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[Industrialist/Financier]
[Liberal]
[Liberal Egotisme: +1.5PP]
 
Before he goes to his duel, the Comte de L'Isle Jourdain writes his will. It is rather simplistic, saying that the wealth of the Barrande estate, the title of Comte de L'Isle Jourdain, and all financial connections to the Barrande name, are to be inherited by his son, Joseph Antoine Barrande. He also includes details regarding the guardianship of his son until he comes of age. He leaves out his wife in most aspects of the will, only keeping her as guardian because the law requires it as well as the required wealth transactions for her being his wife.
 
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((Private to Members of the Order of Saint Michael))

Soldiers in the name of Christ, the King, and the Archangel Michael, I hold you in my prayers. This is a missive granted to all Knight Sergeants directing them to send forth one of their Knights to infiltrate the ranks of the disreputable and potentially revolutionary organization of soldiers known as the Young Franks. It is the mission of these men to ascertain the names of as many of these soldiers as possible and report them to the Council of Saint Michael. Great care is to be given to note the ranks of these soldiers particularly those who are officers and to discovering the exact political sensibilities of the members. Special care must be taken to not reveal yourself to the society as the existence of this order must be kept secret. Vive le Roi!

Le Grand maître de l'Ordre de Saint Michel l'Archange
 
(Joint IC with @etranger01 )

On the way back from the Château d’Ecouen
Somewhere near Paris


The evening had been surprisingly civil and the Marquise of Armentières was quite happy with herself as she rode back toward Paris in her carriage. Her cousin, who had visited the chapel of the estate, a weird interest of his, was also very pleased, so much in fact that he decided to ride with the coachman, which left the young lady free to discuss with her future husband.

“Just what exactly is the nature of the relationship between your father and Sophia Dawes?”

Henri paused for a minute to contemplate a tactful evasion, realized that this thoroughly intelligent woman would see through it anyway, considered that she would be sharing his entire life henceforth, and decided instead on honesty.

“Once, she was his maîtresse-en-titre; now, he is hers.”

The young lady repressed a laugh because of the seriousness and gravity of the situation. Soon, she would inherit this social mess, and it took no genius to understand that la catin would cause trouble long after Condé’s passing.

“Is he aware of how the King repudiated her in public?”

Henri shrugged eloquently, palms up; the gesture conveyed, rather clearly, what do you expect?

“My father and His Majesty have a complex relationship. They’ve gone back and forth from being confidantes and mortal enemies so often that, at this point, I can hardly tell when he is or isn’t in favor.”

The lady pondered for a moment, before answering back: “Well, this is a delicate affair. And the King is a most mortal enemy to have. It is quite possible he spoke ill of Mrs. Dawes in public only to injure your family. I have been told so on several occasions.”

Her fiance considered this in turn. “Perhaps. It may have also been an effort on his part to exile her from polite society, thus removing her from the equation.”

Amélie quipped back, always perceptive : “She looked quite into the equation, if you ask me. How he can be so enraptured by such a person is beyond me. However, I do wish to compliment you on your restraint tonight, for I am certain that neither Mrs. Dawes nor your father perceived any hints of disdain, a feat in itself.”

M. de Bourbon laughed openly, briefly surprising the coachman. “Yes, well, my father grew rather attached to her during the exile. She has a certain base charm in the absence of actual femininity; naturally you outshone her. For myself, I hardly mind the woman or my father’s lack of taste or good sense, though her machinations are tiresome in the extreme. Did you notice how carefully she brought up Father’s latest complaints about me?”

“It was hard to miss, but I must admit, how can one not recognize the genius of Alexandre Cazal? Was her education so neglected as to not being able to read?” said the young lady.

“I’m sure that Father had her taught at some point. To him we may also credit her diction, table manners, hygiene, proper grooming, attire…” Henri showed no sign of stopping in his exhaustive list of civilized qualities that she would otherwise lack.

The marquise laughed mildly before redirecting the discussing, making sure not to say out loud that of course, la catin had learn to read in order to be able to rewrite the will. She rather shifted to a related subject. “I hope to have left a favorable impression on your father. I did not expect such coldness on his part.”

Henri replied with a slight shake of his head. “I have no doubt in my mind that he received you favorably, dearest. The coldness was entirely due to my own manner, with its lack of abasement and insufficient filial groveling for his benevolent forgiveness. I am sure that he was more than pleased with your own presence.” He paused briefly at the end of his statement, tapping the pommel of his saddle thoughtfully, expression faintly absent.

Amélie seized immediately on the pain weaved through Bourbon’s words. She thus spokes softly, as to cajole him: “Do not be so hard on yourself, Henri, for deep down, I am quite sure your father approves of you. He is of a generation who have lost everything, were forced to exile and had a shortness of proper ways to express their expectations to their children. My father was the same…”.

M. de Bourbon’s absent expression lifted, the corners of his mouth lifting in a pleased smile as he nodded to acknowledge her reply. “Of course, my dear. I am sure also that he is finding his sons rather difficult, as well. First Louis Antoine, then myself. And he’s… so very old, now. I should forgive him, I know. But then, would he even acknowledge that there was anything to forgive?”

The marquise paused pensively before answering: “It is to be the great plight of our youth, to try so hard to obtain the approval of men clearly belonging to the past while the present and the future is but before us, should we extend the hand to grab it rather than looking resolutely behind.”

Her fiance smiled wryly. “Our generation is neither the source nor the destination, but rather the bridge over which other men and women shall travel? What an inglorious lot we have ahead of us.”

She smiled for a moment. “And where does that bridge lead, my dearest?”
 
((Private @MadMartigan ))

Cher Monsieur Duval,

I have received your letter with great interest as I enjoy reviewing the reception of my articles, be they praise or criticism. I appreciate the practical nature of your concerns but must first object to the proposition that man's society is arbitrary. Surely the exact nature of the institutions themselves are arbitrary, if it were not so then there would be no differences amongst the national characteristics of peoples. Namely such things as Parliament in Britain or Tsarism in Russia would not find such manifold different forms of unique expression. However, (I hope you will allow me to introduce a concept I am preparing to write on) the natural right of authority in a society rests in four tiers. These tiers of authority go down from the highest, ultimate authority the Theonomy, that is the law of God, Heteronomy, the law of the sovereign on Earth, Patronomy, the law of the father, and Autonomy, the law of the self. In the exercise of statehood it is the role of the sovereign to enact the will of God as the faith of a people is the ultimate expression of that people's prosperity and destiny.

Remarking further on the practical insistence of your position you rightly recognize the extreme care necessary for general to not give an order that will not be obeyed. Truly, the tact and skill necessary to command men into the fires of war is similar to the requirements of a sovereign whose role it is to lead his subjects through the Luciferian winds that confront man at all times. Verily, it would be most wrong for a general to exacerbate needlessly wounds that may divide the functioning force of the army, as these divisions may make the army's mission, namely the confrontation and defeat of the enemy, impossible. In that manner if a command would be rebelled against so as to prevent the mission of the army being done it should not be given. However, you ask me now to look at the anti-sacrilege laws in this way, as commands being given that shall divide and distract from the business of the national prosperity and destiny. This I cannot do, sir, for two reasons. The first is very simple, that being a Minister of War for this government I cannot go against the will of the King, my very life is his own to command. It is not the role of the head of the army to publicly oppose a government's measures. This reason is one of pure propriety, the latter is one of moral principle which we may disagree upon. The second is that the sole purpose of the sovereign's actions is to promote the salvation of his people. In this goal we find all the economic and political maneuvering justified. Therefore, this anti-sacrilege law, a law designed directly to improve the faith of the French people, is a direct thrust of this motive. In the comparison you make to a general's command, it is as if the general, the King, has commanded his troops to assault the breach in a fortress.

You say that France should rise up in rebellion over this law, that to promulgate its commands would lead to an irresponsible distraction as of a foolish and overly strict officer's commands. Rather, think now upon soldiers disobeying the simple and paramount command to attack. The King or general must make this command, and if his subjects or soldiers rebel it is not the fault of his own judgement but the sinful spirits of those rebels. The general must crush this rebellion head on, to ground down the temptations of pride placed into those soldiers by the Devil himself. It is not for a subject of the King to refuse the ordinances of His Majesty, but to obey them with faith, honesty, and a supreme trust in the wisdom of Divinely ordained better. I appreciate the practical concerns, sir, but I ask you to think on these words and on the path that all of us men of power must follow to restore France's place as the eldest daughter of the Church and the pearl in the eyes of God.

Le Vicomte de Saint Fulgent, le Ministre de la guerre

((Private))

Dear Lord Fulgent,

Please do not think I attempt to influence you or the military with my letter, I only wish to engage with the argument you have presented to the people of France in justification of the current Ministry's present legislative slate. Now, in regards to your latest thrust...

Indeed, no man can defy God, for he will always have the last word and our mortal machinations become dust. But, even though no man should defy his sovereign or his father, it is certainly a constant risk present in all human societies. The authority the father of the nation and the household possess are god-granted, but are not in practical terms absolute. You could say that while the King is the general of the nation as commissioned by God, the nation is not a well-trained army but a collection of bandits. But they are the King's bandits, they are of the future of his people, he cannot just replace them with a better lot. And it might be the job of the King to be unyielding, like God, but it is also the duty of the King's servants to preserve the King's authority, which again, cannot be said to be in fact absolute in practice.

If the general commands his army of bandits to assault a breach in a well-defended fortress, he will likely be ignored and possibly overthrown. But if he commands them to attack the supply lines of the fortress and to pick off the defenders one by one, they will in fact excel at this tact with more ability than well-trained soldiers, as their skills lie in that area of irregular warfare. In the same way, the unique national characteristics of France can be said to be at odds with the methods of the current government, but not the goals. I would more generally conclude that the characteristics that you describe as separating nations, such as separating the customs of Russian Tsars and British Parliaments, are not fixed but in fact change throughout history.

The French character is not the same now as it was during the ancien regime, we have gone from a nation of regulars to a nation of irregulars to continue our military metaphor. And I think you and your comrades in de Sully's ministry recognize the changeable nature of the French nation, and wish to change it once more. You do not, in practice, believe in an unchanging divinely mandated nature of the French people.

It may be a godly mission to change the French people to grant greater respect to the sacrosanct aspects of the religion of the majority of the people of France and of its sovereign, but it cannot be said to be godly to slay Frenchmen in order to change French society. That is to say, a Revolution, even one for done of godly ends, cannot be said to be anything less than barbaric. The desire to bloodily revolutionize society is one that must be fought by all good men, regardless of the utopian ends of the revolutionaries.

It is not Lucifer who changed French society to its current state, the men who are of this era are not more sinful than you or De Sully himself. And your methods are not God's methods, they are your own. So any actions you commit in the name of your worthy cause must be judged against you without regard to your ultimate goal. There is godliness in temperance, and I pray that God gives you the strength to accept those things that you cannot change.

Thibaut Duval, Former Deputy of Bouches du Rhone
 
On a Rational System of Supply (1826)

Though well-known in literate Parisian circles of the time as a patron of fiction-writers and novelists, Henri Jules de Bourbon's first foray into writing an actual book was not a fictional story, but rather a military treatise. On a Rational System of Supply handles the complex and highly technical subject of post-Napoleonic military logistics with as much clarity and directness as such a topic allows. It's almost entirely intelligible by well-educated civilians, and there are even several dryly humorous anecdotes regarding the Spanish war and the logistical hardships therein.

Following the abrupt conclusion to the Spanish intervention, Colonel Henri Bourbon found himself no longer the aide-de-camp to General St. Fulgent, but rather the senior aide and military attache to Minister of War St. Fulgent. Ostensibly a soul-crushing position requiring sixteen-hour days, Bourbon instead maintained a busy social schedule and managed to successfully court his future wife mainly through his expert delegation of the more tedious administrative tasks to a competent army of junior aides, many of whom had served under him in Spain. Consequently, Bourbon was left mainly to address high-level matters relating to the numerous issues experienced by the Army during the intervention. Between his own war-time experience and this extended policy process, Bourbon became something of an authority on the issue of military supply (or lack thereof, as was sometimes the case in Spain).

In a series of memoranda and position papers addressed to the Minister of War and the General Staff, Bourbon proposed a comprehensive overhaul of an antiquated logistical system with roots going back as far as the Seven Years' War. Using Jominian principles of geometry and rationality, Bourbon's proposed new-model logistical system offered the army the ability to anticipate the demand for critical materiel through the use of mathematics. While some of his proposals were rehabilitated ideas from the Napoleonic period - Jomini was cited only indirectly given his lack of favor in the royal court - others such as the use of hourly timetables to more accurately plot out the movement of men and supplies were entirely of the writer's own invention. Among Bourbon's other proposals included a memo proposing the establishment of a committee intended to study the theoretical use of railways to move soldiers and supplies.

On a Rational System of Supply is a condensation of those memoranda and papers, with the specifics and military secrets carefully edited out. Instead, the book offers a theoretical model for military reform based along Jominian lines and envisioning a national railway network linking distributed supply and recruitment depots to mobilize the entire nation in the event of war. Curiously, Bourbon seems either ignorant or uninterested in the civilian application of the rails, though that may be explained by the singular military focus of the work.

It was unlikely that such a work would ever achieve anything approaching popular or even elite renown, intended as it was for military readership. Still and all, who knew how that cadre of uniformed men would respond to it...
 
((Joint-IC with Marschalk))

The Comte de L'Isle Jourdain was waiting nervously in the center of Calais. Was he out of his mind, or was he simply acting in a way that was deemed acceptable? He was surprised that Saint-Germain even accepted his demand, what with rumors circulating that the man thought personal honor was a reactionary and antiquated social ideal. Still, the whole situation didnt feel right. The Comte had a sinking feeling that this duel was not going to go the way he intended. Saint-Germain was a willy one, only showing himself in French society when he was publicly challenged, catching those who believed him in Britain off guard. Would Saint-Germain do whatever it took to see the Comte's life taken? It doesnt matter at this point, the duel was set to happen, and whether or not he lived through it would be the only thing that mattered. So here he was, in the center of Calais, waiting for his second.

