France in the Nineteenth Century Part 3

The _emeute_ which was formidable, was suppressed chiefly by a gallant action on the part of the king, who, while his health was unimpaired, was never wanting in bravery. "The king of the French,"

says Greville, "has put an end to the disturbances in Paris about the sentence of the ministers by an act of personal gallantry. At night, when the streets were most crowded and agitated, he sallied from the Palais Royal on horseback, with his son, the Duc de Nemours, and his personal _cortege_, and paraded through Paris for two hours.

That did the business. He was received with shouts of applause, and at once reduced everything to tranquillity. He deserves his throne for this, and will probably keep it."

The next trouble in the new reign was the alienation of public favor from Lafayette, who had done so much to place the king upon the throne. He was accused by one party of truckling to the new court, by the other of being too much attached to revolutionary methods and republican inst.i.tutions. He was removed from the command of the National Guard, and his office of commander-in-chief of that body was abolished.

All Europe becomes "a troubled sea" when a storm breaks over France.

"I never remember," writes Greville at this period, "days like these, nor read of such,--the terror and lively expectation that prevails, and the way in which people's minds are turned backward and forward from France to Ireland, then range exclusively from Poland to Piedmont, and fix again on the burnings, riots, and executions that are going on in England."

Meantime France was subsiding into quiet, with occasional slight shocks of revolutionary earthquake, before returning to order and peace. The king was _le bon bourgeois_. He had lived a great deal in England and the United States, and spoke English well. He had even said in his early youth that he was more of an Englishman than a Frenchman. He was short and stout. His head was shaped like a pear, and was surmounted by an elaborate brown wig; for in those days people rarely wore their own gray hair.

He did not impress those who saw him as being in any way majestic; indeed, he looked like what he was,--_le bon pere de famille_.

As such he would have suited the people of England; but it was _un vert galant_ like Henri IV., or royalty incarnate, like Louis XIV., who would have fired the imagination of the French people.

As a good father of a family, Louis Philippe felt that his first duty to his children was to secure them a good education, good marriages, and sufficient wealth to make them important personages in any sudden change of fortune.

At the time of his accession all his children were unmarried,--indeed, only four of them were grown up. The sons all went to _college_,--which means in France what high-school does with us. Their mother's dressing-room at Neuilly was hung round with the laurel-crowns, dried and framed, which had been won by her dear school-boys.

The eldest son, Ferdinand, Duke of Orleans, was an extraordinarily fine young man, far more a favorite with the French people than his father. Had he not been killed in a carriage accident in 1842, he might now, in his old age, have been seated on the French throne.

One of the first objects of the king was to secure for his heir a suitable marriage. A Russian princess was first thought of; but the Czar would not hear of such a _mesalliance_. Then the hand of an Austrian archd.u.c.h.ess was sought, and the young lady showed herself well pleased with the attentions of so handsome and accomplished a suitor; but her family were as unfavorable to the match as was the Czar of Russia. Finally, the Duke of Orleans had to content himself with a German Protestant princess, Helene of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a woman above all praise, who bore him two sons,--the Comte de Paris, born in 1838, and the Duc de Chartres, born a year or two later.

The eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Louise, was married, soon after her father's elevation to the throne, to King Leopold of Belgium, widower of the English Princess Charlotte, and uncle to Prince Albert and to Queen Victoria. The French princess thus became, by her marriage, aunt to these high personages. They were deeply attached to her. She named her eldest daughter Charlotte, after the lamented first wife of her husband. The name was Italianized into Carlotta,--the poor Carlotta whose reason and happiness were destroyed by the misfortunes of her husband in Mexico.

The second son of Louis Philippe was the Duc de Nemours,--a _blond_, stiff young officer who was never a favorite with the French, though he distinguished himself in Algeria as a soldier. He too found it hard to satisfy his father's ambition by a brilliant marriage, though a throne was offered him, which he had to refuse. He then aspired to the hand of Maria da Gloria, the queen of Portugal; but he married eventually a pretty little German princess of the Coburg race.

The third son was Philippe, Prince de Joinville, the sailor. He chose a bride for himself at the court of Brazil, and brought her home in his frigate, the "Belle Poule."

The charming artist daughter of Louis Philippe, the Princess Marie, pupil and friend of Ary Scheffer, the artist, married the Duke of Wurtemberg, and died early of consumption. Her only child was sent to France, and placed under the care of his grandmother. Princess Clementine married a colonel in the Austrian service, a prince of the Catholic branch of the house of Coburg. Her son is Prince Ferdinand, the present ruler of Bulgaria.

