William Tyler
Three Returning Bourbons and One Bonaparte: 1814-1871
William Tyler - Three Returning Bourbons and One Bonaparte: 1814-1871
- The talk today is on the last monarchies of France, and the period is 1814 to 1870. So we’re dealing with a large portion of the 19th century. And when I began preparing this, I thought I would like to make a different sort of opening. And I thought if any of us were asked to define history, most of us would say that history is the study of the past. But on reflection, that’s only one definition of history. Another view of viewing history, another way of looking at history, is that history is like a river. It stretches back in time. It also runs along beside us in the present. And then it stretches ahead of us in the future. You can’t stop traditional rivers running unless you build a dam or you seek to divert them. Rivers flow, inevitably, onto the sea. Or if you prefer, they flow inexorably onto the future. But over the ages, some politicians have tried to reverse the flow of the river of time, to go back in time. But you can’t go back in time in the same ways you can’t send a river backwards. You can only go forwards. Now, you can prevent the river of time going forward for a short period, even for a slightly longer period. But in the end, history is inexorable, it moves on. But people still make attempts to turn it back. And this is exactly what happened when the victorious allies, Prussia, Russia, and Austria sought to deal with France. After the first application of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814 and onto the second application of Bonaparte in 1815, they sought to put the clock back to before the revolution of ‘89.
To put it back to, if you want a date, 1788, to do a date before the revolution. And the archconservative at the Congress of Vienna arguing for this was the Austrian Chancellor, von Metternich. And Metternich once said, “In Europe,” said Metternich, “democracy is a falsehood. I do not know when it will end, but it cannot end in a quiet old age.” What a depressing thought that is. But of course, it wasn’t true in the 19th century. Metternich is trying to pretend that the French Revolution never happened. But it did happen. And the ideas of nationality and the ideas of democracy had been spread across Europe by Napoleon’s armies during the Napoleonic Wars. The ideas of the French Revolution had been left out of the box and had like a virus, settled in the body politic of Europe. And it couldn’t, it could not be taken out of it, however hard people tried. Now, in the short term, Metternich’s trying to put the clock back work, certainly, in Russia and in Austria, where disaster only comes for both countries, where the collapse of their empires during and the end of the First World War, 100 years in the future. Italy became unified and democratic in the 1860s. And Germany unified and democratic in 1871. And the story of France, we shall follow today. As far as France was concerned in 1814, the allies sought to restore Louis the 16th’s heirs. You remember from an earlier talk that his son had died and it was his two younger brothers that were destined to succeeding, first, Louis the 18th who reigned between 1814, Napoleon’s first application, and 1824, and Louis the 16th and Louis the 18th’s younger brother, Charles the 10th, who ruled between 1824 and 1830.
In other words, Bourbon sat on the throne of France 15 years after the Battle of Waterloo. Now, in all that I’ve said so far, those of you who have been both awake and astute will notice that I never mentioned Britain. And that was because Britain was uneasy about the Metternich policy. And although the Congress of Vienna led to what in Europe was called the Congress System, by the mid 1820s, Britain had washed its hands of it, because Britain was uneasy. It wasn’t represented, of course, at any congress by the king or the royal family, but by the prime minister and other members of their cabinets. And so Britain felt out of touch with the rest of Europe. Now, that’s a phrase you can use at almost any point in history. Britain has always felt out of touch with Europe, no more so than it does in 2022, outside of the EU. But it did then, because it felt that turning the clock back was not the right thing to do. Okay, Britain didn’t want a revolution here in Britain like the Terror of Robespierre, of course they didn’t. But they didn’t want absolute monarchy either. They wanted a constitutional monarchy, and policies driven by elected politicians that were progressive. The French priest, first of all, then politician and subsequently diplomat, Talleyrand, who served Napoleon and then changed, turned his coat to serve the Bourbons, is reported to have remarked of Louis the 18th and Charles the 10th, “They learnt nothing and forgot nothing. They learnt nothing and forgot nothing.” And that, in a sense, stands for the whole of Metternich Europe, whereas the British policies were far more pragmatic than that. If we had to ally ourselves with Russia and Prussia and Vienna in order to defeat Napoleon, we would do so, as we allied ourselves with Stalin in World War II.
But that’s realpolitik. It wasn’t that we did it as it were blindfolded. We did it knowing what we were doing. So Britain disappears from this story largely, between 1814 and 1870, when it comes to France. Louis the 18th himself had escaped the guillotine, which of course claimed his brother’s life, because when his brother and family fled, you remember the Flight to Varennes, where they were heading for Louis the 16th’s wife’s country, Marie Antoinette’s homeland of Austria, were caught at Varennes and brought back as prisoners to Paris. Well, Louis the 18th, by sheer luck, was headed another way. He was headed towards the low countries. And he made it out of France. And so his life was spared. Charles the 10th went even earlier. As soon as the revolution began, Charles the 10th was off. So both the younger brothers of Louis the 16th survived the revolution. Desmond Seward, a British historian of France, and particularly of the Bourbons, disagrees with Talleyrand’s estimation. They learnt nothing, they forgot nothing. “That’s not true,” says Seward of Louis the 18th. And in his book, “The Bourbon Kings of France,” which is on my blog, which I put in a couple of days ago, Seward writes, “The Bourbons did not die with the Ancien Régime. One of the least known of French kings, Louis the 18th, was also one of the ablest. Had he succeeded at the throne before his elder brother, Louis the 16th, this unpleasant but interesting man might well have saved the monarchy.” I’m sorry, I don’t agree. I think Talleyrand, who knew him, hit the nail on the head.