The Duc de Saint-Aignan, donning a long black cloak and waving his cane, walked along the noisy streets of Calais. He traveled here incognito, under the guise of a merchant - after all, matters of honor do not require unnecessary fanfares. The fact that the newspapers were already trumpeting about it did not please the Minister of Justice. After all, it was a duel, a business of gentlemen, and not a contest of fighter roosters or the Spanish corrida. In the old days, they could break a dozen swords - and journalists would not have put their noses into that. But it was in the old days. Noticing the Comte de L'Isle Jourdain, the Duc de Saint-Aignan approached him. "Greetings, my friend." He said, and gazed intently at his face in search of fear or nervousness. Also he would have preferred dedication. "How are you feeling?" After that polite question, the nobleman kept silence for a moment, before asking quite bluntly "Tell me, are you a good marksman?"

The Comte looked at his second. It was odd that he chose this outfit. It was like he didnt want anyone to know he was here. "I fought in Spain during the Siege of Bilbao. I have experience with firing weapons, and I know how to remain cool while under fire." said the Comte. "Still, the Comte de Saint-Germain has been insisting on a duel to the death for weeks, and as the challenger, I have to oblige him on this matter. It doesn't feel right, why risk his life over some minor event?" asked the Comte.

"You have been under fire. It is good."- the Duc de Saint-Aignan said. He once again threw a glance at the young Peer as if weighting him, evaluating his qualities. The fact that he was a soldier – and who has served in a war – was, of course, bettering his chances. He would have to be used to violence and accept it more readily. Although, of course, epaulets did not guarantee anything. Saint-Aignan saw some generals who fainted at a sight of a pistol. It was the men under of epaulets that was important – and today the Comte de L'Isle Jourdain was going to prove his mettle. To the society, to his equals – and perhaps even to his wife. "But is it your first duel? I have fought in six, you know. Two times I killed." - as the Duc de Saint-Aignan said that, he looked at the other nobleman with his cold eyes. He suddenly remembered the drunken Austrian major, with whom he brawled in Italy, while serving in the Army de Conde. The man spoke quite disrespectfully of the French émigrés. Saint-Aignan thought of the way that impudent rogue shrieked, when he run him through with his sword. "And if I have learned something from this experience… If you think of your own death and dread it – you would lose. You need to think of the death of your enemy. How to dispose of him." Then he raised his eyebrow, as the Comte shared his doubts "Mayhaps he is overconfident. Or you believe he is planning some kind of a ruse? This man is surely a scoundrel."

"If I remain focus, if I do not deter or cower in the face of this man, I am certain I will have success." said the Comte. "I am surprised you would allow such a duel to take place. I would not blame you for wanting us to stop this madness in your position. I promise you though that if the choice was left to me, this would not be a duel to the death. I am only fighting as such due to my opponent fighting as such. I will not push further though if he cannot keep fighting, nor will I continue fighting if he decides to delope." said the Comte.

"I may be a minister, Monsieur le Comte, but I am, first of all, a gentleman. And if some person like that dishonored my family name, I would have surely wanted retribution." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan answered quite dryly. The younger generation seemed to have grown soft. They have forgotten that this is how their ancestors, the knights, solved their disputes – with steel in hand and open visor. And if you are not ready to give your life and take life for your King, your Faith, your spouse, children… What makes you a man then? However, the Comte de L'Isle Jourdain did the right thing and challenged Saint-Germain. Now it was important that he kept his spirits during the affair itself. Looking at the other peer, Saint-Aignan smiled reassuringly "It is up to you, how you treat your opponent, whether you would show mercy or judge him more strictly. However I ask you to remember one thing…"Deciding that they have stood here for too long, gaining unnecessary attention, the aristocrat started to walk, gesturing the Comte to follow him "When it starts, do not let yourself to be overwhelmed by emotions. Do not think of your wife, of anything. See him as an aim, this is all. Сoncentrate on your shot."

"Yes. Keep your aim straight, and your hand steady. Fighting in Spain has taught me that." said the Comte, walking along with the Duc. "I just hope that it does not result in death. I am sure many in the ranks of the government would love to see Saint-Germain killed, but I do not wish to see anyone die at this affair." said the Comte. "I just wish not to see my son grow up without a father. I did not know my father very well, before the Terror took him that is. I wish not the same fate upon Joseph..."

"Your son. Of course, I understand. There is no greater pleasure for a father than to see his child grow up by his side." - the Duc de Saint-Aignan said, nodding his head in sympathy. Then he kept silence for a few moments, before adding "You know, my own father has died during the Terror as well. But I was a man by the time, so my memories of him still stay with me." They walked through the marketplace and then across the alleyway, and into a small park, "I am a soldier, Monsieur le Comte, and must tell you the following. At war I have taken life - but I understand that it is never the aim. However, sometimes it is necessary to defend yourself, And you are now defending yourself - your life, your honor and the tranquility of your household, Your cause is just. So you are not to blame yourself, whatever is the outcome." The Duc stopped to rest for a moment. They were now not far from the destination - a secluded area quite fitting for such affairs. "One can only pray that you would be victorious and return to your son, By the way, have you made your confession and received the Sacraments lately?" It would be important to take care of your soul before facing possible death.

"Yes, I was planning on receiving them before the fateful morning." said the Comte. He began to think about how God would even feel about this affair. Does God even believe in the importance of honor in a man? All he could pray for is that God forgives him if he does spill blood. "At the end of the day though, I am protecting my honor. I either live to see it restored, for die fighting for it." said the Comte. "But for now, I wait." said the Comte. "There are some more things I wish to discuss on this matter though, but we can wait until we are in a more private setting..." said the Comte, as he led the Duc down the street.
 
voting closed

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Le Globe

On Greek martyrdom and Turk barbarity. -Essay by Lothaire Lécuyer.

Let us never forget the atrocities by the hands of the Muhammadian so called caliphate. Let it be in Anatolia, Crete, Constantinoples, Cyprus, Macedonia and the Aegean Isles. Let us never forget the crimes against Christendom that were committed on the island of Chios. Thousands of Greeks have perished under the oppressive heel of the Turks as they trample over freedom and Christianity. So wicked are the heathen Turks that they took the leader of the Eastern Church and martyred him. Such is their contempt for what is holy and just that they kill all in their way - let it be a holy man or innocent women.

The Greeks, and their companions, shall never forget these events and the martyrdom of Gregory the Holy. As such is written in the Hymn to Liberty:

"I shall always recognize you
by the dreadful sword you hold,
as the Earth with searching vision
you survey with spirit bold.
From the Greeks of old whose dying
brought to life and spirit free,
now with ancient valour rising
let us hail you, oh Liberty!"

Let us not forget their sacrifice, let us not forget their plight. His Most Christian King Charles X have now been crowned and given the sword of Charlemagne. One of the greatest Christian Kings throughout history. With the very sword he christened the heathen Saxons, Avars and Slavs spreading the light of Christ to the dark corners of Europe. Still all of Europe have not embraced the light of Christ. Following the fall of Constantinoples great parts of Europe have come under the Mohammadian yoke. For centuries they have been oppressed, for centuries they have been levied extra taxes and for centuries they have resisted the destructive eastern forces. And now they stand up, they stand up for liberty and Christ.

It is our duty to aid our fellow Christians. It's our duty to follow in the steps of Byron, Lamarque, Durand and many brave souls. Currently the Greeks have numeriority advantage and the Ottomans lack proper artillery and arms. Let us aid them and the Philhellinistic Societies. In the name of Lord Byron, who gave us masterpieces such as Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, who were all too soon taken apart from the material world as he fought for Greek indepence. Let us do it in the name of all those who have fell to the cruved swords of Mohammedian tyrrany. In the name of appreciation of western culture and civilization - Greece is by many ways the birthplace of our civilization let it not be defiled by heathens. I hope bankers will do such as the London Phillenistic Committee and extend loans to the Greek cause. That more soldiers and officers and other men of honor volunteer in the fight for Christendom and Greece.

As of now the cause of justice have the upperhand despite the martyrdom of tens of thousands of good Christians. As such I will quote a masterpiece by another Philhellenist Percy Bysshe Shelley - too taken away fom us too early. It's wonderful and fitting for hubris of the Ottomans and their inevitable fall:

"And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
 
CHAPTER 12: Quelque peu Theatral
(September 1824 - April 1827)


The new Ministry was conceived with all the benefits of good tidings. Sully commanded a fearsome majority, a tested collective of Ministers, and a new king of an amicable disposition. But the early auguries showed few signs worthy of optimism; Polignac had taken ill soon after the death of Louis XVIII and had to be replaced by the uninspiring Ange Hyacinthe Maxence, baron de Damas; Chateaubriand was further slighted by this replacement that denied his own ascension; and Marshal Bourier had been edged out of office by the Dauphin and replaced by Saint Fulgent. The weight of this burden was increased when on December 2 an ordinance was issued retiring all general officers, who having reached the age limit, had not been on active duty since 1823; nothing was more normal from a financial point of view, but the liberal press took great offensive, especially when it was discovered that the 250 deposed men were almost all former officers of the Empire. It was not improved by the date itself—the anniversary of Austerlitz—poor Charles X did all he could by making up for the blunder by issuing exceptions, but it only served to nullify the financial benefits without repairing the moral damage. Sully was further pressed by the moderate Left, and the figure of Monsieur Durand, who in his ingenious essay A State with Society proffered the liberal alternative to the pecuniary course of the duc de Sully, and thus by implication, assaulted the procedures of the Ultra-Royalist Ministry, which was now solidly accountable for the state of France on account of its longevity. The opposition did not fail to class this ordinance along with the bill for the indemnification of the émigrés, which the government was drawing up at the same time and which, in fact, was announced in the speech from the throne at the opening of the parliamentary session on December 22nd. The presentation of this law has oft been interpreted as an obvious sign of the blind spirit of the reaction attributed to the new king, but in truth, the bill corresponded to one of the dearest ideas of Louis XVIII, and was only delayed due to financial difficulties that its recommendation had been postponed.

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King Charles X of France and Navarre.

The new government sought to rectify this issue that had proved to be the gravest problem facing the Restoration monarchy; that is, the awful problem of the nationalized lands. The most radical solution would have been to nullify all land confiscations and return the landed fortunes to the nobility, with the understanding that the new owners, who had purchased the land in good faith, would be indemnified. But there was perhaps a righteous fear that this would unleash civil war, and thus Louis XVIII had closed this way of escape by proclaiming the irrevocable character of the Revolutionary property in the Charter. An alternative solution, and perhaps a lazier one, would have been to do nothing at all, but Louis XVIII was not prepared to trample on the just grievances of his duly faithful. These considerations of principle were joined by practical problems, such as the fact that the former landowners could not easily resign themselves to their losses, and their complaints, supported by the clergy, stamped the nationalized lands with a moral condemnation that made it difficult to sell. Charles and Villèle thus sought a resolution based on the previous law of Saint-Aignan, whereby the old owners would accept an indemnity, the ministry would bring an end to their demands in the controversial Committee of Restitution, erase all distinctions between nationalized lands and other lands, let the lands return to their normal values, reassure the new holders, open to them the way to a sincere rally to the regime, and thus deprive the enemies of the monarchy of their most likely followers. Villèle drafted a shrewd financial law, which nonetheless involved a serious political inconvenience; that the bondholders would see their annual dividends decrease and would thus resent the returned émigrés. This first method failed in committee, and thereafter, the Minister of Finance resolved to first put before the Chambers a law on the principle of the indemnity and the method of its distribution; after which they could not refuse the financial stipulations to provide the necessary funds. The debates, not unexpectedly, took on a furious nature, and once more, Durand took the lead.

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His Majesty, the King, and the Minister of Finance, Joseph de Villèle

The man who had happily embraced the appellation “Leader of the Opposition” found himself happily acquainted with stretched facts and frank falsehoods, but nonetheless, stuck a middle-course. Durand’s more inflamed colleagues on the Left attempted tricks and maneuvers to discredit the bill; first by emphasising that too many in the Chamber were personally interested in its passage, and then by condemning the whole emigration movement during the Revolution as a crime. To these bad Frenchmen they did not owe any compensation because the confiscation had been a just punishment. Thus to them the indemnity would be like a fine imposed on France in favour of traitors! Durand denied this course and struck hard at Villèle for the practical impossibility of the law, and urged the Ministry to repudiate this course. The extreme Right, the so-called “Edges,” reacted fiercely to this implication, and went so far as even to bring in question Article IX of the Charter, which had declared the sale of the lands to be irrevocable; Louis XVIII apparently had no more right to dispose of émigré property than the émigrés had to dispose of his crown. They tried, by amendments, to give the measure the character of a restitution in strict justice. The Ministry itself, to the shame of its council president, the duc de Sully, prepared nought a defense of the bill, and so embarrassed himself, that even the Minister of the Interior, who increasingly counted himself an opponent of the President, abstained from the bill. The indemnification law eventually passed by 160 votes in the Chamber of Deputies [1]. Convinced by the impressions of Durand and Duval, half of the sum was to be furnished by an amortization fund; the other half by the excess of the budgetary collections, and in addition he combined with this a new optional conversion of the five per cent bonds to 4.5 per cent. In the end, the indemnification fell short of that legendary estimate of a billion francs, and produced instead, an approximate quantity of 630 million francs. And what about the results of this effort? Did this settlement have the hoped-for results? Not quite. The nationalized lands, freed from the moral mortgage which had depreciated their values, now rose in price, but the increased receipts on the transaction tax did not come up to their expectations. The indemnity did not permit the émigrés to receive back their landed fortunes. As a result of the circumstances of inheritance, there were about seventy-thousand eligible for indemnity, and the average share for each one was about 1,377 francs of annual dividend, or 45,000 francs of bonds at real value, much less in actual fact. Furthermore, the real individual indemnity was (for the most part) below this average because of some big compensations; for example, the duc d’Orleans, who ironically opposed the law in private, raked in approximately 12,704,000 francs worth of bonds. Nevertheless, the main result was accomplished; after 1825 there was no longer two kinds of property, two kinds of landowners; there was no material barrier to a national reconciliation. Even this principle could be undermined by the émigrés who felt severely underpaid, and by Durand’s liberal opposition, who could add to their arsenal the theme of the poor little bondholders fleeced for the benefit of the greedy nobles. No one in the Ministry—especially Villèle and Sully—looked better off for their collusion with the world of high finance.

