Hello and welcome to Revolutions.

Okay, so we have come now finally to our final episode on the Revolution of 1830. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as I have. And as you know, it’s all about the great sweeping arcs of history around here, so getting to do an hour-by-hour account of a sudden, sharp, and wholly unexpected revolution has been pretty dang fun.

So before our detour through the backstory on the Duc d’Orléans last week, we left off that hour-by-hour account in the early afternoon of Thursday, July 29th, 1830. The Swiss Guards had just retreated out of the Louvre, triggering a panic among Marshal Marmont’s remaining royal forces, and they all ran away together up the Champs-Élysées, leaving the Louvre and Tuileries palaces to be occupied by the Parisians who struck the white flag of the Bourbons and hoisted the tricolor.

Now, while this was all going on, King Charles X was at his palace at Saint-Cloud, still refusing to face the facts of the last few days. He was, after all, getting most of his advice from Prime Minister Polignac, and it still had not gotten through the King’s skull that Polignac was painting optimistic pictures that came mostly from the prime minister’s own oblivious imagination. Now, if you will recall from two episodes back, however, the Marquis de Sémonville had literally raced Polignac to Saint-Cloud on the morning of July 29th to try to break the King out of his stupor. Now Polignac, of course, continued to insist, “We’re fine. Everything’s fine. Don’t panic.” And Sémonville said, “No. This is a great time to panic. You’re about to lose everything. Here’s what you need to do: you have to immediately suspend the Four Ordinances, fire your entire ministry, and appoint a new one, and call for the immediate convening of the Chambers. This is the only way to neutralize the revolutionary momentum in Paris. Do you understand?”

Now, the King, of course, resisted this advice until he learned a few hours later that Marshal Marmont had been pushed out of Paris. So at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon, the King did what he swore he would not do. He caved. He told Sémonville, “Fine. I’ll rescind the Four Ordinances, create a new ministry, and recall the Chambers.” And for his new prime minister, the King selected the Duc de Mortemart, who was at that point 44 years old and had grown up in émigré exile in England but then returned to France as a teenager during Napoleon’s amnesty. After a distinguished career in the army, he was appointed to the Chamber of Peers by King Louis XVIII and was at that moment probably as qualified for the job of prime minister as anyone. But what really distinguished him at that moment was that he happened to be physically in Saint Cloud when the King needed a new prime minister. Mortemart was as shocked as anyone to find himself thrust into the job, especially because on July 29th, he was sick as a dog and suffering from a raging fever.

So, the Marquis de Sémonville had by now been joined by two of his colleagues in the Chamber of Peers, and after the King made these promises, the three of them rushed back to Paris to deliver the news. But they departed in such a hurry that none of this was officially signed or documented. And most fatally, Mortemart did not accompany them. Sick as he was, he decided to stay in Saint-Cloud, draw up some of those official declarations to officially confirm the King’s promises, and plan to take them to Paris in the morning. But as we have seen, the Bourbon response remains consistently 12 hours behind where it needs to be. Had Mortemart gone to Paris right away, the situation might have been salvaged. But by morning, it was going to be too late. 

Meanwhile, Sémonville and his two colleagues picked their way through the National Guard checkpoints that had now been established all around the city by Lafayette, and then once they got through those checkpoints to the center of Paris, they had to pick their way through the barricades that had been erected on every street. So it was not until 8:30 that night that the three Peers finally reached the Hôtel de Ville. There, they met with the members of that little municipal commission that had self-declared itself a provisional government at the end of Episode 6.05. In the timeline of the Revolution of 1830, that was all just about 4 hours ago. 

But lacking any kind of signed declaration from the King and without the presence of this alleged new Prime Minister Mortemart, the five municipal commissioners were rightly pretty skeptical. They certainly were not going to tell Paris to stand down on the word of a few breathless peers. It was not even clear if they could tell Paris to stand down. So, his long day of racing around, coming up short, the exhausted Sémonville left the meeting and went back to his own house to sleep. But his two younger colleagues continued on to the other center of power in Paris, the home of Jacques Lafitte. Now, Lafitte had, of course, already declared war on the Bourbons, but he was willing to at least listen if it was true that the King had caved to all demands. But again, without any proof, it’s not like Lafitte was just going to stop fighting. So he told the two peers, “Go back to Saint-Cloud, fetch Mortemart, and get him here immediately,” Lafitte said, “we’ll wait until 1 o’clock in the morning, and if he’s not here by then, then don’t bother coming at all.” So off the two Peers went back to Saint-Cloud to fetch Mortemart as fast as they could.

