The Bourbon Kings of France (35 page)

Unfortunately, in the elections of 1819 the Constitutionalists were beaten by both the Liberals and the Ultras, the Centre commanding only a handful of votes in the lower Chamber. Among 90 Liberals out of 430 Deputies was the Abbé Grégoire, a former member of the Convention who had actually voted for the abolition of the monarchy in 1792; he had once observed publicly that ‘Kings are in the moral order what monsters are in the physical’; special legislation was brought in to annul his election. But the Charter stipulated that one-fifth of the Chamber of Deputies had to be re-elected every year, and Dessoles and Decazes were increasingly worried by the signs of growing Liberal strength and the consequent drift of moderate Royalists into the Ultra camp. In November 1819, Dessoles resigned and Louis appointed his beloved Elie Prime Minister. Decazes offered concessions to the Ultras, a stick-and-carrot policy which had some chance of success.

But on the night of 13 February 1820, the Duc de Berry, leaving the Opera with his wife by a side door, was stabbed by a Bonapartist fanatic, a saddler from the royal stables called Louvel, who had tracked him for four years—‘a little weasel-faced mongrel, a snarling lone wolf’. The Duke did not die until six the next morning, but he did so with unexpected dignity, asking mercy for the assassin (who in the event was guillotined) and apologizing to the King for waking him. ‘Don’t worry,’ replied the cold old man, ‘I haven’t lost any sleep.’ The nobility of Berry’s end was somewhat marred by his insistence on seeing his two children by his English mistress, Amy Brown. None the less, the Vicomte Hugo’s inevitable ode hymned the Duke’s
‘Mort sublime’
.

Berry had left the Duchess pregnant, and to the joy of the Ultras, who feared the eventual accession of M d’Orléans (on whose face Chateaubriand saw barely-concealed triumph as he left the deathbed), she gave birth to a boy on 29 September 1820. This was the Duc de Bordeaux, the future Henri V. The news was announced that evening, and quickly spread throughout Paris; in the theatres audiences rose to their feet and sang emotionally
Vive Henri Quatre
. Crowds flocked to the Tuileries and danced
farandoles
in the streets; there was a lavish distribution of free wine in the Champs-Elysées—a hundred barrels at the King’s expense. Victor Hugo was again inspired, writing not only an ode on the Duke’s birth but another on the baptism of
‘l’enfant sublime’
. A public subscription was organized, and, partly by strong-arm methods, raised so much money that the château of Chambord was purchased and presented to the
‘Enfant de Miracle’
. Louis carefully copied King Henri d’Albret’s behaviour at the birth of Henri IV, rubbing the baby’s lips with garlic and giving him a sip of Jurançon wine. He was so overjoyed that he gave Talleyrand the
Cordon Bleu
. M d’Orléans was so infuriated that when he visited Mme de Berry his remarks about the baby’s ugliness reduced the lady-in-waiting holding him to tears.

Berry’s assassination brought down Decazes. At the Duke’s deathbed his widow pointed at the Minister and screamed, ‘There is the man who is the real murderer,’ implying that his attacks on the Ultras had stirred up the Jacobins. Chateaubriand wrote, with a lack of taste unusual in him, ‘His feet have slipped in blood and he has fallen.’ In the Chamber of Deputies a motion was proposed which actually accused the Minister of being an accomplice. At first the King stood firm—‘The wolves ask nothing of the shepherd but to get rid of the dog,’ he sneered. The entire royal family begged Louis to dismiss him. When Mme d’Angoulême warned the King that Decazes’s weak government would endanger his life, Louis replied sarcastically, ‘I will risk the knives and daggers.’ He added, ‘I have never known a heart more open nor one endowed with more sensibility than that of Count Decazes.’ But eventually he yielded, and after giving Decazes a Dukedom sent him to London as ambassador, where Greville heard that he was being literally bombarded by the King with ‘verses and literary scraps’. It is difficult to imagine a more dismal and frustrating sexual condition than that of the impotent homosexual; the loss of yet another ‘dear friend’ was a dreadful prospect for poor Louis.

