In an intriguing examination of French politics in the early 1820s, the video discusses how France, a great power on the international stage, suddenly jeopardized its standing by invading Spain in 1823. The onset of the 1820s saw turbulent changes in France which started with the assassination of the King's nephew, leading to ultra-conservatives dominating the political landscape. This faction, anxious about the rise of liberalism, manipulated elections to maintain power, a decision that appeared sound to them but ultimately sowed the seeds of crisis.
As France's political scene became more insular, the ultra-conservatives initiated a reckless invasion of Spain to suppress liberal influences, fearing similar movements in France. The resulting suppression of fair elections and public dissent led to widespread discontent. The subsequent deadlock, where opposition parties won significant electoral gains despite rigging, demonstrated the fragile stability under ultra-conservative rule. This discontent culminated in violent protests and the rise of Louis Philippe as king, marking the end of Charles X’s reign amidst fears of a return to revolutionary chaos.
Main takeaways from the video:
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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:
1. reintegrated [ˌriːˈɪntəˌɡreɪtɪd] - (verb) - To restore into an integrated whole. - Synonyms: (reinstated, reintroduced, restored)
They had reintegrated themselves back into the international system as a great power.
2. shockwaves [ˈʃɑ:kweɪvz] - (noun) - A widespread feeling of shock or disturbance caused by a particular event. - Synonyms: (tremors, upheaval, jolts)
This event sent shockwaves through French politics.
3. insulated [ˈɪnsəˌleɪtɪd] - (verb) - To protect from the effects of something, often used metaphorically. - Synonyms: (sheltered, isolated, shielded)
They just insulated themselves from public opinion.
4. foreshadowing [fɔːrˈʃædoʊɪŋ] - (noun) - A literary device used to give a hint of what is to come later in a narrative. - Synonyms: (prefiguring, foretelling, predicting)
That's called foreshadowing, baby.
5. existential threat [ˌeksəˈstenʃəl θret] - (noun) - A threat that has the potential to undermine or destroy the existence of something. - Synonyms: (life-threatening danger, critical threat, peril)
Sharing a border with liberal Spain was not an existential threat to France.
6. clamped down [klæmpt daʊn] - (phrasal verb) - To take strong measures to stop or control something. - Synonyms: (cracked down, suppressed, controlled)
Bilal clamped down on the liberal press with heavy censorship laws.
7. legislative majority [ˈledʒɪslətɪv məˈdʒɔːrəti] - (noun) - A situation where a political party has more seats than other parties combined in a legislature. - Synonyms: (political dominance, governing majority, parliamentary majority)
And so he advised the King to call an early election so that they could lock in their legislative majority for the next seven years
8. moderates [ˈmɑːdərɪts] - (noun) - Individuals holding a middle position between extremes, particularly in a political context. - Synonyms: (centrists, intermediates, middle-ground)
One politician begged Prime Minister Polignac to keep the legislature in session all the way up until the election because he believed that he could cobble together a small working majority of moderates from different factions.
9. prerogative [prɪˈrɒɡətɪv] - (noun) - A special right or privilege exclusive to a particular individual or class. - Synonyms: (entitlement, privilege, authority)
If the upcoming election results were not to his liking, he said, then he would make his prerogative respected.
10. revisionism [rɪˈvɪʒənɪzəm] - (noun) - The advocacy for revising accepted historical narratives. - Synonyms: (reinterpretation, alteration, adaptation)
He was signaling that it did not particularly matter what the results of the election were, since he was perfectly comfortable running everything through his unelected and unrepresentative prime minister.
The July Revolution (1820 to 1830)
France in the early 1820s had done the impossible. They had reintegrated themselves back into the international system as a great power. But in 1823, that all changed. For some reason, France recklessly invaded Spain, which brought the great powers to the brink of war and almost took down the international system. Why did France get like 20% stupider in the 1820s?
It's an important question and to answer it we will have to go back to where we left off with French politics. 1823 years before France recklessly invaded Spain. The 1820s were when things really began to change in France. And it started when the nephew of the King of France was stabbed to death by a left wing radical. This event sent shockwaves through French politics. The aristocracy and their allies in the French legislature, the Ultra conservatives, demanded immediate action. During the crisis, superstar politician Richelieu was brought back into government and as Prime Minister, he pushed through a series of changes to the French electoral system.
