Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  On 8 July he wrote to announce the fall of Algiers and to discuss the benefits of founding a French colony in Algeria. The letter arrived at Versailles on 26 July, the day that the Revolution of 1830 broke out.37

  The elections had turned out disastrously for the Ultras, and left the King with no sensible alternative to dismissing Polignac and sending for the Liberals. But he did not see it like that; rather, he thought the time had come to assert his royal right once for all and stage the coup d’état which had been rumoured for months. He was one of those returned émigrés of whom Talleyrand said so accurately that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He had the professional deformation of a pre-Revolutionary king: he hated to relinquish power as old men (he was that too) hate the loss of sexual potency. So it is not surprising that he wanted to reduce the free institutions of the new France to mere façades, as Nicholas II, another stupid monarch, gradually emptied the 1905 Russian constitution of its meaning, with even more disastrous results. Then, as leader of the Ultra party, Charles could not contemplate sharing power with another faction. As both King and party chieftain, his motives were so mixed together as to be inseparable. At any rate, on Sunday, 25 June 1830, saying, ‘the more I think about it, the more I remain convinced that it is impossible to act otherwise,’ he signed the famous ordonnances, the four decrees which led directly and almost immediately to the collapse of his monarchy.38

  The ordonnances were, respectively, a decree dissolving the newly elected Chamber of Deputies before it had ever met; a second, reducing the already tiny electorate by 75 per cent, thus weighting it even further in favour of the rich, and by various devices weighting it still more in favour of landed wealth as opposed to urban, industrial, commercial or financial varieties; a third, calling new elections for September; and finally, most explosive of all, a decree abolishing freedom of the press – in future no periodical and no pamphlet of less than twenty pages might be published without authorization, which might be withdrawn at any time and anyway had to be renewed every three months. This ordonnance supplemented the already severe press law of 1826, which provided for the suppression of books deemed dangerous. When published in the Moniteur, the official newspaper, the decrees would be accompanied by a long official document almost entirely given over to abusing the opposition newspapers, which had had the impudence to carry elections against the Crown: ‘We no longer enjoy the ordinary conditions of representative government ... A turbulent democracy is tending to substitute itself for legitimate authority.’ It was therefore only right that the King had invoked Article 14 of the Charter and its emergency powers: by this means the Charter and its institutions could not only be saved, but strengthened. As David Pinkney comments, ‘In the usual manner of makers of coups d’état the ministers justified violation of the constitution by an appeal to the constitution.’ All these documents were to appear in the Moniteur on Monday, 26 July. When asked by one of the ministers what he thought of them the paper’s editor replied, ‘God save the King and France! Gentlemen, I am fifty-seven, I saw all the journées of the Revolution and I am absolutely terrified.’ But the prefect of police swore by his head that Paris would not stir.39

  The ordonnances were a deliberate attempt to undo some of the most important work of the Revolution. July 1830 was like 1789 all over again; it was like Louis XVI’s clash with the Estates-General that led to the Oath of the Tennis-Court, the creation of the National Assembly and the attack on the Bastille. Ministers did not expect such resolute and successful opposition this time, and made no preparations to deal with any at all. All they could think about was keeping the ordonnances secret until the last minute. They did not even forewarn Marshal Marmont, whom they relied on to keep order in Paris: he learnt the news only by borrowing a copy of the Moniteur from the Dutch ambassador. The decrees became public knowledge during Monday morning. Alexis de Tocqueville, who had spent Sunday and Sunday night with his parents in the rue de Verneuil, had already left for Versailles when the Moniteur appeared. As the news spread the implications of the press decree were immediately obvious: apart from silencing political debate, it would put a great many journalists and printers out of work, and times were hard. Groups of workers and students began to form in the streets, particularly in and round the Palais-Royal; they shouted ‘Vive la Charte! A bas les ministres!’ The Liberal opposition was taken entirely by surprise: many of the newly elected deputies had not yet got back to Paris from electioneering in their constituencies. The leaders could not think what to do, and were afraid of the government. The Constitutionnel and the Journal des débats decided to take no risks and to forgo publication next day. But the radicals gathered at the offices of Le National and put out a protest, written by Thiers, against the illegality of the ordonnances. It was immediately printed and distributed throughout Paris. In the evening, after the police had seized a print-shop in the Palais-Royal, the crowd grew riotous, breaking the windows of the ministry of finance and stoning Polignac’s carriage as the président du conseil went to his office. The prefect of police reported to the minister of the interior that tranquillity reigned in all parts of the capital. ‘No event worthy of attention is recorded in the reports that have come to me.’ Government stocks fell four points on the Bourse (and would fall eight points on Tuesday).40

