Revolutions - 6.8a- The Fait Accompli of 1830

Episode Date: April 30, 2017

What the heck did the rest of France think about the July Revolution? Sponsor Link: Audible.com/revolutions

Hello and welcome to revolutions. Episode 6.8A, the fait accompli of 1830. So last week, we wrapped up the official narrative of the Revolution of 1830. And as I said, we're now going to take the next few weeks to discuss some adjacent revolutionary topics that pop up in the era between the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the great year of revolution, that is, 1848. So today, we will discuss what. what the rest of France thought about the July Revolution. Then next week we will cover the Belgian

revolution that will break out just a few weeks later and resulted in Belgian independence from the Netherlands. Then after that, we will step back to cover the architect of the European order against which these liberal revolts are taking place, the great Austrian foreign minister Metternich. And I have in fact seen this whole era described as the age of Metternich. Then I want to go back and say way more about the Carbonari, who were the Italian Revolution, revolutionary groups that briefly popped up in episode 6.1 because their methods and organizing tactics spread to France during the failed revolt against Metternich-style conservatism around 1820. Then we'll come back and wind up athwart the barricades of Paris again for the June

rebellion of 1832. That's the one that no one would even remember, were it not the backdrop for the climax of Victor Hugo's Le Miserables. Once we're done with all of that, I will then take my standard six-week hiatus, and we will come back for the slow and steady march through 1848. So, five supplementals, then a break, then 1848. Got it? Good. So we will begin this week by answering a question that has been posed by various listeners over the past few weeks. What did the rest of France think about the abrupt royal switcheroo?

Did everyone really just accept replacing the bourbons with the Orleans? I mean, the last time the Parisians got all riled up and expelled the bourbons, it led to a bitter conflict throughout France and a generation's long war against the rest of Europe. So as the New July monarchy was establishing itself in the first weeks of August 1830, were they going to face a similar response? Well, as the title of this episode might suggest, no, no, they did not. So what we're going to do here today is trace how the rest of France discovered the July revolution, what their reaction was, and why on earth rioting Parisians were able to overthrow a government

with little more than a shrug from the rest of the country. So let's rewind our clocks back to the morning of Monday, July the 26th, 1830. As we discussed in episode 6.4, the infamous four ordinances were published in the morning edition of the Monitor, and by 10 a.m., most of Paris knew about the decrees. As we also discussed in that episode, the July 26 edition of the Monitor was then carried out of the Capitol by regular delivery drivers and special couriers, causing a great ripple of surprise that spread out in a circle over not just the next few hours, but the next few days. Everyone was shocked by what they read. As we saw, the Orleon family got the news in the late morning of the 26th and said,

holy crap, these fools are staging a coup. Over in San Clue, Marshall Marmong got a copy of the paper by the afternoon and said, holy crap, these fools are staging a coup. And that was pretty much the reaction wherever the four ordinances hit. But though everyone had the same reaction, that does not mean everyone had the same reaction because there were different groups saying, holy crap, these guys are staging a coup. First, of course, you had members of the liberal opposition.

Each local department had their own version of the clique of liberal journalists, businessmen, electors, and deputies that were busy carrying out the revolution in Paris. These guys were all linked to each other by that, help yourself and heaven will help you political club, and they had all spent the last few months organizing and executing the recent election to the Chamber of Deputies. Having won that election decisively, these guys were quick to conclude that the four ordinances were King Charles's attempt to reverse his defeat. Wherever the July 26th edition of the Monitor landed, the local members of the

liberal opposition were quick to get together and plot a response. On the opposite end of the political spectrum were the conservatives. Some were, of course, ultra-royalists who were as surprised by the four ordinances as everybody else, but pleasantly so. They were thrilled that Charles was finally laying down the law on the jack-of-an anarchists who were trying to illegally usurp the king's power. But unfortunately for Charles, there were just not that many true ultra-royalists. The vast majority of the conservatives were some version of centrist. They supported the bourbons, but had watched with a mix of dread and exasperation, as Charles had pursued an increasingly reactionary agenda.