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The Indemnification Law sought to resolve the grievances of the émigrés, depicted here in the famous Armée des Émigrés.
Sully’s esteem with the king was not held in high regard either when he repeatedly ignored the requests of the sovereign to pass a law that would enable the Council and the King to notarize religious orders in accordance with the restored Concordant. Sully’s Ministry proposed no such law on the King’s behalf; and the King, not one quick to rage, decided that it would be best if he circumvented the Chamber, and even his Ministry, and passed a royal ordinance that in effect, contradicted the Charter, and superseded a prior law passed in January 1817 that allowed religious orders to acquire property only if authorized by a legislative act. [3] The ordinance caused an unimaginable outrage in the Chamber of Peers, where more gentlemen counted themselves disciples of numerous liberal and Voltairian factions than the elected chamber. An abrupt fear emerged among faithful Catholics of the Gallican parliamentary tradition and the Jesuit dominance was just on the horizon, and not without some merit. Lamennais was ecstatic about the passage, and married his political attachments of Ultramontane to the new King; if Sully was not to oblige the actions of Charles X, or even attempt, by shrewd parliamentary machinations, to water-down his propositions, then the King would find it in his own royal duty to execute his divine right. From that time forward, in all that the king and his government did in favor of the state religion, people insisted on seeing only the frightening signs of the mysterious and growing influence of ecclesiastical society of civil society. This malicious interpretation was not to be assuaged by the coronation of Charles X, which took place on May 29, 1825, immediately after the adjournment of the session of parliament. The ceremony in Rheims, which was crafted to permit the whole nation to participate together in a manifestation of monarchical fervor, would mark, in the brilliance of the display, the emergence of France from her misfortunes in an act of faith and grandeur. Nothing was spared to achieve this splendor; the Archbishop of Reims himself explained that the royal power had its source in the hereditary right even prior to the coronation; the wording of the oath was begged by Liberals to include mention of the Charter, but in this regard, Monsignor Deficit refused, and once again the Catholic Church emerged as the primary benefactor of the affair. [3] The coronation lacked no impressive quality, but despite all the efforts of the official poets, and all the celebrations organized by the government, the coronation was not to succeed in arousing the same enthusiasm that had been demonstrated in Reims. When the King made his solemn return to Paris on June 6, everybody noticed the relative coolness of the people, which contrasted painfully with the joy of the September welcome. Chateaubriand, who had wept at an imitation of the royal coronation in Berlin during a performance of Joan d’Arc, called the coronation at Reims: “operatic machinery.”

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The famous embrace of the King and the Dauphin at the Coronation of Charles X. Orléans and Condé are visible to the left of the Dauphin [our perspective]; Sully visible to the right of the King [our perspective]; Bourget hands outstretched; and other Peers.

Charlex X remained somewhat oblivious to the mood of the country, and pressed his Government to appease the requests of Lamennais, who had pushed upon the royal person the matter of the defamation of sacred vessels from churches. But perhaps more importantly, Charles X, who lacked much in popular sensitivity (unlike his brother), excelled acutely in established politics, and came to believe (not without merit) that a majority of the Ultra-Royalists wanted “a necessary expiration after so many years of indifference and impiety.” Saint-Aignan’s posturing to the extreme Right, particularly after the publication of his tract The Moral Restoration, gave further indication to the Sovereign that some royalist fulfillment had to be accomplished. Once Saint-Aignan had declared “when our nation once again becomes the united and harmonious community of the faithful, then the transfer to a truly godly order would naturally follow,” Charles X pressed upon his chief minister to deliver the demands of his supporters. The prescribed law was a matter of severe division in the Ministry; Sully, Berstett, and Villèle were skeptical of the principle. Berstett was the least attached to the Law, Villèle was motivated less by personal conviction than by the necessity of showing deference to the feelings of the King, and Sully was prepared to submit absolutely to the law if the king insisted. The moderate “mathematical” elements of the pure royalist faction implored Sully to neuter the law and construct the statute on principle, not practicality. The council President placed his personal reservations to the side and engaged the king on the matter, but pressed no further than a singular consultation, and ultimately submitted. The Law for the Protection of the Church was to be presented before the Chamber of Deputies in a puritanical form that evoked all the force of the Ultramontane principle; it established severe (sometimes capital) punishments for the desecration of the consecrated vessels, and evoked a sentimental, perhaps even a primordial euphoria on the extreme Right. The moderate elements again implored Sully to amend the bill, and neuter its fearsome force by virtue of the addition of a phrase that would require an act of sacrilege to be committed voluntarily, publicly, and out of hate of scorn for religion. Berstett, perhaps content to allow the flames of his rival envelope him, gave no official endorsement of this principle, and once again prepared to take his own abstention. Duval, exiled from the Chamber of Deputies, spiked the Government in his work Spirit of a Nation in the Journal des débats, and harshly rebuked the Law for the Protection of the Church for inconsistency of purpose and hypersensitivity towards a Church that was a conjugal partner to the Crown. Chateaubriand [5] echoed Duval in the same paper: “The religion which I presented for the veneration of men is a religion of peace which likes to pardon rather than punish, which wins its victories by mercy, and only needs scaffolds for the triumph of its martyrs.”

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A much aged duc de Sully, Prime Minister of France.

In the debates in the chamber of deputies the point of view of the intransigent Catholics and the frightened moderates reached a feverish pitch; finally, the vote approached, and with Durand (who had scurried off to deal with frightening news from Greece) absent, the leadership of the opposition fell to Royer-Collard, who declared: “Not only does it introduce into our legislation a new crime but what is more extraordinary, it create a new principle of criminality, a new class of crimes called supernatural...thus the law again calls into question both religion and civil society…” In any event, upon the approach of the vote, it looked apparent that Berstett would betray the Ultra-Royalists once again, and so inspired was the extreme Right’s hatred of his person, despite his previous service to them, that La Gazette refused him refuge in its pages. But Berstett was not alone, and many on the far-right, influenced by the defection of Chateaubriand, resolved not only to abstain, but to oppose the motion. One-hundred and twenty Ultra-Royalists voted for the Law for the Protection of the Church, flushed with fifty-three abstentions, and thirty-five opponents. Despite Durand’s absence, the Law for the Protection of the Church failed, 121-120 [6]; the Ultra-Royalists had defeated themselves in a spectacular manner. Immediately after the failure of the bill, there was a sense of general relief from the skeptical pure-royalists; they believed that this would calm the apprehension of an ecclesiastical domination and allow a “refreshing of the national discourse.” The outcome was no such relief. The failure of the Law produced a miserable half-way effect; the Parisian public was still persuaded of clerical hegemony by virtue of the King’s ordinance, and the extreme Right was consumed with indignation at the failure of the law. In the aftermath of the whole debacle, the liberal opposition, especially among the crop of fiercer skeptics, concocted a scheme to produce a fantastic regimen of anti-clericalism across the country. The enemies of the regime, smashed by the elections of 1824, had to acknowledge that their direct attacks against the dynasty had failed. Charles’ solemn oath to maintain the Charter and the resolution of the question of the nationalized land by the virtue of the indemnity had slashed away other clear cut political questions capable of disturbing the masses. Under these conditions, the only recourse left to opposition was to appeal to the sensitive attachment of Frenchmen for freedom of thought and expression, to call up the specter of clerical domination aiming at oppressing mind and conscience. By calling forth the specter of clerical domination, the opposition could hold true their loyalty to King and Charter, and even find common cause with a certain respect for religion whose cause was separated from that of its imprudent ministers. A liberal cry was thus belched to assault the church with the most ruthless satire; coins were circulated on which Charles X was represented in Jesuit garb and Louis XVIII as a clerical canon. Societies made generous distributions of Voltaire, Rousseau, and other irreligious authors of the eighteenth century. Students disturbed revivalist missionaries in the churches, and even hurled firecrackers and stink bombs at them and poured ink in the holy water fonts. In Lyons, Rouen, and Brest, such incidents degenerated into regular riots which had to be put down by troops. The Constitutionnel had a special column where it reported the incidents of the sometimes real, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes invented intolerance of the clergymen. The Ultramontane politicians were another point of public scorn; Dupin declared “our present-day Pharisees are devising our tortures. Feel the slashes of the sword whose hilt is at Rome and whose point strikes in all directions!”

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A caricature of King Charles X in the garbs of a Jesuit.

The exaggerated reports and perceptions produced an opinion that a secret “priest party” was the dominator of the Government. Insofar as the intermingling of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (the so-called Jesuit “Congregation”) and the Chevaliers de la Foi were concerned; the public was not so far from true, although it gravely overestimated its clout. Nonetheless, little could put out the fires of belief; a curious tract by the comte de Montlosier, an old Auvergnate reactionary, seemed to suggest that the contemporary system was ruled by four aspects: the Congregation, the Jesuits, Ultramontanism, and priestly meddling. The public excitement of this incident compelled the new minister of ecclesiastical affairs, Mgr. Frayssinous, to make a public statement on the religious policy of the government; he tried to destroy the myths and referenced the facts that the education system was dominated by royal colleges, and not the Jesuit institutions. No matter, the public only remembered the one passage where he acknowledged the existence of the Congregation and especially of the Jesuits, whose presence had been illegal in France since the reign of Louis XV. Henceforth the furor of the anticlerical controversy was concentrated on the Jesuits; revival missions, congregations, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, Ultramontanism, sentimental devotions, etc, were points worthy of scorn. Stendhal wrote in May 1826: “One would think today that the genius of the nation had nothing else to do but make fun of the Jesuits.” The most incredible absurdities flowed naturally, especially following the passage of the Law of the Holiday of the Martyrdom. Charles X, much grieved, witnessed this outpouring so incomprehensible to him. The more religion was attacked, the more he thought he should show his devotion openly. So, when the Jubilee of 1825 was extended to France in 1826 and the Archbishop of Paris had called for public processions, the king insisted on joining them on foot, a candle in his hands, surrounded by his family and representatives of the governmental branches. Since Charles was dressed in violet, the color of mourning for the Kings of France, it gave birth to the rumor that he had been ordained as a bishop and gave Mass secretly in the Tuileries.

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Affaire du 17ème
Extremely unpopular with public opinion and hopelessly on the defensive on the religious question, the ministry encountered in the session of 1826 the prospect of a permanent defeat. Charles X was determined to show a steady course, and resist the drastic changes of Ministry that his brother, King Louis XVIII, had happily endorsed; he kept Berstett, despite worsening relations with the Ministry and the majority, and allowed Bourget a quiet exit to his ecclesiastical duties. Berstett, instructed by King Charles X to redeem himself in the legislature, was charged with accepting the entreaties of the royalist majority in the Deputies, which demanded a bill to modify the provisions of the civil code on the subject of inheritance; the present course of the rural estates was towards perpetual division, and the rural aristocracy was on track to self-inflicted enfeeblement. Berstett drafted his Law of the Standardization of Succession, which would make primogeniture the de facto mechanism for noble succession, and therefore hoped to satisfy the formal wishes of a part of its majority and mollify the opposition that it sensed coming from public opinion. The official opposition kept itself to moderate skepticism, but the papers were ready to unleash the most vicious attack on the Ministry, with the The Constitutionnel going as far as to explain that the bill had been inspired by the Jesuits who wanted to fill up the religious houses with younger sons and daughters who would have to enter because of a lack of any other way of subsisting. The liberal deputies were prepared to jump on the bandwagon, but the leading liberals were nowhere to be found, and the law passed the upper chamber [7]. Suddenly, there seemed to be life in the sails of Sully once more. But the newspapers held the passage in a sour regard, and thrust their vitriolic skepticism into the limelight. For two years the government had found itself under fire from an ever livelier and disloyal controversy, and all efforts at containment had failed; indeed, it had no counter-measure, for the king would not hear of the reimposition of censorship. The great liberal papers were also not for sale, and the Ultra-Royalists, who could amass no more than 14,000 subscribers, were but a nuisance to the liberal press, which flaunted 50,000 subscribers in Paris. They grew weary of attacks from Cazal and Constant in the Constitutionnel, of Duval and Chateaubriand in the Journal des débats, of Durand in Le Diocletian, and of Germain in Le Chevalier. The judges, who could have constrained these publicists towards moderation by convictions post factum, were more eager to show sympathetic indulgence towards journalists in plays for popularity.

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After the legislative setbacks of 1826, and the mistreated reception of the success of the succession law, it appeared difficult to govern against the dominant opinion of the press and the people of Paris. Charles X, his ministers, and the majority of the Chamber could have concluded that they had taken the wrong route, and would come to change their politics, but unsurprisingly, they viewed with equal ferocity that the opposition was wrong, and the opinion that supported it was corrupted by the lies of the press. But if the press was the problem, censorship was out of the question, and the existing laws were insufficient, then it seemed that the Government was trapped by circumstance. The situation was not aided by mounting accusations of foreign policy ineptitude in the press. The utter collapse of the Greek rebellion in 1826, after Metternich successfully deterred Russian intervention, had proved calamitous to Parisian society. The Philhellenic Brigade of France, despite the intervention of Lamarque, was forced to return home, and the popular conspiracy to offer the duc de Nemours, the second son of the duc d’Orleans, the crown of Greece, seemed close to evaporation. France’s Foreign Minister, the baron Damas, had funded the Greek rebels with several million francs of public money in war subsidies, which nonetheless had proven insufficient to save the Greek rebellion after the Sultan resolved his bloody conflict with Ali Pasha of Ioannina by means of semi-independence for the Pashalik of Yanina and redirected his forces to the Peloponnese. In Paris and Moscow, the calls for an invasion of Rumelia—first to liberate the Christians of Yanina, and then to bring the fight to Greece itself—were mounting. In the cumulative, the supposed ineptitude of the Ministry had seriously affected the confidence of the extreme Right, and Charles X himself, a man of warm-hearted affectations, was eager not to see a heroic people be annihilated. But the Ministry could take no action until it could prove itself unshackled from the fierce constraints of the press, which denied it even the ability to govern at home.

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The death of Markos Botsaris ensured that the Ottoman armies regained control of the Peloponnese.
An infamous moment in the history of Restoration France now manifested in the strangest conditions for the Government. A crude amalgamation of personal animosity, feminine attachment, and savage barbarism coalesced into the “Affair of the 17th,” which was named after the scheduled date of the infamous duel. The affair had begun several years earlier, when Bourbon-Condé married his mistresses, Sophia Dawes, to his acquaintance, the comte de L'Isle Jourdain, for a generous dowry of some million francs. L'Isle Jourdain was no figure of particular intellectual distinction, but he was, by right of hereditary virtue, Pairie de France, and thus known familiarly to the esteemed classes of Parisian society. During the One-Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis, while Jourdain was fighting in Spain, the young comte de Saint Germain (not to be confused with the author, Saint Germain), the scandalous proprietor of Le Chevalier, allegedly eloped with Sophia Dawes, the comtesse de L'Isle Jourdain. For unknown reasons, the young Saint Germain fled into a self-exile, after which Sophia and Germain’s impassioned correspondence was interrupted and reported to the Peer. Jourdain, rather than bottle the fury with domestic punishment, interrogated his wife and compelled her impulsive spirit to flee back to Condé; although the pair was forced once again to move away from the Palace on account of Charles’ severe dislike for the commoner.

