The Bourbon Kings of France

by Seward, Desmond

  Louise’s friend, Mme de Lage, witnessed Artois’s entry into Coblenz. ‘Everyone was saying, “There he is, our Prince, our hope, the scion of Henri IV.” They crowded round, all wanting to touch him. He possessed the sort of charm which bewitches the French and a way of looking at you like Louis XV, or so elderly people said.’ Charles told the émigré troops that success was certain, even if not quite as near as he had hoped. Louise joined him and gave her entire fortune to help the White army.

  The defeat at Valmy stunned the émigrés. On 19 November 1792 Artois wrote, ‘One needs the pen of a Jeremiah, my dear Vaudreuil, to give you a picture of the situation since you left … everything is falling to pieces and we are all starving to death.’ He hints that he might commit suicide ‘were I not attached to life by a bond which every day grows dearer, more precious and more essential … Thank God that at least my friend [Louise] is well.’

  After two miserable months at Hamm, Charles set off to ask Catherine the Great for help. The Russian Empress, never indifferent to a handsome man, gave him a million francs and advised him to join the Chouans. ‘You are one of Europe’s great Princes,’ Catherine told him, ‘but there are times when you should forget it.’ His self-esteem restored, he left St Petersburg in excellent spirits that spring, in a Russian warship bound for England, where he landed at Hull in May 1793. But the English government did not respond to a letter which he brought from the Empress, suggesting that they send troops to the Vendée.

  Instead of joining the Chouans, Artois idled away his time at Hamm with Louise who, terrified, held him back when a gamble might have saved the Royalist cause. At the end of 1794, at the Duke of York’s invitation, he joined the staff of the British expeditionary force in Holland, spending the winter with them at Arnhem. When the British were driven back, he wandered from Rotterdam to Osnabruck and then to Bremen in a most unprincely way; little is known of his movements at that date but it is said poverty forced him to eat in the cheapest and most squalid inns, at the public table. Finally, in July 1795, a British warship arrived at Hamburg to take him to England.

  Already English and émigré troops had landed at Quiberon Bay, and had been swiftly routed by General Hoche, who shot all Royalist prisoners. The British government decided to try again, and to make use of Artois whom Louis XVIII had appointed Lieutenant-General of France. At the end of September Charles and a new expeditionary force of 4,000 men sailed from Portsmouth to land at Port-Breton on the Ile d’Yeu, just off the Vendéen coast. He contacted the Chouan leader, Charette de la Contrie, asking where he should join him on the mainland. Unfortunately Charette was cut off by General Hoche, who concentrated 50,000 men opposite the Ile d’Yeu. Frightful weather and an almost complete lack of supplies demoralized the Royalists, as more and more Republican troops arrived every day. On 18 November Artois took his expedition back to England. He was not cut out to be a Bonnie Prince Charlie.

  He dared not land at Portsmouth, where he faced arrest for debts contracted in equipping the émigré armies. Eventually arrangements were made for him to travel secretly to Edinburgh, where he moved into Holyrood House in January 1796; as a royal palace Holyrood conferred immunity from arrest, but he was only able to venture outside its grounds on Sundays. The gloomy palace, in the dark and squalid Old Town which better-class people had long since abandoned, was a crumbling ruin with few habitable rooms. Much of Charles’s allowance of £ 7,000 was spent in providing for indigent courtiers who, for lack of accommodation in the palace, were forced to take wretched lodgings in the Old Town. However he was comforted by the arrival of Louise. (He had completely lost contact with his wife, who eventually died in Austria in 1808.) For all the discomfort of Edinburgh, he had had quite enough of adventures. In 1797 he forbade another Vendéen rising. He wrote, ‘I refuse to authorize an insurrection in the Western Provinces—I cannot let myself be responsible for the useless shedding of blood.’

  Charles X in robes of state, by Gerard

  Henri V, Comte de Chambord

  Comtesse de Chambord

  In August 1799, Charles at last reached an arrangement with his creditors and left Edinburgh for London, where he rented a house, 46 Baker Street. Louise de Polastron found a little house just round the corner, 18 Thayer Street, which still exists; here Charles spent most of his time playing whist; he regarded failure to call on Louise as a personal insult. He also went into English society, Lady Harrington’s being a favourite drawing-room, where he often met the Prince of Wales. Mme de Boigne saw them both there, and says of Charles that ‘though his face was not so handsome as the Englishman’s, he had more grace and dignity while his bearing and way of dressing and manner of entering and leaving a room were incomparable.’ Not that Charles neglected the émigré community. He received once a week and gave three annual dinners—on New Year’s Day, St Louis’s Day and St Charles’s Day. He also made a point of visiting émigré schools, contributing to their maintenance. He even found time to be kind to the young Duc d’Orléans, Egalité’s son, who was shunned by most émigrés.