I think Seward is not, you know, this is, I don’t know whether Seward wrote it for his PhD, but it’s the sort of thing PhD students are encouraged to do, is to challenge the orthodoxy. But in this case, for me, the orthodoxy represented by Talleyrand’s view is the correct view. I do not believe that a single man, let alone Louis the 18th, could possibly have stopped the revolution coming. I just don’t believe it. He wasn’t internally, intellectually a democrat. He could play the part occasionally, if circumstances so demanded, but he didn’t have it in here. And that’s why I think he would never ever have been able to save France from revolution. Before Louis entered Paris as king, after Napoleon’s defeat at the Battle of Leipzig and his first abdication in 1814, he did in fact issue a constitution. “Whom,” you say, “well, you were wrong then, William, and Seward was right, because he issued a constitution. He must have believed in a constitution.” No, no, no, no, no, no. Talleyrand, with the Imperial Senate, that is Napoleon’s senate, the second house, the upper house, Talleyrand had written a constitution. And Talleyrand’s constitution was a very liberal constitution, in 19th century terms, whereas Louis the 18th’s was a very conservative constitution. But it allowed Louis to play the political card of I am giving France a constitution, rather than saying, I will agree to the constitution of Talleyrand. So by giving France a constitution, he gave them a conservative constitution.
And when I say that he played a political game, he was never crowned King of France. It was just assumed, never crowned. Partly because they feared Republican opposition. They also feared Bonapartist opposition. And I guess because Bonaparte’s own coronation had been so over the top, you remember it cost an absolute fortune, that Louis the 18th didn’t have a coronation. So he didn’t have a coronation and he issued a constitution, but that does not make him a democrat. It reinforces Talleyrand’s view that actually, in here and in here, he never learnt anything from the revolution and he never forgot the revolution. The constitution looked quite modern. And this is what Seward says of the Constitution, issued in 1814 by Louis the 18th. He writes in this way. He writes this. “There was a two-chamber government,” same as America, Britain, and almost every other country in the Western world today, with the exception of New Zealand. “The two chambers constituted a system no less representative than the contemporary English Parliament.” Only men and only men of property had the vote, but it was equivalent to what Britain had. “The two chambers constituted a system no less representative than the contemporary English Parliament.” The upper house was made up of peers of Lords, like still in Britain, the House of Lords. But it goes on to say this, “The minister of the household was the nearest thing equivalent to a British prime minister, but it was terribly ineffective. As in the 1792 Constitution, which Louis the 16th was forced to accept at gunpoint as it were, ministers worked directly to the king without any coordination or cabinet.”
And that is not so in Britain. We are seeing the formation of two parties, Tory and Whig. We’re seeing the construct of governments where the prime minister is a member of Parliament and responsible to Parliament. And the role of the king is becoming increasingly, nearly ceremonial in Britain. Now, that was not the case with Louis the 18th. It is much more similar to that of Charles the Second and his restoration in 1660. And so in that way, he kept control. Now, that’s not what Talleyrand’s constitution would’ve said, it would’ve been more British. But in this case, the king still has enormous power. And one of the things that he did was that sack, about 14,000 of Napoleon’s army officers, including high-ranking officers, and replace them with royalist officers from the pre-revolutionary days, some of whom had to be given quick promotions in order to fill the higher ranks in the French Army. This was a bad move. A bad move because they got less efficient military leadership, and a bad move because it alienated those who had served Napoleon. Their view, that is to say, Louis the 18th and the royalist view of Napoleon’s troops were that they were terribly, terribly middle class. They weren’t like us. They weren’t aristocrats. They didn’t know how to behave. It’s a class-based objection, as well as a political objection. After the Battle of Waterloo in June of 1815, Louis, again, who had fled France as Napoleon landed in the south of France, Louis again was returned to the throne, courtesy of the allies. And Seward writes in this way.
He says this, “In a closed carriage on the 8th of July, 1815, Parisians scowled at the fat old man.” He’s 60. “Forced on them by the…” And he’s fat because he overate. “Forced on them by the enemy troops, who had swaggered through their city,” including Russian troops. “The empress of Austria and Russia, and the King of Russia held parades on the Champ de Mars.” There’s no English equivalent there in Paris. England is withdrawing, in a sense, from the victor’s table. “They treated the Prussians and the Austrians and the Russians, treated the King of France with open contempt. The peace terms were an indemnity of 28 million pounds sterling, occupation for five years by an allied army of 150,000, the surrender of Savoy to Sardinia, to the Kingdom of Piedmont, and handing over the Saar,” remember the Saar from later in the 20th century, 1930s? “Handing over the Saar to Prussia, which meant the final abandonment of the Rhine frontier. French pride was shattered, people muttered. People were said to say openly, in the streets of Paris, 'The Allies gave us the Bourbons, but it was Frenchmen who gave us the Bonapartes.’” There was never a referendum. The French people weren’t asked whether they wanted Louis the 18th and Charles 10th back. They were given them, whether they liked it or not. And they were seen as the puppets of Austria and Prussia and Russia. Not of Britain, but of those three. Now, the taking of the Saar by Prussia reminds us of something I’ve been saying on and off in previous talks.