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Sophia Dawes, comtesse de L'Isle Jourdain, the center of the Affair of the 17th.

The comte de L'Isle Jourdain sparred with the comte de Saint Germain in a fiery correspondence that betrayed none of their personal enmity; the bashful newspaper proprietor showed no remorse in his discourse, and at every turn, “cucked” the noble Peer. [8] This conflict between the coxcomb of Le Chevalier and the undistinguished Jourdain showed all the tell-tale signs of impending disaster; the demands of satisfaction were soon presented by the latter, and soon thereafter, all of Paris society knew of the expected duel between Saint Germain. Most importantly, the newspapers themselves became involved in the promulgation of the affair. Even the King, who wanted to intervene on behalf of the legacy of his predecessors, was deterred personally by the Council, which believed that further interference in the famed traditions of Paris would do little to help the popularity of the Ministry or the King. The fame of the duel was no more diminished by the participation of the duc de Saint-Aignan, who was made to be Jourdain’s second; never before had a duel in the French Restoration attracted such figures of distinction, and so it was only natural that the great mass of high society was eager to see it resolved. The participants had agreed, by means of their associates, that the event would be conducted in a secluded location of an undisclosed variety, so as to avoid the attraction of the crowds and the intervention of the authorities. By all estimation, the duel was expected to be conducted a la mort. And so it would be. But not in the anticipated conduct.

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Nathanaël Barrande, comte de L’Isle-Jourdain and Jean Paul, comte de Saint-Germain

The duelers travelled to Lyons-la-Forêt on January 17th, where the duel was to be executed. Without an entourage of observers, Saint-Aignan and Jourdain proceeded to the agreed upon location. When they arrived, however, Saint Aignan noticed a distinct excess of persons proceeding with Saint Germain; it soon became apparent that a plot was afoot. Aignan fled the field and salvaged his skin by taking refuge beneath the hay of a nearby barn; Jourdain was none the wiser, and soon found himself assaulted by a crew of hired thugs. He managed to ward off an attack by his own prowess with a blade, and killed one of the attackers, but soon became overwhelmed, and was restrained by the other crooks. Saint Germain himself arrived, and forcefully revealed to his hired crew that both gentlemen needed to be captured; Saint-Aignan, however, was now long gone, and had spirited off to Paris on his horse. While the crew desperately searched for the absentee second, Saint Germain put a bullet between the restrained Jourdain’s eyes; his final words, rather ironically, were: "I lived a naive fool, but I die with pride..." It took no time at all to arouse the attention of Paris to this act of barbarism, and when the King was informed that a Peer of his Kingdom had been assassinated, and that there had been an attempt upon the Minister of the Crown, he immediately set out the Direcion Royal de Sécurité de l'État to discover the plot. The secret policemen stormed the apartment of Saint Germain, and there discovered the correspondences of the young count; he had shared equal purpose with royalists and liberals alike, but the Ministry preferred to flaunt his proven association with the Masons of France. Not long afterwards, several officers of the gendarme captured Germain in his attempt of flight; and he was dragged back to Pairs under the most curious popular watch. The Court of Cassation heard his case with near instantaneous expediency, and sentenced Germain and those of his captured colleagues to the guillotine. They were beheaded at the place de Grève on February 23rd, 1827.

The Sully Ministry was granted, by this Affair, all the moral righteousness of purpose against the papers of the day. Le Chevalier was shut down by royal ordinance of the King, and Saint-Aignan, who had been made even more draconian by the attempt on his life, encouraged the Ultra-Royalist papers and publishers to flood Paris with accusations of responsibility on the liberal newspapers. The papers, they declared, had excited the pitch of the duel, and had endangered the public peace by encouragement of an engagement that was not only contrary to the law, but had produced an attempt on a Minister of the Crown and the death of a Peer of France. Obviously, the papers made no such reference to Saint-Aignan’s participation, but nonetheless, there seemed new life in the Ministry, and opportunity to exact vengeance on the liberal opposition and their newspapers...



[1] Maxwell said nothing, Marschalk was writing about national morality, Lochlan said nothing, etc. Firehound said nothing about his abstention. Try this lethargy again (any Ministry) and I shall instantly collapse your Government, and ruin all involved characters. That’s a promise. This applies to most of the laws proposed this past term. Consider this a formal warning. The only reason the Ministry hasn’t collapsed as it seems most of the opposition is bothered with other things to write anything public (which is completely fine). If there had been more public opposition to the bills, given the relative laziness of the Ministry this turn in terms of IC, the Ministry would have collapsed. Everyone is at fault. Except me, of course.

[2] Neglect, neglect, neglect. Read my posts.

[3] Absolutism +2 [Net 4/10]. Neglect, Neglect, Neglect. Alt-Hist huzzah.

[4] Absolutism +2 [Net 6/10]. Coronation and Ascension of Charles X. No mention of Charter in the Oath.

[5] It was slightly difficult to write about public opposition examples this turn, seeing as there were relatively few for such a span of time, and thus I have to resort to what few PC things I was given and NPC sources.

[6] In ABE, the inability of a leading member of the House to vote would have led to a general abstention along with his parliamentary constituents, and the Law would have passed; but since TJDS produced good IC this turn, I decided to be lenient. This leniency won’t happen again. Consider this also a formal warning. Don’t forget to vote.

[7] Didn’t see much opposition. Didn’t give much.

[8] Included by popular demand.

--
Wait for cultural update.
 
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Le Tigre Tyrrhénien

Sur quelques événements historiques

Following his return to Paris in July 1823, Alexandre Cazal found his reputation somewhat improved. Although still out of favour with the movers and shakers in the most popular literary circles, Cazal had cultivated for himself a new audience drawn from the cosmopolitan middle and upper classes. Mainly liberal in heir sympathies, these readers took less of an interest in the gritty details of their own society than in those of other countries. Aroused by Cazal's lucid conjurings of Alpine and Italian culture, certain parts of Paris's reading public developed a sizeable appetite for dispatches from abroad. This was, after all, the same Paris that was all too eager to send expeditionary forces to Spain and Greece. Wary of adventurism in its Bonapartist garb, society had by 1824 reacquired much of its taste for the outremer.

Cazal was well placed to sate this. Despite having curtailed his writing of feuilletons during his time abroad, focusing instead on more scholarly diversions, their audience did not altogether disappear. Working with Benjamin Constant to develop Le Constitutionnel's literary output as a means of keeping the journal afloat in the face of the censors, Cazal reappropriated much that he had documented whilst abroad for use in his fiction. Tinged by the influence of the Romantics, Cazal—in the guise of Outremer—wrote stories of doomed Mediterranean love and Viennese aristocratic intrigue. A series of Gothic vignettes taking as their subject the psychological effects of spending prolonged periods of isolation in the Alps excited a certain section of Paris for a time in winter 1823, adding to the catalogue of Cazal's diversions into what we might today call the horror story. One such piece notably deals with an extreme form of what is known as Stendhal syndrome, with Cazal exaggerating his own experiences in Florence to the point where his subject develops a sort of paranoid mania, convinced that the Italian ruins are actively plotting his demise. Titled “Dehors”, it was a later favourite of Guy de Maupassant, who read Outremer as an adolescent in the 1860s. Its influence is evident in his own 1887 short, “Le Horla”.

While Outremer had his fun, however, Cazal did not rest. Awaiting inspiration for a new novel, he spent the winter of 1823 adapting Haydn's Il Mondo Della Luna for the stage, although he was unsatisfied by the outcome and had abandoned the project by January 1824. Instead, the awaited germ of a novel arrived. Buoyed by the publication in London of his Italian novelette Lorenzo Pasquale in December 1823, just the wrong side of sympathetic to the revolutionary Carbonari for the French censors, Cazal set to work on his first full-length Italian piece. Le Tigre Tyrrhénien arrived months later, published in August 1824.

Later published in English as The Tiger of Tyrrhenia, the novel represented a stark shift from the rural drudgery of Messidor. Cazal's documentary leanings having apparently been satisfied by his copious records from his Alpine and Italian tours, in Tyrrhenia he lets loose. Inhabiting a mode that is neither Gothic, Romantic nor Realist, he makes use of historical detail and astute observation as a complement to a narrative with more overtly dramatic tendencies. In this regard, it seems to have been influenced by the Italian tradition, with its focus on grander historical themes. During his travels, Cazal made the acquaintance of the author Alessandro Manzoni, later famous for his masterpiece The Betrothed, whose influence can be read into Tyrrhenia.

The narrative structure itself could perhaps be considered a tighter reworking of Messidor, translated into a different society. Contemporary audiences having met Cazal's intricate interweaving of the many and various plot lines of Messidor cooly, Tyrrhenia is more restrained—“less grand tapestry than satisfying landscape”, as one later critic put it. The main story focuses on the experiences of Don Giacomo Ulerighi, Prince of Montechiusi, as his world is transformed against the backdrop of the turbulence of Napoleon's Italian campaigns. As the novel progresses, the Prince is forced to come to terms with the idea that his world will never be as it once was, having been roused from his contented life by the knock of the modern era.

The novel has various themes, both mundane and abstracted. Immediately, Cazal writes here much more of family than he had done previously, with the relationship between the Prince and his Freemason brother Don Tomaso a constant source of friction. Whilst both men share an interest in science and the workings of nature, the contented dilletante Don Giacomo does not share his brother's enthusiasm for modern ideas of politics, preferring to pursue his studies undisturbed by Bonaparte. Hence a conflict between change and stasis is also present, where stasis comes with the implication of decay. Cazal employs an irony in having the Prince symbolise elements of both ideas at once. On the one hand, his studies of nature and Classial civilisation present an image of a man consumed by the notion of transience, yet on the other he remains steadfast in his desire to see his family's position survive. This dichotomy is never fully resolved; characteristically for Cazal, the book's resolution sees everything much as it was, only slightly different.

The novel is set mainly during the years of 1806–8, with a section set in Egypt in 1801, and a final chapter set in 1815. At the novel's start, Don Giacomo is in his study observing the stars. He notes their flickering and fading, reflecting on their permanence. The next day, whilst travelling into San Gimignano to say mass, his carriage passes the villa of his brother, Dom Tomaso, who is rumoured to be the leader of a chapter of Freemasons. The Prince despairs of Don Tomaso's fascination with the arcane, though becomes troubled when he wonders whether it is Tomaso's modernity, rather than his own faith in the ultimate unchanging nature of the universe, that will see the family best survive the coming years.

Meanwhile, preparations are being made for the coming wedding between the Prince's eldest daughter Donna Agostina to Don Fabrizio Verazzi, scion of a relatively young but immensely wealthy family from Siena. Don Fabrizio is an educated man of the world, having travelled extensively in his youth, and ravishes Donna Agostina, whose own upbringing we learn was parochial, overshadowed by the influence of her prudish mother the Princess. Don Fabrizio and Don Giacomo bond over a shared love of the natural sciences, and Don Fabrizio succeeds in intriguing the Prince with stories from his travels in Egypt. Later, it is revealed that Don Fabrizio had accompanied Napoleon in Egypt, having reneged on the itinerary of his Grand Tour by taking a ship from Sicily and volunteering in the French army.

Don Giacomo grows increasingly uneasy of Napoleon's presence in Italy and is spooked by the receipt of a letter in which an anonymous interlocutor exhorts the Prince to flee before his position is consumed by the revolution. Under the advice of his family's Jesuit priest, Father Benedico, he does nothing—though remains troubled, becoming anxious later that afternoon whilst walking the ruins of an old Roman bath that exist in his garden. He reminds himself of the Romans who felt their own positions to be impervious to change, noting their hubris in believing things to be permanent.

Some weeks later, Don Tomaso arrives at the villa with his son, Don Frederico, who is greatly excited by the prospect of a Bonapartist Italy. Over dinner, a discussion
of the state of the Napoleonic Kingdom to the north turns unpleasant when the Princess, Donna Maria Angelica, is scandalised by the liberal sympathies of her nephew. When Don Tomaso declines to reprimand his son, Donna Maria Angelica threatens to expel them from the villa, before Don Giacomo reinstates an awkward calm by changing the subject to the flowering of the gardens. The next morning, Don Fabrizio arrives at the villa, surprised to see Don Tomaso, whom it is implied he knows well. Don Giacomo suspects this to be proof that Don Fabrizio is a Freemason, which the young man later confirms to be true. At this point, he also confesses his Egyptian past to the Prince, who is not scandalised but instead remarks on the divide between his generation, so intent on conservation, and the passions of the youth, “who wish to see the world overturned, not knowing the underside to be much as this one”. The two men then walk to the Roman baths to admire the flowers blooming as the evening draws on.

The story resumes in 1807, with the annexation of Tuscany into Napoleon's kingdom imminent. Don Giacomo suspects that his brother is organising part of the changeover of power in the region, confronting him when the two are stargazing one night in the observatory. Don Tomaso hides nothing, noting that his actions are just as much founded in a desire to see as little change as possible. Don Giacomo considers this and decides it is the truth, accepting that each brother is equally minded towards the family's survival. They then discuss Don Fabrizio, who Don Giacomo reveals is indeed a prominent and promising Freemason, offering the gnomic comment that the young man is well served to make a great lady of Donna Agostina. Don Giacomo also admits that the letter the Prince received the previous year urging him to flee had been written by Don Frederico, a gambit designed to gauge the true strength of the Prince's convictions.

Soon, Montechiusi falls under Napoleonic control and the Prince's villa is host to a troop of French soldiers, who are respectful of the Prince and his family, the French captain, M. Henri de Villeile, an admirer of the Prince's learning. At breakfast one day, Don Fabrizio announces that he has spoken with the captain and will be enlisting as an officer in the French army. The wedding must therefore be conducted as soon as possible, so that he may be married before he leaves to fight elsewhere in Italy. The Princess is enraged, having been only just borne the insult of her home having received the imperial army, and vows that no daughter of hers will marry a French officer. The Prince confronts his wife and forbids her from banning the wedding, conceding that what has come to pass was always inevitable and giving the couple his blessing. Meeting with Don Fabrizio in his study, he prays “that you might find your place in this world more readily than I.”