Richelieu returned as Prime Minister but had little hope of implementing moderate policies. In the summer of 1820 new electoral laws, to give the government more control over the voters, plunged the country into a really dangerous crisis. For a moment the Liberals seem to have thought that their only hope lay in a
coup d’état
. Riots broke out in Paris; there were cavalry charges by
cuirassiers
and
gendarmes
, the students fighting back with sticks and stones. The police discovered an army plot to restore Napoleon (who did not die until the following year). But the rioters were ridden down and the plotters were shot. So great was the alarm that the Ultras increased their majority—at the end of 1820 there were only fifteen Liberal Deputies.

As Blacas had said, Louis XVIII had to have a favourite. This time he chose, rather surprisingly, a woman. Zoe Talon, Comtesse du Cayla, was the daughter of an old Parlementaire family, now in her mid-thirties and an exceptionally beautiful and amusing lady. She produced a letter from her dead mother-in-law imploring the King to protect Mme du Cayla from her cruel husband who wanted to take her children away. Louis was so overcome that, referring to Decazes, he cried, ‘I too, Madame—they want to take away my child.’ The King had never known such a wonderful listener. In fact she had been put deliberately in Louis’s way by the royal family, as she had Ultra sympathies and would make him forget ‘darling Elie’. Soon the King was writing to her three times a day, and although there could be nothing sexual, they played chess together every Wednesday behind locked doors. Mme du Cayla became literally the last of the
maîtresses en titre
. He heaped gifts on ‘his dear daughter’, including substantial sums of money. He had built a magnificent château at Saint-Ouen (to commemorate his granting of the Charter) and gave it to her, being obsessed with the morbid fancy that from its windows she would one day look out and see Saint-Denis where he would lie buried. Paris was full of coarse jokes about la Cayla.

The liberal Duchesse de Broglie—Mme de Staël’s daughter—saw Louis at the Tuileries in September 1821. ‘The King was wheeled in, in his armchair. He is most unusual looking. In spite of his obesity he has considerable dignity and, for all his fat red face, a truly regal air. There is a perpetual smile on his lips, but his eyes are hard and unsmiling.’

Richelieu finally fell in December 1821, brought down by both Ultras and Liberals. Reluctantly the King sent for the Minister of Finance, M de Villèle, the leader of the Ultras. It was the end of Louis’s gallant attempt to govern with a moderate administration and to unite France. As he himself had said in 1818 (long before Disraeli borrowed the phrase for English consumption) he did not want to be ‘the King of two nations’, but in the face of a seemingly invincible Ultra majority in the Chambers, and exposed to the blandishments of Mme du Cayla and unceasing pressure from his family, he gave up. Confined to his wheel-chair, he was growing older and iller every day. He stopped fighting his brother—‘the two brothers have embraced,’ wrote Comte Molé, ‘and Louis XVIII has made way for Charles X.’

Joseph de Villèle was a crop-headed country gentleman from Languedoc, nearly fifty, who had had an unusually varied career. He had been a midshipman in Louis XVI’s navy, but after nearly losing his life in the Terror, had left France for the West Indies, where he had made his fortune; there were rumours that he had dabbled in the slave trade. He belonged not to the Faubourg Saint-Germain but to the provincial nobility—his town house was in Toulouse. Although a shy man, reserved to the point of dullness, he was a fine public speaker and the Ultras’s most formidable spokesman. He was also a natural administrator who soon succeeded in putting his country’s finances on so sound a footing that they remained stable for the rest of the century.

As an Ultra, Villèle was determined to improve the position of the Church, which had already made a remarkable recovery. Ultras and clergy joined in recognizing the ideas of the Enlightenment as a root cause of the Revolution, and the Church began a campaign to control education which culminated in 1824 with the appointment of Mgr de Frayssinous as Minister of Education. There were sinister rumours of the
Congrégation
(immortalized in Stendhal’s
Le Rouge et Le Noir
), in reality no more than a zealous missionary organization; the actual substance behind these rumours were the
Chevaliers de la Foi
, a secret society of Royalist fanatics dedicated to restoring the Church to its old dominance, whose existence remained unknown until 1949. Understandably anti-clericalism grew apace. The Church was suspected of hoping to regain the estates it had lost during the Revolution, while Liberals regarded its bid to take over education as a real threat to human progress; Stendhal told his readers, ‘Ever since the days of Voltaire the Church in France seems to have realized that its chief enemies are books.’

