MODERN EUROPE

FROM 1814 TO 1848

V.

THE MOVEMENTS OF 1830.

WHEN the Congress of Vienna re-arranged the map of Europe after Napoleon’s fall, Lord Castlereagh expressed the opinion that no prudent statesman would forecast a duration of more than seven years for any settlement that might then be made. At the end of a period twice as long, the Treaties of 1815 were still the public law of Europe.

The grave had peacefully closed over Napoleon; the revolutionary forces of France had given no sign of returning life. As the Bourbon monarchy struck root, and the elements of opposition grew daily weaker in France, the perils that lately filled all minds appeared to grow obsolete, and the very Power against which the anti-revolutionary treaties of 1815 had been in the main directed took its place, as of natural right, by the side of Austria and Russia in the struggle against revolution.

The attack of Louis XVIII upon the Spanish Constitutionalists marked the complete reconciliation of France with the Continental dynasties which had combined against it in 1815; and from this time the Treaties of Chaumont and Aix-la-Chapelle, though their provisions might be still unchallenged, ceased to represent the actual relations existing between the Powers. There was no longer a moral union of the Courts against a supposed French revolutionary State; on the contrary, when Eastern affairs reached their crisis, Russia detached itself from its Hapsburg ally, and definitely allied itself with France.

If after the Peace of Adrianople any one Power stood isolated, it was Austria; and if Europe was threatened by renewed aggression, it was not under revolutionary leaders or with revolutionary watchwords, but as the result of an alliance between Charles X and the Czar of Russia. After the Bourbon Cabinet had resolved to seek an extension of French territory at whatever sacrifice of the balance of power in the East, Europe could hardly expect that the Court of St. Petersburg would long reject the advantages offered to it.

The frontiers of 1815 seemed likely to be obliterated by an enterprise which would bring Russia to the Danube and France to the Rhine. From this danger the settlement of 1815 was saved by the course of events that took place within France itself. The Revolution of 1830, insignificant in its immediate effects upon the French people, largely influenced the governments and the nations of Europe; and while within certain narrow limits it gave a stimulus to constitutional liberty, its more general result was to revive the union of the three Eastern Courts which had broken down in 1826, and to reunite the principal members of the Holy Alliance by the sense of a common interest against the Liberalism of the West.

1821-27. REIGN OF CHARLES X.

In the person of Charles X reaction and clericalism had ascended the French throne. The minister, Villèle, who had won power in 1820 as the representative of the ultra-Royalists, had indeed learnt wisdom while in office, and down to the death of Louis XVIII in 1824 he had kept in check the more violent section of his party. But he now retained his post only at the price of compliance with the Court, and gave the authority of his name to measures which his own judgment condemned.

It was characteristic of Charles X and of the reactionaries around him that out of trifling matters they provoked more exasperation than a prudent Government would have aroused by changes of infinitely greater importance. Thus in a sacrilege-law which was introduced in 1825 they disgusted all reasonable men by attempting to revive the barbarous mediaeval punishment of amputation of the hand; and in a measure conferring some fractional rights upon the eldest son in cases of intestacy they alarmed the whole nation by a preamble declaring the French principle of the equal division of inheritances to be incompatible with monarchy. Coming from a Government which had thus already forfeited public confidence, a law granting the emigrants a compensation of 40,000,000 for their estates which had been confiscated during the Revolution excited the strongest opposition, although, apart from questions of equity, it benefited the nation by forever setting at rest all doubt as to the title of the purchasers of the confiscated lands.

The financial operations by which, in order to provide the vast sum allotted to the emigrants, the national debt was converted from a five per cent, to a three per cent, stock, alienated all stockholders and especially the powerful bankers of Paris. But more than any single legislative act, the alliance of the Government with the priestly order, and the encouragement given by it to monastic corporations, whose existence in France was contrary to law, offended the nation.