The huge divide between what is to become Germany at the end of my talk today, and France. And an enmity that is to give us the horrors of World War I and World War II, and the raison d'etre for the European Union. This division of Western Europe between France and Germany is an important one. It’s an important one because it was never accepted by either side that they would lose or compromise. They always wanted to try, if they had lost, to recover. And if they had gained, to hold on. As for France internally, France was divided politically. Now, one of the interesting things about France, as compared to, say, Britain, is that France’s politics is divided and has strong parties on the far right and the far left. Now, in Britain that’s not so. Our parties have largely been parties of centre right and centre left. Now of course, France has that as well, but they have extremist parties. And the extremist parties come from this period. That is to say, the extreme left comes from the Robespierre tradition of the republic and the extreme right from the royalists who really had never forgiven the revolution and were now strong supporters in 1815 of Louis the 15th. They’re called Ultras, U L T R A S, Ultras. And they believed in the divine right of kings. And Charles the 10th was himself an Ultra. When the lower house was elected after Louis the 18th’s return in 1815, it returned a majority of Ultras. Of course, because the people who had the vote were upper middle class and nobility. The upper middle class were conservative. And conservative in France meant archconservative in 1815, and Ultra. Napoleon was a parvenu, and the republic was, well, indescribably dreadful.
The rest of them were loosely described as liberals, which goes from centre right, right across to extreme left, not at this point, of course, communist left, but an extreme left. Think of Robespierre. After four years, this simply wasn’t working. Now, Louis the 18th did something interesting. He appointed a young minister as his major advisor, a man called Decazes. D E C A Z E S, one word. D E C A Z E S, Decazes. Now, Decazes dissolved the chamber of deputies, the lower house, and a new one was elected, which was far more centre. And the ultra-right were not any longer in power. Now, you will not be surprised to hear that in order to achieve this result in the lower house, there was a little bit of, or more than a little bit, of gerrymandering the results to ensure that the ultra-right were not successful. Now, we’ve seen all sorts of accusations in the states since the last presidential election. And this is the sort of thing that, I’m not getting involved in truth and allegation argument in the States, but in France here, as we enter the 1820s, it’s been gerrymandered. There was all sorts of things went on. And Decazes began to introduce a more liberal, progressive set of policies, knowing that he would be supported by the lower house, which was the important house, as the House of Commons is in Britain. And Cecil Jenkins writes this, “There was under Decazes some relaxation of the censorship and an electoral law rather more favourable to the middle classes, along with some sound financial management, enabling France to pay back its costs to the victorious foreign powers.”
Now, that’s something. “But the conservative Austrian minister, Metternich, was concerned that this new liberal direction being pursued by France, as were the Ultra-royalists, the Ultras.” And the Ultras had strong, we know this in Britain, the Ultras had strong support from the French national press. It’s quite an early example of the power of the press to support one political position against the majority political position. And this is what was happening in France. Jenkins goes on to say this, “So when a disturbed Bonapartist saddler assassinated the king’s nephew, the Duc de Berry,” that is Charles the 10th’s son, “in 1820, they seized the chance to blame Decazes, forced his resignation and ran the country for the next 10 years.” So forget liberalism under Louis the 18th, it becomes conservatism. But not in a British sense of conservatism, it’s a far right belief in conservatism. But the Ultra’s greatest success was when Louis the 18th died in 1824 and was succeeded by his younger brother, Charles the 10th. Charles the 10th was an old man of 67. Now, okay, I know lots of us are much older than that now, who are listening or even talking today, but 67 was an old man in terms of the early 19th century. And he was an Ultra, and he’s manoeuvred by the Ultras. He was a devout, unbending Roman Catholic, with authoritarian views, by nature and by action.
This is not Louis the 18th. I’m not a fan of Louis the 18th, as Steward seems to be, but Charles the 10th, you really can’t be a fan of in any way. He began by insisting on a full mediaeval style coronation. A full mediaeval style coronation, putting the clock back, putting the clock back. He reintroduced a royal practise that was common in Europe up to a century before. The last English sovereign to exercise this tradition was Queen Anne. And that is the touch of the sovereign. Because the sovereign was believed to have been divinely appointed, it is believed that if they touched the skin of someone suffering from scrofula, a skin disease, they would be healed. Now in England, it stopped with the Stuarts, it stopped with Queen Anne, who incidentally touched Dr. Johnson for scrofula. As a child, his mother took him and all he can remember later in life of Queen Anne was a lot of lace and a lot of lavender. But Charles’ attempt is doing it in the 1820s. Now, this is very strange, very odd. Of Charles the 10th, Jenkins writes in this way, “Over the next few years, his missionary alliance of throne and church set about returning education to the church, imposing the death penalty for any act of sacrilege, and a measure which the middle classes found especially threatening, passing a law to compensate emigre nobles, the aristocrats who left at the revolution and whose lands were divided up, and which the middle classes had bought.