From the moment the king appointed Polignac, they had warned both each other, and, when possible, the king, that he was going to provoke a revolution. So they, too, were shocked by the four ordinances, but rather than nodding approvingly or rallying to former resistance, they sighed and shared the reaction of Orlion and Marmon. Basically, my God, it's like these idiots want to get overthrown. Now, a specific subset of the conservatives who we need to talk about are the government officials, administrators, and local garrison commanders, the representatives of the crown out in the departments.

These might be departmental prefects, mayors of cities, town counselors, judges, prosecutors, and the generals in charge of the internal military districts. Now, of course, all these guys were conservative of one stripe or another. All of them were royal appointees. But as I mentioned in episode 6.4, none of them had been alerted to the coming promulgation of the four ordinances. Like everyone else, they had been forced to read about it in the newspaper. Now, without warning or guidance, they had to go out and enforce the ordinances. Very few of them were happy to have drawn this assignment. So with those generalities out of the way, let's turn to a circuit of the country to see what specifically happened as the wave of shock that rippled out of Paris hit the various departments.

Now, the first city I have a good, reliable account of the action for is Ruan, which sits about 100 miles northwest of Paris. The fateful Monday morning edition of the Monitor arrived probably at the end of July the 26th. As it spread across Roran on the morning of the 27th, a scene similar to the one that had unfolded the day before in Paris played out in Ruan. Liberal journalists got together with their lawyers to discuss how they should respond, with the liberal lawyers saying this is all illegal, it violates the charter, and you should feel free to resist.

Two of the local papers in particular were strong supporters of the opposition, so they stayed up through the night preparing a response that they would publish on the morning of July 28th. Now, the local government, of course, was caught off guard and had to scramble their own response. And knowing that they had two opposition presses in their midst, likely to defy the ban, the police commissioner sent down units at dawn on July the 28th. to shut them down. Again, following the pattern of Paris, the editors of the liberal papers locked up their offices and refused the order to shut down. So the police called in a locksmith to open the door, but the journalist convinced the locksmith that he was being used as a tool of tyranny, and the guy said, I quit and walked off the job. So the police brought in a second locksmith, but the journalists inside said, buddy, you are being used as a tool of tyranny, and he too

walked off the job. So in comes the third locksmith. By now, a crowd has gathered and was getting awfully hostile to the police, so before the third locksmith could even do anything, the police commissioner said, forget it, let's just pull back and regroup. As soon as they were gone, even more supporters of the opposition came down, and some of them were now armed. These guys further fortified and barricaded the newspaper offices and waited for what they assumed would be the police returning in greater numbers. But to their surprise and relief, the authorities did not come. So by now we're at the end of Wednesday, July the 28th. Back in Paris, street fights are now underway at that very moment as the Parisians fought Marmonde's three ill-fated columns. News of this full-blown eruption of resistance, dare we say revolutionary resistance, arrived in Ruan the next morning. This led to even more concerted organization by the opposition, specifically on two fronts. Again, all on their own, the people of Ruan followed the pattern of Paris. First, the liberal journalists, electors, and leading supporters, all of whom were already linked by the

Help Yourself Club, remember, gathered and formed a provisional municipal commission to direct resistance. Second, they called out the National Guard to assume responsibility for the maintenance of law and order. Real law and order, mind you, not the king's illegal ordinances. As we're about to see this pattern of the liberals forming a provisional government and calling out the National Guard will be followed across France. Though Ruan did have one unique twist. Being so close to the capital, they called for volunteers to march in support of their brothers in Paris. A large gathering on July the 30th became a recruitment drive, and eventually 500 men signed up to go fight. Of course, unbeknownst to any of them, the fighting in Paris was already over. Now the response to all this

from the official government of Ruan was supremely muted. The police never did come back to the opposition presses to enforce the order. The regular troops, they just stayed in their barracks. The prefect of the department and mayor of the city both showed zero interest in triggering the kind of open street fighting now being reported out of Paris. So while the liberal opposition was a flurry of activity, the official defenders of the regime were inert and passive. By either the end of July 30th or the morning of July 31st, word came that the Royal Guard had abandoned Paris and the king was in flight somewhere southwest of the capital.

