The Bourbon Kings of France (37 page)

As a result of Berry’s murder the Ultras came to power. Although Artois asked Richelieu to take Decazes’s place as Prime Minister, he soon engineered his resignation. It was this which made the King complain angrily of Charles, ‘He conspired against Louis XVI, he conspires against me and one day he will probably conspire against himself.’ What really irritated the King was that with Villèle’s appointment as chief minister, Charles had all but taken over the government.

Artois deserves some credit for supporting Villèle; even if he was generally acknowledged by the Ultras as their leader, Villèle’s charmlessness, caution and lack of enthusiasm can hardly have appealed to Charles. Villèle was one of the most gifted finance ministers in French history, who not only put public accounting on a lastingly regular basis but directly contributed to the increase in banking, and encouraged his friend Baron Jacques de Rothschild to settle in Paris. For almost every year of his administration the budget showed a surplus. Prosperity was evident in industrial development throughout the 1820s. New coal mines were dug, the canal system was lengthened, a steamboat service was started on the Loire, and a French locomotive was constructed in 1827. Roads began to be macadamed. In Paris, the first pavements were built and omnibus services were introduced; gas lighting spread throughout the entire capital.

Prosperity was one of the two planks of Artois’s simple scheme for strengthening the monarchy. The other was glory. He shared the indignation of most Frenchmen at losing the ‘natural’ frontiers of 1792; he too had been humiliated by Waterloo, even if it had saved the Bourbons. The triumph of the French army in Spain exceeded his wildest hopes. In December 1823, at an official dinner at the Hôtel de Ville, he saluted ‘the glory of French arms’; the applause was so great that he was overcome by emotion and could not finish his speech.

The discord between Artois and the King vanished as Louis’s health deteriorated. Charles was genuinely grief-stricken at his brother’s deathbed, so much so that he did not realize Louis had gone until the Baron de Damas whispered, ‘Sire, the King is dead.’ Charles bent and kissed Louis’s cold hand. Then Damas flung open the doors to announce to the waiting courtiers, ‘Messieurs, the King is dead. The King, Messieurs.’

Next day Charles told his grandchildren, who were puzzled by the violet coat he wore in mourning, that although he was King now he would see them just as much as ever, and nothing would part them from him. Mademoiselle, who was only five, was very worried, murmuring, ‘King—that’s not the worst of it’; her governess, Mme de Gontaut, suspected the little girl thought her grandfather would henceforth be confined to a wheel-chair like poor old Louis.

According to custom, Charles was not present at Louis XVIII’s funeral when Saint-Denis, hung with black velvet but ablaze with candles, saw the ancient rites for the last time, complete even to the laying-up of the King’s helmet and spurs. Later Charles congratulated old Marquis de Dreux-Brézé, Grand Master of the Ceremonies of France, on his conduct of the service. The Grand Master apologized for any mistakes; ‘Next time we will do better.’ ‘Thank you, Brézé, but I am in no hurry,’ replied the King.

Charles X made his
joyeuse entrée
into his capital on Monday 27 September 1824. He refused to take precautions against assassination. ‘Why should I? They can’t hate me without knowing me and I’m quite sure that when they do know me they won’t hate me.’ It was raining, but at the barrier at the Etoile the King mounted a magnificent Arab horse, as a hundred and one guns boomed out in salute, and then began his triumphal way to Nôtre-Dame, down the Champs-Elysées and along the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. At the Elysée he insisted on riding out of the procession to greet his grandchildren who were waving from one of the windows. The crowd were delirious; even that sour republican, Benjamin Constant, found himself shouting,
‘Vive le Roi’
—‘Aha, I have captured you at last,’ laughed the King who heard him. When he came home at last to the Tuileries, Charles was asked if he was weary; he answered happily, ‘No, joy never tires one.’ The cheers were even louder three days later when he reviewed his army on the Champs de Mars. The King’s popularity owed something to an ordinance abolishing press censorship, but more to his undeniable charm.