The wedding takes place in early 1808, with much ceremony. A ball is thrown at the villa in celebration, where Don Giacomo considers the two worlds that exist even in his small town: that of the young, liberal in their convictions and willing to change so that everything may stay the same, and that of their parents, appalled by such ideas but nevertheless sincere and happy in their own beliefs. Don Giacomo even remarks that, in her piety and her rigidity, his wife the Princess possesses a passionate beauty of conviction, “the opposite of youth's own flame, but in essence every bit its equal”. Whilst Don Fabrizio and Donna Agostina retire to their first night, Don Giacomo and the Princess themselves retire and make love, for what is implied to be the first time in some years. The Prince describes his wife's habit of reciting a rosary to herself afterwards, no longer repulsed by its chasteness as he was in his youth—“regarding it instead as he did the Roman baths in the garden, one small imprint of a past age, bringing delight through the very act of survival.” The next week, at the novel's denouement, Don Fabrizio leaves to take part in the conquest of Ragusa.

The novel ends in 1815, Napoleon having retreated and life as it was having been restored. Don Giacomo considers how his family's position was changed by the occupation, noting with irony that Don Tomaso has bee forced by the restoration to curtail his Freemasonry. Now, he, Don Frederico and Don Fabrizio form part of an underground society working for Italian unification. Donna Maria Angelica, it is revealed, fell ill soon after the Napoleonic Kingdom fell and has not fully recovered. Her piety remains unshaken, being convinced in what the Prince considers a sweetly pathetic way of her illness being sign of God's displeasure at her having had to welcome Napoleon's army into her house. Don Giacomo, more sanguine, takes the illness for what it is: a symptom of the passing of time. He has a grandson by Donna Agostina and Don Fabrizio, ensuring the survival of the Montechiusi line. More practically, this survival is underwritten by the Verazzi fortune, which Don Fabrizio has by now inherited. The Prince himself remains devoted to his studies, taking solace in the past as the only known constant. “As the evening drew over the villa, the fading sunlight rested for a brief moment upon the stones of the Roman baths, as if caught in contemplation of its own demise. The Prince watched the lambent columns as they shifted under the red light, in defiance of their roots in space and time. He considered how little the same light seemed to move the flowers which, once again, were now beginning to bloom around the ancient stones. Then stone and flower alike fell under the same darkness, and the peace of night returned to the villa anew.”

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Sur la Frégate Joviale

Sur la Frégate Joviale is the third novel written by Henri-Maurice de St. Germain. It is the first written on a naval vessel, and portrays a predominantly political story, a first for St. Germain. It is thought that this is due to Henri-Maurice being a deputy in the Chamber of Deputies, and wishing to escape the drudgery of the political life that duty forced him to take to, but he never really loved. This would mean that the novel would be a sort of political discourse Henri-Maurice felt unable or unwilling to discuss in the chambers.

The novel takes place in an obscure time that is in the 1700s under Louis le Bon, King of France and her colonial possessions. It eminates an air of magic realism that has become a standard of St. Germain books insofar as the real world and that of Angels mix and coalesce into vivid imagery.

The cast of the book is rather large, but at the same time rather limited in that it does not introduce new characters outside of the crew of the Joviale. While many of the characters are named the most important by far are André, one of the many crewmen, and his best friend Jean. Alongside them is the cook Francis, the rural pastor Xavier, and the young drummer Henri. Commanding the crew are a trio of diverse personalities. The Captain, an intelligent and skeptical man by the name of the Marquis de Frantiqueville, the Quartermaster, a humble man named Jacques, and the bourgeois passanger and gentleman scientist, the effeminate and incapable Thomas-Théodule-Thiers (unaffectionately nicknamed Trois-Tay, a pun off his three Ts and on the French term for shut up [Tr: tais-toi]).

The voyage begins when the Capitan, in a fit of hubris and the financing of Trois-Tay, declares his desire to encircle the globe and prove once and for all that man had conquered the seas. At the same time, André receives a premonition in the form of dove who speaks to him and tells him that when the Captain finds what he's looking for in this coming journey, the Joviale will fall off the side of the earth.

After confessing to Father Xavier and Jean about his premonition, they convince him to bring it before the Quartermaster Jacques. A conversation erupts over the place of premonitions and the place of animals as prophets of the Lord, but in the end André keeps the discussion on track and is convinced by Father Xavier to bring the issue to the Captain.

The Captain, a plyer of such trades as astronomy, biology, and math, is shown to be a very intelligent figure. However, his intelligence and vast education expresses a disconnection from his crew and a distain for all that isn't physical. This is thoroughly abused by Trois-Tay, whose materialism and inanity worms into the biases of the Captain.

Thus, when André approaches the Captain and tells him about the issue facing him, he is all but laughed at by the Marquis de Frantiqueville. The idea of a pigeon speaking is inherently preposterous to the Captain. This is further reinforced by the corruption influence of Trois-Tay, who exclaims its no doubt due to excessive, poor quality rum in the galley. To the irritation of the crew, the Captain cuts off rum doles as a safety precaution (although to the crew it comes off as inherently malicious).

The frigate sails south, and encounters all manner of creatures. Huge whales, mermaids, and gigantic birds who fly the endless currents of the South Atlantic are all met, with awe by the lower classes and Quartermaster, intrigue by the Captain, and dismissal by Trois-Tay. As the story goes on, the Captain grows increasingly corrupted by Trois-Tay, going from disconnected to harsh on his men, and from mild skepticism to full cynicism of all supernatural.

It all comes to a head when the cook Francis finds that his son, the drummer Henri, had fallen overboard. As the crew scrambles to help, a dove once again lands near André and says that in order to save Henri they need to throw nothing but a piece of hardtack into the water. When André shares this, he is thrown into the brig by the enraged and cynical Captain. This nearly causes a mutiny among the men, commoners well described as to have been unduly punished by Trois-Tay (often acting as manservants or slaves to him on direct orders from the Captain). However an impassioned speech from Xavier regarding the place of French men as the defenders of common descency afforded to them by the Church sways them enough to have the Quartermaster unlock André, who promptly throws his hardtack into the water.

The hardtack grows into a giant kelp plant that pillows the young Henri back onto the ship, to the disinterest of Trois-Tay and the abject confusion and fear of the Captain. The Marquis, turning to Trois-Tay, asks confusedly what is happenly, only to be laughed at. Trois-Tay transforms into a hellish beast (akin to a gargoyle) and declares that the place of science will forever overtake faith.

The Captain, long corrupted and awash in the sins of his travels and association with Trois-Tay and comes to a sudden realization. Drawing his rapier, the Captaine stabs Trois-Tay in the back as he's monologuing the crew but is dragged into the water by the dying beast. Captain is given a post-mortam last rites by Xavier, while Jean manages to be elected by the crew as the new Quartermaster to replace Jacques, the new Captain.

In a twist of fate, the conclusion continues only a short time later when the crew, drinking on a nearby island, asks as to the name of the pub and island. The bartender explains that this sea was called the world by the Caribs, and thus the island (and therefore the pub), being an insult to the Indians here, was called Off the World [Tr: Large du Monde / Large Dumonde]. The final scene is of the crew staring into their cups quietly, as the prophecy is shown to be true in a way.

The book is primarily a moral story as to the corrupting influences of the decadent politicos of the bourgeois that prey on the weaknesses of the men of France. Although Trois-Tay is the overall villain, the Captain is a tragic hero, sadly and nefariously corrupted by Trois-Tay who plays off his education and hubris in order to put man ahead of the Lord.

The book was published by the Publications de la Maison d'Herbe in mid-1824, and represents yet another step into novelized ultraroyalism by the writer, Henri-Maurice.

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La Mouton du Chevalier

La Mouton du Cavalier is the fourth novel written by Henri-Maurice de St. Germain. It is the first one written purely as a parable, although it is written in what Henri-Maurice dislikingly hears is called as "St. Germain romanticism".

The book represents much of St. Germain's feelings during his time as a Deputy in the Chamber, and is seen as a bit of an autobiography, although one written around the subject of Henri-Maurice himself. The characters are a trio of animals and the titular Chevalier, the simplest cast thus far, a noted effort of St. Germain to focus his work from his grandiose past (also more to expand on the created characters within the book).

The Sheep represents Henri-Maurice himself, the sheep in the paddock of horses, the commoner in the Chamber of nobles and rich. The Bay represents the Doctinaires, a well meaning if oblivious beast who often fights with the Stallion but too indecisive to truly take the leadership from him. The Stallion represents the Ultraroyalistes, a brave and mighty animal, but hauty and unable to connect or understand the Sheep. The Shetland are the Liberals, small, petty, and vindictive. Lastly is the Chevalier himself, the King, the present guide and benefactor of the paddock.

The story begins with Sheep being among his initial flock, teemless masses of quiet and calm fellows. However the Sheep has exceptionally lustrious horns, a matter untoward to the flock (including the Sheep), but found exceptional by the Stallion. During a session of cleaning by the Chevalier of the Stallion, the Stallion makes it known in its own way that it wants the Sheep, surprising the Chevalier. The Chevalier, himself enjoying the horns graced by the Sheep, buys him and takes him from his flock, and sitting him in the Chevalier's personal paddock.

This shocks the Sheep, who only wished to be with his flock, but willingly follows the Chevalier. But within the paddock, much discord follows. The Shetland, although preaching the commonality of animals, altogether ignores the Sheep and indeed denigrates it as a 'wrong looking animal'. The Bay altogether ignores the Sheep, seeing it as beneath notice. The Stallion, although initially a gracious host, is soon shown to utterly be ignorant as to the Sheep itself, instead using the lure of it's horns to gain more favours for itself and all in all uses the Sheep as a tool to advance itself.

Throughout the Sheep's stay, the animals debate endlessly on topics beyond the understanding of the Sheep. To represent this, Henri-Maurice writes in a whimsical sing-song non-language in order to portray this. A famous passage of the book is as follows:



This intelligibility representing Henri-Maurice's complete loss over the debates within the chambers.

The book ends open endedly, as the Chevalier passes on after a prolonged sickness, and his brother takes over, becoming himself the Chevalier. With the change, everything remains the same, as the Sheep, to the background of tepid debate, stares longingly at the fields beyond the paddock.


La Publications de la Maison d'Herbes produced the book shortly after the coronation of Charles X, and the first edition is dedicated to the new King of France.

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Un Leader d'Un

Un Leader d'Un is the fifth novel written by Henri-Maurice de St. Germain, although it would be more accurately defined as a novelette given it's short length. Written due to his well known stature in a fit of self indulgence and inspiration, it represented was written in the hopes of success allowing the writer to continue writing books on the subject of it's anti-hero, the Chevalière Anton Danton; conman, cad, coward, and creep.

The book is written on the experiences of Anton during the time following the Napoleonic War. It is intentionally left unknown which side he fought for, although the uniform of a French Hussar he often wears to (failingly) woo women bears a musketball hole where no scar exists on Anton. However he parades himself as a veteran of the war, a modern Chevalière in the romantic hopes of attaining a level of respect akin to actual nobility.

The novelette is divided into three separate acts. The First Act takes place just prior to and during the invasion of Spain. Anton, wishing to darken himself in the fashion of his fellow youthful officers, volunteers on a mission into France to scout out the rebels which raged against the Spanish King just prior to the outbreak of war. This was an attempt to get out of any real work and the chance of war over in Hispaniola. However this backfires when the Prime Minister announces that war will occur, leaving the terrified Anton to scramble to achieve safety in the face of certain doom. This would not occur, as he is all but chained to his horse and kicked towards the Pyrenees by his fed up officers within the camp.

In Spain, Anton would bounce from location to location, fleeing where he thought battles would rage only to trip onto where they were actually fight, flee to villages which housed Spanish guerrillas, and in one case took refuge in the basement of a winery owned by a couple which secretly produced gunpowder. Anton barely managed to survive the later event when, drunk, he lit some chicory 'liberated' from the owners and blew up the entire winery. When he was discovered by a roving French patrol, he was drunk, covered in soot, and unintelligible. The act concludes with Anton being somehow promoted due to his actions within the winery, which prompts the inebriated Anton to further promote himself as a self-congratulatory move. This would result in a further-further promotion, straight to a fort in northern Brittany by the thoroughly unimpressed commander.

The Second Act would take place in Brittany, where Anton, now in command of almost a hundred men in a medieval fort (well described as being essentially a manned and "armed" ruin). The sole cannon of the fort was a bronze cannon which the fort has a running pool to see how old it is, with ages ranging from 1502 to 1676. Anton, in what is established is a now typical fashion, proceeds to make a mockery of the fort, turning it into a personal fief. He has the men build the fort into a personal castle, while bombarding Paris with incessant demands as to the further requirements of this lonely fort. Anton, so far away from everything, rules as a petty tyrant for nearly a year. However his fun is ruined when a Marshal from Paris arrives, having finally grown tired of his eighty odd letters, and took stock of the fort. He was shocked to find that Anton had turned the fort into a palatial mansion, with the cannon turned upward by the men to act as a giant candlestick in which to light Anton's 'dances' (which involved Anton dancing by himself to music he offkey hummed to himself). Anton is quickly thrown in jail for these actions, and when found to be not even in the army in the first place (having conned the initial officers during a game of cards) was sent to Paris.

The Final Act takes place in Paris, with Anton escaping after the authorities accidentally execute his cell partners and forget about him. Anton, hungry and alone, manages to escape after cleverly finding that the jailor forgot to lock the door (the door being unlocked for over a week). Anton, hussar uniform in hand, flees to the wealthier part of Paris, and (following a much needed bath and squirt of stolen perfume) makes good to his skills as a conman. He talks his way into a party hosted by the King, where Anton proceeds to drink his fill. About half way through the party, the now soaken Anton proceeds, in a singularly amazing fashion, embarrass himself before the court by, in order, hitting on a married woman (who smacks him), hitting on a woman already speaking to a noble (who promptly smacks him), attempting to con a noble by the name of the comte du Hue-Josse by trying to be the same comte du Hue-Josse, then finally attempting to walk up and talk to the King. The entire party titters as the lout is dragged away and thrown into the sewer.