The mayor of Ruan and other royal officials decided that they were not going to die fighting for a fugitive king, and they all resigned on July the 31st. The self-declared provisional government took over administration of the city, and they hoisted the tricolor. There had been no bloodshed, hardly even any conflict. When official carriages started arriving the next day bearing official dispatches from Lieutenant General Orleans, the provisional government of Ruan was seamlessly integrated into the new system as the July monarchy planted its first routes. Outside the immediate vicinity of Paris, the first major city to learn of the fort ordinances was Lyon. Now, even though Lyon is about 300 miles southeast of Paris, it was at this point the second city of France,

and thus linked to the capital by speedy communication and delivery lines. The people of Leon woke up to news of the four ordinances on the morning of July the 27th. And as in Ruan, about 75 prominent opposition leaders met to discuss a response. But with the local royal officials not taking any stern measures to enforce the four ordinances, all of July the 28th passed with just an uneasy calm hanging over the city. On the 29th, though, spontaneous demonstrations broke. out in the center of town. The opposition members then sent delegation to the mayor and prefect to discuss the crisis while simultaneously calling out and taking control of the National Guard.

The mayor of Leon, meanwhile, called in the regular infantry to come down and guard Leon's City Hall, and by the end of July the 29th, those troops were facing a large crowd that heavily outnumbered them. But rather than a violent clash breaking out, negotiations produced a peaceful resolution. The National Guard and regular inventory would share responsibility for maintaining order in the city. The crowd then dispersed without further incident. With the combination of censorship and street fighting slowing traffic out of Paris to a thin crawl, it was not until August 1st that Leon learned that the king had abandoned Paris and a provisional government had established itself in the capital. With this news in hand, the local liberals formed their

own provisional government, and the royal administration simply stepped aside without a fight. So when the agents of the Orleans arrived a few days later, they found Leon too a very hospitable ally. Now, while Ruan and Leon had the four ordinances in hand by the morning of July the 27th, the rest of France was still mostly in the dark. It was not until July the 28th, for example, that the monitor reached the city of Mess on the northeastern frontier. So as, Paris was getting ready to enter the street battle phase of the July Revolution, the people of Mess are just now finding out that anything is even amiss. Now, the region around the city was generally known for being Bonapartis, and they had never fully accepted the Bourbons. Nearly

all their deputies were members of the liberal opposition. So even more than in Ruan and Leon, the royal officials in Mass knew the tenor of the local inhabitants and didn't even wait for the National Guard to form of their own volition. The mayor himself called them out to keep order in this time of uncertainty. The mayor then entered into negotiations with that mix of liberal electors and lawyers, merchants and students who formed the opposition, and agreed to a semi-formal power-sharing agreement until they could get some definitive answers about what the heck was going on back in Paris.

The liberals insisted on raising the tricolor, which the general in charge of the local garrison objected to. But on August 2nd, four students finally arrived from the capital bearing the incredible news that Paris was now in the hands of the Parisians and the king was in flight. Upon receipt of this news, the general dropped his objections and ordered his men to stay in their barracks. The mayor of Mess then resigned and power transferred to the liberal provisional government. Okay, so so far, the July Revolution has been spreading without any fight at all from the local royal officials. Is that the way that it was everywhere? Well, not entirely. Down on the Atlantic coast in Bordeaux, the four ordinances also probably arrived on July the 28th, though I can't confirm the exact time,

but when the monitor arrived, the mayor closed the port and ordered the various wholesale and retail shops to suspend operations. Then he swiftly ordered police to identify opposition presses and shut them down before anyone could defy the press ban. But all of this triggered a backlash, especially among the more radical students in the city. In retaliation for shutting down the liberal presses, a group of these kids broke into the offices of the government presses and smashed them to bits. And then they went a step further. A gang of these young radicals tracked down the prefect himself and managed to take him hostage. Then bands went around to all the tax offices that enforced the import-export duties and smash them to bits too, leading to a few days self-declared tax

holiday for goods coming in and out of Bordeaux. But the same class of respectable bourgeois liberals who made up the more conservative branch of the opposition intervened. They ordered out the National Guard and negotiated the release of the prefect. As in Lyon, the regular infantry and National Guard then joined together to police the streets. And when a crowd tried to force their way into the city hall, a few cavalry companies cleared out the area.

