PART 4: La Vieille Garde
The Palace of Versailles
With France on the brink of Civil War, a group of aristocrats, generals, and politicians, headed by the now infamous Henri, Count of Chambourd, narrowly escaping with his life from the civil strife in Paris, all of whom close to the former King, on the morning of November 10th, called an emergency meeting at Versailles. They formed a ruling council, calling themselves The Committee for National Salvation.
The Committee Discusses the Crisis
Standing on the left is the Bourbon Count of Chambourd
A Second French Revolution was what they feared the most, as this would mean the end of their power, wealth, and influence. They were willing to do everything in their power to accomplish this objective.
By evening of the same day, all Loyalist troops, having spent the last 2 days fighting Republican and Jacobin rebels in the streets of Paris, were ordered to evacuate the city and construct barricades on its outskirts.
Loyalist troops barricade Paris
Messages were sent to Berlin, Madrid, and London informing them of the situation in Paris. The Old Guard, as the Committee informally called itself, pleaded the other European Monarchies to assist them in putting down the rebellion.
None of the 3 Autocracies neighboring France wished to see a Jacobin government seize power; each sent 30,000 of their most highly trained soldiers to Paris to crush the uprising there.
The Prussians, although encountering heavy resistance from French partisans along the way, reached Paris in less than a week.
On the early morning of the 17th of November, Loyalist and Prussian troops entered Paris and began engaging with the Republican rebels.
Brutal fighting on the streets of Paris
The Parisian resistance, weakened after a week of Loyalist blockades and hopelessly outnumbered, fought courageously, but by the end of the week were utterly defeated. A Victory Parade was held the next day.
Victorious Prussian (left) and Loyalist French (right) troops parade in Paris.
The Old Guard had cemented its rule. With 60,000 British and Spanish troops on the way to maintain order and suppress any civil unrest, the Committe for National Salvation had a free hand to enact any reforms they wished.
Soon after the defeat of the November Uprising, the Old Guard forced through sweeping legislation that further increased aristocratic wealth and privelege, censored liberal newspapers and jailed their writers and distributors, and established martial law in the country. Open Republican sympathizers were shot; waving the French tricolor and singing La Marseillaise were made punishable by death.
Loyalist troops executing Jacobin activists
France had avoided civil war, but at the cost of utterly discrediting its new rulers in the eyes of the common citizen. The new regime maintained power through fear and brute force. The years following their seizure of power, France had reached a point of cultural, economic, and intellectual stagnation.
When students began forming liberal-oriented organizations, the Old Guard ordered the instigators to be jailed.
In Eureux, a local Baron evicted close to 100 peasants from their homes to make land for hunting grounds for his House. The locals rose up against this injustice, but the weaponless farmers were quickly arrested by armed Loyalist soldiers.
Aside from this and a few dozen other small incidents, the iron fist of the Old Guard maintained strict order and discipline. Royalist spies infiltrated underground Republican organizations, making organized resistance to the regime impossible.
In Foreign Relations matters, the Old Guard continued the policies of King Louis Antonie I; mainly, strong ties with Carlist Spain and the Italian states.
In January 1844, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire went to war. The Egyptians had long maintained close ties with the French aristocracy, and asked France to assure its protection from the Turkish horde. France agreed, and the Ottomans backed down, leaving Egypt as a French ally and squarely in the French sphere of influence.
The Prussians, worried at an upset in the European Balance of Power, demanded that France withdraw its support for the Egyptians. France refused. Prussia responded by withdrawing its garrison of 30,000 elite troops from Paris, leaving only 60,000 Spanish and British soldiers to protect Paris from armed unrest.
Furious, Henri, Count of Chambord, the unofficial leader of the Old Guard, sent an angry letter to Frederick William IV, the newly crowned King of Prussia, warning him that he is "leading Europe straight into the hands of the Jacobins", and threatening to occupy the left bank of the Rhine if the Prussian troops are not returned to Paris.
The Prussian leadership called his bluff. France had a standing army of hundreds of thousands; why were 30,000 foreign troops so badly needed? The only explanation seemed to be that the Old Guard was rapidly losing authority over the French Army, an army that was in no shape to fight a war with Prussia.
Having nothing to fear, the Prussians expelled French diplomats and banned French nationals from entering their country. Henri of Chambord was humiliated, but through clever political maneuvering, remained as the de facto leader of France.
In March of the same year, disaster struck again, this time on the economic front.
The total incompetence of the Old Guard in areas of economic development led to a massive recession. Capitalists and industrialists everywhere put the blame on the new regime's crippling taxes on investors and industrialists, designed to further enrich the aristocracy at the expense of everyone else.
Thousands of members of the non-aristocratic segment of the Parisian upper class took to the streets to demand voting rights. They were quickly rounded up and jailed; without their continued investments, factories dried up and closed down. The Great Recession was quickly turning into a catastrophic Depression, the likes of which France had never seen before.
Meanwhile, the Old Guard categorically refused to allow any economic, social, or political changes. In 1846, Henri of Chambord was officially proclaimed as the country's official leader, and awarded the newly created position of Protector of France.
As Protector Henri began consolidating political power by purging his political opponents, crackdowns on bourgeoisie liberal organizations increased.
In the wealthiest districts of Paris, violence erupted on October 7, 1846; fights between pro-regime aristocrats and anti-regime liberals were dispersed only when the army fired on the liberal gathering.
The economic catastrophe affected the poor the most. Food riots broke out in all major French cities. Soldiers themselves began to starve, and joined the protests. People in expensive, aristocratic-looking clothing were publicly lynched. The Old Guard had lost all control over the country; armed mobs from around the country set out to Paris, singing revolutionary songs and demanding the Count and his cabal to hang for his crimes against the French people.
[video=youtube;4K1q9Ntcr5g]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4K1q9Ntcr5g[/video]
Aux armes, citoyens,,
Formez vos bataillons,
Marchons, marchons !
Qu'un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons !
To arms, citizens,
Form your battalions,
Let's march, let's march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows!
Seeing the authority of the Old Guard evaporate in front of their eyes, a group of France's wealthiest industrialists, led by the charismatic engineer Ernest Goüin, decided to act. To save the country from abject mob rule and mass terror, they ordered 4,000 elite mercenaries from around the globe, armed with the latest military technologies, to storm and capture all major political and economic points of interest in Paris, as well as to break into the homes of Old Guard members and arrest them for treason. The Industrialists proceeded to install themselves as the rulers of France, pledging to restore "liberty, bread, and honor" to the French people, all while the Spanish and British garrison intended to protect the Old Guard's regime soundly slept in the Parisian countryside.
By dawn of January 6, 1847, France had become, for all intents and purposes, a Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie.
. Really intruiging set up, I suspect a Jacobin style Republic to emerge, that with the growth of the urban working class over the next few decades could face an interesting battle with such a Republic's inherent radicalism making the emergeance of a powerful socialist and working class movement easier - but this in turn could cause strong and perhaps violent conflict with the new Republic's Jacobin traditions. But mabye I am getting ahead of myself and the Revolution will not come in the 1830s but in the latter parts of the century. No matter what, I'll be watching! 
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