Even at sixty-seven, Louis XVI’s youngest brother was the glamorous sort of Bourbon. Although his hair was white, he had the physique and bearing of a man twenty years younger and looked especially impressive on horseback. His friendliness could be overwhelming. Comte de Puymaigre says, ‘If one had been awed by Louis XVIII’s imposing manner, the same could not be said of Charles X; when strolling with him one had constantly to remind oneself that one was talking to the King of France.’ He received persons of plebeian origin in exactly the same way as he received Dukes. Indeed, Charles X deserved the title of ‘First Gentleman in Europe’ far more than George IV; his character was infinitely more honourable than that of the fat hedonist across the Channel. There were no greedy mistresses, no scandals, no ruinous extravagance.

Lamartine, who often met him, analysed the character of King Charles. ‘He had a typically French temperament—light, quick, spontaneous, always ready with an amusing reply, a friendly smile, a frank look, a hand extended, thoroughly amiable in manner; always wanting to please and be liked, a person one could confide in, with a loyalty in friendship rare in a King, genuinely modest, anxiously seeking the best advice, scrupulously conscientious and hard on himself while indulgent to others.’ But the founder of the Second Republic also saw much to criticize; he considered that—in modern terms—Charles was essentially a lightweight without the brains or the character necessary for a ruler in his circumstances. ‘Looking at him, we were attracted by the man but distrusted the monarch.’

Charles X was crowned at Rheims on Sunday 29 May 1825. A spectator, Comte d’Haussonville, noted with amusement that the King’s distinguished bearing ‘evoked a thousand little cries of ecstasy from my lady neighbours’. Clad only in a crimson satin shirt, Charles lay full length at the feet of the Archbishop-Duke, once the humble Père Latil, to be anointed with the chrism of Clovis; enough oil had been saved from the breaking of the
sainte ampoule
at the Revolution to suffice for just one coronation. (Louis XVIII had refused to be crowned, pleading ill-health.) The service was attended by many leading intellectuals including Chateaubriand, Lamartine who wrote a
Chant du Sacre
, and Victor Hugo who produced his regulation ode (‘O God! Keep always this King whom a people adore’). Hugo recalls that it was a radiant day, and how the long clear windows (the stained glass had been broken during the Revolution) let dazzling daylight into the cathedral. ‘All the light of May was in that church,’ says Hugo, ‘gilding the Archbishop and the altar with its rays.’ Doves were released, to fly in the luminous cloud of incense which filled the nave. When he had been crowned and enthroned, the cathedral doors were thrown open and the people acclaimed the Most Christian King in his diamond crown, roaring cannon and trumpets salutes, heralds throwing gold and silver medals into the crowd. Afterwards he banqueted on a dais, still wearing his crown, with the Dauphin and the Dukes of Bourbon and Orléans in their coronets. Next day he held a chapter of the Knights of the Saint-Esprit, and the day after rode on a white horse to the Hospital of Saint-Marcoul where he touched one hundred and twenty-four sufferers for the Evil.

There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the crowd’s welcome when Charles returned to Paris. Yet far from being an ill-considered revival, the coronation of 1825 was well suited to the prevailing mood of historical Romanticism. The period’s Liberals were inspired by a creed far more fantastic than that of the Ultras; they saw the Revolution as the culmination of a 1,300-year-old struggle by the Gallo-Romans against Frankish oppressors, whose latter-day representatives were the nobility.

The Ultras may be forgiven for thinking, in the age of Metternich and pre-Reform Bill England, that the times seemed ripe for putting their ideas into practice. The enactment of the dramatic law of sacrilege in 1825—condemning those who stole communion vessels containing the consecrated Host to lose both hand and head—was a sign and token of the new alliance between throne and altar. It was never enforced.

The law had the King’s fervent support. Guizot, a Protestant, calls Charles ‘a submissive bigot to his fingertips’, and the royal enthusiasm for taking part in religious processions—he was constantly walking round Nôtre-Dame under a canopy—might seem to confirm Guizot’s opinion. Nothing damaged Charles more than being identified with the aggressive clergy of the period; he was even suspected of being a secret Jesuit. Yet in private life he was an unusually tolerant man, who never criticized any of his courtiers for a lack of belief.

An attempt in 1826 to restore primogeniture (and end the break-up of great estates) aroused such fury throughout the entire country, even among noble families, that Villèle desisted. However, the government did succeed in indemnifying the
émigrés
. A thousand million francs (£ 40 million) was raised by lowering the interest on government bonds by two per cent. As over four-fifths of those indemnified belonged to the nobility and clergy, and as the majority of bond holders were bourgeois, the measure naturally outraged the middle-class. But it brought security to everyone who had purchased confiscated
émigré
property during the Revolution.