They finally got back to the royal palace at about midnight, and even if they had rushed in, shoved Mortemart in a bag, and then rushed back out again, it’s unlikely they would have met the 1 am deadline. And Mortemart was not going to get shoved into a bag. He was suffering from chills, and sweat, and a raging fever. Though to his credit, he was not just lying around in bed. Mortemart was up and working on those official declarations everybody kept asking about because he wanted to have them ready when the King woke up in the morning.

So, Instead of returning to Paris that night, the two Peers and Mortemart simply hoped that Lafitte’s 1 am deadline would not be a sticking point if they showed up in the morning with the promised proof. Spoiler alert: the 1 am deadline mattered. When the 1 am deadline came and went without any sign of Mortemart, Lafitte became more determined than ever to ensure that the Bourbons went down and were replaced by the Orléans. Now, before Lafitte headed off to bed, though, he got together with Adolphe Thiers and sent the aggressive little newspaperman, back at the offices of the National, to write a pro-Orléanist declaration, print it, and make sure it was plastered all over Paris by dawn. Thiers, with his enough gunpowder in his personality to blow-up six regimes, worked through the night, and on the morning of Friday, July 30th, the posters were up everywhere. It’s a pretty short declaration, so I’ll just read it to you here in full:

“Charles X can never again enter Paris. He caused the blood of the people to be shed. The Republic would expose us to frightful divisions. It would embroil us with Europe. The Duc d’Orléans is a Prince devoted to the cause of the revolution. The Duc d’Orléans never fought against us. The Duc d’Orléans was at Jemappes. The Duc d’Orléans carried the tricolor under fire. The Duc d’Orléans alone can carry it again. We want no others. The Duc d’Orléans has declared himself. He accepts the Charter as we have always wanted it. It is from the French people that he will hold his crown.”

Now, first of all, did you catch that “man of blood” rhetoric there at the top? Classic! But the most important part is the second-to-last clause: “The Duc d’Orléans declares himself, and he accepts the Charter as we have always wanted it.” This is, uh, really super not true. Again, it is now Friday, July 30th, and no one, not Lafitte, not Thiers, not anyone, had actually spoken to the Duc d’Orléans. He had not declared himself. Nobody knew what he accepted and what he did not. So, the opposition Deputies who had now morphed into this Orléanist faction reconvened at Lafitte’s house at about 8 am on July 30th and decided that if we’re going to keep going with this, we really ought to make sure Orléans is on board.

So, Lafitte dispatched Adolphe Thiers with a note for the Duc, saying that Thiers spoke for Lafitte and that they had an offer they wanted to make. With Charles having lost his legitimacy in the eyes of the people, they wanted to appoint Orléans Lieutenant General of the realm to assume temporary sovereignty until they all figured out what to do next. Now, the ultimate plan, of course, was to make Orléans King, but they weren’t sure Orléans was willing to go that far that fast. So, off went Thiers to meet with Orléans face to face and offer him the job of Lieutenant General.

So, question: Where on Earth has the Duc d’Orléans been through all of this? Well, like everyone else with the means to do so, the Orléans family had decamped Paris in these hot summer days of late July 1830. But they had not gone far. They were residing at their château at Neuilly. Today, Neuilly is just an outer neighborhood of Paris. But at the time, it really was out of town, about five miles northwest of the center of Paris. Like everyone else in France, the Orléans clan was totally in the dark about the Four Ordinances and were shocked when messengers arrived with the morning edition of The Moniteur on Monday, July 26th. Marie Amélie, the Duchess d’Orléans, brought the paper to her husband and said, “Well, dear, they’ve done it. They’ve mounted a coup d’état.” Orléans was mortified, and he said, “They’re mad. They’ll get themselves exiled again. Ugh, it’s already happened to me twice.” So the Orléans clan waited out Monday, trying to stay in contact with both Paris and their cousins over at Saint-Cloud. But with events moving rather quickly, it was hard to tell what was happening.

Sensing a decisive moment in history, though, Orléans’ sister, Adélaïde, said that they should all return to Paris. But the Duc believed jumping the gun was a surefire way to get himself exiled again, maybe even executed if nothing came of the unrest. So the family stayed put at Neuilly to be close to events without becoming participants. When the fighting in Paris began on the night of the 27th, Orléans got even more nervous about his position. Both running toward Paris and running away from Paris both seemed to court disaster. Then, on Wednesday the 28th, the real battles began, and the family could hear the gunfire and cannons. There was a good possibility that at any moment, a crowd of Parisian revolutionaries would show up on their doorstep. Said crowd might be showing up to fetch Orléans to lead them as a liberal man of the people, or said crowd might show up to execute him for being a member of the extended royal family. Both seemed equally plausible scenarios.