Although the book's hero is not so much a romantic knight as he is a total wreck, St. Germain found some inspiration from the gossip surrounding Paris by mid 1825. He hoped in writing that the masses would take to a book about a failure who always ends up in extravagant situations yet somehow comes out still standing. The book was published by the Publications de la Maison d'Herbes.

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Adventure!

Roger "Filanchi" Disney
As Disney had settled into his small house within Saint-Lo, his mind inevitably turned towards the necessities of life. His time in the New World had been spent on the very edge of society, the swamps of Florida, the woods of Louisiana, the mountains of Oaxaca. What fed him was nature, as was that which clothed him, sheltered him, and in all endeavors sustained him.

But in France, the urban and civilized world? He would have to pursue other avenues.

Such pondering led to the creation of what Disney would call "Les Aventures Filanchi" (Trans: The Filanchi Adventures). Proposed not as a single book, but a series of continually running short stories, Les Aventures Filanchi would be based on his exploits in the New World. Although it was written in the third-person, the main character "Filanchi" was but a thinly-veiled and somewhat heroized version of himself, bearing his own nickname. Even the illustrations were taken directly from Disney's personal journal.

Bereft of a publisher or a patron in any regard, Disney committed his own meager inheritance to publish the first edition, to which he distributed personally to his friends who he then further bid to spread word of his works. Confident - or perhaps desperate? - Disney would travel to Paris to submit his works across whatever writing circle would lend an ear.

Below is an except from his very first edition:


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Les Aventures Filanchi

The Jagged Maw of the American Swamp!
"Striding under the Sun, its rays rendered minor beneath the omnipresent fog of sweat that was the Floridian Summer, Filanchi entered into the glade. The lush foliage of the region, which hanged down in large, viridian clumps, gave way to open air, a reprieve that gave way to the endless American Sky - cloudless and bluer than he had ever seen.

Before him stood a trio of his tawny-skinned fellows, chief of which was one they called Tullockchishko, meaning "Drinks the Juice of the Stones". And certainly Filanchi would believe it possible that this Choctaw man would indeed be able to produce juice from stones, as despite his small, native frame, his strength seemed apparent. These peoples - thought Filanchi - were true men of Nature, products of lives lived in constant exertion, but likewise constant freedom.

Tullockchishko held a stubby finger to his cracked lips, biding silence, while likewise beckoning Filanchi closer. With a nod, Filanchi did as his friends asked, excited for the prospects of the day's adventures.

In whispers, all three Choctaw men spoke of a great beast - yes, a great beast of scale and tooth and claw! A beast too wild for France, nay, for all of Europe! One can only laugh at its diminutive cousins that live in the lands of Africa - this was a true American beast. In the native tongue, it was Hachunchuba. Still unsure? Perhaps you may know its more common name, the Alligator.

As long as three men grown put together and weighing far more, the Hachunchuba was a predator of unprecedented danger, as was relayed to Filanchi with all due seriousness. Laying wait in the murky depths, it would snatch men and drown them sooner than his fellows could jump to his aid.

And to that, Filanchi knew his course. He would emulate the historic figures of heroism, the dragon-slayers of yore, knights armed with lance to pierce the scaly hide of a monster. Filanchi would slay the Hachunchuba..."

Les Arpents Malheureux

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By Armand Thiers (Pen-name)​

The Arpents Malheureux is a french novel written by the mysterious Armand Thiers. The novel, follows the life of Jean-Baptiste Bourgogne, a farmer from the Gers and is divided in four parts, named for each season. If Spring and Summer constitutes an unapologetic promotion of rural life, Autumn and Winter marked its decline. In the end, Jean-Baptiste Bourgogne, who devoted his whole life to his land, will die in exile in a small town of the Low-Countries.

Spring :This first part of the novel set the decor of the whole oeuvre. Jean-Baptiste Bourgogne, an orphan, lives with his uncle Robert, a childless widower. He his madly in love with Églantine Blanchet, the daughter of a nearby farmer, and is well intent on marrying her, given that his uncle is willing to cede him the land as a wedding gift. Jean-Baptiste inherits the land faster than expected, as his uncle died prematurely. “The poor old man would finish his days in the village, like he had planned. He died on his farm, lying in the earth of his land who had not consented to such a divorce.” After mourning, Jean-Baptiste marries Églantine and their first children are born.

Summer: The family keeps getting bigger, as Jean-Baptiste is an adept and prosperous farmer. He now has eight living children, while having lost 5 to the depredations of sickness. Every year, while other farmer spends their hard-earned money on baubles and drinks, Jean-Baptiste brings his earnings to his notary, depositing them for interests. His eldest son, Richard, is accepted to the Seminary, a fact that covers him with pride and joy. He is now a minor notable in his hamlet. However, toward the end of this second part, his life slowly starts to unravel. First, his wife, exhausted by the numerous pregnancies, dies. Moreover, his third son, Thomassin, discontent to be working on a land which shall not be willed to him in the end, is harboring ideas of starting a new life in the Low-Countries.

Fall : The season of all miseries! Élodie, his rebellious daughter, has fled the paternal house to go live in Paris. Richard, now graduated from the Seminary, is assigned to a remote parish in Brittany, where he is lodged poorly and badly treated by the Church. He quickly catches a deadly sickness and expires. Thomassin having enough of this life, deserted the land and relocated to the Low-Countries. Even worse, Jean-Baptiste get involved in lawsuits against a neighbor, which he loses even though his case was worthy and right. Upon coming back from the the trial, he witnesses a large column of smoke. His barn, with the entire harvest, has been destroyed by fire. When he travels to his notary to gather the necessary funds to rebuild, he realizes that the new notary, who took the practice when his old one retired, had fled with the money. Ruined, Jean-Baptiste is forced by his second son, his heir, to cede him the land early, in exchange for a modest stipend.

Winter : In this final part, Jean-Baptiste decides to visit his son in the Low-Countries, where he has found employment in a factory. Quite shocked that his son had married a Dutch girl without his consent, he realizes that his grand-children knows not a word of French. Saddened and desirous of returning to France, he is unable to afford it because his second son, to whom he bequeathed the land in exchange of a rent, defaults on the payments. He dies in exile, estranged from all he held dear.

The Arpents Malheureux was a contradictory novel, which could appeal to a diverse crowd. On the one hand, by lionizing rural life, the book was promoting the simplistic values of agrarian life. The generally despicable roles attributed to the youth by the author, them being ungrateful and rebellious, was carefully weighted to appeal to a generation which labored to understand their own children, often swept away by the winds of liberalism. On the other hand, the more astute readers could discern the contours of a carefully masked but quite scathing critique of the religious mindset of the Ancien Régime, which valued obedience, loyalty and industry, such values being displayed by the main protagonist who ends up in misery nonetheless. The faillite of the institutions, represented by the Church letting Bourgogne's son die, and his new notary taking off with his lifetime savings, was perceived by some as a prophetic critic of the current society.

INSIDE PARIS (IV)


The ascension and coronation of Charles ushered in the cultural apogee of the Bourbon Restoration and the Ducal Era; but the splendiferous glories of the new king also inaugurated a more insidious transformation of changing stylistic coalitions and political alterations. The early reign of Charles X was a period of high literature of the most prolific variety, and yet, the subtle frustrations of the belletristic and experimental classes with the royalist order oozed through the sutures of the Restoration. Chateaubriand described the conflicting mood in Paris society with a famous analogy: "The palace has been built with the wondrous exorbitance of heaven itself; but no one wants to notice the conflagration in the vaults." The about-face of the artistic classes was somewhat inevitable; expectations of idealistic civilization were to rudely stumble on the mundane constraints of the earthly world. The longing for purpose, and the confrontation between structure and freedom, first was manifested in the Académie française and the Universités et Grandes Écoles, where the disciples of classicism had solidly established themselves by means of the intellectual fortress of the Conseil Royal des Études de France, which dominated public opinion unopposed. The exceptions to this rule were the persons of Chateaubriand and Henri-Maurice de St. Germain, but by the coronation of Charles X, the Council's opinion towards these famous figures had hardened; the Council wished to see less of the so-called "romantic," which designated everything wandered from the traditions of seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was on this count that the romantic tradition looked like a menace to the national heritage and drew upon itself the ridicule and scorn of the recognized critics. Facing it, romanticism had no rules, theories, or models. Indeed, everywhere it was a puzzle as to what meaning should be given to the word introduced into France by Mme de Staël. Even in 1823 Victor Hugo would say that he "does not know what was meant by the classical and romantic style. Louis XVIII, an avid follower of classicism, had made the division; the Académie française, composed of veterans who made their literary reputations under the old school; a Decazes led government which favored the obsequious observance of a rationalist and liberal ideology. The opposition, on the other hand, was Chateaubriand, Lamennais, and the Conservateur. But as the royalist party took the wind, it was Louis XVIII who would be ceding his place to his brother, and the expectation of the new era, was that the romanticists, who at this time were allied with the extreme Right, would be swept up by the wave of the new optimism.

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Charles X distributing awards to artists exhibiting at the salon of 1824 at the Louvre, by François Joseph Heim
The expected ascension of Charles X, and the thunderous success of L'acadien familial, thus gave all hope to the romanticists, who were eager to make use of this breach in the barrier to enter into the mainstream. Indeed, early romanticism was royalist and Catholic. Like the traditionalists they repudiated the cult of pagan antiquity which excited the imagination of the republicans of the Revolution and had adorned the Empire with the wonders of Rome; like them they turned towards the Christian Middle Ages in order to find in them a more suitable national spirit; like them they also hated Voltaire and the skeptical irony of the eighteenth century; and finally, like them, they found followers in the aristocratic circles who, because of their emigration experience and their support of the Holy Alliance, more willingly welcomed foreign influences than did liberal circles, forever imbued with Jacobin and Bonapartist nationalism. Victor Hugo, as the coronation of Charles X approached, declared "the new literature is the expression of the religious and monarchial society which would emerge from so much of the old debris and from so many of the recent ruins." Ulric Guttinger echoed Hugo: "To be a romantic is sing about one's country, one's affections, one's customs, and one's God." The liberals, oh the other hand, for whom Voltaire was the law and the prophet, vehemently denounced the "saturnalia of literature." The Constitutionnel stigmatized Hugo, Saint-Germain, Chateaubriand, and even Cazal (when he experimented with romanticism in his earlier works)—the newspaper derided them for "outraging good sense, insulting reason, descending to the most disgusting trivialities, and of losing themselves in the limitless regions of the absurd." One faction of the royalists, especially those who belonged to the older generations, and were fiercely loyal to the duc de Sully, were also alarmed by these assaults on what was for them the legacy of Louis XIV. The joint efforts of these royalists and the liberals came to a climax in November 1824 with a solemn excommunication fulminated in the name of the French Academy by Auger in a session attended by the entire Institut. "Do we have to wait, then," he cried, "until the sect of romanticism goes so far as to put in question all our rules, insult our great literary works, and pervert by an illegitimate success that mass of opinions which can always be turned in any direction!" The Academy and the Council had declared war on Saint-Germain and the Romanticists.

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Voltaire vs. H-M Henri-Maurice de St. Germain
By the time of the meeting of the Academy, Saint-Germain was completing his third novel. Sur la Frégate Joviale was intended as no assault on the stylistic senses; romanticism was surely present, but the book did not overflow with abrasive attempts on the established opinion. But as Saint-Germain scribed the book, the establishment's discontentment with his style grew fiercer, and soon thereafter, the Council, through Frayssinous, who Charles X appointed Provost, attacked Saint Germain and his followers by deriding them for embodying "what is false, bizzare, and nebulous" during the main commencement of the general awarding of prizes. From all sides, by journals, songs, and pamphlets, the innovators were made to look ridiculous. The Muse française, which had been a romantic magazine in 1823 and 1824, was abandoned by one of its founders, Soumet, who aspired to membership in the Academy. Victor Hugo, affected by the assaults, felt he had to speak out in support of the sound rules of language to save his skin: "It is well understood that liberty does not mean anarchy, the originality cannot be made an excuse for bad usage; the more they disdain rhetoric, the more reason to respect grammar. They should dethrone Aristotle only to make Vaugelas prevail." Saint-Germain was no such pushover, and in no mood to follow the moderation of his colleagues, he forged out his own path. Encouraged in the papers by Chateaubriand, whose departure from Government had further dampened the aspirations of the royalist romantics, and angered the romanticists to the duc de Sully, Saint-Germain revised the original structure of the book. The "antagonists" (although the appellation would perhaps be inappropriate) of Sur la Frégate Joviale were made to be the vessel's Captain, the Marquis de Frantiqueville, and the intensely satirized caricatured persona of 'Trois-Tay.' The Captain, written by Saint-Germain as the personification of the French "mainstream," was designed as a person of considered cynicism and disbelief. The second half of the book—redrafted by the author to radicalize the previously subtle Romantic elements—reveals Trois-Tay as the prosopopeia of the established French Academy, Council, and cynical Ultra-Royalists (typically believed to have been organized informally by the mathematical Villèle, and thus incorrectly [and commonly] associated with Sully, despite his religiosity). Trois-Tay [the classical-scientific Academy] maliciously exerts his influence on the Captain [the elite], enveloping the Captain in hyper-skepticism that produces methodical mistreatment of the crew [i.e the French populace]. In the end, the Captain realizes it has been played for a fool and fatally stabs the gargoyle of Trois-Tay, before the Marquis himself is killed, thereby achieving Saint Germain's long-desired ambition of creating a "popular royalism." [1]

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Scene adaptions from Sur la Frégate Joviale.