All this inspired opposition to Charles the 10th, both from the left and the right, and even some members of the church.” In fact, Charles the 10th managed to alienate almost everybody. Towards what was to be the end of his reign, which is 1830, things began, well, really to deteriorate. Jenkins says, “Charles appointed the ultimate Ultra-royalist, the mystical Catholic nobleman, the Prince de Polignac, whose mother had been a favourite of Marie Antoinette and who looked down a particularly long nose upon anything subsequent to the Ancien Régime.” Polignac, P O L I G N A C. He is the most extreme of the Ultras, and Charles the 10th appoints him as his main political advisor. In the British equivalent, the Prime Minister. “When people objected, the king dissolved the Chamber of Deputies in May, 1830. But aligned to the lessons of 1789, as the ominous signs of dissent arising out of an economic crisis following bad harvests, Charles attempted a top-down coup, declared that he would rule alone.” That is absolutely back to the past, an authoritarian king by divine right. This is Charles the First nonsense. But it isn’t the 1640s, it’s the 1830s. “He blundered straight into the Bottom-Up Revolution, known as the 1830 Revolution. It was started by the printers, soon joined by other workers, students, and army veterans who mounted barricades and fought off heavy attacks in the army before occupying the whole of Paris.
Within three days, Charles the 10th fled towards,” well, to England, of course, back to England. Wow, it’s a disaster for France. But it was in Metternich’s making, and it was in Talleyrand’s making. They had tried to turn the clock back to the horrors of before. It’s as though the allies in 1945 reinstated the Kaiser in Germany. It’s nonsense. They had to go forward. In West Germany, we went forward, from the Weimar Republic to the West German Republic, or post-war Germany. But France had fiddled around with a constitution under Louis the 18th, which never succeeded. And then Charles the 10th simply lost the plot, I think we would say in modern language. He simply lost the plot. So he’s overthrown. Now, what is interesting, this so-called July Revolution of 1830, what is interesting about this revolution is that it’s middle-class led. Well, I think most of people know and realise that almost every revolution is middle-class led. If it’s going to succeed, you need a working class cannon fodder, but it’s middle-class led. This is definitely middle-class led. And the whole thing, that is to say the monarchy, could have been gotten rid of in 1830 and a republic restored. Not a Robespierre sort of republic, but a middle class comfortable republic. If you like, the republic that France enjoys today. But instead, the Bourbons have won the final throw of the dice. And that is Louis Philippe, who was the son of a member of the Bourbon family, the Duke of Orléans, who had supported the revolution and supported the execution of his cousin, Louis the 16th.
Louis Philippe himself had served in the Revolutionary Army until the arrival of the Terror, when he set off for England. So Louis Philippe, to the middle classes, looks like a very secure pair of hands. He’s Bourbon, he’s got tradition, but he isn’t Louis the 18th or Charles the 10th, and he’s got impeccable revolutionary background. Now, he is not Robespierre, but what he is, is a genuine democrat, genuinely a democrat. His monarchy is called a middle class monarchy. The French called it a bourgeois monarchy. So why didn’t they take a republic? Because in the eyes and minds of the people in 1830, many of whom had lived through it, the Republic meant the Terror and they could not face that again. And in Louis Philippe, they had someone that was ordinary. And his ordinariness was what attracted the French middle class. He walked around greeting people on the streets of Paris, carrying a British umbrella. Poor things. He was a constitutional monarch. Far more in line with what was happening in Britain at the time than anything France had had before. He was also an Anglophile. And in 1843, I read this from the rough timeline of France, “A meeting at Eu, E U, between Queen Victoria and Louis Philippe in 1843 established cordial relations between France and England. But they were undermined two years later when Guizot, the foreign minister of France, promoted a marriage between the duc de Montpensier and the Spanish infanta, which Lord Palmerston considered hostile to British interests.” Never trust the British. What they were trying to do was to marry Louis Philippe’s family into our royal family, and thus to hold France, if you like, from, in any future history being awkward to Britain. But he himself was an Anglophile.
But you can see, without me really having to say, that if you select someone who is sort of beige, shall we say, beige in colour, he’s going to be opposed by both the right and by the left. And he was. In 1831, there was a very serious strike, a workers strike of the silk weavers in Lyon. And it was put down by the army with cannon fire. Now, the same things were happening in Britain, but they were not put down with cannon fire. They were put down by soldiers. Because this isn’t until later in the century that European stations gain police forces. The police forces make a big difference. In Britain, they’re deployed without arms. In France, the gendarmerie are armed, or many of them are armed. But it makes a big difference in how it’s viewed. So this stoppage of the strike in 1831 in Lyon by using cannon does not go down well with the working class. There was also a right wing rebellion, in 1832, led by the widow of Charles the 10th’s son, the Duchess of Berry. Now unfortunately, the poor woman was pregnant at the time. “Hang on,” you say, “didn’t you say she was a widow?” Oh, she’s a widow, right? But she’s also pregnant. Come on, come on, we’re all grown up. You understand what’s happening. And it failed. There was an attempt to assassinate Louis Philippe by a Corsican, Corsica, where Napoleon came from, that also failed. And then we come to another interesting man, Napoleon Bonaparte’s nephew, Louis Napoleon, attempted a coup d'etat from Strasbourg in 1836 that failed. He tried again in 1840, and this time was imprisoned in the fortress of Ham, H A M, from which he escaped in 1846. But he’s another player on the field. So Louis Philippe is faced on the right by the Duke of Berry’s widow. They have a child as well. And they’re supported by the Ultra monarchists, who don’t approve of this House of Orléans at all.