  Mme de Polastron had developed tuberculosis. It was aggravated by the foggy Edinburgh climate, and then by her cold damp bedroom in Thayer Street; in addition, her spirits were worn down by a nagging conscience—a devout Catholic, she never ceased to worry about the irregularity of her relationship with Charles. Everyone else saw a deterioration in her appearance, but he was too much in love to notice. Finally friends called in George III’s personal physician, Sir Henry Halford. His diagnosis was: ‘The patient is in the last stage of consumption, and I fear that it is already too late to stop it.’ On his instructions, Charles at once moved her into a stable, then an accepted cure for tuberculosis, in Brompton Grove (now Ovington Square). But it was obvious that Louise was failing, so she was taken back to Thayer Street, where Charles’s chaplain, Père Latil, forbade her to see her lover and made her prepare her soul. She died on 27 March 1804, aged forty.

  Louise’s final moments are described by the Duchesse de Gontaut, who was nursing her. Charles had at last been let in, to say goodbye. ‘She raised her hands to heaven and said, “A favour, Monsieur, grant me one request—give yourself to God, surrender yourself entirely to Him!” He fell on his knees and said, “As God is my witness, I swear it!” She repeated “Entirely to God!” Her head fell against my shoulder; that word was the last she uttered—she had ceased to breathe. Monsieur threw up his arms and uttered a dreadful scream.’ Charles confessed and communicated the same day, receiving the sacraments from Latil. Henceforward he was a changed man, who heard Mass daily and spent long hours in prayer.

  1804 was altogether a wretched year for him. In March the last serious Royalist plot against Napoleon failed; of its leaders, the Chouan Cadoudal was shot and General Moreau exiled, while General Pichegru committed suicide. Axel Fersen met Charles that autumn and says in his memoirs, ‘He was kind enough to read me the entire account of the recent conspiracy involving Pichegru and Moreau. The whole plan had been his idea.’ In May Bonaparte proclaimed himself ‘Napoleon I, Emperor of the French’. The King had written from Mittau to condole with Artois on Louise’s death, and at the King’s suggestion he joined him in Sweden in October; they had not met for ten years and fell into each other’s arms in tears. Together they issued a formal protest at Bonaparte’s usurpation. But nobody took the Bourbons seriously any more.

  Charles went back to Baker Street and his whist parties. Later he moved in with the King at Hartwell. His sons lived there too, though Berry spent most of his time with Amy Brown and their children (there were even rumours of a secret marriage which had later to be annulled by the Pope). However, Angoulême, that ugly and ungracious little man, did not stray—his wife ruled him with an iron hand. It was said that Artois looked the grand seigneur as much as his sons behaved like plebeians. None the less, London society lionized them.

  Hope revived in 1813, when Napoleon’s reverses became serious. In January 1814 Artois sailed from Yarmouth, landing in Holland, and event
ually entered Franche Comté by Switzerland. But most Frenchmen had forgotten the Bourbons, while the allies, who were still thinking of coming to terms with Napoleon, ignored him. However, everything changed when, on 6 April, the French Senate offered the crown to Louis XVIII.

  On the morning of 12 April 1814 Artois, in his capacity of Lieutenant-General and escorted by Napoleonic Marshals, rode into Paris on a white horse, wearing the blue and silver uniform of the National Guard. Still a strikingly handsome man at fifty-seven, he made a most felicitous speech, ending with the words, ‘Nothing is changed, save that there is one more Frenchman.’ The streets rang with shouts of ‘Vive les Bourbons! Vive le Roi! Vive Monsieur!’ as he rode to Nôtre-Dame to give thanks. Some people actually embraced his knees. When Charles entered the Tuileries he was asked if he was tired; he replied, ‘Why should I be tired? This is the first happy day I have known for thirty years.’

  He was ruler of France for nearly three weeks. But while he charmed the Marshals’ wives, his liking for gentlemen of the Ancien Régime and open contempt for the achievements of the past twenty years made many people uneasy. He seems to have expected to remain in power, with his brother as a mere figurehead; his motive being not so much ambition as a profound distrust of Louis’s moderate policies. But Louis XVIII, who entered Paris on 3 May, was determined to reign. The Duc de Duras asked him whether the crown was truly re-established. Louis replied, ‘It will stay in our hands if I outlive my brother. But if he outlives me, then I guarantee nothing.’

  When the Hundred Days came, Charles went to the provinces to try and rally support. On hearing that the King had fled, he gave up hope and, escorted by 300 picked cavalry, rode to Belgium where he joined his brother. During the uncertain days at Ghent, he was obviously convinced that Louis’s moderation was responsible for their misfortunes. He had always considered that a show of firmness could have stopped the Revolution in 1789; now he believed that the concessions made to the Revolution had paved the way for Napoleon’s return.