Charles was very fashionable in his Romantic Philhellenism. When the English Foreign Secretary, George Canning, visited Paris with his wife in 1826, the King took them to a play in the theatre at Saint-Cloud; Canning was even invited to dinner with the Royal Family at the Tuileries (it was the first time Charles had sat at the same table as a commoner since becoming King). What Charles wanted was English co-operation in working for Greek independence. He got it. In October 1827, in Navarrino Bay, a combined Anglo-French fleet sank the Turkish navy, while the following year General Maison threw the Pasha of Egypt and his troops out of the Morea.

Unlike Louis XVIII, Charles presided over all cabinet meetings. He hunted only two days a week, although so fond of his sport that Parisians nicknamed him
‘Robin des Bois’
. The King’s favourite time of the year was October, when he went to Compiègne for a fortnight devoted entirely to hunting. Lamartine says that ‘a love of horses, a taste for the greenwood, the music of hounds, the thrill of following stag and roebuck, the stirring gone-away and
hallali
sounded on the braying horns, always excited him, just as a brave man responds to the smell of battle.’ He adds that hounds and horses were a way of life for Charles. The old King loved the open air and all its pleasures, even to just lying on his back on the grass at Saint-Cloud.

While Charles did not have favourites, he had a little circle of close friends—the Duc de Montmorency, the Duc de Doudeauville, the Duc de Blacas, the Prince de Polignac and the Baron de Damas. Their amusements were rather limited, being restricted to innumerable whist parties. Indeed, apart from cards and hunting, the King’s one indulgence was a certain love of display; the smallsword which he wore on ceremonial occasions had its hilt encrusted with diamonds (today it may be seen at the Louvre in the Galerie d’Appollon). Even this was only because he thought his subjects expected it of him. In fact he had so little time for luxury that M de Doudeauville had to remonstrate with him about the shabbiness of his bedroom.

Sometimes the King went out into society, as when he attended the Mary Stuart ball organized by Mme de Berry at the Pavillon de Marsan for the carnival of 1829. He particularly enjoyed going to the Opéra.

Charles had a pleasant taste in music. Rossini’s comic opera,
Il Viaggio di Rheims
, in honour of the coronation, won the composer the posts of Master of the King’s Music and
Inspecteur Général du Chant en France
. After the triumphant success of
Le Comte Ory
in 1828, the government offered Rossini an annual pension in return for six operas; Charles, who deeply admired his work, personally signed the contract. It quickly resulted in
William Tell
which took Paris by storm in 1829—the King awarded Rossini the Légion d’Honneur only four days after the first performance. Charles also commissioned an opera from Meyerbeer,
Robert le Diable
.

In February 1830 Charles gave further proof of his tolerance of new fashions. Victor Hugo’s
Hernani
, a play which broke every rule of French classical drama, had been put on at the Odéon and caused a pitched battle between traditionalists and Romantics. Six outraged representatives of the Académie Française waited on the King, imploring him to stop the production. To their horror he refused, laughing and saying, ‘In matters of comedy, gentlemen, I am only one of the audience.’ In the event,
Hernani
heralded the triumph of French Romanticism and transformed French drama.

By this time Charles was politically in very deep waters. There had been too many unpopular measures; attempts at election rigging, the total surrender of education into clerical hands, the sacking of large numbers of Imperial officers, and a new and heavy-handed press censorship. In any case the bourgeoisie resented being ruled by men who were, like Stendhal’s Marquis de la Mole, despising anyone not descended from ‘people who had ridden in the royal carriages’. Still more unsettling was the economic depression of 1826 whose effects lasted for several years. When the King reviewed the National Guard on the Champs de Mars one beautiful spring Sunday in 1827, they booed him so loudly that his horse shied and nearly threw him. To yells of
‘A bas les ministres! A bas les Jésuites!’
he answered, ‘I came here to receive homage, not to be given advice.’ With his usual elegance Charles—who was now seventy—continued his inspection, riding along the ranks, gracefully acknowledging cheers and ignoring insults. Next day the National Guard was disbanded, on Villèle’s advice.