Fresh off of a few hours of being a hostage, the prefect was then happy to recognize the self-declared liberal provisional government, and when they all got word on August 3rd that Paris had fallen to the Parisians, the prefect stepped aside and let the provisional government take over. So the tricolor now flew over Bordeaux. So there were some violence in Bordeaux, right? But it mostly took the form of vandalism and intimidation. But Bordeaux, too, accepted the revolution without bloodshed.

So that leaves us with two places where real actual actual actual. violence broke out. That is, Nantes and Neme. The former, I think, was actually fighting over the July Revolution, the latter just using the Revolution as an excuse to go back and settle some old scores. So, Nantes, as you may recall from our episodes on the French Revolution, is situated on the Loire River, on the north side of Vande. So this is old Catholic and Royal Army territory, where some of the worst atrocities of the reign of terror had been committed, right? This is where they loaded the priests up on boats and sunk them. So you might expect it to erupt at the idea of blasphemous Parisians once again expelling their beloved bourbons.

Well, yes, there was fighting in bloodshed, but not in the way that you would imagine. The city of Nantes had, as most urban centers did, a goodly collection of liberal-minded merchants and lawyers who were, like their brethren across France, appalled when they learned about the four ordinances. though it was not until July 29th that Nant finally heard the news. That evening, a crowd gathered in the center of town looking for more news from the capital. But unlike in other areas of France, the mayor, prefect, and general of the local garrison were all honest-to-god ultra-royalists, who thought the four ordinances a splendid response to Republican terrorism. So they called out the cavalry and mounted police to disperse this crowd that was gathering,

and amid some good old-fashioned rock-chucking, 16 were arrested and 6 injured. The next day, and we're at July the 30th now, the prefect announced an 8 p.m. curfew would be in effect. But until then, crowds continued to gather in the center of town yearning for news out of Paris. When a coach finally arrived bearing the incredible news that the capital had gone into revolt, they're just now learning that the capital has gone into revolt.

More radical liberals in Nantes said right. Now it's our turn. They ransacked a couple of gun shops and managed to procure more than 500 muskets and small arms. Rumors then started swirling. True, as it turned out, that infantry units were coming up from the south to help keep the peace in the city, so a few intrepid souls went off to barricade all roads leading up from the south. A collection of merchants then petitioned the mayor to call out the National Guard, but being a good ultra-royalist, the mayor refused. But the mayor was about to have his hands full, because 300 armed men soon congregated in the center of town demanding the release of the 16 prisoners who had been taken the night before.

Guarding the building holding the prisoners were just 180 armed infantrymen. Crazy enough, though, there was no immediate clash. The soldiers did not want to fire on the civilians, and the civilians did not want to fire on the soldiers. But then we get another one of those bunch of armed dudes in a confined space and someone fires a shot but no one knows who incidents. Someone fired a shot and no one knows who. It was probably an accident, but the results were predictable. Both sides opened fire on the other, and pretty soon seven civilians and six soldiers lay dead with more than 50 total wounded.

The response to this clash of arms, however, did not lead the royal officials to crack down even harder, even though they were all ultra-royalists. In fact, they backtracked immediately. Not only were the 16 prisoners released, but the army was ordered back to its barracks. Now, I have nowhere read why they backtrack so quickly, but probably, even though they were ultra-royalists, that did not mean they wanted to be the authors of like a civilian massacre. But also, this is now the end of July the 30th, and one can't help but wonder if maybe a few military couriers hadn't shown up with more advanced information about what was going on in Paris, that Paris had been lost the day before. But that's just me speculating. Whatever the reason,

there were no more clashes in Nantes on the 31st. And then on the morning of August 1st, it was widely known even amongst the civilian population that the Parisians had won, a new provisional government was in place, and the king was on the lamb. The general in the region decided to lead his men out of town entirely, and he withdrew south into the Vande. The mayor and the prefect soon followed, and a provisional government established itself and raised the tricolor. Outside of those killed in Paris, the dead of Nantes were the only other reported deaths in the whole of France during the July Revolution.

