable only by outward projection of might. If Monsieur le Marquis de La Fayette was authentic in his wishes, the reforming imagination is worse for his presumptions. The liberty he desires cannot be a sustainable legacy if it is imposed, and the grievances affected by the imposition will always exceed the attachment to liberty. Freedom by warfare, not to mention imposed from the bayonet of alien persons, imbues contempt in the heart of the sensible citizen. Do not expect the
Tricolour to be greeted with popular approbation as it marches through the streets of Europe.

Fortunate circumstances have ensured that Monsieur le Duc, and not Monsieur le Marquis, has been charged with the administration of peace. Opposed to these paeans to warfare, Monsieur Talleyrand explicitly proceeded with his affairs against the misguided sentiments of the bellicose. He acquainted prudence and compromise, showed an open admiration for harmonious relations, and integrated the new Kingdom into the Concert of Nations, where exchange and commerce, not violence and bloodshed, are the shibboleths of modern Europe. Perhaps some would believe this outcome would demand a transaction of interest for admission into the tenderness of the nations of Europe. No such concession has been offered, nor accepted; Monsieur Talleyrand showed compassion with the revolutionaries, sympathy for the Dutch, and respect for the interests of Great Britain and Prussia. By his conduct, steadfast in the diplomatic tradition, and repudiating the exportation of our revolution, Talleyrand has procured a wonderful victory for the Kingdom of France, ensuring the safe entrance of those valiant Frenchmen into the territorial body, and with concurrent gratitude, having guaranteed the mutual felicity of France with the Concert of Europe. The interests of Europe satisfied, the population of France increased, and the prestige of the monarchy improved, Monsieur Talleyrand deserves the highest commendation. His approach in the deliberations of Europe need not be forgotten; equal application of such a considered course will offer France with equal bounties in domestic administration and security as Monsieur Talleyrand has procured in the recent settlement in London. With governance, deny delusions of ambitious eager, and proceed consciously, with tomorrow in sight.
 
Affairs of Europe I: Lamennais, L'Avenir, and the Belgian Annexation [1]

Born in 1782, the son of a Breton merchant who had been ennobled; Félicité de Lamenais was among France's most renown ecclesiastical authors. As a youth, he was a devoted follower of Rousseau, but subsequently (and accordingly to his lifelong tradition), swapped loyalties, and became intellectually opposed to Rousseau's implications. Ordained a priest at the late age of thirty-four, Lamennais never had a parish of his own. His first major work, the Essay on Indifference int eh Matter of Religion, published between 1817 and 1823, struck against the Englightenment and the Revolution, but nonetheless show a persistent obsession with Rousseau. In his estimation, notions of liberty and equality were sincerely linked to the "anarchists of 1793" and the wrongheaded theology of Protestantism. As a result of the work's poetic style, and argument that society's salvation was wholly entrusted in basing itself upon the Christian revelation, the book became widely popular. His second book, Concerning Religion in its Relations with the Political and Social Order, revealed Lamennais' mounting disappointment with the Bourbon Restoration and its Gallican subordination of church to state. "Gallican liberties," he argued, were no liberties at all; the correct organization was to look to the authority of the Roman Pope.

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The famed writer, ideologue, once extreme Rightist, and Liberal Catholic, Félicité de Lamenais.

Ultramonatism, Lamennais' ideology, meant a liberation of the French churches from the Gallican bishops, but did not imply the imposition of an actual Roman despotism. The Ultramonatism of this sort was later to become "liberation theology" of other European Catholics who felt themselves oppressed by government, whether that government was absolutist Catholic, or Protestant, or secular. In the France of the 1820s, however, an appeal to the papacy would have been useless; no Pope (pardon Leo XII, who was said privately admire Lamennais) thought it best to modify the links between alter and throne. Lamennais found his solution to this predicament in the example of the Belgian Catholics; liberal principles on civil rights and freedom of the press and assembly; however suspect in their revolutionary origins, could complement the purposes of Catholics. In this third book, published in 1829, Concerning the Progress of the Revolution and the War gainst the Church, he extended his program for freedom of the church to freedom of the press, association, and education for all people. In turn, the Belgian Catholics were encouraged by these publicans to maintain the Union of Catholics and Liberals. Viscount Charles de Vilain XIIII wrote to him in August, 1829: "Your work has created an immense sensation in this country...it has given repose to my spirit, peace to my conscience; completely Catholic in faith, I was liberal in politics, but yet I saw nearly all Catholics making common cause of altar and throne...since that time I have become papist, ultramonatane, I have rediscovered calm and tranquility."


