Charles X of France

“ Oh, nothingness! Oh, mortals ignorant of their destinies!" It is not enough that contending dynasties dispute each other's crowns; their covetousness and rivalry must extend to their tombs. Not enough that sovereigns have been exiled from their country; they must be exiled from their graves. Disappointments in life and in death. This is the last word of divine anger, the last of the lessons of Providence.
V THE KING
Born at Versailles, the 9th of October, 1757, Charles X., King of France and Navarre, was entering his sixty-eighth year at the time of his accession to the throne. ”

“ This inconsistent prince soon exhausted his popularity, and remained the fanatical head of those émigrés who had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. While the opposition Charles X. became conservative as regards the Charter and French liberties, the king and the clerical party surrounding him challenged the spirit of modern France by a law against sacrilege, by a bill for re-establishing the right of primogeniture, by an indemnity of a milliard francs, which looked like compensation given to the émigrés, and finally by the “loi de liberté et d’amour” against the press. ”

“ The next day the Debats said:—
"So here is once more broken the bond of love and confidence that was uniting the people to the Monarch. Here once again are the court with its old rancors, the Emigration with its prejudices, the priesthood with its hatred of liberty, coming to throw themselves between France and her King. What she has conquered by forty years of travail and misfortune is taken from her; what she repels with all the force of her will, all the energy of her deepest desires, is violently imposed upon her. Ill-fated France! ”

“ Had either Charles X. or Louis Philippe been foreign conquerors, and the state of Europe had permitted of their waging war with success, they would have lived and died on the throne of France, and left an honoured crown to their successors. There never were monarchs who mowed down the population and wasted the resources of France like Napoleon and Louis XIV.; but as long as they were successful, and kept open the career of elevation to the people, they commanded their universal attachment. ”

“ Close upon the election of Charles V as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire came the first of a series of wars between that sovereign and Francis I, King of France, who had been Charles's rival for the imperial crown. The Emperor was at this time, 1521, favored by Henry VIII of England, and a secret treaty with Charles was finally concluded by Pope Leo X, who from the first had hesitated between the two young rivals, and who had already treated with Francis. The papal support proved the foundation of future power for Charles in Italy. ”

“ Another idea which has become as general is, that the statesman who had played so conspicuous a part in all our revolutions, from that of 1789 to that of 1830, and had lent with such good grace to each successive government the aid of his splendid talents—whose word, indeed, seemed to decide upon their very existence—was no stranger to the struggles and intrigues which ended in the downfal of Charles X., and the banishment of his dynasty from the soil of France. ”

“ These dignitaries carried the precious relic to the high altar, consecrated it, and anointed the king with a solemn ceremony highly edifying to the observers, and greatly gratifying to the vanity of the new monarch.
It cannot be said that this ceremonious proceeding appealed to the people of France. It was the nineteenth century, and the Revolution lay between the new and the old age. All men of wit laughed [Pg 296] at the pompous affair, and five years afterwards the people of Paris dispensed with Charles X. as their king, despite the flavor of coronation that hung about him. ”

“ When France passed from the rule of the Bourbons, represented by Charles X, to that of the Orleanists, in the hands of Louis Philippe, the "Citizen King" (July, 1830) , great hopes were entertained by the constitutional party that this renewal of the monarchy through the "July Revolution" would result in permanent benefits. At first the new King enjoyed great popularity. In some respects his government, compared with that of Charles X, was liberal, and one of its early acts was an extension of the suffrage by decreasing the amount of the property qualification for voters. ”

“ CHARLES X. (1757–1836) , king of France from 1824 to 1830, was the fourth child of the dauphin, son of Louis XV. and of Marie Josephe of Saxony, and consequently brother of Louis XVI. He was known before his accession as Charles Philippe, count of Artois. At the age of sixteen he married Marie Thérèse of Savoy, sister-in-law of his brother, the count of Provence (Louis XVIII.) . His youth was passed in scandalous dissipation, which drew upon himself and his coterie the detestation of the people of Paris. ”

“ During this storm without, Charles X. was saying to me indoors:
"I am busy correcting the act establishing my 'Government' in Paris. You will have M. de Villèle as your colleague, as you asked, and the Marquis de La Tour-Maubourg and the Chancellor [264] ."
I thanked the King for his goodness, while wondering at the illusions of this world. Society crumbles to pieces, monarchies come to an end, the face of the earth is renewed, and Charles in Prague establishes a "government" in France, after "taking the opinion" of his Council! Let us not jeer overmuch: which of us but has his delusions? ”

“ The envoys on reaching Paris were met by the words: "Too late! The throne of Charles X. has already passed from him in blood."
The king, however, confident that after such concessions the revolt was at an end, played whist during the evening, while the Duc d'Angoulême sat looking over a book of geography. At midnight, however, both were awakened to hear the news from Paris, and then Charles X.'s confidence gave way. He summoned his new prime minister and sent him on a mission to the capital. ”

“ His brother, Charles X., the youngest of the three grandsons of Louis XV. (Louis XVI., Louis XVIII. Charles X.) , the Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X. emigrated in 1789, and went to Turin and Mantas for 1789 and 1790. In 1791 and 1792 he lived at Coblenta, Worms, Brussels, Vienna, and at Turin. From 1792 to 1812 he lived at Ham on the Lippe at Westphalia at London, and for most of the time at Holyrood, Edinburgh. During this time he visited Russia and Germany, and showed himself on the coast of France. In 1818 he went to Germany, and in 1814 entered France in rear of the allies. ”

“ His brothers having been killed at the States of Blois in 1588, he declared himself chief of the League, and assumed the title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom and crown of France; and by virtue of this self-created authority, caused the Cardinal de Bourbon to be declared King, under the name of Charles X. Having inherited the hatred of his brothers for Henri III, and his successor Henri IV, he marched eighty thousand men against the latter Prince, but was defeated, both at Arques and Ivry. ”