So on the night of the 28th, the Duc moved out to a small house on the edge of his estate, and there he laid low. He would be accessible if events made it expedient to be accessible and inaccessible if events made it expedient to be inaccessible. Now aside from the Parisians who captured the Tuileries and the Louvre, the Orléans family was among the first to know that Marshal Marmont’s forces were in retreat because their line of retreat went right by their estate. They were, in fact, so close that as the troops retreated, an errant cannonball flew over the house and landed in the yard. And this apparently broke any remaining hesitation that Adélaïde might be feeling. She fumed righteously and ordered her servants to gather up all the blue, white, and red cloth they could find, and then she set herself to making improvised tricolor ribbons for the family to wear. The elder branch of the royal family was dead. The tricolor would be proof that the cadet branch was alive and well. Now being extra cautious, though, so as not to let the Duc himself become a prisoner to events, Adélaïde told her brother to clear off the estate completely and ride around north of Paris to another property the family owned on the east side of the capital.

So when Adolphe Thiers presented himself at Neuilly at about 10am on the morning of Friday, July 30th, he was presented to the Duchess d’Orléans, Marie Amélie, and Adélaïde. And just as Thiers spoke for Lafitte, the two women said that they spoke for the Duc d’Orléans. Thiers said, “I have come to ask Orléans to be the Lieutenant General, to assume sovereignty on behalf of the people of France.” Thiers said, “Events are moving very quickly, and already other options are presenting themselves. Some of the old Bonapartists were clamoring for Napoleon’s son, who was at that point living in exile in Austria. Others might actually be satisfied if Charles simply stepped down in favor of his grandson. But most ominously,” Thiers said, “if we do not move quickly, the radicals will try to push things all the way to a Republic. And then he said, “To all these arguments, let me add a last one that is decisive. Thrones are obtained only at the price of difficulties and dangers. If the Duc d’Orléans comes today to the middle of Paris, declares that he is rallying to the revolution, has come to share all the dangers the French are facing, and to put himself at their head, he will have played his part in the July Revolution. I cannot hide from you that there will still perhaps be great dangers to surmount, that Charles X is at Saint-Cloud and that he still has forces at his disposal. But you need perils. They are titles to the Crown. The Duc d’Orléans must decide. The destiny of France must not be left hanging in the balance.”

Still unwilling to expose her brother to danger, however, Adélaïde said simply, “If you think that the adhesion of our family can be of use to the revolution, we give it gladly. A woman is nothing in the family. She can be compromised. I am ready to go to Paris. What happens to me there is in God’s hands. I will share the fate of the Parisians.” And to this, Thiers stood up and said, “Today, madame, you have gained the crown for your house.” As soon as Thiers departed, Adélaïde sent messengers off to track her brother down at once and get him back home.

While Adélaïde and Thiers were conspiring to steal the crown from Charles, the King believed that he was well on his way to restoring order in Paris. He had been woken up at about 7 o’clock in the morning by Mortemart and threw a bit of a tantrum when finally presented with the reality of having to go through with all this capitulation. But when he was done crying, the King signed the order rescinding the Four Ordinances and sent his new Prime Minister to Paris, accompanied by the two peers who had come to fetch him the night before.

Like everyone else, these three guys had to deal with the National Guard checkpoints and had to get out and walk when the guardsmen refused to let their carriage pass, but they kept moving on foot even though Mortemart was still very sick and had likely not slept a wink all night. The trio reached central Paris at around 10 o’clock in the morning and headed first for Lafitte’s house. But, by the time they got there, the morning meeting of the Deputies had broken up. So, the trio ran into one of the last members there, and he said, “Come to my house, and we will talk.” And there the Deputy said, “It’s too late. The last chance to save Charles came and went at 1 o’clock in the morning the night before. The question before us is no longer Charles or Orléans, but Orléans or a Republic.

This meeting having obviously gone nowhere, Mortemart went back to his own house in Paris. And there his doctor went nuts and told him, “You have to go to bed and get some sleep.” So, this isn’t really anyone’s fault, but it’s not great that at this critical hour the new Prime Minister was honestly too sick to do his job. So, Mortemart handed the King’s signed declaration to some aides and ordered them to get them printed and posted. But even though it was an announcement of the King’s capitulation, the printers in Paris still refused to handle anything bearing the royal seal, so most people in Paris probably never knew that the King had given up.