Up until now, the process had been that 1/5 of the legislators were elected every year. And the trend over the last five years had been that every year the ultra conservatives were losing ground to the centrists and the left wing Republicans. With the assassination of the King's nephew, the ultra conservatives were officially freaked out at the rise of the French left. And Richelieu was committed to stopping them from making any more electoral gains. Under the new system, 40% of the seats in the legislature would be elected by a select group of ultra wealthy elites who were a lot more conservative and pro monarchy than the general public.
That was precisely the point. The people around the King were getting worried about the mood of the public, so they just insulated themselves from public opinion. They came from the maybe if I ignore my problems, they'll just go away school of thought. They made elections a lot less frequent for the same reason. The thing about elections is that the more representative they are, the more stabilizing they are to the state. It forces governments to address problems early, before they become existential threats. It gives opposition groups something productive to do. Would you rather have angry opposition groups handing out leaflets or stockpiling weapons? Which do you think is better for the long term health of the state?
But that only works if elections are fair. Without fair elections, groups are forced to get creative and the probability of a rebellion or a civil war or a revolution increases. Hmm. So France's electoral reforms in 1820 made the French state more brittle, and they did this to insulate the King and his preferred ultra conservatives from their own growing unpopular. In my opinion, it was a stupid thing to do. But the ultra conservatives didn't see it as stupid. In the next election, under this new rigged electoral system, the Ultra Conservatives won 85% of the seats in the French legislature, absolutely dominating every other group that voiced any opposition to the King's will.
The ultra conservatives thought that they had pulled off a soft couple. They thought that they had won. But it was all an illusion. Even with 85% of the seats in the French legislature, the ultra conservatives were still unpopular with the people. The electoral reforms didn't fix that fundamental problem. It only concealed it. In fact, they had sown the seeds of their own destruction with the huge ultra conservative majority in the legislature. The centrist Prime Minister Richelieu was replaced by an extreme conservative named Villlel.
And then a few years later, when the Spanish liberals rose up to remove their autocratic king from power, Vill persuaded the king of France to invade. It's clear why Villle felt threatened by this right. He was trying to re establish autocratic rule in his own country. And he feared the French liberals doing in France what the Spanish liberals were doing in Spain. That's called foreshadowing, baby. Invading Spain was not wise. But Fidel was not thinking strategically. He was only thinking about his narrow political interests. Sharing a border with liberal Spain was not an existential threat to France.
It did not require a military intervention. But it was politically inconvenient for France's ultra conservative faction. So they invaded anyways. You'd think that the decision to invade a country for political reasons would spark a lively debate in the French legislature. But it didn't. The legislature was 85% ultra conservative. And with the new rigged voting system, nobody in the government was particularly worried about the next election. Everybody just mindlessly went along with Bilal and the King.
The fact that this dramatically increased the chance of a world war, a great power conflict didn't bother any of them. That was far less important to them than their goofy ultra conservative ideology. It's worth repeating that the French people were not on board with this. The ultra conservatives had never been popular. They only dominated the legislature because the elections had been rigged to favor them. The people favored the liberals and the Republicans. The centrist liberals hated the invasion for obvious reasons. The Spanish liberals were their ideological brothers.
The left wing Republicans hated it too. The Spanish constitution had been the invention of their beloved emperor Napoleon. To the millions of Frenchmen who had at one time served under him. The thought of invading another country just to undo the work of Napoleon, why was unthinkable but none of that opposition mattered. The invasion of Spain went ahead anyways, and in the next French election, 96% of the seats went to the ultra conservatives. Now there was virtually no domestic political opposition to whatever Villle and the king of France wanted to do.
But I'll say it again, there was plenty of opposition out on the streets. It's just that the political system had been designed so that none of those people were allowed to participate in politics anymore. Shortly after this, King Louis xv, the man who had been restored to the throne after the fall of Napoleon, died. He was succeeded by his younger brother, a much more autocratic and conservative man who took the name of Charles X. Under King Charles and his ultra conservative prime minister Villlel, liberals and republicans working within the government were purged.