“ But attention grew very lively when the Prince made the following declaration:
Abdication of Charles X.
"Peers and deputies,
"So soon as the two Chambers are constituted, I will communicate to you the act of abdication of His Majesty King Charles X. By the same act, Louis Antoine of France, the Dauphin, likewise renounces his rights. This act was placed in my hands at eleven o'clock last night, the 2nd of August. This morning I have ordered it to be deposited in the archives of the House of Peers and to be inserted in the official part of the Moniteur." ”

“ He had been Minister of War, and of Foreign Affairs, and distinguished himself under the Duke of Angouleme, during the Spanish Expedition. But under the Revolution and the Empire, he had served in the Russian army, and this did not render him popular. The Abbe Vedrenne, in his VIE DE Charles X., wrote:—
"To watch over the person of the son of France, not quitting him night or day; to make sure that the rules of his education are followed in the employment of his time, in the routine of his lessons; to let no one save persons worthy of confidence come near him ”

“ An interesting judgment of him is contained in Queen Victoria’s Letters, vol. i., in a letter of Leopold I., king of the Belgians, to the queen before her accession, dated the 18th of November 1836, “Poor Charles X. is dead. . . . History will state that Louis XVIII. was a most liberal monarch, reigning with great mildness and justice to his end, but that his brother, from his despotic and harsh disposition, upset all the other had done and lost the throne. Louis XVIII. was a clever, hard-hearted man, shackled by no principle, very proud and false. Charles X. an honest man, a kind friend,” &c. ”

“ On his return to the Tuileries he went at a slow pace, paused often to receive petitions, handed them to one of his suite, and responded in the most gracious manner to the homage of which he was the object. An historian not to be accused of partiality for the Restoration has written: "On entering the Tuileries, Charles X. might well believe that the favor that greeted his reign effaced the popularity of all the sovereigns who had gone before. Happy in being King at last, moved by the acclamations that he met at every step, the new monarch let his intoxicating joy expand in all his words. ”

“ CHAPTER XVIII. THE HOUSE OF BOURBON.
“The king is dead; long live the king!” Before Charles II passed away, weak and vacillating as he was, he bequeathed to his subjects a legacy of woe in the unfruitful “Wars of the Succession.” Finally, on his deathbed, through the influence of his confessor, and at the recommendation of Pope Innocent II, Charles made a will in favour of Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. When he received the news of this triumph, for which he had long been scheming, the French king joyfully exclaimed, “The Pyrenees no longer exist!” ”

“ Many addresses were delivered. "All contained the expression of the public love," said Marshal Marmont in his Memoirs, "and I believe that they were sincere; but the love of the people is, of all loves, the most fragile, the most apt to evaporate. The King responded in an admirable manner, with appropriateness, intelligence, and warmth. His responses, less correct, perhaps, than those of Louis XVIII., had movement and spirit, and it is so precious to hear from those invested with the sovereign powers things that come from the heart, that Charles X. had a great success. ”

“ Was not that for a pious sovereign the accomplishment of a sacred duty? It matters not; there were those who reproached him with this homage to the most memorable of misfortunes. They would have forbidden to Charles X. the memory of Louis XVI. Yet a king could hardly be asked to have the sentiments of a conventionnel, of a regicide. In their systematic and bitter opposition, the adversaries of the Restoration imputed to the royal family as a crime its very virtues and its piety. ”

“ By the march to Reims the French party, those Armagnacs reviled for their cruelty and felony, that little King of Bourges compromised in an infamous ambuscade, may have won advantages greater and more solid than the conquest of the county of Maine and the duchy of Normandy and than a victorious assault on the first city of the realm. By retaking his towns of Champagne and of France without bloodshed, King Charles appeared to advantage as a good and pacific lord, as a prince wise and debonair, as the friend of the townsfolk, as the true king of cities. ”

“ Here and there are heard cries of "Hurrah for the Charter! Hurrah for liberty of the press!" But they are drowned by those of "Long live the King!" Everything seems to go as he wishes, and Charles X. feels that the review, which his timid ministers regarded as dangerous, is an inspiration. So far it is for him only a triumph. But suddenly, as he appears in front of the Seventh Legion, he remarks the persistence with which a group of the Guards is crying, "Hurrah for the Charter!" The monarch perceives a sentiment of unfriendliness. ”

“ A striking mixture of races entered into the formation of this people, and the beginnings of the great modern nations into which the Frankish empire was divided brought to them varied elements of strength and a diversity of constituents that were to be commingled in new national characters and careers.
In 840 Charles the Bald became King of France, and his reign, both as king and afterward as emperor, continued for thirty-seven years, during which he proved himself to be lacking in those qualities which his responsibilities and the wants of his people demanded. ”

“ Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the control of Parliament, and since, in such an enterprise, he could not hope for effectual aid at home, it followed that he must look for aid abroad. The power and wealth of the King of France might be equal to the arduous task of establishing absolute monarchy in England. Such an ally would undoubtedly expect substantial proofs of gratitude for such a service. Charles must descend to the rank of a great vassal, and must make peace and war according to the directions of the government which protected him. ”

“ The Duchess of Berry was to preserve this confidence until the Revolution of 1830.
Charles X. had a kindly feeling, founded on very real sympathy, for the Duke of Orleans and all his family. During the Emigration, as under the reign of Louis XVIII., he had always maintained very cordial relations with the Duke, and had tried to efface the bad memories of Philippe Egalite. Charles X. was as confiding as Louis XVIII. was distrustful. Optimist, like all good natures, the new King would not believe evil. He attributed to others his own good qualities. ”