At noon, the opposition Deputies reconvened at Lafitte’s, reconciled to their decision to abandon the King, they now had to move quickly to nip in the bud the one thing worse than the tyranny of King Charles: the tyranny of a Republic. The class and character of the liberal opposition was strongly doctrinaire-style constitutional monarchist; they had settled on a plan to dump Charles and name Orléans Lieutenant General, hopefully on the way to naming him King. But there was still the ever-present and super dangerous question of whether the men and women still manning the barricades would accept the political maneuverings they were undertaking. But if there was one man that the streets might listen to, it was the Marquis de Lafayette. As I mentioned in Episode 6.01, Lafayette was pretty consistent in his own political beliefs throughout his life. His placement on the political spectrum, whether he was considered a popular hero or reactionary monster was defined by the times. At this moment, he was a popular hero again. And with his command of the National Guard in place, it would be a huge deal if Lafayette decided to say, “No, I don’t want to replace one Bourbon with another.” 

Rumors swirled that he was even willing to become President of France if the people called on him. But this was just a rumor. When Lafayette was finally confronted point-blank, he said, “No, Orléans shall be king, as surely as I will not be.” And this was not just posturing; that was his position. But, he did plan to make the price of his support a guaranteed list of civil liberties.

With “everyone” on board, the opposition deputies drafted a short statement. It said: “the meeting of the Deputies at present in Paris begs His Royal Highness, Monseigneur, the Duc d’Orléans, to come to the capital to exercise the functions of Lieutenant General of the Kingdom and express to him the wish to retain the national flag. The Deputies have been concerned, moreover, with assuring to France in the next session of the Chambers all the indispensable guarantees for the full and complete execution of the Charter.”

Then a delegation marched up to Neuilly to deliver to the Duc d’Orléans the good news that if he wanted to be, he could now be Lieutenant General. I mean, they hoped it would be good news. All these guys still had to go on was Adélaïde saying, “Yeah, let’s do this thing.” 

With everyone now navigating National Guard checkpoints with difficulty, the Party of Deputies did not reach the Orléans estate until 8 o’clock that night. But there, by candlelight, the Duc d’Orléans, the man allegedly at the center of all this, finally shows up in person. He accepted the party and their offer and said he would come to Paris in the morning. So the delegation turned around and went back to Lafitte’s to deliver the news that they had their man. But Lafitte was hopping mad, far more aware than the Bourbons that time was actually of the essence, and that waiting till morning was how revolutions were lost. He sent a messenger back to Orléans and said, “No, not morning. Come now.” With Adélaïde’s helpful prodding, Orléans agreed. The family packed up and headed to Paris and arrived at the Palais Royale around midnight. 

As Orléans fatefully entered Paris, King Charles fatefully retreated from it. Having sufficiently recovered, Montemart headed back to Saint Cloud on the evening of July 30th to say that none of it had worked. Paris remained intractable. The scene at the palace was bitter and chaotic. After Marshal Marmont’s retreat the day before, he had been relieved of his command, and the troops were given to the King’s son, who, as I had mentioned a few episodes back, was now firmly convinced that Marmont had betrayed the Bourbons on purpose, just as he had once betrayed Napoleon. As night fell, though, the King concluded that Saint Cloud was too close to rebellious Paris. The King said that the family would now move to a small château on the edge of the estate at the mostly derelict Palace of Versailles. So at 3 am they all packed up and departed, leaving the King’s son behind with the troops to block any potential revolutionary column coming out of Paris. The rest of the family arrived in Versailles at about 7 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, July 31st. 

Back in Paris on that same morning, the Duc d’Orléans woke up at dawn, full of doubt about what he had just agreed to. Now mostly recovered, Prime Minister Mortemart arrived to find out what exactly Orléans was up to. And Orléans, apparently quite sincerely, said, “Look, please tell Charles I don’t want any of this. I do not want to be King. Basically, events are happening to me, and none of this is by design.”

And he was quite serious because a few hours later, a large delegation of Deputies, including all the guys we’ve been talking about Lafitte and Guizot and all of them came to the Palais-Royal and were shocked and horrified when Orléans said, “I’ve changed my mind. I do not want to be Lieutenant General.” They freaked out and laid in the hard sell, and the official argument was that he had to do it. Why? At this very moment, the radicals in the streets might proclaim a Republic. So it’s either you or Madame la Guillotine, you make the call.