Villèle’s foreign policy was one of caution. But he was saddled with no less incongruous a Foreign Minister than the Vicomte René de Chateaubriand, who decided that France must intervene in Spain and save Ferdinand VII from his new Liberal masters; many Ultras saw the situation in Madrid as a Spanish 1789 which might well turn into a Spanish 1793. In 1823 100,000 French troops, nominally commanded by M d’Angoulême, marched into Spain under the White Flag. As they crossed the River Bidassoa, a band of French Liberals met them, waving the
Tricolore
—the troops fired on them without hesitation. Angoulême’s advisers, who had learnt from Napoleon’s mistakes, forbade looting and bribed the Spanish peasants handsomely, and the French army occupied Madrid almost without resistance. Only at the siege of the Trocadero fortress outside Cadiz, where the Liberal government had taken refuge, did the Spaniards show just enough fight for the French to claim a glorious victory. The monarchy’s prestige was enormously enhanced, both at home and abroad, though King Ferdinand refused to pay any of the alarmingly expensive costs of the expedition.

Villèle dismissed his Foreign Minister thankfully, on a pretext of not co-operating on financial matters. ‘Sacked like a servant’, wrote the outraged Chateaubriand. It was a sad mistake to make an enemy of the last of the Frondeurs. For the remainder of the Restoration Chateaubriand led the Ultra opposition to the government in the Chamber of Peers, delivering beautiful and wounding speeches.

On 12 October 1823
Te Deum
was sung at Nôtre-Dame for the victory in Spain. During the service the King dropped his prayerbook repeatedly and looked round him with the air of not knowing where he was. His gout, his varicose veins and all his other maladies had gradually pulled him down. Now he grew dropsical; it was rumoured that poor Louis was in such a state of decay that when his valets removed his socks one day, they found a loose toe. The obese old man became a frightful skeleton. None the less, he tried bravely to live up to his maxim that ‘a King may die but he may never be ill’. Artois soon took over his duties of state; when consulted on ministerial appointments Louis would say, ‘I’m old and wouldn’t like to decide without knowing Monsieur’s views—show him the list.’

In August 1824 the King collapsed during dinner and was carried to his bed. Soon he was unable to sit up and could not even raise his head, though he remained perfectly alert; on 12 September he told his confessor that he was well enough not to need a priest. Mme du Cayla made what was to be her final visit; she coaxed Louis into signing an order buying her the Hôtel de Montmorency. But by the night of 15 September it was obvious that the King was dying. He revived a little and Artois stayed by his bed, kneeling in prayer. Typically, Louis had time for a last joke, a pun,
‘Allez-vous en, charlatans’
—dismissal for the doctors whom he despised and a summons for Charles d’Artois to draw near. He died at four am on the morning of 16 September 1824.

It was no small feat to be the only sovereign to die in possession of the throne during the last century of monarchical government in France. Louis XVIII gave the French their first workable parliamentary system and was justified in seeing it as a truly great achievement. A character no less subtle than Talleyrand, he remained a pragmatist and an opportunist during an age of extremists. Quite unembittered by the Revolution, always able to judge what was possible and what was not, in his case it is palpably untrue to say that the Bourbons ‘learnt nothing and forgot nothing’. He was beyond question the shrewdest royal statesman of his day. Indeed, Gambetta considered Louis XVIII ‘the greatest King of France after Henri IV’.

‘A Submissive Bigot’

CHARLES X (1824–1830)

_____________

‘I would rather earn my bread than reign like the King of England’

Until recently history books have dismissed Charles X—‘an impossible monarch for the nineteenth century … a typical Bourbon, unable either to learn or to forget’. In reality Charles was much more a creature of the nineteenth century than Louis XVIII, while in many ways he was not the least attractive member of his dynasty. The tragedy of this honourable, kindly and friendly man lies in the contrast between his personality and his political ineptitude—in public life he nearly always acted with almost childlike
naïveté
.

