Dancing to the Precipice

by Caroline Moorehead

  In Paris, journalists wrote angry pieces about the censorship of the press and editors, in defiance of the ban, printed them. The weather turned very hot. Printers and journalists gathered in the streets. Trees were chopped down and turned into barricades; pavements were ripped up. At Saint-Cloud, the King went out hunting and the courtiers played whist. On 29 July came an attack on the Louvre: some of the troops defected to the insurgents, the elderly Lafayette again at the centre of the rebellion. In the rue Florentin, Talleyrand, ever in tune with the currents of disaffection, paused to dictate a sentence to his secretary: ‘At five minutes past twelve,’ he recorded, ‘the elder branch of the Bourbons has ceased to reign.’

  Next day, the weather still very hot, Paris was under siege: the banks, the stock exchange and the theatres stayed shut. Bands of young men gathered in the Champs-Elysées; young women attached tricolour cockades to their hats and belts. The name of Louis-Philippe was being openly discussed as a possible saviour of monarchy, a man who could both guarantee the rights of property and stability for the bourgeoisie and promise reform for the liberals. In the Tuileries, ministers found themselves isolated and powerless. From the windows of their lodgings in Versailles, Lucie and Frédéric listened for the noise of cannon or guns which might herald some kind of coup, much as they had once listened from Chantilly for the sounds that might have announced that Louis XVI had been rescued. It was the third time, Lucie reflected, that they had seen turmoil surround a king of France: Louis XVI, Louis XVIII and now Charles X. It was as if her entire adult life had been spent watching the rise and eclipse of kings.

  Though it was now clear that the reign of Charles X was over, there were still hopes among the ultras that the monarchy might be kept in Bourbon hands. But the Dauphin, the small, awkward, stammering Duc d’Angoulême–of whom a courtier had written ‘he is not a Prince, and even less so a man: he’s a nothing, a human envelope, that’s all’–had neither the presence nor the courage for the role.

  On the night of 30 July, the third day of what quickly became known as ‘Les Trois Glorieuses’, the three glorious days, the royal family left Saint-Cloud in a cortège of carriages on which the fleur de lys had been painted over, surrounded by bodyguards, cadets and horsemen. The Duchesse de Berri travelled on horseback, in men’s clothes, with two pistols at her waist.

  They had reached Rambouillet, where they planned to sit out the troubles, when they learnt that Louis-Philippe had agreed to become Lieutenant General of the kingdom. On 2 August, Charles X formally abdicated, stating that he wished that the 9-year-old Duc de Bordeaux, the Duchesse de Berri’s son, be crowned in his place, as Henri V. But it was all too late: the insurrection was gathering pace. The royal party took the road for Cherbourg, escorted by 800 men of the household. At one stop, there being no square table of the kind that etiquette demanded the King sit at, the sides of a fine round acacia one were chopped off to make it square. The heat was appalling. The cortège rumbled slowly on towards the coast in clouds of dust. On 16 August, with crowds lining the docks in total silence, the former Charles X and his family boarded two British boats for Cowes and another exile.

  When, in Versailles, Frédéric had learnt of the abdication he had not hesitated. Leaving Lucie and Cécile–Aymar was away hunting in the mountains–to make their way to Le Bouilh, he had set off immediately for Orléans, thinking that he might find Charles X there, preparing for a possible counter-attack. As with Louis XVI, 41 years before, he was ready, even at the age of 71, to die defending his king. Hearing that Charles was in fact on his way back to exile in England, Frédéric made his own way to Bordeaux.

  In Paris, there had been violent confrontations between loyal troops and insurrectionaries, leaving 150 soldiers and 600 civilians dead. On 9 August, Louis-Philippe accepted the crown. And after many discussions and debates about press freedom and individual liberties, about education and religion, about the electoral laws and franchise, a new France was hammered out, one that would combine the cross-currents of Romanticism with those of industrial expansion and capitalist enterprise. The July revolution brought to power an intellectual and liberal elite, whose model was England; the Duc de Broglie, Mme de Staël’s son-in-law, was appointed to the Ministry of Education, François Guizot, translator of Gibbon and Shakespeare, to the Ministry of the Interior. The country they confronted had an empty treasury, a disordered capital, a disaffected civil service and divided and suspicious European allies. But Louis-Philippe, anxious to please and to be liked, was determined to keep France at peace, and though there would now be eight months of social disruption, savage anti-clericalism, bankruptcies and unemployment, and fears that the bellicosity of the emotional left might lead to war with the rest of Europe, bit by bit order was restored.