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Viscount Charles de Vilain XIIII

The Catholics of the Southern Netherlands had proceeded in a curious matter of compromise. Pope Pius VII, like his immediate predecessors, preferred to back a strong monarchy, Protestant or Catholic, rather than appear to favor any revolutionary opposition movement. King William's government then proceeded to carry out a number of reforms in Belgium int he area of religion and education, reforms which met with approval not only from his Dutch subjects but also from many Belgian anticlerical liberals led by the "Voltairian" Louis de Potter. These reforms were crafted to make the Belgian Catholic church an effective branch of the state (as the Napoleonic Concordant had sought) and to create a modernized state-governed educational system. A special seminary for the priesthood was established, restrictions were placed on the study of Belgian students abroad, and several religious orders were forbidden or limited in their recruitment of new members. This was all undertaken to nationalize the clergy; three universities were opened in the southern provinces at Liége, Louvain, and Ghent, all staffed and financed by the state, against reviving the older University of Louvain with its autonomous, all-Catholic and traditionalist faculty. Dutch Catholics, afraid of Calvinist indoctrination, pushed for secondary schools, and these were organized to give Bible study and morality, without doctrinal instruction. Conservative Belgian Catholics were not too pleased, and hated the lack of positive Catholic instruction. Press and pulpit denounced the state schools and incentivized their congregations to attend alternative schools sponsored by Catholic religious orders. These free schools were population, but they were inferior in quality to the state schools, which had state assistance.

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Louis de Potter

When the Belgian clergy became to oppose educational reforms, William exercised his regal power and delayed filling empty sees. By 1826, Tours, Ghent, Namur, and Liége were without bishops, and thus weakened church resistance, as did the silence from Rome. The Catholic press was also under the strictest of surveillance by the government. Two Belgian papers,
Courrier de la Meuse and Catholique des Pays-Bas explored toleration as a possible alternative. A political circle formed around the Arcbishop of Malaines, François Antoine, led the way for a compromise by suggesting that the hated regal constitution could be used against the government and for the advantage of the Church. The proposed compromise did not seek reconciliation with the King or his ministry, but with those Belgian liberals who supported the administration on school reform and religion. The failure to negotiate a concordant between William and the Pope in 1827 accelerated the path to integration. He had hoped to sign it as a "peace-treaty" but despite his ratification, William's protestant subjects were enraged. Unable to move politically, William could not fill the vacant sees, and the Catholics saw this as a cancellation of the negotiated Concordant. Belgian liberals, unlike French liberals, had their own pivot in political perspective. They believed that the anticlerical and anti-Jesuit rhetoric projected as distracting from issues such as freedom of the press, parliamentary parity, and economic issues in the South. Most of the liberals were privately practicing Catholics and wanted to acknowledge the utility of the Church in return for the advantages to be gained from compromise. The stage was set for a political deal between Catholicism and Liberalism. The first offer of alliance had been proposed in December 1825 when the Catholic leader, Eugéne Constantin, Baron de Gerlache, spoke in the parliament on behalf of free choice of schools for parents and cited his justification liberal ideology and constitutional safeguards. Negotiations on the Concordant divided the two sides briefly, but once it became clear that the Concordant was dead, Gerlache resumed his courtship of the liberals.

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Eugéne Constantin, Baron de Gerlache

Several Catholic newspapers and liberal newspapers amicably received the flattery. Those who supported such a coalition were typically more moderate, leaving conservative Catholics and anticlerical liberals outside the fold. But after the government prosecuted some editors of the liberal paper Courrier des Pays-Bas, several liberal anticlericals defected, including Louis de Potter. The union was formalized in November 1828 as a prudent instrument of opposition. The agreement stipulated that the liberal and Catholic newspapers would cease mutual attacks and that the parliamentary representatives of this Union would withhold government appropriations "until they had secured ministerial responsibility, immediate application of all the provisions of the concordant, freedom from interference in the Catholic schools, the establishment of a tribune of high justice at Brussells rather than The Hauge, and the employment of more Belgians in the civil service, diplomatic corps, and army." The conservative Catholics argued that the Union was a mere return to the Joyeuse Entrée. It might have remained a mere oppositional device if not for the writings of Lamennais. Lamennais' praise and adoption of the Belgian Catholic-liberal strategy in his own works served to give the moment an ideological and theoretical foundation that it had previously lacked. It was instrumental in the translation of idea to action in the 1830 revolution and moved Lamennais onto extreme democratic politics. In Paris, Lamennais urged his French followers to study the Belgian newspapers. The Progrès was reprinted three times in Belgium by August 1829. Lamennais wrote in December of that same year: "It was considered madness, what I said last year about the union of Catholicism and liberalism [being a] unique means of re-establishing society on its true foundations. Yet there it is, under our very eyes, this reunion operating in Belgium, and giving to the world one of the greatest and most beautiful spectacles that has been seen for a long time."