Purged is such a heavy word. They were fired. They weren't killed. Villle then began to systematically roll back the reforms of the French revolution in an effort to return France to an 18th century political mindset. The previous king had promised to never do this. And that promise had kept the peace in France for the the new king did not feel bound by that promise. Bear in mind that none of these moves were popular and the people weren't afraid to let him know. Public outcry reached a fever pitch, and in order to insulate the government from any further criticism, Bilal clamped down on the liberal press with heavy censorship laws again.
Maybe if I ignore my problems, they'll just go away. It soon became clear that the new king had a pretty old fashioned attitude when it came to his prime minister. At the beginning of each year, the king gave Bilal a list of priorities. And it was Villlel's job throughout the year to simply make everything on that list a law. It was like the king was his own prime minister and Villlel was his little assistant or something.
Under such a system, it's not clear what the purpose of elections would even be. There's not really any point if the king's just gonna personally dominate the legislature no matter what. I frankly don't understand why Villlel tolerated being humiliated in this way. But I guess it was the logical conclusion of his extreme ultra conservative ideology. One of the things that the king ordered Villlel to do was compensate the aristocracy for the loss of their land. During the revolution, the land was long gone.
So what Villle had to do was pay the rich by taxing the poor. It was exactly as popular with the people as you might imagine. The New taxes weren't even sufficient. So France had to plunge itself deeply into debt in order to finance this scheme. And for what? Just to re establish the supremacy of the French aristocracy? The country was politically unstable and the poor were still struggling to find enough to eat. The King's political instincts were all out of whack.
An actual election would have helped the King to refocus on what was actually important. But he didn't care about actual elections. As the years passed, the King and Villle continued their politically unpopular ultra conservative crusade, which had the unintended, but in my opinion obvious side effect of making France incredibly politically unstable. In 1827, as the king was performing a routine inspection of the Paris National Guard, the guardsmen surprised him with impromptu cries of down with Villle.
When officers tried to establish order. One guardsman decided to go down in history as an absolute legend and punched his superior officer in the face right in front of the King. Pretty soon the officers completely lost control of the men. They were unable to stop another guardsman from breaking ranks and screaming treasonous stuff right in the King's face. It was a wake up call for the ultra conservatives. The next day, Fiorle's government disbanded the Paris National Guard. The backlash was here and even the rank and file in the military were coming out openly against the King.
Villlell thought that this might just be the beginning of a period of unpopularity for the government. And so he advised the King to call an early election so that they could lock in their legislative majority for the next seven years. Yes, they had been working tirelessly this entire time to make elections as infrequent as possible. When we started this story, there was an election every year. Now there was an election every seven years. If he locked in a legislative majority now, Bilal hoped that all of his autocratic reforms would be done within the next seven years.
And after that, maybe he wouldn't have to worry about elections at all anymore. The liberal and republican opposition groups saw this as an existential crisis. They feared that in seven years time this may all be gone and that this may literally be the last French election. The electoral system was still rigged against the opposition, but nevertheless the liberals and the Republicans threw every resource they had into rallying public opinion and coming out in force. Here were the Results of the 1827 French election.
46% of the seats went to a coalition of liberal and Republican opposition groups. 45% of the seats went to Vill's ultra Conservative government coalition. 7% of the seats went to A conservative group that opposed Villle's government. Even under the rigged electoral system, the liberal opposition groups unexpectedly won the most seats. They were ecstatic. The King and Villlel had made a historic blunder. To make matters worse, it quickly became clear that all of these groups hated each other and so nobody was able to put together a governing majority.
The King was now stuck with a deadlocked legislature for the next seven years. The King fired Villal and selected a new ultra conservative prime minister who believed that they could find compromises with the Liberals. But the Liberals and the other opposition groups were high on their electoral victory and out for blood. So none of them would agree to work with any ultra conservative prime minister. If the King really wanted to work with the Liberals, then he should select a liberal prime minister. But he didn't.
Over the next year and a half, the legislature accomplished virtually nothing. Eventually, the King grew frustrated and fired his failed compromise prime minister in favor of somebody who actually shared his politics. In 1829, he appointed an extreme right wing ultra conservative named Polignac as Prime minister. If a compromise ultra conservative couldn't figure out how to pass anything in the legislature, then an extreme ultra conservative definitely wouldn't either.