The marriage of Louis Philippe's fifth son, the Duc de Montpensier, with the Infanta Luisa is so closely connected with Louis Philippe's downfall that it can be better told elsewhere; but we may here say a few words about the fortunes of Henri, Duc d'Aumale, the king's fourth son, who has proved himself a man brave, generous, patriotic and high-minded, a soldier, a statesman, an historian, patron of art, and in all these things a man eminent among his fellows. He was only a school-boy when a tragic and discreditable event made him heir of the great house of Conde, and endowed him with wealth that he refuses to pa.s.s on to his family, proposing at his death to present it to the French people and the French Academy.

The royal family of the house of Bourbon was divided in France into three branches,--the reigning branch, the head of which was Charles X.; the Orleans branch, the head of which was Louis Philippe; and the Conde branch, the chief of which, and its sole representative at this period, was the aged Duke of Bourbon, whose only son, the Prince d'Enghien, had been shot by order of Napoleon.

This old man, rich, childless, and miserable, had had a romantic history. When very young he had fallen violently in love with his cousin, the Princess Louise of Orleans. He was permitted to marry her, but only on condition that they should part at the church door,--she to enter a convent for two years, he to serve for the same time in the French army. They were married with all pomp and ceremony; but that night the ardent bridegroom scaled the walls of the convent and bore away his bride. Unhappily their mutual attachment did not last long. "It went out," says a contemporary memoir-writer, "like a fire of straw."[1] At last hatred took the place of love, and the quarrels between the Prince de Conde (as the Duc de Bourbon was then called) and his wife were among the scandals of the court of Louis XVI., and helped to bring odium on the royal family.

[Footnote 1: Madame d'Oberkirch.]

The only child of this marriage was the Duc d'Enghien. The princess died in the early days of the Revolution. Her husband formed the army of French _emigres_ at Coblentz, and led them when they invaded their own country. On the death of his father he became Duke of Bourbon, but his promising son, D'Enghien, was already dead. The duke married while in exile the princess of Monaco, a lady of very shady antecedents. She was, however, received by Louis XVIII. in his little court at Hartwell. She died soon after the Restoration.

In 1830 the old duke, worn out with sorrows and excesses, was completely under the power of an English adventuress, a Madame de Feucheres.[1]

He had settled on her his Chateau de Saint-Leu, together with very large sums of money. Several years before 1830 it had occurred to Madame de Feucheres that the De Rohans, who were related to the duke on his mother's side, might dispute these gifts and bequests, and by way of making herself secure, she sought the protection of Louis Philippe, then Duke of Orleans. She offered to use her influence with the Duke of Bourbon to induce him to make the Duc d'Aumale, who was his G.o.dson, his heir, if Louis Philippe would engage to stand her friend in any trouble.

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc.]

The relations of the Duc de Bourbon to this woman bore a strong resemblance to those that Thackeray has depicted between Becky Sharp and Jos Sedley. The old man became thoroughly in fear of her; and when the Revolution broke out later, he was also much afraid of being plundered and maltreated at Saint-Leu by the populace,--not, however, because he had any great regard for his cousin Charles X., with whom in his youth he had fought a celebrated duel. Impelled by these two fears, he resolved to escape secretly from France, and so rid himself of the tyranny of Madame de Feucheres and the dangers of Revolution.

He arranged his flight with a trusted friend; it was fixed for the day succeeding Aug. 31, 1830,--a month after the Revolution.

That evening he retired to his chamber in good spirits, though he said good-night more impressively than usual to some persons in his household. The next morning he was found dead, hanging to one of the _espagnolettes_, or heavy fastenings, of a tall French window. The village authorities were summoned; but although it was impossible a man so infirm could have thus killed himself and though many other circ.u.mstances proved that he did not die by his own hand, they certified his death by suicide. The Catholic Church, however, did not accept this verdict, and the duke was buried with the rites of religion.

There was certainly no proof that Madame de Feucheres had had any hand in the murder of the old man who had plotted to escape from her, and who had expressed to others his dread of the tyranny she exercised over him; but there was every ground for strong suspicion, and the public lost no time in fastening part of the odium that attached to the supposed murderess on the king, whose family had so greatly benefited by her influence over the last head of the house of Conde. She retained her ill-gotten wealth, and removed at once to Paris. She had been engaged in stock operations for some time, and now gave herself up to them, winning enormous sums.

The new throne was sadly shaken by these events, added to discontents concerning the king's prudent policy of non-intervention in the attempted revolutions of other countries, which followed that of France in 1830 and 1831. The next very interesting event of this reign was the escapade and the discomfiture of the young d.u.c.h.esse de Berri.

About the close of 1832, while France and all Europe were still experiencing the after-shocks which followed the Revolution of July, Marie Caroline, the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri, planned at Holyrood a descent upon France in the interests of the Duc de Bordeaux, her son.[1] Had he reigned in consequence of the deaths of his grandfather and uncle, Charles X. and the Duc d'Angouleme, the d.u.c.h.ess his mother was to have been regent during his minority.