So I'll wrap this up with a brief discussion of events in Neme, because Neme is a bit of a special case. Southwestern France had been the epicenter of the great Catholic and Protestant wars of religion way back in the 1500s, and neither the local Catholics nor the local Protestants had ever gotten over it. The Protestants had been an oppressed minority for the 200 years following the wars of religion until the French Revolution came along and unlocked the iron bars of Catholic supremacy. After the revolution, the Protestants had come out of hiding, and many had since become

prosperous merchants. When the restoration came, though, battles that were ostensibly over politics really boiled down to religion. The new white terror that had followed the restoration usually took the form of Catholics attacking their Protestant neighbors. And after the second restoration, the Protestants forever skewed liberal opposition, while the Catholics forever skewed royalist conservative. When the July Revolution hit, the news of the fighting and Paris put everyone on edge, as Niem followed the basic pattern that had unfolded in the rest of France. The people found out about the foreordances, the liberal opposition formed a resistance, the local officials mostly did not stand in their way. It was all pretty subdued during the

three glorious days period of the July Revolution, and it wasn't until word came that Louis Philippe had indeed taken over and was now issuing orders that the Protestant liberals felt super emboldened and the Catholics super-threatened. The Tried Color Cocade and Bourbon White Cawcade were not so much symbols of liberal and conservative, but Protestant and Catholic. August 15th and 16th saw street brawls, but no deaths, just injuries.

And then two weeks later, another round of fighting started up, and this time local Catholics took to the countryside and raised close to 2,000 peasants with stories of Protestant atrocities and sacrilege and saying we have to go defend the honor of God the king. But by that point, a new general loyal to the July monarchy was in place. He declared martial law, the peasants prudently went home, and nothing much happened. That was that.

Now, Neme would remain hostile to the Orlean, but it rarely got above the level of provocatively sneering at the tricolour cockade. Dreams of a third bourbon restoration remain powerful in the region, but never went anywhere. So that was pretty much that. I mean, that's a decent circuit of the and nowhere did anyone fight what was going on in Paris, not even in areas where you would expect staunch opposition. So the question is, why? There are a couple of good reasons, I think. First is the speed of events. Outside of Paris, everyone was a few days behind what was actually happening. The local population would hear about the four ordinances, then that there's fighting in Paris, then the fighting is over and the king has lost, and then boom, he's a

abdicated the throne. They would get all this in the span of just a few days. The switch from bourbon to Orleans came so fast that even had there been unshakable bourbon loyalty out there, they had no time to organize a response before the official carriages from Paris started bearing the seal of Louis Philippe rather than Charles X. Without any counter-orders from Charles, the local officials had no choice but to acquiesce. I mean, what else was there to do? The July Revolution was as quintessential a fait accompli as it gets. Which leads to the second key point. There were unshakable bourbon loyalists out there.

They're about to be called the legitimists, but none of them had been warned or prepared for the surprise drop of the four ordinances. They hadn't even been given the courtesy of a few hours' notice. All the prefects and mayors and generals of garrison were as in the dark as everyone else. And for the most part, when faced with such a drastically uncertain situation, they all erred on the side of going along for the ride and accepting whatever happened, rather than trying to hold the line at all costs. And a lot of it, I think, might have come down to individual emotion. I mean, let's say you're in charge of a military district. You can't be too happy that nobody bothered to tell you about this incredibly provocative thing, nor offer any real guidance about what you were expected to do, or how far you were expected to go.

Why fight for people that won't even bring you into their confidence? So to a man, the local royal administrators declined to fight when local opposition leaders took the initiative. Which seamlessly leads to my third point. I love it when that happens. Which is that while the conservatives and royal officials were caught flat-footed, the liberals were quick to spring into action. All these guys who instantly and independently of one another formed local provisional governments and called out the National Guard, were members of the Help Yourself and Heaven Will Help You Club. They had been organizing politically for years, and if you can believe it, we are still just a few weeks removed from that Chamber of Deputies election, which they had all decisively won.