Then there is the Bonapartists who now have a leader in Napoleon’s own nephew, Louis Napoleon, and then there are those who want a republic. So there were, France is being pulled this way, that way, and that way, always. Pause. One of the things that begins to happen in Louis Philippe’s reign is the acquiring by France of an overseas empire, overseas. In French, , it’s referred to. This is going to attempt to reestablish the French empire that was destroyed by Britain in Canada and in India in 1763 at the end of the seven years war. They are now building up a 19th-century empire. And in the 19th century, it’s a scramble for Africa and a scramble for the Far East. Louis Philippe sought to take Algeria. That was going to be France’s place in the sun, besides which Algeria, on its coastal line, produces a great amount of fruit and veg, which was needed by France. France defeated the Algerian leader, Abd al-Qadir, and begins a 12-year war. Further east, France, and next, Tahiti. And in 1844, gains a major victory in Morocco. So France is stretching outwards. It’s to end, by the end of the 19th century, in conflict with Britain in Africa, which nearly took the two countries to war. But this is the French empire that’s being built. We also have the foundation in Louis Philippe’s reign of the French Foreign Legion, an elite force and a notorious force. So France is looking outwards. It is a major European power, despite all that’s gone before. But there’s also further progress.
A railway is opened between Paris and Versailles in 1837, and by the outbreak of the First World War, they have 40,000 kilometres of railway track in France. Photography is developed by Daguerre. Remember daguerreotypes, which were used for portraits. Chopin is resident in Paris in the 1830s. Culture, never far from the surface of French life and particularly Parisian life, is there for all to see. Stendhal publishes “The Charterhouse of Parma.” Dumas publishes, in 1844, “The Three Musketeers.” And social reform, a law was introduced restricting child labour in 1841, paralleling in time and essence, the British social moves of this period. The difference being that in France, large numbers of employers simply ignored the law. Whereas in Britain, we have factory inspectors to enforce the law. Now, if there are British people listening, I’m sure there are some, they will say, “Well, isn’t this exactly why some of us voted to come out of the EU? Because we obeyed the rules and others didn’t.” And I remember being on a conference with my German friend in Italy, and she stopped as we were going up a staircase, and I didn’t know why she stopped. And she said, “Do you see what I see, William?” And I had no idea what she was talking about. She said, “Look down at your feet.” So I did. I said, “I’m sorry, I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” And she said, “There are no white lines on the stairs.” She said, “That is,” and she quoted whatever it was, “EU regulation 47-2574.
They should have white stripes, why don’t they?” And the answer is because the Italians hadn’t got round to it. Whereas, of course, in Britain and Germany, we had white stripes everywhere. We looked like aged zebras by the end of the EU with these stripes on stairs and other places. So France is moving forward as a major power with creating its second empire. The problem with France, with this word empire is everyone thinks of the empires of the Bonapartes. I’m using empire, in this sense, in the British empire sense of the word. So they’re creating this second empire. They’re also moving forward, as all of Western Europe is moving forward, in Britain, in Germany, or in Prussia, I should say, with all sorts of social developments and scientific, technological developments. It’s all happening. And France is no exception. So the politics may be difficult, to put it mildly, in Louis Philippe’s reign, but underneath that culture, technology, science, empire is all flourishing. It’s all moving forward. But, and there’s always a but, by 1846, things are slightly different. And I read this for 1846. “A deteriorating social situation, due to poor harvests, industrial unrest, peasant uprisings in the west and south of France, and a rash of bankruptcies heightened resentment against the government.” And the government is, of course, seen as the government of Louis Philippe. And they resist in 1848, ‘26, of extending the suffrage, not to women, but to a wider social cast of male voters.
They resist it. And the world is changing. The industrial workers now have some political clout. And that has to be recognised. Then in 1847, faced with a government ban on public political meetings, the leaders of the liberal opposition began a campaign of banquets to provide a form for expressing political discontent. I think that’s wonderfully French. So we’re all agreed, aren’t we? I say on a Zoom call in 1847, we’re all agreed, we’ve got to do something about this government, all of it. Now, may I suggest we meet for a splendid dinner in London next week. And admit in these super meals, these banquets, it’s an odd form, but a very middle class form of revolution. And then in 1848, the government placed a ban on a very large political banquet, scheduled for the 22nd of February, 1848. It led to demonstrations in Paris. Barricades went up. Barricades is a history in itself, in terms of France. And led to the downfall of Louis Philippe, who would not allow the army to crush the revolts. Instead, he abdicated and comes, oh, inevitably, to England where he dies two years later in 1850. And that really is the end of the Bourbons, with Louis Philippe’s abdication in 1848. And all of you will remember that 1848 is the year of revolutions across Europe. It spreads right across Europe. But not in Britain, interestingly. Jeremy Black writes like this, “Reflecting as with Napoleon in 1815, the strength of the dynastic drive, Louis Philippe abdicated in favour of his grandson, Philippe, Count of Paris. But although there was support for this idea in the National Assembly, public opinion in Paris was opposed. And the republicans seized power.” The middle class republicans seized power.