  Talleyrand, the supreme conciliator, taking with him his niece Dorothée, set out for London, from which he had been expelled 36 years before, and where he would prove to be an exceptional ambassador. Though many of the old nobility regarded Louis-Philippe as a usurper, Mme de Boigne, Lucie’s cousin, considered him a giant among pygmies. And if writers like Hugo continued to think nostalgically of the lost douceur de vivre, the subtleties and nuances of another age, when sociability and worldliness were perceived as fundamentally important in themselves, they had also come to see them as insubstantial, even a little irritating.

  Frédéric, as ever, had acted impetuously and with honour, but with little regard for the consequences. From Le Bouilh, he had written to the Chamber of Peers a letter later reprinted in Le Moniteur, stating that having sworn an oath of loyalty to Charles X, he could not now in all conscience swear another to the King who had taken his place. Like Lucie–only more adamantly–he believed that the Bourbons alone were the legitimate kings of France, and that the Orléans branch could never be anything but pretenders. The consequences were not long in coming. Banished from the Chamber of Peers, he forfeited his 12,000 francs annual salary. Having resigned from the embassy of Turin, he lost his diplomatic wages. All that was left was a modest pension and the very small revenues from Le Bouilh and Tesson. Debts of 300,000 francs were still outstanding, and all hopes of holding on to either of the two properties were abandoned. Nor had there been any compensation for the lands and wealth lost during the revolutionary years.

  It was not in Lucie’s nature either to be reproachful or to complain. With winter coming, there were no immediate buyers for Le Bouilh, which, before a bridge was built over the Dordogne at Bordeaux, lay inconveniently far from the city. They had found the château very shabby, Lucie writing to Félicie: ‘Give me warning when you plan to come to stay, so that the only pair of sheets that is not covered in fleas can be washed.’ But were it not for their poverty, Lucie added, she would be perfectly content. She rose at six, or earlier, did lessons in history, geography and mathematics with Cécile, read, played music and discussed politics with Frédéric, and felt busy and useful.

  She had bought Le Cuisinier Royal–it was characteristic that it did not occur to her to lower her standards–and with it was teaching both herself and their single elderly servant to cook, dish by dish. In order to save money they ate only what Le Bouilh and its farm produced. Dinner was at six, after which the family gathered around the lamp to sew and play piquet, while Frédéric read aloud, as he had always done. Since the Princesse d’Hénin’s legacy had been stolen, Frédéric’s cousin, Mme de Maurville, was again living with them, but she had lost her memory and was often bad-tempered. Cécile, now 11, sewed beautifully. In October, in perfect soft autumn weather, peasants from all around Saint-André-en-Cubzac came to help pick the grapes, gathering twice a day in the courtyard of Le Bouilh to eat soup, meat and bread. ‘We are as peaceful as doves,’ wrote Lucie.

  Cholera, brought by the Russian army to Poland, had reached France. Its first cases in Paris had come soon after Lent, when some of the revellers, in their fancy dress, had fallen dying in the streets. There had been talk of witchcraft and poison, and the cholera, for which there was no
known cure, was moving to other parts of the country. ‘My one wish,’ Lucie wrote to her grandson Hadelin, ‘is to die the last in my family, so that I may nurse and take care of those I love, before I join them in a better world.’ She meant precisely what she said: her love for her family had always been and remained the strongest and most important thing in her life.

  It was not cholera, but misfortune of a different kind, one which they had not yet experienced, that hit them now.

  The revolution of 1830, which had brought the liberals to power, had been disastrous for those referred to as the Bourbon royalists, men who, like Frédéric, could not tolerate the idea of the Orléans branch on the throne. Of the 75 prominent generals under Charles X, 65 lost their jobs. The royal bodyguards were dismissed, along with many civil servants, administrators and deputies.