Orléans continued to vacillate but was apparently pushed over the edge by a short piece of advice from Monsieur de Talleyrand. Orléans sent one of his men to Talleyrand, asking whether he should really accept the Lieutenant Generalship. And Talleyrand’s reply came back in three simple words, “Let him accept.” 

So obviously, with a great deal of reluctance, Orléans said “fine, I’ll do it.” The Deputies already had a proclamation for him to sign that said, “Residents of Paris, the deputies of France, at this moment assembled in Paris have expressed the desire that I come to this capital and exercise here the functions of Lieutenant General of the Kingdom. I have not hesitated to come to share your dangers, to place myself in the midst of your heroic population, and to exert all my efforts to preserve you from civil war and anarchy. In returning to the City of Paris, I wear with pride these glorious colors that you have again taken and that I myself have long carried. The Chambers will meet. They will consider the means to assure the rule of law and the maintenance of the rights of the nation. A Charter will henceforth be a reality.”

With Orléans’ approval, Lafitte ordered 10,000 copies of this proclamation printed and distributed. And unlike for Charles, the proclamation was rushed off the presses and plastered everywhere, because that’s what you get from messing with the printers of Paris. 

Orléans then sat tight at the Palais-Royal while more Deputies came out of the woodwork. Where once there had been maybe thirty or forty at any given meeting, there were now over eighty, because these guys finally decided that it was safe to stick their necks out. This group of deputies then drafted their own proclamation to support the one “written” by the Duc d’Orléans and then filled back up to the Palais-Royal and reconvened around Orléans. In the meantime, someone had managed to procure a National Guard uniform for the Duc, and at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, he mounted his horse and put himself at the head of a procession that marched from the Palais-Royal to the Hôtel de Ville.

Now, as has been noted by historians ever since, this was an act that required some degree of bravery on Orléans’ part. Because though we know how this all turns out, at that moment he was basically the choice of like 100 to 150 individual Deputies, Peers, and journalists, none of whom had actually been fighting out on the barricades. In fact, he was a member of a family that all of those people had been fighting against because, let’s face it, this was an attempt to replace one Bourbon with another. So as Orléans marched through Paris, one individual could have walked up with a pistol and ended the whole project. But no pistol emerged. When Orléans got to the Hôtel de Ville, a large crowd had gathered, and heckling did indeed start up and lots of it was “Down with the Bourbons,” and they were not just talking about Charles. And things might have gotten out of hand, but that is when Lafayette stepped into the picture. With the entire crowd watching, he greeted Orléans, embraced him, and together they walked arm in arm up the stairs. 

Once inside, all the deputies and peers and members of the municipal Commission gathered to read the proclamation that by their power, derived from the mumble mumble… the people… mumble mumble… we hereby declare you Lieutenant General. Orléans accepted and promised to guarantee certain civil liberties as Lafayette had continuously insisted was the basic price of his support.

This secured, Lafayette once again gave the entire project his dramatic blessing by grabbing a tricolor flag and leading Orléans out onto the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville. There, in front of the assembled crowd, the two held the tricolor aloft. And this was the second time Lafayette had preserved the monarchy with a dramatic balcony scene. The first, you’ll remember, was the Women’s March on Versailles in October 1789 when he orchestrated a similar scene with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. And now in the future, many critics would not take kindly to Lafayette’s decision here on July 31st, especially given the future course of the July monarchy. For these critics, the balcony scene is further proof that Lafayette was either a dunce, a chump, or a two-faced hypocrite. In fact, a database on revolutionary Paris that I managed to find, that marks many of the offices and houses I used to make my own map, labels the Hôtel de Ville, July 31st, 1830, with uh disdainful bluntness, it just says “Lafayette’s betrayal.”

But what Lafayette thought he was doing, what he thought he had done, was captured in a conversation with Orléans he later recorded in his memoirs. He said, “You know that I am a Republican and that I regard the Constitution of the United States as the most perfect that ever existed.” The Duc replied, “I think as you do, it is impossible to have spent two years in America and not be of the 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?” “No,” said Lafayette. “What the French people must have today is a popular throne surrounded by Republican institutions, completely Republican.” “That is precisely what I think,” finished Orléans.

With the crown being stolen out from under him in Paris, King Charles X was at Versailles trying to figure out a way to steal it back. Despite his declaration that he had fired his Ministry, all the fired ministers were still around and giving him advice. And they thought they had a plan now to get a hold of the situation. The King would move to Tours and there establish a court and call the Chambers and diplomatic court to attend to him there. Now, this, had it happened, would have kept Charles X on the course once followed by Charles I when he had fled London in 1642, planted his flag at Nottingham, and called Parliament and the Lords to attend to him there. But as it turned out, it was too late to even follow the path of Charles I, which is probably not the worst thing in the world as Charles I lost his head and Charles X will not.