On the 12th of November, 1848, they introduced a new constitution. And they have a president in that constitution who will be elected for four years. And then they will elect another who quickly couldn’t stand again. Had to be a man, of course, in the 1840s. So who wins the race to be president? Louis Napoleon. I’ve always said if a republic is declared again in Britain, I reckon Princess Anne would win. And this, in a sense, is what happened in France in 1848. Louis Napoleon, Bonaparte’s nephew wins with an enormous vote. The problem was Louis Napoleon promised that he would give up after four years and hand over to the next president. In another vote, in which he could not stand, very modern. And at that point, you might say, “Well, the revolution’s over, isn’t it, William? Somebody can stand, and it might be like British Parliaments or American Congress. You move from one party to another, from a right to a left or whatever.” But it wasn’t so, because Louis Napoleon could not be trusted. He asked the French Assembly to change the law to allow him to stand as president again. And they said, “No, you can’t. We’re not going to change the law for you.” This is like Putin. So he led a coup d'etat in December, 1851, and gave the people a referendum, and he gains 76% of the vote. And he becomes, again, president of France. Now, unlike Putin who has gone on being reelected, he subsequently proclaims himself Emperor of the French, as his uncle had done.
And so in 1851, he does a coup d'etat to become president. In 1852, he is Napoleon the Third, Emperor of the French, not King of France, as Charles the 10th and Louis the 18th had been, and not King of the French as Louis Philippe had been, but Emperor of the French, as Napoleon Bonaparte had been. And he declares the Second Empire in 1852. And this is a very modern France in 1852. The first department store opens in 1852, Bon Marché. And Paris, the mediaeval city of Paris is entirely transformed by Haussmann into the Paris that we all love today. This is a modern age for France. He continues to extend the overseas empire. For example, and most spectacularly, in Indochina, French Indochina comes into being. He continues to play a military role. He fancies himself as a general, which he is not. But he joins the British against the Russians in the Crimean War. He also supports the Kingdom of Piedmont in Italy, as it seeks to break with Austria and to move towards Italian unification. Does he do it because that’s what he really believes in? No, he doesn’t. He does it because he wants Nice, he wants Savoy. And in agreement for the French Army supporting the Piedmontese against the Austrians, he gains Nice and Savoy. And the most important of the battles is fought in 1859 at Magenta, which happened to be the year when the chemically-devised colour, which we now call magenta, was first made. And so they called it after the battle.
And that brings us to 2022, where my fashion advisors tell me that magenta is the colour of the year. So I’m waiting for a magenta shirt or at least a magenta tie to arrive at Christmas. I’ve written to Father Christmas, I’ve sent it up to chimney, I hope it comes. So he’s involved in European affairs. France is a major country. He’s increasing the size of the French Empire, in the Pacific as well, incidentally, and all over. He’s really pushing. And then France developed close ties with Britain. If there were still any British people listening who voted Brexit, listen to this. In 1860, France and Britain signed a free trade agreement. Wow, 1860, we had a free trade agreement with France. In 1869, his wife, who was Spanish, the Empress Eugenie, who was very beautiful, the Empress Eugenie opened the Suez Canal, which had been built by de Lesseps. Now you think of the Suez Canal as being British, but that’s Disraeli, and that’s another story. And Napoleon can’t survive. He’s manoeuvred by that arch-maneuverer, Bismarck, Chancellor of Prussia. Bismarck is determined to unify Germany and to have Prussia as top dog, and the king of Prussia to become emperor of Germany. And the end result of Bismarck’s manoeuvrings is Napoleon the Third is caught in the trap of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Napoleon the Third again, seeing himself like his great uncle, which he isn’t, is defeated at the Battle of Sudan on the 2nd of September, 1870. And he flees into exile, inevitably to England, where he settles at Chislehurst, south of London.
The new unified German empire is proclaimed in no other place than the Hall of Mirrors in Louis the 14th’s Versailles. Talk about rubbing people’s noses in it, German, French clashes. Worse for the French. The Germans seize Alsace-Lorraine, and its leading city of Strasbourg becomes German. And the statue of Strasbourg, the female statue of Strasbourg, amongst all the other provinces in Paris, is clothed in black, wreathed in black. And thus does really end with the flight of Napoleon III to Chislehurst, the end of any sort of monarchy in France. A third republic is proclaimed, but creepily moves forward to 1940. That story’s in the weeks to come. I said last week or the week before, I think the week before, that it’s difficult to say when the French Revolution ended. I simply don’t think you can say it ended with the defeat of Bonaparte in 1850. And I don’t think you can say it ended with the abdication of Napoleon the Third in 1848. I don’t think it settles unto De Gaulle establishes what we now have in France, the Fifth Republic. And those are the stories for the future. Now I’ve got about a minute. Napoleon the Third died in 1873 and is buried in Saint Michael’s Abbey at Farnborough, in England. He was followed six years later by his son, the Prince Imperial, who was killed fighting with the British as a British officer in the Zulu War in South Africa. But his wife, the beautiful Eugenie, also died, living in England, but whilst on holiday in her home country, Spain, she died in Madrid in 1920, at the age of 94. 1920?