But the King no longer cared. He just wanted somebody who shared his views to start pushing people around. Just to give you a sense of how extreme this new Prime Minister was to. During the Napoleonic wars, he was implicated in an attempt to assassinate the Emperor and was imprisoned for nine years. After the King was restored to the throne, Polignac's political right hand man argued for rounding up Napoleon's supporters and putting them to death.
The liberal opposition groups, and in particular their republican allies, were justifiably alarmed that the King would allow men like this to get anywhere near government. In addition to all of this, the King was sending an undeniable signal with disappointment. He was signaling that it did not particularly matter what the results of the election were, since he was perfectly comfortable running everything through his unelected and unrepresentative prime minister. Perhaps a taste of what the future of France may look like. Around this time, King Charles decided to invade Algeria.
He had some pretext for this, but the pretext doesn't really matter. The real reason is that France lost virtually all of its colonies after its defeat at the end of the Napoleonic wars. And the King felt that establishing a new colony in Algeria would restore French prestige. I would just ask you, is this a good reason to establish a colony? What would our beloved George Canning say about this? Canning had argued that colonies were only useful insofar as they facilitated trade.
I don't recall him saying anything about making the King feel better about past humiliations. You will see this argument made time and time again by mediocre men in the 19th century. They will become obsessed with how colonies look on a map, and then will use the map to justify the policy. But the point of colonies cannot be how they look on a map. The map is an abstraction, a theoretical tool. They're not real. What's real is conditions on the ground.
What would the invasion of Algeria do to improve the material conditions in France? Nothing. In fact, it was worse than nothing. France would have to send 20% of its army overseas. It was France's second unnecessary invasion in only seven years. It destroyed France's military readiness for basically no reason. If there was a crisis in Europe, France would find it difficult to respond. It was a risky plan. Furthermore, France didn't really have any money, and this invasion would impose a massive financial burden.
Remember, France was still taxing the poor so that they could give money to the rich. Any additional taxes to finance this reckless invasion would be met with hostility. But King Charles and Prime Minister Polignac wanted to do it, and so they just did it. In 1830, the king opened that year's deadlocked legislature by proposing a relatively modest set of programs. But many politicians found the way that he opened the session alarming. He seemed to subtly threaten violence if any of them stood in the way of his legislation.
He even hinted that he may act without the approval of the legislature, if necessary, describing himself as the true representative of the people, not the elected legislature. It was a real mask off moment for the King. Even the King's own ultra conservatives were bothered. A couple of weeks later, the liberal opposition in the legislature were able to gather enough support to push back against the King. They sent a letter to the King and told him that from now on, the King's ministers, including the Prime Minister, must have the support of the legislature.
The King couldn't just appoint whomever he wished. Elections had to mean something. King Charles was incensed by what he perceived to be a direct challenge to his power. He accused the Liberals of trying to overthrow the government. He decided that he could not work with these people and immediately dissolved the legislature and called a new election according to his own electoral reforms. This was four years ahead of schedule. But given the current political climate, the liberal opposition was likely to get stronger in the short term, not weaker.
And so he thought that he would need a friendly legislature to get him through the coming storm. Elections were scheduled to begin in late June. The date was not an accident. The French army was scheduled to land in Algeria in early June. So the thought was that by the end of the month, there would probably be some good news. To bolster support for the ultra conservatives, one politician begged Prime Minister Polignac to keep the legislature in session all the way up until the election because he believed that he could cobble together a small working majority of moderates from different factions.
Polignac responded, a majority that would really cause me problems. I wouldn't know what to do with it. Kind of a shocking thing for a politician to say out loud, but it really shows how Polignac and the King weren't really, really interested in liberal democracy at all. The ultra conservative faction was really lost at sea at this point. They only cared about investing more and more power into the King and the aristocracy, and very little about any other people or institutions.