  The King spent the day hunting at Rambouillet, like Louis XVI on 14 July 1789.

  Madame de Boigne was less complacent. She was employing thirty workmen on alterations to her house, and on Tuesday morning (27 July) they told her that ferment was beginning to spread all over Paris. She had already been impressed by their intelligence, their politeness, and their skill; now, ‘I was still more struck by their arguments concerning the danger of these fatal ordinances, of which they understood the range and also the probable results. If our governors had been half as foresighted and prudent, King Charles X would still be living quietly at the Tuileries.’* None of her workmen appeared next day, Wednesday.41

  For the ferment was indeed spreading. On the Monday a meeting of employers at the Hôtel de Ville had decided to shut their businesses, in protest against the ordonnances, which among other things were a direct attack on the political aspirations of men of their type. So on Tuesday the streets of Paris were full of men unable to work: men angry, if not yet anxious, though most of them lived close to the subsistence level; men hot and thirsty (there was a heatwave all week); men idle: ripe for mischief. Among them were many printers, for the prefect of police had forbidden the publication of any newspaper without previous authorization, which none had yet received. Not all journals obeyed this injunction (Le Temps and Le National did not) but whether at work that day or not, all printers had reason for anxiety. The walls of the city were plastered with copies of Thiers’s protest. The police provoked trouble by seizing presses which had been used to defy the new regulations: there was a barricade and a scuffle at the office of Le Temps. Crowds began to mill about the streets, tearing down royal coats-of-arms; there was some pillaging of gunshops. By mid-morning the King was sufficiently alarmed to send Marmont to restore order, but the marshal found, on arriving at the Tuileries, that Polignac, as acting minister of war, had done nothing to get a body of troops together, and it took hours to assemble one. Meanwhile a meeting of thirty of the newly elected deputies commissioned Guizot to draw up another protest. At much the same moment the first death occurred: a demonstrator at the Palais-Royal was shot by the police. Later, as Marmont’s men seized such strategic points as the Pont-Neuf and the place Louis XVI,* there were more casualties. The guardhouse at the Bourse was set on fire. Nevertheless, by nightfall quiet seemed to be returning, and Marmont sent a reassuring message to the King at Saint-Cloud. Unknown to him, twelve revolutionary committees were being formed for the various districts of Paris.42

  Wednesday, 28 July, was the decisive journée. At dawn the quartiers populaires rose in insurrection. A crowd of workers, former National Guards, students and ex-soldiers marched through the streets, cutting d
own trees to build barricades (the great revolutionary innovation of 1830), waving the tricolour and shouting ‘A bas les Bourbons! Vive la République! Vive l’Empereur!’ It was indeed 1789 all over again, but this time the royal forces were at an even greater disadvantage than formerly. In 1827 Charles X had petulantly dissolved the National Guard, the militia, but its members had kept their weapons and uniforms, and now it was re-forming – but not to defend the King. The long years of war had given a great many Frenchmen military training, including thousands of Parisians. The École Polytechnique, as Kergorlay had found, was full of young middle-class liberals, and trained them also in military science. There were many arsenals and gunshops in Paris: there would have been no need to loot the Bastille this time if it had been still standing. The women of Paris sat on their doorsteps moulding bullets for the insurrectionists; bands of men went from door to door borrowing weapons (which, according to Mme de Boigne, were scrupulously returned afterwards).43 Nor were targets of decisive importance lacking. The government was no longer remote at Versailles: its offices were in central Paris, all too close to the revolutionary districts. Finally, the troops of Charles X, besides being too few for their task, were even less reliable than those of Louis XVI had been: they showed a marked tendency to fraternize with the rebels, and even to desert. In the circumstances the crowd had a fairly easy job.