Now, the reason that plan wasn’t going to work is that by the afternoon of the 31st, the King’s son arrived from Saint-Cloud with troubling news. The forces under his command had mostly mutinied out from under him. When some Parisians had approached the palace, the soldiers straight up refused to fire on them. Then, rather than follow the Prince to Versailles, the Swiss Guards had instead approached the National Guard and negotiated their own safe passage right out of France. It was super unclear what the rest of the army was going to do, but so far everything pointed to a complete loss of control. Most of the men were out on garrisons on the Belgian frontier, and of course, oh so ironically, a third of the army and most of the most loyal officers were in Algeria. Because what had begun as a publicity stunt to secure victory in an election now deprived the King of the necessary means of defending his crown. Whoopsie daisy.

With Versailles now seeming too dangerous, the King and his entourage picked up again and moved even further to Rambouillet, where they received word that Orléans had accepted the Lieutenant Generalship and was issuing a flurry of orders to all the armed forces for them to stay put until further notice. There was no confidence now that counterorder from Charles would be followed. It probably wouldn’t. Boxed in and surrounded by rumors that a great mob, similar to the one that had once captured his brother in 1789, was on the way, a deep sense of fatalism consumed the royal family. By the following day, even those in the King’s inner circle counseled the unthinkable—abdication.

But there was one final card for the King to play in this whole, sorry, completely stupid misplayed game that he never should have started in the first place. The King could abdicate in favor not of his son, who was himself tainted and unpopular, but in favor of his grandson, the miracle baby, Henri, the Duc de Bordeaux. Now 10 years old, Henri was innocent in all this and might actually be accepted by the people. By abdicating in favor of his grandson, there was some hope that Lieutenant General Orléans would be forced to recognize the legitimacy of his young cousin, and the crown would be kept in the Bourbon family. It was a clever gambit that would put Orléans and his backers in a tight spot. It did take one good, furious argument to convince his son to sign the letter, but when the shouting was over, both father and son signed. It took the form of a letter directly to Orléans and said,

“My cousin, I am too profoundly grieved by the troubles that afflict and could threaten my people not to have sought a means to prevent them. I have now resolved to abdicate the Crown in favor of my grandson, the Duc de Bordeaux. The Dauphin, who shares my views, also renounces his rights in favor of his nephew. You will now, by virtue of your office as Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, proclaim the accession of Henry V to the Crown. You will take moreover all measures that concern you to determine the forms of government during the minority of the new King. You will communicate my intentions to the diplomatic corps, and you will inform me as soon as possible of the proclamation by which my grandson will be recognized King under the name Henry V. I renew to you, my cousin, the assurance of the sentiment with which I am your affectionate cousin. – Charles.”

The abdication was signed Monday, August 2nd, 1830. It had been one week since the publication of the Four Ordinances, kind of an all-time great political blunder.

Back in Paris, Lieutenant General Orléans and his stable of new advisors got the abdication letter on the afternoon of August 2nd and now had to figure out what to do with it. They agreed that it put Orléans in a tight spot, but someone, and unfortunately, I do not know who to give credit for for this, had a bright idea. They said, “Let’s just keep what we like and ignore what we don’t.” So on August 3rd, Lieutenant General Orléans proclaimed to a joyous Paris that King Charles X had abdicated the throne. But there was no mention of abdicating in favor of Henry V. For all anyone knew, the kingdom was now simply in the hands of Lieutenant General Orléans, who also stressed that he did not derive his powers from some last-minute appointment by an abdicating King, but by order from the people of France, from whom true sovereignty derived. So 15 years since Louis XVIII’s Charter of Government made it clear that sovereignty came down from God to the King, Lieutenant General Orléans made it clear that sovereignty once again came up from the people.

But as word of the abdication made the rounds in Paris, it was accompanied by a rumor that this was all a ruse and that the King was actually planning to attack the capital. So for the first time since the capture of the Tuileries Palace five days earlier, the street fighters of Paris had something to do. About 15,000 to 20,000 of them gathered at what is today the Place de la Concorde. They were joined by companies of the National Guard to keep the whole thing kind of organized, and they all resolved to march Rambouillet. Now, what they would do when they got there was still a pretty open question, but it was also like 30 miles away, so they’d have plenty of time to think about it. And on that morning of August 3rd, 1830, this great mob set out on the road.