Polignac wasn't even particularly interested in popular support. What he wanted to do was make elections no longer matter. We must now talk about Article 14 of France's constitution, also known as the Charter. History will hang on the wording of Article 14, so let me just give you the whole thing up front. The King is the supreme head of state, commands the land and the sea forces, declares war, makes treaties of peace, alliances and commerce, appoints to all places of public administration, and makes the necessary regulations and ordinances for the execution of the laws and the security of the state.
Let's break it down. The King is the head of the state. He commands the military, runs foreign policy and appoints all the ministers. That's all very straightforward, but then there's this funny bit at the end. And makes the necessary regulations and ordinances for the execution of the laws and the security of the state. Regulations and ordinances. That basically means laws, right? And makes the necessary laws for the security of the state. Huh?
You see what this is, don't you? If the King pressed a giant red button that said this is a security matter, he could institute any regulation or law that he wished. Who got to decide what was a security matter? The king. It was a giant loophole in the middle of the French constitution that could theoretically grant the King unlimited power in the name of security. The King's supporters in the ultra conservatives began to argue that the unruly liberal opposition to the King was a security matter.
And if the upcoming election tipped in the liberal direction, the King could use Article 14 to overturn it. Nobody had ever done anything like this. Before even the ultra Conservatives were split on whether it would even be legal. But the ultra Conservatives didn't need to agree. Only the King needed to agree. After some consideration, the King spoke to his closest ministers. If the upcoming election results were not to his liking, he said, then he would make his prerogative respected.
The King was not being explicit, but everybody took his meaning. One way or another. The Liberal opposition would be out of power after the next election. The French army landed in Algeria in early June, and ten days later they won their first significant victory, all according to plan. On the day that the news of the French victory reached Paris, the King decided to make a big public spectacle of attending Mass, you know, to beef up his religious credibility.
On the eve of the election, as expected, large crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of the King as he made his way through the streets. But there was no cheering, no waving. The crowds just stood there, eerily silent, watching the King like a pack of hungry wolves. Voting began shortly after this and then wrapped up in the third week of July. The feeling going into the election was that it might be close. It wasn't close.
65% of the legislative seats went to the Liberal and Republican opposition. 32% of the seats went to the King's ultra Conservatives. The rest went to smaller groups that also opposed Polignac's government. A massive victory for the Liberals. The King and his ultra conservative allies met to decide what to do about the election results. Discussion centered around Article 14 of the charter. If they argued that the Liberals in the legislature were a semi treasonous faction, then the King had the Authority under Article 14 of the Charter to make the necessary laws for the security of the state.
After much debate, the King decided to invoke Article 14 and use it to do four things. These would later become known as the four One, dissolve the newly elected liberal majority legislature. Two, reform the French electoral system and make it pretty much impossible for the Liberals to ever win again. Three, immediately hold new elections under this new electoral system and allow the ultra Conservatives to win pretty much every seat. Four, suspend freedom of the press and shut down the Liberal newspapers, who the King blamed for his drop in popularity and the unexpected election results.
That's right. It was the newspaper's fault, not the 10 years of unpopular policies. The King's cousin Louis Philippe was not informed that the King was taking this step. He learned of the four ordinances by reading about it in the newspaper. Louis Philippe was more friendly to the Liberals than his cousin the King was. And when he read what the King had done he told his wife, they've done it. They've mounted a coup d' etat.
Later that day, he hosted a large group of mostly liberal supporters at his home. And quite naturally, the King's four ordinances were all anybody could talk about. In front of all these people, the usually careful Louis Philippe lost his composure and shouted, they're mad. They'll get themselves exiled again. His Liberal supporters urged him to come to Paris and throw his support behind the Liberal opposition. Louis Philippe told them no, he wouldn't openly go against the King.
For the time being, he would do nothing. In Paris, the liberal newspapers were not taking this lying down. One paper famously wrote, the legal regime is now interrupted. That of force has begun. In this situation, obedience ceases to be a duty. Later, continuing, France must judge how far it ought to take its resistance. They were coming just a hair shy of openly calling for revolution.
That evening, soldiers tried to shut down one of the many liberal newspapers that were continuing to operate in violation of the King's Navy new censorship law. This attracted a crowd who began taunting the soldiers with cries of down with the Bourbons and Long live the Charter. The soldiers tried to suppress the crowd, but it quickly turned into a riot, with mobs roaming the streets and smashing street lamps.