  Marmont’s men soon had to abandon the streets and retreat to the Louvre and the Tuileries. The crowd seized the Arsenal, the gunpowder stores at La Salpetrière, the Hôtel de Ville and Notre-Dame, where the polytechniciens quickly ran up a tricolour: anxious courtiers at Saint-Cloud could see its flutterings through telescopes (they could also hear the gunfire). The Banque de France was stormed. The great bell of Notre-Dame rang an incessant tocsin. By the end of the day Marmont had lost 2,500 men, ‘killed, wounded, captured, and above all deserters’.44 Reinforcements were ordered up from outside Paris, but they were to prove even less loyal than the soldiers already in combat, who were bitter because neither the King nor the Dauphin had come to join them. Instead the King played his usual evening game of whist, to a background of cannon-fire.

  His ministers continued to exhibit their incompetence. They encouraged Charles to refuse all concessions, and Polignac refused to meet the Liberal leaders bearing Guizot’s petition. As a result the Liberals, slowly mustering their courage, their wits and their convictions, began to see that the Bourbons would have to go. But who, or what, would replace them? The banker Lafitte was the first to mention the duc d’Orléans; but as yet the other Liberal deputies, still afraid that Polignac would win, could agree on nothing but the publication of Guizot’s protest; and the Parisians were growing angry and impatient at the failure of the deputies to offer any effective leadership.45

  During Wednesday night the insurgents continued to erect barricades (in the end there were 4,000). Early on Thursday morning (29 July) Marmont disposed his troops for the defence of the Louvre and the Tuileries: many of them were Swiss Guards, who uneasily remembered the massacre of 1792. Brisk fusillades from the palace windows kept the insurgents at a distance for a while, but the position of the Bourbon monarchy was worsening all the time. Mail-coaches flaunting tricolour flags were carrying the news to the provinces, which in response prevented effective reinforcements being sent to the garrison in Paris. At Saint-Cloud the King was vehemently urged by some of his supporters to withdraw the ordonnances and dismiss his ministers, but he had still not brought himself to do so when the news arrived that Marmont had been driven from the Tuileries. Finally, at 4 p.m., Polignac announced that a new ministry would be formed, pledged to withdraw the ordonnances, but it was too late. The Prince de Talleyrand, who from his windows had watched the royal troops fleeing the Tuileries gardens, had long since taken out his watch and observed, ‘Five past twelve. The elder line of the House of Bourbon has ceased to reign.’46 The prefect of the Seine (the comte de Chabrol, father of Tocqueville’s house-mate) was replaced at the Hôtel de Ville by General de La Fayette, now commander of the revived National Guard and the most popular man in Paris, and a so-called Municipal Commission, which was really a provisional government appointed by the Liberal deputies. Behind the scenes, intense pressure was mounted to induce the duc d’Orléans to assume the Crown – or, we may say, to pick it up on the point of his soon-to-be-famous green umbrella. Next day Mme de Boigne’s workmen came back to her, and ‘with an heroic simplicity’ told her of their exploits in the rising. Paris was papered with a fresh poster, beginning ‘Charles X can never return to Paris. He has caused the blood of the people to be shed.’ (The fact that this proclamation was drafted by Thiers is an irony too painful, in view of 1871, to contemplate for long.) ‘A republic would expose us to terrible divisions; it would embroil us with Europe. The duc d’Orléans is a prince devoted to the cause of the Revolution ... It will be from the people of France that he will hold his crown.’47 That evening the duc, who had been nervously hiding in the suburbs for the past four days, returned to the Palais-Royal, and next day went to the Hôtel de Ville to accept the lieutenancy-general of the realm – an interim step towards kingship. He and La Fayette appeared together on the balcony, wrapped in a tricolour flag, and were greeted with thunderous applause. On 1 August they met again, at the Palais-Royal, and there a conversation took place of such importance, not only to France, but to the story of Alexis de Tocqueville, that it must be recorded in full:

  LA FAYETTE: You know I am a republican and that I regard the constitution of the United States as the most perfect that ever existed.