Now there’s two ways of looking at this march. I think it’s safe to say that a few people in the crowd were Orléanist allies who had a very specific goal in mind: to use this approaching mob to force Charles to accept exile. But there’s a slightly more conspiratorial theory that the entire adventure was dreamed up by the Orléanists to get the hottest of the hotheads out of Paris while they completed their little coup. Because now that the radical street fighters had done their work, it was time to literally clear them out of town for the day while the respectable Liberals took over.

As soon as the mob departed, a joint session of the Chamber of Deputies and Chamber of Peers convened at the Palais Bourbon. It was the first time either chamber had officially convened since Charles had dismissed them all back in March. With about 200 Deputies and 70 Peers in attendance, they ran around covering every fleur-de-lis in sight with the tricolor, and then in a carefully choreographed bit of theater, a column of National Guardsmen led Lieutenant General Orléans to the Palais Bourbon, where he was invited to deliver an address to the Joint Chambers.

In this address, partly written by François Guizot, Orléans portrayed the events of the past week as a defensive operation against the illegal tyranny of the Crown. He said that, “he himself had accepted the Lieutenant Generalship to restore order and the rule of law.” Then he said, “it was clear the Charter of Government needed to be revised.” Next, he specifically cited most of the problems that had led to all this: The law of the double vote had to be dropped, suffrage needed to be increased, not restricted, the right of royal censorship needed to be abandoned entirely, and of course, the infamous Article 14 needed serious revision to avoid something like this happening in the future.

While Orléans the Chambers discussed revising the Charter of Government, the Parisian marchers kept tromping on the road to Rambouillet. When they reached the town of Trappes, still about 15 miles from their destination, a few of the Orléanist leaders convinced the mob that this was a good place to stop and rest. Three of them would ride on to scout what lay ahead. But the real plan was pretty clear. When they got to Rambouillet, they would knock on the ex-King’s door and ask for an audience. By now, night was falling, and they found Charles angry and agitated, which, yeah, sounds about right. But the three Orléanist messengers had news that made him even more agitated and angry, intentionally inflating the danger. They said, “Look, somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 Parisians are marching here as we speak. There is no time to lose because, frankly, we don’t think we’ll be able to control them if and when they get here. So you have to leave.” Charles, as was now his lot in life, fumed and raged and refused to budge. And then when he calmed down, he recognized that he had two choices: leave France or fall into the hands of a mob and share the fate of his brother. So he said, “Fine, I’ll go.”

As the royal family packed up, the three representatives rode back to Trappes, where the mob continued to sit idle, and when they got there, they said, “Look, everything is cool now. Charles is being escorted out of the country as we speak. There’s no reason for us to keep going.” A few no doubt tried to keep the march moving forward, but after a day of wandering through the French countryside, most everyone was tired. And like I said, still 15 miles from their destination. So they decided, “Okay, we’ll turn around and go home.” By 11 o’clock, the last of the marchers had turned around, and at 1:00 o’clock in the morning, Charles and his family told the few Royal Guards left, “Escort us to the coast, and from there we will sail away from France.”

The end of the July Revolution and beginning of the July Monarchy played out in Paris over the next few days. There was some talk of calling a constitutional convention to draft a whole new Charter of Government, but the inner circle of the liberal opposition, who were now officially the Orléanist faction, rejected the idea as too unpredictable. Best to make the revisions to the Charter we think necessary and ram them through before anyone could say, “No.” They still needed to address whatever Lafayette demanded to keep his support, and so it was not until August 6th that the revised Charter was buttoned up and ready to go. The entire preamble of the old charter was dropped, with it any hint that the Charter was a gift from the King. It also took care of the most pressing issues. In addition to dropping the double vote, the property requirement for electors was reduced, and the voting base of France doubled. Now, we’re still only talking about maybe 150,000 – 200,000 people tops, so it’s not like this was a democratic move or anything, but still, more voters, not fewer voters, was the order of the day. The language of the odious Article 14 was also severely curtailed, to granting extraordinary powers to the King only in times of extreme national emergency. The right to initiate legislation was also given to the Deputies, as was the right to impeach Ministers of State.

But as this was being presented to the Chambers, a crowd gathered outside, and they were not happy about what they were hearing. Yes, this revised Charter was probably better than the old one, but it did not go as far as they wanted. It all seemed designed to benefit the comfortable liberals, who had mostly hid out in their homes and offices during the Three Glorious Days and promised very little to the men and women who had fought and died in the streets. The July Revolution had been won by their blood, not the proclamations and resolutions of well-dressed bankers in fancy apartments.