Saint Germain's ultramonatone salvo against the institutional creations of the Ecclesiastical Minister, the Archbishop of Reims, destroyed the peaceful compromise of intellectuals that had ruled the ascension of His Most Christian Majesty King Charles X. Charles' compassion towards the ruling classes had produced a momentary cessation of censorship, and so the Left was eager to flood Paris with works long inhibited by the censors. Perhaps as some demonstration of graciousness to the political altruism of Charles X, the Left quit their former tactic of demagoguery, and penned political tracts and fictional narratives that lauded national reconciliation. Among the works that crafted this rehabilitative 'zeitgeist' [2], Alexandre Cazal's Le Tigre Tyrrhénien led the foray of rapprochement. Cazal had abandoned a long-planned staged adaption of Il Mondo Della Luna in 1823, and returned to the novel; the abandonment was a fortuitous one, as was the timing of the publication. Le Tigre Tyrrhénien was published just a month before Louis XVIII's death—the book was therefore stocked and circulated in Paris after Charles X took the crown. Almost certainly by accident, Le Tigre Tyrrhénien's timing was read by Left and by Right as a prophetic emblem of the national unity that seemed epitomized by the new mood and the new King. The narrative itself seemed to not disprove these beliefs; Don Giacomo, Prince of Montechiusi, was read as the spiritual representative of the ancien ways, an enlightened despotism that occupied itself in equal parts with the rationalism of science and simultaneously a cautious (if not hostile) attitude towards change. From a romantic perspective; Cazal makes Giacomo antithetical to Saint Germain's depiction of Trois-Tay, insofar that the Prince is the scientific protagonist, and therefore an exemplar for imitation. Giacomo's bent for classical Rome further reinforced the presumption that Cazal had flung his hat with the classical rationalists that dominated public opinion; the 'moving forces' of the novel (i.e. Don Fabrizio, Don Tomaso, Don Federico, and the other liberals) are shown to be equally receptive to the scientific Atticism of the old prince. There is no lack of tension between the cautious personas (Don Giacamo and his wife, the Princess) and the new crop (Don Fabrizio and Don Federico), but the ultimate resolution—the nuptial reconciliation between the families, the restoration of the old regime, and the return to scientific studies—implies the tranquil triumph of the traditional rationalism and its political counterpart. Le Tigre Tyrrhénien was therefore received both as the book to epitomize the renewed union of the enlightenment with the Restoration, and simultaneously, a counter-attack against the extreme Right and its romantic allies. Cazal's association with the liberal aristocracy further confirmed this perception, and for the first time in his life, Cazal made serious inroads with the conservative aristocracy. The French Academy and the Council, preferring to interpret Le Tigre Tyrrhénien as both complementary to the new monarchy and opposed to the absurdity of the romantic tradition, warmly received the novel; Cazal's success was impressive enough that he made an impression on the leader of the "mathematical Ultra-Royalists" M. Villèle, who allowed Henri Bourbon to extend an invitation to Cazal for the coronation of King Charles X. Whether his production had deliberately induced this desired acclaim, or was an accident of circumstance, was unknown to all but himself.

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A gathering of the familial Dons in Le Tigre Tyrrhénien.
Nonetheless, the contented sentiment of the intellectual class, incarnated by Cazal's most popular (although certainly not his finest) work up-to-date, was shattered by Sur la Frégate Joviale. As national politics once again devolved into the fiercest conflicts regarding the Indemnification Law, regarding the Greek Revolution, regarding the Sacrilege Law, and regarding the politics of the king; Saint-Germain fought his own battle against the entrenched criticism of the aesthetic masters. Although he personally disliked the fact that the term "Saint Germain romanticism" had come into general usage, Henri was determined to pluck out the foes of his scripture and supplant the snobbish rationalism of Voltaire with the ultramonatone royalism that esteemed faith and valor above all other considerations. The consequence of this fervor was Saint Germain's next novel, written in late 1825, and published in Paris to great anticipation in March 1826. La Mouton du Chevalier embraces the romantic parable to the absolute extreme, and elicits the most furious satirization of Restoration politics, exceeding even the liberal assaults on the Bourbon Monarchy. Saint Germain drafts himself into the trope of the Sheep—the symbol of the masses—enveloped in the intrigues of high-society and political life. A petty animal among equestrian beasts, the Sheep is disappointed on all sides; by the Shetland [the Liberals], the Sheep is supposedly extolled, but nonetheless excluded for its incorrect appearance [playing with the Liberal obsession with the bourgeoisie]; by the Bay [the Doctrinaires], the Sheep is utterly ignored, and considered beneath the mathematical resolutions of their work; even the Stallion [the Ultra-Royalists] fails the Sheep, which is exploited for the purposes of the Stallion's haughty proclivities. The misuse of the Sheep is running tragedy, and was designed by Saint-Germain to offend the political system that excludes the aspirations of the romantics, and more notably, betrays the sincere loyalism of the French masses. In a work of political defection; Saint-Germain even brings into question the character of the King [represented by the Chevalier], unable to pivot the trajectory of the nation to more inclusive routes. Not long after, Saint-Germain even attempted to introduce his own narrative for the masses, and penned the three-act novelette, Un Leader d'Un. The new story was an crafted to saturate Germain's fascination with the concept of the anti-hero, and present a comedic popular alternative to the general public by means of a blunderous adventurer seemingly favored by divine intervention at multiple interdictions.

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The House of the Chevalier.

La Mouton du Chevalier and Un Leader d'Un flooded Paris alongside other famous romantic works, and crushed their mediocre opponents (notably the light-hearted stories of Outremer) by what Auger described as "illegitimate successes." The bookstalls of the capital were aflush by Saint-Germain's L'acadien familial, Sur la Frégate Joviale, La Mouton du Chevalier, and (although less applauded) Un Leader d'Un; by Vigny's Eloa, Cinq-Mars, and Poèmes antiques et modernes; by Hugo's Nouvelles Odes, Bug-Jargal, Hymne à la Colonne; by Stendhal's Racine et Shakespeare; and by Mérimée's Théâtre de Clara Gazul. In the course of these years English romantic literature, the novels of Sir Walter Scott in particular, had invaded France, and by July 1827, new performances of Shakespeare by English actors had earned a huge success. Beside this, a real reversal of alliances had taken places; many romantics had deserted the royalist camp in favor of the liberal opposition. Why had this occurred? The Sully Ministry, by its commonplace tone and Villèle rationalism, and especially by the failure of the Anti-Sacrilege Law, had disappointed the hopes of the Catholic and idealistic extreme Right; the Academy and the Council had persecuted Ultramonatism in the failure of the Sacrilege Law, poetic genius in the person of Chateaubriand, literary preeminence in the person of Saint-Germain, and freedom of the press by the king's ordinances in the aftermath of the Affair of the 17th. It had succeeded in making royalism appear to be just as opposed to the aspirations of the new generation as Napoleonic despotism had been in 1814. A new breed of liberals had arisen; encouraged by the Globe, rallying around the double-threat of Henri Bourbon and the Marquess of Armentière, it repudiated all old patterns, those of the Revolution as well as of the Old Regime. Between the two oppositions of Right and Left, Saint-Germain and Chateaubriand bridged the gap, defending the rights of the press, lionizing the common man, and upholding the innovative attempts of style. The struggle for Greek independence furnished a common cause for contest and enthusiasm, permitting the aspirations towards freedom to be united with the defence of Christianity and the military tradition. Victor Hugo, Saint-Germain's prized protégé, sensed from what direction the wind blow, and brought over an innumerable quantity of Saint-Germain romanticists to his position. His Hymne à la Colonne indicated that he had made his choice; the royal government, which had heaped honors and pensions upon him, had not yet perceived his shift. Whether Saint-Germain would follow Hugo leftward, find hope in non-royalist ultramontanism, or remain stubbornly devoted to his contemporary beliefs, was an issue of great apprehension for his followers...

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Victor Hugo, the protégé of Saint-Germain, and an early defector to the opposition.

The great social struggles of this period should not detract from the fact that never before had France been so indulged in literature of pristine quality. With the exception of Armand Thiers' Les Arpents Malheureux, which was roundly panned for applying the trends of the decade of Messidor (but nonetheless gave inspiration in the approach of the work to future writers), the Ducal Era glowed with artistic energy; every work from Cazal to Saint-Germain and in-between was glamorized in the later century. France was now coming into connection with the world after a decade of deliberate cultural isolation from the external; Roger Disney provided Paris with excitable tales of American adventure that seemed in all parts to critique Atala, ou Les Amours de deux sauvages dans le désert and its depiction of the Natchez Indian Chactas. Disney's Les Aventures Filanchi, mixing adventurism and naturalism, arrived at the perfect time; the flora of North America was all the buzz in the academies and colleges. Alexander Lesuer had reported his scientific findings of the flora back to France, while Alcide d'Orbigny trotted across South America to make his own analytics of the new countries. The Near East, which had also been popularized by Chateaubriand, and even more so by tales from the Greek War of Independence, attracted attempts to repeat their own Itinéraire and follow the footsteps of Childe Harold. Others wanted to trace the marches of Alexander the Great, and some, such as Victor Jacquemont, went as far as the Indies. Orientalism too was not simply a traveler's preoccupation or a literary fad; it had become a research science with Paris as its uncontested world center. The Council had six chairs devoted to oriental language, and lavished pensions on Abel Rémusat when he published his Eléments de grammaire chinoise in 1822 and brought Eastern literature into the West. Eugène Burnouf discovered the secret of the ancient languages of Parsia and India, while Silvestre de Sacy published an Arab Chrestomathie and an Arab Anthologie grammaticale, and directed the Ecole spéciale des langues orientales, established by the government in 1824. And, of course, Egyptology remained fresh in the French imagination, where Jean-Francois Champollion, had begun to extract the secrets of the hierogylphics. The generosity of Charles X was to permit him in the next few years to arrange in the Louvre one of the finest galleries of Egyptian antiquities. Yes, France was alive with adventure!

[1] Give some credit, that was some sexy story weaving.
[2] Yes, I hate the term too.

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The same schedule as last time barring extraordinary events. 48 hours for the Ministry to figure out what to do with itself. 24 hours for just debate. 36 hours of debate+voting.
 
Dear Victor

I have read your Hymne a lá Colonne and must say I was quite taken. I have always sought to create wonderous landscapes, impactful in imagery and philosophy. I completely support your trailblazing through new literary jungles, a de Igny of romanticism and the common man. I hold absolutely no reservations as to your judgement, and know that what you create will lead France into greatness. Do not dodder in the wake of the those that oppose you, they're stuffy and antagonistic to imagery.

Alas my student, I feel a great pull upon me. This politic Chamber pulls at my soul and the actions of the duc du Sully have shaken my faith. Where should I go? Where is my place in France's politics?

If you wish, I have a fair glass of wine at the Chapter House should you wish to join me. I feel a great need to lift the burden of apathy and rend unto myself a real purpose for the future.

Sincerely,

Henri-Maurice
 
((Private))
Dear Lord Fulgent,

Please do not think I attempt to influence you or the military with my letter, I only wish to engage with the argument you have presented to the people of France in justification of the current Ministry's present legislative slate. Now, in regards to your latest thrust...

Indeed, no man can defy God, for he will always have the last word and our mortal machinations become dust. But, even though no man should defy his sovereign or his father, it is certainly a constant risk present in all human societies. The authority the father of the nation and the household possess are god-granted, but are not in practical terms absolute. You could say that while the King is the general of the nation as commissioned by God, the nation is not a well-trained army but a collection of bandits. But they are the King's bandits, they are of the future of his people, he cannot just replace them with a better lot. And it might be the job of the King to be unyielding, like God, but it is also the duty of the King's servants to preserve the King's authority, which again, cannot be said to be in fact absolute in practice.

If the general commands his army of bandits to assault a breach in a well-defended fortress, he will likely be ignored and possibly overthrown. But if he commands them to attack the supply lines of the fortress and to pick off the defenders one by one, they will in fact excel at this tact with more ability than well-trained soldiers, as their skills lie in that area of irregular warfare. In the same way, the unique national characteristics of France can be said to be at odds with the methods of the current government, but not the goals. I would more generally conclude that the characteristics that you describe as separating nations, such as separating the customs of Russian Tsars and British Parliaments, are not fixed but in fact change throughout history.

The French character is not the same now as it was during the ancien regime, we have gone from a nation of regulars to a nation of irregulars to continue our military metaphor. And I think you and your comrades in de Sully's ministry recognize the changeable nature of the French nation, and wish to change it once more. You do not, in practice, believe in an unchanging divinely mandated nature of the French people.

It may be a godly mission to change the French people to grant greater respect to the sacrosanct aspects of the religion of the majority of the people of France and of its sovereign, but it cannot be said to be godly to slay Frenchmen in order to change French society. That is to say, a Revolution, even one for done of godly ends, cannot be said to be anything less than barbaric. The desire to bloodily revolutionize society is one that must be fought by all good men, regardless of the utopian ends of the revolutionaries.

It is not Lucifer who changed French society to its current state, the men who are of this era are not more sinful than you or De Sully himself. And your methods are not God's methods, they are your own. So any actions you commit in the name of your worthy cause must be judged against you without regard to your ultimate goal. There is godliness in temperance, and I pray that God gives you the strength to accept those things that you cannot change.

Thibaut Duval, Former Deputy of Bouches du Rhone

((Private @MadMartigan ))

Cher Monsieur Duval,

Please sir, do not take my words as attacks on your motives or positions. Rather, I enjoy this correspondence immensely and seek only to converse with a man who does not share the sensibilities of my own circles. Indeed, in the healthy exercise of government it is the wise ruler who takes up a cabinet of disparate ministers so as to learn of the views of those men of import. It is the King's ultimate rule who can synthesize the divergent positions of our society into one national policy.

It is with sadness that I confide in you the chaotic nature of this ministry and mourn the formation of a pseudo-party system as is seen in the democracies of Britain or the United States. I hope that under the great wisdom and faith of His Majesty we will avoid that most contentious fate. We must be temperate in the cause of government, but never go back against our principles. If there is any other points of my previous articles or in the article that shall soon be published, I await your correspondence with great interest. Know, sir, that you shall find welcome in my home in the town of Saint Fulgent or in Paris, whenever you should visit.

Le Vicomte de Saint Fulgent, le Ministre de la guerre
 
Paris, the fall of Greece 1826.

Lothaire were fully committed to his studies and did not pay much attention to the overall political climate. He did care, but he felt mostly powerless. He invested sums into "le Globe" hoping to make it into the foremost liberal and romantic circulation in Paris. His journalists would write some articles against the current ministry, but they mostly fell to deaf ears and were drowned among the many pamphlets and papers circulating in Paris at the time. But he would be contacted by le Globe who wanted more essays regarding Greek indepence. Lothaire were happy to do so, alltough he would be somewhat moderate as he would balance between speaking for the Greek cause and not upsetting the Holy Alliance. For his second semester Lothaire would continue with the subjects of "Military managment and leadership" and "Scientific method" and only adding "Military operations" as the third subject.

As the Greek rebellion were in dire straits during 1826 Lothaire would write another essay, an essay that would also include engravings from the "Massacre of Chios" by Eugène Delecroix..

Le Globe

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From the Destruction of Psara to the Destruction of Western Civilization. -Essay by Lothaire Lécuyer.