And we’ve been talking about the French Revolution of 1789. And suddenly, we’re hurtled forward to the year 1920 when Eugenie dies at the age of 94. Well, it’s nearly a century between 1789 and the Storming of the Bastille, and 1871 and the proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The monarchy is over, Bourbon, Orleans, and Bonaparte. But today, there are still claimants to the French throne and still some political support. The leading claimant to the throne is descended from Louis Philippe and is known to royalists as Jean the Fourth, Jean Carl Pierre. He is the most likely royalist claimant to the throne of France. There is another whom the ultra royalist in France support, Louis Alphonse, who is descended from Louis the 14th, but he’s Spanish. And then there’s a third pretender who’s very pro British, Jean-Christophe Napoleon, called by his supporters Prince Napoleon. And he descends from Napoleon’s brother, Jerome Bonaparte. And to end the story, I share one thing in common with Prince Napoleon, believe it or not. We are both freeman of the city of London. Now, what an extraordinary place at which to end the tour. But you might have lots of questions or lots of points to make, shall I see?
Q&A and Comments:
I love that, Michael.
Q: Irene says, “Our country’s politics seem to be going from bad to worse.” Michael says, “Which country?”
A: Well, actually, any of the countries which people are listening from is probably are.
Q: Did France insist that the conquered nations speak French?
A: No, they didn’t. That would’ve been impossible to do.
Q: Where did Charles the 10th flee to at the time of the revolution?
A: Well, he fled northwards to Brussels. He then fled to England. And then he was peripatetic around Europe. Louis the 18th, when he came to England for a time, stayed in a country house, Gosfield Hall, near where I used to live in the east of England in Essex, at a town called Braintree. And it strikes me as, well, an extraordinary place for an absolutist Bourbon to land up. Braintree, and I hope no one from Braintree is listening. Braintree is a dump now, and it was a dump then. And Louis the 18th lands, oh, well, only because he was offered this house free. But I love that story, that he should have land up in Braintree. You wouldn’t wish it on your worst enemy.
Where am I? I’m scrolling down. And people are obsessed by my “101 Dalmatians” tie. My family kept dalmatians, where I, my great-grandparents had them running behind the carriage when they went to church on a Sunday. I’ve had three in my life, and they’re wonderful. I miss them.
Michael says… Michael, you are absolutely right. At the Treaty of Vienna, more time was spent on having parties and balls than diplomacy. Both Metternich and Talleyrand had mistresses, whereas the English foreign secretary, Castlereagh, brought his wife. I know, it’s wonderful. Yeah, it’s wonderful. Talleyrand, one of the most successful politicians had such morals that he makes modern politicians seem like saints. Well, I wouldn’t quite, Michael, go that far, but you’re absolutely right. No, it’s wonderful. They all had mistresses, except Castlereagh, who I imagine went to bed at 10:00 every night with a strong glass or cup of cocoa.
Q: Irene, in view of the hostility between Prussia, Germany, and France dating from the early years, we’re looking at here and continuing through the Franco-Prussian War and the two world wars, to '45, what a marvellous achievement EU is, with the two ancient enemies now allies. How stupid of us in the UK to walk away from that organisation?
A: Well, Irene knows that I voted to remain, but the truth of the matter is, that because it was started by France and Germany, without us being partners at the beginning, we were always half members, in a sense. We were always out on a limb. And the reason was, as I tried to say when talking last week about Bonaparte, that the whole basis of European legislation, constitutional, and every sort of legislation, is Bonapartist, it’s the Code Napoleon. And we don’t have that. And we find the, we find having laws laid down difficult. We think of laws as being from the bottom up, the Code Napoleon thinks of it as from the top down. And we also don’t like it, the reason I mentioned earlier today, and that is we think if there are laws, people should obey them. And if they don’t obey them, they should be brought before courts. But that is not the view of all European countries. Of course, it is of Germany, but it isn’t when you get to countries like Greece and Romania that, I once asked an adult education European colleague, how they reconcile not abiding by the law. And he said, “Well, the phrase we use is, 'We’re working towards it.’” Well, sometimes they’ve been working towards it for decades.
Q: What is scrofula?
A: Scrofula is a skin disease.
Q: Do you know the French view of the English?
A: Well, the French view of the English is much like the English view of the French. Both countries think themselves superior to the other. Both countries think their language is superior. And the French rightly think their food is superior, and think their culture is superior. Yeah, it is.
Why does, I’ll let you into a secret about, no, not, sorry, I can’t. “Giggly,” it says. Look, I knew people ask about the polar bear. And this is an internal joke between myself and Judy, because we said, I said, “Look, this is, do you celebrate with your family the Elf on the Shelf?” And she said no. And I said, “No, nor does my daughter, she’s resisted it.” Because we’ve only recently gained this Elf on the Shelf, which I think had reached us from the States. And I said, “I’m going to move my bear tonight from one end of the shelf to the other. Do you think anyone will notice?” You all have noticed. I’m so impressed. I wonder if you’re so good at remembering the history of where the bear is.
