King of France

“ There is every reason why you and your gallant companions should enjoy the favors of that crown your efforts have placed upon the head of the King of France. Your true and fitting station is around the throne your bravery and devotion have restored. But as for us,—we who have fought and marched, have perilled limb and life, to raise the fortune and elevate the glory of him who was the enemy of that sovereign,—how can we be participators in the triumph we labored to avert, and rejoice in a consummation we would have died rather than witness? ”

“ Such knights and squires as were not rich, but eager for renown, were delighted, and said to each other: 'Lord! what fine times are coming, since the king of France intends to visit us! He is a valiant sovereign, and of great enterprise. There has not been such a one in France these three hundred years. He will make his people good men-at-arms, and blessed may he be for thinking to invade us, for certainly we shall all be slain or grow rich. ”

“ RECENT DEATHS. LOUIS PHILIPPE, EX-KING OF THE FRENCH. The vicissitudes of kings form an impressive chapter in the history of Europe; and one of the most striking episodes in the narrative is the checkered life of the last king of France—one week among the mightiest monarchs on the loftiest pinnacle of ambition, he was, the next, an exile in a foreign land—his past supremacy almost forgotten. ”

“ I love it, and would wish to maintain it with all my power, for our Christian Faith; it is not I who should be prevented from going to Church and hearing Mass! As to the good deeds I have done and my coming to the King, I must wait on the King of Heaven, who sent me to Charles, King of France, son of Charles, who was King of France. You will see that the French will soon gain a great victory, that God will send such great doings that nearly all the Kingdom of France will be shaken by them. ”

“ His Royal Highness's intelligence, labours, and devotion fit him for the first place in the Royal House of France, after H. R. H. the Comte de Chambord. May the day be long distant ere H. R. H. the Comte de Paris can be King of France; but if ever His Royal Highness does wear the Crown, he will never disgrace the Throne, for few Frenchmen in the records of French History have been born with such mental gifts and such promising signs of a happy reign as the present Heir-Apparent to the French Crown. ”

“ As to any advantages which the imperial crown may bring, we think that our sovereign, the King of France, who is raised to the throne by the hereditary nobility of his royal blood, is high above an Emperor who owes his elevation to an election which may be refused. ”

“ France is a country of plains, Henry, and consequently a Catholic country. The King of France ought to be the king of the Catholics and not the king of the Huguenots, for the King of France ought to be the king of the majority. ”

“ The King of France must be a great actor. He must appear to his people as in reality a king-stately, dignified, and beyond all other human beings in his remarkable presence.
When the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette came to the French court King Louis XV. kept up in the case the same semblance of austerity. He forbade these children to have their sleeping-apartments together. He tried to teach them that if they were to govern as well as to reign they must conform to the rigid etiquette of Paris and Versailles. ”

“ PRINCESS OF FRANCE. Doth this man serve God? BEROWNE. Why ask you? PRINCESS OF FRANCE. 'A speaks not like a man of God his making. ARMADO. That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too too vain, too too vain; but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement! Exit ARMADO KING. Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate, Alexander; Arinado's page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas Maccabaeus. ”

“ The King, the master of France, had entered and was facing the crowd. And a truly royal figure he made in his splendid dress, for Louis XV. knew how to present himself as a worthy grandson of the Sun God who had created Versailles and made monarchy in Europe sublime: the pose of his handsome head, the dignity of his carriage, the matchless air of command that conveyed an air of majesty such as could only belong to one whose wish since boyhood was law, whose words were orders, whose will was the inspiration of a nation. ”

“ On his arrival at the door, the King of France began the usual ceremonial, and when he had gone on from genuflexions to kissing the feet, the hand, and the forehead, he stood up, while the first president of the Parliament of Paris, in his turn stepping forward, said in a loud voice:
"Very Holy Father, behold my king ready to offer to your Holiness that oath of obedience that he owes to you; but in France it is customary that he who offers himself as vassal to his lord shall receive in exchange therefor such boons as he may demand. ”

“ The French King was, in fact, at this period, the victim of his own vices; the sovereign of a great and powerful nation, without a home or a hearth, a wifeless husband, and a discontented lover; tenderly attached to all his children, and yet unable to confer a favour upon the offspring of one mother without incurring the resentment of the other; and while feeling himself degraded by the thrall in which he lived, totally devoid of the moral courage necessary for his escape from so disgraceful a bondage. ”

“ I should have displayed the difference between a constitutional Emperor and a King of France. The Kings of France have never possessed any administrative or municipal institution. They have merely shown themselves great Lords who were ruined by their men of business.
“The nation itself has nothing in its character and its tastes but what is transitory and perishable. Every 97thing is done for the gratification of the moment and of caprice, nothing for duration.... That is our motto, and it is exemplified by our manners in France. Every one passes his life in doing and undoing ”

“ With all Europe in arms against him, he, an old and broken-hearted man, contrived to preserve, by his fortitude and will, the territories he had inherited; and he died peacefully upon his bed, at the age of seventy-six, still the most absolute king that ever reigned in France. A man so strong, so fortunate until his latter years ”