He was born on 9 October 1757 at Versailles, christened Charles-Philippe and given the title of Comte d’Artois, which had once belonged to Saint Louis’s brother. Artois’s father, the Dauphin Louis, died when he was eight and his mother shortly after, so there was little discipline in his childhood; the Duc de Vauguyon, who made Louis XVI’s early years such misery, could do little with his youngest brother, a naturally cheerful and unruly little boy and the one genuinely normal member of the family.

Charles grew into a handsome young man, tall, slim and broad-shouldered, with a fine, rather small head, very well set, with large brown eyes, black hair and the Bourbon nose. When he was only sixteen he was married to an equally juvenile Princess of Sardinia, Maria Theresa, daughter of Victor Amadeus III and sister to Madame. She was a dwarf, four foot high, with a grotesquely long nose, and completely characterless. They had two sons, Louis, Duc d’Angoulême, born in 1775, and Charles-Ferdinand, Duc de Berry, born in 1778; there were also two daughters who died young. But it was never more than a marriage of state.

The one responsible post given to Artois was that of Colonel-General of the Swiss Guards, and when he was seventeen he began to drill them. Maurepas, Minister for the Royal Household, rebuked him. ‘You have acquired a liking for drill, Monseigneur. That does not become a Prince. Run up debts and we will pay them.’ Charles thought this an excellent suggestion. He introduced English horse racing to France, importing English mounts and jockeys, and also started cabriolet racing, an early form of trotting in which he sometimes competed himself. The fashionable world flocked to his race meetings in the Bois de Boulogne. Charles bet heavily, but always seemed to lose, losses equalled by his card debts. In addition, he inherited the Bourbon mania for field sports; in 1785 he spent fifty-three days hunting boar, running down and personally dispatching eighty-nine animals (for a loss of eleven hounds killed and nearly 200 wounded). As might be expected, he was soon in debt, despite an income of almost £ 150,000; by 1781 it was reported that he owed 21 million livres—nearly £ 900,000. When he needed money he simply went to his brother, swearing and shouting until the King gave in.

According to the Austrian ambassador, the young Artois was frequently drunk and often violently rude. If there were spectators when he played tennis, he shouted insults until they left the court; once, after ordering ‘all Jews and bastards’ to leave, he noticed a single officer sitting calmly on the bench; asked angrily why he had not left with the others, the officer replied that he was neither a Jew nor a bastard. Charles surpassed himself at a masked ball in Paris in March 1778. He was escorting Mme Canillac, a lady of the town, when they met the Duchesse de Bourbon. After exchanging a few words, the irritated Duchess reached up and snatched off his mask whereupon he pulled her nose so hard and painfully that she wept. Her husband promptly challenged him to a duel; they met early one morning in the Bois de Boulogne, the fight being stopped after the Duke wounded Charles in the hand. Shortly afterwards, when the Bourbons went to the play they were received with such enthusiastic cheers that the Duchess again dissolved into tears.

Artois had the pathological sensuality of his house. Not only did he run through all the most famous prostitutes in Paris, but he seduced many court ladies including the Duchesse de Guiche whom, so Hézecques tells us, ‘the public long looked upon as one of his easiest conquests’. Hézecques also explains how Charles possessed ‘that fashionable ease and light amiability which please women. One can well believe the rumours that few beauties could be cruel to him.’

It was to please a woman who was a friend and not a mistress that in 1779 Artois built the Bagatelle in the Bois de Boulogne. He had bet the Queen 100,000 livres that he could build and furnish a palace within nine weeks, and with the architect Bélanger and a thousand workmen he won his bet. The tiny white palace in the Etruscan style reveals another side of Charles besides mere extravagance; he was the only member of the Royal Family in his generation to have more than a casual interest in the arts; the Bagatelle is a perfect example of Neo-Classical art, and with its furniture and decoration is one of the most representative ensembles of the period.