By pure chance, one of these mobs stumbled across Prime Minister Polignac and his Minister of the Navy as they were leaving a cabinet meeting. The mob closed in and started pelting the two with rocks. The politicians narrowly escaped the mob by jumping into a nearby carriage, but not before the Minister of the Navy was badly injured. Somehow, the French Navy managed to lose a battle on the streets of Paris. They really weren't safe anywhere
On July 27, thousands of soldiers were sent to shut down the liberal opposition newspapers, which led to widespread protests across Paris. First, the soldiers tried to escalate things by charging one of the crowds on horseback, which didn't work. Later, they tried to escalate further by firing indiscriminately into the crowd. 21 were killed and scores were wounded. As the sun went down on a violent day, some new revolutionary slogans were heard in the protests.
Down with the aristocrats. Death to the ministers. Only 24 hours ago, these had been liberal crowds who had been protesting for constitutionalism and a free press. Now they were revolutionary crowds, and they wanted to overthrow the government. The violence had only radicalized the people.
The next day, the crowds were significantly larger. The man in charge of defending Paris at this time was Major General Marmont, and he had a hell of a problem on his hands. His garrison in Paris had been hollowed out for the Algerian campaign, and of those that remained, most of the higher ranking officers had been sent home so that they could vote for the ultra conservatives in the upcoming election. Marmont's garrison was not in any way prepared for what they were about to encounter.
At noon, Marmont moved into Paris with the aim of occupying key bridges and public squares where the protests had been the strongest. What they found when they entered the city was totally unexpected. Within the last 24 hours, veterans of the Napoleonic wars had grabbed their dusty old muskets and gone over to help the protesters. The veterans had each adopted large groups of protesters, and in only a day they taught them a few tricks. As Marmont's soldiers advanced through the streets, they ran into thousands, yes, thousands of barricades.
These were tall, defensive structures built out of ripped up cobblestones and furniture and wagons and parts of buildings and anything else that the protesters could get their hands on. The taller ones could be three meters high, which for the Americans in the audience is approximately. Learn how long a meter is high, quite high. The old veterans instructed the protesters not only to build the barricades, but also to occupy the buildings on each side of the streets approaching the barricades so that any enemy soldiers would be hit with musket fire from three directions.
They also loaded up the buildings with cobblestones and roof tiles and other things that unarmed protesters could hurl down at the soldiers. Let's not be cute. By other things I mean human excrement. As groups of soldiers advanced into the city, they bumped into barricades that hadn't been there last night. When they turned around, they bumped into new barricades that hadn't been there a few hours earlier. It was like being trapped in a maze, but the walls kept shifting and also somebody kept dumping human excrement in into it.
Marmont had not thought to send his soldiers into the city with supplies, and so the whole garrison spent eight or more hours covered in filth, frantically marching in circles with no food or water. Morale was at an all time low. A great many soldiers either surrendered to the protesters or defected to join their cause.
As the sun began to set, many of the soldiers had to make direct assaults on the barricades just to escape the city and make it back to camp. Late in the day, the liberal opposition opened negotiations with Marmont.
They told him that as a precondition to any talks, the king must revoke the four ordinances. Marmont expressed his sympathy and agreed to take their demand directly to Prime Minister Polignac. The Prime Minister flatly rejected this preliminary demand and told Marmont that there would not be any further meetings with the delegates.
Marmont was stunned at his response and decided to take the highly unorthodox step of writing to the King personally. He wrote, this is no longer a riot. It is a revolution continuing. I think it is urgent that your Majesty profit without delay from the overtures that are made to him. The honor of the Crown can still be saved. Tomorrow, perhaps it will be too late.
I am taking measures to pacify the revolt. The troops will be ready at noon, but I await with impatience your Majesty's orders. To be clear, this was way out of line. This was a local military military officer going around the Prime Minister so that he could advise the King on political matters. But Marmont was desperate, and nobody above him seemed to be taking the situation seriously. The King wrote back and basically told Marmont to hold steady.
Marmont's pleas had fallen on deaf ears. The next morning, Marmont pulled back to a defensive position. He wouldn't be tricked into another costly engagement like yesterday. Almost immediately, 15 or 20% of Marmont's 12,000 soldiers defected and went over to join the Protesters.