She regretted her inaction during the days of July, when, had she taken her son by the hand and presented him herself to the people, renouncing in his name and her own all ultra-Bourbon traditions and ideas, she might have saved the dynasty.

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc and papers in "Figaro."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARIE CAROLINE FERDINANDE LOUISE, d.u.c.h.eSSE DE BERRY.

Nee a Naples, le 5 Novembre 1798.]

Under the influence of this regret, and fired by the idea of becoming another Jeanne d'Albret, she urged her plans on Charles X., who decidedly disapproved of them; but "the idea of crossing the seas at the head of faithful paladins, of landing after the perils and adventures of an unpremeditated voyage in a country of knights-errant, of eluding by a thousand disguises the vigilance of enemies through whom she had to pa.s.s, of wandering, a devoted mother and a banished queen, from hamlet to hamlet and from chateau to chateau, appealing to human nature high and low on its romantic side, and at the end of a victorious conspiracy unfurling in France the ancient standard of the monarchy, was too dazzling not to attract a young, high-spirited woman, bold through her very ignorance, heroic through mere levity, able to endure anything but depression and _ennui_, and prepared to overbear all opposition with plausible plat.i.tudes about a mother's love."[1]

[Footnote 1: Louis Blanc, Histoire de Dix Ans.]

At last Charles X. consented to let her follow her own wishes; but he placed her under the guardians.h.i.+p of the Duc de Blancas.

She set out through Holland and the Tyrol for Italy. She travelled _incognita_, of course. Charles Albert, of Sardinia, received her at Turin with great personal kindness, and lent her a million of francs,--which he borrowed from a n.o.bleman of his court under pretence of paying the debts of his early manhood; but he was forced to request her to leave his dominions, and she took refuge with the Duke of Modena, who a.s.signed her a palace at Ma.s.sa, about three miles from the Mediterranean. A rising was to be made simultaneously in Southern France and in La Vendee. Lyons had just been agitated by a labor insurrection, and Ma.r.s.eilles was the first point at which it was intended to strike.

The Legitimists in France were divided into two parties. One, under Chateaubriand and Marshal Victor, the Duc de Bellune, wished to restore Henri V. only by parliamentary and legal victories; the other, favored by the court at Holyrood, was for an armed intervention of the Great Powers. The Duc de Blancas was considered its head.

The question of the invasion of France with foreign troops was excitedly argued at Ma.s.sa. The d.u.c.h.ess wished above all things to get rid of the tutelage of M. de Blancas, and she was disposed to favor, to a certain extent, the more moderate views of Chateaubriand.

After endless quarrels she succeeded in sending off the duke to Holyrood, and was left to take her own way.

April 14, 1832, was fixed upon for leaving Ma.s.sa. It was given out that the d.u.c.h.ess, was going to Florence. At nightfall a carriage, containing the d.u.c.h.ess, with two ladies and a gentleman of her suite, drove out of Ma.s.sa and waited under the shadow of the city wall. While a footman was absorbing the attention of the coachman by giving him some minute, unnecessary orders, Madame (as they called the d.u.c.h.ess) slipped out of the carriage door with one of her ladies, while two others, who were standing ready in the darkness, took their places. The carriage rolled away towards Florence, while Madame and her party, stealing along under the dark shadow of the city wall, made their way to the port, where a steamer was to take them on board.

That steamer was the "Carlo Alberto," a little vessel which had been already used by some republican conspirators, and had been purchased for the service of Marie Caroline. It had some of her most devoted adherents on board, but the captain was in ignorance.

He thought himself bound for Genoa, and was inclined to disobey when his pa.s.sengers ordered him to lay to off the harbor of Ma.s.sa.

However, they used force, and at three in the morning Marie Caroline, who was sleeping, wrapped in her cloak, upon the sand, was roused, put on board a little boat, and carried out to the steamer. She had a tempestuous pa.s.sage of four days to Ma.r.s.eilles. The steamer ran out of coal, and had to put into Nice. At last, in a heavy sea which threatened to dash small craft to pieces, a fis.h.i.+ng-boat approached the "Carlo Alberto," containing some of the d.u.c.h.ess's most devoted friends. With great danger she was transferred to it, and was landed on the French coast. She scrambled up slippery and precipitous rocks, and reached a place of safety. But the delay in the arrival of her steamer had been fatal to her enterprise.