"Hellenism was born when the world was born,
Nobody could be found to eliminate it,
Nobody, for it is protected from above by my God,
Not till the whole world ends will the Greek race vanish!"


Such were the response of Archbishop Kyprinanos under the threat of Greek extinction in Cyprus. Such were the courage of the Archbishop and the many fighting Greeks and those who have suffered martyrdom. And such are the destructive forces of the Turks. Held back by no restraints of civilization, no humility nor compassion for their fellow man. Such are their disregard for their own subjects that they threaten to wipe out thousands of innocents - and their threats are backed by action. And let this all be a testimony of the courage of the Greeks and our fellow Christian brothers, who do not bow down to infidels but stand up for their kin and God. The brutality of the Turks remain unparalleled. The Destruction of Psara are just one of many crimes committed against God and his people. 7000 people lived on the beautiful island, none remain. All have fallen to the curved swords of the heathens.

"On the all-black ridge of Psara
Glory walks by herself taking in
the bright young men on the war field
the crown of her hair wound
from the last few grasses left
on the desolate earth."


And now the sons and daughters of Ancient Greece are once more in peril. Their dreams, our dreams, of restoring the greatness of Pericles's Athen seem distant. In all their savagery they oppress the free people of Greece and their ideals. The Destruction of Psara are to be a reminder on what may happen. Today they might destroy an Island, but tommorow they take all of Greece. And history will judge us by how we chose to act. Were we to cower and watch as infidels raped the virgin lands? How would we judge a grown man, a man of the finest caliber who only looked as his own mother were defiled? It's our moral obligation to aid the Greeks. As if their cause are undermined, the cradle of our very civilization are underminded. Let the words of the late Lord Byron sink in:

"The mountains look on Marathon
–And Marathon looks on the sea;
And musing there an hour alone,
I dream’d that Greece might still be free;
For standing on the Persians grave,
I could not deem myself a slave."

Greece might still be free. But it will not be freed by volunteer corps, corps that were led by men such as Durand and Lamarque are a thing of the past. The Turks have stabbed the very Greek nation with their curved saber, their saber of oppression and heathenry. But the sword is stuck in her body. As such we can only hope that His Most Christian King Charles X set out and meditate a peace with the Turks - hopefully with the aid of the English and the Russians. As such they will take the saber out slowly and secure a healthy recovery, taking it out too fast and with too much force could only worsen the condition. Let the great powers of the West and Christendom return to their cradle and negotiate with the oppressors of Christ.

But if the Turks, in all their savagery, are not willing to cooperate the Joyeuse should swing and cut the Ottoman Saber in half. If our beloved King Charles are to lead the Sons of St. Louis in defense of Christendom he would surely be forever sung about. The French Army have already proven to be capable of restoring peace and freedom in Spain, perhaps it should be led to achieve the same in Greece. Not a war of aggression and conquest as under Napoleon - but a noble Crusade for freedom and Christendom.

Remember the Greek national hero Athanasios Diakos. A man who on his deathbed were offered a position in the Ottoman Army only if he converted to Islam. But he held fast to his beliefs, and for that he were impaled. His final words were "I was born a Greek, I shall die a Greek". Let us put the Greek martyrs to honor, let us secure their rightful place as the heirs to Classical Greece and as a free people under God.

 
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l'Élan Journal
On the Need of a true Common Royalist Party

The place of the Ultraroyalistes was meant to be as the defenders of the trio of forces which represent French society, the King, the Church, and the Common People. They were meant to represent the greatest singular force in politics, an entity uniting the disparate forces of philosophy, politics, nobility, and military men. They were meant to be the watchers, protecting the weak and sheltering the poor while they bringing about a righteous fury upon heretics, idolaters, apostates, and republicans.

They failed.

With the largest ever majority in the French government a la the democratic procedure, it has failed.

With the chance to promote pious and heavanly bills propogated from the King himself in dedication to both the Church and the Common Man, they failed.

With the chance to truly be great, they failed.

What is needed now is a proper party to replace the Ultraroyalistes. One that actually applies the principles of King, God, and the Common Man. One that allows the Commoner to take pride in everything they do, in those who lead, and in what they represent. A unity of ideals that represent the French dream, a Romantic dream.

We at l'Élan believe that to true build a nation that will never again fall to the lesser forces of Republicanism and apostry, of tyranny and murder, of failure and defeat.

The ideals of the past must be remembered, but for the future we must adapt. Actively promote and defend the Church, maintain and salute our traditions, and become an the singular greatest nation under the Lord. For we are led by His Most Christian Majesty, Good King Charles. By God and King, there needs to be a change, and the Ultraroyalistes must fall.
 
((Letter to @MadMartigan ))

Friend,

Have you seen the current turn of events in Greece? I have and their prospects frighten me. I'm certain you're heavily invested in the financial sector and seen the generous loans offered by the City of London to the Greeks. These loans have in effect made London the financer of the independence war. The Greeks have even made their own "British" political party whose belief are that a Greece state can only survive with British help.

As such I look to you. Could you and your banks, and other banks, aswell offer loans to the Greeks? Not only out of an ideological point of view but also political. As such French influence would greatly grow in the region. I could also invest some of my fortunes to ease the loans

Yours,

Lothaire.

((Private letter to @TJDS ))

Honored Deputy,

Let me thank you for your service, namely that of opposition.

But I do not write to you regarding domestic politics; rather foreign. With your position as Deputy I will advise you to press on the cause of Greek liberation in the Chamber. Either to encourage the government to meditate a peace or in worst case to intervene by force. Perhaps even to go so far as to give them the assurances they need in order to do justice - and score a public victory.

As the Founder of the Philhellenistic Society of France to encourage your members to make donations and create a more public debate of the Eastern Question - in salons, coffehouses, the press and the Chambers.

And to create editorials in your paper regarding the Greek cause.

Chef de bataillon Lothaire Lécuyer.
 
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La Gazette de France

Treatise on the Four Levels of Authority

In the exercise of the organic bounds of society we find that power must be held by those who legitimately exercise it. We in France have seen within our lifetimes the state we should be thrust into if the authority of a society is abused and seized by men who lack legitimacy. We must look first towards where legitimacy comes from. Legitimacy for Hobbes comes from the will of a people to secure peace out of the constant and total war of the state of nature. To accomplish this peace the sovereign is entitled to dispense his justice so as to bind men against the wicked nature of their souls. Verily, man must be bound against his wickedness, but this is not done by a sovereign who derives his legitimacy from the contract of the people. For who can a sovereign rule over a people from whom he derives all his power. If the King’s power comes from the assent of the people in the beginning stages of civilization as Hobbes contends, why then as Hobbes further states it is impossible for those people or their descendents to withdraw the conditions of their contract. Indeed, if the authority of a king resides in an agreement from the people then the people, as said by Locke, those people would be able to rightfully rebel against the king in the case of the sovereign’s breaking of the contract.

This understanding of authority is tainted fully by its English protestantism, coming out of a truly non-Catholic tradition. For us French, faithful to God and the Holy Mother Church to the last we must look to tradition and God for legitimate politics. The lies of Rousseau state that all men were equal and were thrust into inequality, but this is plainly false. Where in the world are all men equal? Some men have been endowed by God with great talents in the arts or natural strength so as to perform great feats. Others are born with a great propensity towards virtue, the greater part of these men becoming monks or clergy, while some men are unfortunately born with an innate weakness to vice and the temptations of the Devil. Why should we not observe this fact also in the nature of politics, wealth, and authority? Even the great liberal Jefferson admits to the need for an aristocracy to guide the policies of the land. Rousseau’s position that this fundamentally obvious inequality is not the result of the natural state of mankind but the artificial construction of property, out of which grows civilization itself, cannot be correct because nowhere can we find this purported state of nature except in the Americas where the savages have long dwelt with little notions of civilized life. However, when we examine the state of life in the tribes of the Americas we find a society of inequality as well. Superior hunters are more honored in the tribes and rudimentary systems of hierarchy maintain a social cohesion, both more and less strict in differing ways than our own. It is clear to me then that the natural inequality of man is the design of God, who loves all people but has created them for different roles.

If God created man for the purpose of the state of civilization then from Him we must derive the authority of society. The Law of God in all things we shall henceforth call the Theonomy, the foundation of all things. Theonomy is the ultimate power of God and rightness of his strictures. What God commands is done should he will it and those who have been granted free will act in accordance with the statutes of the Lord, else they be condemned to hellfire. This condemnation of the sinful man is the ultimate expression of God’s judicial power, the highest form of the same judicial power we find on Earth. The power of the Theonomy runs through all forms of authority as it is in the permission of God’s Law that any form of law may be created. Without the Lord’s permission a law cannot be said to be legitimate as the only source of legitimacy in this world based not in the ignoble pursuits of the flesh or temptations of the Devil is the transcendent power of the Theonomy.

Let us now consider the lowest of the four levels of authority, that of the Autonomy. Man holds natural authority over himself as granted by God when he endowed mankind with free will. Man is autonomous in his wills and freedoms, that ultimately of obedience to God and legitimate authority or disobedience. The Autonomy of man is first subordinated to the will and power of the father of a family, the Patronomy. The Patronomy is the legitimate authority of the father of the family, the paterfamilias. The father of the family is the head of the family in the same manner that God the Father is the father over the family of all peoples. The father of the family thereby executes the will of God in the realm of the family, the foundational unit upon which society is built because it is from the kin group that all higher levels of man’s organization is modeled and finds expression. From this Patronomy, with the higher blessings of Theonomy, we find the final form of legitimate authority, the Heteronomy.

As the paterfamilias rules his household by the statutes of Christ, the King rules his kingdom by the statutes of the Lord. The King serves as Father to one nation as God serves as Farther to all nations above each nation’s divinely ordained King. This is why we find the name of Jesus Christ as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Truly, this Heteronomy is legitimate only in the continuous support of Theonomy, which rests in the ordination of the Lord and the support of the King through the Church. The ultimate goal of the Heteronomy is to bring the nation into the faith of God. To do this we must aid the poor, strengthen the Church, and build up the institutions of the nation in reflection of the organic form of God’s commands. To find the purest expression of this Heteronomy the fullness of power must be exercised in the hand of the ordained King, who is the father. Like how the father may send out his brother or son to aid in the enactment of his commands and the public life of the family, the King will have ministers to aid in the complex running of government. However, ultimate and complete authority must remain in the hands of the sovereign as in the father, and those ministers must never enter in the government of His Majesty seeking to enact any form of policy that runs counter to the mission of the Heteronomy or the person of the King.

Le Vicomte de Saint Fulgent, le Ministre de la guerre
 
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(Private - @Dadarian )

Letter from the Marquise of Armentières to Monsieur de Saint-Germain​

Dear Monsieur de Saint-Germain,

It is with much admiration for your courage that I read your most recent article published in L'Élan, in which I believe you seized quite accurately the mood of the nation in regards of the current governnent's failure to live up to the expectations of the people.

I also happen to be of the opinion that for royalism to thrive and bloom in the realm, it must guard from the extremes and embrace the concerns of all Frenchmen, thus delivering the good policies to usher the realm towards new heights, both domestically and internationaly.

I would be very much interested to hear your specific ideas on these matters, and I kindly renew my invitation of years past to grace by your insight my household.

Best regards

Amélie Constance Félicité de Bourbon D'Armentières
 
Thibaut Duval, in anticipation of eventually regaining a seat in the Chamber, took it upon himself to give public speeches in receptive venues of Parisian society.

The Legal Regime

I am sickened by the gutter press which uses religious intolerance as a way to promote a liberal stance, using attacks on the Jesuit order and on the King's own personal relationship with God in order to attack a Ministry which needed no help from the outside in attacking itself. Among the Revolution's most bloody tools was the scapegoat, using hatred of the outsider as the basis for turning slander and libel into weapons for change. Such change cannot be confused with true progress. We hear all too much of how the mob may be stirred up, but it seems the gutter press is as likely to wish to stir up the rumor mill in the Court and Chamber, to churn the hives of gossip in Paris. The men who wish to rule France have no need to fear the people of the nation, the only enemy that is attacking them are themselves. As a society within a society, the political class; of which I am a part as much as the man who took my seat in the Chamber; is thoroughly corrupt. This corruption existed before, during, and after the Revolution.

We have seen through the phases of the Ancien Regime, Revolution, Reaction, Empire, and Restoration new tools added to the arsenals of the slanderer, the conspirator, the well-heeled scoundrel. With freedom of speech and thought comes responsibility for one's words and deeds; what France sorely needs is a legal regime under which a man can defend himself in court against the slings and arrows hurled at him in print. We should adopt a more British legal attitude towards slander and libel as the proper median course between a return to the censorship and the kind of reckless permissiveness which gave rise to the horror of the Affair of the 17th. We cannot allow the gutter press which called for the blood of merchant and prince alike in the Revolution to be the defining institution of the modern French nation. Printers must be held responsible for circulating false accusations, even if the writers themselves are anonymous.

The second tool of terror we must abolish is the corruption of the political process. Bribery has many faces, from the hand off of payments to electors to buying the support of the common man with raucous parties and gifts of wine. By broadening the franchise and introducing the secret ballot we can inoculate the conscience of the electors in such a way that they cannot be easily harassed in daylight or bribed in the shadows. It will be harder for money alone to corrupt the thoughts of men when they cast their ballot in complete confidence and cannot be overseen by their masters. And a larger electorate will make it harder to gain a strangehold on power simply by maintaining a small cartel of cronies in each district.

The third principle of the legal regime is a new concordat with the Church. Why do we have clerics in charge of education on one hand and maintain a ban on the Jesuit Order on the other? Isn't this absolutely backwards? The French nation requires a tuition free and public education that instructs the next generation in civics and public morality, while in the public square giving the Church the same right of freedom of speech and thought we endeavor to grant every Frenchman in our modern society. By building a wall of separation between church and state we free the Holy Roman and Catholic Church from being a mere department of national affairs, we end our isolation and allow a new level of discourse between France and Rome, one that can only be beneficial for the spiritual wellbeing of the nation. We can cast of the shackles of past and join the brotherhood of truly modern nations.

There are some who think that moderation can be maintained through personal character alone, that as long as the right men are in charge they can ride the waves of the gutter press and the corruption in the electoral districts in order to deliver the right kind of leadership. But this is tragically unambitious. Our Kingdom deserves bolder strokes to give every man, from the King to the pauper, the kind of freedom we hear so much about but see in true practice so rarely.