  No sooner had Charles X reached England than he made contact with those who remained loyal to him in France, and who were angry and apprehensive about what the July revolution might bring. After 40 years of swings of fortune, the royalists were masters of subversion and clandestinity. The west and south-west and the Vendée remained areas of known Bourbon support, with networks of secret societies and agents.

  Among those who had accompanied the deposed King to England was Auguste de la Rochejacquelein, Félicie’s husband, whose two brothers had perished in earlier Vendéen insurrections and who was himself a soldier. By birth and by inclination, Auguste was an ‘ultra exalté’. Félicie, for her part, still childless at 31, had grown up wild and boyish, her imagination fed on tales of Vendéen heroism, and, in spite of all Claire’s efforts to turn her into an elegant courtier, had preferred to learn to shoot, ride bareback and break in horses. Drawn to the Duchesse de Berri, whose lady-in-waiting she became, she had come to believe that the future for France lay in the sole remaining Bourbon heir, the young Duc de Bordeaux. Together, to the disapproval of the court, the two women often dressed up in men’s clothes and went out hunting; but though they frowned on such antics, the courtiers were also charmed by the Duchesse’s silky fair hair, and the energy that she put into creating pleasure for herself and those around her.

  After the Duchesse’s departure for London with Auguste and the court, Félicie retired to live in the Château de Laudebaudière in the Vendée, surrounding herself with a coterie of ardent royalists. Many of the young women, noted the local Prefect, M. de Sainte-Hermine, who had been ordered to keep an eye on them, were to be seen in men’s clothes. ‘An impenetrable air of secrecy reigns over the Château,’ he reported, ‘and only the initiates are party to its mysteries.’ He was right to be alarmed: Félicie and her friends were plotting.

  In England, Auguste and the Duchesse de Berri were busy making plans for an insurrection, convinced that if the legitimate monarchy, in the form of the 9-year-old Duc de Bordeaux, could be restored to France, then it would follow that legitimacy would triumph, not only in France, but throughout Europe. Neither Charles X, nor de Blacas, who had accompanied him to exile in England as he had once accompanied his elder brother, were quite as keen on the idea of a military uprising. But Auguste and the Duchess continued to make their plans, drawing comfort from the uneasy state of France in the first months of Louis-Philippe’s reign. In Holland, Mme de Cayla, Louis XVIII’s favourite, and M. Ouvrard, the rich financier with whom Thérésia Tallien had once lived, were both prepared to raise money for the cause. Military leaders were appointed from among the secret ultras to co-ordinate the insurrection, which was to be triggered by the Duchesse’s return to France when, so they believed, disaffected people all over France would rise and sweep the young Duc de Bordeaux to the throne. Since Auguste remained abroad, it was Félicie who took his place as commander of one section of the Vendée. She was a natural soldier, if somewhat severe and brusque, devoted to her followers, competent, obedient to superior orders and apparently fearless. From England, the Duchesse de Berri sent her a lock of her hair.

  It was at this point that Aymar entered the story. In 1830, Aymar was 24, an excitable, affectionate young man, whose passion for hunting had filled him with nostalgia for the romance and heroism of the Vendée. Lucie, for whom her sole remaining child possessed ‘a soul as pure as the purest mountain crystal’, admitted that even so he could be both unsophisticated and rough. Not long before, Aymar had met Félicie for the first time; he had been captivated by her high spirits and daredevil ways. Towards the end of 1830, with very little to keep him occupied at Le Bouilh, and hearing constant rumours about this possible uprising, he set out for Laudebaudière. There he found not only Félicie, but her friend, the sculptress Félicie de Fauveau, a manly-looking young woman whose uncompromising monarchist views and taste for the medieval and chivalric had won her fame in Paris. The château was full of young Bourbon royalists looking for adventure. Aymar joined the cause.

  In January, as he and one of the other young men were making their way to Bordeaux, they were stopped by police and questioned. Aymar, as his mother acknowledged, was capable of arrogance. Accused of criticising the new government and praising the Vendéen rebels, he was sent for trial to the assizes in Niort in May. A letter to Frédéric had been found on him in which he had written: ‘There will be war, I think; I don’t quite dare say, I hope; but that would be the truth, because it would be very hard to imagine the people any more unhappy than they are…’ At Niort, he was sentenced to three months in prison; though the sentence was quashed, 2,000 francs of the fast-dwindling de la Tour du Pins’ fortunes had gone in lawyer’s fees. At this stage, however, Lucie was still speaking of ‘this stupid little affair of my son’s’.