Charles’s rudeness was only a passing phase and he became a rather popular figure. Hézecques claims that before the Revolution ‘the Comte d’Artois was adored by the people as he was affable to everyone and had our nation’s cheerful temperament. His habit of driving about Paris and even his extravagance contributed to his popularity.’ Mme de Campan confirms this, saying that ‘the Parisians showed real affection for him’.

His one public-spirited action was to join the French army at the siege of Gibraltar in 1779. He was accompanied by his bosom friend, the Créole Marquis de Vaudreuil, and by M de Bourbon with whom he had been reconciled. They travelled in some comfort, their baggage and servants filling thirty-five carriages. He spent two months in the trenches, his visit being the routine morale-boosting tour of royalty visiting troops in the field—an affair of parades and dinner parties rather than fighting. Nevertheless Paris welcomed him home as a hero.

Otherwise Artois led a life of uninterrupted frivolity. He was fond of theatricals, acting many times in Marie Antoinette’s little theatre at the Petit Trianon, notably as Figaro. He also gave an epic performance walking the tightrope. He had become the Queen’s
chevalier servant
, escorting her to all the smart Paris plays and balls.

Ironically, it was through his membership of the Queen’s set that in 1785 Charles met the woman who reformed him, Mme de Polastron, the sister-in-law of Yolande de Polignac. Louise de Lussan d’Esparbés, Vicomtesse de Polastron, was only twenty-one, a delicate, nervous ash-blonde with china-blue eyes, a wonderfully sweet smile and a low voice; Lamartine describes her as ‘the perfection of tenderness’. Charles and Louise fell completely and unreservedly in love. Even Hézecques admits that ‘the passion of Mme de Polastron for the Comte d’Artois was as unconcealed as it was genuine, for heartfelt affection was their only bond’. Charles confided to one of Louise’s friends, the Marquise de Lage, ‘It’s really true—in all the world I live for her alone. Never, no never, was Heaven pleased to form two hearts, two beings better suited to each other. I truly believe it, I even dare be sure of it, and you can have no idea how proud the very idea makes me. But if I deserve your friend, if my heart is worthy of making her happy, it is to her alone that I owe it. It is her advice, still more her sentiments, which have purified my soul and renewed it. Think what I owe her for teaching me how to be happy!’

Louise made Charles more responsible and he began to take a disastrous interest in public life. During the Assembly of Notables in 1787, he displayed an obvious distaste for reform, even if he did not support the
révolte nobilaire
. Calonne was a friend who had paid his debts twice, but when he was gone Charles attacked Loménie de Brienne, just as formerly he had attacked Necker, ‘the fornicating foreign bastard’. He then resisted the doubling of the
Tiers Etat
’s representation in the States General, warned the King that the country was in the throes of a dangerous revolution (though agreeing that the tax burden must be shared more fairly) and opposed Necker’s recall. By 1789 Artois was the acknowledged leader of the court party.

He had also again become one of the most unpopular men in France. It was known that he had done his best to stop the King making any concessions and the mob shouted abuse at him in the streets. The evening after the Bastille fell he tried to enlist support among the troops, buying them wine; he had a scheme for marching on the Assembly and arresting its members. Next day Louis was shown a pamphlet listing ‘enemies of the people’; Artois’s name came first. Seriously alarmed for his brother’s safety, the King ordered him to leave France.

That night Charles escaped from his flat at Versailles, through a secret door. He rode to Chantilly where he borrowed a carriage from his cousin Condé, then drove to Valenciennes and crossed the Belgian frontier. A tutor followed with his sons, whom he sent to their grandfather at Turin, but their mother stayed at Versailles. Charles, who expected to be out of France for three months at most, was soon joined by Condé, and by the Polignacs and other members of the Queen’s set (this flight by Artois and his friends later became known as ‘The First Emigration’).

The Emperor Joseph II made it plain that M d’Artois was not welcome in the Austrian Netherlands. So, after a delightful month with Louise in Switzerland, Charles presented himself to his father-in-law at Turin, where he was joined by his wife. King Victor Amadeus gave them a palace and an allowance but Charles had to be on his best behaviour, attending Mass daily and, so it was said, even sleeping with his wife; he did not dare see his mistress. In the end he informed the new Emperor—Leopold II, Marie Antoinette’s second brother, who had succeeded Joseph in 1790—that life at Turin had become unbearable. Leopold told Charles to go to Coblenz which belonged to their cousin, the Elector Clement Wenceslas of Trier. Accompanied by sixty followers, Charles arrived there in June 1791 and was given the Castle of Schonbornslust for his residence.