  After the royal family came back to Paris in 1815, Artois steadily opposed Louis XVIII’s moderate policies, though never in public. But everybody knew Monsieur’s real opinions, that he was encouraging the White Terror. However, the dissolution of the Chambre Introuvable in 1816 put an end to the Ultra majority and diminished his political influence.

  Artois was not quite so foolish as is generally assumed. The Ultras were much more than a mere mob of blimpish backwoodsmen; they intended to rebuild, rather than resurrect, the Ancien Régime, and their political ideas were so far removed from pre-1789 attitudes as to constitute a Revolution of the Right. They were not only men of the Emigration, but also the heirs of the Notables and Parlementaires of the revolte nobilaire of 1787; they accepted Parliamentary government readily, as a means of controlling the King and of perpetuating their own power. And Charles, far from being an Absolutist, believed that a strong monarchy in partnership with a strong ruling class offered the best hope of a lasting Restoration.

  The Ultras possessed two formidable political thinkers in Louis de Bonald and Joseph de Maistre, the ‘Prophets of the Past’. Bonald, arguing that the traditional social order had been divinely revealed, proposed an alliance of ‘Throne and Altar’. The Comte de Maistre regarded the ideas of the Enlightenment and the Revolution as Satanic in origin; because of Original Sin men could not be made good simply by restructuring society; the only solution was a rigidly hierarchical society based on ultramontane Catholicism. His belief that ‘Spiritual absolutism is the sole principle of stability and continuity’ has something of Orwell’s 1984 about it, as does his grim Eulogy of the Executioner—‘take away from the world that incomparable agent and in a moment order becomes chaos.’ Bonald and de Maistre were supported by translations of Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution, while Romanticism and the emotional Christianity of Chateaubriand supplied the enthusiasm. To be a true Ultra, one had to be a pious Catholic; as a modern historian has written, ‘Gone was the frivolous, Godless aristocracy of Ancien Régime France; in its place was a spiritually and politically regenerated caste.’

  Charles was unmistakably a man of the nineteenth century, in contrast to Louis XVIII who always remained one of the eighteenth. He readily adopted the new political ideas, corresponding with de Maistre while still in exile. If he did not share his brother’s literary tastes, one need not believe that ‘he never read a book’; we know he was familiar with both de Maistre’s and Bonald’s political writings and with Scott’s novels. His weakness came not from stupidity—although admittedly he was only of mediocre intelligence—but from invariably seeing things as he wished them to be. Unfortunately this was a fault common to almost his entire circle of friends and advisers. Lady Morgan observed in 1816, ‘There appears, indeed, among these ardent royalists a resolute determination to see every object through the medium of their own wishes.’

  Throughout Louis’s reign, Charles vehemently opposed any policy of compromise with the Liberals. On one occasion he threatened to leave the Tuileries with his sons, whereupon the infuriated King screamed that there were still prisons for rebellious princes. In 1818 Charles actually begged Wellington to stay with his army of occupation. In the summer of that year there were rumours that he was plotting to seize the throne, the so called ‘Conspiracy of the Water’s Edge’, but so desperate a course was out of character, though he considered the policies of Richelieu and Decazes disastrous—‘a programme which includes persecution of the King’s friends and of those of the realm and contempt for monarchical institutions.’

  If he was unhappy about his brother’s government, Charles was content with his family. He quickly took to his new daughter-in-law, Caroline de Berry. After the sadness of a grandson and a grand-daughter dying in infancy, he was overjoyed at the birth of a healthy child in September 1819, Louise-Marie-Thérèse. She was given the ancient title of ‘Mademoiselle’.

  Charles was heartbroken by Berry’s murder in 1820. He also realized that the dynasty faced extinction; Angoulême was impotent, while even Purs admitted that he seemed unfitted to be King, with no thoughts beyond his hounds and his chess. In tears, Charles actually discussed the possibility of remarrying with his friend Vitrolles, who suggested the sister of Ferdinand VII of Spain, the widowed Duchess of Lucca; he was sufficiently interested to ask Vitrolles what she looked like, but abandoned the idea when Caroline de Berry gave birth to her miraculous son.

  His grandson became the most important person in Charles’s life. Young Henri and Mademoiselle watched constantly from the windows of the Elysée, where they lived, for the arrival of his fast little phaeton and then ran eagerly to greet ‘Bon-papa’ who was more like a father than a grandfather. He let them do literally what they wanted; when Sir Thomas Lawrence was painting his portrait, Charles refused to send his grandchildren out of the room, although they were tormenting both Sir Thomas and himself.

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

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

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

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