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King William I of the Netherlands (1833)

Lamennais was eager, if not in inciting revolution, in condoning it and participating actively in the creation of new liberal states. Although most of the leaders of the Belgian revolution were liberals rather than members of the Catholic party, and the upper clergy were deeply reluctant to endorse its methods, the harmonious working-out of the provisional government. France too was changed for the experince. The events of 1830 had proved beyond a doubt to persons like Lamennais and Lacordaire that the Church should welcome liberty. Association with the Bourbons had led the populace to destroys its altars and crosses, but in Belgium and Poland, Catholics were the popular leaders in the struggle for freedom. Religion could deploy the weaponry of the present, association and education; all it needed from the state was liberty, the freedoms promised by the Charter. With that faith in publicity so typical of the time, Lamennais founded a newspaper in October 1830; L'Avenir (The Future) aimed to change the minds of men to win over their souls. "God and Liberty," the epigraph of the newspaper, was no innocent slogan. Although it seemed to flatter the anticlerical impulse in Paris, Catholicism without legitimism or Jacobinism, divorced from party politicians and changing regimes, its social reformism and demands for liberty placed it with the radical left. It proposed Church-state relations modelled on those of Belgium; it gave support to Catholics in ireland and Poland and called for reforms in the Papal States. "Liberty of conscience and of teaching, liberty of the press and of industry, such are our natural and acquired rights," declared Lamennais in the paper. The new King, in unquestionably menacing tones, was warned to keep his promises, or forfeit his right to rule. Soon it would attack the government for not granting freedom of education, bitterly mocking Armentiéres' legislation with 'Barante's amendments and the state's choice of bishops. It even encouraged the monks of a Breton abbey in their resistance to the attempts of the authorities to close it.

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The annexation of Brabant, Hainaut, Namur (west of the Meuse), and a portion of East Flanders placed the "Union" within the boundaries of France's new political system. Lamennais was their natural public figure—but he was consumed with intensifying radicalism. He embraced universal suffrage, and dominated by his powerful personality, like Saint-Simon, the movement grew closer to an extremist conclusion. The radicalism of L'Avenir made it enemies everywhere. Legitimists were angered by its assault on the alliance of throne and alter, its attacks on European monarchs and its unfairly blaming them for provoking a mob into sacking Saint-Germain. It displeased the bishops by its ultramonatism, its radicalism, and its attacks on their quiesence, and above all it earned the hostility the King, who was a frequent target. With a limited circulation of approximately 2,000, it seemed Lamennais would take his support of Liberal Ultramonatism to the new Belgian provinces of France...



[1] I find this quite intriguing; it's very much alt-history in the sense that Lemennais was extremely popular in OTL Belgium but was opposed vigorously by Paris. The annexation thus presents a fascinating alternative.
 
A Letter to Jacques-Charles François Sauzet Barante ((@Jackbollda))

Sir.

I have recently been reading about your speeches and have been reading your articles in the Journal Des Debats. Ignoring the comments made against myself, I have been very intrigued by your stances on certain issues. In-fact, the more I delve into what you were speaking, the more I realized that our ideals are shared. As a man who partook in the June Revolution, I agree that the Revolution is the personification of liberty against the oppressive white-flagged tyranny that France had been experiencing under Charles X. However, I am in fear of the increasing Republican sentiment in this nation, a sentiment headed by men like Lamarque who wish to bring us back to the days of the Terror. I agree with your belief that the Regime (for all the good it has done) has been too kind to these dangerous men. We must be a civilized society, not one that succumbs to violence on the whims of a mob!

As such, while you may lump me into the same category as some of these dangerous demagogues, I wish to offer the Resistance Party my support, both personal and financial. Perhaps by doing this, I can show you, monsieur, that I am not a threat for you to fear.

-Alexandre, Baron Descombes