A French gentleman in the secret had hired a small boat, and put out to sea in the storm to see if he could perceive the missing vessel. His conduct excited the suspicion of his crew, who talked about it at a wine-shop, where they met other sailors, who had their story to tell of a lady landed mysteriously a few hours before at a dangerous and lonely spot a few miles away. The two accounts soon reached the ears of the police, and Ma.r.s.eilles was on the alert, when a party of young men, with their swords drawn and waving white handkerchiefs, precipitated their enterprise, by appearing in the streets and striving to rouse the populace. They were arrested, as were also the pa.s.sengers left on board the "Carlo Alberto,"--among them was a lady who deceived the police into a belief that she was the d.u.c.h.esse de Bern.

Under cover of this mistake the d.u.c.h.ess, finding that all hope was over in the southern provinces, resolved to cross France to La Vendee. At Ma.s.sa she had had a dream. She thought the Duc de Bern had appeared to her and said: "You will not succeed in the South, but you will prosper in La Vendee."

She quitted the hut in which she had been concealed, made her way on foot through a forest, lost herself, and had to sleep in the vacant cabin of a woodcutter. The next night she pa.s.sed under the roof of a republican, who respected her s.e.x and would not betray her. She then reached the chateau of a Legitimist n.o.bleman with the appropriate name of M. de Bonrecueil. Thence she started in the morning in a postchaise to cross all France along its public roads.

She accomplished her journey in safety, and fixed May 24, 1832, as the day for taking up arms. She made her headquarters at a Breton farm-house, Les Meliers. She wore the costume of a boy,--a peasant of La Vendee--and called herself Pet.i.t Pierre.

On May 21, three days before the date fixed upon for the rising, she was waited upon by the chiefs,--the men most likely to suffer in an abortive insurrection,--and was a.s.sured that the attempt would fail. Had the South risen, La Vendee would have gladly joined the insurrection; but unsupported by the South, the proposed enterprise was too rash a venture. Overpowered by these arguments and the persuasions of those around her, Marie Caroline gave way, and consented to return to Scotland with a pa.s.sport that had been provided for her.

But in the night she retracted her consent, and insisted that the rising should take place upon the 3d of June. She was obeyed; but what little prospect of success there might have been at first, was destroyed by the counter-order of May 22. All who rose were at once put down by the king's troops, and atrocities on both sides were committed.

Nantes, the capital city of La Vendee, was hostile to the d.u.c.h.ess; in Nantes, therefore, she believed her enemies would never search for her. She took refuge there in the house of two elderly maiden ladies, the Demoiselles Duguigney, where she remained five months.

They must have been months of anguish to her, and of unspeakable impatience. It is very possible that the Government did not care to find her. She was the queen's niece, and if captured what could be done with her? To set her free to hatch new plots would have been bitterly condemned by the republicans; to imprison her would have made an additional motive for royalist conspiracies; to execute her would have been impossible. Marie Caroline, however, had solved these difficult problems by her own misconduct.

Meantime the premiers.h.i.+p of France pa.s.sed into the hands of M.

Thiers. A Jew--a Judas--named Deutz, came to him mysteriously, and bargained to deliver into his hands the d.u.c.h.esse de Berri.

Thiers, who had none of the pity felt for her by the Orleans family, closed with the offer. Some years before, Deutz had renounced his Jewish faith and pretended to turn Christian. Pope Gregory XVI.

had patronized him, and had recommended him to the Duc de Berri as a confidential messenger. He had frequently carried despatches of importance, and knew that the d.u.c.h.ess was in Nantes, but he did not know her hiding-place. He contrived to persuade her to grant him an interview. It took place at the Demoiselles Duguigney's house; but he was led to believe that she only used their residence for that purpose. With great difficulty he procured a second interview, in the course of which, having taken his measures beforehand, soldiers surrounded the house. Before they could enter it, word was brought to the d.u.c.h.ess that she was betrayed. She fled from the room, and when the soldiers entered they could not find her. They were certain that she had not left the house. They broke everything to pieces, sounded the walls, ripped up the beds and furniture. Night came on, and troops were left in every chamber. In a large garret, where there was a wide fireplace, the soldiers collected some newspapers and light wood, and about midnight built a fire. Soon within the chimney a noise of kicking against an iron panel was heard, and voices cried: "Let us out,--we surrender!"

For sixteen hours the d.u.c.h.ess and two friends had been imprisoned in a tiny hiding-place, separated from the hearth by a thin iron sliding-panel, which, when the soldiers lit their fire, had grown red hot. The gentleman of the party was already badly burned, and the women were nearly suffocated. The gendarmes kicked away the fire, the panel was pushed back, and the d.u.c.h.ess, pale and fainting, came forth and surrendered. The commander of the troops was sent for. To him she said: "General, I confide myself to your honor."

He answered, "Madame, you are under the safeguard of the honor of France."