In order to fill the holes in his defensive position, Marmont ordered his men to pull back into an even tighter circle, which the soldiers incorrectly interpreted as a retreat, which triggered a chain reaction of even more defections. By noon, the defections were totally out of control, and in order to stem the losses, the King fired Marmont and ordered the garrison to withdraw from the city, turning a false retreat into a real one.
The Protesters had captured Paris. The whole thing only took three days. Old man Talleyrand, who had lost faith in the King and had been helping to guide the Liberal opposition from behind the scenes, was perhaps the first person to fully understand the significance of this. As he and his political allies watched the soldiers leaving the city, he took out his pocket watch and declared, 29th of July, five minutes past midday, the elder branch of the House of Bourbon has ceased to reign.
The Liberal opposition was blown away at their own success. They had been fighting to overturn the four ordinances and squeeze some political concessions out of the King. And now, without even really intending to do so, they had overthrown the monarchy. That evening, the King finally tried to negotiate. If he had done that yesterday, when Marmont asked him to, it may have helped. But now it was too late. The Liberals controlled Paris, and they got to decide what happened next.
The next day, the Liberals and their Republican allies were locked In a heated internal debate, some argued for using their new position to overthrow the entire system, while others urged caution. The other great powers were monitoring the situation in France carefully. And if they caught even a whiff of something resembling the French Revolution, most of them were prepared to march into France to stop it. That's how you get a world war.
As if to drive this point home, as the liberal opposition gathered to debate their next move, they could hear cries of Long live Napoleon coming from the streets. The people were in a dangerous mood. They seemed fully prepared to do the whole French Revolution over again. Although it must be said that the crowd was a little misguided in their sloganeering. Napoleon was dead. He wasn't long living nothing. The liberals finally figured out what their demands would be.
They demanded that King Charles be removed from power and that France transition to a limited constitutional monarchy, kind of modeled after Great Britain. This, they believed, would be just radical enough to satisfy the republicans and prevent a civil war, but not so radical that it would freak out the other great powers and trigger a world war. The problem was figuring out who to replace the king with. Some of the more radical Republicans suggested Napoleon's 19 year old son, but that idea was dismissed out of hand.
Remember, they were trying to not freak out the other great powers. Others suggested the King's nine year old grandson, Henry or Henri, I guess. But the mainstream liberals rejected this over fears that the tyrant King Charles would continue to wield power from behind the scenes. They settled on the one person that they could all agree on. The king's 56 year old cousin, Louis Philippe. The liberal politicians, by far the largest part of the coalition of opposition groups, strongly favored Louis Philippe, as it was widely known that he was a closet liberal.
The more conservative members of the group felt that they could hold their noses and back Louis Philippe, since they could rest easy knowing that the monarchy would survive. The radical republicans who were initially pushing for Napoleon's son also felt that they could hold their noses and get behind Louis Philippe. What made Louis Philippe unique was that he had fought with distinction in the republican army. That was a big deal to the veterans of the Napoleonic wars. He may have been royalty, but in a way he was one of them.
It was also noteworthy to the veterans that even after circumstances forced him flee France, Louis Philippe never took up arms against his own country. Many exiled aristocrats did. But Louis Philippe always refused. That was a big deal. So it seemed that Louis Philippe was the only candidate for king that could unite the liberal, conservative and republican factions and prevent a civil war. At least for now. By the evening of July 30, Louis Philippe was on his way to Paris. It wasn't official yet, but the reign of King Charles X was effectively over.
When Louis Philippe entered Paris, he was greeted with cries of long live the Republic. This was a bit of a problem. The people of Paris had been radicalized by the violence of the last five days. Yes, it had only been five days, and they might not be okay. With the monarchy surviving at all, Louis Philippe had to perform a difficult balancing act. He made an effort to reach out to all of Napoleon's old generals and made sure to appear with them publicly alongside symbols of the revolution, like the tricolor flag.
He had to somehow communicate, I am basically on your side, while also making it clear that he was not re establishing the Republic. His outreach worked. The people of Paris rallied behind Louis Philippe, and a couple of days later, Charles X abdicated the throne. The July Revolution was complete.