The Jesuits were indicted before the law-courts by Montlosier, himself a Royalist and a member of the old noblesse. A vehement controversy sprang up between the ecclesiastics and their opponents, in which the Court was not spared. The Government, which had lately repealed the law of censorship, now restored it by edict. The climax of its unpopularity was reached; its hold upon the Chamber was gone, and the very measure by which Villèle, when at the height of his power, had endeavored to give permanence to his administration, proved its ruin. He had abolished the system of partial renovation, by which one-fifth of the Chamber of Deputies was annually returned, and substituted for it the English system of septennial Parliaments with general elections. In 1827 King Charles, believing his Ministers to be stronger in the country than in the Chamber, exercised his prerogative of dissolution.

The result was the total defeat of the Government, and the return of an assembly in which the Liberal opposition outnumbered the partisans of the Court by three to one. Villèle’s Ministry now resigned. King Charles, unwilling to choose his successor from the Parliamentary majority, thought for a moment of violent resistance, but subsequently adopted other counsels, and, without sincerely intending to bow to the national will, called to office the Vicomte de Martignac, a member of the right centre, and the representative of a policy of conciliation and moderate reform (January 2, 1828).

1829. MINISTRY OF POLIGNAG.

It was not the fault of this Minister that the last chance of union between the French nation and the elder Bourbon line was thrown away. Martignac brought forward a measure of decentralization conferring upon the local authorities powers which, though limited, were larger than they had possessed at any time since the foundation of the Consulate; and he appealed to the Liberal sections of the Chamber to assist him in winning an installment of self-government which France might well have accepted with satisfaction. But the spirit of opposition within the Assembly was too strong for a coalition of moderate men, and the Liberals made the success of Martignac’s plan impossible by insisting on concessions which the Minister was unable to grant.

The reactionists were ready to combine with their opponents. King Charles himself was in secret antagonism to his Minister, and watched with malicious joy his failure to control the majority in the Chamber. Instead of throwing all his influence on to the side of Martignac, and rallying all doubtful forces by the pronounced support of the Crown, he welcomed Martignac’s defeat as a proof of the uselessness of all concessions, and dismissed the Minister from office, declaring that the course of events had fulfilled his own belief in the impossibility of governing in accord with a Parliament.

The names of the Ministers who were now called to power excited anxiety and alarm not only in France but throughout the political circles of Europe. They were the names of men known as the most violent and embittered partisans of reaction; men whose presence in the councils of the King could mean nothing but a direct attack upon the existing Parliamentary system of France. At the head was Jules Polignac, then French ambassador at London, a man half-crazed with religious delusions, who had suffered a long imprisonment for his share in Cadoudal’s attempt to kill Napoleon, and on his return to France in 1814 had refused to swear to the Charta because it granted religious freedom to non-Catholics.

Among the subordinate members of the Ministry were General Bourmont, who had deserted to the English at Waterloo, and La Bourdonnaye, the champion of the reactionary Terrorists in 1816.

The Ministry having been appointed immediately after the close of the session of 1829, an interval of several months passed before they were brought face to face with the Chambers. During this interval the prospect of a conflict with the Crown became familiar to the public mind, though no general impression existed that an actual change of dynasty was close at hand. The Bonapartists were without a leader, Napoleon’s son, their natural head, being in the power of the Austrian Court; the Republicans were neither numerous nor well organized, and the fatal memories of 1793 still weighed upon the nation; the great body of those who contemplated resistance to King Charles X looked only to a Parliamentary struggle, or, in the last resort, to the refusal of payment of taxes in case of a breach of the Constitution. There was, however, a small and dexterous group of politicians which, at a distance from all the old parties, schemed for the dethronement of the reigning branch of the House of Bourbon, and or the elevation of Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, to the throne. The chief of this intrigue was Talleyrand. Slighted and thwarted by the Court, the old diplomatist watched for the signs of a falling Government, and when the familiar omens met his view he turned to the quarter from which its successor was most likely to arise.