“ His speech made a powerful impression; the sentence with which it concluded excited fresh acclamations, cries of "Bravo!" and "Vive le Roi!"—"Sire," said he, "how important in our eyes, and how dear to our hearts—how sublime a feature in our history—must be the epoch of that regeneration which gives citizens to France, and a country to Frenchmen,—to you, as a king, a new title of greatness and glory, and, as a man, a source of new enjoyment." The whole Assembly accompanied the King on his return, amidst the people's cries of happiness, military music, and salvoes of artillery. ”

“ Henry the Sixt, in Infant Bands crown'd King Of France and England, did this King succeed: Whose State so many had the managing, That they lost France, and made his England bleed: Which oft our Stage hath showne; and for their sake, In your faire minds let this acceptance take. ”

“ Moreover, his lord paramount, the King of France, had promised to maintain him in his duchy. The nobles were loath to accept as their future ruler one whose illegitimacy for various reasons was considered more disgraceful than that which tarnished the shield of many of his ancestors, but being in some degree constrained, perhaps surprised, by the sudden action of their masterful duke, they consented and acknowledged themselves the “men” of the little bastard. ”

“ The Emperor got out of his litter and entered Paris mounted on a black horse richly caparisoned with the arms of France, sent him by the King his nephew, who came out to meet him mounted on a tall white charger wearing a scarlet robe, mantle and hat covered with pearls, with a great train of nobles and chevaliers gorgeously dressed attended by their followers wearing their liveries, the officers of the households of the King and the Dauphin in immense numbers dressed according to their grades. ”

“ The said traitors seeing that the said Duke and his council would not aid and succour them, nor follow their ways, privily departed out of his country into France, there taking themselves to be under the obedience of the King's ancient enemy Charles, calling himself King of France ”

“ The king of France, by the advice of the duke of Burgundy, summoned the greater part of the princes, prelates, heads of universities, and principal citizens of the great towns, to Paris, to consider on several matters of great importance to the kingdom in general, and more especially respecting the reformation of his ministers, who had for a long time very ill governed the realm. ”

“ Troubled, leaning on Necker, descends the King, to his chamber of council; shady mountains <10>
In fear utter voices of thunder; the woods of France embosom the sound;
Clouds of wisdom prophetic reply, and roll over the palace roof heavy,
Forty men: each conversing with woes in the infinite shadows of his soul,
Like our ancient fathers in regions of twilight, walk, gathering round the King;
Again the loud voice of France cries to the morning, the morning prophecies to its clouds. <15>
For the Commons convene in the Hall of the Nation. ”

“ France, in the exercise of a right which few in America will question, had, in imitation of the United States, and incited by their example, renounced the monarchical form of government, and established a republic. For centuries uncounted, voluptuous kings and licentious nobles had trampled the oppressed millions into the dust. But now these millions had risen in their majesty, and driving the king from his throne and the nobles from their wide domains, had taken their own interests into their own hands. ”

“ In this country were no plots and schemings about succession. Here the King's son came to the throne under the will of the people. This country was never disturbed by struggles to get a good ruler. This country always had a good ruler, that is the will of the people.
What a miserable spectacle France, great France, chivalric France presented now! How many pretenders were there to the throne?--to the presidential chair? There were the Legitimists, and the Orleanists, and the Napoleons, two branches of Napoleons, and a dozen aspirants to the presidency! ”

“ Low he fell down on his bended knee.
'What news, what news, my trusty page?
What is the news you have brought to me?'
'I have brought such news from the king of France
That you and he will never agree. ”

“ Pity and righteousness shall be restored. There shall be a treaty of peace, and all men shall of their own accord return to the King, which King shall weigh justice and administer it unto all men and preserve his subjects in beautiful peace. Henceforth no English foe with the sign of the leopard shall dare to call himself King of France [added by the translator] and adopt the arms of France, which arms are borne by the holy Maid. ”

“ The French nation had been so accustomed to attach an idea of everything noble, lofty, and magnificent to the royal name and person, especially during the stately and sumptuous reign of Louis XIV., that they could not at first tolerate the idea of royalty being in any degree mingled with matters of traffic and finance, and the king being in a manner a banker. It was one of the downward steps, however, by which royalty lost its illusive splendor in France, and became gradually cheapened in the public mind. ”

“ The accession of that idea carried nature, at that time, as high as she could go;—I was at peace with the world before, and this finish’d the treaty with myself.—
—Now, was I King of France, cried I—what a moment for an orphan to have begg’d his father’s portmanteau of me! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Lastlie, that either of them should assist other, in recouerie & conquest of their rights, lands, and dominions, occupied, withholden, and kept from them, by him that called himselfe king of France, and other the princes and barons of France. ”

“ Unless deliberately ignoring the History of France before 1792, surely no one will contend that a King on the Throne of France will prove a step in advance from complexity to simplicity in settling the internal and foreign difficulties of Europe, unable as we are, to do without France. As to political farceurs, suspicious minds and interested partisans of the Imperial or Republican confraternities, we do not expect to see them accept our views. Calamities never teach wisdom to fools. ”

“ But far more remarkable, as a characteristic of this century, than the lowering of the rank of England in relation to foreign states, is the rise, for the first time in Europe, of a figure hitherto unknown,—a true, unshackled, and absolute king, and that in the least likely of all positions and in the person of the least likely man. This was the appearance on the throne of France of Louis the Fourteenth. ”