Louise’s friend, Mme de Lage, witnessed Artois’s entry into Coblenz. ‘Everyone was saying, “There he is, our Prince, our hope, the scion of Henri IV.” They crowded round, all wanting to touch him. He possessed the sort of charm which bewitches the French and a way of looking at you like Louis XV, or so elderly people said.’ Charles told the
émigré
troops that success was certain, even if not quite as near as he had hoped. Louise joined him and gave her entire fortune to help the White army.

The defeat at Valmy stunned the
émigrés
. On 19 November 1792 Artois wrote, ‘One needs the pen of a Jeremiah, my dear Vaudreuil, to give you a picture of the situation since you left … everything is falling to pieces and we are all starving to death.’ He hints that he might commit suicide ‘were I not attached to life by a bond which every day grows dearer, more precious and more essential … Thank God that at least my friend [Louise] is well.’

After two miserable months at Hamm, Charles set off to ask Catherine the Great for help. The Russian Empress, never indifferent to a handsome man, gave him a million francs and advised him to join the
Chouans
. ‘You are one of Europe’s great Princes,’ Catherine told him, ‘but there are times when you should forget it.’ His self-esteem restored, he left St Petersburg in excellent spirits that spring, in a Russian warship bound for England, where he landed at Hull in May 1793. But the English government did not respond to a letter which he brought from the Empress, suggesting that they send troops to the Vendée.

Instead of joining the
Chouans
, Artois idled away his time at Hamm with Louise who, terrified, held him back when a gamble might have saved the Royalist cause. At the end of 1794, at the Duke of York’s invitation, he joined the staff of the British expeditionary force in Holland, spending the winter with them at Arnhem. When the British were driven back, he wandered from Rotterdam to Osnabruck and then to Bremen in a most unprincely way; little is known of his movements at that date but it is said poverty forced him to eat in the cheapest and most squalid inns, at the public table. Finally, in July 1795, a British warship arrived at Hamburg to take him to England.

Already English and
émigré
troops had landed at Quiberon Bay, and had been swiftly routed by General Hoche, who shot all Royalist prisoners. The British government decided to try again, and to make use of Artois whom Louis XVIII had appointed Lieutenant-General of France. At the end of September Charles and a new expeditionary force of 4,000 men sailed from Portsmouth to land at Port-Breton on the Ile d’Yeu, just off the Vendéen coast. He contacted the
Chouan
leader, Charette de la Contrie, asking where he should join him on the mainland. Unfortunately Charette was cut off by General Hoche, who concentrated 50,000 men opposite the Ile d’Yeu. Frightful weather and an almost complete lack of supplies demoralized the Royalists, as more and more Republican troops arrived every day. On 18 November Artois took his expedition back to England. He was not cut out to be a Bonnie Prince Charlie.

He dared not land at Portsmouth, where he faced arrest for debts contracted in equipping the
émigré
armies. Eventually arrangements were made for him to travel secretly to Edinburgh, where he moved into Holyrood House in January 1796; as a royal palace Holyrood conferred immunity from arrest, but he was only able to venture outside its grounds on Sundays. The gloomy palace, in the dark and squalid Old Town which better-class people had long since abandoned, was a crumbling ruin with few habitable rooms. Much of Charles’s allowance of £ 7,000 was spent in providing for indigent courtiers who, for lack of accommodation in the palace, were forced to take wretched lodgings in the Old Town. However he was comforted by the arrival of Louise. (He had completely lost contact with his wife, who eventually died in Austria in 1808.) For all the discomfort of Edinburgh, he had had quite enough of adventures. In 1797 he forbade another Vendéen rising. He wrote, ‘I refuse to authorize an insurrection in the Western Provinces—I cannot let myself be responsible for the useless shedding of blood.’