Bourbon Restoration in France

We shall make the attempt.

The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases, hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing, murmurs, sleep, tumults, and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a halting place.

These epochs are peculiar and mislead the politicians who desire to convert them to profit.

In the beginning, the nation asks nothing but repose.

In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which made him a citizen.

This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the Ordinances of July.

The Restoration fell.

It fell justly.

You talk about Louis-Philippe, who his own sort of treason involving the du Maurier plot sort of sparked Philippe Galatier's downfall.

And I guess we're sort of going to keep following Louis-Philippe as his father's head rolls, because now we're getting sort of my area of expertise covering the Bourbon Restoration and July Monarchy.

One thing about Louis Philippe is that he was always his whole life haunted by his role in the death of his father.

He felt deeply guilty by it.

We shall make the attempt.

The Restoration had been one of those intermediate phases hard to define, in which there is fatigue, buzzing, murmur, sleep, tumult, and which are nothing else than the arrival of a great nation at a halting place.

These epochs are peculiar and mislead the politicians who desire to convert them to profit.

In the beginning, the nation asks nothing but repose.

In other words, it denied to the nation that which made it a nation, and to the citizen that which made him a citizen.

This is the foundation of those famous acts which are called the Ordinances of July.

The Restoration fell.

It fell justly.

broken never to rise again.

There only remained the Bourbons to take possession of their undying rights.

The

Emperor Francis will never favor any other dynasty.

Whether the chief magistrate should be elective or hereditary cannot concern us, and the less so, as experience has taught us the fallacy of the Roman notion that liberty depends on an elected sovereignty.

in co libertas posita irat populi romani quod non nascibatur sed eligibatur princeps tacitus The only combination which could affect us would be the ascension of the throne of France by that branch of the Bourbon family, whose natural sympathies would lie rather with absolute than constitutional powers, and who cannot look with preference on a country which has so readily accepted the political changes by which that family has suffered.

but even this contingency could little affect the external relations of france now that all the governments of germany have been compelled to assume a constitutional form that which was easy to an arbitrary power is impossible to a legal one obliged to assign legitimate motives for its acts the scandal of the partition of poland for instance would never have come from powers constitutionally organized m bancroft informs me he saw in the archives at paris a letter from the minister to england after the peace of seventeen eighty three stating that george the third had expressed to him a hope that louis the sixteenth and himself might remain good friends and added if we do so such an event as the partition of poland would be impossible The virtuous and uncompromising minister who has governed France for a longer period than any other statesman since Cardinal Fleury has lately given to the world his gloomy prospects of the future of French democracy.

And yet it is, no doubt, to the expression of the most democratic portion of the Constitution, viz., to universal suffrage, that the present highly conservative tone of French politics is owing.

It was vengeance.

It was classic Bourbon vengeance.

I feel no sympathy for the Bourbons when they're overthrown 15 years later because of what they did to Marshal Ney.

Appalling thing to have done.

He wasn't a war criminal.

He wasn't... brain of Britain, frankly, intellectually.

But he was broken in some way emotionally and psychologically by what had happened in Russia.

And he should have retired, but he was the bravest of the brave and he kept going and pushing himself forward to the point that the Bourbons should have just allowed him to have gone off to his chateau and lived his life out there.

Well, there's that often recited quote.

I think it's sometimes attributed to Talleyrand that the Bourbons learn nothing and they forget nothing, meaning they don't realize why there was a French Revolution during the Restoration and they're back to their old ways.

And this fits perfectly with the Democrats.

They don't realize that they disgraced themselves And in five civil and criminal courtroom, they tried to destroy somebody who was guilty of nothing.