  ORLÉANS: I think as you do; it is impossible to have spent two years in America* and not to be of that opinion; but do you believe that in France’s situation, in the present state of opinion, it would be proper for us to adopt that constitution?

  LA FAYETTE: No, what the French people must have today is a popular throne surrounded by republican institutions, completely republican.

  ORLÉANS: That is precisely what I think.48

  Ten days later everything had been settled: the chambers had met, the Charter had been revised (not very drastically) and Orléans was on the throne as King Louis-Philippe I. On 16 August Charles X and his family sailed from Cherbourg into permanent exile.

  And Tocqueville? There are only glimpses of him during the July Days, but together they tell a story. When the news of the ordonnances reached Versailles on the Monday (26 July) he apparently denounced them in public before the parquet, saying that they were illegal and should not, would not be enforced. It is a pity that we do not know more about this, his first political action, but it was sufficiently dramatic to alarm his father when he heard of it. On Tuesday morning he wrote a hasty note to Alexis: ‘Whatever you may think of the measures taken, I engage you to express yourself with restraint and moderation. You will easily realize that both sides will be much exasperated, and that the government, having taken such a decision, will have to break all opposition.’ (The comte did not yet believe that the Bourbons would fall.) ‘Young people, above all, must be prudent so as not to compromise their position, especially those who having most talent can excite most envy. For the rest, we will talk it over on Thursday. Until then, je t’embrasse bien tendrement.’ But when Thursday came Tocqueville, after writing a hasty note of reassurance to Marie (‘we can be sure that, a week from now, calm will certainly have returned to Paris’), had to escort his parents from the rue de Verneuil to Saint-Germain-en-Laye, where they took refuge with Édouard’s in-laws. It was a wise precaution, if only for the sake of Mme de Tocqueville’s nerves: that day the barracks of the Swiss Guard, on the nearby rue de Babylone, was attacked; but it was probably not an easy journey, for the revolutionary struggle was moving westward, and the area between the wall of Paris and Saint-Cloud was swarming with militants. And there was trouble at Versailles: the people had seized arms from the barracks of the royal bodyguard and invaded the town hall. The local National Guard was hastily resuscitated and Tocqueville enlisted in it. He had no in
tention of standing by to let royalists be massacred, or of being massacred himself. But what he had seen of events in Paris had already changed his political views quite radically. On Friday (30 July) he wrote to Marie that the Bourbons, not one of whom had gone out to lead or encourage the soldiers who were being killed in their service, were cowards, ‘and don’t deserve a thousandth part of the blood which has just been shed in their defence’. At dawn the next day (Saturday, 31 July) he was on guard on the outer boulevards of Versailles and saw the royal family go by on the first stage of their long retreat. The sad procession of coaches, in single file, reminded him of a funeral, and he wept to see them: ‘for I felt, even to the last, a residual, hereditary affection for Charles X.’

  Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade

  Of that which once was great is passed away.

  He returned to the National Guard headquarters and handed in his gun and ammunition, exclaiming to one of his comrades of the parquet, ‘There is nothing more to do, it’s all over ... I have just seen the hearse of the monarchy go by, the King, the House of France, the ministers ... would you believe it, the escutcheons on the royal coaches had been hidden with coats of mud.’* He was much moved, but he had finally made his choice: as he wrote twenty years later, ‘that king fell because he had violated rights which were dear to me, and I hoped that my country’s liberty would be revived rather than destroyed by his disappearance.’ He decided to take the oath of loyalty to Louis-Philippe.49

  * ‘Bread at twenty-four pence for eight pounds!’

  * In 1830 Talleyrand was on the other side, financing Thiers’s paper, Le National.