These guys were organized, they knew each other, they knew what they wanted, and given all the shenanigans of the Polingiac ministry over the past year, they were surprised, but not shocked by the four ordinances. They had been expecting something like it ever since Polingiac had come. into office. So when the long-awaited royal coup finally hit, it did not take more than a few minutes to get over their surprise and get going on an organized resistance. And they were not the only ones who had spent the last year waiting for the other shoe to drop. Except for the most ultra-royalists, most conservatives in France were not at all impressed with Polignac nor his conduct as prime

minister. But their principal complaint was that if Charles and Polingak weren't careful, they were going to provoke another revolution. And when it finally came, a lot of them were like, well, yeah, that sounds about right. What a bunch of dunces. Can't believe they brought this down on themselves. I mean, think about a guy like the Marquis de Semmaineville, a conservative centrist. He ran around like crazy on July the 29th trying to save the Bourbon dynasty. But when Charles refused to help himself, Semmeneville was like, well, I'm not going down with you. I'm actually just going to go to bed. The universal conclusion was that Charles had done this all to himself, and when Louis-Philippe made it clear that the point here was the continuity of law and order and preventing the slide to a terrorist

republic, what the hell? The king of France is dead. Long live the king of the French. Now, the last point I'll make to help answer the question of why the July Revolution came off with barely a hitch is the power of French nationalism. French nationalism had been unleashed by the revolution, and then been forced into unhappy hibernation by the restored bourbons. It's certainly the thing that bound together the respectable liberals of the salon and the Paris street fighters. I mean, those Napoleonic veterans did not come out to man the barricades because they wanted Blase-affer economics, nor were any of them ever going to qualify for a vote. What they fought for was the tricolor and the national honor of France,

which they believe the bourbons had continuously besmirched. The return to the national National Guard was more an expression of patriotic nationalism than it was an expression of adherence to liberal ideology. And in fact, for the most part, the July Revolution should be considered a national revolution, rather than a liberal revolution. With Louis Philippe embracing the tricolor and the idea that power came from the nation, not from God, well, that went a long way towards papering over any internal divisions amongst the opposition members and suppressing any great urge on the part of moderate conservatives to defend Charles, because those conservatives, no less than the liberals, remembered a time when they were citizens of a great nation, rather than subjects

of a petty tyrant. So, the fait de comblee of 1830 was not challenged anywhere, because France was being restored. So I'll wrap this up by taking a brief look at the response of the rest of Europe to all of this. Now, when France had last staged a revolution, the rest of Europe had joined together to combat the revolutionary menace. And here again, radical Parisians are overthrowing the bourbons, who, I will remind you, the Allies had handpicked for the job of ruling post-Napoleonic France. Well, the response to the rest of Europe was basically the response to the rest of France, a general shrug of the shoulders.

The British, for example, were not thrilled at the idea of recognizing Orillon, but they had also not been thrilled with Charles's conduct. They disapproved to Polignac and a little bit of Poliak and hated that they had annexed Algeria. So when word came that the bourbons had been overthrown, they were like, well, okay. It's not like they didn't know early on. They could work with him. So on August 31st, the British ambassador presented his credentials to the July monarchy. Austria followed a similar line. Foreign Minister Metternich was not happy at this liberal challenge to the conservative order he had forged, but at this point Charles's blundering had left Europe

with a choice of a liberal monarchy under Orlean or anarchy under a republic. Metternich chose the lesser of two evils and instructed his embassy in France to extend recognition to Louis Philippe. Prussia then followed Austria's reasoning and accepted Orlean as a check against any further slip towards real revolution. Russia contemplated rejecting the new regime, but with everyone else lining up, they ultimately concluded, what's the point? So they too recognized the July monarch. The last important power to get on board was the Vatican. Naturally wary of French revolutionaries, the Pope waited until back-channel negotiations assured him that Louis-Philippe had no intention of nationalizing the church and the concordant of 1801 would be respected in full.

Upon those assurances, the papal ambassador extended recognition in September. And that was that. The fait accompli of 1830 was accepted and life went. on. Now, though the acceptance of the July revolution in France was mostly met with a shrug of the shoulders, what was actually causing the other European powers a major headache in the summer of 1830 was a concurrent revolution that had broken out in what had once been the Austrian Netherlands and then become an annexed part of France and then been placed inside of a new thing called the Kingdom of the Netherlands but was full of people who did not want to be a part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. And we'll talk all about that next week. It's the Belgian Revolution.