In 1830, France got off lucky. There should have been a civil war, but there wasn't. There should have been an invasion by France's conservative neighbors, but there wasn't. The liberals and their new king, Louis Philippe, somehow managed to thread the needle and preserve the peace. Austria was quick to recognize the new government in France.
Metternich had been busy behind the scenes, reassuring the great powers that Louis Philippe would be a perfectly acceptable king. And with him in charge, they had no reason to worry about the July Revolution spinning out of control. He was right. On August 3, Louis Philippe reopened the legislature and proposed a set of liberal reforms, including eliminating the loophole in Article 14 of the Charter that allowed the king to seize power in the name of security. All of these reforms were popular, and they passed easily. The old charter had stated that the king was the sole source of sovereignty.
Now sovereignty was shared between the king and the legislature. Politicians could now write their own legislation without first getting the approval of the king. Ministers were still approved by the king, but now they could be removed by the legislature. The old censorship law was scrapped. The size of the electorate was increased by 75%. It wasn't what republicans would have asked for. The only people allowed to vote were still a small wealthy minority.
But it was a step in the right direction. 1830 was a turning point for Europe. The liberals pulled off a relatively bloodless revolution in France. But it was also part of a wider trend in Europe of liberals finally rising up against the authoritarian status quo. Portugal, Spain, Belgium, Switzerland, northern Italy, the German confederation and Poland all saw liberal uprisings of some kind. Some were successful, some were not. But the larger point is that the post war conservative old order was crumbling and a new period of liberal ascendency was beginning.
The liberal victories brought about a profound change in the political left in Europe. Before 1830, the moderate liberals and the radical Republicans were united in their opposition to the conservatives in power. As the liberals came to power in France and elsewhere, it exposed rifts in their coalition. In the words of eric Hobsbawm, After 1830, Liberalism and Democracy appeared to be adversaries rather than allies. Alexis de Tocqueville was a big time defender of liberal France in the 1830s and viewed the republican left with a lot of suspicion.
He wrote of the Split from the 18th century, there flows two rivers. One carries men to free institutions, the other to absolute power. Liberalism, in his view, brought with it free institutions. Republicanism, in his view, brought with it mob rule and chaos, which naturally led, in his view, to absolute power and emperors. Not only did 1830 split the liberals and the republicans, but it also split the east and the West. Liberalism triumphed over authoritarianism in France, Britain and Belgium, which meant that Western Europe became a sort of liberal bloc.
Portugal and Spain were doing their own thing, but they were so weak and consumed with internal conflict that they couldn't challenge their liberal neighbors. Eastern Europe had mostly suppressed their liberal revolts, making them a kind of conservative blank where monarchies continued to dominate political life. The interesting thing about France in 1830 is that it provides a sobering example of what happens when conservative governments try to freeze out even incremental progress and liberal institutions.
This all could have been avoided if at any time during the preceding 10 years, France had just allowed the liberals to win an election. That's what elections are, they're release valves. If the liberals in France could have got into government and passed some reforms, it would have let off enough steam to avoid the July Revolution. But instead of doing that, the French ultra conservatives in the 1820s sabotaged all of the release valves in order to suit their own short term political aims.
Demand for reform reached such intensity that the liberals were willing to do anything in order to achieve it. As a result, the king was overthrown and the ultra conservatives were swept out of power in France forever. The ultra conservatives were so hellbent on preventing any liberal reform storms whatsoever that they lost everything. The same factors that produced the July Revolution in France were at work all across Europe. Some governments were overthrown, some were not. But every government had to figure out how to weather the same storm.
No country did a better job at weathering the storm than Britain. Why? Because unlike so many of their peer names nations, Britain decided to allow their disputes to be resolved through politics. The election of 1830, which was coincidentally called on the same day that the French Liberals captured Paris, unleashed the greatest period of legislative productivity in Britain in a hundred years. The British Liberals accomplished some great things, including something that up until now was thought to be impossible, something that would change the world forever. They abolished slavery in the British Empire sa.
POLITICS, LEADERSHIP, HISTORY, EDUCATION, FRANCE, REVOLUTION, HISTORIA CIVILIS