  By now, the Vendée had been split into separate sections to prepare for the uprising. But in September, when the different leaders–of whom Félicie was one–met to discuss tactics, it was agreed that it was too soon to act. To Auguste, Félicie wrote long letters calling for more guns, and more money, having by now gone through most of her own. Aymar had returned to the château of Laudebaudière and the little band of royalists passed their days training, recruiting men from among the local peasants and farmers and assembling weapons.

  Early in August 1831, Aymar was sent by Félicie to carry a message hidden in the leaves of an album to Auguste in Spain, where he was trying to raise men and money for the cause. Pausing in Bordeaux to get a passport, Aymar was spotted by police and arrested. Frédéric, who saw him taken away, hurried back to the inn where Aymar had been staying and took away the album and several kilograms of ammunition. Aymar himself, left alone in a room in which a fire was burning, seized the chance to burn the bundle of papers he was carrying. Just the same, he was conducted, in handcuffs, back to the Vendée, where police questioned him about his friends in the château of Laudebaudière. What he did not know was that the château had been searched, that crates of guns, sabres, pistols and ammunition had been discovered, and that most of the others were already in detention. Félicie, dressed as a servant, had escaped.

  Aymar was moved to the prison of La Roche-sur-Yon to await trial. Frédéric went with him, and took a room in the town, so that he could spend two hours every day with his son; Lucie stayed at Le Bouilh with Cécile. Three months later, Aymar was released for lack of evidence. To Félicie, Lucie wrote that their money was running very low, and that no buyer could be found for Le Bouilh. Everything that could be sold had already gone. ‘There are green leaves just appearing on the trees, but I, my dear child, am not growing green again, I am becoming old and obsolete and the vicissitudes of life no longer amuse me as they once did.’ Only her heart, she said, still felt warm, which was as well, for there was nothing in the world she so disliked as a cold heart.

  The Vendée, to the royalist leaders, at last felt ready for insurrection, the people stirred out of the lethargy into which the July revolution had plunged them by the brutality of the local gendarmerie. The Vendée was good guerrilla country, with thick forests of oak and chestnut, fast-running rivers and narrow roads winding between deep ditches which offered p
erfect cover. Scores of men, trained and armed, were believed to be waiting for the Duchesse’s signal. In April 1832, having wasted a certain amount of time wandering around Europe, the Duchesse de Berri landed in Marseilles. She was surprised to find very little support or excitement, and pushed on to Toulouse and then to Bordeaux, where she spent two nights at Le Bouilh with Lucie and Frédéric. ‘Henri V,’ she told her followers, referring to her son, ‘summons you to arms. His mother, regent of France, is committed to your well-being. Long live the King, long live Henri V.’

  The Duchess travelled on to the Vendée. But still the uprising did not come. Supporters shrank away, back to their farms and villages, saying that their weapons, left so long hidden in damp places, had rusted. In Paris, the staunch Bourbon royalists, Chateaubriand and Fitz-James, said that they could do nothing as they were being watched. Support that might have come from the Tsar of Russia or Metternich did not materialise.

  Still the Duchess pressed on, using the code name of Petit Pierre, losing men in skirmishes with police and soldiers, making forced marches by night, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback, struggling on through driving rain over rocky ground. She was dressed as a peasant, her face smeared with mud. Aymar, terrified lest he miss out on the fighting, set out to join her. Hidden in Nantes by an elderly royalist, he met up with other supporters and they walked all through vineyards and along river banks, guided by loyalists.

  But the moment had been lost; all element of surprise had vanished. When small bands of men did rise up and attack police stations and barracks they were easily rebuffed. The weather had turned cold and very wet: the rain poured down, soaking the rebels and their ammunition. The government soldiers, meanwhile, well fed, well equipped, and in far greater numbers, had no difficulty defeating them. When Aymar and his men attacked a village, burnt the tricolour flag and rang the church bells, it was all too late. The insurrection had collapsed.