As the Chamber session of August 6th wrapped up, Lafayette felt obliged to go out and speak to the crowd and tell them “No, this is all good and fine. France is now on firm constitutional grounds. Further reforms should come and would come in time.” The crowd still grumbled, but they accepted Lafayette’s promises and dispersed without further trouble.

On the morning of August 7th, the Chambers met again for the final debate and vote on the revised Charter, and one final amendment was added before the official vote was taken, that the tricolor flag would fly now and forever over France. This final amendment added, the deputies then called Lieutenant General Orléans to the throne. They said,

“On condition of the acceptance of these requirements and propositions, the Chamber of Deputies declares, finally, that the interest of the French people calls to the throne His Royal Highness Louis Philippe d’Orléans, Duc d’Orléans, Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, and his descendants in perpetuity from male to male, by order of primogenitor, to the perpetual exclusion of women and their descendants. In consequence, His Royal Highness Louis Philippe, Duc d’Orléans, Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, will be invited to accept and to swear to the clauses and engagements stated above and observation of the Constitutional Charter and the changes indicated, and after having done so, to take the title King of the French.”

The final vote in the Chamber of Deputies was 219 to 33, with 150 not showing up. The Deputies then took the revised Charter over to the House of Peers, who promptly voted 89 to 10. 14 in attendance abstained, more than 200 peers did not show up for the vote. So this new constitutional monarchy was founded with reservations from the more radical circles and the complete non-participation of old-style conservative royalists. But it was going through. Lieutenant General Orléans humbly accepted the Charter and the invitation to the throne by saying, “I receive with deep emotion the declaration that you present to me. I regard it as the expression of the national will, and it appears to me, in conformity with the political principles that I have professed all my life.” Then, once again, he and Lafayette appeared on the balcony together, and it was later said that the July monarchy was sealed by the Republican kiss of Lafayette.

But this was not quite the end of it. This was still merely the invitation to take the Crown, not any official coronation. So the next day was spent working out all the details. Among the most pressing was figuring out how the new king would style himself. To confirm the historical break with the old absolutist Bourbons and reject their conception of absolute monarchy forever, they settled on Louis Philippe I rather than Louis XIX. And then, of course, most important, he accepted that he would not be the King of France. He would be the King of the French. His sovereignty was not by and for some chunks of geographic territory that he laid claim to by God-given right, but rather by and for the people of France. Because it was the people, not the land, who made up the nation of France.

Finally, on August 9th, 1830, a joint session of the Chambers hosted the coronation of Louis Philippe I. It was an understated affair compared with the grand coronations of Charles X and Napoleon and the whole line of Bourbon Kings before that. Louis Philippe, dressed in the uniform of a general, and he sat in the throne. After everything was read again, Louis Philippe rose and said, “I accept without restriction or reserve the clauses and engagement embodied in this declaration, and the title King of the French, that it confers upon me, and I am ready to swear to observe it.”

So the King of France is dead. Long live the King of the French. 

The resulting celebrations in Paris stood in marked contrast to the sad procession of the deposed Bourbons, still slowly making their way towards the coast. Charles was intentionally moving at a snail’s pace, just in case by some miracle events took a dramatic turn, and he was recalled. But there was no dramatic turn of events. In each town the family passed, the tricolor now flew, and National Guardsmen lined the streets. By August 16th, even their snail’s pace could not stop them from eventually reaching the docks.

Louis Philippe had hired two American ships to ferry his cousins across the English Channel to exile in England. As they boarded the boat on the afternoon of the 16th, tears abounded, but there was little send-off. There were no throngs of loyal subjects mobbing the docks and begging them to stay. The Last King of France departed for exile, and it was far more “good riddance” than “goodbye.”

So, this concludes our series on the July Revolution of 1830, which has now birthed what we call the July Monarchy of Louis Philippe I. But fear not, I am not going to abandon you for another long hiatus just yet. For the next few weeks, I’m going to knock out a few one-off supplementals to round some things out. For example, there is a revolution that’s about to break out in Belgium. Got to talk about that. And then, as you die-hard fans of Les Mis know, there is an aborted revolt in 1832. Once the more radical students of Paris realized the July monarchy ain’t all it was cracked up to be. So I’ve got a few of these plans as we start laying the groundwork for 1848. But first up next week, we will answer the question that I have gotten many times since the start of the Three Glorious Days, and that is, what on Earth did the rest of France think about the July Revolution?

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