Nicholas, there is a blue plaque for Chopin in St. James’s Place, he must have stayed there for a while to merit this. Yes, he did. A painting of Louis Philippe hangs in the Foreign Office on a back staircase. Yes, it would be on a back staircase, wouldn’t it? It’s only the city of London that has a big portrait of Napoleon in the Guildhall, which it points out to every French visitor is the general and emperor that we beat.
Q: Oh, Tony, a very serious question. Does the current Russian middle class have the critical mass to initiate a revolution a la France?
A: The answer is probably no. And if it comes, it would come from the Officer Corps of the Army. And that could be worse than what we already have. It’s difficult to see in Russia. I can be completely wrong.
Oh, Nitsa says, I did not know this, Nitsa, this is Magenta is after the war centre, the Holocaust survivors hoping to reach Palestine legally or illegally by boat. I did not know that. So thank you enormously for that. I’ve never heard that. Isn’t it amazing how ignorant people can be even in their late 70s? I’ve never, I’m always being struck how ignorant I am. Thank you. Right, okay. I’m glad you liked it.
Q: What is a freeman of the city of London?
A: Oh, it’s just a thing. It doesn’t mean much now. You pay a little money and you go along, and you have a little ceremony and you are made of Freeman of London. In order to be made of Freeman of London, you have to have basically worked in the city. And I did, when I was principal of the City Lit. And a friend of mine who was a freeman said, “Why don’t you join?” So I did. And I’m a freeman of the City of London. Technically, it means I can drive my sheep over London Bridge and all those silly things that people talk about. But you are also a freeman of the city of London if you are grand and important and you are made such by the Corporation of London as a big do. So if you were an American president or American secretary of state and you were particularly Anglophile, you might be invited to a dinner to speak in the city, and at the City of London. The City of London is a local authority in its own right, the Corporation of London, and they would offer such a person to become a freeman of the city, terribly prestigious, which is what happened to Louis Napoleon. Mine was not prestigious. I paid the money by credit card, I went to the ceremony, I got the tie, and I’m a Freeman of the City of London. But I’m proud to be.
Yes, Barbara, you are right, Braintree was the site of a secret nuclear bunker, outside of Braintree, I’ve been down it.
Q: Barbara says, “What does the term republic means? What is the fifth and fourth, third, et cetera, republic?”
A: Right, the republic means that it is a constitution with a president and parliament and not a democratic president and parliament and not a king. So it’s not an absolute monarchy nor is it a constitutional monarchy, it’s a republic. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth republics, the first republic was named afterwards, obviously, ‘cause they didn’t know it was going to be the first at the time of the revolution. The second republic is the one that Louis Napoleon headed in 1848 with a different constitution. The first, the Third Republic, rather, it changes. After Louis Napoleon, it’s the Third Republic with a new constitution. The Fourth Republic has another constitution, and the Fifth Republic. So if France redoes its constitution, it will be the Sixth Republic. But it’s not likely to do it. I hope that is clear. Yes, you mentioned that New Zealand is the only spot to have one house, Israel is another, having just one house, the Knesset, and South Africa also, right. I didn’t know about South Africa. Israel, I’d forgotten. I was thinking in terms of the Commonwealth. I did not know about South Africa. For those who want me to put my cards on the table, I’m in favour of a one-house parliament or Congress. But I’m in a huge minority in Britain.
Oh, Michael, scrofula is tuberculosis’ cutaneous form. I guess, Michael, you’re a doctor, so I bow to you.
Oh, and Jack says, “Scrofula is bovine tuberculosis. When it affects humans, affects the lymph nodes, it ulcerates through the skin, mainly at the neck.”
Ooh. You say French believe their cooking is better than the English. Actually, they used to boil beef and were not taught how to roast until they saw the English during the Hundred Years’ War. Well, they aren’t really into beef in France. I love France for its food. I don’t mind anything else.
And Richard says, “Scrofula is actually tuberculosis spread to the lymph.” Ah yeah, we’ve got that. And he says he’s a doctor. So Richard, your answer is definitive. Scrofula is actually tuberculosis spread to the lymph glands in the neck. And you were touched for it. And in England, you were given a coin by the sovereign after, oh, by the way, the sovereign didn’t touch you with their bare hands, ew! They wore gloves. They didn’t actually have to touch the skin. Well, they touched it with the gloves and they gave you a coin, which was known as a touch piece. And people kept them round their necks, drilled a hole in them. And if you’ve got one today, they’re very valuable. I’ve only got a copy of one. The real thing would be into thousands of pounds. The rain, they were mass produced and was of Charles’ the Second, because it was a PR exercise for the monarchy that he would touch people. He also touched people in other ways, which would not be approved of today, I can tell you. But no, they touched for scrofula.
I think I’ve answered all the questions that I can answer tonight. And I just have to say, Judy, to everybody, thanks very much for listening. Bye-bye.